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Official Oklahoma voter registration statistics released yesterday show 2,090,107 Oklahomans are registered to vote heading into the 2020 election cycle. Oklahomas official voter registration statistics are counted every year on January 15.

"These statistics continue a decades-long trend of growth for Independents and Republicans as a share of the Oklahoma electorate," said State Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax. "And although they are relatively small in overall numbers, Libertarians now have more than 11,000 voters for the first time in state history."

The largest number of Oklahoma's voters are Republicans, who make up more than 48.3% of registered voters. Two years ago, Republicans accounted for 46.8% of registered voters.

Democrats are the second-largest party at 35.3% of registered voters, down from 38.2% in January 2018. Democrats had long been the largest political party in Oklahoma, but were passed by Republicans in January 2015.

Independents, or "no party" voters, are now 15.9% of Oklahoma voters, up from 14.8% two years ago.

The Libertarian Party, which gained recognition in 2016, now has 11,171 registered voters, more than double the number in January 2018.

Oklahomas registered voters:

JAN. 15, 2020 JAN. 15, 2018

DEMOCRATS 738,256.35.3% 769,772.38.2%

REPUBLICANS 1,008,569.48.3% 942,621.46.8%

LIBERTARIANS 1,171.less than 1% 4,897.less than 1%

INDEPENDENTS 332,111.15.9% 298,867.14.8%

TOTAL 2,090,107 2,016,157

HISTORICAL VOTER REGISTRATION IN OKLAHOMA

The State Election Board began recording statewide voter registration statistics by party in 1960.

YEAR DEM REP IND OTHER 1960 82.0% 17.6% 0.4% N/A

1980 75.8% 22.8% 1.4% N/A

2000* 56.7% 35.0% 8.3% *

2020* 35.3% 48.3% 15.9% *

*Minor parties account for less than 1 percent of voters in Oklahoma.

Read the original post:
State Election Board Releases Official 2020 Voter Registration Statistics - The Marlow Review

Joe Rogan is one of the most influential people in media. That doesn't mean he's a good interviewer or a responsible communicator when speaking to a large and devoted audience, but it is a fact. It's hard to pinpoint the exact size of his podcast's audience, but Rogans official YouTube channel has 7.3 million subscribers and he recently claimed his podcast gets 190 million downloads a month.

When Elon Musk goes on Rogans show and smokes a blunt, Tesla stocks take a tumble (though as Rogan notes at every opportunity, they quickly bounced back). It was a big deal when Bernie Sanders sat down with Rogan for an hour-long interview in August, and an even bigger deal earlier this week when Rogan said that he would probably vote for Sanders in the upcoming election. Sanders is not the first presidential candidate to go on Rogan's podcastTulsi Gabbard has been on several timesnor is Sanders the first candidate to get something resembling an endorsement from Rogan. Rogan hosted and voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson in 2016.

On Thursday, Sanders tweeted a clip from Rogan's podcast highlighting his endorsement, in which Rogan said he likes Sanders for career-long consistency in his politics.

Rogan's endorsement of Sanders is notable because unlike Johnson, Sanders has an actual shot at taking the White House, and in a close race, gaining the support of even a portion of Rogans massive, loyal audience could be a difference maker. Whats less clear is why the Sanders campaign embraced and promoted the endorsement, knowing that Rogan is controversial and hated by parts of his base. Rogans endorsement is so influential, his audience so large, that its not even clear Sanders needed to acknowledge it because Rogans audience rivals (and is likely larger than) his own. Who is Sanders reaching with a Joe Rogan video clip that Rogan hasnt already reached?

Rogan's endorsement, and the video Sanders shared on Twitter in particular, has caused some controversy among people who argue that Rogan is a bigot who should be marginalized, ignored, or disavowed.

Rogan hasn't wielded his power with much responsibility: He's given people like Chuck Johnson, Milo Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones, Stefan Molyneux, and Gavin McInnes access to his gigantic audience, and Rogan rarely challenges his guests on their views, allowing them to launder their bad ideas on his show. Data & Society researcher Becca Lewis has argued that Rogan giving a platform to these people has led his audience down more extremist rabbit holes on YouTube. Lewis describes Rogan as a "libertarian influencer with mainstream appeal."

"When [Rogan] hosts other members of the Intellectual Dark Web, it's easy to get drawn into that world," Lewis told Motherboard in 2018. That Rogan is an entry point to other YouTube and podcast influencers speaks to his own influence; whether Rogan's endorsement matters doesn't depend on whether Rogan himself is GOOD or BAD, it's whether his endorsement moves the needle. And given how much discussion there is about his endorsement and what we know about Rogan's overall influence, it almost certainly does.

