The American Guesser

The Green Party is hoping one of their guys has a shot of getting into Congress out of Louisiana’s 2nd district :

The Republican is a Vietnamese American who almost never mentions his party affiliation when campaigning inside New Orleans. The Democrat is disgraced nine-term incumbent William “Dollar Bill” Jefferson, under indictment for bribery after the FBI discovered $90,000 stashed in the plastic containers of his home freezer. The Green Party candidate is longtime community organizer Malik Rahim, a co-founder of Common Ground Relief Network, a grassroots organization brought together in the wake of Katrina to open medical clinics, distribute flood relief supplies and repair and rebuild homes damaged by the flood. With a projected low turnout, it’s shaping up as a three way race that could go in a surprising direction. “We are shooting for 30,000 votes here,” a Rahim campaign spokesperson told BAR, “and we think we can win.”

I dunno. You can never underestimate the ability of people to rationalize away a candidates obviously criminal behavior because they think they need someone to bring home the bacon. After all, they’ve been told by the media, the schools and their churches for years that they cannot possibly service without assistance from the nanny state. The only reason for wanting the ability to vote is to be able to get stuff from the government.

And right now, you just bet that Bill Jefferson is pumping out that message. At least Malik Rahim has been rolling up his hands and working for the people. Jefferson has literally be rolling away the cash.

Now that most of the hype is over from the election, I thought it would be prudent to point out some to the vote totals for those Presidential candidates that suffered from a media blackout. In the table below I have listed all the candidates that had the mathematical possibility of winning the election (candidates who appeared on enough state ballots to equal 270+ electoral votes). Not listed are the twenty or so other candidates who did not meet the same criteria. Together they garnered 103,312 votes..

That means 1,644,929 people voted for a candidate other than Obama or McCain. Also because of in-fighting in both the Libertarian and Constitution Parties, Ron Paul and Alan Keyes were on some state ballots instead of their official candidates. That means there is another 60,823 votes that should have been split between those two parties.

Via The Washington Times:

Tom DeLay will vote for John McCain but the former House Republican leader said his wife, Christine, is planning to vote for Libertarian presidential nominee Bob Barr.

“I’m trying to convince my wife not to do that,” the Texas Republican told editors and reporters at The Washington Times on Friday. “She said it publicly yesterday.”

Mr. Barr’s candidacy is an issue conservatives appear to be grappling with since he won the Libertarian party’s nomination on the sixth ballot at their May 25 convention in Denver. Early polls suggest Mr. Barr could draw small but significant support in key states such as Georgia and North Carolina, potentially complicating the electoral picture for Mr. McCain, Republicans’ presumed presidential nominee.

“Potentially complicating the electoral picture” … that’s one way to describe it.

Listen folks, your vote doesn’t BELONG to either one of the Big Two parties. It’s yours, and you can use it to vote for whomever you want. If more people voted for the person they really wanted to get the job this nation would be better off. But we’ve let the parties and the press brainwash us into voting for candidate A because heaven help us is Candidate B wins. The fact is that Candidates A and B, while different, are pretty damn close.

Myself, I can’t get to enthused about Barr’s libertarianism, considering how focused he was on Bill Clinton’s Penis. There were good reasons to impeach Clinton (lying under oath at the head of the list). But Barr was focused on the sex part during who impeachment mess. It left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

*ahem*

Hat tip to Third Party Watch.

Professor Glenn Reynolds says he wants a party that combines “GOP economic-libertarian strands with the Dems’ social-libertarian strands.” I want a party that does that too, but that pays attention to immigration issues, doesn’t blame America for what’s wrong with the world and recognizes that there are times you fight back, even if you have to strike the first blow. Oh, and he bitchslaps Trent Lott and his ilk wanting to destroy on talk radio for gettin’ the public all riled over the amnesty bill. Lott should be dead to any GOPer with the slightest libertarian bent.

Hat Tip: JAWA Report.

Does this count as initiating force?

Libertarian Greg Graziani isn’t worried about being politically correct.

His campaign commercial for the state [South Carolina] Senate District 46 seat is a testament to that. It features him tackling a young man on Folly Field Beach.

Not a big deal if he was playing football or rugby.

But the commercial implies Graziani is knocking over an illegal immigrant.

Graziani then walks away from the man, who is belly-down in the sand and appears to be handcuffed, and addresses the camera:

“I’m Greg Graziani, and I’m tackling tough issues like illegal immigration.”

[deleted]

Graziani believes one way the state could curb the flow of illegal immigrants is by cutting off the public aid they receive, such as not paying for emergency room visits or schooling. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that approach unconstitutional.

Graziani’s response? Amend the Constitution. And if that fails, he said in a recent interview, do it anyway.

“Another good thing about our system is that you can just do something and wait for the courts to rule on it because they are very slow,” he said, “and, in that time, you can see where you can get going.”

