Vote for Hillary - but before you do, view this to help you decide

[betweentheeyes]

Vote for Hillary - but before you do, view this to help you decide

https://youtu.be/aHGit3zF808

[bigdog]

On Wednesday, July 6, 2016 at 8:44:51 AM UTC-4, betweentheeyes wrote:
> Vote for Hillary - but before you do, view this to help you decide
>
> https://youtu.be/aHGit3zF808

I will vote for Gary Johnson and that's already been decided.

[betweentheeyes]

bigdog <jecorb...@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:5b9706df-82ca-4411...@googlegroups.com:

Can you garner enough electoral votes to throw the choice to Paul
Ryan in the House?

[Governor Swill]

That would certainly be better than Donald.

Swill
--
Donald J. Trump: The asteroid destined to destroy
a party of dinosaurs. - Samantha Bee

Trump Claim: Ambassador Chris Stevens "was left helpless to die
as Hillary Clinton soundly slept in her bed..."
Fact: The attack in Benghazi was at 3:45 pm, Eastern.
Hillary was wide awake when the call came in.
Trump is a liar.

Trump has written a lot of books about business, but they all
seem to end in Chapter 11. - Hillary Clinton

S. E. Cupp has characterized Trump as wearing the Republican party
like a rented tuxedo. When the prom is over, it's going to end up on
the floor with the liquor stains and cigarette butts.

So if you are thinking of voting for Donald Trump,
the charismatic guy promising to ‘Make America Great
Again,’ stop and take a moment to imagine how you
would feel if you just met a guy named Donald Drumpf:
a litigious, serial liar with a string of broken business
ventures and the support of a former Klan leader who
he can’t decide whether or not to condemn.
Would you think he would make a good president,
or is the spell now somewhat broken? - John Oliver

[Ministry of Vengeance and Vendettas]

bigdog <jecorb...@yahoo.com> wrote in news:5b9706df-82ca-4411-83ea-
0ca2e5...@googlegroups.com:

You're an idiot andthat has already been determined. Johnson can not win.
This is no time for a protest vote.

People like you have a once in a liftime chance to give the country to a
career criminal.

--
"...And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned
from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let
them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and
pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of
liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and
tyrants. It is its natural manure."--Thomas Jefferson, Nov. 13, 1787

[Governor Swill]

On Wed, 6 Jul 2016 15:37:26 -0000 (UTC), betweentheeyes
<between...@supportingthe2nd.org> wrote:

Played that third party game before and George Bush won.

I won't make that mistake again.

[Just Wondering]

Ministry of Vengeance and Vendettas wrote:

> bigdog wrote:
>> betweentheeyes wrote:
>>
>>> Vote for Hillary - but before you do, view this to help you decide
>>> https://youtu.be/aHGit3zF808
>>
>> I will vote for Gary Johnson and that's already been decided.
>
> You're an idiot andthat has already been determined. Johnson
> can not win. This is no time for a protest vote.
>

In the presidential race, it's a foregone conclusion that
some states will cast their electoral votes for a particular
candidate. In those states, it is an ideal time for a

protest vote.

> People like you have a once in a liftime chance to give
> the country to a career criminal.
>

The trouble with a statement like that is, neither
candidate has a criminal record, and whichever
candidate you are backing, there are people who are
absolutely convinced that your candidate IS that
career criminal.

[Ministry of Vengeance and Vendettas]

Just Wondering <fmh...@comcast.net> wrote in news:BzDfz.30582$Gl3.8619
@fx35.iad:

Yeah well, tell me what crimes you think Trump has committed and if he is
responsible for anyone's death.

[Just Wondering]

On 7/7/2016 9:20 PM, Ministry of Vengeance and Vendettas wrote:

> Just Wondering <fmh...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> Ministry of Vengeance and Vendettas wrote:
>>> bigdog wrote:
>>>> betweentheeyes wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Vote for Hillary - but before you do, view this to help
>>>>> you decide https://youtu.be/aHGit3zF808
>>>>
>>>> I will vote for Gary Johnson and that's already been decided.
>>>
>>> You're an idiot andthat has already been determined. Johnson
>>> can not win. This is no time for a protest vote.
>>>
>> In the presidential race, it's a foregone conclusion that
>> some states will cast their electoral votes for a particular
>> candidate. In those states, it is an ideal time for a
>> protest vote.
>>
>>> People like you have a once in a liftime chance to give
>>> the country to a career criminal.
>>>
>> The trouble with a statement like that is, neither
>> candidate has a criminal record, and whichever
>> candidate you are backing, there are people who are
>> absolutely convinced that your candidate IS that
>> career criminal.
>
> Yeah well, tell me what crimes you think Trump has committed
> and if he is responsible for anyone's death.
>

I don't know that he has done either. I think Trump is the lesser of
the two evils, or if you prefer, Hiliary is the greater evil. It doesn't
change what I wrote.

[Governor Swill]

On Thu, 7 Jul 2016 19:45:12 -0600, Just Wondering wrote:
>Ministry of Vengeance and Vendettas wrote:
>> bigdog wrote:
>>> I will vote for Gary Johnson and that's already been decided.
>> You're an idiot andthat has already been determined. Johnson
>> can not win. This is no time for a protest vote.
>In the presidential race, it's a foregone conclusion that
>some states will cast their electoral votes for a particular
>candidate. In those states, it is an ideal time for a
>protest vote.

Protest votes put Bush in the White House in 2000 and we all know how
that went. Hellooooooo debt from hell!

>> People like you have a once in a liftime chance to give
>> the country to a career criminal.
>>
>The trouble with a statement like that is, neither
>candidate has a criminal record, and whichever
>candidate you are backing, there are people who are
>absolutely convinced that your candidate IS that
>career criminal.

The stakes are too high to let Trump win this election.

[Ministry of Vengeance and Vendettas]

Just Wondering <fmh...@comcast.net> wrote in news:S7Ffz.20393$5j1.5791
@fx34.iad:

I am asking on what basis anyone would conclude that Trump is a career
criminal.

I think the evidence that HRC is is pretty strong to include bribery and/or
blackmail of law enforcement authorities.

[bigdog]

That will depend on whether Americans are so fed up with the choices given us by the major parties or will continue to vote for people for no other reason than they have an R or a D next to their name. All I know is I have just one vote and I'm not going to waste it on unacceptable candidates like Trump or Clinton.

[bigdog]

On Thursday, July 7, 2016 at 6:54:37 AM UTC-4, Ministry of Vengeance and Vendettas wrote:
> bigdog <jecorb...@yahoo.com> wrote in news:5b9706df-82ca-4411-83ea-
> 0ca2e5...@googlegroups.com:
>
> > On Wednesday, July 6, 2016 at 8:44:51 AM UTC-4, betweentheeyes wrote:
> >> Vote for Hillary - but before you do, view this to help you decide
> >>
> >> https://youtu.be/aHGit3zF808
> >
> > I will vote for Gary Johnson and that's already been decided.
> >
>
> You're an idiot andthat has already been determined. Johnson can not win.
> This is no time for a protest vote.
>
> People like you have a once in a liftime chance to give the country to a
> career criminal.
>

People like you are the reason Trump got nominated and your "reward" will be four years of Hillary. You made your bed, now lie in it.

[bigdog]

On Thursday, July 7, 2016 at 11:21:00 PM UTC-4, Ministry of Vengeance and Vendettas wrote:
> Just Wondering <fmh...@comcast.net> wrote in news:BzDfz.30582$Gl3.8619
> @fx35.iad:
>
> > Ministry of Vengeance and Vendettas wrote:
> >> bigdog wrote:
> >>> betweentheeyes wrote:
> > >>
> >>>> Vote for Hillary - but before you do, view this to help you decide
> >>>> https://youtu.be/aHGit3zF808
> >>>
> >>> I will vote for Gary Johnson and that's already been decided.
> >>
> >> You're an idiot andthat has already been determined. Johnson
> >> can not win. This is no time for a protest vote.
> >>
> > In the presidential race, it's a foregone conclusion that
> > some states will cast their electoral votes for a particular
> > candidate. In those states, it is an ideal time for a
> > protest vote.
> >
> >> People like you have a once in a liftime chance to give
> >> the country to a career criminal.
> >>
> > The trouble with a statement like that is, neither
> > candidate has a criminal record, and whichever
> > candidate you are backing, there are people who are
> > absolutely convinced that your candidate IS that
> > career criminal.
> >
> >
>
> Yeah well, tell me what crimes you think Trump has committed and if he is
> responsible for anyone's death.
>

That should make for a hell of a campaign slogan.

"Vote for Trump. He's not a career criminal".

I happen to think we should elect people with better qualifications than that.

