I've long noted the schizophrenic American stance on sex: condemn publicly, crave privately. Ban Playboy, read Cosmo in the checkout line (50 Ways To Drive Your Man Wild In Bed!!!)
Of course, strict Christian edicts about sex before marriage usually pose problems, as what we get from marriage roulette is often sexual incompatibility.
You wouldn't buy a car if you couldn't test drive it, but you'll chant'til Death Do Us Part.

So, as Heinlein noted, we have immense pressure to marry, and then when things aren't right... we cheat. If we can't get what we want, we figure out the next best thing, and ignore the vast differences between fantasy and reality.

Is this the hill that the libertarian party wants to die on?

Free porn, sex, and legalized weed?

I suggest you read the Democratic Party platform with the same attention to detail, to find out what they have in store for you wacky freedom loving libertarians.

Unlike the Republican Party they seem to be unrestrained by the actual constitution when they govern.

I know they talk a good line, but what have they done for you lately? (Outside of Obamacare and attempting to shred both the first and second amendment)

Ugh, Isab -- first of all the Republicans aren't really free market, but those who are chase many libertarians away. This is the point. Not that the Democrats are a good choice.

As I've said before, I'd crawl on broken glass through a gauntlet of alligators to vote for Mitt Romney in this election.

"Cleary, I'm not endorsing pornography, but there is a clear difference between endorsing pornography, and speaking out against regulations against it."

You had me up to here.

If you are against regulations limiting the types of porn legally available for view how are you not endorsing porn for everyone and all tastes? Either you regulate it or you don't. It's simple.

ASFA the 2016 statement, it is poorly worded but to my reading was intended as a strong rewording of the 2012 statement still using the "child pornography as a "hook".

Their is no doubt about conservative views on porn so the wording will always go back and forth but basically stating it's a BAD thing for people to do and observe. That's a core Republican requirement for a large number of Republicans so no surprise.

Our pastor does a lot of family counseling and addiction to porn as well as alcohol, drugs, and gambling are common problems.

Instead of focusing on ADDICTION (personal responsibility) the focus is on ____________ . Cue gun control, gambling, alcohol, and wimmen in some cultures.

What'cha going to do. It's human nature to want to blame something. Anything except ourselves.

I'm fiscally conservative, which means I find the Republicans the party of slightly less ginormous government -- people who talk about the free market but are really for crony capitalism handouts (as long as they go to rich people, not poor).

Amy, you think the Democrats' crony capitalism handouts are going to poor people? How cute. Naive, but cute.

==============================

Is this the hill that the libertarian party wants to die on?

Free porn, sex, and legalized weed?

Isab at July 17, 2016 6:32 AM

Did you see their convention? That's pretty much what most of the party is in it for.

It's the party of permanent teenagers who think they should be able to sit in the basement, get stoned whenever they want, and boink without consequences. Someone else will mow the yard and do the heavy lifting that keeps things running. "Dude, we're out of Hot Pockets. Get your Mom to the store."

This is not a party of people who want to be free to make their own way in the world free of government over-regulation. People who accept responsibility for getting up early and getting the crops in before the frost, who don't need Big Brother to shake the bed and wake them up to do chores.

At least not according to the cosplay stoners I saw in footage of their convention. One candidate for party chairman (chairman!) actually stripped off his clothes and danced on the stage in an effort, so he said, to return the party to its free-wheeling and fun-loving roots. 'cause a love of fun is what we need right now in a president, and the party backing him.

Do you have any credibility on this Amy? You live in the libertarian paradise of . . . California? You are a professed Hillary supporter. The libertarian party had a guy dance in his underwear at their convention. A bee beard guy was a recent prominent leader. To top it off they don't have the numbers to effect any changes. Sorry, the free porn, sex, and drug crowd just isn't large enough to make a difference.

The Establishment GOP has been trying to purge the conservatives out of their party for a very long time.

They're finally succeeding. A better headline might be: Too bad the Libertarian Party can't provide a better party to land in other than porn, sex and weed.

So they'll be party-less in the entirety. Or, they'll take over because of numbers. In which case the lede might be Republican refugees force libertarians out of their own party.

porn, sex and weed

This is a cheap shot that totalitarians use to belittle the notion they they shouldn't get to control every aspect of your lives

Weed was outlawed on the fear of hordes of rampaging niggers and beaners raping white women.

And white women loving the non white cock.

If you support weed being illegal, but booze being legal, you are a racist, as it causes fewer deaths, property damage, and interracial sex than the watered down beer they sell in Utah.

Whats wrong with porn, sex, and weed?