A big part of Rogan's appeal is that he's an average Joe. Sitting down with him for an interview is not the same as doing a quick spot on CNN or Fox News. His interviews are long (often more than three hours), meandering, and silly. It gives subjects the chance to speak at length and often put their foot in their mouth. For his listeners, a recommendation from Rogan is like a recommendation from a friend, if your friend was talking to millions of people at once. It has the appearance of raw, emotional authenticity. It is the exact opposite of a measured, calculated endorsement from the

New York Times.

What seems to have made lots of people mad, however, is that Sanders has embraced the endorsement. Whats worth noting is that its not clear that Sanders sharing the video is actually going to earn him any more voters. Sanders, of course, has a huge audience, but Sanders reach is almost certainly smaller than Rogans. Sanders clip has 3.2 million views on Twitter. Rogans audience fluctuates and its notoriously difficult to get reliable podcast statistics (especially if you dont work for that podcast), but if Rogans 190 million downloads per month figure is accurate, we could conservatively estimate that each episode is getting far more than 3.2 million downloads.

This is why its impossible to amplify Joe Rogan: He has an audience bigger than nearly anyone in the country, and to ignore that he exists and that people like him is to remove yourself from reality. Theres little danger in Sanders tweeting this video and radicalizing people because Rogans audience is already huge. But sharing the video and tacitly accepting Rogans endorsement feels like an unforced error, or at least a risk Sanders didnt need to take: Hes opened himself up to criticism from parts of his base who care about social justice, marginalized people, and stand against the people and ideas Rogan has allowed to be laundered on his show, without really standing to gain anything.

"The goal of our campaign is to build a multi-racial, multi-generational movement that is large enough to defeat Donald Trump and the powerful special interests whose greed and corruption is the root cause of the outrageous inequality in America," the Sanders campaign told Motherboard in a statement. "Sharing a big tent requires including those who do not share every one of our beliefs, while always making clear that we will never compromise our values. The truth is that by standing together in solidarity, we share the values of love and respect that will move us in the direction of a more humane, more equal world."

Continued here:
Joe Rogans Endorsement Is One of the Most Influential in America - VICE

Rush drummer Neil Peart during a performance at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas in 2002. (Ethan Miller/Reuters)

Neil Peart, the Canadian drummer and leader of the Seventies hard-rock band Rush, has died. Peart had battled brain cancer for three years.

I saw Peart and his band perform at the now-demolished New Haven Coliseum during Rushs Power Windows tour in 1985 (I think), and he was even more phenomenal in person than he was on the records. Fan polls routinely agreed he was the greatest rock drummer of his time (or indeed of all time, I would argue, though some would go with Keith Moon). Im not sure any rock track boasts drumming that can match Pearts breathtaking work on the 1981 song Tom Sawyer

Unusually for a drummer, Peart also wrote the big majority of his bands lyrics, which were among the most ambitious ever attempted in the hard-rock space. Like many other rock lyricists (Roger Waters, Pete Townshend), Peart was a genius at tapping into the restless alienation of late-teen boys who think theyre smarter than everyone around them. It occurred to me many years later that its an odd kind of gift, to keep your mind stuck in that mode of detachment, anger and frustration as you advance into middle age and accumulate mansions and supermodel girlfriends. Peart told Rolling Stone four years ago, I set out to never betray the values that 16-year-old had, to never sell out, to never bow to the man. A compromise is what I can never accept. Well, no one wants to hear rock lyrics about property taxes and the failings of the kitchen staff.

He also labeled himself a libertarian and in youth dabbled in Ayn Randism, naming Rushs 1975 song Anthem for her1937 novel Anthem, which was among George Orwells influences for 1984, and crediting Rand in the liner notes for her influence on the 1976 Rush album 2112.What teen boy didnt also flirt with Rand? To persist with a Rand fixation is not the mark of a healthy mind, though. When asked in 2012 (again in Rolling Stone) if Rands words still spoke to him, he said, Oh, no. That was 40 years ago.Peart did retain his libertarianism, after a fashion. He explained:

In that 2112 album, again, I was in my early twenties. I was a kid. Now I call myself a bleeding heart libertarian. Because I do believe in the principles of Libertarianism as an ideal because Im an idealist. Paul Therouxs definition of a cynic is a disappointed idealist. So as you go through past your twenties, your idealism is going to be disappointed many many times. And so, Ive brought my view and also Ive just realized this Libertarianism as I understood it was very good and pure and were all going to be successful and generous to the less fortunate and it was, to me, not dark or cynical. But then I soon saw, of course, the way that it gets twisted by the flaws of humanity. And thats when I evolve now into . . . a bleeding heart Libertarian. Thatll do.

