Last Night I Dreamed Again

733 thoughts on “Last Night I Dreamed Again”

1. I’ll be voting for Trump, even though it’s very unlikely that he’ll win Illinois.

   While I understand your dislike of Trump and really don’t think he’s going to be a great President, I also can’t buy the “Great Monster” view of him that the News Media & Liberals are pushing.

   Hillary is the “Great Monster” and must be fought.

   Unfortunately, voting Trump is the only legal way of fighting her. 😦

   1. I’ll be voting for Trump, even though it’s very unlikely that he’ll win Illinois.

      I live here in Illinoisy too, south of the I80 dividing line between the sophisticated, cosmopolitan, northern part, and the redneck hillbilly south. If all the closet Trump supporters actually get out and vote, and I know quite a few, and at least half of them have not voted since 1988, Trump may surprise Hellary.

      Trump’s a clown, but not evil, Hellary is an evil clown who’s not even bothering to hide her true self any more.

      Too bad Scott Walker and Ted Cruz flamed out…..

      1. My concern about Illinois is the Dead Vote. 😉

         1. Who knew so many of the dead were already walking among us? Gotta say, the zombie apocalypse isn’t turning out quite as I imagined.

         2. To her dying day my wife was convinced that her dead mother was still voting the straight Democrat ticket in Glen Ellyn.

            1. In 2014, my wife was asked by the Will Co republican chairman to help supervise a vote re-count in Cook County. She got access to the voter rolls and looked up all her family members that had died in the last 40 years. All of them had been removed from the rolls and none had voted in the last 30 years.

         3. So – a spinoff from The Walking Dead called The Voting Dead?

      2. Ted Cruz did not flame out, Trump was covered for in the media and given totally disproportionate media coverage.

         1. Yep. Exactly this.

            1. Ted burned brightly as long as it was even remotely conceivable he could win, then he bowed out so as not to become a joke with an eye to the fight in the rubble come 2020.

               Early R open primaries leveraged by other-side party-directed crossover ops launched Teh Donald, and then the Bush-or-Bust wing of the R side made sure Trump would win by keeping far too many not-Donald candidates in the race past the first debate to try and hand it to Jeb! on his families heirloom silver platter.

               Fixing that massive systemic process failure will likely consume the Republican Party, but that process will be far, far easier than any fight to try and pitch out The Dowager Empress.

               1. Yep. Mr. Trump played the media, the GOP kept out the actual conservatives in order to push Jeb! And Jeb lite and here we are.

                  Side note: one of my friends, a registered Democrat, and union shop steward has gotten two ballots so far.

         2. Definitely a large part of it, yes.

         3. Of course the mainline media played up Trump: They try to swing things for the GOP candidate they think is easiest to defeat, then hammer him. The other bright spot is that this may well come back to bite them.

         4. Not to mention Kasich stayed in to make sure Cruz’s vote would split…this week Kasich “courageously” wrote in McCain.

            AFAIAC Kasich is currently exhibit one in why the GOP needs to give way to a real opposition (although due to US legal structures it will probably be the GOP in name).

      3. I, too, am from Illinois (i think I’m form the same town as Paul, actually), but I’m also…not there. I’m in the Red Sea, actually. And even if I’d requested an absentee ballot in time, we haven’t gotten mail in about two months, and we probably won’t get any until the middle of this month, if then. So, yeah.

      4. Oh how I wholeheartedly agree about Walker and Cruz. They were my choices. I dreamed, futilely, that would be the ticket. Walker/Cruz or Cruz/Walker would’ve had my enthusiastic vote. My dream team! But, alas. However, I can’t agree about early voting being an evil. I’m old and crippled. I can’t get in those long Election Day lines. My sister used to stand in line for us before early voting. I sat and waited. Then I got quite seriously accused of line jumping. The next year is when we got early voting. I also think it encourages more folks to vote. I like it. But open primaries? Oh those need to die in a fire! We started that in Texas and I loathe it with every fiber of my being. Who’s bright idea was that?

         1. yes, yes.

         2. Early voting is still an evil. Sorry, but it is. Making exceptions for “old and crippled” by having a handicapped voting line (like parking spaces) I have no issue with. I’ll even serve you guys cookies.

            1. WARNING! Do. Not. Accept. The. Cookies.

               Not unless you are unconcerned about Russian hackers publishing your email.

            2. In Wake County, NC (Raleigh area) there is a handicapped spot, and they will even bring the book and your ballot out to your car so you can sign in and vote. One year someone fussed at me because I insisted on getting out, grabbing my walker, and standing in line.

            3. Early voting is still evil.

               Why?

               1. because one of the parties manufactures votes to meet the gap. so if they know by how much they’re losing…
                  Think back to when Reagan won. If we hadn’t taken them by surprise…

                  1. Like the box of votes that surfaced just in time to put Gene Talmadge over the top, way back in the days before early voting?

                     1. whatever, Kevin, but why make it EASIER?

                        1. My point is that it doesn’t. Those aforementioned votes surfaced when most ballots were paper and tallied by hand. And allegedly it didn’t prevent it from happening in the 1960 election in places Nixon could have contested but chose not to. Going to a machine makes it more difficult (not impossible, mind). I have greater confidence in my early vote than I would an absentee ballot.

                           So far I’ve early voted twice. Once when my father had a doctor’s appointment, and this year because I wanted to be sure to vote on several issues and there’s the aforementioned issue with our sort of work. Early voting makes that possible when it might not be otherwise.

                           You know I’ll argue with a sign post, but I’d have to see some sort of indication that early voting made it easier to commit fraud because I’d accept that.

                           You might be interested in that this time people were waiting to early vote. Very heavy turn out. It will be interesting to see if that’s an indication of turn out on November 8th.

                           1. Your counterargument only demonstrates that cheating is possible without early voting. To demonstrate that early voting would not make it easier to cheat, you’d need to have some way of comparing how hard it was for them to come up with the a plausible number of votes back then, when you didn’t get the results until after the election, vs. how hard it would be to pull the same trick now when early voting gives you a pretty good idea of what the percentages are.

                              I believe that Sarah is correct, and early voting makes it easier. Let me demonstrate with a thought experiment. Let’s pretend that we are dirty rotten fraudsters planning to steal the vote in Crook County. Let’s further stipulate that in order for our “found ballot box” to look plausible, we need to put our candidate over the top by no more than X votes. To make the math easier to do in our head, I’ll say that X is 200, but just scale the numbers as appropriate. The ballot boxes typically hold Y votes, and I’ll arbitrarily say that Y is 2000. (Again, in comparing to any real situation, just scale the numbers).

                              Here’s what we would have to do with no early voting: prepare five (or so) ballot boxes, with the following vote counts:

                              Box A: 1800 votes for our guy, 200 votes for the other guy
                              Box B: 1600 votes for our guy, 400 votes for the other guy
                              Box C: 1400 votes for our guy, 600 votes for the other guy
                              Box D: 1200 votes for our guy, 800 votes for the other guy
                              Box E: 1100 votes for our guy, 900 votes for the other guy

                              (Of course, the actual numbers we’d prepare for each box would be more like 1103 to 897, to make it less obvious.)

                              Now, if the other guy has beat our guy by 100 votes, we break out box E. If he beat our guy by 300 votes, we break out box D. If he beat our guy by 1000 votes, we break out box B. And so on — and then we toss the other ballot boxes in the bonfire to destroy the evidence.

                              Now, if we already know (from early voting) that the other guy is on track to beat our guy by about 1000 votes, all we have to do is prepare box B. So we only have to manufacture two thousand ballots, instead of ten thousand. Voila! A lot easier.

                              A source of real-world data might be to compare voting patterns in counties that institute early voting, after vs. before they institute it. Does that result in a significant shift in election results, as compared to the general election pattern in that same election? E.g., if that county instituted early voting in 1979 and the next Presidental election went more widely Republican than ever before, but so did the whole state, that’s not per se an indication of cheating. If that county’s voting pattern stayed very much as it had been in 1976, yet the rest of the state EXCEPT for the early-voting county shifted hard Republican, then that’s an indication that someone used the early voting data to cheat with. However, I don’t have that kind of hard data readily at hand. It shouldn’t be too hard to find if you know where to look, I just don’t know where to look.

