Don't Vote For Romney

This is why our forefathers didn't want us going into a party specific system, particularly two parties. When is America going to wake up and actually start LEARNING from its history and ACTING on what it learns instead of continuing to repeat it and expecting different results. That's the definition of insanity and it definitely seems like our country has gone bat shit crazy.

(In case you do not know: I served on active duty for 5 years and in the Air and Army National Guard for 7. I served in Germany for 3 years, deployed to Hungary as part of I-FOR and to Kuwait as part of OIF.)

Show me in the US Constitution where we are required to spend blood and treasure changing the governments of other nations.

Nope. Not there.

The trouble with standing armies, as Jefferson and many others warned, is that it becomes so tempting and easy to use them to try to reshape the world into a utopia. Of course, the vision of utopia is the one held by whoever runs our government at the time, so the vision and mission changes pretty constantly.

It is not our job.

It is immoral to send US troops to fight and die for any reason other than defense of the sovereignty of the USA.

That means:

WWI - Immoral

WWII - 50/50

Korean War - Immoral

Vietnam War - Immoral

Grenada Invasion - Immoral

Gulf War I - Immoral

Gulf War II - Immoral

Afghanistan Invasion - Immoral

That’s the problem that only a few people seem willing to acknowledge: Sending troops to topple governments just because we don’t like them is a violation of the Constitution and is why the USA is seen as a bully by most of the world.

Ron Paul brought this up when he referred to the book “Blowback” by Chalmers Johnson, and you saw how the mainstream Republicans ran over each other trying to be the first to imply that Ron Paul was a traitor for saying that it was time for the US government to take responsibility for the bad stuff it did in the world.

The easiest way for us to improve our image overseas is to stop doing evil things to the people of other countries. Invading countries because we want their resources, or because the dictator we installed is no longer our lap dog, is evil.

The libertarian philosophy is different from every other political philosophy in that we expect people to take responsibility for their own actions and ideas. If you believed Saddam Hussein needed to go, then why weren’t *your* boots on the ground? What a total act of cowardice it is to send innocent young American men and women to die for your fears that Hussein might have had WMDs. On top of that are the lives of innocent Iraqis and the trauma inflicted on our troops who have since realized that they killed people for no good reason.

But, I could be wrong. So please tell me what is morally right about saying, “You, GI, you go risk your life fighting in a foreign land so I can sit home and feel better about the world.”

I’m waiting.

... And as far as the rest of the Americas, I think it's the Monroe Doctrine that "protects" the Americas from European military adventures. In the north, there are only 2 European countries that maintain territories--Denmark (Greenland) and France (St. Pierre and Miquelon). De Gaulle did "invade" St. Pierre during WW2 (supposedly to pre-empt an American invasion), which some in the administration thought was a violation of the Doctrine, but I don't think there are any troops permanently there, or in Greenland. (Of course, the US maintains a base in Greenland.)

Incidentally, France is the only European power to still hold a colony on the American mainland (French Guiana). I do think there are troops there, which would be a unique case of European troops permanently stationed in that continent. And of course there are a whole slew of European (English, Dutch, etc) colonies still around in the Caribbean.

Probably the main benefit for having forward bases is psychological.

Since most people aren't extremely au fait with modern technology, "the good guys" are reassured by having troops nearby to defend them, while "the bad guys" are (hopefully) more worried about doing bad stuff than if the troops were 1,000s of miles away.

I'd also think that having people on the ground somewhere would give a heck of a lot better feel for what's going on, and the response time would not only be instant rather than delayed (be it by 24 hours), but it'd (hopefully) also be better directed and more effective.

That said, I agree that most bases could probably be shut down, or at least very majorly downsized. You could start with places like Germany.

Considering that a pilot at a base in Nevada can attack targets and kill hostiles (mostly) in Afghanistan, the necessity of keeping people in Germany to take care of threats in the middle east has decreased tremendously.

One C-5 can carry 90 tons of payload. The cargo hold of the C-5 is a foot longer than the entire length of the first powered flight by the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk." It can reach anywhere on the planet in less than a day, non-stop due to its in-flight refueling capabilities. Two C-5s with air support can deliver enough people and equipment to invade a small country.

Technology has rendered forward bases nearly moot.

I was not thinking of the last decade of war but our treaty obligations to Europe, Japan and Korea. I would love to pull our troops from Germany, Japan and Korea but it has to be done the right way. Done wrong and you could start a war in Asia. Our pulling out of Germany and Japan will cause them to rearm which will cause problems (a freak out) by Russia and China.

We also need to decide if we are going to keep guaranteeing free passage on the high seas. If Yes we will need our advanced naval bases if not when we need to pull the fleet back to Norfolk, Guam and Hawaii. A continental defense fleet looks way different than our present blue water Navy.

The next question is our nuclear umbrella when we change our deterrence it effects quite a few nations. I just have not seen a good plan from Ron Paul on these issues.

