Robamaney Has A Running Mate
As everyone in the universe should know by now, the Robamaney has chosen a running mate, one Paul Ryan, congressman from Wisconsin and author of a budget proposal full of “drastic cuts” that would, given a miracle, somehow balance the federal budget in 30 years or so. The perfect match for Robamaney who promised deficits of about $300B per year into the unknown future.
Yet, I heard a campaign ad for these very same candidates this very day telling me that they had plans, not only to balance the budget, but to also start paying down our national debt.
I respond to this nonsense by simply reminding you all that Doctor Einstein once explained that the true definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome.
Both the duopoly candidates have the very same underlying message for we the sheeple: “YOU ARE STUPID – VOTE FOR ME AND PROVE IT”
What a treat it was to spend an entire week among people who are actually capable of rational thought (on the Reason Cruise). Did I agree with all that was said? Of course not. But I did appreciate that almost all of what I heard was the result of thinking rather than blind emotional reaction.
Troy L Robinson
Hmm… We have Robamaney… how about Byden? Any thoughts on how to combine those two? 😉 (Though I do get the larger message you are driving through, and quite creatively, I might add 🙂 )
I am voting for Obama, sorry, I must be one of the stupid ones (though if I can find a good third party candidate who is not Ron Paul, I might vote for them–so there is hope for me yet 😛 ) But I am voting for Republican in my home district here on Long Island (it’s supposed to be VERY close–Randy Altschuler (my guy) vs. Tim Bishop)
Sorry but Biden is a standalone act.
His name is Gary Johnson, ex Governor of New Mexico and nominee of the Libertarian Party. His history as Governor was one of consistent resistance to unnecessary spending, something we sorely need at the national level.
IMHO, a vote for either of the duopoly party candidates is a vote for business-as-usual. In other words, a stamp of approval for the mess they have made of our once-great Republic. Surely you do not want to be a party to such.
Troy
Then there is that interesting question — by what logic could you even consider a vote for Obama? Has he used his office in a way that you actually approve of? I am very interested to know what process could lead to such a choice.
Troy
Greg,
We still eagerly await your answer as to why Obama is your choice for president. None of us would deny you your right to make such a choice but I, for one, am really interested in the decision process that got you there.
Troy
Wow, I haven’t been here in a while, have I? Sorry. xD Job search and all.
Anyways…back to you guys: I have recently come to the realization that Obama…is not my guy at 100%, more like 75%. Romney is not my guy, not even at 5%. But in this case, you are choosing the “lesser of two evils,” rather than choosing “this guy is right for the job.”
I live in NY. As such, my vote does not matter anyway. I could vote for Romney, woo! He gets 1% of the vote. -.- Instead, I am either going to vote Obama because I “like” him better than Romney (Which again, lesser of two evils), or I am going to vote third-party.
If I see someone on the third-party ticket (if there are any) that are NOT “extreme” libertarians, the definition of extreme is “Okay, we did this; now what?” (IE, I like Ron Paul’s ideas–like abolishing the fed–but the problem is he wants to do too much too quickly. You need to phase them out, determine what is going to happen next, etc., not suddenly abandon them in my opinion). I would support a much more moderate version OF Ron Paul, but not Ron Paul himself or someone like him.
If I cannot find someone like that, I will vote Obama or vote for someone from some random party as third-party guy that is not Libertarian. In my opinion, a third-party vote is not so much a “wasted vote” (as I have suddenly come to realize) but rather a statement of saying “You guys both stink; try again next time.” If there is a large enough percentage of third-partiers in “guaranteed” states, maybe, just maybe, both parties will take a look at this and say “You know, maybe we should try something different.”
If Colin Powell had run, I would have voted for him. If Bill Gates had run, I would have voted for him. But not Romney. That’s sort of where Obama becomes the “lesser of two evils.”
Whatever for, Greg? I used to be a big fan of divided government. It once kept the Feds from getting up to nearly as much mischief, as they do when one party controls both the executive and legislative branches. Since government is the antithesis of freedom, I don’t want it to do a damn thing other than stay the hell out of my life, while protecting the natural rights of the citizens of its constituent States from aggressors. The more ideologically divided and less cooperative its branches, the better for our Liberty. However, that was back before Congress abdicated their responsibilities, and signed blank checks for the POTUS to start wars, borrow as much money as he wishes, spend it on whatever he wishes, impinge on our rights with outrageous executive orders, etc. and otherwise refuse to hold him accountable for treasonous violations of his oath of office.