                              I understand that early voting is extremely convenient for a lot of people. But I agree with Sarah: the cost is too high for the relatively small benefit it gets us. The few people who get to vote because they COULD not have voted on Election Day are completely disenfranchised, and then some, by the extra fraud that it enables.

                           2. The other part of early voting that makes it easier is simple: if you aren’t checking id (and that would include comparing things like addresses for tax filings, government documents, etc.), then even if the real voter shows up at a different time, who’s the ringer? One or both would have to have their ballots invalidated. At least with same day, there’s a chance they would run into each other.

                           3. Yes, exactly that.

                           4. Also, count in the people who showed up to vote: 1/3 of the precinct I watched and who were told that they had already voted. They were told they could vote “provisionally” but that’s a sop. those votes dont’ get counted unless the total is tight, and anyway, how do you REMOVE the false vote.
                              If it’s all in one day, how in hell do you tell people they voted earlier or by mail? Particularly if it’s early in the morning.

                           5. Try putting “Broward county voter fraud” in your search engine …

                              “The state GOP alleges that officials in Broward County, which includes Fort Lauderdale, have been opening tens of thousands of vote-by-mail ballots prior to them being cleared for counting.

                              “Chairman Blaise Ingoglia told Shapiro that ‘Florida law prescribes that when the supervisor of elections takes in all these ballots, they have to be approved by the canvassing board.’

                              “Therefore, the officials have no legal authority to open the ballot “envelopes.
                              http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/11/02/broward-county-voter-fraud-fl-gop-opening-mail-ballots-vote-election

                              Even if nothing improper is being done to/with those ballots, this violation of procedure taints any presumption of confidence.

                              Of course, how much difference could a few tens of thousands of votes in Florida male?

                              Any acts that diminish confidence in the validity of our voting are effectively crimes against the legitimacy of the State and should be prosecuted as such.

                           6. One of the behavioural patterns observed locally with early voting is “Community Leader” holds a rally, giving out free stuff to attract attendees, whips up the crowd and herds them onto buses to “Go Vote” for OUR candidate. Hordes descend on polling place, where many people insist they are registered, overwhelming safeguards, poll watchers, etc. The effect is to deploy a Cloward–Piven strategy on that polling place.

                              Can anybody be confident that voters are not slipped a $20 for getting on that bus? Can anyone state with confidence that the Community Leader isn’t compensated for the number of people on those buses?

                           7. That is correct, to a point. The problem is keeping a running tally during early voting. That it’s illegal isn’t the issue; voting fraud is illegal, too, and that doesn’t seem to matter much. With paper ballots, such as absentee ballots, it’s easier as it’s a matter of monkeying with envelopes and box seals. With machines it becomes a bit harder. With some, that go into separate modes, it’s harder still because the final mode, that gives results, is often different than the balloting mode, and going back to balloting means resetting the machine. Here we get into seals and basic security and such. Executing a man-in-the-middle attack would be hard to detect without examining the code, and applies to all machine voting; it’s also, depending on the machine, a bit harder to pull off.

                              Basically, on some machines, this means you can only see how many people have voted (ours displays that you’re voter number so-and-so when you’re making your choices). Then it’s a guessing game of how each person came through might have voted rather than a hard count.

                              What I am uneasy about is the potential of November 8 “glitches,” particularly in areas thought to favor certain candidates. While this should force a fall-back to provisional ballots, that opens the door to more monkeying. So it was that when I early voted because I didn’t know if we’d all be working and unable to go to the polls, it was in the back of my mind that at least I had my vote down in the event something like that happened.

                              FWIW, I didn’t early vote lightly. I gave some thought to the potential of monkeying before I ever went, including looking into the machines used again.

               2. Also, early voting lets candidates lock in votes before they’re fully vetted. That’s what the campaign is for, after all.

                  1. And when would that be? You mean to say there’s not going to be voter’s regret on November 9th? What about immediately after leaving the polls? Does that means everyone should wait and cast their vote as late as possible on election day?

                     There’s always some sort of cut-off point. There’s nothing magical about the first Tuesday in November.

                     1. Actually, there is. It’s been US law since 1845. Did you know that Minnesota opened early voting on September 23, before the first presidential debate was held? That’s what I mean by voting before the candidates have been fully vetted. Early voting is a terrible idea, at least voting for a month or more before actual election day.

                        1. Means nothing. Odd are most of us here had our minds made up about the candidates before the conventions. You are always going to have no information voters, which is why campaigns stick out all those signs near the polls: they’re trying to trigger a name recognition response. That’s why it’s a mild dirty trick to send goons around yanking up signs right before an election.

                           In reality you’ve got roughly 30% who will vote their party regardless. Of the remaining 40%, most of those make up their mind way in advance. The remainder include those who never watch a debate, don’t keep up with politics, and care just enough to vote but not enough to look into candidates or platforms. You could move the elections to the first Tuesday in January and they wouldn’t be vetted any more than they would on September 23.

                           Do you think anyone was really shocked about Hillary’s e-mails last week? That’s like the scene in Casablanca where what’s-his-face is shocked, just shocked, that there’s gambling at Ricks even as he collects his winnings.

                           1. One thing casts doubt on your estimates, Kevin: the fact that “October surprises” actually work. I.e., with the parties’ voters so evenly balanced, the number of undecideds whose votes can be affected by late vetting is still high enough to be worth substantial effort.
                              For that reason, for all voters (including those who try to stay open-minded as late as possible) to be able to make their actual voting decision from the same information, I don’t see any good reason for any significantly early voting. Maybe one day’s worth, if there are really enough absentee ballot requests caused by schedule conflicts on 2nd Tues November.

                  2. OTOH, it does make it hard to time your lies so that they hit without enough time to be debunked.

            4. I would distinguish early voting, which I did, in person at the County Courthouse, ID required and shown (Indiana) 2 days ago, from the ripe for fraud use of mailed out and back absentee ballots. In Indiana, the rules on these changed to DIS-ALLOW a challenge to the ballot because the signature on the ballot envelope does not match the voters official signature in the poll book. I resigned as an election Inspector (in charge of a polling place) when this went into effect. And some states have all of their balloting done this way – WTF !!!!

               Danger: opinion light on:
               Yes, I did vote for Trump. Hillary is and always has been too evil, too corrupt, and too hostile to America and the Western Civilization that allowed this nation to grow over the last 200+ years.
               Hillary would (G-d prevent her from doing so) set fire to what is left of productive and independent America and lock the doors after doing so.
               Trump, as a businessman appears to be a chameleon – putting on whatever face, and taking whatever action is necessary, to get the deal done, but he has worked with real products and people, and is, I think, less likely to accept or propose plans (as opposed to goals) which can not work.
               I realize that many of the goals he has stated are not possible without legislative cooperation which he will not get, but that may be another stick with which to beat the GOPe.
               I KNOW that he will get NO respect, courtesy, covering up, or shilling from the MSM, and that may actually be a check on some of his crazier ? did I just suggest a spectrum of crazy there ? ideas, and it may turn out that he gets almost nothing done in 4 yrs (if he lives past inauguration).
               On the other hand, I can well imagine what this nation will look like after 4 yrs of Hillary, and the lifetime of the Supreme Court she would appoint.

               The other danger I fear, is that the powers aligned against free Americans in favor of centralized and globalized government will use his election as an inflection point and tank the economy generally, in April or May of 2017, which would allow both the GOPe and the Dems to have someone to blame who is not them.
               JPDev
               I think that I will go drink now – it just seems time for that.

            5. Hear. Hear.

            6. The problems with early voting is why I dropped my ballot in the box on the day of the election, and not before.

               1. late the day before, but…

         3. Actually, it could get worse then open primaries. States get to determine how to pick electors. As this election nears, there are a significant number of districts in California where the only Republicans on the ticket are Trump-Pence. There’s absolutely nothing in the U.S. or California Constitution that could keep the California legislature, soon to once again have a super-majority of Democrats on both houses of the state legislature, from doing the same thing to the Presidential election. An open primary, period, and top two vote getters are on the ballot, no write-ins permitted in the general. It would be Clinton and Sanders on the ballot in California.

