The Libertarian Party of Colorado passed a resolution this week refusing to nominate the ticket of Chase Oliver and Mike ter Maat, selected at the party’s national convention last month. Additionally, it called on the Libertarian National Committee to decertify the ticket.
The resolution, announced via X on Monday, was passed by the party’s Board of Directors, who said the decision was made to uphold the party’s core principles and ensure that its candidates genuinely represent their values and strategies. To that end, the party will not place the ticket on its ballot later this year. The resolution comes one week after Hannah Goodman, Chair of the Libertarian Party of Colorado, stated in an interview with local media last week that she would be supporting Republican former President Donald Trump over the Libertarian ticket.
“This decision was not taken lightly,” the statement read, “it reflects the will of our delegation which voted NOTA in the final round of voting. and reiterates our deep concern that the national ticket does not align with the values and strategies that the LPCO holds dear.”
The party further criticized Oliver and ter Maat for their positions and actions on various issues, namely their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, views on gender-affirming care, and stances on alleged Russian collusion and the rule of law. While the party remarked that it appreciates their antiwar stances, it argued that their overall approach does not align with the Colorado affiliate’s understanding of liberty and resistance to government overreach.
Following the statement, Libertarian National Committee Chair Angela McArdle announced in the LNC business list the creation of a Reconciliation Committee tasked with identifying specific grievances. McArdle added that the committee, comprised of herself and four other members of the committee, would aim to resolve any issues before the end of the month.
“Your goal is to communicate with the state affiliates who are aggrieved, find out their specific grievances, and communicate with the Oliver campaign to see if we can get those grievances resolved,” McArdle said. “This is a much better route than disaffiliations, lawsuits, threats, removal, etc.”
Statist crybaby throws hissy fit because it cannot dictate who responds to its totalitarian bullshit
Obviously, asking other people, if they care to answer. No answer is of course fine, as I can’t and wouldn’t want to compel anyone. Nothing I asked or said there or will ask in the future was, is, or will be @ the troll “Nuna”, just in case that was still somehow unclear.
I won’t finish reading its reply past the first few words or read its posts going forward if I can help it. It’s unfortunate that I can’t block it from seeing my comments as well, as can be done on FB and many other sites. I certainly would if I could.
As I said,
I actually have a generally favorable impression of David Bergland. As well as of his running mate, by which I mean Roger MacBride, because I don’t have a proper sense of James Lewis. The latter is also true of Harry Browne. But besides the four of them, and Ron Paul of course – the most libertarian Libertarian – none of the LP’s presidential or vice-presidential nominees have been libertarians.
I was actually talking to Jim. Agreeing with my friend was very tangential. Jim can agree or disagree with my point that Bergland wouldn’t have qualified under an ultrahypocritical libertarian ultrapurity standard from a likely Randall Terry voter (and Trump voter before that), along with all other past libertarian nominees, disagree, or consider it too trivial to address. I’m going to guess it’s the last one. That’s fine, since I think it’s a pretty minor point too.
Ooooooh someone’s a little angry they got caught using multiple sock puppets to agree with themselves
Nuna, it’s not her loss, and it certainly isn’t mine either. Her loss, I think she will agree, was of time in having read and addressed you earlier. Kindly please f off and mind your own business. I wasn’t talking to you, should not, and hopefully won’t again.
My only loss, likewise, is in addressing Nuna at all, as she deserves only to be ignored completely.
Reality: please resist the temptation to address her again as well.
¯\_(?)_/¯
Your loss
Nuna posted something, and conflated me with someone? Ok, that’s nice. I don’t see a likelihood of anything worth a reply if I read it, but might be goaded into making a long one if I do. So, l will scroll past it, which Nuna would like to believe is Nuna winning an argument. In fact, reaching the level of babbling nonsense that those who previously engaged you no longer even listen to you or read you in this case, that’s not winning. By that standard, crazy homeless people constantly win arguments. I still see no evidence anyone agrees with Nuna’s baloney.
Observer’s point seems both logical and plausible.
@Reality/Actually
Yikes. When I said you were prolonging your humiliation, I was talking about time, not word count.
> I might still not vote, because it legitimizes an illegitimate system.
I disagree with your conclusion, but I do find it a respectable one.
> I don’t suffer under the brain damaged illusion that anyone running for office is not “statist” on something or other.
Agreed. Though in the case of Terry, it remains unclear to me which something or other that would be.
> Or that even if an actual anarchist was running and had a chance to win that his or her ability to do whatever small amount the office would give them to unwind or limit government wouldn’t ultimately backfire
Disagreed. Call me an optimist setting myself up for disappointment.
> I don’t know that my ability to perform brain surgery with blunt instruments and no training wouldn’t make things worse rather than better or backfire in some unforeseen way
While I may think that about you, you should be more confident about yourself. Things can hardly get worse any faster than they currently are.
> the most likely result of that would be a period of chaos and tribal / gang warfare leading to some sort of tyranny or neo feudal system of local tyrannies.
After which it would be time to press the button again. What makes you think that situation would be worse in any way than the current one?
> And nobody running for office and likely to be on the ballot is Hitler.
On the contrary, in a sense, with the exception of Terry, they all are. Abortion is the most massive and prolonged genocide in history. Longer and larger even than the ongoing genocide “Ukraine” has been perpetrating for over 107 years now.
> this is already way too long for anyone with a lick of sense to have fully read and understood. If you did, congratulations.