[Klaus Schadenfreude]

On Thu, 7 Jul 2016 10:54:36 -0000 (UTC), Ministry of Vengeance and
Vendettas <nuke_them_...@sulaco.com> wrote:

>bigdog <jecorb...@yahoo.com> wrote in news:5b9706df-82ca-4411-83ea-
>0ca2e5...@googlegroups.com:
>
>> On Wednesday, July 6, 2016 at 8:44:51 AM UTC-4, betweentheeyes wrote:
>>> Vote for Hillary - but before you do, view this to help you decide
>>>
>>> https://youtu.be/aHGit3zF808
>>
>> I will vote for Gary Johnson and that's already been decided.
>>
>
>You're an idiot andthat has already been determined. Johnson can not win.
>This is no time for a protest vote.

It's the PERFECT time.

Only a complete idiot would vote for trump to Keep Hillary out, just
like only a complete idiot would vote for Hillary to keep Trump out.

[Governor Swill]

I think the opposite. You planning to vote? I am.

[Just Wondering]

You are asking the wrong person. I never claimed he is.

[Just Wondering]

And you just supported my point.

[Governor Swill]

Ordinarily I'd be more understanding but in this case, my priority
isn't to put one candidate *in* the White House, but to keep one
candidate *out*.

[Governor Swill]

On Fri, 8 Jul 2016 11:08:37 -0600, Just Wondering <fmh...@comcast.net>
wrote:

*piggyback*

Then make your case. Be specific.

[Governor Swill]

I happen to think it's time for a general voter rebellion. Vote for
anybody *but* incumbents.

Even 4% of the vote for NOTA would be enough to get their attention.

Might not fix anything, but it would certainly make them notice.

[Governor Swill]

On Fri, 8 Jul 2016 06:45:27 -0700 (PDT), bigdog
<jecorb...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, July 7, 2016 at 6:54:37 AM UTC-4, Ministry of Vengeance and Vendettas wrote:
>> bigdog <jecorb...@yahoo.com> wrote in news:5b9706df-82ca-4411-83ea-
>> 0ca2e5...@googlegroups.com:
>>
>> > On Wednesday, July 6, 2016 at 8:44:51 AM UTC-4, betweentheeyes wrote:
>> >> Vote for Hillary - but before you do, view this to help you decide
>> >>
>> >> https://youtu.be/aHGit3zF808
>> >
>> > I will vote for Gary Johnson and that's already been decided.
>> >
>>
>> You're an idiot andthat has already been determined. Johnson can not win.
>> This is no time for a protest vote.
>>
>> People like you have a once in a liftime chance to give the country to a
>> career criminal.

How many other politicians have been career criminals using your
logic?

>People like you are the reason Trump got nominated and
>your "reward" will be four years of Hillary. You made your
>bed, now lie in it.

Indeed. Voters have been busy voting on stupid, emotion based wedge
issues instead of paying attention to what the pols are actually
doing.

[betweentheeyes]

Governor Swill <governo...@gmail.com> wrote in
news:689unbpmfd154tcfp...@4ax.com:

>>The trouble with a statement like that is, neither
>>candidate has a criminal record, and whichever
>>candidate you are backing, there are people who are
>>absolutely convinced that your candidate IS that
>>career criminal.
>
> The stakes are too high to let Trump win this election.
>
> Swill

Cool, plan B

Vote Hillary
https://youtu.be/-dY77j6uBHI


--
Vote for Hillary, but first review this video to help you decide
https://youtu.be/-dY77j6uBHI
Maximize Hillary's click thru


--
Vote for Hillary, but first review this video to help you decide
https://youtu.be/-dY77j6uBHI
Maximize Hillary's click thrus

[Just Wondering]

On 7/8/2016 2:35 PM, Governor Swill wrote:

> Just Wondering wrote:
>> Ministry of Vengeance and Vendettas wrote:

>>> Just Wondering wrote:
>>>> Ministry of Vengeance and Vendettas wrote:

Shouldn't you be addressing Ministry of Vengeance?

[Just Wondering]

On 7/8/2016 2:36 PM, Governor Swill wrote:

> On Fri, 8 Jul 2016 06:48:28 -0700 (PDT), bigdog wrote:
>> Ministry of Vengeance and Vendettas wrote:

I live in Utah. I actually kind of like what Senator Lee's been doing,
so I'd vote for him. If Senator Hatch was running, I'd definitely NOT
vote for him.

> Even 4% of the vote for NOTA would be enough to get their attention.
>
> Might not fix anything, but it would certainly make them notice.
>

It's a foregone conclusion that Hiliary won't be getting Utah's
electoral college votes. Therefore, I am considering three
options for sending a message:
1. Vote for Gary Johnson, as the most effective way to tell both
major national political parties that they are out of touch.
2. Write-in vote for a true conservative candidate, as best
reflecting who I think should be on the ballot but isn't.
3. Writ-in vote for None Of The Above. Personally, I think NOTA
should be a printed ballot option for every election choice.

[bigdog]

On Friday, July 8, 2016 at 4:34:00 PM UTC-4, Governor Swill wrote:
> On Fri, 8 Jul 2016 06:43:23 -0700 (PDT), bigdog
> <jecorb...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >On Wednesday, July 6, 2016 at 11:37:26 AM UTC-4, betweentheeyes wrote:
> >> bigdog <jecorb...@yahoo.com> wrote in
> >> news:5b9706df-82ca-4411...@googlegroups.com:
> >>
> >> > On Wednesday, July 6, 2016 at 8:44:51 AM UTC-4, betweentheeyes
> >> > wrote:
> >> >> Vote for Hillary - but before you do, view this to help you
> >> >> decide
> >> >>
> >> >> https://youtu.be/aHGit3zF808
> >> >
> >> > I will vote for Gary Johnson and that's already been decided.
>
> >> Can you garner enough electoral votes to throw the choice to Paul
> >> Ryan in the House?
> >
> >That will depend on whether Americans are so fed up with the
> >choices given us by the major parties or will continue to vote for
> >people for no other reason than they have an R or a D next to their
> >name. All I know is I have just one vote and I'm not going to waste it
> >on unacceptable candidates like Trump or Clinton.
>
> Ordinarily I'd be more understanding but in this case, my priority
> isn't to put one candidate *in* the White House, but to keep one
> candidate *out*.
>

My priority is to keep both out of the White House but thanks to the Republican and Democrat parties that seems to be a longshot. It seems to be a foregone conclusion that I am going to detest the next POTUS, whoever it is. Not that I have had a warm and fuzzy feeling for any of the recent ones.

[Just Wondering]

On 7/8/2016 2:47 PM, betweentheeyes wrote:
> Governor Swill <governo...@gmail.com> wrote in
> news:689unbpmfd154tcfp...@4ax.com:
>
>>> The trouble with a statement like that is, neither
>>> candidate has a criminal record, and whichever
>>> candidate you are backing, there are people who are
>>> absolutely convinced that your candidate IS that
>>> career criminal.
>>
>> The stakes are too high to let Trump win this election.
>>
>> Swill
>
> Cool, plan B Vote Hillary
> https://youtu.be/-dY77j6uBHI
>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftx7soJIaKg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGC2vg27bFI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Efe276Doht0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMpqImAjel4
If those don't give you nightmares, maybe this will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqYJRc0TJkQ

[bigdog]

The chances that my one little vote is going to decide who the next president will be is even more remote than that it will be somebody not named Donald or Hillary. What I do with my one vote is express my values and which of the candidates on the ballot best represents my values. By itself it doesn't amount to a hill of beans. Together with people who share my values we can send a message to both the major parties what we stand for and what they need to do to win over our votes the next time around. If we capitulate and accept the least smelly bucket of shit the two major parties offer us, they will never get that message and continue to take us for granted. We will continue to be offered a choice of which bucket of shit is least smelly to us. Besides, in this election cycle, that would be very difficult to determine.

[betweentheeyes]

Just Wondering <fmh...@comcast.net> wrote in news:nRVfz.7994
$vw5....@fx18.iad:

Good stuff .. makes you wonder how she won in the primaries.

--
Vote for Hillary, but first review this video to help you decide
https://youtu.be/-dY77j6uBHI

Maximize Hillary's click thru rate!

[Governor Swill]

On Fri, 8 Jul 2016 15:30:47 -0700 (PDT), bigdog

Agreed. But until somebody can field an effective third party slate,
the choices will continue to be voting against rather than for.

[Governor Swill]

On Fri, 8 Jul 2016 16:01:02 -0600, Just Wondering <fmh...@comcast.net>
wrote:

I did. I headed the post with *piggyback* and replied to quotes two
posts back. Look at the attribs.

[Governor Swill]

Georgia is probably going to go for the Republican, but it's quite
close. I have to vote for Hillary. God! I wish somebody else was
running! Like Bozo the Clown or Lucifer or the Ghost of Adolf Hitler.
Oh, wait, he IS running!

