If you weren’t already aware, I’m a twin. Fraternal. And that’s his artwork to the left.
As you can tell, the twin’s quite the artist…and, yes, quite the lib. But – admit it – for an Obama shirt, it’s pretty badass. I mean, an AC/DC reference? Genius!
Moreover, it lacks the nauseating messianic dimension that everything else Obama-branded has.
Anyways, for the last few years, I’ve been pushing my libertarianism on him pretty solid – and, for the last year, my active disinterest/dismissal of Obama – so it was only inevitable he’d try to shut me up with something convincing.
Last week, he shot me an email with a link to Wick Allison’s – ex-publisher for National Review and current editor in chief for D Magazine – A Conservative for Obama.
I read it. Yeah, not convinced.
The editorial actually starts off quite strong, describing the abstract difference between conservatism and liberalism and then going on to show how Bush’s tax cuts (without subsequent spending cuts) and foreign policy are unsound political moves. Totally agree.
But then, after associating these unsound policies with McCain (a move I more or less agree with), Allison immediately shifts to an empty endorsement of Obama, citing his intellect, strong rhetoric/speaking skills, and pragmatism as reasons for doing so. Nothing else. Obama was, apparently, that easy of a decision for Wick. After all, it’s him or McCain!
To which I have to respond with a big ole’ bullshit! These are not the only options and, Wick, you know it.
What about Bob Barr? I lament: WHAT ABOUT BOB BARR!?!
This Wick Allison guy is ex-National Review. How can he not mention, not even in passing, Bob Barr?
Bob Barr’s foreign policy? Arguably isolationist. Spending? He’ll veto everything and anything! And questions regarding how Barr thinks it is “America’s job is to ‘defeat evil,’ a theological expansion of the nation’s mission”? I don’t think so. Bob cites my girl Ayn Rand all the time!
This is your man, Wick. Unless you address the issue, I am left to assume that your editorial is just a pathetic attempt to get some traffic to an online news source that no one’s every heard of.
Bob Barr is slated to be the only presidential candidate on the ballot in Texas after Republicans and Democrats missed the Aug. 26 deadline to file in the state.
“Unless the state of Texas violates its own election laws, Congressman Barr will be the only presidential candidate on the ballot,” says Russell Verney, campaign manager for the Barr Campaign and the former campaign manager for Ross Perot. “Texas law makes no exceptions for missing deadlines.”
The Texas Secretary of State Web site shows only Bob Barr as the official candidate for president in Texas.
No joke. Check out the screen shot below (click to see larger):
Republican? Nothing. Democratic? Nothing. Libertarian? Bob Barr and Wayne A. Root! Woohoo! Everyone start jumping for joy, right?
“Agents of the GOP are twisting the law to have Bob Barr thrown off the ballot in Pennsylvania,” says Russell Verney, campaign manager for Barr and a former campaign manager for Ross Perot, “while the law has to be twisted for them to get on the ballot in Texas. Rules are rules, except when they inconvenience those who make them.”
…
“Third parties are never given second chances when it comes to getting on the ballot,” says Verney. “And third parties are often thrown off the ballot for the most minor infractions of ballot access laws. In Texas, we have a clear deadline that was not met by the Republicans and Democrats, but it is all but certain that some way, some how, the establishment candidates will find a way on the ballot. Some people are just above the law.”
Not the greatest of interviews by any means. In fact, the beginning was downright damning.
But a big “phew” came from this end when Colbert stopped badgering Barr about his neocon past and asked him about the current role in the Marijuana Policy Project. Check it out:
No, not Hillary but her brother Tony. Tony Rodham. From the LA Times:
Rodham, a self-described “yellow dog Democrat all my life,” is unsure who he would support in November if Clinton is not the party’s standard bearer.
“If my sister doesn’t end up with the nomination, I gotta take a look at who I’m gonna vote for,” he said.
Horrors.
Does that mean, Fiore asked, Rodham would vote for Republican John McCain?
