Muda69

Yep, if saving time and reducing typos by using the copy/paste feature to enter a forum thread title instead of manually typing out each letter and word is laziness, then I am guilty as charged. How's your IBM Selectric doing gonzo?

Please elaborate.

I didn't. I copy/pasted it from the website.

And exactly what ideology is that, Dante? Is $40 trillion taxpayer dollars acceptable to you? Are you willing to have your federal income taxes doubled, maybe tripled, to pay for it all?

No, hence the qualifier "usually" in my statement. You really need to learn basic English and the meanings of words, Gonzo.

Yes. I have experienced ballots where for one particular position all the candidates running for that position are, IMHO, not qualified. So I will choose not to cast a vote for that particular position. I then continue on with the rest of the ballot. Have you ever done this?

No, I have previously stated that I am not. And the generally accepted rules of article headlines generally capitalize all the key words found in the headline. Thus the capitalization of the word libertarian. I'm sure if the author of said article had been referring to the libertarian political entity he would have included the world "Party" following the word "Libertarian".

Again gonzoron, does one just hold their nose and vote for the "lesser of two evils"? And please point out these local elections where there is only one position on the ballot to vote for. I have never heard of or experienced one in my decades long history of voting in local elections in the state of Michigan and Indiana. No, it's not. But you and Gonzo just keep holding your nose, IO, so you can get to wear those little "I voted" stickers on your foreheads.

And every member of the uni-party is mentally stable? Only the shear numbers of the Democrat/Republican parties hide the crackpots which reside therein. I agree with your opinion that the national Libertarian political party needs to focus on local races, and not yet national ones. It is one of the reasons I choose not to be a member of the Libertarian political party.

No, you are wrong gonzoron. Please educate yourself. Among libertarian circles the "big L" Libertarian usually refers to the Libertarian political party. "small l" libertarianism usually refers to those individuals who believe in those principles.

Republicans Are the Party of Trillion-Dollar Deficits: https://reason.com/2019/07/19/republicans-are-the-party-of-trillion-dollar-deficits/ A slowly sinking ship.

? Are saying there are no fat guys who enjoy pole dancing that also identify as conservative or liberal? Are you referring to the the Libertarian political party or leaning toward libertarianism in general? They are two different things.

What if you don't feel there are any qualified candidates for a certain position? Does one just hold their nose and vote for the "lesser of two evils"? No, I believe in that situation the principled thing to do is not cast a vote for that position at all.

An apples to oranges comparison. Four of those elections did not employ an electoral college system, one of them did. And again for the record I did not vote for Mr. Trump in the 2016 election, and I won't be voting for him in 2020.

Then please explain to a layman like myself exactly what you are trying to say.

I would be content with breaking California up into several new states, or having it secede from the union altogether.

No thoughtful, objective answer from you other than "Go, Fight, Die, Win, USA #1". Typical. And expected.

Corey Atchison Freed After Serving 28 Years for a Murder He Didn't Commit: https://reason.com/2019/07/18/corey-atchison-free-nationalism-conservatism-big-tech/ One might have expected Atchison to express bitterness. (If I had been wrongly imprisoned for nearly 30 years of my life, I would be plotting some kind of elaborate revenge, Count of Monte Cristo–style.) But Atchison told the press that he felt "blessed" and held no grudges. "Life's too short," he said. Indeed, life is too short. And Atchison's life is 30 years shorter, because overzealous authorities stole that time from him. I can't help but think about this travesty of justice in the context of the current national freakout many on the right are having with respect to "Big Tech," globalization, automation, and the supposed sins of the free market. To grapple with these issues, these conservatives are racing to embrace nationalism and "declare independence from neoliberalism, from libertarianism, from what they call classical liberalism…from the set of ideas that sees the atomic individual, the free and equal individual, as the only thing that matters in politics." That's how author Yoram Hazony explained it during his remarks at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C., this week. (See my colleague Stephanie Slade's excellent writeup of the event.) Other speakers at the conference explicitly singled out private companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook as bigger threats to individual liberty than big government. Libertarians, the new nationalists say, are fools for caring more about the latter threat than the former. For the likes of Steven Crowder and Dennis Prager, perhaps the threat of YouTube censorship really is the most serious tyranny they face. Many other Americans have different problems. Neither Google nor Amazon nor any social media company even existed when the government sent Atchison to prison for for 28 years. Who knows if one day Twitter would have shadowbanned Eric Garner, killed by the cops because he was selling loose cigarettes? On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced that none of the officers responsible would face charges. The only person who went to prison in the Garner case was Ramsey Orta—a friend of Garner's who managed to record his final moments. Giving more power to the government is probably not an appealing agenda for the family of Daniel Shaver, whose killer—Officer Philip Mitchell Brailsford—will receive $2,500 a month because he allegedly got PTSD for shooting the unarmed man in a hotel hallway. Nor would it please the Lowthers, who spent $300,000 trying to stop Child Protective Services from abducting their children based on a mendacious lie. Our critics—be they nationalist conservatives or progressive liberals—say we libertarians are monomaniacally focused on reducing the size of government. But that's because we recognize that government has more power than any other institution to kill people, deport their relatives, kidnap their children, and destroy their livelihoods. If you're not at serious risk of suffering one of those calamities, you possess a level of privilege many of your fellow Americans do not. That doesn't mean you are forbidden from complaining about bias or mistreatment at the hands of private organizations such as tech companies and the mainstream media. I'm frequently critical of both myself. But you should be really, really wary of supporting robust federal intervention into these problems, when the likely result will be to give government authorities more resources for oppressing everyone. The next time someone says that there's no bigger threat to Americans' liberties than Big Tech, remember Corey Atchison.

Who is there left to fight in the Middle East, Grover? Like I said: Endless "war". Endless suffering. Endless death. Most of my children have not known a time when the USA was not at "war" with some entity. Is that the America our forefathers envisioned? No. If you truly believe in the cliche of "Better to fight them there than here" then you clearly are a warhawk and a supporter of the military-industrial complex.

Here's What You'll Face When You Try to Invade Area 51: https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/heres-what-youll-face-when-you-try-to-invade-area-51-1836420016? Looks like a viable attack plan to me.

And still the question is why in the hell are these men and women still there in the first place? Endless "war". Endless suffering. Endless death. Mostly now to enrich the military-industrial complex. After all it helps the overall American economy, does it not?

Words do matter, do they not? No, I'm not.

Throwflame - Introducing the TF-19 Flamethrower Drone:

Ten Questions for the ‘Squad’: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/ten-questions-for-the-squad/ All good questions.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2005), in 2003 there were 75,573 cases disposed of in federal district court by trial or plea. Of these, about 95 percent were disposed of by a guilty plea (Pastore and Maguire, 2003). While there are no exact estimates of the proportion of cases that are resolved through plea bargaining, scholars estimate that about 90 to 95 percent of both federal and state court cases are resolved through this process (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005; Flanagan and Maguire, 1990). https://www.bja.gov/Publications/PleaBargainingResearchSummary.pdf That is our current state and federal "justice" system. Pile on the charges, whether truly substantiated or not, in order to frighten and demoralize the defendant. Then plea bargain down to the one or two charges that may actually stick.