[Governor Swill]

On Fri, 8 Jul 2016 15:39:48 -0700 (PDT), bigdog

If your state is red or blue, you can vote as you wish, but in
battleground states, every vote against Drumpf is going to count.

I live in a potential battleground state but we'll have to see how it
looks in November. If the polls are solid red, I can vote NOTA and/or
against incumbents. Since there have been recent financial scandals
in my county government, I'll be voting against incumbents here.

[Just Wondering]

That's not how it works.

[Just Wondering]

Dunno about Bozo; Lucifer and Adolf's ghost aren't natural born American
citizens. But a vote for Hillary IS a vote for Lucifer.

[betweentheeyes]

Just Wondering <fmh...@comcast.net> wrote in

news:dW2gz.1731$y32...@fx02.iad:

Swill did similar in a different thread. She's unable to follow
the replies and respond, instead responding to a reply by someone
else. It F's up a thread discussion when / if you attempt to
straighten out her mess.

[bigdog]

Third parties have fielded appealing alternatives whether you are on the left or the right. The problem is voters have been programmed to believe that if that don't pick an R or a D they are wasting their vote. So they continue to choose between Coke or Pepsi even if they don't like Coke or Pepsi.

It's a classic Catch 22 situation. How do third parties get voters to take their candidates seriously? They have to become viable. How do they become viable? They have to get voters to take their candidates seriously.

It has been done successfully on the state level. Bernie Sanders has been elected as an independent. Jesse Ventura won the Minnesota governor's race running a third party candidate but those are the exceptions. Ross Perot and John Anderson both got significant percentages in the popular vote when they ran. George Wallace was the last third party candidate to win electoral votes back in 1968. Teddy Roosevelt was the last third party candidate to finish ahead of one of the major party candidates. Dissatisfaction is so high this time that it wouldn't surprise me if Gary Johnson drew high single digit or even low double digit percent of the popular vote.

We get the government we deserve. Every four years voters complain about the choices the Democrats and Republicans offer them yet they refuse to consider alternatives. Until that changes they will continue to be offered the buckets of shit the major parties choose to nominate.

[bigdog]

I live in Ohio which is the definition of a swing state. As Ohio goes so goes the nation. Since the GOP became a major party, no Republican and only two Democrats have been elected POTUS without winning Ohio. The last was JFK. It decided the 2004 election. Had Kerry won Ohio, he would have been POTUS.

That still isn't going to get me to choose between Hillary or Donald. Neither is acceptable to me and neither will get my vote. If I were to vote for the lesser of two evils, I'm not sure I could decide which one that is. These are hands down the two worst choices the major parties have offered us in my lifetime. There has been no Democrat nominee I would put below Hillary and no Republican nominee I would put below Donald. Even if you told me my one vote would decide who won the state of Ohio and Ohio would decide the outcome of the election, I still wouldn't vote for either of them.

[Governor Swill]

On Sat, 9 Jul 2016 04:46:43 -0700 (PDT), bigdog wrote:
>On Friday, July 8, 2016 at Governor Swill wrote:
>> On Fri, 8 Jul 2016 bigdog wrote:
>> >On Friday, July 8, 2016 Governor Swill wrote:

>> >> On Fri, 8 Jul 2016 bigdog wrote:
>> >> >betweentheeyes wrote:
>> >> >> Can you garner enough electoral votes to throw the choice to Paul
>> >> >> Ryan in the House?
>> >> >That will depend on whether Americans are so fed up with the
>> >> >choices given us by the major parties or will continue to vote for
>> >> >people for no other reason than they have an R or a D next to their
>> >> >name. All I know is I have just one vote and I'm not going to waste it
>> >> >on unacceptable candidates like Trump or Clinton.
>> >> Ordinarily I'd be more understanding but in this case, my priority
>> >> isn't to put one candidate *in* the White House, but to keep one
>> >> candidate *out*.
>> >My priority is to keep both out of the White House but thanks to
>> >the Republican and Democrat parties that seems to be a longshot. It
>> >seems to be a foregone conclusion that I am going to detest the next
>> >POTUS, whoever it is. Not that I have had a warm and fuzzy feeling for
>> >any of the recent ones.

Why all the focus on POTUS? As you note below, the only successes in
third party or independent candidates seems to have come from
Congress.

>> Agreed. But until somebody can field an effective third party slate,
>> the choices will continue to be voting against rather than for.
>>
>Third parties have fielded appealing alternatives whether you are on the left or the right. The problem is voters have been programmed to believe that if that don't pick an R or a D they are wasting their vote. So they continue to choose between Coke or Pepsi even if they don't like Coke or Pepsi.

Another problem is they typically target high offices and don't have
donors. Any new third party that arises will have to form as a slowly
evolving grass roots movement, or, as his been the case throughout
history, be formed by fragments of parties that have split or multiple
parties that joined together for mutual goals.

>It's a classic Catch 22 situation. How do third parties get voters to take their candidates seriously? They have to become viable. How do they become viable? They have to get voters to take their candidates seriously.


>It has been done successfully on the state level. Bernie Sanders has been elected as an independent.

When Democrats "primaried" Joe Lieberman, he too, won as an

independent.

>Jesse Ventura won the Minnesota governor's race running a third party candidate but those are the exceptions. Ross Perot and John Anderson both got significant percentages in the popular vote when they ran. George Wallace was the last third party candidate to win electoral votes back in 1968. Teddy Roosevelt was the last third party candidate to finish ahead of one of the major party candidates. Dissatisfaction is so high this time that it wouldn't surprise me if Gary Johnson drew high single digit or even low double digit percent of the popular vote.

Nor I. The question is, where will those votes come from? The
libertarian wing of the GOP, the libertarian wing of the Dems or both?

>We get the government we deserve. Every four years voters complain about the choices the Democrats and Republicans offer them yet they refuse to consider alternatives. Until that changes they will continue to be offered the buckets of shit the major parties choose to nominate.

That's because most voters get their news these days from facebook or
sources that already agree with their ignorant preconceptions. The
voters don't pay attention much and when they do, they focus their not
on who the candidates are or what they've done, but on what the
candidates are saying they will do.

Why is Donald heading the Republican ticket? For decades the GOP has
made promises they not only haven't kept, but have taken action in
direct opposition to those promises.

Republicans have campaigned against illegal immigration for decades.
But it was a Republican Senate and Republican President who eliminated
penalties for hiring illegals and granted amnesty to millions more.

Reagan campaigned more than once on eliminating Social Security and
the Welfare state. Yet as President, he "saved" SS, expanded welfare
spending and was instrumental in extending free phone service to the
poor.

Republicans campaign endlessly about smaller government and balanced
budgets, but every time a Republican gets into the White House, debt
growth explodes, and Reagan grew government faster than any President
in half a century.

The list of Republican betrayals of their promises is even longer than
the Dems' and far more visible.

Since at least Eisenhower, free trade has been a GOP mantra while Dems
favored protectionism and tax sanctions for American companies moving
jobs overseas. But to hear Republicans talk these days, free trade
agreements like NAFTA (negotiated by Bush 41) and the TPP
(negotiations begun by Bush 43) are destroying America while Congress
refuses to change the tax code to remove tax incentives for
eliminating jobs in the United States.

These are reasons why the GOP rank and file nominated Donald Trump and
why many Dems crossed over to vote for him. They're sick of
Washington's forked tongue.

[Governor Swill]

On Sat, 9 Jul Just Wondering wrote:
>On 7/8/2016 Governor Swill wrote:

>> On Fri, 8 Jul Just Wondering wrote:
>>> Shouldn't you be addressing Ministry of Vengeance?
>> I did. I headed the post with *piggyback* and replied to quotes two
>> posts back. Look at the attribs.
>>
>That's not how it works.

Yes, it is how it works and it's how it's worked for the twenty years
I've been accessing Usenet.

Not my fault you don't know how to read - or use - attribution marks
or what a post leading with *piggyback* means.

[Governor Swill]

On Sat, 9 Jul 2016 betweentheeyes wrote:
<snip>

>Swill did similar in a different thread. She's unable to follow
>the replies and respond, instead responding to a reply by someone
>else. It F's up a thread discussion when / if you attempt to
>straighten out her mess.

Do you not understand Usenet norms? It's perfectly acceptable, in
fact, useful, to reply to more than one respondent in a post. This is
especially true if the earlier post you want to reply to is missing
from your Usenet feed or is buried too far back in the thread to
quickly find.

It's also acceptable to edit posts so your reply shows only what
you're replying to. This doesn't work when you ask a question, don't
like the answer, delete it and ask the question again.

Such "creative editing", that is editing intended to make it appear
the OP said something other than what they did, or make it look like
they didn't respond is frowned upon and tantamount to lying.

