I went down a bit of a rabbit hole recently. Of course, people who know me would just say "so what the hell else is new?" But I digress. I happened to receive a notice of a forum ("A Conversation about Gun Sense") being advertised by the local chapter of the League of Women Voters. Then, I happened to scroll over the list of co-sponsors of the event, and saw one was "Grand Valley Students United", a leftist student group (see https://www.gvstudentsunited.org/issues ), while the other was KWSI 100.3, a local socialist radio station (see https://kwsi.org/the-station/ ). So the studen ..read more

What a horrendous fucking waste of time and energy these disaffiliations are. Few of them have more than a half-dozen leaky, unrestrained walking urethras who are making these important decisions supposedly "in the name of" hundreds of LP members in their states. The Virginia hostile coup, for instance, took place at the behest of just SIX colludants. Libertarian Radicals, more than anyone else in the party, should remember when the prags took over in the early 2000s and we were shoved aside, deprived of any voice, and told to just suck it up, shut up, and keep working. Many of us did so, w ..read more

The Libertarian electoral wins in Pennsylvania over the past few years are certainly worth celebrating. However, they also must be kept in perspective. There are no other states that have as many elective offices as Pennsylvania. Most states have counties.  The difference with PA is that each county can have dozens of "township" and "borough" entities, as well as a few "home rule" towns, all of which have elected officials.  2,560 of these, to be precise (see the official list here ). So in other words, there are thousands and thousands of elective offices in PA.  Many of th ..read more

DEMOCRAT You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. You push for higher taxes so the government can provide cows for everyone. Barbara Streisand sings for you. DEMOCRACY You have 2 cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk. REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY You have 2 cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk. PURE DEMOCRACY You have 2 cows. They out vote you 2 - 1 to ban all meat and dairy products. BRITISH DEMOCRACY You have 2 cows. You feed them sheep's brains until they go mad. The government assures everyone that everything is fin ..read more

 I'm not for or against any particular kind of energy. We need it all. I do, however, oppose any subsidies or penalties for any kind of energy. Petroleum, for instance, gets a gigantic "gunboat subsidy" -- American warships and troops protecting the Suez Canal, and so on. Our ring of bases along the borders of Russia, Iran, and China is likewise a subsidy -- intended to secure oil supplies to us and our "allies". On the other hand, petrol also has numerous penalties. For instance, auto emissions are now so insane that what comes out of a new car's tailpipe is cleaner than the average s ..read more

Leftists pretend to be concerned about the aggressive actions of police officers, which leads to outcomes like we saw recently in Minnesota and Colorado. Just this week, Paige Pierce Schmidt was shot and killed by police in Delta CO, as was Duante Wright in Brooklyn Center MN. Police kill roughly 1,400 Americans every year, or 26 per week on average. A disproportionate number -- about a third -- are black; the rest are mostly white. At core, it is the plethora of useless and countless laws, like the prohibitions on drugs, prostitution, gambling, and, increasingly, guns -- laws that were ei ..read more

Roy: YES. The "spike" is indeed OVER. I'm sorry you're not seeing it. I'm answering your specific complaints here because the same "factoids" keep getting thrown at me as if half the population is reading from the same script. I'm just going to keep my thoughts here so I can phone in future discussions. It's not worth my time debating this with anyone who believes any or all of the following are justified in any way: 1) placing individuals under house arrest; 2) mandatory needles which will be followed by claims the vaccine(s) "saved us all"; 3) bankrupting business owners; 4) raising sui ..read more

Colorado Candidates: I don't know how many of you are answering candidate questionnaires from groups that typically oppose Libertarian or non-government solutions, but I answered the rather long survey from Colorado Rural Voters. My answers were rather long, too --there wasn't a text limit in the entry boxes, and I saw no notice that they preferred <100 words until I got to the confirmation screen. Oh, well. In any case, Colorado Rural Voters would be better named "Colorado Gimme Your Money and Rights Voters" -- look at their wish list on their main page. Some of those wishes might sound go ..read more

Every so often in history, there is a moment where nations can tremendously alter long-established relationships with other nations. The assassination of Iranian hit man Qassem Soleimani has -- despite initial expectations -- become that very moment. Iran, which has absolutely nothing to gain from open war with the US, wisely lobbed a volley of missiles in the vicinity US troops.  Not *at* the troops, but in their vicinity. This was a public-relations master stroke on the part of the Iranians.  It gave them cover with their own war hawks ("see, we did *something*") and sent the message that ..read more