blog of bile » Manhattan LP

On the subway today

bile — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 03:09:48 +0000

I’m on the 1 train heading to Times Square when at Franklin a woman with a large Hillary button gets on the car and sits across from me. 1 or 2 stops later a guy sits next to me and after a minute pulls out the Mises Institutes Scholarly Edition of Ludwig von Mises Human Action. I start talking to him about it since 1) seeing a person reading Mises on a NYC subway car is fairly uncommon and 2) I’m also currently reading it but had picked up and was reading the latest John Stossel book as a break from HA. He says soming about Stossel and the Hillary supporter looks up with evil eyes and just stares at us. Ron Paul gets mentioned and she looks angry.Turns out he’s a long time libertarian but never bothered with the party. I invited him to come to a Manhattan LP meeting and to check out our website.

I should have invited the Hillary supporter too.

FSP’s Liberty Forum Day Two

bile — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 02:46:56 +0000

10:00AM Sharon Harris from Advocates for Self-Government gave the opening speech this morning. She talked about how the liberty movement needs to start working toward honing our delivery of the freedom message. Libertarians, especially those who are active in the movement, tend to be more abstract thinkers. More logical progression of ideas whereas the majority of people are more emotional “think with the heart” types. We talk about abstract rights and wrongs and less practical examples but we need practical real world examples for those who aren’t generally like us.
Chris Lawless informs us the hotel doesn’t want us to open carry.
We ran into Glen Jacobs very briefly. He is better known as Kane from the WWE. He’s fairly well known as a libertarian and recently publicly supported Ron Paul for President. I believe he is also a member of the FSP. We unfortunately didn’t get an opportunity to get a photo with him but if he’s still around tomorrow or Sunday we surely will.
12PMish xyz and I checkin to the hotel and while walking out to the car we see the John McCain’s campaign bus. While walking in we discuss stopping Mr. McCain and telling him that after his argument with Romney over whether or not water boarding is torture we decided to try it out ourselves and agreed with him that it indeed torture. As we walk through the automatic doors into the lobby and are talking about this I nearly run into McCain as my head is turned talking to xyz behind me. I got out of the way in time however and diverted my knocking over of a 72y/o presidential candidate which would have been picked up on the camera which was following him.
1:00PM xyz and myself attend Gardner Goldsmith’s presentation on immigration. I listen to his radio show so little was new but it’s very enjoyable to interact with fellow Liberty Forum attendees in asking questions and whatnot. Robert Schulz of We the People Foundation also gave a very good lecture I heard. xyz and I did however get a chance to talk with him while waiting in line for dinner.
2:30PM I attended Don Gorman’s lecture on Becoming an Effective Activist but it effectively was a sales pitch for the FSP and how easy it is to participate in politics and protest in NH. xyz attended Peter Bagge’s presentation on his work for Reason Magazine and his art in general.
4:00PM Thomas Eddlem gave a lecture on how the current administration has been disobeying the Constitution. Particularly the 4th, 6th, and 8th Amendments. He however blew things out of proportion a bit in describing how it could be used against the average citizen. While it’s certainly an issue to say that it’s just as probable that I would be locked up and the key thrown away without trial is the same as some guy picked up who has the same name as a known terrorist and himself has a criminal record is ridiculous.
Chatted with another Libertarian Party presidential candidate: Michael P. Jingozian. Reminded him that I believe he was invited to the Manhattan LP’s Annual Convention. He said he forgot to look into whether he could attend and took some contact info. We’ll see.
Nearly had dinner with Gardner but it turned out the table we picked already was filled besides the two chairs we picked. However, those who had reserved those seats were people we had previously had discussions with during the cocktail hour. Including Ed Hudgins from The Atlas Society. Talked about hard money.
The keynote speaker for the evening was Bernard von NotHaus of the Liberty Dollar. He came out dressed as the ghost of a Revolutionary solder, Capt. Roughseas, who was sent by the Founding fathers informing us to take care of this fiat money system that’s corrupted the US. Complete with sabre. It was a bit odd but generally entertaining. Nothing that probably more than half of them in attendance hadn’t heard before.

Dave Ridley’s Ridley Reports from the first night:

Fort Lee rally and NYC party notes

bile — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 01:30:59 +0000

http://www.usadaily.com/…

At a Ron Paul rally in Ft. Lee today several dozen supporters braved the cold air and held campaign signs and American flags for motorists approaching the George Washington Bridge and traveling on Lemoine Avenue. (Ron Paul was not present at the rally).

After the rally, Ron Paul supporters headed to Monument Park on Palisade Avenue where in November 1776 General George Washington began his famous retreat which culminated on Christmas day crossing the Delaware River. Monument Park is the only park in the United States dedicated to the soldiers of the American Revolution.