And I've got really hairy balls for a girl. Wanna lick 'em?

[Governor Swill]

Better than voting for Trump.

If Georgia looks blue in November, I can vote for Johnson. If not,
I'll vote for Clinton.

[Governor Swill]

On Sat, 9 Jul 2016 04:56:47 -0700 (PDT), bigdog

I don't have a problem with that. Donald is clearly the more
dangerous of the two.

> These are hands down the two worst choices the major parties have offered us in my lifetime.

Ditto.

>There has been no Democrat nominee I would put below Hillary and no Republican nominee I would put below Donald. Even if you told me my one vote would decide who won the state of Ohio and Ohio would decide the outcome of the election, I still wouldn't vote for either of them.

[bigdog]

The down-the-ticket races I decide on a case by case basis. I pledged my vote to Portman in the Ohio Senate race when he voted against UBC and I will keep that pledge but I won't be terribly upset if Democrat Ted Strickland wins since he is also a strong 2A supporter and was endorsed over John Kasich in the battle for the governorship. I never vote a straight party line ticket. Where Libertarians are on the ballot, I usually vote for them.

> >> Agreed. But until somebody can field an effective third party slate,
> >> the choices will continue to be voting against rather than for.
> >>
> >Third parties have fielded appealing alternatives whether you are on the left or the right. The problem is voters have been programmed to believe that if that don't pick an R or a D they are wasting their vote. So they continue to choose between Coke or Pepsi even if they don't like Coke or Pepsi.
>
> Another problem is they typically target high offices and don't have
> donors. Any new third party that arises will have to form as a slowly
> evolving grass roots movement, or, as his been the case throughout
> history, be formed by fragments of parties that have split or multiple
> parties that joined together for mutual goals.
>

I would not be upset if the GOP splintered and a new conservative/libertarian party were to emerge from the wreckage with very different leadership than is now heading the GOP.

> >It's a classic Catch 22 situation. How do third parties get voters to take their candidates seriously? They have to become viable. How do they become viable? They have to get voters to take their candidates seriously.
>
>
> >It has been done successfully on the state level. Bernie Sanders has been elected as an independent.
>
> When Democrats "primaried" Joe Lieberman, he too, won as an
> independent.
>

You're right. Forgot that one.

> >Jesse Ventura won the Minnesota governor's race running a third party candidate but those are the exceptions. Ross Perot and John Anderson both got significant percentages in the popular vote when they ran. George Wallace was the last third party candidate to win electoral votes back in 1968. Teddy Roosevelt was the last third party candidate to finish ahead of one of the major party candidates. Dissatisfaction is so high this time that it wouldn't surprise me if Gary Johnson drew high single digit or even low double digit percent of the popular vote.
>
> Nor I. The question is, where will those votes come from? The
> libertarian wing of the GOP, the libertarian wing of the Dems or both?
>

Chuck Todd despite his lefty leanings is pretty astute at crunching numbers. He has said historically third parties draw equally from the majors for the first 10% or 5% from each major party. It's when they go above that 10% threshold that they begin to draw more from one party than the other. That's what Ross Perot did in 1992.

> >We get the government we deserve. Every four years voters complain about the choices the Democrats and Republicans offer them yet they refuse to consider alternatives. Until that changes they will continue to be offered the buckets of shit the major parties choose to nominate.
>
> That's because most voters get their news these days from facebook or
> sources that already agree with their ignorant preconceptions. The
> voters don't pay attention much and when they do, they focus their not
> on who the candidates are or what they've done, but on what the
> candidates are saying they will do.

I am more familiar with those of my generation (boomers) and most of them vote for a candidate based on whether he/she is wearing a red or blue jersey. They often don't even like the candidate they are voting for but when I ask them why they don't vote for an alternative they keep telling my they don't want to waste their vote. That's when I start pulling my hair out.

>
> Why is Donald heading the Republican ticket? For decades the GOP has
> made promises they not only haven't kept, but have taken action in
> direct opposition to those promises.
>

That is true. What I can't understand is there was a maverick candidate who really does believe in the things Republicans have campaigned on but the primary voters rejected him in favor of a bigot. I would have been happy to vote for Cruz. Never for Trump.

> Republicans have campaigned against illegal immigration for decades.
> But it was a Republican Senate and Republican President who eliminated
> penalties for hiring illegals and granted amnesty to millions more.
>
> Reagan campaigned more than once on eliminating Social Security and
> the Welfare state. Yet as President, he "saved" SS, expanded welfare
> spending and was instrumental in extending free phone service to the
> poor.
>

Reagan never had a Republican House and only had a Republican Senate for a few years so he had to make compromises. Even Bush with control of both houses for 4 of his eight years couldn't push SS privatization through.

> Republicans campaign endlessly about smaller government and balanced
> budgets, but every time a Republican gets into the White House, debt
> growth explodes, and Reagan grew government faster than any President
> in half a century.
>

Again, that was the Democrat Congress at work. To get the tax cuts he wanted he had to give on spending. WBush didn't have that excuse.

> The list of Republican betrayals of their promises is even longer than
> the Dems' and far more visible.
>

You don't need to tell me that. It's way I left them 20 years ago. George Will recently followed suit.

> Since at least Eisenhower, free trade has been a GOP mantra while Dems
> favored protectionism and tax sanctions for American companies moving
> jobs overseas. But to hear Republicans talk these days, free trade
> agreements like NAFTA (negotiated by Bush 41) and the TPP
> (negotiations begun by Bush 43) are destroying America while Congress
> refuses to change the tax code to remove tax incentives for
> eliminating jobs in the United States.
>

That's the Trumpists saying that. Most GOPers still support free trade.

> These are reasons why the GOP rank and file nominated Donald Trump and
> why many Dems crossed over to vote for him. They're sick of
> Washington's forked tongue.
>

If ever there was a year for a third party candidate to make some noise it is this year but voters have become to accustomed to Coke or Pepsi.

[Just Wondering]

On 7/9/2016 12:12 PM, Governor Swill wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Jul 2016 betweentheeyes wrote:
>
>> Swill did similar in a different thread. She's unable to follow
>> the replies and respond, instead responding to a reply by someone
>> else. It F's up a thread discussion when / if you attempt to
>> straighten out her mess.
>
> Do you not understand Usenet norms? It's perfectly acceptable, in
> fact, useful, to reply to more than one respondent in a post.
>

Possibly, but not the way you did it.

[Just Wondering]

On 7/9/2016 11:59 AM, Governor Swill wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Jul Just Wondering wrote:
>> On 7/8/2016 Governor Swill wrote:
>>> On Fri, 8 Jul Just Wondering wrote:
>>>> Shouldn't you be addressing Ministry of Vengeance?
>>> I did. I headed the post with *piggyback* and replied to quotes two
>>> posts back. Look at the attribs.
>>>
>> That's not how it works.
>
> Yes, it is how it works and it's how it's worked for the twenty years
> I've been accessing Usenet.
>
> Not my fault you don't know how to read - or use - attribution marks
> or what a post leading with *piggyback* means.
>

There is no Usenet norm where you reply to a up-tier
post AFTER a down-tier post and bury a "piggyback"
somewhere. That's just some shit you made up.

[betweentheeyes]

Governor Swill <governo...@gmail.com> wrote in

news:2mf2oblgtdcf063oo...@4ax.com:

> If Georgia looks blue in November, I can vote for Johnson. If
not,
> I'll vote for Clinton.
>
> Swill

Excellent, a Clinton woman
https://youtu.be/-dY77j6uBHI

[betweentheeyes]

Governor Swill <governo...@gmail.com> wrote in

news:fo30oblddra7vt8an...@4ax.com:

> Indeed. Voters have been busy voting on stupid, emotion based
> wedge issues instead of paying attention to what the pols are
> actually doing.
>
> Swill

You're voting for Clinton, good girl!

[betweentheeyes]

Governor Swill <governo...@gmail.com> wrote in

news:rpf2obdjthg24mkae...@4ax.com:

> I don't have a problem with that. Donald is clearly the more
> dangerous of the two.
>
>> These are hands down the two worst choices the major parties
>> have offered us in my lifetime.
>
> Ditto.
>
>>There has been no Democrat nominee I would put below Hillary and
>>no Republican nominee I would put below Donald. Even if you told
>>me my one vote would decide who won the state of Ohio and Ohio
>>would decide the outcome of the election, I still wouldn't vote
>>for either of them.
>
> Swill

[Ministry of Vengeance and Vendettas]

betweentheeyes <between...@supportingthe2nd.org> wrote in
news:XnsA6415832AEEB7be...@213.239.209.88:

> Governor Swill <governo...@gmail.com> wrote in
> news:fo30oblddra7vt8an...@4ax.com:
>
>> Indeed. Voters have been busy voting on stupid, emotion based
>> wedge issues instead of paying attention to what the pols are
>> actually doing.
>>
>> Swill
>
> You're voting for Clinton, good girl!
> Excellent, a Clinton woman
> https://youtu.be/-dY77j6uBHI
>
>

Well, she is the emptyhead's choice.