Peart died in Santa Monica on January 7. R.I.P.

Link:
Farewell to Rocks Greatest Drummer (and Randian) - National Review

Libertarians have been among the most vocal critics of President Trump's decision to order the killing of Iranian terrorist leader Qassem Soleimani. But there was actually a time when there were prominent libertarians who advocated assassination as an alternative to war.

It's worth noting that the libertarian objections to the Soleimani killing fall into two broad categories. One has to do with the question of whether Trump had the legal authority to order the attack without Congress. But the other is the substantive criticism of whether it's a good idea to take out a prominent foreign leader.

In the past, however, there has been a strand of libertarian thought that actually saw targeted killings of America's enemies as a way to eliminate threats without the need for major military engagements that killed civilians. To be clear, this doesn't mean it was a universally accepted position among libertarians (as if such a thing exists), but it was a prominent one.

Harry Browne, who was the Libertarian presidential nominee in 1996 and 2000, explicitly argued that the United States should offer a bounty on the heads of our enemies. In Why Government Doesn't Work, the manifesto for his 1996 campaign, he made the case against the first Iraq War for its toll on innocent victims. "Assume Saddam Hussein really was a threat," he posited. "Is that a reason to kill innocent people and expose thousands of Americans to danger? Isnt there a better way for a President to deal with a potential enemy?"

As an alternative, he argued that the president could publicly deliver a message to Hussein, explaining the U.S. meant no harm to the Iraqi people and proposing $20 million be given as a reward to the person who assassinates him. "Everyone in the world is eligible for the reward: American citizens, citizens of other countries, Iraqi citizens, members of your Palace Guard, your cabinet even your wives."

Browne went on to explain: "There are brave, daring, ingenious, ambitious people in the world who would love to try for such a reward. At least one of them would probably be successful. But, what is more important, the potential for such success should dissuade anyone from threatening us."

He wrote: "Would the President be condoning cold-blooded killing? Yes but of just one guilty person, rather than of the thousands of innocents who die in bombing raids."

In the wake of Sept. 11 and as a presidential candidate, Ron Paul advocated that the U.S. enlist the help of private individuals to capture terrorists by issuing "letters of marque and reprisal." He proposed a bill that would have allowed "Congress to authorize the President to specifically target Bin Laden and his associates using non-government armed forces. Since it is nearly impossible for U.S. intelligence teams to get close to Bin Laden, the marque and reprisal approach creates an incentive for people in Afghanistan or elsewhere to turn him over to the [United States].

But he later criticized the raid that killed bin Laden, arguing that the U.S. should have worked with Pakistan.

There are specific circumstances surrounding the Soleimani killing that may make it particularly objectionable to libertarians. But the idea of targeting bad actors as an alternative to large-scale bombing raids is not incompatible with noninterventionist foreign policy sentiments.

View post:
Prominent libertarians once advocated assassination as an alternative to war - Washington Examiner

What is wrong with Fox News? A few months ago when Todd Starnes left Fox Radio to launch his own talk radio show and media company, you could see things changing at Fox. Todd Starnes provided a daily one-minute commentary on a hot political topic. Fox Radio replaced Starnes with three rotating anchors. One of the anchors is Guy Benson.

Fox News Radio promoted a gay, Never Trump Libertarian to replace a conservative, Pro-Trump evangelical Christian.

Of course, most stations that carried Starnes dont seem to be airing the Fox commentary. But it is still a fascinating and troubling move from Fox.

Benson came out as gay on Megyn Kellys Show back in 2015. Remember back then? When Kelly was anchoring on Fox News? Kelly remains on good terms with Benson, and according to the Daily Mail, attended Bensons gay marriage ceremony in September 2019 along with other notable libertarian and conservatives like Hugh Hewitt and Katie Pavlich.

Of course, Benson claims to have moderated his approach on Trump. In a column at Town Hall he wrote, My path forward has involved a different, more agnostic posture: Supporting and praising the president when warranted, and criticizing him as necessary.

Thats laudable. President Donald Trump isnt perfect. There are things to cheer and things to critique.

However, the appointment of another libertarian voice to the growing number of Culture War libertarians on Fox raises some serious questions.

Why would Fox News replace one of the few evangelical voices with someone who holds Culture War views so fundamentally different than Starnes?

Is there a place for evangelical Christians in the mainstream press?

Also, Is Fox trying to shift conservatives into a more libertarian view on issues like gay marriage?

Whatever the motive, this is an opportunity to encourage conservative, evangelical Christians to support conservative media outlets. We need real conservative voices.

Continued here:
Fox replaced conservative, Christian Pro-Trump host with gay, Libertarian Never Trumper - Capstone Report