            1. There is a [woman] FEC commissioner who was instrumental in installing that obscenity in California and who wants to do it nationwide. I believe I have seen reports of her being highly touted for a Cliinton Administration post but cannot lay hand upon such articles. (Those curious might search articles at Washington Examiner from the last couple months.)

            2. Amusingly, in the first California election after that stupid rule was implemented, two Republicans ended up as the only candidates on the ballot in a heavily Democratic district. There’d been so many Democrats running that they’d ended up splitting the Prog vote into too many parts, and the two Republicans had ended up with the largest shares.

               Though it’s worth noting that having Clinton and Sanders as the presidential candidates probably wouldn’t change the overall vote all that much, given how much of a lock on things Los Angeles and (even more so imo) San Francisco have on things here.

      5. Too bad Scott Walker and Ted Cruz flamed out…..

         I honestly thought Walker was what a lot of people claim Trump is (and to a degree they are right): someone ready and willing to fight. I was very excited when he announced and was ready to go.

         1. Yeah, really too bad he dropped out. Walker was one of those that I would have enthusiastically supported if he won in the primary, along with Rand Paul.

   2. I don’t understand the GOP hostility to Trump, unless you personally stand to lose money, power or influence as a result of his election. He has flip flopped no more than Romney. His attack on trade policy is basically that they are poorly negotiated. He says he will make Mexico reimburse the cost of the Wall. Given he can suspend NAFTA through executive action, why wouldn’t they pay? I am actually with JFK and Speaker Rayburn on trade, but the Democrats have for years sought adjustment assistance. I think the real reason people oppose Trump is he is a loud New Yorker. We have not elected a New Yorker since FDR. Trump is from the old Tammany wing of the Democrats, just like Senator Moynihan. If he wins, he will be a great president.

      1. Sigh. you know, I didn’t grow up here. I’m not against loud new yorkers. Actually I rather like them.
         Trump is exactly like Romney moved far far to the left, yes. If you thought Romney was a RINO, then Trump is a democrat in GOP clothing.
         His economic theory is loony — and I mean really frigging loony, go listen to his speeches — he’s promising to help the working class by engaging in a trade war that will raise the price of things they NEED ten times. He’s promising to bring work back to the US which he can’t do without ABOLISHING minimum wage. And even if the legislative branch let him do that (and I agree that would be a great idea) his supporters would be really unhappy at less than $5 an hour, particularly with tariff-enhanced prices for everything.
         Next — his tactics were cut throat in the primaries, but not in the general, when he seems rather hapless.
         His solutions are always top-down statist.
         And his supporters think making up insults is the height of political discussion, and seem to think anyone who can’t prove pure-white pedigree should be deported.
         This is living out the “Mexico will pay for the wall, believe you me” which if he believes, he’s also completely crazy.
         What you have to ask yourself is this: IF you were doing a hostile take over of the GOP, how would it be any different?

         1. ““Mexico will pay for the wall, believe you me””

            His proposed tax on money remitted to Mexico would be one way to pay for it, as would withholding Social Security payments ordinarily sent to the Mexican government on behalf of their citizens working here legally.

            Many of his proposals are not so loony if you make certain assumptions which may or may not be valid. Trump hasn’t sufficient track record to evaluate, but several of his economic advisers are not smoke & mirror specialists (see: Larry Kudlow)

            Whether and how much Trump attends to their advice is a whole ‘nother question, but unlike Hillary, Trump is not ideologically committed and, more important, will not be insulated from criticism of any bad effects that result from his policies.

            Of curse, also unlike Hillary, Trump can be assured his policies will be criticized for any bad effects that occur without regard to whether his policies caused, exacerbated or are even relevant to those effects. (See: Reagan, homeless epidemic)

2. Know the feeling … of having to choose between the unspeakable and the even more unspeakable. A couple of my neighbors (long-time Democrats) who have opened up to us are in despair. They cannot abide Hillary …

   1. Hillary has declared war against the Constitution and huge swathes of American demographics. I voted against her last week.

      330 million Americans, and we can only choose between *those* two morons?

      People keep thinking my Powerball Election system is a joke.

      1. Right now, I’d be willing to risk. Yes, I know d@mn well I should NOT be President of the U.S.A. but considering the top FOUR choices… I have my doubts I could do any worse than any of the lot. Ouch.

         Let’s try International Diplomacy, Alex.

         ‘Problem: Iranian backed parties carrying out attack on US ships in the Gulf.’

         “My fellow Americans, recently there have been attacks on US ships in the Persian Gulf. It has been said that the Iranians are behind these. Iran has stated that no Iranian vessels have attacked any US vessels. We shall take them at their word on this. As they are not Iranian vessels, Iran will have no issue with our new policy that any such harassing vessels will be sunk – with no need to consult up the command chain. Our navy knows what to do. They can do it without wasting time fussing over it.”

         1. I like it. I have always thought that the default stance for our military should be “If it shoots at you, destroy the F&*|( out of it!” Make that absolutely clear to the entire world. Publicly reiterate that position whenever there is a chance. Make sure EVERYONE knows about it. That way when our ships are attacked and some idiot little nation cries about our response (and they will because the whole thing is just grievance bait). The President should shrug and say “Well, can’t say we didn’t warn you”.

            1. That was once the way it worked. Through the Reagan administration, anyway.

               An excited aide once called Ronnie at his place in California, where he was on a short vacation. He woke him up at oh-dark-thirty to tell him someone had attacked a US ship off the coast of Africa.

               Reagan told him “the Navy knows what to do about it, I’ll look at their report tomorrow” and went back to sleep.

               The media had a full class-A freak-out over it, but I thought it showed that the President had confidence in the military being able to handle a tactical situation without the CIC breathing down their neck.

               Not like a later incumbent, who actually had a radio link so he could tell a sniper when to pull the trigger…

               1. I had that incident, and Reagan’s response, in mind. I just barely didn’t add a “There is no need to wake the President” line.

         2. With policies like that, you clearly might make a better president than any of the current probable choices. Sad, but true.

   2. I was musing over the choice and realized that while both candidates are liberal Democrats, there is a significant difference. Teh Donald is a passive liberal, Hillary is an active liberal, a Progressive.

      This means Trump, when faced with a problem will reflexively offer a liberal policy response. There is increasing reason to believe he can reach out for and accept conservative responses, but his first reflex will be liberal. Hillary, OTOH, will actively seek out “problems” in order to impose liberal “solutions” to them, such as we have seen the Office of Civil Rights do to address the collegiate “rape culture.”

      Given the choice between a passive tyrant and an aggressive one, there is really little choice.

      1. Even while we wish there was a non-tyrant choice.

         1. From your lips to God’s ear, Sarah.

   3. Last election, I saw Pres. Obama signs. This year not a one.

      Last election, no Mr. Romney signs, this year loads of signs touting Trump/Pence.

      Though I will admit, when talking to one such sign-placer (a local farmer) he seemed to see it as a polite middle digit salute to all the pols who’d betrayed him. Our local GOP has.. issues. Though I’m really happy to be voting for one guy, a real Indy tea-partier and I’m hoping the kick-em-where-the-sun-don’t-shine Trump “supporters” like this guy, will vote the down ticket.

      God willing and the creeks don’t rise.

3. I am still voting for Johnson. I think it is not right for us to have to make this choice.

   1. A vote for Johnson is a vote for Hillary, sadly. Equally sadly, Johnson is an idiot.

      Either vote for the witch or beat her. Standing on the sidelines will not keep you safe.

      1. We *really* need to move to some form of preferential ballots — both for the final elections and the primary elections. This notion that “A vote for X is a vote for Y” is *exactly* why our candidates get worse every election!

      2. Sorry, I don’t buy that. A vote for Johnson is a vote for Johnson. Granted it doesn’t help to defeat Hillary, but saying it’s a vote for Hillary assumes that that given vote SHOULD belong to Trump.

         This attitude, that all “conservative” votes BELONG to the Republican party, has been pretty endemic to the Republican establishment for a long time now. Each election we are told “A vote for [anyone other than the Republican] is a vote for [Democrat]” and what do we do? We hold our noses and vote for the Republican even though we KNOW he doesn’t share our ideals. After all, the Democrat is worse… right? Maybe the next Republican will be good. But they never are, because the Republican party is no longer the party of small government staying out of the lives of the people. It is no longer the party of Liberty. And it does NOT own my vote. So whomever I vote for, it is not a “vote for Hillary” (unless it is… but yea, that ain’t happening).

