The Libertarian Choice — A Dated Governor Or An Internet Troll
What exactly Libertarians are is hotly debated; but the general gist as I understand it is Republican economic policies and Democratic foreign policies, with social issues favoring whichever side favors less regulations and restrictions on others’ lives. On paper it sounds like a solid platform that could win over voters and shake up the two-party system. In reality the Libertarian Party is filled with fringe types, retread politicians way past their due date, and almost Democrats & Republicans whose beef with their would-be party on one issue or another led them to identify as a Libertarian.
Nonetheless, desperate times call for desperate measures and plenty #NeverTrump folks are ready to back the Libertarian party nominee if need be. The Libertarian candidates however consist of…well how can I put this politely? Eccentric possibilities. Only one has experience actually governing in political office?—?you know, something the President is going to have to do. Of the 16 running, two have generated the most buzz: Gary Johnson and Austin Petersen, so we’re going to focus on them.
Source: The Libertarian Choice — A Dated Governor Or An Internet Troll — The Buckley Club
So, once again, the criticism of Libertarians is that they are insufficiently pro-life. Where sufficiently entails, I guess, a willingness to push for government intervention.
Perhaps they could include a criticism of these guys as being insufficiently concerned with marijuana use?Report
The criticism of Peterson has more to do with the (allegedly) dishonest portrayal of his views. I mean, Mendez is prefering Johnson over him and Johnson is clearly pro-choice, which is JayFromBrooklyn’s position as well.Report
I probably still had Erickson’s “Will Libertarians finally grow up?” essay on the brain.Report
“Republican economic policies and Democratic foreign policies, with social issues favoring whichever side favors less regulations and restrictions on others’ lives. ”
Really? Not according to much of the libertarian stuff I’ve read. Libertarians generally believe in capitalist markets, not the corporatist markets favored by the Rs. Dem foreign policies? Like intervention in Syria, Libya, destabilization of Ukraine, and like that super secret stuff in Nauru? Right…. I’ll concur with the last part though. The author doesn’t seem to understand libertarians as much as he’d like to think.Report
As far as I know, the difference between the Rs and the Ds on the Ukraine, Syria, and Libya, is that the Rs have favored more intervention, more armed support to the “good” guys and boots in the ground. This site gets iffy with too many links, but google John McCain and Ukraine, John McCain and Syria, and John McCain and Libya.
Before someone says “well, that’s McCain’s personal opinion”, do remember that the Republican Party chose the Senator from AZ as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. I doubt that was because McCain’s opinions were SO OUT OF WHACK with the Party Leadership’s that it made all the sense to have him chair a Committee that has REALLY NOTHING TO DO with military interventionsReport
Realignment changes things.
People who get paid to analyze things like this are calling Hillary Rodham Clinton “The Mad Bomber”… it’s not a compliment.Report
I’m not sure I follow your point, but the first McCain and Syria hit in Google is from Nov 29 2015, not yet six months ago, McCain asking for 20,000 ground troops to be sent to Syria. So, whatever the change is, it must be fishing recentReport
We’re in a nascent realignment, and it has to do with the syndicates aligning behind Hillary. If the neocons (Halliburton, etc) jump ship, do the Republicans still stay hawks?Report
I’ve been reading about Lincoln’s time with the Whigs, and this realignment thing makes sense to me.
The entirety of the Whig Party was a reaction against Jackson, and was an uneasy coalition at best.
Very much in-line with much of Republican thought today (except, perhaps, the part about de-criminalizing indebtedness).Report
The whigs weren’t a bad party. I could have voted for them.Report
Well, kinda my point. If the dems are advocating intervention and the repubs are advocating boots on the ground intervention, it’s still intervention, so there’s very little difference in the intervention other than the method.Report
I don’t buy that.
There is a vast ocean of difference between sending some weapons and chairing some diplomatic meetings, and having 20,000 US troops like McCain was requesting last November.
It was not Hillary who wanted to find out if radioactive sand glowed in the darkReport
Yes, but you’re putting that in past tense for a reason.
I know a guy who gets hired by the government to give forecasts, and makes some serious change off betting on politicians and politics.
He has it at 1 in 3 that Hillary wins against Trump.
He also has it at 1 in 5 that, if she wins, there will be a world war three while she is in office.
[Have you seen Joe Biden parading around as if he’s got a chance? He’s their backup plan, if Hillary… proves more unsuitable than she already is. (They call her the Mad Bomber, and say simply: “give her someplace we don’t care about to go bomb”)]Report
“….if she wins, there will be a world war three while she is in office.”
…only after someone puts a gun on Chelsea’s head….Report
Please don’t cite it like that, when I’m giving it 20% odds.
Clinton already knows the score about being President. There are people you can defy, and people you can’t. Your backers are, in general, bad people to piss off (we haven’t had a nice syndicate since Jimmy was in charge).Report
Yet another guy you “know”. Is this the same “gun to the head” guy?
And the “they” that call her a “mad bomber” — who is this “they”?
I’m starting to suspect there isn’t a “they” and there isn’t a “guy you know” — at best there’s “people on some nutty conspiracy forum I hang out on”. I mean sure, there’s plenty of people on places like Democratic Underground that might call her “the Mad Bomber” or think someone held a gun to Obama’s head.