--
"...And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to
the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a
century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time,
with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."--
Thomas Jefferson, Nov. 13, 1787

[Governor Swill]

On Sat, 9 Jul 2016 bigdog wrote:
>On Saturday, July 9, Governor Swill wrote:
>> >Jesse Ventura won the Minnesota governor's race running
> a third party candidate but those are the exceptions. Ross
>Perot and John Anderson both got significant percentages in
>the popular vote when they ran. George Wallace was the last
>third party candidate to win electoral votes back in 1968.
>Teddy Roosevelt was the last third party candidate to finish
>ahead of one of the major party candidates. Dissatisfaction
>is so high this time that it wouldn't surprise me if Gary Johnson
>drew high single digit or even low double digit percent
>of the popular vote.

I'll be surprised if he doesn't take double digits but that will
depend on him having a presence in the debates. Imo, the "rule" that
candidates must poll at least 15% to be included supports D and R at
the expense of all others. Letter writing campaigns to the major
sponsors, League of Women Voters, CNN, Fox and MSNBC for example,
demanding Johnson be included might help. Perhaps the Libs and some
disaffected D and R voters might be induced to help with that.

>> Nor I. The question is, where will those votes come from? The
>> libertarian wing of the GOP, the libertarian wing of the Dems or both?
>>
>Chuck Todd despite his lefty leanings is pretty astute at crunching
>numbers. He has said historically third parties draw equally from
>the majors for the first 10% or 5% from each major party.
>It's when they go above that 10% threshold that they begin
>to draw more from one party than the other.
>That's what Ross Perot did in 1992.

Anderson Cooper once said that the reason the media appears to lean
left is that, as a reporter, when you get out and about in the world
doing stories and see the suffering across the planet, it evokes in
you feelings of compassion and empathy.

>> >We get the government we deserve. Every four years voters
> complain about the choices the Democrats and Republicans
>offer them yet they refuse to consider alternatives. Until that
>changes they will continue to be offered the buckets of shit
>the major parties choose to nominate.

As Paul Begala has recently noted in the context of gun control, any
voters who don't like it have only themselves to blame. This is also
true of the current dissatisfaction. Ds and Rs alike keep voting
party line despite the failure of their pols to keep their promises.
This leaves the less organized swing voters to choose between the
lesser of two evils, neither of which they like.

>I am more familiar with those of my generation (boomers)
>and most of them vote for a candidate based on whether
>he/she is wearing a red or blue jersey. They often don't
>even like the candidate they are voting for but when I ask
>them why they don't vote for an alternative they keep

>telling me they don't want to waste their vote.

>That's when I start pulling my hair out.

That's because they see it as a horse race and hope to be on the
winning side so they can crow about it the day after the election.
They don't understand that the vote is our VOICE. If our VOICE
shouts, "I don't like any of the choices" loudly enough, the choices
might get better.

>> Why is Donald heading the Republican ticket? For decades the GOP has
>> made promises they not only haven't kept, but have taken action in
>> direct opposition to those promises.
>>
>That is true. What I can't understand is there was a maverick
>candidate who really does believe in the things Republicans
>have campaigned on but the primary voters rejected him in
>favor of a bigot. I would have been happy to vote for Cruz. Never for Trump.

Not Cruz. Too religious.

>> Republicans have campaigned against illegal immigration for decades.
>> But it was a Republican Senate and Republican President who eliminated
>> penalties for hiring illegals and granted amnesty to millions more.
>>
>> Reagan campaigned more than once on eliminating Social Security and
>> the Welfare state. Yet as President, he "saved" SS, expanded welfare
>> spending and was instrumental in extending free phone service to the
>> poor.
>>
>Reagan never had a Republican House and only had a Republican
>Senate for a few years so he had to make compromises.

He had it for his first six years.

>Even Bush
> with control of both houses for 4 of his eight years couldn't
>push SS privatization through.

The voters soundly rejected it. And three years after Bush's
"Privatization Tour" ended, they were proved right. Wall Street
tanked and nearly took the whole planet with it.

>> Republicans campaign endlessly about smaller government and balanced
>> budgets, but every time a Republican gets into the White House, debt
>> growth explodes, and Reagan grew government faster than any President
>> in half a century.
>>
>Again, that was the Democrat Congress at work.

Sure, right. No matter how much power the GOP has, everything is the
Dems' fault. Keep believing that, Sparky, if it helps you sleep at
night.

Reagan, that great, modern conservative, with the help of Republican
Senates for six of his eight years, grew the government payroll by 66%
and tripled the national debt. Unless you're willing to admit the GOP
is a collection of ineffectual wimps who couldn't even run a paper
route, you'll have to stop blaming the Dems. Then again, as long as
you're blaming them for all that government expansion, you might as
well credit them for the economic boom and the collapse of the Soviet
Union.

Iow, the buck stops here.

>To get the tax cuts he wanted he had to give on spending.

More BS. The majority of that spending was Reagan's own and in any
case, the biggest source of debt dollars was revenue loss and of
budget spending by the executive. Look it up. You'll be horrifically
surprised.

>WBush didn't have that excuse.

No, he didn't. The 2001 Senate was 50/50 until a Republican defector
gave it to the Dems on the thinnest of margins. But in the next
cycle, the GOP took it back. After eight years, the debt was doubled,
the banking system had collapsed, the economy had tanked and we were
in two wars that, 8 years after Bush, we're still fighting. Oh yeah,
and he destabilized the middle east empowering ISIS with self exiled
Iraqis and American weapons left behind.

>> The list of Republican betrayals of their promises is even longer than
>> the Dems' and far more visible.
>>
>You don't need to tell me that. It's way I left them 20 years ago.
>George Will recently followed suit.

It's going to be interesting to see if, after November, the GOP is a
regional party or a national one.

>> Since at least Eisenhower, free trade has been a GOP mantra while Dems
>> favored protectionism and tax sanctions for American companies moving
>> jobs overseas. But to hear Republicans talk these days, free trade
>> agreements like NAFTA (negotiated by Bush 41) and the TPP
>> (negotiations begun by Bush 43) are destroying America while Congress
>> refuses to change the tax code to remove tax incentives for
>> eliminating jobs in the United States.
>>
>That's the Trumpists saying that. Most GOPers still support free trade.

Yes and many Dems support them.

>> These are reasons why the GOP rank and file nominated Donald Trump and
>> why many Dems crossed over to vote for him. They're sick of
>> Washington's forked tongue.
>>
>If ever there was a year for a third party candidate to make some
>noise it is this year but voters have become to accustomed to Coke or Pepsi.

Agreed, but this year is special. Both candidates terrify pretty much
everybody and more than at any other time, the populace is going to
turn out to vote against the one they fear most.

The Trumpsters are hoping to keep Johnson from doing as little damage
as possible while the Dems are hoping libertarian minded Republicans
who're disenchanted with the mainstream and hate Trump and Clinton too
much to vote for either, will bleed votes off Trump and leave her in
the White House.

[Governor Swill]

On Sat, 9 Jul 2016 19:00:19 -0600, Just Wondering <fmh...@comcast.net>
wrote:

>On 7/9/2016 12:12 PM, Governor Swill wrote:
>> On Sat, 9 Jul 2016 betweentheeyes wrote:
>>
>>> Swill did similar in a different thread. She's unable to follow
>>> the replies and respond, instead responding to a reply by someone
>>> else. It F's up a thread discussion when / if you attempt to
>>> straighten out her mess.

You never did answer my question. You wanna lick my balls or not?

>> Do you not understand Usenet norms? It's perfectly acceptable, in
>> fact, useful, to reply to more than one respondent in a post.
>>
>Possibly, but not the way you did it.

Exactly the way I did it. If you'd bothered to use your eyes, you
would have noticed the >> marks in front of what I replied to weren't
the same as the > mark in front of your text.

Going forward, that means the reply was intended for whoever wrote the
text following >>.

Usenet 101:
Above, what you wrote has > in front of it.
What I wrote has >> in front of it.
What betweenthecheeks wrote has >>> in front of it.

So if I reply to >>>, obviously I'm replying to betweenthecheeks.

[Governor Swill]

On Sat, 9 Jul 2016 19:02:43 -0600, Just Wondering <fmh...@comcast.net>
wrote:

Aw . . . you're only saying that because you don't know any better.

I didn't "bury" the piggyback, it was the *first* line of text at the
very top of the post.

And yes, you CAN reply to an up level post and it's perfectly
acceptable form. That's why up level quoted text is preceded by
differing numbers of > marks to start with, so you can tell how far
back that bit goes.