Why the fuck do you get to tell grown adults what they can or cant do to and with their own bodies so long as they do not inflict harm on others?

Is this the hill that the libertarian party wants to die on?
Free porn, sex, and legalized weed?

Hell Yeah!

Don't shoot 'till you see the whites of their eyes.

This is a cheap shot that totalitarians use to belittle the notion they they shouldn't get to control every aspect of your lives

Not necessarily. It's an observation by outsiders that the Libertarian Party does not seem to be very serious on its quest for the presidency. Or a party of serious adults at all.

With a national debt of almost $20 trillion and rapidly rising, ISIS exporting terrorism, Turkey falling apart, waves of illegal immigrants (and anyone else who can hitch a ride with them) entering the US through a porous Southern border, China pushing for dominance over its neighbors, North Korea threatening to launch a nuclear strike against ... well ... everybody, several US states teetering on the brink of insolvency, and a Middle East devolving into chaos and 14th century barbarism, the next president has much more serious issues to deal with then legalizing weed and decriminalizing Internet pornography. But the Libertarian faithful continue to push those kinds of issues as if they're the ones about with the American electorate should be most concerned. As if a president can by himself simply wave a magic wand and legalize weed in all 50 states.

And elect a wannabe Chippendale as its party chairman.

Yeah, this is the party of adults.

With a national debt of almost $20 trillion and rapidly rising, ISIS exporting terrorism, Turkey falling apart, waves of illegal immigrants (and anyone else who can hitch a ride with them) entering the US through a porous Southern border, China pushing for dominance over its neighbors, North Korea threatening to launch a nuclear strike against ... well ... everybody, several US states teetering on the brink of insolvency, and a Middle East devolving into chaos and 14th century barbarism, the next president has much more serious issues to deal with then legalizing weed and decriminalizing Internet pornography

And yet the republicans want to ban porn for moral reasons, the dems want to ban it for feminist reasons.

For most libertarians the question is pretty simple.

Does the government need to tell you what to do in this instance? No, why they fuck are they then?

Porn, weed, HOAs, sin taxes on cigarettes and soda, cities fining you for growing vegetables on your own property or collecting rain water, its all government authoritarianism.

But nobody has any right to tell consenting adults what sex they can and cannot see or have with each other.

I'm sure that many religious conservatives would love to see a Christian version of sharia, with moral and religious law taking precedence over man's law.

I'm sure that many atheists would love to see a 'secular' version of sharia, with moral and religious law taking precedence over man's law.

Bob: If you are against regulations limiting the types of porn legally available for view how are you not endorsing porn for everyone and all tastes?

To endorse something is to declare your approval or support of it. Just because you approve of or support someone's right to choose some activity that brings them happiness or pleasure -- whether it's drinking alcohol, watching porn, buying a huge SUV or participating in a neo-Nazi march -- doesn't mean you must approve of that specific activity itself.

Everybody wants to impose a version of sharia in which their morality is the law of the land. Thing is, no one wants to live under their own version.

The Taliban leaders had palaces with porn, prostitutes, and alcohol - all the things they told ordinary Afghans were immoral.

How about all those strict morality evangelists who have been brought down when their indulgences in greed, prostitutes, porn, or extramarital affairs were revealed?

Me? I'll stick with a Constitution that says I have a right to live my own life and the responsibility to clean up any mess I make.

.

This is a fake news item but it's not that implausible...

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) sent shockwaves through the Republican Party today when he announced that he would endorse Donald Trump for President, but only if the GOP nominee would be willing to publicly support a ban on masturbation. The Senator called this ‘The single most important issue facing the country today’ and that without ‘swift action by the next President the country was doomed to slide down a slippery slope of debauchery and self-satisfaction’.

I have often wondered why humans no matter their political leanings reach the same conclusion: puritanism.

Do we really have a haunting fear someone, somehwere might be happy?

For most libertarians the question is pretty simple. Does the government need to tell you what to do in this instance? No, why they fuck are they then?

And that's where Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, is a squish, particularly on abortion.

Johnson is for legal abortion, but also for letting individual states decide whether to ban it. How does that work? If it's bad for the feds to tell you that you can't have an abortion, why is it OK for the state to do it instead?

It's confusing. He's pro-choice.

Johnson has always believed that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided, but specifically because he believes laws about abortion should have been left to the states.

He personally believes that a woman should have the right to choose, and since it is now the law of the land, that the right should be upheld and protected in all states. He is not looking to overturn Roe vs. Wade (although he once said it should be).

I think this is the outcome he wants, but he didn't like the way it occurred.

Do we really have a haunting fear someone, somehwere might be happy?