" . . . dead wrong on foreign affairs which is the problem with the Libertarian movement in a nutshell. "

I believe you would have fewer problems in this regard with an actual Libertarian in the White House than you imagine.

It is nice - I agree - that we have the ability to go abroad and stomp on people who need stomping.

This comes at a cost - we also have the ability to stomp on people who didn't do nothin' to us - and you can't say 'boo' because the precedent has been established.

But consider also: the foreign adventures conducted in your name are linked to the decimation of civil rights that we all decry.

Maybe being able to bomb Libya at will is not an actual good thing.

As the Republibot candidate, I will promise to be comfortable with the appropriate amount of hypoocrisy necessary to be elected.

I also will be as libertarian as possible while still remembering the lessons of the Barbary Pirates.

In addition, I heartily endorse the Fair Tax proposal.

Man, I managed to tank my candidacy in less than eight hours. Time to go back to playing in bars.

The national party lost me during the last years of Bush and they have just reinforced my view this year. None of the candidates had a snowballs chance in hell and Romney is putting everyone to sleep while Obama is doing his Nixon impersonation.

Ron Paul is right on the economy but dead wrong on foreign affairs which is the problem with the Libertarian movement in a nutshell.

I foresee dark days for the republic if the national Republicans do not pull there head out of Wall Street's ass and address the real problems on Main Street.

The Republican party was born when a faction in the whigs broke away over slavery; It might be time for the real conservatives in the party to form a new party without the Wall Street/Banker/Congressional cabal.

A problem I've noticed for the last several election cycles, is that Republicans just don't seem to know how to run a good political campaign on the national level.

Democrats are masters at manipulation and will stop at nothing to win the point; Republicans seem to have a distaste for such dirty pool and think that standing around looking noble will be all they need to win the day.

Wrong.

Shakespear famously proved the value of words in Marc Antony's speech after the death of Julius Caesar, the one that begins "Friends, Romans, countrymen..." He managed to turn the opinion of the crowd against the conspirators with some well-chosen words. Anyone wishing to attempt a career as a public orator would do well to study that speech.

Democrats would have you believe that they are the Party of the People, the representatives of the Common Man, but most Democrats are members of the intelligentsia and are pretty well off financially, whereas the "rich man's party" has an awful lot of Joe Six-Packs in its constituency. The bastions of Liberalism are the East and Left Coasts, where the networks and the big news agencies are located; the flyover country is the home of the simple folk who don't want to make too much noise as they hang their flags every morning.

Conservatives--the voting ones, not the ones in office--feel that the best way to be prosperous is to just leave people alone to work hard and earn an honest living without too much interference from the Government. Liberals feel that they know better than anyone else how to micromanage the country and despite the fact they say they're all about "personal freedom" they pass law after law after law.

So many Conservatives don't like being hypocrites, which is just what you need to be to succeed in poltics--you've got to promise one thing and deliver something else, do a little slide step and lead the people on. This is why most Conservative candidates aren't very good at campaigning. They look awkward. The only one who was ever really good at it was Ronald Reagan, and HE was an actor (and started out as a Democrat, in case you've forgotten.)

As far as running female candidates goes...it's about as offensive as saying that the tallest candidate, or the better-looking candidate, will win; it assumes people vote with their emotions not their heads. Oh, wait...

Female candidates turn people off because they come across as strident. There have been several very good ones, but these women figured out how to speak in public without sounding screechy and shrewish. Christine Todd Whitman, governor of New Jersey, was a woman I'd've voted for if she went on to run for President. Sarah Palin? I'm sorry, but I cringed every time she came on screen; between her voice, her mannerisms, and her bizarre behavior, not to mention the reality-TV show that is her family, made my skin crawl. Hillary Clinton has the same effect on me, with the added cachet she's a Liberal. With Hillary it's, "Ugh, she's a Liberal witch." With Palin it was, "Oh, God, she's ONE OF US!!! KILL ME NOW!!"

Maybe the truly "good" Republican politicians are too smart to run for President, so we get only the bimbos and the buffoons putting their names forward (not talking about you, R2.) It's like how the Miss America Pageant isn't a contest to find the most beautiful and accomplished girl in the USA, but to pick one from the fifty who entered the contest. You have to choose from what you've got, not which would be the best for the position.

...he was the successor of a popular, successful president. It shouldn't have been close. The inability to capture sufficient electoral votes in itself is proof of the failure of the Gore campaign in 2000.

Gore made several missteps in 2000 that even liberal Democrat pundits had to admit. First of all, for some strange reason he ran away from his boss, who, again, was popular and successful. Gore was a terrible campaigner, and came across as stiff. His team famously put him in "earthtones" to make him seem more "real". Many voters were put off by his sighing and eye-rolling behind his opponent during the debates. That made him seem childish, unserious.

To note all this is not a commentary on his politics. He simply ran a bad campaign, presented himself badly, and came up short where it really counted, when it should have been clear sailing.

