{"id":44526,"date":"2014-06-03T12:05:33","date_gmt":"2014-06-03T17:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=44526"},"modified":"2014-06-03T08:23:32","modified_gmt":"2014-06-03T13:23:32","slug":"you-can-laugh-if-you-want-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=44526","title":{"rendered":"You Can Laugh If You Want To"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You would not be the first.<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks back, the <del>Ventura<\/del> Independence Party, which has throughout its history been a center-left party of people who just loooooove to tinker with the buttons and levers of government &#8211; which is the opposite of &#8220;libertarian&#8221; &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=43970\">endorsed<\/a> a political newcomer who&#8217;s never held elective office, never run for election (that we&#8217;re aware of), but who came (along with her husband) from the Ron Paul clique.<\/p>\n<p>Then, the Libertarian party candidate for governor &#8211; a party whose existence the regional media barely acknowledges &#8211; gets &#8220;arrested&#8221; while on his petition drive in a DFL-controlled city.<\/p>\n<p>OK, that last might be a bit of a stretch.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/politics\/statelocal\/261610051.html\">But this<\/a>? \u00a0Governor <del>Messinger<\/del> Dayton battling his &#8220;libertarian&#8221; streak? \u00a0Not so much:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Now as he sets off on his battle for re-election, Dayton says he finds himself increasingly frustrated at the layers of bureaucratic machinery that too can often smother good intentions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI vacillate every day from being a liberal to a libertarian,\u201d the governor said in an interview before his overwhelming DFL endorsement for a second term. \u201cDepending on what is happening, I sometimes go back and forth more than once a day.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the whole thing (and to his credit, reporter Baird Helgeson does carry some of the dumbfounded reactions to the preposterous premise).<\/p>\n<p>The DFL is trying to wedge &#8220;libertarians&#8221; away from the GOP.<\/p>\n<p>Fearless predictions: \u00a0the campaign finance reports\u00a0<em>will\u00a0<\/em>show donations from liberals with deep pockets to Hannah Nicollet and to the Libertarian Party candidate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You would not be the first. A few weeks back, the Ventura Independence Party, which has throughout its history been a center-left party of people who just loooooove to tinker with the buttons and levers of government &#8211; which is the opposite of &#8220;libertarian&#8221; &#8211; endorsed a political newcomer who&#8217;s never held elective office, never [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-14"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44526"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44528,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44526\/revisions\/44528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}