This past week Jonathan and I decided to end the Libertarian Douchebag Podcast. I know, I know. So many of you are now wondering what you will now do every Monday. We just decided that we couldn’t get the type of reach and content we wanted, with the Douchebag part of the name. So, we ended it…

only to create a new podcast called The Libertarian Dime. The new url is http://thelibertariandime.podshow.com. We recorded our first new episode for the new brand this weekend, and we hope to have some big announcements soon for upcoming shows. This past week was probably the longest show you will hear us do, but if you listen to it, you will see that we could have gone even longer.

Again: http://thelibertariandime.podshow.com

After a better than expected response to our first episode of Libertarian Douchebag, Jonathan and I recorded another one today. I mixed and uploaded it up already, so head on over to http://libertariandouchebag.podshow.com/ for your LD fix. We’re still learning, but I think this episode was much stronger than the first.

Enjoy!

Ages late to the party, I decided to start my own podcast, to maybe better explain all the things I never get around to writing about. I joined up with my friend Jonathan, and using Skype, recorded the first episode last Tuesday. The first thing I learned about podcasting from actually doing one, is that I hate how my voice sounds when it’s recorded. I sound like a six foot version of Kermit the Frog. Secondly, it is harder than it sounds. There are many visual and aural cues you normally pick up on when you have a face to face conversation with someone that are totally missing over Skype.

Overall, I’m mostly happy with the first episode. I know I was pretty rough, stuttered a few times or more here and there, and sometimes lost track of my thoughts. However, the first episode is done, mixed, and up online. No hiding now.

We hope to do at least one episode a week, and I’m pretty sure we will get better. If anything, this podcast will make me a better speaker overall, and even if I never get beyond ten listeners, I will have accomplished something.

So, with no more waiting needed, the url for the podcast is:

http://libertariandouchebag.podshow.com.

Try to enjoy.

There will be plenty of picking on Republicans later, but today I write about the utter stupidity of Howard Dean and the Democrats. Yesterday, Florida’s Democrats gave up on having a re-vote of the botched primary from January that didn’t count. At first, when the primary happened, I assumed this was a Florida Democrat thing, where the state party decided to move up the primary. Turns out I was dead wrong, and it was a Republican controlled state legislature and Republican governor that moved the primary up. The national Republican Party also penalized Florida by cutting their delegates in half, and this seems to have caused no problems for them. The national Democrats, however, led by Howard Dean and agreed with by Obama and Clinton, decided to strip the state of its delegates.

How stupid can you be? Honestly, if Republicans moved up the primary, why the hell would you penalize all the democrats? Howard Dean and his cohorts have to be morons, what else could you think? Now that Florida can’t figure out how to re-run the primary, the voters in Florida have been totally screwed by the Democrats. They have no excuses. I don’t think one could even blame the Republicans really, it’s not like they have the power to strip delegates.

What Dean should have done is said, “Hey, we know the Republicans are being assholes about this in Florida, but we won’t let them stop democracy and mess with our party, so we will count the delegates this year, and work something out with them for next time.” Didn’t happen and I don’t know why. Seems simple to me.

I said I wouldn’t write another Ron Paul post, but I received a message through my blog that I wanted to reprint. I can’t verify it’s authenticity, but the ip address matches one close to where Ron Paul lives.

Hi,

I thought you would want to know that Ron Paul is really dropping out this time. I used to work at campaign headquarters and we were told this week that the whole thing was basically shutdown. The only reason Ron won’t say he’s totally dropping out, is because he still wants donations to come in so he can sell his book. He makes a huge profit per book and he thinks he could set his whole family up by using campaign money to promote it. When I heard that, I quit in disgust. It’s never been about the presidency, it’s been about promoting Ron Paul.

You were also right about the newsletters. He knows who wrote them. Everyone in the campaign headquarters knows who wrote them, but Ron wouldn’t let it out because the person is still a close associate.

A bunch of us are planning on writing about the intricacies of the Ron Paul campaign, all the mistakes, wastes of money, and in some cases, flat out lies. I’ll email you when it’s out.

As I said, I can’t verify it’s real, so take it for what it is.

One more thing. A friend of mine directed me to http://www.ronpaulradio.com because he thought the wing nuts on there were ridiculous. It was some holocaust denier on streaming video spouting off about Ron Paul. Overlayed on the video I saw “justin.tv”. Didn’t think much about until I saw a link to Justin.tv on the RonPaul2008.com site as I looked to see where he lived. Unbelievable. Ron Paul’s website links to a site that plays holocaust deniers. Sounds about right for someone who wrote the newsletters.

Apparently, Bush and Congress have fixed every problem in America. Why else would Henry Waxman be asking the Attorney General to pursue purgery charges against Roger Clemens. Must be nothing else to do.

I didn’t watch the debate last night, but I might listen to it on POTUS 08 on XM Radio today. I’ve read a number of articles and blogs about it and they all come to roughly the same conclusion. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton did equally well in the debate, but that really is a loss for Hillary because she needed to really win big to change his momentum. This may or may not be true and we won’t have the answer until late on March 4th, but it does underscore a problem she has been having: She is much better in speeches than in the face to face debates. Her tough talk from this weekend didn’t materialize in the debate, and I wonder if the constantly changing tone is making her seem less consistent on some issues than she really is.

