Not completely -- I've been hanging onto a mind-bending bit from a left-libertarian website for awhile, but it pales next to the fed.gov "shut down the fun stuff no matter what" that's goin' on.
You'll be pleased to know that some polling has the blame for that (dreadful, utterly dweadful) semi-stoppage split pretty evenly between Dems and GOP, between the House and Mr. Obama, despite the in-the-bag oldstream media hewing pretty closely to their notion that anything bad is the sole fault of "Tea Partiers," which I guess gives silverfish like Peter King of NY (R-only-in-NY) an out.
Bo-ring. Bo-ring. C'mon, can't they even gin up a new Emmanuel Goldstein to hate on?
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
8 comments:
AP put out a story on their own polling, stated teh won's popularity numbers down to 37% - lower than Bush at same point in office. It took them 7 paragraphs to get to that little factoid.....
The way I see it, the government is demonstrating that it is capable of doing more with just 83% of it's employees on the job than it did with with the other 17% on duty. So what do we need that 17% on the payroll for?
It looks like the government can take a lesson from the private sector and do more with less... if only it would focus on the constructive.
Left-libertarian? I don't see how one could be a leftist and a libertarian at the same time. How does even a slight tendency to be leftist qualify one to be dubbed "libertarian?
Looking forward to the mind-bending in any case. I figure it'll be a good one.
Mike James
One of my wife's friends was here earlier, and in the course of conversation indicated her conviction that the GOP is going down for this unless "Boehner" "calls for a vote" on something or other. Apparently she gets her "news" from CNN or MSNBC.
I pointed out that the House has been doing pretty much nothing BUT voting and it's the Senate that's not doing anything and the President who's refusing to negotiate. You can imagine the response.
I would have thrown her out of the house except that she makes great chicken salad and matzo ball soup. Well, and it would have upset my wife. :)
"I don't see how one could be a leftist and a libertarian at the same time."
Mike, ever heard of Bill Maher, self proclaimed Libertarian, known for his radically left points of view, self loathing antisemitism and famous for being employed as a comedian without ever having been funny.
In my heart of hearts, I can't blame El Presidente for anything but amping up the rhetoric and threatening to veto. At this point, we're trying to pass legislation; the ball is not in his court.
Senate Dems, on the other hand, are fully responsible for this modest scale-back they Chicken-Little into "ZOMGFEDGOVSHUTDOWN2013!!!!"
Fed employee I know points out that he is working, sans pay, until the "non-essential" payroll department is called back to duty.
FWIW.
Dave,
I'm pretty sure that Bill Maher claiming to be a Libertarian was just another one of his (not funny) jokes (or he's an idiot... or both).
Mike,
There are two (typical) paths to the Libertarian party. The first (I think more common) path is the one you are probably thinking of. Conservatives who have become disaffected with the "big government" tack of the Repub party.
The other (a little less common) is Classic Liberals who wake up and see that the modern liberal/progressive ideal is NOT what they signed up for. I have a friend that this perfectly describes. He was a strait "D" ticket voter, until he scrapped that completely and joined the Libertarian party. I'm pretty sure that these people are what our lovable blogger is talking about when she says "Left Libertarian" (at least that's what I'm talking about when I use that term). In my friend's case, he totally drank deeply of the Libertarian coolaid and is now practically an anarchist.
Oddly enough, I personally straddle the two. I am basically a Classic Liberal who found himself stranded in the Repub party. I grew up during the Reagan years and was attracted by his "government is the problem" line (yes, I was fooled. Don't judge, I was a kid). Since then, I have realized that the Republican party no longer believes in small government and only believes in liberty as narrowly defined by the religious right. I couldn't move to the Dem party, because, while they were good on a liberty in a few ways, they were also for bloating government even more than the Repubs, AND actively working to destroy some other liberties that I hold dear.
I think the Libertarian ideal goes too far. You know the saying "Garlic in everything is as bad as garlic in nothing"? That goes for government too, and I think the Libertarian "ideal" would be too close to "government in nothing". However, I will still vote Libertarian in the mean time because they are decades (if ever) away from their "ideal".
I guess you could call me a Moderate Libertarian.
s
Post a Comment