Libertarians and others in town

The PA Libertarian Party Convention is being held this weekend at the FM Kirby Center it is also being billed as Restoring Freedoms with speakers from other points of view.

I stopped by and the first thing I see is a guy wearing a NRA tee shirt with a handgun strapped to his belt. Oh boy. I didn't engage the young man but it reminded me of the time I ran into a similar situation a few years ago when I was in a restaurant and somebody came in packing a gun in plain sight. I asked him why he would do such a thing? He responded "because that is my right." I said it's also probably your right to ride a pogo stick into church but do you really want to do that. Cooler heads got in between us so the incident didn't get out of hand.

I ran into a few friends including my lifelong pal Green Party activist Carl Romanelli.. I reminded everyone that the most dangerous place in a room is the space between Carl and a microphone. He is scheduled to speak for 20 minutes tomorrow and he said they have a trap door set in case he goes over the time allotted. It was a pleasure to see Doreen Shutz again. She is  passionate and committed to the Libertarian cause.

It was great fun talking with "recovering politician" Dr. David Madeira who was accompanied by one his daughters. We discussed the latest manufactured controversy over the stay at home mom thing and it if is  worse that a 10 year old boy ate dog meat or a a 36 year old man strapped a dog to the top of his car for a 10 hour trip. Dave is now a radio host on 94.3 The Talker who has a better time slot than he started with. M-F 9-Noon. His website lists Gort42 as my favorite liberal blogger. I will return the favor and get him back on the blogroll.

The headliner was 2 term New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson who is running for President on the Libertarian ticket.. I got a chance to talk with him and asked how he got excluded from the Republican Presidential debates. He explained that he needed to get over the 1% threshold in the national polls but the pollsters didn't include him last year in their surveys. In a CNN survey 8 months later  he got 2% polling ahead of Huntsman and Cain but they still kept him out.The networks decided a  pizza guy is more entertaining than a 2 term Governor. Cable news is entertainment.

Below is a pic of  Governor Gary Johnson  with event organizer Lou Jasikoff