         Whether Trump wins or loses, it’s all down to Trump. If he’s done his job and attracted enough votes to get elected, he will be President. If not, Hillary will be President. Period.

         1. “A vote for Johnson is a vote for Johnson.”

            It’s just math. If you’re voting for Johnson as a protest, that dilutes the Republican vote and gets Hillary elected. Clinton would have lost hard to Bob Dole if not for Ross Perot. Otherwise known as shooting yourself in the foot.

            Except this year it will be shooting yourself in the head, because Hillary is going to import half of Central America. Your vote will never matter again in your lifetime. This is your last chance to rush the cockpit and pull out of this dive.

            1. Problem One: Even if every single person who voted Perot voted for Dole, Clinton would still have won.
               Problem Two: Clinton is not going to be able to “import half of Central America.”

               1. Can you say that in German? Because Merkel doesn’t seem to get it…

               2. And what, pray tell, will stop her? Certainly not the law.

                  1. Logistics.

                     1. Logistics? The only logistics question I’m aware of is that there wasn’t a Leftist Supreme Court that would rule in favor of the “private” groups suing for requiring the states not to deny them anything they ask for.

               3. Even if every single person who voted Perot voted for Dole, Clinton would still have won.

                  I don’t think that’s correct… IIRC, that would have flipped enough states into the Dole column that he would have won the electoral count, if not the overall popular vote.

                  1. I’m looking at the vote count by state, and it looks like that would have flipped Nevada, Kentucky, Arizona, Oregon, Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee, Florida, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania–129 electoral votes.
                     Since the original result was 379-159, it looks like I was wrong–that would have resulted in a victory for Dole, 288-250.
                     That, again, assumes that everyone who voted for Perot would have voted for Dole if Perot was not in the race.

               4. No. Some of us voted for Maury.

                  And no, Clinton would’ve lost.

            2. I’m not entirely sure if Bob Dole would have won, if it weren’t for Ross Perot. Let’s face it: the people voting for Ross Perot were voting for him because they didn’t like Bob Dole *or* Bill Clinton. Now, granted, if they had voted for Bob Dole, he would have won…but we don’t know the motivations of these voters. How many voters would have stayed home, had it not been for Perot? Would Bill Clinton have had the House, had these people stayed home?

               Now, if we had a preferential voting system, it could very well have been the case that Bob Dole may have won…or Ross Perot…or even Bill Clinton…it all depends on what the secondary preferences of the people voting would have been like…

               Ultimately, we miss the point when we complain that Bob Dole lost because of Ross Perot: we ignore the fact that Bob Dole was, in many ways, a lousy candidate. We blame Perot, and the voters who went his direction, because Dole couldn’t attract enough votes, and it prevents the inner reflection necessary to fix the problems we have in our candidates.

               1. “…it prevents the inner reflection necessary to fix the problems we have in our candidates.”

                  Exactly! And they won’t DO that reflection, because they are too busy blaming the wrong people… and maths…

               2. My memory of that election is that there was considerable distrust of Bush 41 among conservatives, and it turned to disgust once his “Read my lips” pledge turned to “Kiss my hips.” The Berlin Wall had fallen, the Soviet Union was in shambles, and the theory was advanced in some quarters that it was better to be stabbed in the front than in the back, and that four years of Slick Willy would bring the nation to their senses. Conservatives stayed home in droves.

                  1. As we see, nations are NOT brought to their senses that way.

            3. The current of American politics flows Hillaryward. A vote for Trump is a vote against the flow of the current. A vote for Johnson (or Stein) is a vote across the current’s flow — it does nothing to alter our direction nor our momentum.

               It is not a vote “for” Hillary, but it is an irrelevant vote.

               1. How the vote goes depends on where you are. fivethirtyeight projects Trump 55.9% of the vote, Clinton 35% in my state. My vote for either of them is irrelevant. If I vote third party, I decrease very slightly the lockin of the Republicans and encourage the third party, both good things around here.

                  1. Yes, environmental conditions, even in political environments, tend to vary across localities. The one certainty is that politics (either party) tend to attract the sort of people who shouldn’t be trusted with governance.

                     1. Because by the nature of American campaigns, we elect people who are very good at competitive campaigning, not people who are proven good at governance.

               2. Based on what I’ve seen and heard, the only third party candidate who *might* have a chance of getting any electoral votes is McMullin. And that’s only if he manages to take Utah.

                  Disgust for Trump in Utah is pushing a lot of that, particularly since Trump attacked Romney over religious stuff right before the Utah primary. Mormons *really* don’t like it when people do that.

            4. That logic is decent if you’re in a swing state. But if you’re in a state like Texas or California which is going to go to one candidate in a landslide, then you can probably afford the luxury of a protest vote.

            5. Agreed 100 percent. The phraseology is both inaccurate and dumb as a sack of rocks.

               That said, IF you want to keep Mrs Clinton from aquiring the White House rather than the orange jump suit she deserves* you will vote for Mr. Trump.

               If you don’t care whether or not she wins, vote for anyone else.

               In summation: a vote for Johnson is a vote for “Meh. I don’t really care if Clinton wins.”

               Yes, it’s not fair. Or right. It sucks. You have my sympathies right up to the moment when you say “I think a Clinton presidency would Dilma the U.S. and a Trump presidency, distasteful as it could prove, would not.”

               Then I tell you to grow up.

               *hyperbole for rhetorical effect. They’ve got her picture in the dictionary next to privilege.

               1. It sucks hairy goatballs.

            6. “A vote for Johnson is a vote for Hillary”? “It’s just math”?
               If he votes for Hillary, will Hillary have more votes than if he votes for Johnson? Do you even arithmetic, bro?

               “This is your last chance to rush the cockpit and pull out of this dive.”
               I have heard some variation on that every single election I’ve been old enough to participate, to justify worse and worse Republican candidates. And I’m 47.

               1. Correction. You’re clearly not old enough, or haven’t read enough political biography. Trump is objectively, policy wise no worse than oh, Ford. And Romney was a vast improvement.
                  Is Trump a step backward, sure. And meanwhile the communists and their long march keep pushing FORWARD.
                  You can give us room to correct the step backward, or you can surrender to the long march.
                  Do what you have to do. I’m not pushing my decision on ANYONE. I don’t have enough liquor to share.

                  1. You make good points, and made a bunch more good points in the main article. The comment I replied to did not. 🙂 Whether I end up voting for Johnson or Trump, whether Hillary or Trump win, I will still buy you a drink if I ever meet you, and I will still need one myself.

                     1. We’re all going to need a lot of drinks. This election should do for bourbon what the last did for bullets.

         2. Plus it’s the same type argument progressives use. If you don’t support their cause you are “for” something terrible:

            Don’t like Obamacare? You’re “for” people dying in the streets.
            Don’t like gun control? You’re “for” kids getting murdered.
            Don’t support abortion? You’re “for” women dying in back-alley abortions.
            Don’t support Trump? You’re “for” Hillary getting into the White House and Destroying Everything!

            Screw that. I’m not a peasant who “owes” some feudal lord my loyalty and support no matter what.

            1. “Screw that. I’m not a peasant who “owes” some feudal lord my loyalty”

               Don’t like Feudalism? You’re “for” anarchy.
               (By edict of the Department of False Choices)
               😉

               1. Actually, it’s usually lack of support of some Important Government Program (like Obamacare) that “makes” someone an anarchist to a prog. Fah.

            2. Plus it’s the same type argument progressives use.

               It is also the same logic many, many pundits who are actively and viciously anti-Trump used to get people who didn’t like McCain or Romney (or W for that matter) to vote for many, many years.

               Their rejection of it when their preferred guy lost I think is where a lot of the middle-finger Trump voters (see comment above) have their origin. I know it only added to my conviction of, “this is not how I wanted to remove the GOP as it exists to create a genuine opposition but this is the chance we’re getting).