If you are willing to vote for a congenital liar, who is a committed Marxist revolutionary, bent on dismantling our Constitutional republic and destroying our capitalist economy, who has demonstrated his contempt for Congress by ignoring their will, and operating as a dictator using executive orders to overturn their acts or deliberate inactions; what possible point is there in even voting for a Representative. What would you expect him to do for you? If Congress did manage to pass an Act Obama didn’t like, he would veto it. If they overrode his veto and passed it anyway, he would issue an EO to his administration ordering them to ignore it. If they refuse to enact something he wants, he will just issue another EO to accomplish the same thing through bureaucratic regulations.
Congress is now largely irrelevant, and with just one more SCOTUS appointment, he will have a rubber stamp from the Judicial Branch. Then he can do whatever he damn well pleases as the Dictator in Chief, governing the sheeple by executive fiat. You do realize that the POTUS takes an oath to faithfully execute the laws of the land, don’t you? Constitutionally, he doesn’t get to pick and choose which laws he will enforce, and doing so is a violation of his oath. Subverting the Constitution is treason. Are you really cool with his assumption of dictatorial powers?
I am not so sure… the indoctrination you received in the principle of altruism appears to run very deep. Until you somehow overcome that handicap and learn to think as a sovereign individual, rather than emote like a meek serf subservient to ‘authority,’ you will never be able to see the way America was meant to be. This is supposed to be a nation of laws, not one of elitist demagogic rulers, pandering to the guilty feelings of an altruistic herd of sheeple. Greg, until and unless you grok and embrace the idea that is America, there will be no hope for you. â—„Daveâ–º
I vote Republican not for divided government, but because I did a very simple thing:
I sent the following question to both the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate, something along the lines of this (before the SC ruling on Obamacare):
“With recent changes and regulations in place on businesses, as well as things that are yet to come such as the decision on ObamaCare, these regulations have definitely caused a lot of uncertainty of the marketplace when employers are kind of sitting back and waiting to hire, rather than hiring outright, because of the unknown–not to mention that some regulations don’t kick in until many years down the line.” (I altered it slightly to fit a better overarching question for the D’s candidate.)
The results I got were markedly different:
Tim Bishop (D) promised me he’d get back to me within 48 hours (through an automated message). A MONTH later, he responded with two sentences and a “Check our website.”
Randy Altschuler (R), on the other hand, responded to me by giving me his personal cell phone and email and I was able to interview him within 2 days of receiving this information. I picked his brain about any number of issues under the sun. Interview took about 20 minutes. And I am no media member, either 🙂
The end result is I was much happier with what I heard from the Republican side of this election (At least from him). I determined that he was a moderate, and he was actually going to try to keep the parts of the ObamaCare plan that I liked, for example the “Children on parents’ plan until 26” provision and wasn’t going to rip the whole thing down, but instead replace it with something much more effective that got rid of the whole “taxing me to do what you want” part of the law, as well as the whole “I must buy health insurance even though I cannot afford it” part. I also learned that he was going to keep business, in general, in touch with what would be coming down the pipe and what would be up to change, something that I do NOT think Obama, Pelosi, Reid, etc. do very well (if at all).
THAT is why Altschuler is my man. 🙂
Greg, if you consider it worth your time, please take a look at this page of “issues,” then explain on which issue, which is key to you, you support O’Bama over Romney.
Also, do you think an altruistic person should be admired? This last may be “off topic.” Dave will do with it what he may, if you choose to answer.
I will tell you in broad strokes. We’re going to ignore the issues of citizenship because like it or not, he’s the President. But! What we do have is a body of work to judge him on, to see if he is worth of being re-elected.
1) You are asking me who I would vote for, between the two of them. Neither of them are “good.” Personally, I think there should be a “You came up with these two clowns? LOL. Try again.” button.
2) That being said, in my view, on the foreign policy issue of terrorism, Obama has a strong foothold. I wholeheartedly supported the killing of Osama Bin Laden and the drone strikes, for one. (It should, however, be noted that this is a continuation of Bush policies, which–as far as this ONE issue–I supported as well.)
3) With 2) in mind, bear in mind that the main issue this election is the economy. I don’t know about others my age, but I certainly want a job. On these grounds, Obama has failed, miserably:
1) Obamacare, though laudable (and here Dave and I sharply disagree), created a ton of uncertainty. This is mainly due to the fact that more “uncertain” principles kicked in later, down the road. An employer says, “Right now, I could hire Greg. But 2 (or however many) years from now, I’ll have to cover him under my insurance plan… I simply won’t have the money then.” You can see this firsthand when one of my former coworkers at the job I held prior suddenly is working 4 days a week instead of 5 days a week and full-time. To put him part-time thus saves the company money–despite what effects in may have on him. There are certain things I don’t agree with: taxes to force me to get insurance for one; but yet I like the regulation of insurance companies which allows me to stay on my parents’ plan (Which I do hold to be a Constitutional regulation as the focus is on companies based in multiple states rather than the tax, which is based on people).
