The title is what I posted last night on Twitter when I saw news of this.... I would refrain from writing on it at all, but it became a topic of conversation on the forum, so here we go....

Sept. 21, 2012, Saint Paul, Minn. — Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson’s campaign today filed an anti-trust lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Central District of California challenging Johnson’s exclusion from upcoming debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates. The Commission announced earlier Friday that invitations to the debates were being extended only to Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.

I'd just call Johnson a boob and be done with it but that would be a gross and unwarranted insult to all the boobs out there, most of which are nice to look at (at minimum anyway.)

Let's look at the alleged merits of this:

• The claim is made that the Office of the President is an "interstate" commercial matter.  Like hell it is.   Further, the Office of the President isn't "trade" (at least it damn well better not be!)
  
  
• The claim is made that the private Democrat and Republican parties "conspired to restrain trade both in ideas and in commerce."  Oh really?  Ideas are now "interstate commerce" and they're "restrained" because two private parties decided not to invite you into their tent?  Never mind that a political contest is not commerce in the first place.

The Sherman Act exists to prevent the monopolization of a marketplace.  We can argue for and against that all day long, but what we can't argue in this instance is that even if the commission keeps Johnson off the stage on national TV that it constitutes a monopoly.  In point of fact Johnson and his supporters have spammed all matter of social media, including Facebook and Twitter, and are certainly free to put forward whatever positions and points they wish via any media they and their supporters wish to pay for.  Indeed, that's exactly what Johnson says he's collecting donations for -- first to "buy him a podium" and then to "run ads." 

Well Gary?  That was just a political promise -- right?  And we know how much those are worth.

But I cannot let this go without getting into the outrageously-dripping hypocrisy of Johnson's position in this regard. 

First, hard-core Libertarians have argued forever that anti-trust laws should not exist in the first place, and that private-property rights trump them.  I happen to disagree, incidentally, but this is what the Libertarian Party says in it's own platform at a national level:

Property rights are entitled to the same protection as all other human rights. The owners of property have the full right to control, use, dispose of, or in any manner enjoy, their property without interference, until and unless the exercise of their control infringes the valid rights of others. We oppose all controls on wages, prices, rents, profits, production, and interest rates. We advocate the repeal of all laws banning or restricting the advertising of prices, products, or services. We oppose all violations of the right to private property, liberty of contract, and freedom of trade. The right to trade includes the right not to trade — for any reasons whatsoever. Where property, including land, has been taken from its rightful owners by the government or private action in violation of individual rights, we favor restitution to the rightful owners.

So Mr. Hypocrite, having run on the National Platform as the Presidential Candidate, which was adopted at the very convention in which you accepted the nomination and therefore you did so knowing the expected behavior you would have to endorse and condone you then***** all over that very same document as soon as you become ass-hurt because you didn't get what you wanted.

That clause in the platform is a real problem in my view, in that it presumes many things that simply aren't so.  Like, for instance, that there really are alternatives in all cases where trade might be restrained. It's not hard to imagine that there might not be -- for instance, in the case of a constrained water supply that a group of people monopolize and then cut off to certain parts of a county, effectively destroying the land's value and forcing people to either move or die.  This is the exact reason why such laws exist, and yet there are people in the Libertarian Party who take the ham-fisted and intellectually-vapid position that no protection against these sorts of assaults is appropriate under the law.  This is the same insanity that infests the National Party's position on trade and immigration; the so-called "Party of Principle" devolves rather quickly away from "we do not believe in initiation of force" and adds on the end of that sentence "where we can see it; it's perfectly fine if you do it in China where it's out of our eyesight."

But in this particular case it is neither here nor there, as Johnson ran for President on this platform and thus adopted it. 

That's what running on a national ticket and being nominated by a national party complete with its platform means.

I have long argued that Johnson isn't really a Libertarian at all; he's a utilitarian and will ramrod the white-hot poker of the banksters up your kiester exactly as will and have both Democrats and Republicans.  Force and fraud are tools that Gary is happy to see used so long as they go his way, not things to be eschewed or proscribed.  He has taken utterly-incomprehensible positions on financial fraud and foreign policy for someone who claims to be Libertarian, with the latter including his assertion that we should go kill Kony (who has never done anything to America or Americans.)

For those who forget I interviewed Johnson in 2010 on blogtalk for an entire hour.  I said at the time that I had to withhold my endorsement of both him and what he was trying to do, as I was simply not convinced that he was sincere in any meaningful way when it came to fixing what's broken in America.

The long list of articles I have penned on him since were designed to elicit some sort of positive response that would lead me to change my mind.  After all, I sure as hell cannot vote for Obama again after all the lies he told and Mitt Romney is both a gun banner and a bankster stooge.

Unfortunately Gary Johnson has failed in this regard.  I called for him to withdraw from the race in February before the party made its selection when, immediately following his "Nobody committed any crimes" line of crap, credible evidence was discovered that 84% of foreclosures in one county of California alone appeared to contain violations of the law.  Johnson said nothing about this -- not then and not since -- and that was enough for me.  From there the hits just kept piling up and now we have this insult as the final cherry on the cheesecake.

If you are Libertarian -- either formally or in your leanings -- you cannot vote for this man.  I predict that this suit will be properly dismissed as both frivolous and wholly without merit as there is no causal link to commerce and consumers; after all votes cannot be legally traded in commerce.

That is how it should be, that is what I expect, and given that this stunt demonstrates nothing more than taking a whiz on the Party Platform that Johnson claims to be running under it certainly appears appropriate for National and the State Parties to issue formal resolutions of condemnation, censure and non-support.

I'm willing to bet they refuse and instead cheer despite the blatant and outrageous hypocrisy this clowncar of a campaign displays and by refusing to issue those condemnations they will confirm that the so-called "Party of Principle" is just another pack of political liars.

Goodbye National.