A few laughers from the 2008 Democratic Party Platform for those of you who think those national platforms matter

One commenter here (who shall remain anonymous) thinks it is a cute exercise to quote either the Libertarian Party platform, or the Green Party platform, or any other cherry-picked item to challenge the legitimacy of anyone who would self-identify as anything other than one of the major Demopublican flavors.

Libertarians are dangerous because they want to eliminate civil rights or public education; look, it says so right here in the platform, and if you don't subscribe to every word of your platform then how can you claim to be a Libertarian.

So let's take a look at some of the promises and positions from the Democratic Party Platform of 2008 that turned out to be, ah, problematic"

"We will eliminate all Federal income taxes for seniors making less than $50,000 per year."

"Our Children's First Agenda, including increases in Head Start and Early Head Start. . . ."

"We will make an unprecedented investment to provide teachers with better pay . . . ."

"We need . . . to promote public charter schools that are accountable . . . ."

"We support full funding of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act."

"We will start a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank . . . ."

"We will strengthen privacy protections in the digital age and will harness the power of technology to hold government and business accountable for violations of personal privacy."

"We will maintain fiscal responsibility so that we do not mortgage our children's future on a mountain of debt."

"We will not increase taxes on any family earning under $250,000. . . ."

"We will insure that savings incentives are fair to all workers by matching half of the initial $1,000 of savings for families that need help. . . ."

"America cannot afford to continue to run up huge deficits. . . ."

"We will not raise taxes on people making less that $250,000, and we will eliminate Federal Income taxes for seniors making less than $50,000."

"We need a stronger and sustained partnership between Afghanistan, Pakistan and NATO--including necessary assets like satellites and predator drones . . . ."

"We must also be willing to consider using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense. . . ."

"We support plans to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 troops, and the Marines by 27,000 troops."

"We will aggressively address Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury [among our veterans]."

"We will double our annual investment [in the UN Milennial Development Goals]."

"We will make it a top priority to reduce oil consumption by at least 35%, or ten million barrels per day, by 2030."

"We cannot continue to allow people to enter the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked."

"We will repeal the prohibition on negotiating prescription drug prices . . . ."

"The government we create will . . . protect our civil liberties."

"We will pay for our new spending . . . ."

"We will close the revolving door that has allowed people to use their position in the Adminstration as a stepping-stone to further their lobbying careers."

"We reject the use of national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspeted of a crime. We reject the tracking of citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. We reject torture. We reject sweeping claims of 'inherent' Presidential power. We will revisit the Patriot Act and overturn unconstitutional executive decisions issued during the past eight years. We will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine duly enacted law."

"We will close the detention camp in Guatanamo Bay. . . "

So I'm wondering just how President Obama gets to claim he is a Democrat, if he didn't carry through on so many critical planks of the Democratic Platform?

Cause, you see, if he's not a Democrat, then I guess he'll have to come clean and run as an independent.

National party platforms don't matter worth spit, which is why nobody but trolls and people with too little else to occupy their time ever go back and read them.

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here: chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.” The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

Libertarian National Committee Deathwatch Part 1

As the LNC continues to lurch towards collapse, with the latest news of mass layoffs at HQ, I've decided to begin tracking those things leading the national party to irrelevance, even as state and local parties gain power. As news, rumors and rhetoric break out, I shall chronicle them in this ongoing series at Delaware Libertarian. Organizations approaching failure have a number of characteristics. One of the most striking is renunciation of their purpose and effort to reinvent themselves as a "me-too" provider of services in the marketplace. In this, the LNC has been on a collision course with destiny for a while now. Recently, for example, it hired Republican Party web site developer TerraEclipse to redesign the LNC web site . Terra created a web site very similar to those of the clients it brags most about -- far-right Republican conservatives like Tom McClintock and BJ Lawson. A quick look at the web site they built for the LNC is instructive. The tagline on the ...

The disturbing decline of the Delaware blogosphere: a very unfortunate Around the Horn (even if it's not Friday)

I've noticed a change in my own blog-checking habits over the past several weeks, and I don't know if it's just me or the reality of the last month of a divisive political campaign. I automatically used to check out Delawareliberal first and several times a day, because it was where I could find edgy, thought-provoking, and (dare I say it) funny banter going on. These days visit several other spots first, and my visits to DL are both shorter and less engaged. Why? Because the combination of invading neo-con commenters with the stridency of some of the major contributors has led to such pleasant exchanges as a post dedicated to labeling another blogger racist by donviti, whose own sense of provocative humor is generally so far out there that he makes John Belushi doing Samurai bartender on the SNL look positively pro-Asian. Or I can find Delawaredem and jason periodically spewing the idea that anybody who is not a liberal or progressive Democrat is somehow a non-American,...

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