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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
You know what? I'm going to say it: If you hate Clinton soooooo much that you can't even hold your nose to vote for her to save the world from a petty thin-skinned child who wants to turn the USA into a authoritarian state, then you don't have the right to call yourself an American let alone a progressive, conservative or whatever your personal political ideology may fall into.
This is beyond Clinton Derangement Syndrome, IMO
Trump was giving his positive Gettysburg speech and says that he would sue the accusers if he was elected: https://twitter.com/Walldo/status/789868373760847873
So wish that the GOP had a bigger sane part of their party because we need to have two sane opposing parties so that both sides can strengthen their arguments instead of what we have right now. I would have voted for a GOP candidate if they would me, a black gay man alone. But no.
I'm curious if there any GOP or 3rd party candidates this thread would vote for? Me? Evan Mc Mullin would get my vote and he has a chance to get Utah's electoral votes too. Why? Because Utah is 2/3 rd GOP and Trump has one half while he has the other.
Sorry for the long post.
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But wait... Eleven accusers and he only scored four times? Geez, I think even Beavis and Butt-Head have a better track record...
edited 22nd Oct '16 10:30:59 AM by sgamer82
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Problem is, no sane moderate GOP politician would be able to win the primaries. Someone like Colin Powell for example would never have won over the rabid voter base that gave Trump the primaries. Which is a shame since I would have loved to see an election cycle with HRC vs. Colin Powell.
edited 22nd Oct '16 10:34:50 AM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprisedThere's another Churchill quote that I can't be bothered to look up now so I'll just paraphrase it: "Democracy is the worst form of government - except for all of the others that have been tried."
This actually makes me feel pretty silly about roughyl 70% of my posts.
Let's say you're a pacifist and you've got two policies you absolutely require your candidate to support. One, you want them to push for restrictions to gun ownership, perhaps along the line that Hillary Clinton has proposed. Two, you want the US to carry out an extremely isolationist foreign policy when it comes to military matters. You absolutely will not condone any sort of military intervention in Syria or Iraq.
If you're that voter, there's no place for you in either party. The Democrats are closer - because they'll at least agree with you on the first point - and the Republicans will have large segments of their supporters and leaders agreeing with your line about military interventions in foreign countries. You won't find a realistic candidate for both of your core policies, though. What would you do then? If those are the two most important things in a President for you, your only choice is to go third party, even if they're absolute lunatics about everything else.
Now, to be honest I don't have a lot of time for people who base their vote on just one or two - or even five - areas of politics. I simply don't think they're paying enough attention and thinking enough. So I wouldn't have a lot of sympathy for my hypothetical voter. Still, the point stands: these so-called "big tent" parties are actually pretty restrictive.
I mean, what if you're fundamentally opposed to the free market, and want there to be loads more regulation and state ownership? What if you want free education and healthcare, paid for by higher taxes on the top earners? You will never find a Presidential candidate in the US with more than 1% support for that. The best you can do, then, is try to find the one who hurts you the least - and usually that will mean something like accepting that the President you voted in will use drones to bomb funerals of civilians killed in a previous bombing in Pakistan or Iraq. Both Trump and Clinton will do this, and Obama does it already. That's what you have to accept if you want to vote against the one who would either do nothing or go all in and abolish any code of conduct for the military in a foreign country.
If you didn't have a FPTP system you'd have viable third (and fourth and fifth and ninth) parties, some of which would agree with you both on the use of the military and in economics or social policies. They still wouldn't be a 100% match but at least you wouldn't be picking between a candidate who agrees with you 10% of the time and one that's a 30% match for you. For most Americans under the current system, that's roughly the choice you're making. Maybe it's more like 20% and 50-60% but still.
Here in Finland, when I vote, I've got about 3 or 4 parties that agree with me on about 60% of the time, two that agree with me 80% of the time, and about 4 or 5 that I agree with less than 30% of the time. All of these parties are represented in Parliament, and normally about 4 or 5 of them will be in the government coalition. Doesn't that sound nicer?
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.Mexico is never going to pay for that wall.
edited 22nd Oct '16 10:43:08 AM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprisedI don't know how the hell anyone could believe for one minute that Mexico could be convinced to pay for it. Why would Mexico do it? It would probably be the largest single investment ever made by Mexico - or, for that matter any North American country other than the US (or maybe including the US, depending on what sort of wall you want).
Why?
I mean, why? How?
Why?
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur...."War with Russia, folks" guaranteed. Well, if there was any time to ask my question, now's my chance. What is the likelihood of Clinton going to war against Russia? I ask this after having a small discussion with one of my friends who thought that Clinton would try to start a war against Russia. His justification was something about the Syrian no fly zone thing being enacted which leads to Russian retaliation which, in turn, gets us into WW3. Like I said, the talk was short lived and I didn't bother to press for details. I'm not inclined to believe that it will happen, but I want some info from people who may know better.
We are all made of star stuff. Very, very weird star stuff.

He also killed an independent study on private prisons. Coincidentally, Johnson had some financial stakes in his state's private prisons.
Disgusted, but not surprised