Another way you can tell if a reply is meant for you: Read the text
replied to. If you didn't write it, the reply isn't yours either.

[Governor Swill]

On Sun, 10 Jul 2016 12:42:06 -0000 (UTC), betweentheeyes
<between...@supportingthe2nd.org> wrote:

>Governor Swill <governo...@gmail.com> wrote in
>news:rpf2obdjthg24mkae...@4ax.com:
>
>> I don't have a problem with that. Donald is clearly the more
>> dangerous of the two.
>>
>>> These are hands down the two worst choices the major parties
>>> have offered us in my lifetime.
>>
>> Ditto.
>>
>>>There has been no Democrat nominee I would put below Hillary and
>>>no Republican nominee I would put below Donald. Even if you told
>>>me my one vote would decide who won the state of Ohio and Ohio
>>>would decide the outcome of the election, I still wouldn't vote
>>>for either of them.
>>
>> Swill
>
>You're voting for Clinton, good girl!
>Excellent, a Clinton woman
>https://youtu.be/-dY77j6uBHI

You're just scripting again. Try reading what you replied to, STUPID.

[bigdog]

On Monday, July 11, 2016 at 10:12:21 PM UTC-4, Governor Swill wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Jul 2016 bigdog wrote:
> >On Saturday, July 9, Governor Swill wrote:
> >> >Jesse Ventura won the Minnesota governor's race running
> > a third party candidate but those are the exceptions. Ross
> >Perot and John Anderson both got significant percentages in
> >the popular vote when they ran. George Wallace was the last
> >third party candidate to win electoral votes back in 1968.
> >Teddy Roosevelt was the last third party candidate to finish
> >ahead of one of the major party candidates. Dissatisfaction
> >is so high this time that it wouldn't surprise me if Gary Johnson
> >drew high single digit or even low double digit percent
> >of the popular vote.
>
> I'll be surprised if he doesn't take double digits but that will
> depend on him having a presence in the debates. Imo, the "rule" that
> candidates must poll at least 15% to be included supports D and R at
> the expense of all others. Letter writing campaigns to the major
> sponsors, League of Women Voters, CNN, Fox and MSNBC for example,
> demanding Johnson be included might help. Perhaps the Libs and some
> disaffected D and R voters might be induced to help with that.
>

Yes, it is a rigged game and that's the way the Dems and GOPers want to keep it. I liken them to Coke and Pepsi. While in theory they are competitors, they are also partners in keeping the lion's share of supermarket shelf space among the two of them, squeezing out other brands. That's certainly what our major parties do. They will tell us the two party system has served the country well. In fact the two party system has served the two parties well. For the country, not so much. As Jesse Ventura astutely pointed out, we have just two significant parties in this country. That's just one more than they had in the Soviet Union.

> >> Nor I. The question is, where will those votes come from? The
> >> libertarian wing of the GOP, the libertarian wing of the Dems or both?
> >>
> >Chuck Todd despite his lefty leanings is pretty astute at crunching
> >numbers. He has said historically third parties draw equally from
> >the majors for the first 10% or 5% from each major party.
> >It's when they go above that 10% threshold that they begin
> >to draw more from one party than the other.
> >That's what Ross Perot did in 1992.
>
> Anderson Cooper once said that the reason the media appears to lean
> left is that, as a reporter, when you get out and about in the world
> doing stories and see the suffering across the planet, it evokes in
> you feelings of compassion and empathy.
>

That's fine if you are a commentator. But then don't try to pass yourself off as a journalist. A journalist reports the news. He isn't an advocate. You're either one or the other but you can't be both.

> >> >We get the government we deserve. Every four years voters
> > complain about the choices the Democrats and Republicans
> >offer them yet they refuse to consider alternatives. Until that
> >changes they will continue to be offered the buckets of shit
> >the major parties choose to nominate.
>
> As Paul Begala has recently noted in the context of gun control, any
> voters who don't like it have only themselves to blame. This is also
> true of the current dissatisfaction. Ds and Rs alike keep voting
> party line despite the failure of their pols to keep their promises.
> This leaves the less organized swing voters to choose between the
> lesser of two evils, neither of which they like.
>

People are more concerned with having their team win as opposed to how their team will govern. All they care about is whether the candidate is wearing a red or blue jersey. The really don't care about the quality of the person wearing that jersey. That's why most Americans continue to vote D or R. In the past few election cycles I've encouraged my Republican friends to consider the Libertarian Party candidate knowing they weren't enthused about McCain or Romney. Their answer was they didn't want to see Obama win. Those same people will vote for Trump because they don't want to see Clinton win. I know it won't happen but if somehow the GOP convention would endores Gary Johnson and he became the defacto alternative to Hillary, I think he would have a much better chance of winning than Trump. I'd give him a 50-50 shot. At this point I'd make Trump a 2-1 underdog.

> >I am more familiar with those of my generation (boomers)
> >and most of them vote for a candidate based on whether
> >he/she is wearing a red or blue jersey. They often don't
> >even like the candidate they are voting for but when I ask
> >them why they don't vote for an alternative they keep
> >telling me they don't want to waste their vote.
> >That's when I start pulling my hair out.
>
> That's because they see it as a horse race and hope to be on the
> winning side so they can crow about it the day after the election.
> They don't understand that the vote is our VOICE. If our VOICE
> shouts, "I don't like any of the choices" loudly enough, the choices
> might get better.
>

I always bristle when I hear people complain about third party candidates taking votes away from one or the other major party candidate. This happens on the left and the right. You can't take something away from someone who didn't own it in the first place. My vote belongs to me, not any candidate. I cast itr for whom I choose. I don't owe it to anybody. Some on this board have chastised me for choosing to vote for Gary Johnson instead of Trump. They tell me a vote for Johnson is a vote for Hillary. No it isn't. A vote for Hillary is a vote for Hillary. By giving it to neither major party candidate I am playing no favorites. If they want to complain, they should complain about their primary voters who chose to nominate a dick.

>
> >> Why is Donald heading the Republican ticket? For decades the GOP has
> >> made promises they not only haven't kept, but have taken action in
> >> direct opposition to those promises.
> >>
> >That is true. What I can't understand is there was a maverick
> >candidate who really does believe in the things Republicans
> >have campaigned on but the primary voters rejected him in
> >favor of a bigot. I would have been happy to vote for Cruz. Never for Trump.
>
> Not Cruz. Too religious.
>

As a firm believer in separation of church and state, I too was turned off by that aspect of Cruz but I was all in with him on reducing government spending so I would have overlooked that. I think legal precedence would have prevented him from enacting a pro-Christianity agenda.

> >> Republicans have campaigned against illegal immigration for decades.
> >> But it was a Republican Senate and Republican President who eliminated
> >> penalties for hiring illegals and granted amnesty to millions more.
> >>
> >> Reagan campaigned more than once on eliminating Social Security and
> >> the Welfare state. Yet as President, he "saved" SS, expanded welfare
> >> spending and was instrumental in extending free phone service to the
> >> poor.
> >>
> >Reagan never had a Republican House and only had a Republican
> >Senate for a few years so he had to make compromises.
>
> He had it for his first six years.
>

You are correct. I thought he had lost it in the 1982 midterm but I checked and it was in the 1986 midterm that happened.

Reagan never had a Republican House and that is where spending bills originate.

> > with control of both houses for 4 of his eight years couldn't
> >push SS privatization through.
>
> The voters soundly rejected it. And three years after Bush's
> "Privatization Tour" ended, they were proved right. Wall Street
> tanked and nearly took the whole planet with it.
>

I think the voters never understood it. The proposals I saw would have allowed people to choose if they wanted a portion of the their SS funds invested in the market. Anyone who didn't choose to could have stayed with the system as it was. Democrats convinced them that privatization meant gambling everyone's trust fund in the market. That wasn't the case at all. The Dems are still playing that card in the Ohio Senate race running ads pointing out that as a Congressman Rob Portman supported privatization. They imply that would have meant gambling people's retirement in the market. Not the case at all.

> >> Republicans campaign endlessly about smaller government and balanced
> >> budgets, but every time a Republican gets into the White House, debt
> >> growth explodes, and Reagan grew government faster than any President
> >> in half a century.
> >>
> >Again, that was the Democrat Congress at work.
>
> Sure, right. No matter how much power the GOP has, everything is the
> Dems' fault.

Kind of like when the Dems still blame Bush.

