I Have Not Yet Sealed the Ballot

[peristaltor]

I should, but something this year is... different.

Preamble: I have voted officially for president in every election since I was eligible in 1984. I'm not going to defend past presidential choices; no voter needs to defend past election choices.

This year, though, has been hard. This is the first year where I just don't give a shit which of

Comments

[theweaselking]

no voter needs to defend past election choices.You know, I fundamentally disagree with you on that point. I thinking people who vote for terrible people SHOULD examine and interrogate their choices. I think it's important to be able to look at a vote for Reagan and say "I didnt know about the Alzheimer's" or "in the 1980s I didn't recognise racism the same way" or even "I just thought Carter was weak in dealing with Iran, I didn't know at the time that was sabotage" and be able to not only defend your at-the-time choice, but examine how your decision was made and, given the outcomes, what you might want to do differently with your next vote

[peristaltor]

...thinking people who vote for terrible people SHOULD examine and interrogate their choices.

I agree, and I did. But I can't regret my Reagan vote any more than I can regret my choice of college polo shirts (mine had the little frog in the cart on them from a National Lampoon cartoon, but were polo shirts still), any more than a short kid can regret not being able to reach the cookie jar before the growth spurt.

For the record, I resonate best with the third of your scenarios. Fuck Bush I, Casey and Gates. Fuck them hard, fucking treasonous traitors.

The fact that the Supreme Court made the final decision....

I'll stop you there. Gore won Florida. Yes, he made a tactical mistake in not insisting on a state-wide recount; but he still won.

Trouble here is, there have been close elections in the past. The Robed Ones stopped a standard recount, and included language in the decision that noted it must never be used for precedent. Which the Court has never done in its past

[theweaselking]

I must note that you haven't commented on the Kucinich article to which I linked and from which I quoted.

You're right, and I didn't click through and read beyond the bits you quoted, because regardless of how well it's argued, at this point in the cycle those are not relevant considerations. The time for a "should we have a 'money' candidate or not" is WHEN CANDIDATES ARE BEING CHOSEN.

I will consider your conclusion, even though it reads to me like:

"Money could win, or money could win, so perhaps that money should prevent this money from winning."I think the equation of Trump with Clinton, or of Democratic policies with Republican ones, is either ignorant or disingenous. Even leaving aside the issue of wars, the economy improves significantly under Democrats and crashes under Republicans, every time, because Democrats care about facts and results more than ideology. Society improves for more people under Democrats than Republicans because Democrats care about people more than ideology

[peristaltor]

Americans don't *have* a good option, an option who makes all correct or even (depending on your perspective) mostly-correct decisions.

Quite true. By the way, on that note, have you heard of the book Ratfucked? The author is making the radio rounds of late. I heard him on a show called This Is Hell. Right up your alley.

The time for a "should we have a 'money' candidate or not" is WHEN CANDIDATES ARE BEING CHOSEN.

Quite true, also. A pity money shut down the anti-money candidate. Which means....

Oh, wait....

[theweaselking]

(continued because of character limits)

If you have an opinion, and it doesn't resort to calling me names that I don't deserve, chime in on what I could do.You only have three choices: Trump, Clinton, or "I don't have any opinion, let everyone else decide

[peristaltor]

Weasel Headed, not Weasel Crowned.

[l33tminion]

Forward, it points forward! Look, if you're getting hung up on that logo, "deliberately obtuse" is an accusation you most certainly deserve. It's infuriating. I swear to god, I just want to get out my dimensional portal to the universe where alternate-universe you is complaining that if Hillary Clinton is so progressive, why does her logo point backwards

[peristaltor]

It does tickle me how upset you get about the arrow thing. That shows me the gag has legs.

More seriously, there is a group out there who would like new maps of the world to be printed upside down, with North being on the bottom of the page. They argue that because early charts and maps were made by those from the North, that the planet now holds a North-centric bias against the people on the "bottom" of the planet. Flipping the map would literally be an arbitrary decision with no consequences to the planet (other, of course, than screwing up map readers who are used to North being up).

Making people confront the "play/progress means point right" social convention? Worth doing, if only for a laugh.

...I'd rather not have to explain things done and said by President Trump to a four-year-old.Personal things, or political things? The personal things that fall out of his mouth, yes, those are difficult, especially the cat grabbing

[theweaselking]

It does tickle me how upset you get about the arrow thing. That shows me the gag has legs.

I gotta admit, it didn't seem like a gag to me. It seemed like you thought it was a serious thing to be concerned about, and that you'd genuinely missed that it points "forward".

Contrast with the troubles of the AP History students of the 2050s, who will be left asking their teachers if this Early 21st project isn't some elaborate joke. Not only was the guy who did THAT actually named "Wiener", but there was a "family values" candidate who claimed his wallet name was "Rick Santorum" - Rick being short for Richard, which shortens down to Dick, meaning this dude wanted to be taken seriously while claiming his real name was PENIS SEXPOOP?

I feel for that poor hypothetical AP History student. And I think the joke is a lot clearer in that paragraph than in your OP, y'know?

[peristaltor]

In all fairness, Santorum meant nothing until he pissed off Dan Savage. That was a brilliant stroke on Dan's part, I must say.

On the note of bad names, an anecdote: I used to work in one of those chain mall book stores. A little dude with a bad combover ordered the complete Sleeping Beauty trilogy by Anne Rice's pseudonym. Something about his name bugged me: Dick Schmaltz.

I looked up the last name in the German-English dictionary. Translated literally, this guy was named "Thick Drippings." And he ordered porn.

Wiener? Don't know if you read Ferrett Steinmetz's blog, but he has a point: those pics must have some effect, otherwise why use them? Ferrett has a lot of contact with the kink community, so he would know far better than I.

(Oh, and Steinmetz's Flex, The Flux and Fix trilogy is well worth a read.)

And I think the joke is a lot clearer in that paragraph than in your OP, y'know?I left it deliberately vague in the OP because L33t already knows the joke and likes it not one bit (see his comment below). I decided

[theweaselking]

Don't know if you read Ferrett Steinmetz's blog,

I don't. I have zero interest in the writing of a man who says of catcallers "they're not rapists, they're enthusiasts", who writes "any woman who says no to a man more than once before saying yes should be dragged into an alley and beaten", and who thought organising crowds of men to approach strange women at conventions, surround them, and ask to grope them was a good idea.

Fuck that guy. He's a misogynist shithead.

(Oh, and Steinmetz's Flex, The Flux and Fix trilogy is well worth a read.)

The one where he rips off Stephen King's Firestarter, all the way down to not bothering to change the name of the villain, for the first book?

I haven't read them and I won't, because "misogynist shithead". But I've read people who've read 'em.

those pics must have some effect, otherwise why use them? For the same reason that 419 scams are deliberately badly written and show off bright red flags for being a scam: because this self-filters the responders. No need to waste time on someone

[tcpip]

Politicians are not leaders.

"You can vote for someone on Election Day and march in protest of their policies three hours later. It is not your job - and so long as American Presidential voting works the way it currently does, in its ugly, hamfisted first-past-the-post, winner-take-all way, it will never be possible - to vote with your conscience. That isn't what it’s about. Voting for the office of President is about choosing who will keep the lights on. "

http://isocracy.org/content/politicians-are-not-leaders