Gary Johnson for President

[Guyau]

.

Bob, your question about boots on the ground (our sons' and daughters' boots on the ground) is the excellent question. Excellent, that is, when posed as a rhetorical question. Lindsay Graham is the one who has been honest about this. I'm not interested in your "nuke 'em all" alternative. We (Bill Clinton and NATO) have won exactly one little war without our boots on the ground. That's not usually the feasible situation. When I hear Americans (over the last fifty years of my adult life) say "lets fight a war, but just from the air" I think one word: chicken. To say nothing of la-la land. We have boots on the ground right now in the campaign to take Mosel from ISIS. That is what is necessary, and the President (any President) will send more if necessary, and if, as I think, the toppling of their "state" hold on regions is a rational defense of the region that is the USA, they are right to do so. The entry question is what is the objective level of threat to the US and what is the objective estimate of loss of our life and limb and treasure to us to go over and destroy them and what would be the successor threats resulting from that victory. After the congressional vote of Declaration of War on that entry assessment, then the President and his Generals decide the methods for success in the mission. The President today is making such an execution, as was the President before him, without the Constitutional Declaration of War, due to that same one word, applied to the Congress: chicken.

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, merjet said:

Attention grabbing comes in degrees.

Merlin,

And what is wrong with attention-grabbing on a discussion forum?

Emphasis is supposed to grab attention. That's why you do it. (Boredom is not a virtue in a discussion except, maybe, for the boring. ) 

The issue was "screaming."

Michael

[merjet]

31 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Merlin,

And what is wrong with attention-grabbing on a discussion forum?

Where did say it was wrong? It's about manners. Please tell us how much you like obnoxious, high-pressure salespeople trying to sell you something that you have no interest in buying.

Your attention-grabbing didn't bother me -- I easily ignored it -- but at least I understand how Stephen Boydstun felt.

[KorbenDallas]

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, merjet said:

Where did say it was wrong? It's about manners. Please tell us how much you like obnoxious, high-pressure salespeople trying to sell you something that you have no interest in buying.

Your attention-grabbing didn't bother me -- I easily ignored it -- but at least I understand how Stephen Boydstun felt.

Merlin,

Manners?

Gimme a break. 

I've been formatting article headlines the same way for years here on OL regarding all topics and all different perspectives. Nobody ever complained about that being obnoxious and high-pressure sales to get people to read something they had no interest in. Nobody ever complained, period.

Instead, we have a pretty damn good readership here in OL.

But now it's a problem because some people don't like Trump, he's winning hands down and the news is not favorable to their last hope, especially when the dude said something as goofy as the Radical Islam threat being overblown. And if people think my opinion that Johnson said something goofy is bad manners, how about the ton of times people mocked Trump (and Trump supporters) to my face right here on this forum for stuff he's said (and I haven't tut-tut-tutted)? Does that count as bad manners, too?

Complaining about my headline formatting will not make Trump start losing and Johnson start winning. 

Anyway, why not complain about Islamists blowing people up, chopping their heads off, throwing gays off of buildings, etc.? None of that is worth commenting about (don't forget, Johnson says it's overblown), but my headline formatting is the problem?

Jeez...

Talk about projection and a big fuss over nothing...

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Gary Johnson is certainly making a splash with some important people, though.

Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney said they are thinking of voting Libertarian this election (see here on CNN).

They say they are voting on principle, so obviously they see Johnson as aligned with their principles.

That's awesome. Keep on truckin'...

Michael

[Guyau]

.

Not to worry, Michael. I am going to send you the annual financial contribution I make for this site, though this year I better delay it from Aug. 1 to after the election. I don't want you sending the money straightaway to this guy you're selling, the product (Mr. Trump) you're so everywhere pushing on us, so bolstering in your own look at all information on the election, so distorting everything anyone not for your candidate says on anything about affairs of the world, so slipping from what they said to you to some imaginary saying they plainly did not, a product I'll not be buying. Rest assured, I will come through with the annual contribution. But no more posts until after the election.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Stephen,

I don't want to make you mad. 

 

It's just that OL is a site where everyone gets to plug their own candidates. I plugged mine for the reasons I laid out on a long, long thread. And, no, I did not distort what people said here. Not knowingly. I have put up with a lot of personal criticism, some of it quite snarky, so I have given my honest analyses in rebuttal. Disagreement is not distortion. Nor is banter. Not when it's honest disagreement and banter in goodwill. The fringe distorts. I don't know of anyone who does that regularly on purpose on OL.