         3. “This attitude, that all ‘conservative’ votes BELONG to the Republican party, has been pretty endemic to the Republican establishment for a long time now.”–Stuart the Viking

            I disagree. That attitude is endemic to political noobs and the lazy. We who have been in “the Republican establishment” (a.k.a. the people who show up and do the work of rallying votes, raising money, staffing Republican field offices, attending state party conventions with maybe occasionally having won the privilege of being a delegate, and keeping the Grand Old Party in being between elections whilst the rest of America does their Rip Van Winkle impressions) know that every vote has to be earned. If we were dumb enough to think that any votes “belong to the Republican party” then we’d be like Trump who cares nothing about Get Out The Vote (GOTV) efforts.

            1. You have heard different comments from me as a poll worker. While everyone working the phones has sounded like that a lot of the paid staff have seemed upset they needed to bother with volunteers like me.

               I did notice a strong correlation between campaigns that won and campaigns that didn’t think that way. Then again, I worked for a candidate who lost twice for the same Congressional district (including 1994) and thought he was entitled to the GOP nomination the next year. He got it and we lost again.

         4. That’s because you think that the general election is a matter of voting FOR your preferred candidate.
            Sorry, but for most of the general elections in my lifetime, I haven’t really preferred either candidate – picky that way, I guess; so I see the general as a vote AGAINST the worse candidate of the two offered.
            It’s not as idealistic, but it’s more likely to have a pragmatically useful effect on how my life will be affected in the coming 4 years.

      3. I Live in New York, here a vote for Trump is a vote for Hillary. There is no way he is winning this state so I might as well vote to please myself.

         1. And yet one of my best friends in NYC has made the same foul bargain I have. Admittedly he’s the one that pushed me over the top. We spent some time drinking “together via phone” afterwards.

   2. I have long wondered if the Libertarian party is a front for something else…. ever since speaking to their first Presidential candidate; the man was a cipher with no opinions of his own.

      And check out what Lauren Southern has to say

      (from about 45 minutes onward)
      which comes as no surprise, but a sad confirmation of what I’d come to suspect: that the Libertarian Party is being wielded _by_ the Democratic Party to deliberately dilute the conservative vote.

      1. Connect even more dots- Fun stuff from MattBracken •
         “While we’re at it, why don’t we connect a few more of the dots. This comes from a thread at Breitbart on Valerie Jackboot from 3 years ago:
         “Obama just happened to know 60s far-left radical revolutionary William Ayers, whose father just happened to be Thomas Ayers, who just happened to be a close friend of Obama’s communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis, who just happened to work at the communist-sympathizing Chicago Defender with Vernon Jarrett, who just happened to later become the father-in-law of Iranian-born leftist Valerie Jarrett, who Obama just happened to choose as his closest White House advisor, and who just happened to have been CEO of Habitat Company, which just happened to manage public housing in Chicago, which just happened to get millions of dollars from the Illinois state legislature, and which just happened not to properly maintain the housing—which eventually just happened to require demolition.
         Valerie Jarrett also just happened to work for the city of Chicago, and just happened to hire Michelle LaVaughan Robinson (later Mrs.Obama), who just happened to have worked at the Sidley Austin law firm, where former fugitive from the FBI Bernardine Dohrn also just happened to work, and where Barack Obama just happened to get a summer job.”
         (In other words, liberalism has made us too naive and stupid to go on without a wholesale reboot.)”

         1. Not really. There is such a thing as coincidence, and it’s not surprising that the Obamas would have met while at work.

            1. Yes, and Jarrett’s parents worked in Iran for the Shah, and moved out when she was five years old. Also, Tom Ayers, CEO of Comm Edison in Chicago, and Frank Marshall Davis, Communist in Hawaii? How were they “close friends”?

               Obama’s association with Bill Ayers is damning enough; it doesn’t need to be backdated to a previous generation.

      2. I’ve met Dr. John Hospers. He was a soft-spoken man yet had very strong, well thought-out opinions.

4. On the other hand, Hillary is promising free college, free health care, and other positive liberties which POSITIVELY require the enslavement of half the population.

   By my calculation more than half the population would become enslaved. Those who receive the free largess from the government will find that the cost is their liberty, they will be owned by the government which provides for them. Those of the middle class find they are taxed, taxed, and taxed some more. Don’t let the talk fool you this will not be done by taxing the 1% or the 5%, as rich as they are, even should all ‘loop holes’ be closed, there just isn’t enough money. The government is and will continue to be financed by the working middle class. The middle class will have less and less left to take care of themselves, until they too fall into the grip of dependency on government.

   Excuse me, I think you hit a nerve…

   1. The government is and will continue to be financed by the working middle class.

      Quick check of above: Who made more money last year, Wal-Mart or Nieman Marcus? And the year before that?

   2. 1. Eat the rich. The poor are tough and stringy.

         Wasn’t initially a Trump supporter, but came around to it. In fact, the more I see and hear, the better I like him. He may well be the best chance to turn this country around that we’ll ever have.

         1. “Eat the rich. The poor are tough and stringy.”–Reziac

            Heh. I’ve resisted the idea of a wealth tax but the more of the ultra-wealthy’s political antics and meddling the more I come around to the idea of imposing one, good and hard. For example, Jane Fonda has had way too much money for a very, very long time. Let’s give her and a million other super-rich the Obammunist “at some point, you’ve already made enough” treatment along with a strong dose of Fauxchontas’s “you didn’t make that” as a chaser.

5. I’m keeping a very close eye on the polls. I really, really, REALLY don’t want to vote for Trump, and I really really want to be part of sending a message by voting 3rd party. But just between you, me, your minions, and the NSA, I can survive Trump. WE can survive Trump. We cannot survive Hillary.

   1. This. And the polls look dangerous.

      1. Agreed – which is why, as a resident of Illinois, I sincerely thank you for agreeing to hold your nose and vote for Trump in Colorado. I’m planning on voting for Trump here, but there is no reasonable possibility of him getting ANY electoral votes from Illinois. Worse, I’m pretty sure my wife is planning on cancelling my vote anyway … elections are not fun times in my house.

         1. Nor mine.

      2. She has a horrible combination of characteristics: She’s evil and LAZY. The Russians and Chinese and Iranians have all her e mails as Secretary of State because she didn’t bother to take much trouble over her bootleg e mail system. She went to bed while the ambassador and troops were dying in Benghazi. F*** the 3 AM call, it won’t wake her up.

         1. That last I will never forgive.

         2. H stands for Hubris. Hillary is so smart she doesn’t have to think.

   2. I too am watching the Polls very closely. I live in CA (maybe it’s advance penance for my sins!), where Hillary is pretty-much guaranteed to carry the state no matter what. Given that, I’m free to say “a plague on both their houses!” and vote in 3rd party land. If there was any chance that the state might be a close vote, I’d actually have to make a difficult decision…

      After all, a write-in vote for Cthulhu would just spoil my ballot. 😦

   3. Sadly, the polls are gamed. The good news is they’re nearly all gamed by NGOs and media organizations so you know they’re pro-Hillary Clinton. So it should be predictable. Whatever the polls claim (until a day or two before the election) is designed to manipulate voters in that direction.

      The bad news is a lot of these people are clueless: the alt right trolls gamed the faux 15 pts Hillary! lead beautifully.

      So who knows?

6. > the most corrupt places in the US. Really, Arkansas and Chicago?

   Erm, as places go, Arkansas is pretty clean. We’re poor enough there’s not much gravy to support real corruption.

   “Dollar Billy” Clinton bought a governorship with teacher union PAC money. And in ’92 the Party ran him as a candidate primarily because all the better-known possibilities were under indictment, had been laughed out of office, or were facing both in the near future. By Democratic standards Dollar Billy was sparkling clean.

   Very few people here believed the country was stupid enough to elect him to the Presidency. And then we couldn’t believe y’all would do it *twice*… But at least we were rid of him, and put his hand-picked successor in jail.

   It was quite interesting to see his “makeover” as soon as he announced he was trying for the Oval Office. Overnight he apparently gained 40 or 50 pounds, his careful Yankee-educated speech turned into semi-hillbilly, and we first heard of “Slick Willy”, which had Arkansans looking at each other and going, “Who?” And then we read about his political record and stances, which bore no relation whatsoever to his previous campaigning or acts while in office.

   Ah, politics.