Dr. Murray Sabrin emceed the Monument Park rally on this anniversary of the Bill of Rights (1791). New Jersey was the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights on November 20, 1789.

Assemblyman Mike Doherty who has endorsed Ron Paul for President and introduced him at the Philadelphia rally last month gave an impassioned talk about why Ron is the best candidate for president. Ron Paul, Doherty pointed out, will protect U.S. borders, abolish the income tax, cut unnecessary and unconstitutional spending, defend the U.S. dollar, and protect U.S. sovereignty.

High school student and LewRockwell.com blogger Max Raskin told the gathering why all young people should rally behind Ron Paul. “Its simple”, said Max, “The welfare-warfare state is unsustainable and his generation will have to pay an enormous amount of taxes to foot the bills.” Max urged everyone to help get Ron Paul’s message out to all young people in New Jersey so he can win the February 5th primary.

xyz and I were two of those several dozen. First I’d like to say it was damn cold yesterday. My tea turned to iced tea in less than 10 minutes and of course it had to be breezy and there was ice everywhere. But that didn’t stop the 40+ of us (as I counted while we rallied on the Route 95 overpass). We spent an hour waving signs and flags and xyz and I handed out copies of the Manhattan LP’s Serf City. The one thing not reported by USADaily was how Doherty also talked a good minute on how he doesn’t want a candidate who wears dresses and how Ron Paul would never wear a dress.

As for the NYC Ron Paul HQ party: It went well. Not as many people showed up as we expected but it was respectable. Given that it was below freezing and sleeting I’m a bit surprised we had the turnout we did. It was a special night though. We had a projector connected up and displaying RonPaul2008.com when it broke $12 million. The video below captured the excitement.

There were two camera crews there from the news media. One was NY1 and I was told the other was CNN. A quick search of NY1.com however doesn’t produce anything at the time of posting. xyz and I left at 2:30AM to catch the 2:50AM bus home. When I purchased a bus ticket for xyz with a $5 bill I received my change for the $3.40 ticket. Appropriately the one dollar coin it gave me was from the new president series, Thomas Jefferson.

UPDATE:

Here are some photos from the party… including xyz getting a backrub and another video.

Results of the Manhattan LP OPH booth at the Lexington Street Fair

bile — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:55:40 +0000

I arrived with xyz before 11AM. David Jacobi was the only person there when we showed up and had been since about 9AM. One of the Manhattan Ron Paul Action group people (Mike?) showed up shortly after we did. We had 7 people I think before that second shift. At 4PMish the second wave came in which is when we left.

Notes on it all:

It was not well organized. People weren’t sure when others were to arrive exactly nor had their phone number. There was only 2 documents available for those walking by: Republican oriented Ron Paul slimjims and the Manhattan LP’s Serf City. This was completely unacceptable. Only a few people actually asked for info and half of them knew libertarians or were already but several people would have taken something had we had it. Perhaps get The Advocates’ Discover Liberty tabloid [PDF]. It’s not great but it’s something. A flier with the Libertarian platform would have been better than what we had. I’m just going to start bringing my own things when these types of events occur.
The OPH board we had was ancient as were some of the cards. We need to purchase a new one.
People are interesting:
- An older woman, late 60’s, didn’t want to take the quiz. Said she knew where she stood and wasn’t going to let us try to sway her. ‘I know what you’re trying to do.’
- Another 60 something y/o woman. Ranked fair high in the libertarian section of the diamond but was supporting Clinton because she wants to see a woman in office.
- Several foreigners who scored fairly libertarian who were from socialistic nations.
- Found 2 authoritarians myself, no 0:0’s though.
- A wheelchair bound gentleman who scored a 100:90 but said he was currently supporting Rudy. Said that Paul’s foreign policy turned him off to him.
- An older fellow who thought the questions were rigged to produce libertarian leaning results. Refused to acknowledge that there was a Maybe option or that it’s only meant to take but a minute to fill out and wasn’t going to be open ended. He argued with me about regulation of TV,radio etc. That of course you don’t want the government to regulate content but transmission was mandatory otherwise it wouldn’t work. He outright ignored my bringing up that his home cordless phone and access point use unregulated frequencies. That companies work together to create standard protocols and come up with new technologies (like UWB) to get around interference and frequency collision. Also arguing that conscription is necessary in case ‘there are unpopular wars.’ He ended up walking away informing me ‘I respected the libertarian movement until I talked with you.’ It’s obvious he had little understanding of the idea to begin with.

Overall it was a good amount of fun. Talked with some really open and nice people… argued with some staunch conservatives and liberals who weren’t so nice. I’d say maybe 50% of those I talked to knew who Ron Paul was… only 10% knew his platform. It’s going to be very interesting the 29th up in New Hampshire.