Libertarian candidate
And the Libertarian Party has selected for their presidential candidate… former Republican Congress-critter Bob Barr.
I knew a young college Republican and ultra-conservative whose hero was Bob Barr. I somehow doubt he is going to vote for Barr. But, hopefully someone will. The silly season of the Liberal blogosphere, which has run into the libertarian Reason-oids, have come up with this absurd premonition that Alaska might just go for Obama — which, will happen if, you know, Obama wins 45 states. (The other two states the silly season is suggesting are Kansas – based on a stray poll — and Mississippi — based on an utter maxing out of the black vote to the tune of 100 percent vote for Obama off of 100 percent of eligible black voters voting — or so it would seem.) Part of the calculus for this absurdity is a chunk of vote for Bob Barr in these odd Libertarian “LEAVE ME ALONE!” out-posts. We shall see, shan’t we?
I was hoping Stan Jones might barn-storm out as a Favorite son candidate of Montana. If you scaffow at that, realize that Stan Jones is the most consequential Libertarian of the past decade, or more, for having swung the Senate to the Democrats — more electoral impact than anything Bob Barr has had during his Libertarian Party career. Jon Tester won his election by a fraction of a percentage point, and Jones won three percent of the vote. Even if you figure that Tester’s anti-Patriot Act and similar stances makes the margin a little too close for comfort in disrupting the odd calculus which, because I don’t want to think too much, has about half the Libertarian politician vote thrown to the Republican if s/he were absent and the other half just dissipating away as a no-vote, it is still enough to say with fair certaintude that Jones is responsible for Tester’s election. Stan Jones is a perenial candidate who became known previously because he turned his skin blue because he digested collodial silver in 1999 in preparation for disruptions that the Y2K bug might have in the nation’s supply and transport of various antibiotics. I suppose you can say that American political history is full of characters such as him. Take the man who swung gave Alf Landon the position to be the Republican Presidential nominee in 1936 off the basis that he was just about the only Republican to win any election in 1934 — John Romulus Brinkley. Landon owes his Kansas gubernatorial victories to this man’s votes — which otherwise would have gone to the Democratic candidate. And for that, Landon could win Maine and Vermont.
In 1918, Dr. Brinkley began to perform operations which he claimed would restore male virility and fertility by implanting the glands of goats in his male patients at a cost of $750 per operation (about $7000 today, adjusted for inflation). He hired a press agent, advertised in newspapers, and used direct mail to promote his procedure to people who wrote asking for information. During his medical career, more than 16,000 people were victims of needless insertion of goat testicles, intended to restore energy and virility levels.
Following one of his crude operations, the body of a patient would typically absorb the goat gonads as foreign matter. The organs were never accepted as part of the body since they were simply placed into the human male testicle sac or the abdomen of women, near the ovaries. Unsurprisingly, in light of his questionable medical training (75% completion at a less-than-reputable medical school), frequency of operating while intoxicated, and less-than sterile operating environments, some patients suffered from infection, and an undetermined number died.
Hm. Go Bob Barr, regardless.