Thank you! While it certainly could have been said more succinctly – and I still have another five of your follow up posts above to go – so far I actually agree with you – in this particular post that is -more often than not. However, I can’t help but notice that none of what you said even attempts to “dismantle” what I said.
> if Nunya actually is a self deluded crank who actually believes everything he or she writes and not, as is far more likely, a troll for lulz, it doesn’t fundamentally change any of this.
Call me a self-deluded crank all you like, but I am 100% sincere and I resent disingenuous accusations of trolling, both here and on BAN, by people who at best disagree with me but more realistically are themselves trolling.
> I’ll try to shut up, but admittedly I’m not exactly the best at it.
You and me both. While impractical, and sometimes even a source of frustration with oneself, there is no shame in that.
> I strongly suspect no one believes it, and less strongly that Nunya doesn’t believe it either.
I strongly suspect you are incorrect about the former, and I know you are incorrect about that latter.
> There wouldn’t be nearly enough such people to matter, even if they existed.
Quality over quantity any day.
> Ok, now this really is becoming detrimental to things I actually do need to get to, in a more immediate sense.
… So just go do the stuff you need to do, instead of switching to using the name “Actually” instead. There is no deadline before which you need to respond, if you wish to do so at all.
> Jim, I’m sure Bergland would be too “statist,” too.
I actually have a generally favorable impression of David Bergland. As well as of his running mate, by which I mean Roger MacBride, because I don’t have a proper sense of James Lewis. The latter is also true of Harry Browne. But besides the four of them, and Ron Paul of course – the most libertarian Libertarian – none of the LP’s presidential or vice-presidential nominees have been libertarians.
> I’d probably rather have a living daughter than a son dead from suicide, which is the choice many parents with trans kids say they had in allowing them to transition
False. Suicide rates are much higher post-transition than pre-transition. And most come to their senses and grow out of such delusional nonsense. Regardless, your son would never become a daughter, he would merely cease to be your son. Vitaly Milonov was correct when he said that transsexuals lose their original sex but gain nothing, thereby losing all humanity. I would go further and say that is also true of feminists: women who so desperately want to pretend they are men that they lose their womanhood without attaining manhood – which is why “trans-exclusionary feminism” is so hypocritical. And by losing their humanity, they lose all human rights.
> I don’t know, or care, what position if any Bergland held on that.
Bergland was fortunate enough to be active at a time when the Libertarian Party fixated on such nonsense, so he could keep his opinions to himself and concentrate on sensible things like abolishing taxes and returning to the gold-standard.
> Bergland was lucky enough not to have lived long enough to be asked for a position on it, but if he had, it, are these four the most important questions facing the country, or among the top issues?
Exactly!
> Trump probably belongs in prison for something or another […] but I don’t think this was what he belongs in prison for
Indeed. Trump belongs in prison for: 1) conspiring with Fauci, the HHS, the NIH, the CDC, the FDA, the USPHSCC, etc. and more generally the World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum; libeling 2) anarchists by claiming they were behind the socialist BLM riots, 3) the non-false-flag J6 protestors who were their at his behest to call for election integrity, 4) DeSantis; and 5) promoting the “Log Cabin” RINOs’ child abuse and subversion of the constitution.
> I don’t think anyone running was even remotely good
They weren’t. Rectenwald was the least bad, but his double-standards for Israel and “Palestine” made him far worse than NOTA as well.
> but they’re still, ideologically at least , better than anyone else in the general election overall
Not at all. They are variously as bad as the others, once again excepting perhaps Terry. Oliver is no better than Biden; Smith is no better than Trump; Rectenwald is no better than Kennedy.
> I’d disaffiliate them for that crap
Again that would be a good thing for the state parties, a bad think for the national party. Just like how the European Union is paradoxically threatening to expel Hungary and Slovakia despite being the one who wants them to remain, while the majority of people in those countries want to leave the EU.
> I don’t see these as even being sufficient reasons to withhold my personal vote.
That only says something about you personal values and integrity though, not that about the validity of reasons given.
> The other choices on the ballot will be even worse, regardless.
Again, no they are not. They are just as bad. With the possible exception of Terry.
> Better reasons to simply not vote were spelled out by Reality.
Bro, that is you. You even share the same QR-code-esque randomly generated avatar.
> If I really had to pick between Biden and Trump, probably Trump, but I’d be highly tempted to ask whoever was holding the gun to my head to pull the trigger,
Good man.
> If I voted in Nevada, which I think is the only state to give voters that option, it would be for nota. I might write that in if I vote.
Good man!
> It’s an absurd exaggeration that any position on these issues makes any candidate Hitler.
Not necessarily, as I explained above. But more importantly, you are completely missing the point, which is that you would not blame Weimar conservatives for being angry with president von Hinderberg’s choice of Hitler and Göring, but you do blame the LPCO for being angry with the LNC’s choice of Oliver and ter Maat… That’s a double-standard. The LPCO is being no more petty, quarrelsome, disingenuous, far-fetched or unreasonable than the Weimar conservatives, yet you hypocritically treat them completely differently.
> Living under Brezhnev was even significantly worse than what we have here
It was worse than living here at that time. By now, the US has followed the EU so far into the abyss, that Brezhnev would be far preferable to Biden or Trump – or Oliver or Kennedy or Stein or West or de la Cruz.
> Hitler and Stalin were way worse than that.
Indeed. Living under them was almost as bad as living under Lenin, Makhno, Petlyura, Bandera, Yushenko, Tymoshenko, Poroshenko and Zelensky.
