wow

slow news day…….

You can show possession with an apostrophe, but for a contraction with a proper noun.

*...but not for...

@1: yeah, no death threats.

i don't mind johnson's presence in this race at all.

@1: Don't complain. Rarely is there a weekend post these days.

@4: Agreed about Gary Johnson. The more the electorate gives third parties their due consideration, the more likely it seems that in future elections there will be better choices or the two major parties will adapt faster to growing contituincies.

Here's the thing about this year's crop of third party candidates: One (Johnson) is either a liar or an idiot, and the other one (Stein) should not have been put in the recycling bin.

I like the idea of third party candidates, but they have to do better than this.

Johnson isn't very smart. He uses "free market" BS to mask his complete ignorance of any economic theory.

@7 - There are lots of smart free market theorists: Ludwig Von Mises; Hayek; Milton Friedman to name a few. Johnson has spoken intelligently in depth about economics before. I have never heard Hillary or Trump ever talk seriously about economics before without a scriptwriter and a teleprompter.

Google “Gary Johnson”
Let Gary debate! #LetGaryDebate
Visit http://www.johnsonweld.com
https://www.facebook.com/govgaryjohnson

Two political humor videos - which do you like better?

Debate Commission Confronts Millennial Revolt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyziCyUo…

Commission on Presidential Debates meeting 9/16/2016 Draft907
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raZzW9ji…

@8 when I listened to him on Joe Rogan's 3 hour interview with him, he didn't get any deeper than "Kidney Transplants R Us". The care will be great because it's bad business to give bad care!

It's bald-faced blind trust of corporate benevolence at the bottom of any plan he tries to offer. He's better serving of the Koch brothers than actual individual interests and well-being. He was in favor of vouchers and charter schools and opened new private prisons. He doesn't act like a pro-individual politician, he acts like a pro-corporation politician. He really knows how to ooze just enough personal rights stuff on you to keep you enthralled.

History provides us with a perfectly good example of libertarian unregulated market economics. It's called Victorian England and if ever there was a golden age of humanity, that was it. I can't understand why we all didn't adopt that model in perpetuity. If a man can't be free to work 6 days, 12 hours a day in a coal mine for a crust of adulterated bread and a little rancid bacon fat, then we all ought to just pack it in, I say.

As I've said before and I'm sure I will say again often, Libertarianism is the fantasy football league of political philosophies. The only place it can be demonstrated to work is in Ayn Rand's disfunctional fantasy novels. Wanna be a Libertarian? Go to Somalia and try it on for size. It's a libertarian paradise.

In Sesttle, Novoselic and Carey aren't exactly "low budget". They're pretty much A-listers in our little town.

I heard Johnson on Bill Maher a few months back. Someone asked about energy, and his reply was that it was consumers who are moving away from coal, choosing to use less energy and choosing to invest in renewables, which is complete and utter nonsense.

Consumers have very little control over their energy supply, and most couldn't care less how they get their electricity, as long as it's cheap and reliable. It's true that Americans are using less energy than they were a generation ago, but that is mostly because of government mandated efficiency for appliances, HVAC and insulation. And renewables are heavily subsidized, with Obama-era incentives helping to drive the cost of renewable energy down. This is all good, but it's not consumers, it's government intervention.

I am so disillusioned to find out that Krist Novoselic is a Gary Johnson supporter. I don't like this future.

There is only one logical conclusion to the crap spread by Gary Johnson, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises, and that is corporate absolutism.

The bias on this is just so hilariously obvious. It highlights everything practical, intelligent and optimistic about this ticket and turns it sideways. Great synopsis, telling bias/commentary. Johnson-Weld is obviously doing something right. You don't incur this type of scorn unless of course you can no longer be dismissed... Bravo Johnson-Weld! The grown-ups have eneterd the race and the children are having kaniptions!

The bias on this is just so hilariously obvious. It highlights everything practical, intelligent and optimistic about this ticket and turns it sideways. Great synopsis, telling bias/commentary. Johnson-Weld is obviously doing something right. You don't incur this type of scorn unless of course you can no longer be dismissed... Bravo Johnson-Weld! The grown-ups have enetered the race and the children are having kaniptions!

Third Parties are a huge threat to our Republic.
The virtue of our Two Party system is that it forces everyone in the country to pick one side or the other, vote, create a winner (with at least 50%+1 votes) and move on.
No party will represent everything any particular voter wants, but voters pick the party that best represents their positions. They are free to work within the party to make it better reflect their own views, if they choose.
But by having two (only) choices, we are forced to compromise to some extent, within our chosen party and with the opposing party.
Such compromise is essential if a democracy is to function.
The critical feature is that after the debate and campaigning are over we choose, someone wins a majority, and we move on.
Third parties always weaken one of the major parties, allowing someone to 'win' with less than 50% (and without a mandate)
That can lead to a lack of legitimacy for the 'winner' in the eyes of many voters…

All of which is not to say that the two parties we have are all that greater, but the problem is not the n umber of parties but the quality, and adding third and fourth etc more crappy parties to the mix only makes things worse.