> Keep believing that, Sparky, if it helps you sleep at
> night.
>
> Reagan, that great, modern conservative, with the help of Republican
> Senates for six of his eight years, grew the government payroll by 66%
> and tripled the national debt. Unless you're willing to admit the GOP
> is a collection of ineffectual wimps who couldn't even run a paper
> route, you'll have to stop blaming the Dems. Then again, as long as
> you're blaming them for all that government expansion, you might as
> well credit them for the economic boom and the collapse of the Soviet
> Union.
>

I have no problem admitting the GOP is largely a collection of ineffectual wimps which is why I left the GOP 20 years ago. The fact is money is appropriated by the House and the Senate and President either accept or reject what they enact. Republicans in the House and Senate aren't really interested in smaller government. For all their talk about limited government, they want to hand out goodies to buy votes and contributions just as much as the Dems.

> Iow, the buck stops here.
>

Reagan's priority was getting tax cuts and to get those he had to compromise on spending. Perhaps is greatest lasting legacy was indexing tax brackets to inflation which killed what was effectively an automatic tax increase every year.

> >To get the tax cuts he wanted he had to give on spending.
>
> More BS. The majority of that spending was Reagan's own and in any
> case, the biggest source of debt dollars was revenue loss and of
> budget spending by the executive. Look it up. You'll be horrifically
> surprised.
>

I am more than happy to credit Reagan with the federal government losing revenue.

> >WBush didn't have that excuse.
>
> No, he didn't. The 2001 Senate was 50/50 until a Republican defector
> gave it to the Dems on the thinnest of margins. But in the next
> cycle, the GOP took it back. After eight years, the debt was doubled,
> the banking system had collapsed, the economy had tanked and we were
> in two wars that, 8 years after Bush, we're still fighting. Oh yeah,
> and he destabilized the middle east empowering ISIS with self exiled
> Iraqis and American weapons left behind.
>

And Obama has doubled the debt again. And continues the wars.

> >> The list of Republican betrayals of their promises is even longer than
> >> the Dems' and far more visible.
> >>
> >You don't need to tell me that. It's way I left them 20 years ago.
> >George Will recently followed suit.
>
> It's going to be interesting to see if, after November, the GOP is a
> regional party or a national one.
>

I would like to see it blown up and a new coalition party put together from the remnants.

> >> Since at least Eisenhower, free trade has been a GOP mantra while Dems
> >> favored protectionism and tax sanctions for American companies moving
> >> jobs overseas. But to hear Republicans talk these days, free trade
> >> agreements like NAFTA (negotiated by Bush 41) and the TPP
> >> (negotiations begun by Bush 43) are destroying America while Congress
> >> refuses to change the tax code to remove tax incentives for
> >> eliminating jobs in the United States.
> >>
> >That's the Trumpists saying that. Most GOPers still support free trade.
>
> Yes and many Dems support them.
>
> >> These are reasons why the GOP rank and file nominated Donald Trump and
> >> why many Dems crossed over to vote for him. They're sick of
> >> Washington's forked tongue.
> >>
> >If ever there was a year for a third party candidate to make some
> >noise it is this year but voters have become to accustomed to Coke or Pepsi.
>
> Agreed, but this year is special. Both candidates terrify pretty much
> everybody and more than at any other time, the populace is going to
> turn out to vote against the one they fear most.
>

Two bad they won't turn out to vote for someone other the the D and the R.

> The Trumpsters are hoping to keep Johnson from doing as little damage
> as possible while the Dems are hoping libertarian minded Republicans
> who're disenchanted with the mainstream and hate Trump and Clinton too
> much to vote for either, will bleed votes off Trump and leave her in
> the White House.
>

Polls indicate Johnson at this point is getting a significant number of Sanders supporters as well. Earlier this year in a LP debated hosted by John Stossel, Johnson went so far as to say of all the candidates still running in the two major parties, he found himself more closely aligned with Sanders. I'm betting the feeling with a lot of Sanders votes might prove to be mutual.

It's a long shot but I would love to see Johnson win enough electoral votes to deny either Clinton or Trump a majority. I wonder how many states he would have a realistic chance. I think likely places would be states that have a history of electing independents in statewide races. Off the top of my head that would be a few New England states and Minnesota.

[Governor Swill]

--
"If Donald Trump is our standard bearer,
what's happened to our standards?

[Governor Swill]

On Wed, 13 Jul 2016 07:35:41 -0700 (PDT), bigdog wrote:
>People are more concerned with having their team win as opposed to how their team will govern. All they care about is whether the candidate is wearing a red or blue jersey. The really don't care about the quality of the person wearing that jersey. That's why most Americans continue to vote D or R. In the past few election cycles I've encouraged my Republican friends to consider the Libertarian Party candidate knowing they weren't enthused about McCain or Romney. Their answer was they didn't want to see Obama win. Those same people will vote for Trump because they don't want to see Clinton win. I know it won't happen but if somehow the GOP convention would endores Gary Johnson and he became the defacto alternative to Hillary, I think he would have a much better chance of winning than Trump. I'd give him a 50-50 shot. At this point I'd make Trump a 2-1 underdog.

I agree with all of this.

Swill

[Governor Swill]

On Wed, 13 Jul 2016 07:35:41 -0700 (PDT), bigdog wrote:

>On Monday, July 11, 2016 at 10:12:21 PM UTC-4, Governor Swill wrote:
>As Jesse Ventura astutely pointed out, we have just two
>significant parties in this country. That's just one more than they
>had in the Soviet Union.

Looked at another way, it's *twice as many* as the USSR had. :) But
yes, you are quite right.

>> That's because they see it as a horse race and hope to be on the
>> winning side so they can crow about it the day after the election.
>> They don't understand that the vote is our VOICE. If our VOICE
>> shouts, "I don't like any of the choices" loudly enough, the choices
>> might get better.

>I always bristle when I hear people complain about third party
>candidates taking votes away from one or the other major party
>candidate. This happens on the left and the right. You can't take
>something away from someone who didn't own it in the first place. My
>vote belongs to me, not any candidate. I cast itr for whom I choose.

And if you choose the third party candidate who cannot possibly win
instead of your second choice, you have deprived that second choice of
your vote.

>I don't owe it to anybody. Some on this board have chastised me for
>choosing to vote for Gary Johnson instead of Trump. They tell me a
>vote for Johnson is a vote for Hillary. No it isn't. A vote for
>Hillary is a vote for Hillary. By giving it to neither major party
>candidate I am playing no favorites. If they want to complain, they
>should complain about their primary voters who chose to nominate
>a dick.

A small dick. I hate to say it but after over forty years of voting
across party lines, in 2012 I voted my first straight party ticket in
support of Obama, who I actually liked. But now, I have to do it
again. The more I listen to conservatives, the more I see of their
real political positions, the more I'm driven away from my original
party of choice.

>> Not Cruz. Too religious.
>>
>As a firm believer in separation of church and state,
>I too was turned off by that aspect of Cruz but I was
>all in with him on reducing government spending so
>I would have overlooked that.

You drank his koolaid too? Except on certain social issues,
Republicans haven't been conservative since Jan 20, 1981. Reagan
campaigned on smaller government, low taxes and balanced budgets but
it was all a sham.

"“No amount of budget reductions, even if they had been politically
palatable, could have balanced California’s budget in 1967. The
cornerstone of Governor Reagan’s economic program was not the
ballyhooed budget reductions but a sweeping tax package four times
larger than the previous record California tax increase obtained by
Governor Brown in 1959. Reagan’s proposal had the distinction of being
the largest tax hike ever proposed by any governor in the history of
the United States.”[1]"
<http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/2154/reagans-forgotten-tax-record>

>I think legal precedence
>would have prevented him from enacting a pro-Christianity agenda.

I wasn't worried about a Christian Agenda, I was worried about
Christian judgmentalism affecting his political philosophy and the
Supreme Court appointments he would try to make.

>You are correct. I thought he had lost it in the 1982 midterm
>but I checked and it was in the 1986 midterm that happened.
>
>Reagan never had a Republican House and that is where spending bills originate.

Um, per the Constitution, *tax* bills must originate in the House.
Spending can originate from House, Senate or, as is most often the
case, the Executive.

>> > with control of both houses for 4 of his eight years couldn't
>> >push SS privatization through.
>>
>> The voters soundly rejected it. And three years after Bush's
>> "Privatization Tour" ended, they were proved right. Wall Street
>> tanked and nearly took the whole planet with it.
>>
>I think the voters never understood it.

They understood it right enough.

>The proposals I saw would
>have allowed people to choose if they wanted a portion of the
>their SS funds invested in the market.

Which tanked three years later.

>Anyone who didn't choose to
>could have stayed with the system as it was. Democrats
>convinced them that privatization meant gambling
> everyone's trust fund in the market. That wasn't
>the case at all.

Doesn't matter whether it was 40% or 30% or 5%. The voters were too
savvy to risk their SS funds in unstable private sector markets. SS
is what it is precisely because it's guaranteed to be there. That's a
guarantee the investment houses and markets couldn't make and three
years later, we saw why.