   1. Now it’s pretty clean. Not in the nineties. I had friends from there rage-crying when Clinton won the presidency.

      1. I really wish I could say the same about Chicago and/or Illinois generally. I can’t. The graveyard vote is alive and well in Chicago.
         http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/10/27/2-investigators-chicago-voters-cast-ballots-from-beyond-the-grave/
         So are other types of fraud – but we’re by no means unique:

         Click to access VoterFraudCases-8-7-15-Merged.pdf

         Federal prosecutors keep putting Illinois politicians in jail. Just sad.

         1. Apologies for the double post btw – thought the first one had gotten lost in the system somehow.

      2. Unfortunately, it is still not clean in Chicago.
         http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/10/27/2-investigators-chicago-voters-cast-ballots-from-beyond-the-grave/
         http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-dead-vote-colorado-chicago-edit-0927-md-20160926-story.html
         They continue to send Chicago/Illinois politicians to jail at a very regular rate.

         1. I have a suggestion. Put all the Chicago politicians in jail right up front, and get it out of the way. That way they can do their jobs with minimal distraction, from a congenial environment. 😉

         2. Count your blessings.

            When you can’t send them to jail, that’s when you know we’ve lost.

            1. The place we’re at right now is that you can only send one party’s politicians to jail.

               1. And at times merely for the crime of being in that party.

                  Last Friday my first two thoughts at the “unprecedented” claims were 1992 (President an unindicted co-conspirator in charged announced the Friday before the election, charges later thrown out) and Ted Stevens (convicted just before the election on charges later thrown out).

                  1. Or Rick Perry in the primaries.

                  2. “Unprecedented” to hold a Liberal accountable to laws passed for the little people, political opponents and enemies foreign or domestic.

                     Holding Democrats to the same standard as everybody else is undemocratic. Remember, the law is a tool of the Haves to keep the Have-nots in their place. Hillary’s friends and mentors told me that back in the Sixties.

               2. For better or worse, here in Illinois, we still send crooked politicians from both parties to jail – even at the governor level. Which is to say, the entire !$#@ political culture in Illinois may well be crooked and/or not a good place for an innocent. Sigh.

   2. Reminds me of my US history teacher in high school, who had lived in Georgia (“the one in the North America, not the country”). She said that if you thought Jimmy Carter was liberal when he was president, you should have seen him when he was governor.

      1. The one is Georgia *is* a country, with its own Constitution, chief of state, legislature, laws, and army.

         Theoretically, it’s as independent as any of the members of the European Union.

7. My thoughts exactly. I am dismayed; I am appalled; I am disgusted.
   But it’s a choice between two modes of destruction, and one mode will be examined more thoroughly than the other.

   And who knows? Maybe the horse’s ass will sing.

   1. Sounds like Gozer the Gozerian is the one behind your election.

      1. Sadly, I’m not sure the situation is that good.

      2. *considers using “Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man” as write-in*

         Probably not, unless I find myself at the voting booth and it just… pops into my head.

8. We shall overcome. As I tell the congregation when it meets in the church building, times like this make the promise of the Kingdom of Heaven seem so clearer in contrast. Until we get there, though, we have a wild ride ahead.

   1. I wish there was a Constitutional provision for “Hang them all and start over.”

      1. Younger son said we need this, just last week. An option on the ballot, he said.

         1. The Daughter has proposed a None of the Above option that would: 1) would force a new election and, 2) disqualify any of the present candidates from running again — either permanently or for a prescribed number of cycles. (It all depends on how angry she is with politics and politicians at the moment.)

            1. I would modify that to have the candidates who lost to None of the Above summarily executed (assuming None of the Above actually won the election).

               1. I’d settle for the ability to vote against a candidate explicitly instead of having to vote tactically for someone else.

                  1. Hmmm … a two-column tableux?

                     Hillary Clinton …. For … Against
                     Donald Trump … For … Against
                     Gary Johnson … For … Against
                     Jill Stein ………… For … Against

                     To move on the the second round, a candidate’s “For” votes must exceed the number of votes cast “Against”? Can you cast multiple “Against” votes, e.g., “Against” more than one candidate?

                     Is president selected by the most votes “For” or the most net votes (“For” less the “Against”)?

                     Do you have any reason to imagine the types of people befuddled by the Florida 200.0 “Butterfly” ballot could successfully navigate that? Do you have any idea how difficult this would make it to round up a bus load from the retiree’s retreat and instruct them in how to vote? “I punched #2; they told me ‘punch #2’!”

            2. May have changed since then, but Nevada used to have “None of the Above” as a default option on the Presidential ballot. Reportedly during the 2nd Clinton go-round it got 8% of the vote.

               1. One poll offered SMOD as an alternative.

                  Double digits.

                  Among the independents, a dead heat with both Clinton and Trump.

            3. I wish….

      2. Oh, nice. Now I’ll be whistling the theme from Hand ‘Em High all day.

         1. Make that the theme from Hang ‘Em High.

            1. Anybody who’d make such a simple error maybe shouldn’t be voting in the first place, ever consider that?

               Too bad the Democrats of the South abused basic citizenship and literacy tests of potential voters so badly that the Black Robed Supremos banned their use.

               Talking about hanging or voting None Of The Above is just the lazy person’s way of trying to grab a moral high ground without doing anything to earn it. Shame, shame.

               1. Ahhh, it’s the troll from Insty who is trying to call us bad citizens because 99% of voters don’t get the personal begging he thinks is his due.

                  1. Nah, he thinks no matter how much you’ve devoted to the party you haven’t done enough and thus it is your fault the GOP is the way it is.

                     Some days he’s okay…others he annoys me enough I want to start talking about how he did 80 hours weeks every four years at phone banks for both his presidential and house candidate and has been a delegate at every GOP convention since 1848.

      3. That is EXACTLY what the Second Amendment was intended for. You simply have to want it badly enough.

      4. I suggest you brighten your election day reading Lone Star Planet by Piper.

         It’s in the PD…maybe for 2018 and 2020 we should fund a campaign to print 1 billion copies and distribute them as campaign literature…for the Democrat.

      5. “Hang them all and start over”, eh? Let’s first apply that principle to those purporting to be citizens yet failed to exercise Eternal Vigilance. Sleepwalking to Gomorrah (or shambling to Gomorrah as zombies, take your pick) is the usual course of most of the populace.

         Better voters, better politicians. The fault, dear TRX, is not in your Aristois but in yourself.

      6. As Edmund Burke observed, when it comes to that state, it’s war. You do not have constitutions during war.

9. Share your opinion. I’m going to be voting for Trump because I prefer the likely disaster to the absolutely certain disaster. And probably taking a bath in Clorox afterwards.

   I would love to take dowm the media but don’t know where to start. Newspapers and TV no longer get any of our money. Sadly, this does not seem to bother them. Suggestions? (Come on, folks. If the brilliant and ungovernable bunch that frequent this place can’t come up with some destructive ideas, we’re doomed indeed.)

   1. Create a KickStarter to implode the media buildings, with the media still inside?

      1. Hey, now, let me know in time to get out!

         Besides, the building I work in has other companies on different floors there.

      2. Just kill their telephone and internet connections – half of ’em wouldn’t know what to print if they couldn’t get the talking points from the others.

   2. I’ve been saying for years that we need new hard news outlets. Conservatives and libertarians seem to produce lots of commentary and little to no reporting. I kicked around some thoughts with the Kilted Coon a couple years back and came up with a ballpark $5M to get such an operation off the ground on a national scale, which isn’t unreachable, I just don’t have the time and energy to make it happen myself. You could do it at the state or local level for a lot less. *waves paper in the air* Good idea, free to a halfway decent home!

      1. Despite all the media, hard news is damned hard to come by.

         I can find lots of “personalities” babbling, but they never say anything informative.

         1. Good idea though. The MSM seems so enamored of their opinion journalists, you could probably hire away their investigative news reporters and it would be months before they found out!

            1. (Still might be understaffed, though…)

         2. The MSM is not in the “hard news” business.

            See: Same Candidates, Different Worlds
            Last night I was comparing campaign coverage on CNN and FOX News. It was like seeing two different realities.

            The MSM is in the “World View” business, tailoring the news to provide the safe space you desire.

   3. The media is in large part responsible for the current situation.
      I no longer watch network news or read the paper, relying on the interwebs and sites like this for information. Unfortunately lots of smart people still believe the bullshit from MSM and NPR. Talk about “selected not elected”!
      “Infoshops of Ishir” anyone?

