Comments

1
Meanwhile, Trump keeps coming out with new sex scandals, and Hillary's emails are a treasure trove of corruption.

Great job, America.
3
@1, No, Hillary's emails are a treasure trove of nothing really.
Trump's taxes would be a treasure trove of privilege and foreign influence by most guesses. Trump's foundation is a treasure trove of money laundering and embezzlement, and Trump is a treasure trove of misogyny, rape, racism, xenophobia, sexual assault, corruption, tax evasion, failure to pay workers, and all sorts of other nasty shit.
Jill Stein is just a treasure trove of stupidity.
I'm with Hillary who is the only one out of the bunch with any ability to actually do the job they're all trying to get.
4
British comedians definitely have an influence on how I vote. Especially since Great Britain has shown the world how well it's politics is going these days. His wife is an Iraq war veteran. You remember the Iraq War, right? That little war Hillary Clinton voted for. Back before she campaigned against Barack Obama on an anti-marriage-equality platform. And before she became the most failed Secretary of State in American history (but there's still time to win that title, John Kerry!)

All the arguments against third (and fourth and fifth...) parties are the very same arguments in favor of just one party. You remember the great Empires of the World that had(ve) only one party. We know how that ends up. Not so good for the gays. Or anyone.

I've been trying something since I voted for Bill Clinton and was rewarded with that whole mess: I vote third party. Since doing so, I have discovered I don't have to hate either of the two party candidates. I don't have to tell them to fuck off. I don't have to write hateful screeds against their right to run for office. I don't have to lose any sleep. And it's because I don't have to vote for either of them. It's so freeing not having to vote for a seventy year old crazy person and, instead, vote for a party that was always for LGBT rights, women's rights, an end to the drug war, humane immigration policy, and anti-war. They won't win. But I do.
5
Mounting evidence that there is in fact a segment of the electorate which has even less of a sense of humor than the far right.

@1 Those earth-shattering emails don't seem to be having much of an impact. I'm still pulling for Vlad and Julian though. I have faith they will come through and save American democracy in the end. Somewhere buried in those treasure troves is the smoking gun: that email where Clinton thanked Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi for his donation to the foundation and assured him that security would be light on that fateful night in Benghazi.
6
Just look at those responses! Such is the way of the wingnut: everyone who disagrees with them must be a paid shill. Because no actual thinking human being could possibly hold differing views, much less ones they are capable of articulating and supporting with reasoning and evidence!
8
Who knew Gary Johnson's skin was as thin as Trump's? The reporter was lobbing Johnson a softball question, fully allowing him to spout a boilerplate answer that he's no doubt rehearsed ad nauseum to the most common question that comes up regarding his run, and he just starts barking at a reporter for even voicing it.

@1, 5: Yeah, these two candidates are not comparable in terms of crookedness. Watch John Oliver's previous video on the subject. I'll even jump it to the summary for you, so you don't have to invest a full 20 minutes into it. [Link] Or you can start at 12:08 [Link] to get the summary on Hillary, and how even with her faults, she is still miles ahead of Trump in terms of accountability for previous mistakes.
9
Headline:

Should You Click If You See The Words 'Shreds', 'Destroys', 'Obliterates' Or 'Shuts Down'?

Rule of thumb: if the headline ends in a question mark, the answer is no.

Anyone ever notice how all these people and things that keep getting destroyed and obliterated and shut down are still around?
10
@9 ok I won't click on your imaginary headline.
11
3
Mmmm..….
Koolaid.
12
Totally agree Dan. To all those people who claim they won't vote for the lesser of two evils, recognize that's ahistorical. even as far back as the election of 1800, our very own Alexander Hamilton wrote:

“In a choice of Evils let them take the least – Jefferson is in every view less dangerous than Burr.”
13
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Wow. Burr must have been quite a badass..

Because what's a little slave rape among friends?
And keeping your own biological children as slaves?
Pshaawww….