Apropos, if you want to set up a thread promoting Gary Johnson and prohibit criticism of him on that thread, I'm game. Go for it. 

I didn't do that with Trump, though. Nowhere. And some people bashed the shit out of him wherever I talked about him, on that long thread and elsewhere. They still do. But I argued my case and kept to my message and reasons. And bantered about crows and so on. And my man is winning.

I'm not going to say I'm sorry for that. I'm not sorry for that. I'm happy Trump is winning. That was my point all along from the very beginning.

I don't feel good that you feel bad, though. I wish I knew what to do to make you feel better and still remain true to myself. If you have any suggestions, I'm listening...

btw - I have nothing but gratitude for your donations over the years. It's unconditional as it is with all who have donated. That gratitude will not change whatever happens. Even if you end up hating me. I mean it. I will always express it, too. Thank you.

Michael

[KorbenDallas]

42 minutes ago, Guyau said:

But no more posts until after the election.

Stephen I hope you'll reconsider!  I really enjoy reading your posts
 

[SteveWolfer]

11 minutes ago, KorbenDallas said:

Stephen I hope you'll reconsider!  I really enjoy reading your posts

Me too!

[Brant Gaede]

6 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

How do you fight such a war withOUT boots on the ground.  Easy: nukes,  poison gas and chemicals and (note this)  a cold blooded lack of concern for collateral damage.   Hit 'em hard,  hit 'em first.  As Nathan Bedford Forest [sic] (one of the few true military geniuses of the Civil War)  said:  Get their [sic] firstest with the mostest. 

He denied ever saying that.

Where did you get this expert knowledge on fighting a war--be like "Chemical Ali"?

You might be a great war dog, but war dogs don't run wars nor are they consulted, just used.

I guess that dovetails with moralist's criticisms of your person and why "governments love people like you."

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

44 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

He denied ever saying that.

Where did you get this expert knowledge on fighting a war--be like "Chemical Ali"?

You might be a great war dog, but war dogs don't run wars nor are they consulted, just used.

I guess that dovetails with moralist's criticisms of your person and why "governments love people like you."

--Brant

I used to be a techno-warrior.  I worked on A-bombs, H-bombs, guidance systems for cruise missiles and such like before I quit working for governments back in 1968.   I am a graduate of Livermore  when Edward Teller and Sidney Fernbach used to run it.  Those were the days...

According to Shellby Foote, the Civil War historian,  N,B.Forest did say that....  Whatever.  It is true.  When one attacks one attacks full bore with maximum strength. 

[merjet]

3 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Talk about projection and a big fuss over nothing...

The pot calls the kettle black. 

[Brant Gaede]

2 hours ago, Guyau said:

.

Not to worry, Michael. I am going to send you the annual financial contribution I make for this site, though this year I better delay it from Aug. 1 to after the election. I don't want you sending the money straightaway to this guy you're selling, the product (Mr. Trump) you're so everywhere pushing on us, so bolstering in your own look at all information on the election, so distorting everything anyone not for your candidate says on anything about affairs of the world, so slipping from what they said to you to some imaginary saying they plainly did not, a product I'll not be buying. Rest assured, I will come through with the annual contribution. But no more posts until after the election.

Michael's consistent point of view is what holds this thread together, Stephen. It's not a matter of agreeing with it or sanctioning it.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

27 minutes ago, merjet said:

The pot calls the kettle black. 

Merlin,

That's enough. 

If you've got something other than trolling to contribute, please go for it.

Trump 2016.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, KorbenDallas said:

Stephen I hope you'll reconsider!  I really enjoy reading your posts

 

2 hours ago, SteveWolfer said:

Me too!

 

47 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Michael's consistent point of view is what holds this thread together, Stephen. It's not a matter of agreeing with it or sanctioning it.

Guys,

Stephen is a special person--one I hold in super high regard. Sometimes he takes leave of OL. After a while he returns. That's been his pattern and that's a good thing. In fact, anything he does is a good thing in my eyes. Even when he disagrees with me. He's good people.

One of the fundamental characteristics of OL is that people come and go as they please. (Also, every person speaks for himself or herself. Nobody speaks for the others, at least not without a qualifying reason and that doesn't happen very often.) If they stay or if they go, that's good for OL and good for their lives.

For instance, there is a person I like a lot (Reidy) who left OL because I supported Trump. Good for him, good for me and good for OL. I let him know he was always welcome here, then let him pursue his own interests as he saw fit. We are in peace. What could possibly be wrong in a world where that happens?