10. A word from L. Neil Smith, several elections ago:

    http://www.lneilsmith.org/whyguns.html

    “If he makes excuses about obeying a law he’s sworn to uphold and defend — the highest law of the land, the Bill of Rights — do you want to entrust him with anything?”

    1. Having talked with L. Neil Smith, he has chosen to vote against Hillary the same way I have.

    2. I’d settle for a candidate who admits that the Second Amendment means what it says (Guarantees the right to the militia? Really? If an amendment said, “The existence of well-educated juries being fundamental to the proper functioning of trials, the right of the people to keep and read books will not be infringed” would you claim that the government can make laws banning books as long as those laws exempt people currently on juries?) and while s/he thinks guns are evil and should be banned, s/he loves the Constitution more than s/he hates guns and will support gun bans only via Constitutional Amendment.

       As far as I know, there are NO honest Constitution-supporting gun-banning politicians. I’m sure there are individual people who support the above position – it’s a big country – but the gun banners hate guns more than they love the Bill of Rights, and they lie to themselves about what it says.

       1. At a rough estimate there are 80 million families who own firearms in the US. The gun control crowd claim less, but that’s based on polls, and who in their right mind answers truthfully to questions about guns in the home from some anonymous voice on the phone or doofus with a clipboard at your door.
          Would a president Hillary abolish the Second Amendment? Of course not, too hard to do legally. Would her executive orders and nominees to SCOTUS neuter our 2A like a French Poodle? You betcha.
          If you believe that owning firearms is crucial to guaranteeing your fundamental right of self defense against all enemies foreign and domestic, then voting against HRC is your only sensible choice.
          All that said, I truly fear that she will still manage to steal the election, and in that case we can expect the country to be run in the same honest and open manner that the Clintons have always conducted business. In other words escalating unrest at home and abroad as our once proud country gets auctioned off to whomever has the cash in hand.

          1. Hillary has explicitly stated that she would nominate Justices who share her desire to undo the Citizens United and Heller decisions.

             Teh Donald has explicitly stated that he would select his nominees from the list of 20 or so names provided by the conservative constitutionalists advising his campaign.

             If Trump is lying that means he would select from the same pool Hillary would. For once in her campaign, Hillary ain’t lyin’.

             1. And her desire to repeal the PLCAA (gun manufacturers can’t be sued because criminals use guns) is worse, because it allows that “private sector” fig leaf that Leftists love when it allows Facebook and Twitter to refuse service but not bakers and photographers.

          2. I’m actually more troubled by Hillary Clinton’s position on the first amendment than on the second amendment. Don’t forget, Citizen’s United was about a “corporation” which was political action organization formed for the explicit purpose of damaging Hillary Clinton politically.

             I think you can make a moral case for abridging the political free speech rights of for-profit corporations. (I don’t see how to do it without making the media nobility, or without de facto government control over the media, but I see the moral case in the abstract.) There’s a real principal-agent problem. Even assuming the corporation’s management is solely focused on the corporation’s profits, and further correct that _AAA_ is the best way to maximize the corporation’s profits, how does he know that 51% of the shareholders wouldn’t prefer to sacrifice their money in exchange for supporting _BBB_ instead. And even if 51% approve, what about the other 49%? Don’t they have some sort of a right to stop their property from being used to support causes they despise?

             But Citizens United wasn’t about a for-profit corporation. Citizens United was about a bunch of individuals who organized in the corporate form for the explicit purpose of using their collective speech to harm Hillary Clinton. The issue there is black-and-white and it doesn’t depend on corporate personhood: any organization explicitly formed to say _CCC_ has at minimum the free speech rights of the least free person in the group, regardless of the form in which that organization takes. Since all Americans have free speech, any American organization explicitly formed to say anything whatsoever has full free speech rights.

             1. For-profit corporation shareholders who disagree with the corporate political expenditures can sell their shares. Union members who disagree with the union’s political expenditures can find other work.

                If corporations can be barred from political expenditures, so can unions.

                PACs, explicitly formed for advocacy of certain political principles should unquestionably be free to raise and spend monies without fear of harassment nor unduly onerous tax-compliance regulations.

       2. Hmmmm. Lawrence Fish? He wants to ban guns but only by constitution amendments because (and it warmed the cockles of my heart to read a dyed-in-the-wool prog write this) if we burned the 2nd Ammendment to get this Good Thing, what’s stopping us burning the rest of the Bill of Rights.

    3. L. Neil Smith kicks ass! I have a shelf full.

11. If you feel that bad about voting for either of them, then the worst thing you can do is compromise your conscience. Vote third party, Johnson or McMullin. McMullin looks liike he may actually take Utah, so there will be a lot of attention paid to who else votes for him. Both main candidates are so bad that saying one or the other will do slightly less damage isn’t the way to go.

    1. Third party presidential is not a vote, unless you already have a bunch of third party state, local, and congressional incumbents of your party. In which case it is no longer a third party.

       1. Then don’t vote that way yourself. As for others, it’s their choice.

          1. Every man has the right to be a damned fool. That does not mean he is right to be a damned fool.

             1. Nope. But he still has the right. And it’s not your (or my) place to force him not to be. Persuade, yes. But force, no.

                1. So? Suburbanbanshee is trying to persuade people not to waste their ballot on third-party protest votes. I don’t see any guns being held to heads here. What’s your beef?

                   1. Kind of belligerent there, aren’t you? And no, banshee wasn’t really trying to persuade anyone (or if so, was doing a pretty poor job of it). That was just a statement that a third party vote wasn’t really a vote, which is nonsensical on its face. And if you want to pick a fight over it, go elsewhere. Not playing.

                      1. Kind of belligerent there, aren’t you? And no, banshee wasn’t really trying to persuade anyone (or if so, was doing a pretty poor job of it). That was just a statement that a third party vote wasn’t really a vote, which is nonsensical on its face. And if you want to pick a fight over it, go elsewhere. Not playing.

                         The only one being belligerent here is you. Get over yourself.

                         1. Still not playing. Grow up.

                            1. Oooohhhh – nice job modeling civility there.

                            2. Not fighting with you either, no matter how much you try.

                         2. To be “fair”, I was close to the “line into getting angry”.

                         3. Mr Simon, you strongly disagreed with the man. Haven’t you been properly re-educated to appreciate how warlike that is?

                            Also, when someone writes a statement about a political belief, that is ONLY persuasive if the Approved Authorities agree that it is, or if every individual reading it, is, in fact, persuaded by it.

                            Silly fellow. When will you grow up and join the New Soviet.

                   2. “I don’t see any guns being held to heads here.”

                      Vote Trump or this story idea gets it right between the eyes.

                      “Vote Trump or I shoot this pun” is probably counter-productive, eh?

          2. It’s basic math:

             Let’s say there are 10 liberal voters, and 12 conservative voters.

             The candidates are Hillary, Trump, Johnson.

             9 liberals vote for Hillary.
             7 conservatives and 1 liberal vote for Trump.
             5 conservatives vote for Johnson.

             Hillary wins.

             This is how voting for a third party helps elect the candidate you like LEAST.

             1. Then convince those 7 conservatives not to vote for “the other major-party guy” but for the candidate who best represents their views. If you get the majority of them to vote for Johnson, he wins. It’s only if you buy into the idea that third parties are unelectable that the received view works.

                I won’t be surprised if either or both of the current major parties splinter after this election. The last time that happened was in the 1850’s, but the conditions now are roughly similar to what they were then.

                1. “Best Supports Their Views”?

                   As if the Libertarian Party really supports our views.

                   IMO the Libertarian Party should actually be the Libertine Party. 😦

                   Of course, from what I’ve heard Johnson is more Liberal than Conservative.

                   1. Then change Libertarian and Johnson to Constitution and Castle. The point remains valid.

                      1. So What.

                         Until this “Constitution Party” (which I haven’t heard about) gets strong enough to matter, then I’ll vote for the person with the “best chance” of winning that I can live with against the person that I seriously can’t live with.

                         No, for a Winning Third Party, you need to work to win local elections over a wide portion of the country.

                         None of this garbage of “focusing only on the Presidency”. 😡

                         For this current election, the only “winning” choices are Trump and Clinton.

