GOP Establishment Urging Liberty Supporters to Vote Romney

There have been a slew of articles published recently that have called for Liberty supporters and Libertarians to vote for the Romney/Ryan ticket. The reasons why these voters should vote Romney are ones that have been presented before, but unfortunately for Romney, they are as unconvincing now as they were then.

For instance, they say that we must prevent Obama from getting a second term as he would lead the country into a disaster. However, many of the target audience already believe that Romney will also lead the country the wrong way as well. From civil liberties (Patriot Act, NDAA, war on drugs), to foreign policy and economic policy, there is no difference between Obama and Romney.

Now here is something to think about: We've already experienced this type of argument before in the lead up to the War on Terror, War in Iraq, and now the situation with Iran. This argument tries to play on people's fears in order to get their support for something unpopular. Yes I am equating Romney with the unpopularity of War, but instead of the WMD boogeyman, we've just swapped it for the Obama boogeyman.

Another reason why the GOP establishment gives to support Romney is that he would be more likely to work with Libertarians and liberty-minded individuals than Obama. Unfortunately the actions of just the past few months has shown how much Romney campaign is willing to work with Liberty supporters. Abuse, disenfranchisement, and trying to cut them off in future participation in politics are usually not signs that someone is willing to work with you.

The Romney campaign has successfully demolished any chance of support from Liberty supporters. It was said months ago, that Romney would need the support of this group to win, but instead of working with the group or maintaining relations with them, he has antagonized and silenced them.

Sorry Romney, but basically you've burned bridges with this entire group of supporters, and now you are trying to throw us a rope. I feel sorry for anyone willing to trust you enough to even touch that rope.  I and many other Liberty supporters will stay here on the side of liberty and vote Gary Johnson in the upcoming election, and watch as you lose the by that 10% margin belonging to the vote which you've worked so hard to alienate.

Coverage of the Empire State Building Murder

In the Empire State Building incident last week, two people were killed and nine were wounded.  The two people killed were the murderer and his intended target, and the nine wounded were innocent bystanders.  As the facts of the events were sorted, it turns out that the murderer only shot his intended target, and that the nine innocent bystanders were shot by police who took down the murderer.  Now I am not angry at how the events played out.  I am not angry at the police for how they handled the situation either.  The man did have a gun after all, and police do need to defend themselves.  It's unfortunate that nine people were injured solely by police defending themselves, but I am positive that the officers didn't intentionally shoot those that were wounded.

No, what really angers me is the media coverage of the event.  I was online when the stories were being posted.  Some labeled it as a shooting, and some were posting it as 'terror' probably trying to grab their audience's attention. Not surprising.  However, many media outlets were quick to label the event as a mass shooting.  After Aurora, CO and the shooting at the Sikh temple, the mainstream media was ready to jump on this, and so were many gullible gun-control advocates.

And here is the problem: it wasn't a mass shooting.  There was only one victim of the shooter in this case, and as stated above, the rest of the wounded were victims of police fired rounds intended to take down the murderer.  According to a witness, the BBC posted that the murderer was shooting indiscriminately at people, which is absolutely false. Some media outlets even published that the nine bystanders were injured in a 'gun battle'.  In actuality, there was no gun battle as the murderer was taken down pretty quickly by police.

Whatever happened to the phrase 'just the facts' because apparently our media doesn't believe in this any longer? And when are we going to hold our media outlets accountable for their atrocious journalistic standards?

The World in a Different View

I read an article bashing Ron Paul's foreign policy views.  I ended up posting a comment to that article and thought that I should post it here as well.  Here's what I wrote:

There is so much wrong with this article that I don't even know where to begin.

1. On Osama Bin Laden, he may have not even been a factor if we didn't support him in the first place.  But as it is, Paul was for going after Bin Laden in Afghanistan, but with a mark of reprisal, and not by invasion and nation building.