I trust Stephen will be happy doing whatever he pleases, here, elsewhere, or even offline, whatever he chooses, and that makes me happy.

 

Michael

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I want to get back to horsing around about Gary Johnson, but the banter atmosphere is blown.

What the hell.

I came across the following meme and it struck a nerve, not just for this thread, but in light of the nonstop tragedies of the last couple of weeks.

Steeped in my longing for the banterhood of threads gone by, I saw this, burst out laughing and thought: "This is me."

Michael

[KorbenDallas]

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I want to get back to horsing around about Gary Johnson, but the banter atmosphere is blown.

What the hell.

I came across the following meme and it struck a nerve, not just for this thread, but in light of the nonstop tragedies of the last couple of weeks.

Steeped in my longing for the banterhood of threads gone by, I saw this, burst out laughing and thought: "This is me."

Michael

When I saw that it reminded me of themes in the Romantic Manifesto where Rand spoke about it being a socially accepted thing that maturity is losing one's creative spirit.  You don't have to.  That would be a Naturalistic approach, to accept things as what they are, as they are, and only will be--rather the Romantic approach of what ought to be, can be.  And losing that creative spirit a man dies.  Keeping that creative spirit, or igniting it again, a man can live.  (Knowing you know this.)  MSK I like the image, but I have to say that I have several more years before I approach that age. 

As for GJ?  I have no idea.  I don't think he has a clue. 

[KorbenDallas]

23 minutes ago, KorbenDallas said:

As for GJ?  I have no idea.  I don't think he has a clue. 

Ah yes, this might be why:

 

[KorbenDallas]

Okay one more.  On a serious note, I hope Gary Johnson makes the Presidential debates.  I think its better for America to have more than two parties represented on the floor, to have more to think about, more views, and perhaps engage Americans that might not have been engaged before.  I really liked seeing Ross Perot up there even though I was for the conservative, it made the debates more interesting, more ideas, more views, more learning.  I think the polling threshold should be lowered to 10-12% to accomplish this.

But it seems to me that Mitt was right, if they would reverse the Libertarian ticket it might make more sense.

[KorbenDallas]

I lied.  Here's another--in the best interview that I've seen Gary Johnson in.  It's conducted by Bill Maher, a great conversationalist, and he asks the right questions to get the right responses from both Gary and the crowd, and asked from an individualist's perspective, which is mostly the ticket:

 

[Jonathan]

On July 13, 2016 at 3:13 PM, william.scherk said:

I love roads...Who will build the bike-lanes? Who will finance, plan and build the subways and the new sectors they serve? Etc.  The best my naive understanding can suggest is a similar publicly-supervised set of consortia and public interests as today, of similar wills and similar sources of monies. City roads will exist, as will state and federal roads and rights-of-way. Controlled-access interstate roads could be re-tolled the length and breadth of the Union, and city-urban sectors could be tolled-by-use and tolled-by-time. The economic inefficiencies of piecemeal development may be better managed with a hierarchical contract scheme, or with a price on every foot of 'public' byway, be it sidewalk or bridge to nowhere.

In this mood, I love the dumb questions. 

I remember hearing, years and years ago, Hedrick Smith being interviewed about his book, The Russians. When confronted with the idea of privatization, Soviet citizens couldn't imagine who would produce and deliver food, and everything else, if government weren't in charge of it all. "What if a store owner wanted to use his ownership power to deny people access to food!!! We'll all starve!! Besides, privatization is all too complex, and I can think of lots of problems and objections to which I, personally, can't imagine any solutions!"

J

[BaalChatzaf]

12 hours ago, Jonathan said:

I remember hearing, years and years ago, Hedrick Smith being interviewed about his book, The Russians. When confronted with the idea of privatization, Soviet citizens couldn't imagine who would produce and deliver food, and everything else, if government weren't in charge of it all. "What if a store owner wanted to use his ownership power to deny people access to food!!! We'll all starve!! Besides, privatization is all too complex, and I can think of lots of problems and objections to which I, personally, can't imagine any solutions!"

J

Were the Russians whom Hedrick Smith interview aware than in the U.S.  over 90 percent of the food is privately produced and distributed?  In the U.S. we have a problem of there being more food than people can consume in a healthy fashion  so overweight is  a chronic and significant health problem  in the U.S.

[Jonathan]

3 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Were the Russians whom Hedrick Smith interview aware than in the U.S.  over 90 percent of the food is privately produced and distributed?  In the U.S. we have a problem of there being more feed than people can consume in a healthy fashion  so overweight is  a chronic and significant health problem  in the U.S.