Yes, actually. That's why people are so irrationally angry over Pokemon GO! And before that it was hoverboards.

No wonder the republicans are in trouble? Except for a small group of "media" shouting they are (the last two blog articles highlighting two members of that group) they actually are not in trouble. While November may prove a loss for the Rs, it also may not (polling is what you would expect it to be at this time, tight). Again only a group of fairly described sore losers "media" believe the Rs are in "trouble"
"Mitt Romney"? Yea we should all long for the candidate afraid to stand up and take the fight to the opposition, one who believes the average voter needs more imported labor, one who would pilot the 'keep things exactly the way they are' ship in a perfect straight line. Btw, Trump is vastly more liberal on social issues than Romney ever was or will be. Some in the R party were upset with the Trump pick for the correct reason that he is more liberal on social issues than they would want.

As someone else posted the platforms are, and have been, pandering to voting blocs. Both major parties will contain language that will be disappointing if not frightening. Go ahead and read the D platform for a trip down safe space, socialist, bankruptcy, hooked on government, feelings are more important than rights, cultural equivocation lane.

In January our new president will be Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Voting for anyone else is an exercise of your voting freedom but at least be honest with yourself that at the end of the day it will be Trump or Clinton. And for quite a few of you who have been posting here for quite some time, to actively work toward putting Clinton into office makes a whole lot of your past posting a whole lot of hot friggin air.

"That's why people are so irrationally angry over Pokemon GO!"

Not me. I've correctly identified it as a data-collection method disguised as a game.

As Californians' voting record proves, the public often approves of things about which they have no idea.

Well, Niantic leaped to closed that Google account-scope gap, which I do believe was unintentional. The app is now on par with Google Maps, Uber, Facebook, and a million others that we all use. Anyone with your cell phone number can track your location now. Since the game is driving people to locations they don't normally visit, how useful is that data in building a profile of someone?

Anyway, the Boomers and Xers on social media aren't bitching about privacy issues. They don't like kids running around in packs with their faces in their phones. They're suddenly "concerned" that these kids aren't improving their communities simultaneously. They want to add a quiz element at public landmarks. They didn't seem to care what these kids did previously with their free time, but now here's a new thing that's foreign to them, so they need register their contempt and provide oversight.

I think it's an ugly aspect of human nature.

I'm the absolute worst with tags tonight. Some sentences are less emphatic than they appear.

Mel.

Nevermind

Mel.

"Yes, actually. That's why people are so irrationally angry over Pokemon GO! And before that it was hoverboards."

Lets be fair IP. People were angry about hoverboards because they didn't hover. Back to the future clearly showed what a hover board should look like. These wheeled things clearly didn't meet that definition. People had the same response to tofurky, which isn't turkey no matter how much some people want to pretend it is.

" It's an observation by outsiders that the Libertarian Party does not seem to be very serious on its quest for the presidency. "

This is the crux of the problem. We've got a federal government staking a claim to power unencumbered by the Constitution. And yet libertarians want to stand around and bitch about social conservatives, who don't stand a chance in hell of getting any of their policy preferences adopted. (In part that's because the social conservatives are missing the point they should be focusing on -- but that's a topic for another post.)

The so cons would have a whole lot less ammunition if we didn't have a giant federal bureaucracy mandating that states and local school districts must allow sexually mature biological males to use the girls locker room......

"Lets be fair IP. People were angry about hoverboards because they didn't hover. Back to the future clearly showed what a hover board should look like. These wheeled things clearly didn't meet that definition. People had the same response to tofurky, which isn't turkey no matter how much some people want to pretend it is."

Well, okay, it was fair to be irked about THAT for a while, but the ongoing hatred is something else.

What about the people who fume every time a kid cruises by on one, who call them "douchescooters," and who laugh when one catches fire, like that's what you get for having one? People want to shut down stuff they don't like themselves.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/3ygsvx/i_hate_hoverboards/

Hey, I agree that people love to scream 'Stop liking thinks I don't like!!?!?!?' I even agree that the default state of humankind is douchenozzle. But yeah, most of the hoverboard hate is over blatantly false advertising. If they called them wheel-o-majigs or rollranglers or whatever then everyone would have ignored them by now.

And yet the republicans want to ban porn for moral reasons, the dems want to ban it for feminist reasons. ~ lujlp at July 17, 2016 12:24 PM

The Social Conservatives have turned the Republican Party into a late night comedian's joke. Ideology is more important to them than competence. This is why the California Republican Party is dead, nominating the Dan Lundgren's of the world instead of candidates who can win an election in a mostly liberal state. The Massachusetts Republicans were able to nominate folks like Mitt Romney and William Weld. The California Republicans preferred to die on the hill of ideology. They only got Arnold by default.