And if a party is doing a poor enough job having only only two parties hastens the point at which the weak party can be flushed away and a new more responsive party come on the scene.
For example the Republicans fairly quickly supplanted the Whigs, and won the presidency in just their second election.

People tempted to frolic after third parties should instead work within one of the existing parties to change it's positions.

Of course there is a third option; not voting/participating.
However people so unmotivated that they choose not to participate are probably not going to make an informed vote and do society a favor by staying home.

I am the woman in this article. You mis-quoted us. Mis-represented us. Load the entire audio interview online asap.
Also. I was VERY CLEAR. LIBERTARIANS DO NOT LIKE TRUMP.
I will read all comments later today. I have a 15 page intro into Libertarianism. I suggest to people to please only comment if you know ejat we stand for. Please do not just assume or attack.
We have a lot of Progressive causes that Progressive leaders are mum on.
Please post the audio.
Thank you,
Tiffany Diaz De Leon

Well that is sure a misleading and creative way to corrupt what was said to meet the reporters motive. I challenge the Stranger to post the audio of the interview with me in full. Let all hear what was stated rather than the perverse twist placed on it. The reporter lied when she stated I would support Trump if forced to vote for either a D or R. I wouldn't vote! The reporter took things out of context, used half sentences of comments and even quoted things not stated.

Good to see the fedora wearing autistic folks with poor hand-eye coordination and the women who love them enough, usually their mothers, to drive them to their LARPing... I mean libertarian get togethers having such a fun time with their faith based economic ideology.

@21 you are not the solitary savior for your shitty platform, we're not going to read 15 pages about libertarianism and see the light and this joke-ass businessman-cum-governor is not a good presidential candidate.

Johnson says:

"It's how we deal with failure that ultimately determines success."

Doubling down on deregulation, outsourcing, privatization and elimination of the social safety net (as in wanting to cut deeply into SS, Medicare and Medicaid) after the last 40 year of public policy trending toward corporatism precisely shows Johnson's inability to 'deal with the failure' of his unsubstantiated dogmas.

uber fire department! now with surge pricing! uber schools, uber prisons, uber government: for all the social safety-net needs you can afford. your uber mayor is just an app-tap away.

"Libertarians: Dedicating our efforts to ensuring the rest of society has the same freedom to trade as the press has to publish."

The only liberty that libertarians care about is the liberty of the wealthy and powerful to enjoy their wealth and power unhindered. And everyone else can go to hell.

Libertarianism is evil, pure and simple. The end game is the rich eliminating any counterbalancing force in society.

I find this hilarious. None of you actually understand Libertarianism at all. I can sum it all up in less then '15 pages'. We believe everyone in this country has the right to live his or her own life, as they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of another to do the same. "My right to swing my arms ends at your face". And to @29, Libertarianism is FAR from evil. Socialism is evil. Socialisim is the use of force. Plain and simple. The government are the guys with the guns and are the ONLY people who can use force to enforce your 'new laws'. We the people tell the government what to do, so I won't tell the government to do something I'm not willing to do myself. Remove that 'faceless' entity of government and put yourself in there. Are you willing to put a gun to the head of someone or deprive them of freedom to get your goals? Are you willing to pull that trigger yourself? If you are, then fine, go for it. but i've noticed those on the 'left' deplore violence. So that is evil.

Isn't it weird how there's only one candidate who supports mandatory vaccines? It's not just all the other non-Democratic candidates who are "anti-vaxxers". All the other major Democratic candidates were not for more states trying this my-way-or-the-highway mandatory vaccine scheme California is going to try.

Hillary Clinton is the only one who is totally on board with this wack new thing. You'd expect a boob like Trump to sign on to a plan like that without waiting to see if it works at all or makes a bad situation worse. You'd have thought that Clinton would be the one taking a measured approach.

But nope. Hillary is the lone name that isn't an "anti-vaxxer" as the Stranger would have it.

Keep in mind there are 47 "anti-vaxxer" states. California was an "anti-vaxxer" state until just about five minutes ago. Washington is an "anti-vaxxer" state. Almost every country in Europe and around the world is "anti-vaxxer". You have to jump down a very long list of countries until you finally come to freaking Croatia before you find one that isn't, by Stranger standards, "anti-vaxxer". Croatia.

The World Health Organization? Yep, the WHO is "anti-vaxxer" too. Bunch of rubes, am I right?

So yeah, never change guys.