Smith didn't merely interview the Ruskies, but lived among them, and experienced what they did.

As for their awareness of the American system, I think they had some little information, and had heard rumors, but didn't really know what to believe, and couldn't imagine its being as successful as it was. To them, it sounded like a fairytale that was made up by people who were supposed to be their political enemies.

J

[william.scherk]

On 7/17/2016 at 2:57 PM, Guyau said:

But no more posts until after the election.

It's a deal.

I figure more actual exposure for the Libertarian candidate (hey Guv, do some more townhalls) and more actual interviews with challenging reporters will add to the slight bit by bit uptick in his general election polling over the past month. All things considered, I figure he is very close to the strike zone -- for a third-party podium at the three presidential candidate debates.

Is everything he says red-nosed and shambling and comic? Not at twelve and thirteen percent in national four-candidate soundings.  Not completely for me, although I do not favour his hedgehog haircut.  The 'clown show' label that is affixed to him could probably have been affixed to Perot or Anderson. It doesn't do much work for me.

I think all but the most partisan hooligan wants Johnson pressed and pressed hard, just as with the two top uglies. And pressing Johnson is best accomplished by getting him and his schtick before the large debate audience.

If he doesn't make the threshold, he might perform as have other Libertarian candidates in the pre-Johnson era: amassing just shy of seven in a thousand votes. But I think this outing may be an outlier. He could 'spoil' things in some certain states, for one of the uglies or the other. 

The only way to instantiate a Libertarian presence in Washington DC is to capture a House or Senate seat. Barring that, the pure ideological libertarian will feel satisfied with Johnson much more than a Democrat is satisfied with Clinton or a Republican with Trump.  I will not be surprised if he shows enough support (~5-7%) to make a November 'squeaker' even more meaningful: keeping each side of the coin below a majority, down to plurality in the low forties. That would be something -- it would not dent the powers of the President one bit, but would make the administration subject to hard checking.

To the fuss ... Stephen pointed hit on a salient detail for me: in the article headlined Gary Johnson Says The Threat Of Radical Islam Is ‘Overblown’ that wee three syllable truncquoat is all we get from the sentence in which it was uttered (number 3):

1. “the problem in the region is our 40,000 troops in South Korea. That is not a stabilizing force in the Koreas.”
2.  [China] “should be dealing with North Korea.”
3.  "overblown”  
4. “You can argue we’re at war with ISIS, I’ll concede that,”
5. “Do I have issue with wiping out ISIS? If it involves boots on the ground, if it involves dropping bombs, if it involves flying drones, I think that all those methods have the unintended consequence of making things worse not better.”
6. “I think one of the big problems about running for political office when it comes to the military is that candidates draw lines in the sand and I think that’s a big mistake,”
7. “If I draw a line in the sand and it gets crossed, count on the action that I promised.” ,
8. “You’re asking me a hypothetical question that I’m going to be drawing a line in the sand right here and I’m going to have to it stick to for the rest of the time that I’m running for office and take office,” 
9. [Clinton]“has been the architect of our foreign policy”
10. [U.S is] “less safe.” “I think Trump scares me to death and with Hillary nothing really changes. Hillary is just treading water.”

I read the Daily Caller regularly (often via Memeorandum). This is a kind of bait  and hook headline slop you have to get used to on many commentary sites, and DC is not the sole or the worst purveyor. In the end, I want to know what the DC extracted that one word from. I am not ready to scorn Johnson on the grounds of a truncquoat. 

Of course, it is for some folks not arguable that X[ISIS]:evil risk is overblown. An arguable issue is what one of us can reasonably read into a one-word quoat. I think the broader issues of rationally assessing terror-risk within anti-terror strategy is worth a discussion.

Here is another sample from the 'interview' that was paraphrased at the DC story

• The Libertarian nominee said that he would not add any additional restrictions to immigration from the Middle East.
• Johnson would not be fine with a nuclear armed Iran, but would not definitively say what measures he would take to stop that hypothetical situation

I think I will write to the guy responsible for the article and ask why they so heavily edited a remark that the only thing left was "Overblown."  Am I too needy to think that a quote in a headline be given contextual body in a sentence?  

__________________________

Back to the subject of slave roads and free roads and sea roads and ice-cream roads ... Jerry and I are coming at the thing from different planes. I don't see a problem with roads, as such.  Roads are built by consortia. The fun is in the levying of costs and the cost of ownership, and the ongoing efforts to pay the building debt. 

