We are not worthy

[nancylebov]

OOPS -- we really aren't worthy. asim tells me (in a comment) that the filing requirement was only for minor parties. Maybe there is a limit to how silly things can get.

#####

American politics, the greatest show on earth......

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/politics/entries/2008/09/16/barr_files_suit_to_remove_obam.html

Libertarian presidential nominee Bob Barr’s campaign filed suit Tuesday seeking to remove Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama from the ballot in Texas, alleging that the two major candidates missed the deadline for officially filing to be on the ballot.

The lawsuit by the former Republican congressman from Georgia claims that neither McCain nor Obama met the requirement of Texas law that all candidates provide “written certification” of their nomination “before 5 p.m. on the 70th day before election day,” because neither had been formally nominated by their respective parties in time.

That would have been Aug. 25. Obama did not accept his party’s nomination until Aug. 28, McCain his on Sept. 4.

I'd heard the Obama campaign had its act together. Oh, well.


Link thanks to http://rm.livejournal.com/1455617.html

Mood: cracking up hysterically while Rome the US burns.

Addendum: Anyone happen to know when and how the Texas filing requirement was passed? Was this something the people in the parties should have known, or was it something Texas should have told them?

At least no one's going to believe this is a clever Libertarian conspiracy.

Comments

[asim.livejournal.com]

Well, the problem is that this is pretty much BS. This has been running around for a while, and I'd be curious to see exactly what Barr's suing over, since that deadline is for 3rd party candidates:

http://mrontemp.blogspot.com/2008/09/correction-obamas-and-mccains-filings.html

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

He's suing on the grounds that he's stupid and he thinks the world *is* what he *wants it to be* - which should be obvious, given his party affiliation.

And, since, according to his party's platform, Obama is unclean for being black and McPalin is unclean for being a woman, OBVIOUSLY neither one can be on the ballot.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Cite for misogyny and racism in the LP's platform?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Well, you could start with Barr himself and "Today, as we celebrate our freedom and independence, we should stop and give thanks to God for the life and work of Jesse Helms. As a nation we are stronger and the world is freer for his commitment to liberty."

Or you could go with their VP candidate, and "has America really been unfair to minorities? No it hasn't. It was unfair to me. A white butcher's kid, whose father had no money, but nobody gave me a break. And do I have a chip on my shoulder? You're drat right I do. And I represent millions and millions of poor people in this country who weren't lucky enough to be poor and black"

But the short version is best found in their positions on slavery - which is to say, that any contract entered into must be fully enforced regardless of fairness, that absolutely under no circumstance must anything infringing on your right to own property ever be considered under any circumstance.

Add that to their explicit desire to end civil rights laws, end antidiscrimination laws, and their official and explicit condonement that anything you might want to teach your children is A-O-K with them?

The Libertarian party in the USA are a party whose defining position is that anyone who isn't a white male isn't a person.

[avram]

If this were actually true, it would toss the election to Obama.

[madfilkentist]

Barr has taken legal action to remove George Phillies from the New Hampshire ballot. That is much more contemptible than expecting that all parties should follow the same rules.

If Barr were running as an independent candidate, I might support him as vastly better than McCain and Obama. But he's running as the Libertarian Party candidate, which will let anti-libertarians point at the things he does and sneer, "See? That's what libertarianism really means!"

They also get to pull quotes out of his old days as an undisguised conservative as rocks to throw at libertarians (see one of the comments above for an example). Supposedly he's completely changed, and if he had, he could repudiate them. But his actions against George Phillies and against Saddleback Church show he's no libertarian (not that this will stop the libertarian bashers from using him).

In any case, the two official government parties get to play by one set of rules, and everyone else has to follow another. This serves the same purpose as "campaign finance reform."

[madfilkentist]

I just discovered a serious mistake in my comment above. I had assumed that the Barr quote about Helms was an old one. In fact, he made it just a few months ago.

This further lowers my estimation of Barr. But I stand by my point that people are going to use him, and are using him, to smear libertarian ideas. The Libertarian Party made this possible.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The Libertarian Party doesn't need his help to smear libertarian ideas. They do it all themselved.

But yes. Barr's praise of Helms is *recent*. The VP's complaint about how Obama had it easy because he's black? *Recent*.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

This further lowers my estimation of Barr. But I stand by my point that people are going to use him, and are using him, to smear libertarian ideas. The Libertarian Party made this possible.

It's worse than that. This could have been an excellent time to promote libertarian ideas, but the LP has blown it by choosing a racist.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm willing to believe bad things about Barr, but wasn't this basically him finding some nice things to say about Helms upon his death? That's very common polite behavior. I doubt that it reflects a hell of a lot in the way of Barr's deep beliefs about race. Note the massively laudatory comments about Reagan upon his death, even among people who disagreed with him on most everything.

--albatross

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Barr was a keynote speaker at the Council of Conservative Citizens, an extremely segregationist group.

Jesse Helms was strongly pro-segregationist. Courtesy to him after his death is (at least) extreme rudeness to the still-living people who were hurt by segregation.

"Minor Parties"

[(Anonymous)]

In most states, a party that got a number of votes above a certain threshold in the previous election don't have to requalify, as I understand it. The qualification percentage or absolute number varies widely from state to state. So the two largest parties, and sometimes other parties get in free. As to the situation in Texas, I have no idea.

David Bellamy