I think it’s fair to say, also, that her campaign has not been run real well. She has focused on things that have been meaningless and it’s hurt her in the debates. For example, when she tried out the line “change you can Xerox”, not only did she get booed, Obama was able to basically slam that back in her face and make her look petty. Why did she try to link Obama to Farrakhan? Does she actually think he’s a militant anti-semite? How about bringing up his associations with homophobic men of the cloth? She has yet to pounce on that, and I can only wonder if it’s because she has similar associations within her church. Bringing up the Saturday Night Live skit from last week (which was legitimately funny and somewhat spot on) last night brought her boos again. I don’t think it was because she was wrong to bring that up, but because it sounded so out of place, like she was just wanting to bring that up, without proper context.

So I don’t know what her campaign is thinking or what advice she’s been given. I do think her skill as a campaigner has been grossly exaggerated. She’s run two campaigns, one where she was running in a state that is two to one Democratic against an unknown Rick Lazio, and the other against an even bigger unknown (I don’t even remember who it was now). She’s never had to run a tough campaign (and for the record Obama’s run against Alan Keyes could never be called difficult or challenging), and I think it’s starting to show that she doesn’t have the people she needs right now.

The other possibility, is that she’s more like Gore than she is like her husband. Most people who like Al Gore, say he is bright, knowledgeable on all the issues, intellectually curious….and an awful candidate. I won’t say she is as bad as Gore, but it’s starting to become clear to me that she is the type of politician who loves to get immersed in an issue, explore all the options, and develop a policy, but not really engage with constituents. While I don’t agree with her conclusions for the most part, those are all good qualities for a senator. Since 1900 there have only been two sitting senators elected President: Warren Harding and JFK. There are reasons for this. What makes a good senator doesn’t necessarily mean you will make a good presidential candidate. This election will mark the first sitting senator elected in the last 48 years (unless you’re a RonPaulTard and think Ron Paul will be president).

I normally don’t care about celebrity news but this clip of Sylvia Browne being so wildly off concerning Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony is priceless:

Click here if you can’t see the video

Found this video on the Skepchick Blog.

In a New York Times article today, recent studies have shown that the fastest growing “religious” group is Unaffiliated. This group includes people who could still be religious but don’t want to be part of church, to people like Richard Dawkins, and then to people like me, who think God is an asinine concept. These people aren’t necessarily agnostic or atheist, but once they and their descendants are out of the Godbag factory, you’d have to think (hope) more atheists are coming! Oh to live to see the day with just 25% atheism!

Ralph Nader has announced yet another run for the presidency of the United States. As in 2004, he’s made some overtures to the Green Party, but fell short of fully embracing the party. The Green Party, though, will be instrumental in getting Nader on as many state ballots as possible. If you are a Nader supporter (and I’m not), you must wonder, where has he been the last four years? I’m not sure, because I don’t really care about Ralph Nader, but in some quick scans of weekend news stories, I can’t find any reference to any groundwork for a serious run at the presidency. If he is so serious about running as a third party candidate and changing Washington, you’d have to think he’d start sooner.

Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy in January 2007, Barack Obama in February 2007, and John McCain has essentially been running for president since 2004. They’re all running within the two party system and they still had to dedicate at least two years to their campaigns. Can Ralph Nader really be serious if he thinks he can just swoop in eight months before the election, with virtually no infrastructure, and be a serious candidate? Even if you agree with him about the problems with a two party system (and I actually do agree with him on that point), his method of challenging the system is weak and pathetic. This has got to be a vanity run for him, so he can put “Five Time Presidential Candidate” on his tombstone. I’ll bet that Ron Paul will get more write-in votes than Ralph Nader in the election.

Ralph Nader is over seventy years old now, and probably has had any real effect on policy in over twenty years. He loves to bash on corporate greed, but he himself is a multi-millionaire who has mutual funds flush with shares in “evil” corporations. I know he claims to live off a small percentage of his income, while donating the rest to various charities, but he’s never releases his tax returns, so we don’t know for sure. I’m not calling him an outright hypocrite, and I never fault anyone for wanting to make a buck, but it makes his rhetoric on “evil” corporations sound a little more hollow when you realize he depends on corporate earnings to fund his lifestyle.

I think based on the lack of groundwork, his understanding of the modern campaign is limited. Ron Paul, douchebag extraordinaire, who is also over seventy years, has had a working internet presence for at least a year. His cult-like followers have raised more money that Ralph Nader ever will, all without corporate money. I hate to keep bringing up Ron Paul, but the two are very similar in that they rail against a lot of the same things, have no shot at the presidency, they are both running for vanity, I would never vote for either of them, and they are both old white men.

Will Ralph Nader be a “spoiler”? Nah, he will get so few votes, he won’t matter, but even if he did, who cares. As far as I am aware, it is up to candidates to convince people to vote for them, not cut quid pro quo deals with voters to ensure they keep power. So let Ralph Nader run, if it will stroke his ego. I just can’t take him serious though.