> It is, at the very least, profoundly stupid, and a prima facie case for having voting rights revoked due to mental incompetence.
Molon labe.
> Someone who genuinely believes that abortion is just like the nazi holocaust can be excused for believing it trumps all other issues, but that still wouldn’t make Terry a purist libertarian, or any kind of libertarian.
Terry is the most libertarian presidential candidate who currently has ballot access. He’s certainly not perfect or anything, but he is the only one that sets himself apart from the pack, and he does so in the positive, liberty-loving direction.
And this isn’t the first time either, the Constitution Party’s candidates tend to be far less totalitarian than their competition. That is why I as a libertarian – or if you want to bicker about whether I am or not, as a paleolibertarian anarcho-capitalist – switched my registration from Republican to Constitution Party in 2021.
There is no other party that fields candidates that aren’t all equally bad (except the American Independent Party in 2008 but never since then)!
The reason Heise (and McArdle) ran Rectenwald is simple: he was the only guy not just willing to do it, but willing to drop out and endorse Trump. But he couldn’t do a good enough job hiding that intention, on top of being an off-putting asshole in general, and so they bled enough votes to narrowly lose the nomination even though they had a reasonably solid MC majority in the room. Same reason they lost on the delegate purge fight, a few fence-sitting enablers who mostly back them but balked at going that far.
So now they’re just adapting the plan: have the LNC effectively endorse Trump anyway while state parties refuse to put Chase on the ballot, knowing there’s zero chance they’ll be disaffiliated.
That they didn’t get to modifying the delegate allocation formula to remove the presidential vote component (and that is a very telling indication of their intentions) doesn’t matter. They’ll just make sure those states send through enough alternates and then wave through a quick bylaws change to seat them at the start of the 2026 convention. Oh it’s no fair Chase didn’t make the ballot in too many state etc. That’s if a 2026 convention still happens at all. I wouldn’t bet on it.
Sorry, that was a very long winded quibble with your correct point: no past L.P. nominee wasn’t a statist under that standard. The only part I disagree with is that Bergland would even likely have passed that test.
Furthermore, in judging the highly questionable goal of adhering to libertarian ultrapurity by candidates or what state and national parties should do about it, the criticism comes from someone who says he or she will probably vote for Randall Terry, who isn’t and doesn’t claim to be a libertarian of any sort. Someone who genuinely believes that abortion is just like the nazi holocaust can be excused for believing it trumps all other issues, but that still wouldn’t make Terry a purist libertarian, or any kind of libertarian. But, I share Reality aversion to nitpicking over who is or isn’t. That only leads to endless nitpicking over trivia, which is at the very least a nontrivial part of why the LP doesn’t get more accomplished.
If there’s a universally accepted “real libertarian,” I don’t know who that is, or why anyone should care.
Jim, I’m sure Bergland would be too “statist,” too. He died just before covid, so there’s no way to know whether he would have voluntarily masked or social distanced. Which is not actually statist unless you propose using government force to make others comply likewise, which Oliver did not do, but whatever. Is it statist to wear a yarmulke, hijab, or short shorts or microskirts without underwear? No, it’s a personal decision. The only political matter should be whether the government can dictate those choices.
I don’t have any teens who want to transition, thankfully. Mine were and are “normal” in that way. If I did, I’d probably rather have a living daughter than a son dead from suicide, which is the choice many parents with trans kids say they had in allowing them to transition. It may be that nefarious forces are pushing parents into such conclusions, but the least competent institution to intervene in such difficult decisions is the government. I don’t know, or care, what position if any Bergland held on that.
Bergland was still alive during the 2016 election, but I neither know nor care what position if any he took on the allegations of Trump Russian collusion, and those claims don’t by any means solely rest on the Steele “dossier” or who paid for it.
My read is that the Trump trial and conviction was politically motivated BS that will end up being overturned on appeal, but I’m not an attorney, and Oliver is not running for Manhattan DA. Bergland was lucky enough not to have lived long enough to be asked for a position on it, but if he had, it, are these four the most important questions facing the country, or among the top issues? Really?
Trump probably belongs in prison for something or another, much like Biden and every past president for the last however many decades, but I don’t think this was what he belongs in prison for ( and he probably won’t get prison time, either).
I don’t see how any possible position any conceivable L.P. nominee holds on these four issues would make him or her worse than the candidates of other parties and independents who will be listed on the ballot when taken in the context of all other issues, worthy of LNC overriding the decision of delegates in convention (I don’t think anyone running was even remotely good, but they’re still, ideologically at least , better than anyone else in the general election overall) or worthy of state parties bucking the national nomination. I’d disaffiliate them for that crap, if it was my call, but I’m not in the LP and don’t care.
I don’t see these as even being sufficient reasons to withhold my personal vote. The other choices on the ballot will be even worse, regardless. Better reasons to simply not vote were spelled out by Reality. If I bother to vote, it might be for Oliver or Kennedy, but I probably won’t vote. If I really had to pick between Biden and Trump, probably Trump, but I’d be highly tempted to ask whoever was holding the gun to my head to pull the trigger, or more likely chicken out and flip a coin, because, no, it’s not going to come down to my vote, particularly in a non battle ground state, or even if I did live in one. I’m only guessing Trump won’t be worse than Biden in a second term – either one is highly likely to be a disaster, in various predictable and unpredictable ways, as would anyone else running. If I voted in Nevada, which I think is the only state to give voters that option, it would be for nota. I might write that in if I vote.