2. The United States would not be in NATO or the UN. I would wonder what either of these organizations have to contribute to the US.  If anything both organizations just serve to compromise or circumvent US sovereignty. When our defense department looks towards the UN and NATO for indication to go to war instead of our own Congress, then you know our sovereignty is compromised.

3. Federal foreign aid to disaster areas would not have happened sure, but the caveat would be that it is FEDERAL.  There is nothing to stop the american people themselves in donating and giving aid, and if we had more of our own money that government takes from us, then I am sure we would be happy to donate and give aid ourselves.

4. Iraq... The US supported, funded and armed Saddam Hussein.

5. Yugoslavia, I can't say too much here as I am not familiar with that history, but I will point out Rwanda because the US did nothing in that country while it was being ethnically cleansed.  I wonder why...

6. Libya... we did more than so called 'protect' innocent civilians although that is what the American public was sold on.  It went from protecting to overthrowing the government. I remember the original intent was to just institute a no fly-zone in civilian populated areas, but quickly evolved into bombing Ghaddfi's headquarters. Now also throw in the fact that Islamic militants such as Al-Qaeda were part of the side that we were protecting...

7. Syria... Islamic militants are also at work here, but more so this is a civil war. Let's be honest here, what you are advocating is not the protection of citizens, but the victory of the rebels in overthrowing the current regime. This is the painfully obvious goal here, not the protection of the Syrian citizens.

8. Didn't a report just come out stating that Iran is not close to developing a nuclear weapon nor have they even decided to pursue one?

In closing, it seems that in recognizing all of these examples, you try view them in a way to advance your own political view.  Such myopic views of these situations is what is the real problem here. The attention span of our media seems to be limited to the 1 minute clips that they present, which is just enough to grab an audiences attention, but we never get the whole story. We can't rely on today's media any longer to do their job because they can be flat out lazy instead of diligent. This means that the public, who needs information to make informed decisions, must be diligent themselves to seek that information.

Here's an interesting article on CNN about a journalist facing wiretapping charges. Apparently there is a viral video out there of a police officer slamming the head of a handcuffed kid into a cafeteria table. The journalist may potentially get 21 years in prison if found guilty, and this case is a good test for jury nullification in New Hampshire.  While the story itself is interesting, what I want to point out is the reaction and comments to the case made by readers of the story.  Here are two of those responses.

What I would like to point out is that there is such a thing as bad laws.  The law is not perfect, and if we do see bad laws, we need to challenge them and not accept them as 'just the way it is.' If we were to reduce our thinking to accepting the laws as is, then nothing would ever change, and we would be drowning in bad laws. A question that I would ask to those two people above - What would you have said fifty years ago in the age of Jim Crow laws of the South? Would you tell those African Americans, oh too bad you just have to follow the law?

Link to the article

Harry Reid and Audit The Fed

Harry Reid does not have time to fit the bill (H.R. 459) to audit the Fed into the Senate schedule for a vote, but has time to talk to/about Mitt Romney's tax returns. This is the situation even though Reid has supposedly been fighting to audit the Federal Reserve for the past two and a half decades. What gives?

Bloomberg and Gun Control

It wasn't long after the Aurora shooting that politicians jumped at the chance to speak out in favor of more gun control laws.  Bloomberg was praised by some in the media as having the fortitude to speak out in favor of more gun control.  However, just because Bloomberg was speaking out in favor of such measures doesn't make the man right.  I've put out the idea that even if guns were not available to the shooter, that he could have easily killed many people, and probably more people if he had chosen a different weapon (say the many explosives that were found at his apartment). Getting back to Mayor Bloomberg and his view on gun control though, according to this article, he was brazen enough today to say these remarks:

"I would take it one step further. I don't understand why police officers across this country don't stand up collectively and say, 'We're going to go on strike. We're not going to protect you unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what's required to keep us safe.'"