I am convinced that illegal immigration is going to be a hot button issue in the 2008 elections. Politicians from any party (except the Greens, who eat this stuff up) who tell voters that amnesty (or amnesty by any other name) is a good thing are going to lose votes. Middle America just ain’t buying it, for various reasons.

At my job, I work right next to people who weren’t born here. All of them entered the nation legally. I have absolutely no problem competing with them for jobs. I reject the bigots who say immigration (not just illegal immigration) is poluting our nation’s culture. Our nation’s culture is derived from the things immigrants brought here.

But illegal immigration is bad for the nation’s security. It also drives down wages, takes money out of the nation, props up the nation’s entitlement programs so the problems are not addressed and is unfair to those peoeple who follow the law.

And I’m glad to see Libertarian Party candidates ignoring all this silly open borders nonsense.

My mind isn’t quite made up about [tag]Ron Paul[/tag], the libertarian-minded fellow who’s running for the Republican nomination. He’s stronger on border security than most libertarians, which I like, but he’s also one of the folks who tends to blame America’s “alliances” on the War on Terror. I think that’s bullshit, since American is the natural enemy of Islamofascists whether we are friends with Israel or not. I would argue that being a friend of liberty automaticall requires us to be friends of Israel anway. And he’s a right-to-lifer, which n my mind, tells me he thinks the Nanny State out to be in control of women’s bodies, which is an un-libertarian stance to take.

Anyway, here’s Paul’s Vox Popoli is here.

Illinois is sinking further and further into nanny-statism. Not only must common cold remedies be locked up, customers have to show ID to buy any. Can’t risk the possibility of of people using it to make meth.

The message in the media is, of course, that all law-abiding citizens should just bend over and take it.

Despite the inconvenience, most local pharmacists said customers are generally happy to oblige.

“For some customers it has been” an annoyance. “People have been used to it being on the floor,” said Jagruti Patel, a pharmacist at Cub Foods on Knoxville. “But it’s understandable as for what’s been going on.”

Gary Jones, a pharmacist at Bogard Drug Stores Inc. in South Peoria, said most people don’t seem to mind the restrictions.

“But we have had a few strange ones that look like they don’t belong, and they’re somewhat upset they have to ask for it and are limited in their purchases,” Jones said. “Those are probably the people we’re trying to stop.”

This reporter never talked to me.

Here’s an idea. Next time some state legislator comes into the drug store to buy cold medicine, send his sorry ass packing. Tell the fascist bastard that his ID looks phony. Better yet, call the drug cops on him. Tell the police that he looked like he didn’t “belong,” and that he irritation at being denied the medicine is evidence he planned to do something nefarious.

After all, if the politician wasn’t doing anything wrong, he doesn’t have anything to complain about.

Here’s another problem: It isn’t going to work. Meth heads will figure out how to get the stuff they need, or switch to something new. That means the Drug Warriors will have to come up with something even more draconian. Maybe door to door inspections. Or random drug tests at traffic stops.

Stop complaining. If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to complain about.

Damn you Matt Welch. I wish I wrote like this. I wish I thought like this:

There’s a thin, dangerous line between “we must be doing something right” and “we must not be doing anything wrong.” Or more relevantly, between that an “we may be doing some things wrong, but that doesn’t matter, because we’re doing The One Important Thing right enough.”

That latter mind-set led Goldwaterites down the rabbit-hole of Nixonian statism, just as the children of the Gingrich Revolution have grown up to become fluffers for the Executive Branch. Both cases, of course, also illustrate the miraculous change that occurs in some people when their political team holds the reins of power.

One of the worst evils being perpetrated by Bush apologists has been to spread the idea that anyone who disagrees with or disapproves of anything coming out of the White House is somehow disloyal or reckless. Brad Spangler says:

An example of one of those brainwashing tricks is the continuous debate over what the right “balance� is between liberty and security. The implicit assumption underlying that debate is that liberty and security are antagonistic; that one supposedly can not have more of one without having less of the other.

With all respect to Mr. Spangler, Ben Franklin said it best:

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.”

As a libertarian who only grudgingly supported the war in Iraq — I couldn’t bring myself to disagree with the idea of liberating so many enslaved people, and Sadaam never lived up to treaties — I have sat back and watched dissenters’ patriotism questioned by Bush’ surrogates. I could never agree with the torture and mistreatment, nor with the continued erosion of civil liberties.

The massive spying program in violation of FISA was the final straw for me. But I was surprised at the anger I saw from people who thought that because I supported the war I must be a die-hard Bush supporter. I laughed that off.

But the worst of the criticism was that I was somehow advocating a weakening of our national security. By insisting that the Bush administration needed to get a judge’s permission before they tapped a citizen’s phone line, I was in their opinion somehow expressing my lack of concern about terrorism. One person accused me or forgetting about Sept. 11, 2001.

To hell with that. I voted for the guy in 2004. I didn’t drink his Kool Aid.