It’s an absurd exaggeration that any position on these issues makes any candidate Hitler. Having lived in an actual totalitarian nation, and spent plenty of time in various third world authoritarian banana republics and Europe’s welfare states, I appreciate both the extent the US is still better for now, and the danger that this won’t last. I’m not old enough, but my parents lived under Stalin and Hitler, and it was much worse than anything USians have lived through. Living under Brezhnev was even significantly worse than what we have here, and my parents, many other people, and reading history assure me that Hitler and Stalin were way worse than that.
Anyone claiming we live under something like Stalin or Hitler, or that any LP candidates advocate anything like Stalin or Hitler, deserves a week in an Uyghur reeducation camp so they don’t say anything that stupid ever again. Not really – nobody deserves that, no matter what stupid things they say – but it would be justice of a crude and repulsive sort. It is, at the very least, profoundly stupid, and a prima facie case for having voting rights revoked due to mental incompetence.
Actually, one last ppps, no more necessary or wise than the last 3. I should not have said what everyone can see. I see no evidence or reason to believe anyone believes the nonsense Nunya writes simply because they’re smarter than me in not replying to it. I strongly suspect no one believes it, and less strongly that Nunya doesn’t believe it either. I’m 100% certain that it makes absolutely no difference even if someone actually is that crazy and stupid. There wouldn’t be nearly enough such people to matter, even if they existed.
Ok, now this really is becoming detrimental to things I actually do need to get to, in a more immediate sense. No congratulations to me for allowing myself to respond to the ravings of a mental asylum patient, whether that patient is confined, escaped, wrongly released, or sadly not yet diagnosed. If I was my dad, I’d spank my ass for the lack of discipline in doing so and give myself at least an hour of corner time, and take away my phone for a week or two.
Time to stop playing games and go try and be the adult with adult responsibilities that my chronological age indicates. I share absolutely no ones disappointment at that.
Lastly for now, trolls and delusional cranks have no more right to demand I shut up as they do to compel me to waste endless amounts of time dismantling an endless amount of bullshit they generate. It’s probably good advice, since any form of reply regardless of length or level of seriousness to sarcasm ratio is only likely to generate even more of the same in reply. But the best way to handle such demands is to neither give in to them nor get goaded into doing what I just did just to make that point, which was probably exactly what the troll or delusional crank intended (consciously if troll, subconsciously if delusional crank).
I’ll try to shut up, but admittedly I’m not exactly the best at it. Or I might reply – probably not very seriously, and hopefully at much less length. There’s no reason to take any of this seriously. It’s less important, and less likely to change what happens in real world government and politics, than whatever people scribble on public toilet stall walls. But you all already knew that, so why am I telling you? I’ve already wiped my ass, and other people might need to use the stall, you never know. In my defense , there are empty ones on either side, but that still doesn’t make this among the million best ways to use my time.
Errata: both Trump and Biden are likely to start WW3, to unknown extents. I meant Trump seems marginally less likely to, not that you, I, the candidates themselves, or anyone else, individually or collectively, can rationally estimate those chances . Either Trump or Biden is virtually guaranteed to expand federal spending, red tape, and debt overall; I meant Trump seems marginally less likely to expand them quite as fast as Biden, and again this is very hard to impossible to guess rationally.
Which one is least likely to declare himself emperor Napoleon, general of all armies, CEO of all corporations, pope of the one true religion, etc? Maybe Trump, because he’s blunt enough to say crap that stupid. Biden seems marginally more likely to act as if he were in a way that’s subtle enough on the surface to not be removed to a mental health unit at gitmo or a black ops site. Again, nobody alive can rationally estimate or compare the chances. I asked Nostradamus, but he just answered in angry gibberish. My limited knowledge of late medieval French and Latin lends me to guess it was something about me, my mother, farm animals, etc.
Odd definition is a kind way of putting it. I don’t play those games anymore.
I don’t identify as an LP member, don’t register to vote as one (not an option in my state, but I would not register with a party even if it were), don’t send them or any of their candidates money, and advocate for other people to do the same as me. I haven’t formally revoked my signature membership from decades ago only because it’s a waste of time. If it was opt in rather than opt out, I wouldn’t sign the idiotic oath now.
I don’t identify as a small l libertarian, either. I don’t identify as any label, because arguing about how those labels are defined is a waste of time. Y’all fight it out. I don’t care. If libertarians weren’t retarded about that kind of stuff, I might call myself one. I’m generally for smaller government across the board.
I don’t usually vote in government elections. I don’t trust the vote counts, don’t believe in the promises of lying politicians, and rationally calculate that the chances of my one vote changing the presidential results in my “deep red” state are less than winning the top prize in a megamillions lottery. Local races are no more of a mystery around here, but even if they were, a pox on both their houses.
If I believed my vote would be honestly counted, or would be nontrivially likely to change anything, I still wouldn’t trust the honesty of political candidates or their ability to carry them out even if fully intended. I might vote for Oliver, if my local libertarians bother to put him on the ballot (I certainly won’t help them again), because he’s for less government overall than Trump or Biden or Kennedy or anyone else who will be on my ballot, if he had a chance to win. I might vote for Trump because he seems slightly less likely to start WW3 or expand federal government and its debt and monetary inflation than Biden, but it’s hard to predict how that will shake out over 4.5 years or whether either of them would make any meaningful difference (or whether whatever difference they would make would be in the intended direction). I might vote for Kennedy, because he’s the most prominent candidate who isn’t Trump or Biden, not because I agree with his views or trust him to be effective in implementing them than the other two. Or I might still not vote, because it legitimizes an illegitimate system.