While I agree that we should do all we can for our law enforcement officers, abridging the Second Amendment of our Bill of Rights should not even be in consideration.  The right to bear arms is there so individual people can defend themselves not only from criminals, but from tyrannical government. After tragedies, such as 9/11, we are urged to give up our civil liberties in order to attain more security, and the politicians succeed.  We have already had compromises of the First and Fourth Amendment, and now they are going to go after the Second Amendment once again.  We now live in a society where any citizen can be spied on if they are 'suspected' to be a terrorist, where they can be on the President's kill list, where we are searched in order to get on an airplane, where we can even be indefinitely detained without charges brought against us.

Getting back to the Second Amendment though, the right to bear arms is meant for personal self defense and prevention of tyranny.  What Bloomberg suggests is that we need to give up this right in order for our police to be safe.  Now think about this;  who will protect us against the police in those situations where the police are in the wrong?  I am not saying that this happens often, but it does happen.

Take this account recently in Florida.  Police shot a man in the early hours of the morning after knocking on his door.  Police were searching for a suspect at the wrong home.  They proceeded to knock on his door without announcing themselves, and the resident answered with a firearm drawn.  The police then shot the resident, who had nothing to do with the suspect they were looking for.

Here is another account from Bloomberg's home state of New York.  I watched the entire youtube video, and I would encourage everyone to do the same. The story had me in tears, but is a good example of police misconduct which ended in a tragic fatality.

Police are not perfect, and we shouldn't expect them to be. If I need to defend myself, I would much rather have a firearm than a police officer 5 minutes away.  However, Bloomberg is the same politician who wants to ban large sugary drinks from his city, so I understand his political philosophy.  You can depend on the government to protect your health from sugary drinks, just like you can depend on the government for your personal safety. 

Think about this though;  when the government fails in its duties (in some cases it does pretty often), who is left to protect the individual?

Media Hype of Gun Control

I came to the realization that what seems to be the driving force behind the gun control debate seems to be the media.  The media needs to talk about "something."  They need to attract attention.  They need this attention to make money, so naturally they will mention gun control, which is a topic that will surely draw that attention.  What is more troubling is that even though they bring up the topic, they fail to be interested in reporting on the facts, and in some cases completely disregard the facts.

I've run across a number of articles following the Aurora shooting where it is painfully obvious that the journalist publishing the piece failed to even cross check their article.  In one article, they label the weapon used as an 'AK-47 style' rifle, which to anyone who knows anything about the AK-47 or the AR-15 will tell you, are not similar at all.  Another article pointed out that the guns were obtained online without background checks, which again is totally false.  Yet another article claims these assault weapons are the very ones that the military uses, completely and utterly false.  You cannot start a debate on a topic with false facts, and expect an honest debate to take place, so why do we let our media get away with this?  Whatever happened to doing your research before publishing something?

We need to stop media from dictating what issues we talk about today.  I am not saying that we shouldn't have an open or honest debate on gun control, but it should be just that - open and honest.  We should not let the media tell us that this is about guns.  The story here should be, why didn't anyone around this guy raise any flags about his behavior in those four months when he was planning this?  Why is the media not focusing on that fact?

The guy, Holmes, also had explosives, and had booby trapped his own apartment.  Why is that not a cause for concern? He could have easily blown up his entire building and everyone in it.  Why is there no talk about this?

And think about this; when the Trayvon Martin incident took place, infused in the national dialogue was the idea that race was a factor.  Turns out it wasn't, but it sure did grab a lot of attention that way.  Even Obama capitalized by saying that if he had a son, he'd look like Trayvon Martin.  We don't need media spinning stories in a way that grab our attention.  We need them to report facts, not fabricate them for us so that we pay attention.  We need to hold our media accountable.  We need to demand that these so called journalists lose their jobs.

The true tragedy here is that not one of these so called journalists will lose their jobs and that the public will accept their misinformation as fact to form their own opinions of the situation.  If we base our debates on lies and misconceptions we will solve nothing.