2) The President has not provided a budget that is even worth looking at. If he so concerned with cutting the deficit, why does he propose a budge that he KNOWS is going to be voted down? Failure, unless you want to count political grandstanding. But I do not like those things.
3) The President thinks that “big government” is the way out of this mess. While I do agree that certain, common-sense, measures should be taken to ensure an economic collapse does not happen in the future, growing government creates unending bureaucracy and makes things a nightmare. You could shrink government while providing some form of basic law–which in effect cuts down bureaucratic waste–but he wants to do the OPPOSITE of that. Opposed.
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However, THE most fatal flaw he committed was giving Congress WAY, WAY, WAY too much power. By effectively going to Congress and saying, “I want a healthcare bill,” without having any guidelines set up for the most part (“Oh, public option doesn’t work? Oh, but this will? Okay, let’s do that. Oh, wait a minute, that doesn’t work? Sure, I’ll let you throw together a hastily-assembled bill. No problem!”), he, in essence, put the success of his entire Presidency on Congress. When he asked for the ball back in his court, Congress said, “You’re kidding me, right?” and laughed in his face and said “Heck no.” That is, truly, the failure of leadership. But obviously Congress doesn’t want to point that out 😉
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Then we go to Romney:
Romney has managed *a* business. This business was bent on making profits. The economy is more complex than just making profits. Businesses also have to make sure they can afford to hire the amount of workers that they have (See: my old company, which forced me out of a job -.- ), make sure taxes don’t cripple them, etc. Taking over Sports Authority (I think?) is great and all that, but (unless you want him to take the whole economy over >.> ) it doesn’t show he can tackle that. The jury is out on this one.
On foreign policy, see: his international trip that was supposed to be a walk in a park, becomes a disaster. So he fails miserably here–already.
So the verdict is that IF I was to vote for one or the other, it would be Obama. But he wins on an issue that isn’t really important to me at the moment (above, terrorism). Libertarians appeal to me to a degree, but I don’t like Ron Paul’s approach of “kill everything now and worry about what happens later” that much, either.
Actually, the Green Party and Jill Stein seem to be the best fit for me. Jill Stein is a physician, so maybe she can figure out the Obamacare nonsense and get rid of the parts that simply don’t work for doctors.
Now, there is a HUGE caveat to this: I live in NY, and am sort of “disenfranchised” by the whole process. No matter who I vote for, Obama will win the state. That’s why I think the electoral college should be abolished. Let the people speak completely for themselves.
(Also, Daedalus, was there a link on that post or a post on this forum I was specifically supposed to respond to?)
Greg, I find it very sad that so few Americans understand the logic behind the Electoral College. As originally conceived, it was meant to address several distinct points. First and foremost is the fact that the States elect the president. There is no federal election in our Republic, ergo, no “popular” vote. Voting for electors pledged to a particular candidate is the way the people of a given State determine how their State’s presidential votes should be cast. Unfortunately, some of the States have ways of allocating their electors that tends to disenfranchise voters withing that State, but, that is a State problem, not a problem with the Constitutional method for selecting the president.
Another important aspect of the Electoral College is that the electors are left to their own conscience when it comes time for the vote. Assuming we select electors with character and principles, they are free to block an obviously “rigged” election, should that occur. Having said that, there has been at least one obviously “rigged” election that the electors neglected to block — that being the Kennedy/Nixon contest that Kennedy won only because of “rigged” results from Illinois and Texas.
Were we to implement a true “popular vote” for president, a few States would determine the outcome of every presidential election. Because of States monkeying with the Electoral College, we are close enough to that already for my taste.
I do not disagree that there is much in our electoral process in dire need of sanitation. I would begin by outlawing political parties as they currently exist. But, that is only me being me.
Troy
I see your point again, Troy. On the one hand, my vote doesn’t matter for the electoral college in the system we have now: If I vote Romney, my state will vote Democratic anyway. If I got rid of the EC, all of a sudden, my vote may matter TOO much.
One of the underlying reasons of tHe original intent of the electoral college as I understand it is because the founders thought that news travels too slowly. Thus, someone from Virginia may not ever seen a candidate in person, nor read of him in a timely fashion.
As such, the majority of Americans will be uninformed. THe spread of information now goes at a rapid pace–however, are we, as the American people still uninformed? I’d wager to say that you and Dave say “yes.” I would say “yes,” but for the few of us who use our brains, we are remarkably INFORMED.
The bottom line here is that I feel thusly: My vote should actually count as much as my neighbor and as much as the guy down the street, and as much as yours (you’re in Texas, right?), and as much as the guy in Rhode Island.