But we’d dismiss those people PDQ, but it’s harder for us to judge “this guy you know”. Although given what “these guys you know” have had to say in the past, I’m thinking lots of the people you know are crazy.Report
It’s the guy who’s working for the Bernie Sanders campaign. He’s also worked for pretty much everyone in Washington, including Newt Gingrich (which he did solely to burst the man’s ego — I wonder if he was even getting paid), the Libertarians, and the Green Party. [If I said he has worked for RAND, this might help clear some things up, yes?]
“They” are spies and analysts — who do you think Koch hires when he wants a decent view on politicians, here and abroad?
This guy I know — he works political campaigns, right? He won a bet against Hillary Clinton (did you guess that she likes to bet?) http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/08/25/sen-hillary-clinton-hosts-ned-lamont-clinton-top-rival-far-behind-in-polls.htmlReport
Oh well, if we can’t trust a Sanders campaign official who may or may not exist, whom you may or may not know, to impartial about the candidate that beat them in the primary, whom CAN you trust, right?
I mean the whole setup screams “Impartial assessment”. No bias there!Report
Oddly enough, he’s currently working for Hillary too, just not her campaign.Report
I really was about to post something about 2006 that no one had picked up on at the time… (and I only know of because of my friend) but the video evidence isn’t on the net anymore (how in the world did that happen?).
Sorry, if I do manage to find any evidence, will post.Report
Your argument makes no sense. “chairing some diplomatic meetings” is not intervening. How about “drawing a line in the sand regarding chemical weapons”. Is that better?Report
And when did O send in 20k troops? I must have missed that. Sure people loooove to talk about the thing he said he shouldn’t’ have. But did he back track and, you know, not do the stupid thing. Leave the fox news talking points to fox.Report
JA was talking about McCain wanting to send in 20k troops, not me.Report
And i’m pointing out the fox news silliness of harping on O’s line in the sand. He made a statement, decided it was a bad idea and didn’t follow through with the threat. How is that bad? Should have gone threw with the threat after deciding he misspoke? This seems to be one of those cases where the differences between O and what the R’s want is so glaring it hard to see how it isn’t clear to everybody.Report
Oh, let’s see. The “most powerful man in the world” makes a clear statement that “consequences” will happen if Syria doesn’t get rid of their chemical weapons or uses them.
That’s a threat. That’s not the same as trying to hold trilateral peace talks. That’s interference in the sovereign affairs of another country, ie meddling. Were the Rs being even more stoopid? Yep, but meddling is meddling. We seem to be arguing over degrees of stoopid.Report
No, not 20k… late in April it was reported that 250 special forces were inserted into Syria… which are to “bolster” the 50 that were originally (and very quietly) sent in Nov 2015.
Under what authority? The
Gulf of Tonkiner, the 2001 AUMF:We’ll recall that the 2013 AUMF for Syria with regards its use of Chemical weapons was abandoned amid intense public resistance to the move… surprising both Democrats and Republicans. With the neo-con hawks failing to secure/guaranty congressional approval, Obama dropped his request for the new AUMF.
So, there is no AUMF with regards the Syrian President’s use of chemical weapons. Nonetheless, in November, Clinton argued:
Presumably any old AUMF will do, so there likely won’t be any real discussion on the issue, no matter who the president will be.
So, yes… we’re on a path from 300, to 3,500, to 30,000 troops on the ground, and I’m willing to bet one Schrute Buck it will happen under our 2001 perpetual war agreement and without any sort of “National Conversation”.
p.s. Once upon a time Trump said he’d watch all parties fight to the death, let Russia bleed its resources, then Metternich like, step in and mop up. That seems to have been an idea he focus tested and dropped.
We’ll see if Trump goes back to his getting value for our blood and treasure position… because he can really score points against her on this front…but my eightball here says no.Report
If intervention is only military intervention and chairing diplomatic meetings is not intervening, then like 75% of our formal intervention in Syria just poofed into thin air, which makes the Ds even less intervening than what I thought.Report
Unless your saying that 75% of our formal intervention is just the non black stuff. We do a lot of stuff that’s black. What do you think all those billions for the nsa and cia are for?Report
There’s probably ore black ops than even you might believe- but most of it is on the margins. Expensive yes, but not earth moving.
Taking out Bin Laden was black ops brought to light, but how much are we reshaping the world one black op at a time?
The problem with black ops is that they are as good as the politician/civil servant sitting in Washington. And the amount that these guys know about the world is painfully little.
How many people around here know what the Inner Niger Delta is and why is important (no googling)? There’s a sixpack of IPAs that says that the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee has no clue where it is (hint: not in Nigeria) though I’m sure that it has appeared in the intelligence reports he is supposed to read at least once a month.
I have a lot of respect for the guys doing back ops in the field. And I pity that they are controlled by people that do not understand the difference between a Shia and a Sunni.Report
This strikes me as an “It’s the same with / without a condom” argument.
If you’re getting screwed by a two-inch d!ck, is it really getting fished?Report
Continuing the line…
Perhaps it is to someone who can’t get pregnant….Report
The author probably should have stopped at that sentence, realized he has no idea what he is talking about and deleted the piece.Report
Mr. Mendez is first person I have seen to have successfully gotten rid of McAfee.Report
You watch, a week from now there will be a paragraph about him and nobody will be able to explain how it got thereReport