As for Palin, her choice didn't seem shrewd to you because you presumably weren't voting Republican anyway. That's not an insult, but as you point out in your signature, you "voted against Reagan" and you'd do it again. So if McCain nominated Reagan reincarnated as VP, you'd think that was stupid, too.

The Palin choice (despite Steve Schmidt's CYA claims) was only bad in that it was too little, too late, but it was shrewd in that it was necessary to even keep in the game. McCain misjudged the field going in; he thought he was tremendously popular with liberals and liberal press, and had spent most of his career dumping on conservatives. When he was a Republican senator happy to pop up on the Sunday shows and trash talk conservatives, he *was* enormously popular with liberals.

The second he became the presidential nominee, though, he became enemy number one, the biggest right wing extremist of all time--liberalish "compassionate conservatism" Bush from the liberalish "Voodoo economics" Bush family was right wing extremist number one in 2000 and 2004, that's just the rule. If Nancy Pelosi ran as the Republican nominee, *she* would suddenly find herself the biggest right wing extremist of all time--it's the typical framing issue, not reality. But in McCain's case, it didn't matter--liberals and Democrats weren't about to vote for McCain just because he'd been their useful idiot for years, and McCain had already thrown away the support of the people he really needed. As things stood, he was going to be stamped on like a cockroach under a shoe. Just to avoid embarrassment, McCain had to do something to mollify the people he should have been courting in the first place, actual non-Democrat, non-liberal voters. That means: not you. Sarah Palin at the time was more qualified and more experience than Obama, so that particular complaint is nothing; the selection of Palin had more to do with the signal that McCain was waving the white flag in his war against conservatives. It mollified some, but many saw the move for what it was: last minute desperation. That doesn't mean it wasn't a shrewd move, it was probably all McCain could do at that late date to avoid a far more embarrassing loss.

For what it's worth, I supported Hillary Clinton over McCain and Obama. I'm not a defender of either party.

(Re: nominating a woman:)

"It was a fairly shrewd move when we (Republicans) did it four years back."

No, it wasn't. The problem there was that, as opposed to the Democrats, who nominated a smart, savvy woman who did a good job of reprsenting the party's values and value, McCain chose a clearly-unqualified dunce, and the resultant message it sent to female voters was, "We think you're so stupid you'll vote for anybody with a uterus." The party lost way more women than it gained with Sarah Palin.

(Re: the 2000 Election)

"Remember the stupid campaign the Democrats ran in 2000 when they lost to Bush II?"

No, they didn't. More American voters wanted Gore than Bush. They won the election. They lost the lawsuit. I mention this, not to whine about a stolen election, but because you're talking about the effectiveness of the campaign. Well, it was effective: It got more votes than Bush II's campaign did, which is what campaigns are for.

(It's also worth remembering that, in the run-up to the 2000 Election, the electoral math seemed to indicate that Gore carrying Tennessee was a lock, and that, therefore, Gore was likely to win the Electoral College, while losing the popular vote. Republican pundits were lined up to take to the airwaves all over the place to point out that such an outcome would be fundamentally un-American, and a constitutional crisis.)

The problem the Republicans have now -- and I don't see a solution, I think the party has killed itself -- is that, the 8-year catastrophe that was George W Bush having driven off so many sane Republicans, while energizing so many Democrats, someone in the party decided the answer was to pull in actually crazy "conservative" voters just to add numbers, warm bodies, to the party's "Big Tent." I'm not talking about honest conservatives who think that government is overbearing and private enterprise can and should do much that Dems like me want Government to do. I'm talking crazy. I'm talking birthers and racists and anti-government militiamen (Not the guys you can respect: I mean Timothy McVeigh) and the Westover Baptist Church and the guys who kill abortion doctors during church services and set bombs in clinics.

Now, calling in all that crazy has brought in numbers, but the problem with crazy people is, THEY'RE CRAZY. Once you've got them inside the tent, you can't control them.

It always makes me think of that X-Files episode where the school commitee of a small New Hampshire town makes a deal with Satan to keep the high school's juvenile delinquents in line. They're later shocked to find Ol' Nick is killing all sorts of people, teenaged hoods and otherwise, they didn't want killed.

The episode's capper is Mulder asking the head of the Satanists, "Did you really think you could call up the Devil, and ask him to behave?"

I have been a libertarian since 1981, and even ran as Libertarian in 2001.

I've put a lot of effort into helping Ron Paul's campaign, even though he is running as a Republican and I consider the Republicans to be one of the two worst parties in American politics.

Here is the thing about Ron Paul, however. Very few of us who want Ron Paul to be our president really think Dr. Ron Paul is going to be the best president we ever had, or even a spectacularly good one. The reason we want Ron Paul is because he is the current point man for a movement that, until very recently, has been marginalized in America for more than 200 years: Movement towards freedom.