Your founder of the Democrap Party was quite a guy.
14
Cthulhu 2016
Why Vote for the Lesser of Two Evils?
15
Greens have run for and won local elective office. Here in San Francisco, we had four electeds in the mid 2000s. What was the local Democrat Party's response? To make our electeds offers they could not refuse, threatening them with political extinction unless they switched parties and played ball. Even then when they got the chance, they marshaled resources to extinguish them.

In many states, third parties must run presidential and receive a vote threshold to retain ballot status. The Democrats and Republicans have it in their power to liberalize ballot access laws but will do nothing of the sort.

It is never okay to demand that people vote YOUR instead of THEIR values and to shame people when they don't. It is irrational to demand that people vote YOUR instead of THEIR values in states that are not in play electorally unless you flunked out of the Electoral College.

When the choices are to vote for the war criminal or the right wing xenophobic populist, then it is perfectly fine to opt out. That Clinton has been leading in the polls by an insurmountable margin for the past six weeks and that the clamor against voting Green has only grown with her lead, then there is something else going on here.

Liberals and Democrats have become so domesticated that they seek to achieve social status within the in-group by performing outrage as a demonstration of fealty to the tribe.

When the elites from both parties, the military contractors and finance, are solidly behind Clinton II, then this portends a potential single party unification of party, military finance and the state--a classical definition of fascism. The sad truth might very well be that the shortest path out of neoliberalism and neoconservativism might very well be over the dead political bodies of the Clinton Democrats.

Irrespective, I am voting Green.
16
@4: This wasn't about "the arguments against third (and fourth and fifth...) parties", it was about third party choices for President of the United States. I'm guessing that he, like Dan and others, can see a value in third parties being on city council and various local offices. But to think that a plurality of voters will out of the blue vote for a third party person is a bit silly, no?
17
……….dispatch from the front lines of The Revolution……..

Just voted.
Had to show a photo ID.
What a racist country…..

Some background;
We vote in a county in which more that 90% of the ballots in the primary were GOP.
Today is the first day of early voting.
This afternoon we were the 400th voter.
That is more than usually early vote the whole election.

18
@13, I agree, I think Jefferson is one of early america's greatest monster, but Hamilton's endorsement was right: Jefferson had beliefs, Burr had none. Though idk why you, presumably a right winger, would hate Jefferson.
20
@8 Let me sum it up in one sentence, "being less corrupt than Donald Trump is a low bar to cross." If being less corrupt than Donald Trump is the only standard we have for Presidency, then why am I not a viable candidate? Why is Joe Exotic not a viable candidate? We're less corrupt than either Donald or Hillary. They're both awful people who believe in awful things (even if Hillary has tenuously adapted her campaign rhetoric to the post-Sanders world).
21
How many times did George Washington say, "Shut ur very punchable british face."?
22
If Romney had been elected in 2012, we wouldn't be in this mess.
23
Wow. Judging by this responses, people who support third-party candidates are narrow minded zealots with little logic and no humor. And maybe a little tinge of xenophobia and propensity to violence? (Are third party voters just Trumpists who don't like the Donald??)

This wasn't a screed against third parties. It was a close look at these two specific candidates -- who happen to be absurdly ill-equipped for the job, flat out moronic, and pandering to special interests -- which actually bemoaned the fact that in the US we don't seem to get a decent choice between two or even five.
24
Oh for fuck's sake. Let's stop with the "pox on both their houses" bullshit. Trump is far, far worse than Clinton.

Thought experiment: imagine you met someone who had literally never heard of Trump or Clinton, and you wanted to explain what made them so awful. With Trump this would be easy: "He sexually assaults women. He mocks the disabled. He mocks veterans. He has no political experience at all. He can't focus. He's easily provoked. Etc." Now imagine how you'd build the case against Clinton: "She used a private email server." "So?" "Because [__]. Also, she deleted personal emails." "And? I delete my emails all the time." "Oh, that's bad because [___]." Etc.