I don’t suffer under the brain damaged illusion that anyone running for office is not “statist” on something or other. Or that even if an actual anarchist was running and had a chance to win that his or her ability to do whatever small amount the office would give them to unwind or limit government wouldn’t ultimately backfire in its complicated, deadly machinery which is, and is designed to be, more complicated than anyone can possibly understand.
If someone waved a wand and made me president, I don’t know that my ability to perform brain surgery with blunt instruments and no training wouldn’t make things worse rather than better or backfire in some unforeseen way. I don’t think the person capable of doing it exists, will exist, or has existed. If you accept biblical literalism, Jesus would be the exception, and he rejected the offer. It was to be Emperor of the world, not POTUS, but if someone made me absolute monarch, would I do better than with the limited powers of POTUS? Probably worse. I would most likely end up being beheaded, most likely for good reason, or at the least exiled in disgrace or locked up in solitary confinement for life. If I managed to avoid those, I’d probably have my idiot children, grandchildren, great great etc, or elected or appointed monarchs after me, screw things up worse than before afterwards.
If someone gave me a button to abolish government, would I push it? Probably not. Or, actually, I probably would in some moment of frustration with how much it sucks. But the most likely result of that would be a period of chaos and tribal / gang warfare leading to some sort of tyranny or neo feudal system of local tyrannies.
So, there’s no good answer. And nobody running for office and likely to be on the ballot is Hitler. That’s just silly and stupid, and does not deserve a serious answer. Least of all the libertarian candidates, unless through their incompetence backfiring if they could somehow win. That’s not a personal knock, I don’t think anyone is competent to be a good president , and I think the system has more than adequate safeguards against that possibility.
Who’s the closest to Hitler that’s running? My best guess is Biden, but he’d be more like Vidkun Quisling to Xi as Hitler. An even closer comparison would be Woodrow Wilson at the end of his second term, but much earlier in Biden’s second, if not before the end of his first. Kamala Harris as president doesn’t sound like a great idea to me, but what the hell do I know? No more than any of the nine digit number of people, many of them not very smart and/or not irrationally obsessed with politics, tasked with making an impossible decision while blindfolded to pick someone to do the same continuously for four years.
Unwinding government to a night watchman or original constitutional design state is no more easily manageable than getting rid of it completely. Neither I, nor anyone else, is competent to do that – again, by systematic design. Voters are overall rational in not picking someone who hasn’t demonstrated the ability to manage very large organizations to be CEO of the federal government, and at the same time irrational in wanting mutually exclusive things at the same time from our “CEO.”
If a very competent megacorp CEO or victorious war general somehow had the realistic opportunity to be POTUS, would that be a great idea, even if the honesty promised to do everything they could to make government smaller and keep us at peace? Not necessarily, because political power in divided government is different than executive power in business, military etc. But people who might be least incompetent to hold such positions generally rationally decide against seeking them and would probably lose if they had a brain malfunction and decided to run. Unusually honest people generally don’t rise to positions of such prominence in any organization, anyway. Assume rationally that anyone running for President, especially with a nontrivial chance to win, is fundamentally dishonest and/or incompetent, particularly for an office which has through a near quarter millennium of its evolution become by design impossible to be competent to hold.
Trump is as close to such a person as we’ve had, but he’s, uh, not exactly either honest or competent. His business management hasn’t performed as well as investing the family fortune in a stock index fund and leaving it alone would have. He’s a decent lowbrow entertainer – celebrity apprentice, tv rassling, MAGA rallies. But not nearly as good, smart, or effective as the POTUS in idiocracy, if you ever saw the movie or read the book. Biden is a lifelong swamp creature and corrupt influence peddler with increasingly bad dementia. Kennedy’s brain was eaten by a worm and many years of substance abuse and believing ideological bullshit. Oliver probably isn’t competent to run a McDonald’s, not that anyone will be electing him.
I’ll stop there, because that’s barely the tip of the iceberg, and trolls don’t have a rational claim on my time. Not that any amount of further bloviating would be any better at generating a great solution to political problems or any more likely to put such a solution in any position to be implemented. It would just be a waste of even more of my time, and this is already way too long for anyone with a lick of sense to have fully read and understood. If you did, congratulations. The prize you get for having wasted your time is the same one I get for having wasted mine writing it while taking a crap. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Also, if Nunya actually is a self deluded crank who actually believes everything he or she writes and not, as is far more likely, a troll for lulz, it doesn’t fundamentally change any of this. Time to flush and wipe.
If Chase Oliver is too “statist” to be the LP Presidential candidate, then every LP candidate has been too statist to be the LP Presidential candidate, with the sole exception of David Bergland. Either your standards are too high for a functioning political party or you have an odd definition of what it means to be a libertarian.
What everyone sees, is that you are for some reason too afraid to either accept that you are a hypocrite or to attempt to justify your double standards. Instead you are just prolonging your humiliation by projecting your own lack of substance, as you continue to spam “meaningless drivel” rather than making an attempt at “dismantling” your hypocrisy getting called out – something which you just claimed you were “easily capable” of. Either make a “substantive reply” or sit down and shut up, because what you are doing now is embarrassing yourself.
If you want to earn a substantive reply, post something that deserves it, not obviously ridiculous drivel. Otherwise, accept your failure to write anything deserving of one, or don’t. You still failed. Everyone, with the possible exception of yourself, can see it.