But that is at the largest scale, say the Interstate System, which is sometimes treated as a strategic defence. At the lowest level, with a consortium of ownership and interest to build a gravel, asphalt, cement path across a park -- or from curb to garage, there is no problem. Are the roads and bridges in your county falling into shit and danger, consequent hazards and blockages to commerce and access?

My angle is that the most important questions (not problems) -- are to do with cost, debt, planning.  I don't see a movement in the world to alter the broad strokes of the present integrated transportation system. Private-Public partnership under Planning authority is going to remain more or less the same, with interesting novelties and inventions to come. The notion of 'public carrier' will probably always have an exemplar, no matter where or how the costs are assessed and at which level they are paid for (from a pool, by individuals in increment or usage share).

 -- in a speculative-fantasy kind of mental sketch, I can see a private colonization of interstate rights of way as technology becomes mature (ie, vacuum/linear-induction subsonic 'tube' roads) ... but at the same time see 19th century tech revive: the many nouveau streetcars and light-rail projects of the last thirty years in the USA.

(Here's a boring side-issue on the subject of public 'roads.'  One of the most efficient means of transport in the Greater Vancouver region is our so-called Skytrain system of rail transit. Ours is grade-separated and automated. There are no drivers.  This combo means that trains can arrive every sixty seconds at peak times.  This efficiency and the spread of the network since 1986 has had very visible consequence in the landscape. Almost every single station in the network 'sprouted' an intensively urban neighbourhood around it. This is of course a case of public planning and market exuberance and intelligence.  In a planning sense, the rights of way are 'private' or restricted and this gives a bigger development bang for the buck.

South to Seattle a new extension of rail transit opened this year -- it is a tunnel between downtown Seattle and a state university campus to the north. Because the entire rail system shares 'public' roads in spots, it must have drivers, and thus the cost of each train trip is enlarged with each increase in frequency.  The other billion-dollar project in Seattle is a massive dig to replace an earthquake damaged state freeway on the waterfront. Here, a majority of eligible voters approved the design and expenditure. Who owns and manages and maintains?  The similar private-public corporations and consortia as with every other billion-dollar transportation project.)

 

On 7/13/2016 at 7:08 PM, jts said:

On 7/13/2016 at 1:13 PM, william.scherk said:

Who will pay and how  is predictable based on prior practice. Who planned it, what constraints and vision led to its building? --  fun questions. Who owns the road, the bridge, the tunnel, the street, the highway, the sea lanes are other questions of interest. 

On the subject of roads, which is one of many similar questions:   The general question is: how would a free market solve problem X, whatever X might be.

It is not necessarily a problem. Roads of all levels in the transport hierarchy get built in the present system across the entire world, with more or less efficiency of design and more or less attention to maintenance and planning.  

On 7/17/2016 at 6:43 AM, Guyau said:

We don’t have the full transcript of the Daily Caller interview with Johnson.

Just to add a bump. Yeah. 

On 7/14/2016 at 5:30 AM, Brant Gaede said:

You can (and should) use some specifics to illustrate the free market case, but specifics aren't an argument and if you argue as if they were you will always lose even if the other fellow is intellectually a moron.

Yeah. Maybe.

Here to highlight the It Ain't Broken point of view, I reiterate the notion of disestablishment of the present legal order of roads (rail, sea-lanes, ports, air lanes, etc) and their supervision.

On 7/13/2016 at 1:13 PM, william.scherk said:

[G]reat disestablishment of previously reigning legal regimes.  To return ownership from the 'public' to 'the people' in a directly individual kind may not be possible, except in a corporate sense:  the urge to build a road (port, bridge, etc) is a kind of combinatoric, it has individual factors and 'motives' but is most often measured in the aggregate.

Here a few items to highlight.

On 7/16/2016 at 8:19 PM, Guyau said:

[Y]ou might be also interested in whether the perceived threat of radical Islam to America is overblown (blowing levels in this context being about perceived level of threat) in comparison to the blowing level on other threats.

Terrorism 'works' in that it inculcates fear and elevates anxiety and fellow emotions. A personal feeling of vulnerability to violence will peak in the aftermath of shocking attacks and murders, according to individual 'assessments.'  Terror is designed to awaken or deepen a sense of siege. I say this with knowledge of five years of escalating violence and terror in Syria. The 'risk' in Syria is so elephantine in relation to North America (if not the three hundred millions of Europeans) that you have to know where to compare and how.  Is the present sense of  vulnerability a function of the immediacy effect, adding to the effect of a massive media that trades on atrocities?