See the difference? Trump's horribleness is self-evident. Any decent human being immediately knows why he sucks. Even my preschooler knows you shouldn't yell or make fun of people. Clinton's horribleness is contrived. You have to get reeeeeally far into the weeds to show why something she actually did (as opposed to shit she never did) is supposedly so bad. It's almost like the GOP is picking random things no one has a moral opinion on, then insisting those things are horrible and thus Clinton is horrible.

No, wait. That's EXACTLY what the GOP does.
25
How many viable parties would we need to have a tolerable alternative on offer?
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@22: It's in your best interest that you stop reminding us that you were R-Money's resident supporter around these parts. It doesn't do you any favors.
27
#16 it is an extension of the same argument. If it is impossible to vote Republican, which it is because ten thousand reasons, and it is impossible to vote for Libertarians because all the reasons, and it is impossible to vote Green for all the reasons Dan screams about, then what we ARE talking about is one party. If we can't vote more right and we can't vote more left then... what are we talking about here?
28
@20 one additional criterion you'd fail: if you were President you'd fuck up the job real bad. Nothing personal, I would too. So would Jill Stein, another bozo like the rest of us except a bit more woo-woo. Trump on the other hand would be the most fucked up fuckup in the world history of fuckups. Johnson, yeah Aleppo, but he would be a notch up in probability of not-fucking-up, libertarianism and all. And Clinton, who whatever you think of her has a reasonable chance of not completely fucking the pooch.

Which of course is the problem, for the teen chaos magickian types and rage junkies.
29
Venn @ 25 - it depends on what your definition of 'viable' is.
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@22: Yes, we'd be in a thoroughly different mess.
31
Ms Thinking - True. Maybe one ought not to have high standards for the office. (I spare the assembled company a reference to The Three Sisters and the differences between Mary's and Sophy's expectations of a husband.)
32
@24 - I agree, especially that Trump's issues are self-evident. However in talking to those who hate Hillary Clinton, their views are different. They say, "She had her political rivals killed", "She let our people in Benghazi die", "She helped/condoned her husband sexually assault women", "She's a career politician and therefore corrupt/on the take/etc." The facts really don't support these accusations, but on the other hand, things you (and I) regard as self-evidently wrong are things many people are perfectly okay with: sexual assault of women, making fun of people, being crude, rude, and unqualified for office. It's shocking, I know, but there's a big segment of our population who WANTS an unqualified buffoon in office. I think they believe it will be funny (and a middle finger to the 'powers that be'), they think they have nothing to lose, and they hope that such an idiot will disrupt and derail the political process so they can hopefully reshape it into something more beneficial for themselves.
33
Mr.Venn - in case it wasn't already true and evident enough, T***p has turned running for political office into a Jerry Springer-like spectator sport. And not a particularly sporting sport, at that. The challenge, for extra points, is to maintain even reasonable expectations of the highest office.
35
@27: If you can't vote for the Republican and you can't vote for the Libertarian and you can't vote for the Green what are you left with? The Democrat. And what are you supposed to do if the Democrat is someone you don't like very much? How about, you should have worked harder during the primary to get the person you really wanted on the Democratic ticket, instead of the "at least she's not a Republican" candidate. And you get to work on the next election, because this particular one is already decided. That doesn't mean you give up, it means you failed this time, and you dust yourself off and vote for the person who's not a Republican, and keep working. Voting isn't the end or the beginning of representative government, it's just one part of it. Would you have been happy to vote for Bernie Sanders? Let's see Bernie's take on what the next steps should be: https://newrepublic.com/article/137103/b…
36
Personally I'd rather vote for someone who blanked on what Aleppo is than a candidate who wants to suck us into another Unwinnable Middle Eastern War.

I may not agree with every one of Governor Johnson's positions but at least he's consistent.

Gary Johnson 2016!
37
I've never cared for the fame-slut, shock-jock-wannabe rants of Dan Savage. This article makes me question the fundamental worth of The Stranger. Defending the not-very-quietly-Republican #ShillaryKillary and the #FalseBinary #RiggedDuopoly is anti-survival, anti-logic and anti-Democracy.

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