Once again, you have a terribly verbose way of taking the l (big L).
Once again, you invert reality (small R) as usual. I’m easily capable of dismantling your absolutely absurd nonsense. It’s simply not worth the time , as nothing is to be gained. I highly doubt you have or will convince one person of your topsy turvy views. You either know they are nonsense, or are too delusional to attempt reasoning with. There are many better ways to spend time, and you’ll keep insisting things are the opposite of what they are however many times I would make the effort. Why bother?
What a terribly verbose way you have of admitting that I’ve got you by the short and curlies and you are incapable of defending your hypocrisy.
100% of those who resort to using terms like “Godwin’s law”, “whataboutism”, “dogwhistles” and such non-arguments, are hypocrites who cannot handle the fact that their hypocrisy got called out.
That’s a ridiculous comparison. And yes, those nitpicking issues or nonissues are all of the things you said they’re not. Petty , etc, etc . Shame on you for the most absurd Godwin’s law example I’ve ever seen, which is saying a lot. You appear to be trolling, or maybe just profoundly delusional. Either way, conversation seems like it would be a waste of time.
There is nothing petty, quarrelsome, disingenuous, far-fetched or unreasonable about any of these very valid reasons for objecting to the nomination of two statists as “libertarian” presidential candidates.
Do you blame the Weimar conservatives for putting von Hindenburg on blast over his decision to propose national socialists Hitler and Göring as chancellor and chief of police, respectively? Should they have “tepidly” supported Hitler right up until the Enabling Act, just because he was their president’s pick?
If so, then why should the Weimar conservatives have been punished and gone down in history as being responsible for the rise of nazism?
And if not, then why are you applying double standards to von Hindenburg’s reluctant choice of Hitler and Göring and to the LNC’s reluctant choice of Oliver and ter Maat.
Nuna, they lost and sought reasons to create discord. That’s it. If the situation was reversed do you seriously think they would ever allow good faith policy criticisms from a state affiliate of their candidate for cause removing their candidate from the ballot?
Pretty expensive decision these people made. Be a damn shame if money laundering was discovered to be taking place.
They have viewpoints and positions they want to push which transcend particular individuals in figurehead roles.
“You keep assuming they had better choices willing and able to run than McArdle and Rectenwald.”
If they didn’t why did they take control to start with?
All of those are legitimate disagreements among libertarians. For example, somebody’s decision to mask and distance or not should be none of the government’s business. Those reasons sound petty. You’re not going to agree with anyone on each and every issue.
But supposing they aren’t, they shouldn’t have participated in a national convention if not willing to respect the outcome and support the nominees, even if tepidly. It’s not like Oliver being nominated was implausible going in. They should resign positions, disaffiliate, or be disaffiliated if unwilling after the fact.
None of those things will happen.
On the contrary, the LPCO (why is the Colorado LP abbreviated LPCO but the New Mexico LP becomes NMLP…?)’s statement explicitly enumerates several very legitimate problems with the National self-proclaimed “Libertarian” Party’s nominating the likes of Chase Oliver and Michael ter Maat as its representatives:
– “While Chase Oliver was having a masked and distanced Thanksgiving dinner in 2020, LPCO members were risking fines and jail to have normal, human, illegal Thanksgivings with their friends and families.”
– “While Chase Oliver was saying that “gender-affirming care” is a decision between the parents and the child, LPCO members were pointing out the network of public school officials, public health bureaucrats, and billion-dollar pharmaceutical companies creating a web of perverse incentives to pressure parents and children into irreversible decisions.”
– “While Chase Oliver was silent about alleged Russian collusion, LPCO members were years ahead of the public in identifying the intelligence agencies’ creation and the Clinton campaign’s funding of the Steele dossier.”
– “While Mike ter Maat was making feeble jokes about former President Trump’s New York trial verdict, LPCO members were organizing locally to preserve the rule of law in the face of a nationally unprecedented assault on this fundamental societal underpinning.”
And Mises Caucus =/= Mises Institute by any stretch of the imagination – unfortunately. That’s like comparing Little League Baseball to the Cricket World Cup.
I’m not arguing for or against Mises or Trump. It’s a fact that most of them see Trump as very imperfect, just better than Biden from their perspective. I think most of them were willing to support Dave Smith, and a somewhat smaller set were willing to support rectenwald . A significantly smaller subset made peace to one degree or another with Oliver nomination, and or support Trump, or whatever else they might do.
You keep assuming they had better choices willing and able to run than McArdle and Rectenwald. I see no evidence or reason to assume those things. Just because existing choices are far from perfect it doesn’t mean better ones are actually available. The people who may have been better may simply not want the headaches and work and responsibilities of those positions. If you want me to change my mind, please present evidence, not griping about how bad the people who did in fact step forward suck. They could be as bad as you say , or even worse. That still doesn’t do a thing to prove that anyone better was both willing and able to step forward.
My understanding is that libertarians generally oppose the draft. But even if they supported it, they’re not the government. They have no such means to compel people to step forward and seek positions they do not wish to be candidates for.
Also I disagree that their support or disagreement with Trump varies when for party members they expect 100% agreement with them. That is the definition of hypocrisy. “How dare this party nominate Bill Weld…but we’re going to accept everything bad Donald Trump did in exchange for Ross Ulbricht getting pardoned and Mike Lee getting in Cabinet.” You’re full of shit at that point.
