Liberty Maven

Bob Barr calls it as he sees it:

John McCain isn’t the opponent of big government that he claims he is, according to Bob Barr, the former GOP congressman and Libertarian presidential candidate.

“I think McCain is a hypocrite,” Barr said of the Arizona senator. “He claims he is for smaller government and that’s not the case.”

Here’s the article.

Yesterday on CNN’s the Situation Room one of the pundits who happens to be a member of the much distrusted (by many Ron Paul supporters) Council On Foreign Relations (CFR) lamented that Republicans “betrayed their own President and party” by voting against the big bad bailout bill. It is this mindset that we are railing against in large numbers as we continue to call, email, and write our representatives to tell them we don’t want our tax money to go toward any kind of bailout. It seems that lawmakers must now choose between betraying the status quo in Washington or betraying their own constituents. So far, the constituents are winning. That is as it should be, but there is another fight looming.

Now the Senate plans on voting for an “adjusted” bailout bill tonight. It includes tax breaks and higher FDIC insurance guarantees. The tax breaks are very targeted and will not affect a large number of people. The new FDIC limit provision does nothing for the economy other than send a false signal to people that the government has your bank account’s back. This notion is ridiculous. The U.S. government is insolvent. The national debt is headed north above $10 trillion. How can we trust the government will have the ability to “protect” us when the time comes? More importantly why should the government do so? It is time to disown Mommy and Daddy government.

John McCain bluntly stated the strategy for the bailout bill when he said, “The first thing I would do is say, ‘Let’s not call it a bailout. Let’s call it a rescue,’ Americans are frightened right now”.

Other supporters of the bailout began calling it a rescue around the time George Bush went on TV to plead his case for the bailout. If this is a rescue then it is the equivalent of sending a cold calculating serial killer to rescue a young woman from being robbed. Sure she’ll be saved from losing a bit of her money, but she’ll end up being killed in the end.

The media yesterday spoke how the stock market surged upwards because of the confidence some kind of bailout bill will be passed this week. It seems to me the market surged because there were good buys out there after the oversold panic from the day before. Indeed, the main stream media seems to have a bias toward supporting a bailout of some kind.

We now have the sitting Republican President, the two candidates vying for his job, and the media all in agreement that something must be done and that something is this horrid $700 billion heist right out of the U.S. citizen’s pockets. Please contact your Senators and urge them to vote against this new thievery of the American taxpayer. It is time we all started living within our means so we aren’t forced to live beneath the means we once had.

Note: This superb commentary regarding the current status of the two party system was submitted by Doug Lasken, an accomplished freelance author and English teacher in Los Angeles, California.

Where’s A Good Party?

by Doug Lasken

Perhaps the best adjective to describe our presidential conventions is “noisy.” You’d think, from the impact, that the noise was generated by a good percentage of the population, but the conventioneers at both events are just a tiny group that knows how to get heard.

One has to admit it’s been a good show this time because disapproval of President Bush is so widespread and profound that defeating his party is highly motivational, while die hard Republicans are motivated to salvage their banner. The fact is, though, that vast numbers of Americans view the two party system as a transparent scam, and they are looking for something better.

In a nutshell, the parties don’t stand for any clear-cut principles or practices.

The traditional wisdom, of course, is that Democrats hold the rich to their obligations to the little guy, oppose unnecessary war and want a sustainable, pleasant planet earth.

Republicans are supposed to believe in an independent mindset that thrives in a free marketplace unfettered by intrusive government. They are “fiscal conservatives,” advocates of a government run like a frugal household in which expenditures do not exceed income, and they believe in “family values” (a vague concept involving caring about one’s family).

It’s all bunk. Neither party represents any of those things.

Read More »

We had the live blog open for commentary on the first debate between Obama and McCain. For a transcript of our comments and several of our readers check out the link below.

Check out the first Liberty Maven live blog transcript.

There will be no Bob Barr or Ron Paul, but we will be live blogging the first Presidential Debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. This is of course, assuming John McCain actually participates and the debate takes place.

Mike Miller and I, Marc Gallagher, will provide our commentary together as we watch the debate live. Feel free to participate with us beginning tonight at approximately 8:45pm (EST). We welcome any and all comments from our readers during the event.

Hopefully, we can remain civil with the big government rhetoric we are likely to hear from the two establishment candidates. Wouldn’t it be better if they included a few of the other third party candidates like Bob Barr, Ralph Nader, Chuck Baldwin, and Cynthia McKinney?

