More likely it is his running mate leading him astray (imo.)

And in a state with winner take all. Your vote means nothing (nor does mine.) You have no representation and peacefully you can do nothing about it. Just pay taxes and be silent (or be audited.) This is not freedom.

Some time in the future, all this will be a non issue. There are a lot better things to be concerned about than what someone decides to do to their own body. However, if a candidate decides during the campaign that it is time to have a sex change (today, not in the future) then they will likely have lost my vote because the surgery will debilitate, and if the candidate thinks they must have the surgery immediately, then without it they will also be at least distracted from the job they are pursuing. Either way, it is a significant change that requires re-evaluation.

Well Said, Sir! . let's just remember that freedom
includes self-determination. -- j
.

my condition might be considered a mental illness --
I am a conservationistic objectivism advocate ... the
society which determines what is a mental illness
has a whole lot to do with the diagnosis, don't you think? -- j

p.s. I have always considered that the ideal person
would not be caged-in by gender, but would be able
to navigate in either male or female interpersonal
situations equally well. . takes a lot to do this.
.

Then there is the problem of taxation to keep the price high to stop the kiddies from starting use as with the high tax on tobacco. Just gets a black market and theft and pushing to their friends.
There is little rationality with drug use. My neighbor in the same building as the heroin overdose asked if I ever smoked tobacco. I said yes and he lit into me for it being stupid due to toxins. He thought I should start using weed like he does and alcohol instead because it is safer. I told him that when burned the two each make hundreds of possibly dangerous toxins. "No", he said. weed is more natural and less toxins because tobacco fields are treated with chemicals, completely forgetting the main reason besides the difference in arterial dilation or constrictions, for the toxins produced by burning of organic matter.
As for drug use, do you think that Rand could have written her stuff without the use of tobacco and amphetamines? I found that with giving up tobacco that I wasn't as able to to get new math ideas as easily as without it.

He's abandoned that position (or clarified that he doesn't hold it, take your pick). http://reason.com/blog/2016/08/26/lib...

Even if this headline were true, though, he's still at least 1,000 times better than candidates who we know won't cut the federal budget.

No need to go through the same dead end discussion again, Term. I don't base my support for candidates based on faith. At this point that would be the only reason to vote for Trump. I do not trust him to act any better than I trust Hillary. Fear of Hillary is not a reason to vote for another bad candidate.

When they are running for office I will consider them on their merit.

What's up with this boy...too much mary jane?

If drugs werent illegal, the stage would be set for all out free market competition. I suspect a lot of weed would be just grown at home (cheap), but definitely the price would come down so it was just another commodity. As to the other drugs, the best part would be that the prices would fall and the quality would go up. There would be no need for streetcorner drug dealers when you could get it at a drugstore or walmart even. Less violence for sure. As to its attraction, it would lose the rebel attraction. Just another drug, like the currently legal ones, that one needs to evaluate before you take it.

Now wait a minute. Of course the House of Representatives have decided a President since the Twelfth Amendment. It gave the Presidency to John Quincy Adams instead of to Andrew Jackson the first time those two ran against each other. Henry Clay came to Adams with a proposal: "I can make you President, if you will promise me the Secretaryship of State."

"Excuse me, Mr. Clay," said John Quincy Adams. Who then shut the door.

What happened next behind that closed door, we cannot know. But we can guess.

Now I find it difficult in the extreme to imagine Hillary Clinton bribing enough Republicans to sway their State delegations. That's how bitterly some of them hate her. The Clinton Foundation hasn't enough money to buy off that kind of hate. And because the feelings are mutual, I don't think the Foundation would even have the inclination.

All Trump has to say is this: "You can pick me, or you can pick Hillary. But I warn you: if you pick Hillary, I will take you down with me, and don't think I can't." That's what I would say in his place.

Actually the only thing I think certain people are counting on, is that Hillary will drop dead within a month of taking office. But I am a native son of Virginia. And I can tell you flatly. You do not repeat not want Tim Kaine for President. That. Kind. Of. Failure. Is. Not. An option.