Recent Democratic leaders (Pelosi, Reid, Kennedy, Clinton, et al) have pulled their party so far to the Left that it has become a parody of a European socialist party and is beholden to so many special interests that is has no clear ideology, except to champion every grievance industry that comes along.

That the Libertarians have a chance to make an impact in this election is only due to the decades-long childish tantrums the two main parties are in the middle of throwing.

It's a contest, not to see which party can win the election, but to see which party can act the most immature and reduce itself to irrelevancy the quickest. Unfortunately for the Libertarians, the two main parties still have a few adults left in them. And, at least challengers to Rince Preibus and Debbie Wasserman Schultz haven't stripped to their underwear and danced on the stage at the conventions ... yet.

Do we really have a haunting fear someone, somehwere might be happy?

Yes, actually. That's why people are so irrationally angry over Pokemon GO! And before that it was hoverboards.

Insufficient Poison at July 17, 2016 5:45 PM
______________________________________

But that's not why hoverboards are banned on at least some subways. They ARE a hazard to others, however angrily some kids might disagree.

The political conventions aren't known for attracting the creme de la creme of the ruling class. They draw people who want to be in the heat of the action, take part in crowd antics, and be on TV.

The Orlando convention was EXTRA ridiculous, because prior to this election, getting a Libertarian into the debates never seemed feasible enough to warrant much investment. No one with a serious day job made it there, unless that day job was "reporter." So the loons were not well diluted, and that's who the media focused on. (It also was literally next door to MegaCon, so many of the "cosplayers" were literal cosplayers, and that did not help at all.)

The "party" draws eccentrics the way the GOP attracts racists and the DNC attracts poor minorities. You're going to see them disproportionately represented. They self-identify as adherents, but it doesn't mean they're running the show or even really get what the party is about.

No libertarians in my life are "in it" for weed and porn. Those things are already extremely easy to acquire. (And the liberals are picking the up the "legalize weed" banner.) The libertarians I know are rich or trying to be rich, and we're getting taxed to death. We're offended that our money is being wasted to keep others from doing things that are no one else's business. We believe that secular government and individual freedom are the crown jewels of Western civilization. Most of us are skeptics and/or Randians who don't want any religious BS informing our policy.

The "someone else will harvest the crops" stuff doesn't ring true to me. Libertarianism doesn't favor state support for people who don't produce. Free-market ideologies are embraced by people who are confident they can take care of themselves. It would be a bad choice for a lazy person.

If "boinking without consequences" means having sex with any other consenting adults without the government having a say, then yes, I surely want that. In the libertarian worldview, you still are responsible for your own sexual health and any babies you create.

That is the difference between libertarians and the libertarian party IP. It changes nothing about having a representative dance in his underpants at the convention. The number of people who participate in the libertarian party are too small for the GOP or the donks to care about. And as for the libertarians who don't care to get involved with party politics, you get what you aren't willing to bother with. You have to pick from the choices you let others make for you.

The reality is libertarians as a political force are irrelevant. They can't even put a credible group of people forward to represent them. Why would anyone believe they will actually show up to vote?

As for the crazy policy statements at the convention, these are relevant how? When was the last time any of these actually made it into law? Individual politicians statements I can get worked up over. But these planks are pretty irrelevant. Both of the major parties are coalition parties. No one has enough supporters to get elected on their own. So you pair up with the least objectionable people you can. In this day and age planks are where you let the kooks vent so you can get their vote. No one reads them anyways. But front and center on the stage is a different story.

We're running two former governors. They're polling at 13% out of the gate:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/17/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-cnn-poll/

13% is a long way from 51% IP. Also, this is a poll of Americans. It isn't even a poll of voters, much less likely voters. When around 50% of registered voters vote you can have 80% of the people who didn't vote and it doesn't make a difference. So far the Libertarian party has yet to break 2% in an actual election.

If they want some power, if they want to make a difference, then libertarians need to start from the ground up. They need to take state government offices. You've had some success there. Take over an entire state government, or at least become a major voting block. You can't even put someone in the house of representatives and you think you have the numbers to take the presidency? I'll bet you $100 to the charity of your choice that Johnson doesn't break 5% on election night.

And I'll guarantee that as long as libertarians demand 'purity' they won't make a difference.

Ben, what is your charity?

Mine is http://www.innocenceproject.org/

If we accept each other's charities then I will take your bet. I'm good for it.

The innocence project is good for me too. Just please remind me after the results are in. I can be a bit forgetful.