New Gary Johnson ad

[GALTGULCH8]

http://youtu.be/4x9bkXVccAs

He is running to win but we all know the major parties will be like steam rollers. This time might be a little different in that Gary Johnson might get over 5%

After all there are many who are not happy with the other choices.

[studiodekadent]

I'm not sure Gary can reach 5% of the popular vote, but 1% is quite possible and IIRC is enough to secure SOME federal funding that can be used to spread the message.

That said, I'd agree Gary Johnson is easily the best candidate.

[Selene]

I'm not sure Gary can reach 5% of the popular vote, but 1% is quite possible and IIRC is enough to secure SOME federal funding that can be used to spread the message.

That said, I'd agree Gary Johnson is easily the best candidate.

Andrew:

On what grounds could a Libertarian candidate possibly justify taking Federal funds?

I am voting for him. However, I would have a real problem with him accepting Federal matching funds. Additionally, I would want him to announce that he would refuse to take those funds.

Adam

[goblueram]

I want to vote for him, but I also want to vote for a realistic chance to defeat an evil candidate.

[Selene]

I want to vote for him, but I also want to vote for a realistic chance to defeat an evil candidate.

Ryan:

One factor that has to come into play, is what state you are in. I am in NJ and even though we could move the State out of the O'biwan column, it is a low probability.

Now if you reside in State where it is close, you have a more difficult decision from a purely practical political position.

Adam

[Reidy]

What reason do we have to think Johnson will break 1%? Has this ever happened? I remember that in 1980, the hope was that Clark (the most presentable candidate the LP has fielded up to now) would get 1% or 1 million votes, and he got neither.

[goblueram]

Adam,

I am voting absentee for Michigan, where the race has tightened up. I think there is a chance. I now live in Chicago, but really didn't want to change my license to Illinois where votes do not matter.

-Ryan

[Selene]

Adam,

I am voting absentee for Michigan, where the race has tightened up. I think there is a chance. I now live in Chicago, but really didn't want to change my license to Illinois where votes do not matter.

-Ryan

Ryan:

I think that Romney is going to take Michigan and that it will be very close. Therefore, you should cast your vote for Romney-Ryan in that State.

Adam

[studiodekadent]

On what grounds could a Libertarian candidate possibly justify taking Federal funds?

Because sometimes working within a system in order to change it CAN be effective, especially in situations where the system is fundamentally inescapable and no alternatives can be easily be implemented.

[Selene]

On what grounds could a Libertarian candidate possibly justify taking Federal funds?

Because sometimes working within a system in order to change it CAN be effective, especially in situations where the system is fundamentally inescapable and no alternatives can be easily be implemented.

Andrew:

I am fine with working within the system. I cannot justify taking Federal tax dollars as a Libertarian candidate. It is the same reason I will never have a tax deductible advocacy group.

My partner and I decided this when we first formed F.A.M.I.L.Y., Advocates.

Adam

[Mark]

I want to vote for him, but I also want to vote for a realistic chance to defeat an evil candidate.

Indeed, voting for Gary Johnson -- or not voting at all -- will help defeat Romney.

Regarding foreign policy and domestic freedom, Obama, bad as he’s been, has pretty much only continued what Bush Jr. initiated. Romney, the neoconservative candidate, would be Bush Jr. II.

Adapted from ARI Watch:

Romney’s advisors include: Michael Chertoff (former head of Homeland Security, and current body scanner war profiteer), Cofer Black (former director of Blackwater), Eliot Cohen (PNAC), Robert Kagan (PNAC), Robert Joseph (responsible for the “sixteen words” in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union message claiming that Iraq had tried to buy enriched uranium from Niger), John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Dan Senor, Eric Edelman (a top official at the Pentagon under Bush), Michael Hayden (former CIA director), Stephen Rademaker (helped draft the original Homeland Security legislation), Kim Holmes (Heritage Foundation), Vin Weber (PNAC), Dov Zakheim (foreign policy advisor to Bush Jr. during his 2000 campaign, former member of the “Vulcans” and PNAC).

And Walid Phares, former member of the of the Phalange movement in Lebanon and now at the neocons’ Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Eight of Romney advisers signed letters of the neocons’ Project for a New American Century (PNAC, founded by Kagan and Bill Kristol), urging the invasion of Iraq: one letter to President Clinton in 1998 and another to President Bush a few days after 9/11. Dobriansky, Friedberg, Cohen and Weber signed the 1997 PNAC charter. Romney’s foreign policy white paper, with the title “An American Century” and foreword by Eliot Cohen, uses the same rhetoric as PNAC.

Early in 2009 Kagan, Edelman, Senor and Bill Kristol launched Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) to succeed PNAC. FPI opposes withdrawing from Afghanistan and supports a troop increase, it advocates a permanent occupation of 20,000 troops in Iraq, promotes “regime change” in Iran, and military intervention in Syria. Three of FPI’s four board members are advisors to Romney.

His largest financial backer is the neoconservative billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

Romney and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, are good friends. See

“A Friendship Dating to 1976 Resonates in 2012”

by Michael Barbaro, The New York Times April 7, 2012

www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/us/politics/mitt-romney-and-benjamin-netanyahu-are-old-friends.html .

Romney speaking at The Citadel military academy in South Carolina, October 7, 2012:

“This century must be an American Century. ... God did not create this country to be a nation of followers. ... America is not destined to be one of several equally balanced global powers. America must lead the world, or someone else will.”

Thoughtlessly following the lead of another country is not the only alternative to leading the world by force – and U.S. military force is what Romney is talking about here. Americans should mind affairs in America and stop their government’s forceful meddling in foreign countries, which only jingoistic nonsense like “destiny” can justify.

[blackhorse]

Better to have a RINO in office than a communist.

[Mark]

Romney would implement more communist policies while spouting American bromides like Berzelius Windrip.

[blackhorse]

eh????

[GALTGULCH8]

This is where tolerating torture leads:

<<<"“Hype” is a pejorative word, suggesting that what interest there is in Abu Ghraib is artificially generated and goes beyond what the facts justify. We should not really care very much about Abu Ghraib.

Mr. Tracinski pretends to believe that U.S. torture is confined to (paraphrasing the ARI line) “a few bad apples at Abu Ghraib” instead of occurring in many places and at orders from the top.

There’s much more, reviewed in other articles on this website – see Torture and Intrinsicism for a list. ARI is pretty quiet about U.S. torture, and when it speaks of it, it lies. Even when Yaron Brook laments: “Why does [the Bush administration] fear torturing prisoners of war ...” he lies. The Bush administration and the neocons do not fear torturing prisoners of war, they continue to do it even now. What they fear is publicity.

The following is from a review of the book Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett Fischer, about George Washington during the Revolutionary War:

“In New York, [George] Washington had wept while watching through a spyglass as the British massacred Americans who had surrendered. But Washington, Fischer writes, ‘often reminded his men that they were an army of liberty and freedom, and that the rights of humanity for which they were fighting should extend even to their enemies.’ To the American officer in charge of 221 prisoners taken at Princeton, Washington said, ‘Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren.’ ”

This attitude may well have contributed to the demoralization of King George’s mercenaries and helped win the Revolutionary War. The people at ARI can’t begin to comprehend this benevolent attitude, either morally or practically.

Geneva Conventions and international human rights standards may be fine things, but America ought to – and once did – possess its own decency. The neocons and their sympathizers at the sickenly-named Ayn Rand Institute have taken that decency away. There are many things to dislike about ARI. This by far is the worst.">>>