“I didn’t say that. It could be Bob Barr,” he said, referring to the Libertarian presidential candidate who, as a House member from Georgia, was a prime player in the impeachment of Rodham’s brother-in-law, Bill Clinton).
DENVER – The Libertarian Party yesterday picked former Republican representative Bob Barr to be its presidential candidate after six rounds of balloting.
…Barr, 59, left the GOP in 2006 over what he called bloated spending and civil liberties intrusions by the Bush administration
Notice anything in particular below?
First one to get it will receive…uh, how about a free Bob Barr sticker!
Really, I have a faint memory of Newt and, like most people, associate the Contract with America with him but that’s about it. It’s a memory with positive undertones though. Like the Ali G video articulated, there was welfare reform. And term limits. A balanced budget. All of which I consider good legislation…and Newt was leading it!
However, in the last week, I’ve randomly come across some items-articles, blogs-that dispute this positive association.
Big ups to Subtle as a Sledgehammer for sending me this link, an NPR article with an excellent excerpt from Ron Paul’s bestselling The Revolution: A Manifesto (which I will in turn pathetically excerpt) in which he briefly critiques the ‘Contract’:
a toothless, soporific agenda called the Contract with America that was boldly touted as a major overhaul of the federal government. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The Contract with America was typical of what I have just described: no fundamental questions are ever raised, and even supposedly radical and revolutionary measures turn out to be modest and safe. In fact, the Brookings Institution in effect said that if this is what conservatives consider revolutionary, then they have basically conceded defeat.
I know, not much substance but I thought I’d link to it anyway.
Tennessee Cottonmouth gets more into it, giving Newt a scathing indictment based on his reaction to Bob Barr’s presidential announcement here (copied below):
Look at the former House Speaker presuming to lecture Bob Barr on the danger a robust Libertarian Party presidential candidacy poses for Freedom and Pursuit of Happiness in America.
“Bob Barr will make it marginally easier for Barack Obama to become president. That outcome threatens every libertarian value Barr professes to champion,” jabbered Gingrich a couple days ago in the Washington Times upon recieving word that the former Republican Barr is officially pursuing the LP nomination in Denver next week, and if successful will likely be kicking John McCain square in the musty folds of his crotch all summer long.
Let’s be clear: Newt Gingrich has never been an ally of anything or anyone remotely libertarian, and for him to even mouth an understanding of what motivates adherents of the Freedom Philosophy to believe the way they do is an act of stark profanation capable of inducing waves of emises. Newt Gingrich is a quintessential right-wing progressive interventionist who’s got a fundamental ax to grind — like the left-wing progressive interventionists he loathes culturally and admires ethically — against all things pro-individualist and anti-statist. Newt’s ideological rallying yawp, like that of John McCain and, indeed, the Democrats, is “Subordinate Your Life and Happiness to Patriotism, Collectivism and Government’s Divination of the ‘Common Good.’”
Newt, of course, is one of the chief Republican nitwits responsible a decade or so ago for purposefully derailing the party’s mildly libertarian-leaning “Contract With America” — the electorate’s November 1994 embrace of which helped the Stupid Party roll back Democrats into the congressional minority for the first time in roughly an eon.
A month and one week ago, Bob Barr launched his presidential exploratory committee. It was a pretty anti-climatic event, given that most everyone expected the full-on announcement.
Today, he finally made that announcement. Bob Barr will be running for President under the Libertarian ticket…which, come to think of it, will make this November the first time I vote Libertarian. Woohoo!
A couple of excerpts from his press conference follow. Full audio here.
On defense:
…specifically with regard to national defense policy and foreign defense policy, I believe in reemphasizing, restrengthening the word defense in defense policy, the word defense in the department of defense.
On potentially Nadering McCain:
At the end of the day if I do not succeed on November 4th, it’s not my intent to blame Senator McCain or Obama. And I hope they would return the favor.
If you weren’t already aware, I’m a twin. Fraternal. And that’s his artwork to the left.