The live blog transcript will remain here following the debate for future reference.

The Bob Barr campaign sent letters to both the Commission on Presidential Debates and the Obama campaign requesting inclusion in Friday night’s debate in Mississippi after John McCain said he would not attend due to the importance of “fixing” the economic problems we face.

Of course, these letters were predictable and will likely be ignored, but I again applaud the campaign for fighting for every opportunity to get the freedom message out to the American people.

Most of you have probably heard that Sen. John McCain is temporarily suspending his campaign and calling for a postponement of Friday night’s presidential debate so that he and Sen. Barack Obama can go to Washington and cast a vote to spend $1 trillion of your money bailing out Wall Street.

The University of Mississippi, the host of the debate, and Sen. Obama are proceeding as scheduled. We here at Barr HQ are encouraging Sen. Obama to do just that, however, we are asking for a favor.

Russ Verney has sent letter to both the Commission on President Debates (view letter) and the Obama campaign (view letter) asking for Bob Barr to be included in Friday’s debate. In his letter to the CPD, Verney wrote that including Bob in the debate would allow them to proceed as planned and that “Congressman Barr’s participation will provide a substantive and vigorous debate of the issues facing our nation.”

Keep it up Bob. Read the rest here.

The Dallas Morning News is reporting that Bob Barr lost his case.

AUSTIN — The Texas Supreme Court has denied Libertarian presidential candidate’s Bob Barr attempt to keep the names John McCain and Barack Obama off the state’s November ballot.

The court did not explain the reason for its decision Tuesday.

What a bunch of leadership. Read the article here.

Bob Barr released a video yesterday regarding the U.S. Constitution outlining how McBama ignores it while Barr clings to it.  Barr says he doesn’t believe in the Constitution’s “intent” but in it’s “letter”. He gets rather emphatic in this video attempting (rather successfully) to show he truly does care about defending and upholding our founding document. See for yourself below.

Listen, everyone, don’t let people distract you with nonsense about fiscal responsibility within the government or holding our leaders accountable. And definitely DON’T worry about the future of the U.S. Dollar. After all, the fundamentals of the economy are strong and we have REAL problems to worry about, such as imprisoning dangerous soda spillers, foreclosing on a disabled man who parked a car in his very own driveway, AND, most disturbing of all, people trying to peacefully exercise their freedom of speech!

Let’s start with the deadly soda, because we definitely all need to work together to proactively hunt down dangerous felons like this.  Let me paint the picture.  It’s an easy one.  We’ve all had parents, at least two, anyway.  And some of us have even cared for them when they got sick.  And most of us have had a soda or two in our lives.  So this should be pretty easy to picture.  Natalie Walters, a lady who routinely takes her father to the Boise Veterans Affairs Medical Center for treatment, also decided to callously take advantage of her right to travel, and regularly visited the cafeteria.  Her routine was to refill her mug with Diet Coke for anywhere from $1 to $1.50, depending on the cashier at the time and his or her ability to accurately type in the right codes and digits on a keyboard.  Well, imagine her surprise on Aug. 20, when Walters filled her mug with Diet Coke, [and] the clerk charged $3.80.

“I told her that cannot be right and asked to talk to the manager,” Walters said.

The manager told Walters the price is correct.

Walters decided she didn’t want to pay that much and offered to return the soda, she said. But the manager told her there was no way to accept the returned soda and Walters had to pay. Walters refused, and she said she was angry by this point, and she poured the soda onto the counter.

The manager banned Walters from the cafeteria.

But, wait, there’s more!  A LOT more!  Officials realized their debt to the safety of the community, and felt morally compelled to go through every piece of cafeteria and hospital videotape, tracking her insurgent movements, tracing her back to her ill father; going through his medical records; and justifiably upsetting him by interrupting him at his own dental appointment to let him know that Big Brother requested his daughter’s presence.

Read More »

Ron Paul schooled America via MSNBC this afternoon. With such a short soundbite style interview it is hard for him to be effective about his “teachings”, but in this interview I think he does an excellent job. He discussed why inflating the money supply is a no-win in the long run. He then goes on to say rather emphatically that he could never endorse John McCain for a variety of reasons but his most biting reason was foreign policy. Paul says he could never endorse someone that thinks it’s funny to sing “bomb bomb bomb Iran” as McCain did a few years ago.