Hello WilliamShipley,
"The Art of the Deal" ...could be, I suppose. I prefer straight forward dealing. Not being able to get into his head, I find it difficult to put faith in what could be. If the man does become POTUS, I hope Tariffs are just a negotiating ploy. They are simply bad economics. It is much better to reduce burdens here as incentive than to be punitive and risk trade wars.
Respectfully,
O.A.

I don't know what will happen. It's all speculation, and with a high degree of error since it's never happened since the adoption of the Twelfth Amendment. But I know there are a lot of Republican Reps who don't like Trump either, just like there are a lot of Democratic Reps who are ticked off at the DNC for rigging the election. So I think a lot of interesting things could happen.

I'm not arguing for an armed overthrow. What I'm hoping for is that enough people realize what poor choices we are presented with and force a do-over. I'm not a Trump supporter per se, but I do appreciate his anti-establishment bent. If there was no choice, however, I think it would open up the races to additional political parties. I think that just like choices in the market, we should have choices in voting. That can't really happen without something changing in a major vote outcome because right now the two parties control the system.

Am I concerned about the attempts by the looters to continue their control? Absolutely. The Democrats have been rigging votes for twenty years now and I don't think that is going to stop until Voter ID laws are mandatory. But they can only rig the votes of the people who don't show up. If we can encourage more and more people to go and vote against the status quo, we might be able to get back on the path to real reform. I may be a bit optimistic as it could very well be that we descend into the looter utopia in Atlas Shrugged instead. We'll see in about three months.

(PS not me down-voting you)

I wouldn't count on the tariffs, at least in a large degree, I think he wants it as a 'stick' in the negotiations.

Yes the removal of penalties helps but the market must have the bottom fall out of it so that there is no profit to be made other than a little above the manufacturing cost. Then the only marketing would be by pier pressure and not with force. Might even stop some deaths without the pressure from the pushers. Heroin has come to my small, 1700, village with an overdose death of a 33 year old woman in an apartment in the building next to my house.
Was it only the early few candidates for the Libertarian Party that had any coherency or consistency to their beliefs? Rand could have been called a libertarian with a nearly consistent philosophy. I have some problems with her reification of the adjective and adverb 'right' to a noun 'right' which is somehow inborn as an nattribute of a human being. She somewhat gets around that with a right being a moral principle which has a choice to it.

You keep repeating that as if it makes it better. It doesn't.

Forestalling evil is a good if there isn't an opportunity to prevent future, greater, evil.

By "forestalling" evil you create a very small, very short-term, reduction in evil. By voting against evil entirely you might create a short-term increase in evil, but set in motion the ability to create a long-term, large reduction in evil, which vastly outweighs the amount of evil you "ignored" in the run-up to the tipping point.

The longer you "lesser of two evils" folks ignore that point, the longer until we can actually rid ourselves of the evil.

Like I said: You're part of the problem.

Hello DB,
I think people are so terrified and desperate, they are resorting to Rand's ethics of emergencies when contemplating their choices. I have voted third party before. This time, as I look at the options that will be on my state's ballot, I find they are all distasteful and the quandary has me questioning whether I should just vote all the down ballot options and abstain from supporting any of the presidential options... At this point Johnson has become the lesser of three evils. I am on the fence, but will probably fall in his direction when push comes to shove. I feel as if we are up the proverbial $*%! creek without a paddle.
Galt this stinks.
Regards,
O.A.

I think he will tighten bordere security tho. he will be good at restoring the USA as a respected nation. Tariffs were always something he threw out there to negotiate more open trade so we can export to more countries. He wont do cronyism like Hillary, and he wont lead us into socialism as fast as her.

I think he will tighten bordere security tho. he will be good at restoring the USA as a respected nation. Tariffs were always something he threw out there to negotiate more open trade so we can export to more countries. He wont do cronyism like Hillary, and he wont lead us into socialism as fast as her.

I think he will tighten bordere security tho. he will be good at restoring the USA as a respected nation. Tariffs were always something he threw out there to negotiate more open trade so we can export to more countries. He wont do cronyism like Hillary, and he wont lead us into socialism as fast as her.

Forestalling evil is a good.

I read a documentary that said that cultures have a typical life of 250 years during which time they expand and then eventually crash. The crash is precipitated by citizens forgetting what made the culture great and then using government to get goodies instead of concentrating on being productive. We are at that 250 year point.