I have wondered if the administration saw 2008 coming and maybe, just
maybe, Bush was trying to funnel some capital into the markets to
delay the inevitable.

>The Dems are still playing that card in
>the Ohio Senate race running ads pointing out that as a Congressman
>Rob Portman supported privatization. They imply that would have meant
>gambling people's retirement in the market. Not the case at all.

It is exactly the case, but let's be specific here. People are
already gambling much, if not most, of their retirement in the
markets. SS is the one part of that future income that isn't a
gamble. You know it'll be there. Even if the Great Depression came
back and your entire investment portfolio lost 80% of its value, you'd
still have that dependable base.

THAT was what the voters feared risking, that one little bit of
guaranteed retirement income.

>> >> Republicans campaign endlessly about smaller government and balanced
>> >> budgets, but every time a Republican gets into the White House, debt
>> >> growth explodes, and Reagan grew government faster than any President
>> >> in half a century.
>> >>
>> >Again, that was the Democrat Congress at work.
>>
>> Sure, right. No matter how much power the GOP has, everything is the
>> Dems' fault.
>
>Kind of like when the Dems still blame Bush.

Like when Republicans still blame Clinton?

Different animal. The point is, a Republican President and Republican
Congresses made decisions that didn't pan out and now try to blame on
a Democrat minority they did everything in their power to minimize at
the time. Reagan added almost twice as much to the existing debt as
all other previous Presidents COMBINED. Blaming the minority party
won't work. Reagan could have vetoed any spending he wished and it's
unlikely the Dems could have overridden.

It wasn't the Dems jacking up military spending or crashing tax
revenues with massive, temporary tax cuts, it was Reagan. Did he have
to grease Dem palms with legislative concessions and spending they
wanted, of course! But the point is he only had to do that because of
the massive amounts he wanted to spend.

Why else did debt growth jump up so high when the GOP took over two
thirds of the government? Jimmy Carter was a Democrat and so were his
Congresses. One of them had a filibuster proof Senate and his
deficits and debt were nowhere near Reagan's.

And the debt kept piling up until a Democrat got back into the White
House. Then the debt growth rate slowed dramatically. Clinton put
less on the debt in 8 years than Bush 41 did in just 4. And that
doesn't even take inflation into account. Clinton put less on the
debt than Reagan did without even adjusting for inflation.

Federal taxes remained at lower rates than under Carter. Clinton also
restrained spending even as Republicans fought tooth and nail to spend
every penny they could and gut his fiscal restraint policy. Why would
they do that? Because a Democrat was keeping a Republican promise to
be fiscally responsible.

Republicans love to claim it was the GOP in Congress who cut that
spending growth but that's just an outright lie. Consider this proof:
As soon as the White House went GOP in 2001, all that massive debt
growth came rushing back with the GOP still in charge in Congress!

>> Reagan, that great, modern conservative, with the help of Republican
>> Senates for six of his eight years, grew the government payroll by 66%
>> and tripled the national debt. Unless you're willing to admit the GOP
>> is a collection of ineffectual wimps who couldn't even run a paper
>> route, you'll have to stop blaming the Dems. Then again, as long as
>> you're blaming them for all that government expansion, you might as
>> well credit them for the economic boom and the collapse of the Soviet
>> Union.
>>
>I have no problem admitting the GOP is largely a collection of
>ineffectual wimps which is why I left the GOP 20 years ago.
>The fact is money is appropriated by the House and the Senate
>and President either accept or reject what they enact.

In theory. Bills aren't passed in a vacuum and handed blind to the
Executive. In reality, they negotiate back and forth continually.
When a President is on record as stating he WILL veto such-and-such a
bill under certain conditions, Congress doesn't bother sending it to
him unless they have an override majority, or can attach something
else the President wants really, REALLY, badly to it.

>Republicans in the House and Senate aren't really interested
>in smaller government. For all their talk about limited government,
>they want to hand out goodies to buy votes and contributions
>just as much as the Dems.

Exactly. But of the four Presidents preceding Obama, the only one to
actually shrink the government was Clinton who cut the number of
federal employees by 22%. He was also the only one to cut cap gains
over the course of his Presidency.
http://reagan.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004090

>> Iow, the buck stops here.
>>
>Reagan's priority was getting tax cuts and to get those he
>had to compromise on spending.

I'm sure he did, but not to the tune of nearly 2trillion dollars. His
defense spending alone doubled and that *was* a Reagan imperative.
http://reagan.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004090

The revenue loss was the biggest problem with the deficits. He cut
too deep in 1981 and spent the rest of his Presidency raising taxes a
bit at a time trying to deal with it. Of course he didn't call them
"tax increases". Oh no! The White House described them as "revenue
enhancements" - as big a pile of government doublespeak as any
Democrat ever uttered.

>Perhaps is greatest lasting
>legacy was indexing tax brackets to inflation which killed
>what was effectively an automatic tax increase every year.

Which Reagan delayed for four years after its passage.

"There were 11 major tax increases during his administration. And this
doesn’t count the fact that Reagan intentionally delayed the start of
tax indexing, which was part of the 1981 tax bill, until 1985 so as to
capture a lot of anticipated bracket-creep for the Treasury. In fact,
it was the failure of inflation to come in as fast as White House
economists expected that created much of the deficit problem."
http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/2154/reagans-forgotten-tax-record

>And Obama has doubled the debt again.

No, no he hasn't. He was handed a 12T debt and will leave behind a
20T number. Under Bush, the debt went up 123%. Under Obama, it will
come in at about a 60% increase. That's a reduction in debt growth of
roughly 50%.

>And continues the wars.

""In Tampa, the Republican argument against the president's
re-election was actually pretty simple - pretty snappy.
It went something like this: We left him a total mess.
He hasn't cleaned it up fast enough.
So fire him and put us back in." -- Bill Clinton"

Bush started those wars with no clear idea of where they were headed
or what might happen. Like the proverbial bull in a china shop, in
2006 his party got it's ass kicked ending a ten year streak of
Congressional control and he had to confront what he'd done. So he
stood there like a deer in headlights and said, "mistakes were made."
Well, DUH.

>> >> The list of Republican betrayals of their promises is even longer than
>> >> the Dems' and far more visible.
>> >>
>> >You don't need to tell me that. It's way I left them 20 years ago.
>> >George Will recently followed suit.

One of the few Republicans who wasn't a wild eyed shill for every
radical and special interest group willing to stuff a little cash into
his wallet. I left the GOP in 1992. The debt had exploded and wasn't
slowing down, the 91 recession hit me very hard and I saw the power of
the Church increase dramatically. I haven't voted for a Rep President
since though I have voted GOP for other offices.

>> It's going to be interesting to see if, after November, the GOP is a
>> regional party or a national one.
>>
>I would like to see it blown up and a new coalition party put together from the remnants.

Dramatic and emotionally satisfying, yes. But far more likely it will
split with the main wing siphoning conservative and socially
conservative Dems off into a more centrist party (resembling the
Nixon/Eisenhower GOP) leaving the Dems with the hard left and hanging
the hard right out to flap in the breeze with the Libertarians.

>> Agreed, but this year is special. Both candidates terrify pretty much
>> everybody and more than at any other time, the populace is going to
>> turn out to vote against the one they fear most.
>>
>Two bad they won't turn out to vote for someone other the the D and the R.

I'll be paying attention. There are conditions under which I'd vote
for Johnson. For example, if Trump weakens or ever trails Hillary in
my state near the end or if it appears the Senate (maybe even the
House) is going to switch parties again.

But rule #1 remains, "NEVER TRUMP".

>> The Trumpsters are hoping to keep Johnson from doing as little damage
>> as possible while the Dems are hoping libertarian minded Republicans
>> who're disenchanted with the mainstream and hate Trump and Clinton too
>> much to vote for either, will bleed votes off Trump and leave her in
>> the White House.
>>
>Polls indicate Johnson at this point is getting a significant number
>of Sanders supporters as well. Earlier this year in a LP debated
>hosted by John Stossel, Johnson went so far as to say of all the
>candidates still running in the two major parties, he found himself
>more closely aligned with Sanders. I'm betting the feeling with a lot
> of Sanders votes might prove to be mutual.

Wishful thinking. More Sanders voters have turned to Hillary than
Hillary voters had turned to Obama at this point in 2008.

>It's a long shot but I would love to see Johnson win enough
>electoral votes to deny either Clinton or Trump a majority.
>I wonder how many states he would have a realistic chance.

Zero. Ok, maybe NM if they REALLY liked his governorship there.

>I think likely places would be states that have a history of
>electing independents in statewide races. Off the top of my
>head that would be a few New England states and Minnesota.

Not enough to win EC votes. Remember, with rare exceptions, you have
to take 50%+ of the vote in a state to get that state's EC. Do you
foresee any states giving him that many votes?