The world right now is heading for a very dark place in my opinion. I see a pre-World War I European mentality out there when you look under the covers at what is going on economically, and our own debt is finally starting to bite. It’s heading there whether Trump or Biden get elected, although trajectories in either case would be different. I think a more globalized war becoming reality I’m probably at 1 in 3, and it’s not necessarily over Ukraine. Biden has a sense of institutional restraint in him. Trump has no restraints at all. That can be positive, but can also be very negative. And we know from his presidency that anyone challenges him he has a desire to strike back (Soleimani assassination).
“They support and oppose Trump to different levels. Why are you so confident they had other, better candidates who were both willing and able to run? Do you know of any?”
If you’re going to break something, you own it. Mises put all this time, money, and energy into taking control of the party in Reno. They take control…and the best choice they come up with to run the party was Angela McArdle. Really? Off what established leadership, running the Libertarian Party in Los Angeles? Even from Mises’ point of view her own completely horrid time management destroyed their Convention plans. The Convention did nothing except elections.
Then you have a presidential race, per Angela McArdle’s own leaked texts to confidants the only thing the Mises people cared about the party enough to put an effort into was Dave Smith for President, and Smith declines. And Michael Rectenwald was Plan B? If that was Plan B and McArdle was Plan A running the party, what else I’d inside this group? We know they had Josh Smith who they elected Vice Chair and he ran for President, but got on the bad list.
They support and oppose Trump to different levels. Why are you so confident they had other, better candidates who were both willing and able to run? Do you know of any?
I think they generally have a preference for Trump over Biden, but that covers a lot of ground. Nevertheless, it’s an impediment for them in recruiting candidates willing to run against both and therefore have to deal with endless harassment from those who think they’re helping Biden by taking Trump votes.
“So, bad as he was , rectenwald may have been the least bad or only choice Heise and them had. Or a sacrificial lamb because they actually want Trump whether they are willing to admit it or not.”
No, I think they wanted Trump and for this group that argue for Austrian economics above all else supposedly are going to support a President Trump that is going to be implementing heavy tariffs and protectionist measures embracing mercantilism which this Mises.org article tells everything wrong it: https://mises.org/mises-daily/mercantilism-lesson-our-times .
Meanwhile he’ll clearly do other statist actions – maybe start a war, maybe crash the value of the dollar intentionally eliminating most Americans’ personal stores of value for the future – once elected as I at this point think will happen because Biden is so out of touch with what people care about, and this will be the Mises Caucus’s and their supporters’ identity…years into the future. They supported this and people like McArdle and Harlos were Steve Bannon’s useful idiots.
Osint : You presume Heise had better candidates willing to run to pick from? Why? Running for president has legal requirements and is very hard and thankless work. There’s not always a ton of people willing to subject themselves and family to that, particularly from an ideological subset of a minor party, and especially one many of which support one of the major party presumptive nominees.
Then if you do have people willing you have to sift thru their background, see if they have work ethic and funds to travel, charisma level, fundraising ability, handling media and crowds, etc. You have to be able to sell them to delegates, and if you get to that stage, voters in general.
So, bad as he was , rectenwald may have been the least bad or only choice Heise and them had. Or a sacrificial lamb because they actually want Trump whether they are willing to admit it or not.
Seebeck,
I hope you’re right, and it’s just that easy to do.
Meanwhile because the bylaws were not changed, they still have on the books the size of every state’s delegation to the National Convention is half set by the vote received in the presidential race. That they wanted to make this change further speaks to their pre-Convention motivations. It was proposal 13 in their strategy document:
“This proposal bases delegate allocation purely on national LP sustaining members residing in a given state. It prevents states that have had ballot access taken from them by government policy from having their representation crippled. Any state that performs well in the presidential election is probably also fairly active and engaged in the process and can add recruiting sustaining members to its efforts. This also separates non-libertarian protest voters from serious libertarian voters in considering allocation. Finally, it helps the national LP generate revenue, which is good.”
Right now based on existing bylaws, if Colorado does not run anyone on their presidential ballot line, based on numbers for the 2024 Convention they will lose 9 of their 33 National Convention delegate slots. Montana would lose 3 of their 6. New York which looks like they will be unable to get ballot access could lose 10 of their 41.
The Mises argument in my opinion should just change it to an executive office (i.e. either President or Governor). The point of a political party is to get votes from both members and non-members. It’s not like Democrats or Republicans most states have political party membership.
“It was rather absurd for a lot of delegates to vote to re-elect an MC-dominated LNC, including most of all the Trump-supporting Chair, while not picking their presidential candidate (who guaranteed was going to drop out and endorse Trump).”
1. Rectenwald was qualitatively a completely horrible candidate. The only thing I can think of is Heise gave up on the presidential election as far as being a positive event for the party when Dave Smith chose not to run and so intentionally ran someone that was a black hole of charisma.
2. There are people that support Mises ideologically while not being completely controlled by them. I think you can see it in the votes on the Michigan, Oklahoma, and Washington State delegations as well as the Rutherford Vice Chair win, Redpath Treasurer win, and the Oliver/Ter Maat nominations. In my opinion that group of people which was maybe 10% of the Convention if that effectively controlled who won everything. From those results I think we can take “no, we’re going to allow everything here to vote as a delegate”, “we support McArdle, but want Rutherford to be a check on her”, and Redpath’s win is acknowledgment by this group the party’s finances suck. The Oliver/Ter Maat nomination was in part down to McArdle’s own horrible time management of the Convention as well as Mapstead, Ter Maat, and Oliver supporters in the end all working together a la the Democrats in 2020 teaming up to deny Sanders the nomination. There’s no reason to have a 7-hour delay caused by the Secret Service to a party whose motto was “BECOME UNGOVERNABLE”. Platform/bylaws-wise, this Convention was a complete failure for Mises: they accomplished nothing in their strategy document. And that’s down to their own time management.