Steve and Jon are tangling with these implications ..

On 7/16/2016 at 9:22 PM, SteveWolfer said:

On 7/16/2016 at 9:12 PM, Jon Letendre said:

Also the mistake of not grasping that terror is used because it can work. Obama has recently assured that there is no existential threat. This Ignores that terror can push a nation to abandon things it should not.

I agree.  And it takes over the media and our political focus and it taints the way we feel about life, and part of what we lose isn't visible.... it is what we would have been doing instead.  It steals from our ability to feel higher levels of benevolence towards our fellow man.  It is a far uglier and more costly thing that first glance would reveal.

When is the next terror attack in Canada due, I ask myself?  What are we doing to detect, prevent and defuse plots designed to make me feel under siege?

Jumping subject again to solving 'problem' equations ... 

On 7/13/2016 at 7:08 PM, jts said:

On the subject of roads, which is one of many similar questions:   The general question is: how would a free market solve problem X, whatever X might be.

Roads are not a 'problem' except that they are not built and maintained when they need be.  The whole complicated mess of public-private building requires some kind of framework that already has solved intrinsic issues of priority and planning.

On 7/13/2016 at 2:33 PM, SteveWolfer said:

On 7/13/2016 at 1:13 PM, william.scherk said:

sea roads and the rail and air roads

Here is a fun thought I had one day.  I was reading about the outstanding safety record of Google's self-driving cars. [...]

Like a friend of mine once said, until you have lived with a particular technology for a while, you have no idea how it will end up being used. 

One of my personal amazements has been the pace and scale of transport infrastructure built out in China during recent dramatic urbanization, especially their superspeed train network.  I don't think North America's geography makes sense for similar trains, despite their relative ubiquity in Europe.  On the subject of 'automated' driverless vehicles, the first ones on the market are public/private, with working examples in the Netherlands, and incubated and nearing birth in Singapore. I think 'collective' driverless shuttles will also be an important part of the mix which will include driverless single-user vehicles.

Back to underscore Stephen's line of interest ...

On 7/17/2016 at 6:43 AM, Guyau said:

We don’t have the full transcript of the Daily Caller interview with Johnson. We know the "out-of-blue" Michael mentioned of Johnson in their “report” of the interview, but nothing concerning context in the interview itself. (Rather like Rand’s essay “From the Horse’s Mouth,” but then it’s not the horse’s mouth, Kant’s text, but a scholar’s reporting what the horse said, that she invokes.)

-- re the occasional fishbone or clunker in Rand non-fiction, I think of The Comprachicos. The analogy was fine for its scope, but I was left with the impression that the fictional (grown in a pot) comprachicos cited (from Hugo?) were actual and historical in Rand's mind.  

On 7/17/2016 at 6:43 AM, Guyau said:

Thrush: So back to the foreign policy thing. You hear both Hillary and Trump talk about the threat that ISIS poses—

Johnson: No question.

Thrush: --an existential threat. How do you do that, cutting 20 percent of the federal defense budget, and how would you go after ISIS? Would you go after ISIS?

Johnson: Well, first of all, involve Congress. We’ve got treaties with 69 countries in the world, would defend their borders, that were congressionally authorized treaties. . . . Our decisions with regard to the military are executive and they’re the military [decisions]. Involve Congress. Let’s get an open debate and discussion and declaration of war, if that’s the way that we want to treat ISIS. [...]

Johnson: Right, but how is it best—how is it best dealt with? . . . .

Much discussion ensued. 

-- again to the subject of 'clownish' performances and outstanding red-nosed policy proposals -- is there something about the Libertarian position on marijuana that strikes OL readers as clownish?  Is calling for marijuana legalization clownish itself, or only the way Johnson does it?

I mention this because there may be an element of electoral calculation there -- that the policy may be agreeable (to an Objectivish person) but perceived as a non-starter with voters, something that general election voters will find mostly bizarre, or untimely or unpopular.

In other words, in other words, what is the problem with calling for  legalization of marijuana?  

As for the Libertarian position on war powers and war strategy and the defeat of ISIS, I don't think Johnson is prepared at this time to give details and flesh out a coherent plan to 'take' ISIS off the map.   On the other hand, the GOP candidate evinces the same smudgy detail about policy and process -- as heard in the Pence-Trump interview.  Quo vadis? Cui bono? In Terrorem.