Sasha dear, I understand Libertarianism quite well. The trouble is that your candidate doesn't. Either that, or he lies almost continuously to pander to people.

I wish I lived the easy life these folks clearly have. Believing that a laissez faire system is the answer to societal problems can only come from having to never deal with an insurance provider, a utility provider, a bank, or even a mechanic.

If anyone is interested in hearing more policy positions straight from the source, Johnson/Weld also held an "ask me anything" (AMA) session on Reddit a couple weeks back. [Link] It's not surprising how little time it takes for the logic of their positions to be proved faulty. For instance, with net neutrality. [Link]

Wow, Are you sure you were actually at this rally??? I used to think your fish wrap was at least half way worthy but, NOPE. get your facts straight and be an actual journalist (that would be the unbiased). The woman you have posted is definitely not a Trump fan.

Understanding things is for sheeple.

Libertarians have the courage to know things things for THEMSELVES. By themselves. For themselves. When one person must know what somebody else is taking about, freedom dies.

Did Howard Roark let blank stares stop him?

@30: I will gladly hold someone at gunpoint, if necessary, to remind them that laws are meant to be followed.
You must be one of those "voluntarist" nutters who think that if we abolish all force and coercion, everyone will just be nice to each other, an assumption on par with how communism believes that if we provide everyone with the basic means of living, everyone will just be nice to each other. Your lot means to establish a power vacuum, where there is nothing to protect the weak against the strong. You know, the same old FYIGM philosophy as always.

@36 "know things for themselves"

What the fuck is this supposed to even mean? Is it some more faith replacement claptrap? I know that, for myself, gays are evil and, therefore, I am correct because it is true for myself.

Honestly, this is some special snowflake stupidity. Also, fuck yea vaccinations should be mandatory.

Who is funding him?

I just realized that the idea of a free market is just fine for this newspaper but terrible for everyone else. Maybe we should say "Freedom for me but not for thee" is the presses new motto.

@38

Ayn Rand didn't change just because everyone said "girl, what?" Understanding! Bah.

Mandatory vaccines. You're going to need to tattoo bar codes on everyone to make that efficient.

For those of you who want to decry libertarianism as "evil" ...

Let me ask you this. Which political party has advocated for gay marriage for 40 years? Which political party has advocated for MJ legalization for 40 years?

That's right: libertarians have been advocating for these positions since the 1970s. And THAT is because they have a coherent political philosophy centered on individual rights.

You don't have to agree with them on other positions, like free trade or departments of the Federal Government. But you have to admit that they got these two issues RIGHT, and did so a long time ago. Even the Dems had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into these positions.

So don't dismiss the ideas. Maybe -- just maybe -- they have ideas worthy of consideration.

God I hope all the Libertarians are gone by tomorrow. These are the craziest bunch of comments I've ever seen, including when Sgt. Doom was still here.

Catalina, I assume you meant that Stein SHOULD have been put in the recycling bin.

@43: The Libertarians are right ON THOSE PARTICULAR SOCIAL ISSUES, and on a few others. But their economic proposals would leave the poor and disadvantaged to fend for themselves, and put us all at the mercy of the extremely wealthy.
They're not evil because they happen to disagree with me on certain issues; they're evil insofar as they want to apply a purely ideological set of principles (how things SHOULD work) to government, completely dismissing the real-world impact (how things WILL work) of their deliberate naivete and magical thinking.

@42 Yes, you are a delusional nut. Thanks for letting us know.

Of course mandatory vaccines are an impossibility. Just like how they're not the same as the holocaust. Unless, of course, you're a moron.

Listen, I realize that you're a Bernieorbuster, so am I. And Bernie had good ideas which he defended on a weekly basis on Thom Hartmann's show. You know who didn't? This fucking faith loving nutcase. You know it, I know it, get your head out of your ass.

No Sarah91. I meant that the Greens should not have recycled her. She should have gone into the wastebasket after she lost the last time.

"I'm not a Republican, I'm a Libertarian."
"So then you're a Republican with no Conscience?"

guys, Australia has already implemented "no jab, no pay" policies to good success. Mandatory vaccines are a good idea in the age of free information and lots of idiots who can access it freely.

@43- Libertarians are for gay marriage and marijuana legalization AND ALSO for allowing businesses to not serve gay people and drug test all their employees. So yeah, the Libertarian future is one where happily married gay couples might smoke weed if only they had food or shelter which they can only get if they do exactly as their employment contracts stipulate. It's a return to the company store owning your soul and the emergence of the toll road to get anywhere else.

I thought "You in?" was Trump's campaign slogan #smallhands #yucks

Uber Über Alles!

@47: There are three possibilities: recycle, compost, or trash. Ms. Stein is suitable only for composting.