Let’s be honest, Mises care way more about controlling the party than they do the presidential candidate. So their goal now is to turn Chase Oliver into Andre Marrou and post-election paint that as a rejection of that wing of the party. And safe to say there are people inside the group that in my opinion are working for the Republicans. Apparently the money donations to the group have dried up which conveniently is the time Heise chose to leave, and there’s some evidence out there I need to further look into of the peak of donations to the group tailed off when Steve Bannon went to jail and then picked back up afterward. Not accusing anyone of anything, just a circumstantial bit of evidence.
Your best guess on how many states? 5, 10, 20?
I don’t think we’ll see any of the MAGA state parties that are repudiating Chase put some rando right-wing crank on the ballot, like get Rectenwald or Tom Woods or whoever. They’re just going to openly support Trump. And so far none of them are fusion states, so without that option they’ll just not put anybody on as a Libertarian.
Bingo again. Delusional thinking seems to be the only kind they are capable of, judging by results. People with better connection to reality either know to steer clear of them or realise their mistake and disengage in short order. Never had there been such a gaggle of overeducated, out of touch with reality, delusional idiots. It’s like a roach trap for them, especially if given to contrarianism, orneriness, childish oneupsmanship, lastworditis (guilty, guilty, guilty) , tyranny of small differences, sunk cost fallacy, and associated mental defects.
Too small to be a governing party, not too big to be a mental asylum.
It was rather absurd for a lot of delegates to vote to re-elect an MC-dominated LNC, including most of all the Trump-supporting Chair, while not picking their presidential candidate (who guaranteed was going to drop out and endorse Trump). How did anyone think that was going to go? They’re just going to obey the rules and fall in line behind Chase? Of course not. They’re just adapting the plan. Whether they get to a super-majority to officially nullify the nomination is effectively moot, if they’re just going to have states left and right refusing to put the nominee on the ballot, and say gee that’s OK nothing we can do about it. They’ve already de facto cancelled Chase’s status as their nominee whether they ever do it officially or not.
This isn’t kumbaya. Yay party unity, now let’s all come together guys. Delusional thinking on the part of whatever subset voted for both McArdle and Oliver.
@ observer: bingo. The real purpose of Trump speech, achieved. It’s all mop up at this point. A lot of people don’t get this yet, but that’s because they’re only looking at dominoes that already fell, not ones in line to fall.
The party is over, and will not be fixed or replaced. Anyone still involved, regardless of faction if any: the sooner and more completely you get out, the better off you’ll be. Believe me now or believe me later.
I have yet to follow my own advice only to the extent of not having formally revoked my signature membership, which I still think would be a masturbatory waste of time, but that could change. They’re only going to become more and more embarrassing as time goes on.
Better than toss-up chance the LNC does revoke the nomination. MC-ers, or I suppose you could them the McArdle faction now, have as firm if not more of a supermajority than they did before the convention. And she’s telegraphing this by not backing the nominee’s ballot access at all, instead creating a sham committee to endorse and validate LPCO’s attacks on the nominee and demand Chase grovel and suck up to them. When he doesn’t, or frankly even if he does because it’ll never be good enough for him, there will be more states doing this on top of MT and CO. And then, very predictable, Angela will pretend to be sad about it and say there’s just too much backlash from the states it’s too divisive we have to rescind the nomination.
Chase might have won the Libertarian National Convention, but he is not functionally the nominee of the Libertarian National Committee.
Chris,
Colorado has already nominated downticket candidates back in March and they are already on the ballot. Colorado’s ballot line is maintained by its voter registration numbers >1000 or by achieving 1% in a statewide state-level race. Not going to be an issue.
However, Oliver can still file his paperwork as the Libertarian nominee. LPCO is not the gatekeeper for that filing. All he has to do is find 9 LPCO Electors and submit the paperwork to the Secretary of State. No independent petitioning is required since Oliver is clearly the LP nominee regardless of any LPCO antics.
@Chris: if they go the independent route, they need to collect 12,000 valid signatures with at least 1,500 in each congressional district before July 11.
This may seem a bit pendantic but LP Colorado sent delegates to DC who participated in the nomination at the national convention. They may refuse to honor their obligation to put the ticket on the Colorado ballot, but they can’t undo the fact that they were part of nominating Oliver and ter Maat.
I’m also curious to see if LP Colorado pursues placing others on the ballot. This would require some cooperation by whomever they would choose, which may not be forthcoming.
Supporters of Oliver/ter Maat still have the opportunity to place the ticket on in Colorado via the Independent route.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Good on the Colorado LP for refusing to nominate Oliver and ter Maat, but bad on Hannah Goodman, and for that matter Angela McArdle, for endorsing Trump instead.
This Reconciliation Committee is doomed to be a huge nothing sandwich that will not lead to any useful results. If she wanted it to appear as anything more than a champagne trough, McArdle should have rescinded herself from being part of it.
Sad to see in Colorado, the birthplace of the Libertarian Party. I will be voting for Chase Oliver and Michael ter Maat in November.
Well, another western affiliate shows its true colours. And gets in line to be disaffiliated, (if we were lucky). If these people want to support Trump, there is a whole damned political party for them. It’s called the GOP. Get out of ours.