                         To believe otherwise is “drinking your own ink”. 😡 😡 😡 😡

                         1. Yup, go ahead and vote for the lesser of two evils every time. See if you ever get anyone not evil in office.

                            1. Then Get Off Your Rear End and build a Party that would be a real challenge.

                               You haven’t provided me with a non-lesser-of-evils candidate who has a chance of winning and you blame me?

                               I live in the Real World not the Make-Believe World that you live in. 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡

                            2. For what possible reason are you getting so belligerent? If you’re not willing to help build such a party, then you’re tacitly indicating that you’re satisfied with the choices you have.

                            3. Because people like you “sneer” at people who “vote” the lesser of two evils but have not really provided an alternative.

                               I know that I’m not somebody who is able to build your “Fancy New Party” but the attitude of people like you also isn’t IMO the attitude necessary to build a “Fancy New Party”.

                               You people should have started decades ago but haven’t done shit.

                            4. You’ve really got an attitude, Paul. You’re assuming a position on my part that you know nothing about. Perhaps it’s best if we discontinue this discussion, since you don’t appear able to conduct it calmly. If you want to be civil, I’ll be happy to respond to you. But if all you want to do is insult me, we’re done.

                            5. …or vote for someone who doesn’t have a chance of being elected from your polity every time, and see if you ever get anyone not evil in office. The time to try for less/non-evil was during primaries; that opportunity is gone.
                               The margin between T & H, in this case, is what your vote affects: more T/less H, more H/less T, or no effect whatever.
                               If you agree that the purpose of government is primarily to protect your liberties, at least consider which candidate will likely do less harm to your personal liberty for the next four years: Pragmatism counts, now.

                         2. You’re right about a third party needing to be deeper than just an every-four-years presidential race. But you’re wrong about your attitude toward third parties in general. You say, “Until this Constitution Party gets strong enough to matter,” but you don’t seem to think about how that might happen. Unless and until those of us who aren’t represented by either of the major parties start supporting third parties that represent us, things will never change. To believe otherwise is “drinking your own ink.” (in your own words)

                            1. Yawn!

                            2. Got a Senate candidate, Constitution party, on my ballot.

                         3. You know when your interlocutor rags on your character “you’re so angry” rather than your argument, it’s a sign they’re experiencing major cognitive dissonance. Be charitable and ignore them :-p

                         4. Part of what you need in order to win local elections is name recognition, and a showing of more than 1% in the national elections is major name recognition. Not that I think the Constitution Party will get that — I hadn’t heard of them until just a few weeks ago, but after looking at their website and Castle’s statements, I’m planning to vote for him. (I’m registered in Texas; if I was in a battleground state, I probably would be holding my nose too. But since I’m in Texas, I have the luxury of being able to cast my vote according to what I think is good long-term strategy, not the immediate tactical needs of the situation.) There are a few aspects of their platform that I don’t like (for example, they favor trade protectionism, which is the broken-window fallacy in yet another disguise), but I’m at least 80% in agreement with them, which is far more than I ever expected to find.

                            And as much as feasible given that I am mostly living and working overseas, I’m going to try my best to support Constitution Party candidates in local races. Because you’re absolutely right that that’s where you win the long-term game.

             2. I Utah the numbers look more like 100 conservative voters and 40 liberal voters. So

                If 50 conservatives vote Trump
                and 50 conservatives vote McMullin
                and 40 liberals vote Clinton

                Trump or McMullin win. Either is able to keep Hillary out since she needs an absolute majority in the electoral college. if the College breaks down with Trump 268, Hillary 264 and McMullin 6, then the choice goes to the House of Representatives.

                1. Who have to choose between the top three electoral vote getters.

                   While McMullin might be, probably is, better qualified to be President than Hillary or Trump I am not sure the resulting civil unrest amid claims of disenfranchisement from the supporters of the other two (with some credibility) that would occur if the House choose him would be any better for the country than Hillary or Trump.

                   I think it might actually damage our institutions more and hasten what I fear will be Trump 2.0.

                   It would certainly end the GOP which, while an aim I have, do it in a way that probably would mean the vacuum would be filled by said Trump 2.0 and his minions. I’m iffy about the Trump method of burning it down enough I didn’t vote for him in the primaries. I still like my plan better but you play the hand you’re dealt although #NeverTrump had they been serious could have tried something along the lines of my plan (I briefly though they would) but they didn’t.

                   1. And before anyone thinks it, DON’T ask, “How could it get worse?” Just. Don’t.

                      (Shudder)

       2. Honestly, I’m tired of people telling me that voting third party will hand the election to ‘The Other Side’. I am well aware that none of the third parties/independent candidates will win. However, I also am well aware that the belief that one can only vote for a major party candidate is what got us to this situation. The major parties are not entitled to my vote, and both major candidates are so awful that I cannot in good conscience give it to either of them.

          I happen to live in Utah, and I have a unique opportunity to slap both parties in the face by voting for a candidate that may take electoral college votes from both parties. I doubt that McMullin will get to the circumstances that will put him in the white house, but I think he has a better than even chance of winning the state, and that gives my vote a lot more weight than it has at any other point in my lifetime.

          1. I’ve heard rumblings that McMullin has gained ground here in Wyoming as well. (Not that Wyoming’s vote matters, in the scheme of things–I *hate* the electoral college!!!) At the very least, we will be able to put him on the ballot and still have it count as a recognized vote.

             At this point, I just want a loud and clear message sent to the two ‘major’ parties that We Have Had Enough. Because the message that “A vote for a third party is wasted/goes to the Opposition” is *exactly* why we’re in this situation this election, and that needs to stop right now.

             1. Because the message that “A vote for a third party is wasted/goes to the Opposition” is *exactly* why we’re in this situation this election, and that needs to stop right now.

                Then Build a Third Party that can actually challenge the Democratic Party and/or the Republican Party.

                The Libertarian Party is a Joke.

                The “silly” party is no threat to the “evil” party or the “stupid” party. [Very Angry]

                1. That’s what some people tried with the TEA party. Both existing parties united to smash them before they got any momentum.

                   1. Who promised you that it would be easy? 😡

                   2. The TEA party made the same flaw as other third-party efforts: They tried to go national first. No: you go local and state first, with local candidates that people know, and build from there. Take away local support and you begin to cut off national support, just like girding a tree. Even Teddy Roosevelt couldn’t pull it off with the Bull Moose party, and if he couldn’t, it’s doubtful anyone else could.

                      1. The TEA party never seemed to have much organization, and the local state chapters went off in all directions.

                         The people who formed my local branch, for example, were for more concerned with promoting their religious preferences than a political platform.

                         No, I’ve already had state-mandated religion, thankyouverymuch. I don’t want it back again.

                2. Building a new party/movement is actually McMullin’s longterm goal. He’s very realistic about his chances of winning the presidency.

                   1. IMO running for the Presidency isn’t the Best Way to start a new party/movement.

                      What’s needed is a wide-spread “grassroots” effort to win local/state offices in several states.

                      Of course, it won’t be easy but who promised that it would be easy?

                      1. I actually agree with you in a normal election. However, this election has certainly had the effect of distilling people’s dislike of both parties, and McMullin is capitalizing on that.

                         1. I wish him the best of luck but I’ll be voting for Trump.

                            1. That’s fine. This election is lost to the sane, regardless of who wins. But pay attention to the next one. McMullin has created a credible challenge (granted, in a relatively small area) without a party or budget. A large majority of the local politicans have been withdrawing their support of Trump since McMullin began showing so much popularity. Regardless of whether he wins Utah or not, people have noticed and you will see others try to copy him in future elections.

                         2. I would recommend that if you were serious you’d read history to figure out when and how third parties supplanted one of the major parties in in a two party system. And I’d respect McMullin more if he weren’t willing to sacrifice us all to Hillary in order to achieve his – undoubtedly noble – long term goals.

                            But I can’t blame the Mormons. We’ve re-discovered tribalism and everyone’s dealing with it their own way. May God have mercy on us.

                            1. Rediscovered tribalism?

                               Had it shoved down our throats.

                            2. By the alt-right who turned the Marxist hierarchies of virtue on their heads, while retaining them and the idea of a closed economic pie too. May G-d have mercy on our souls.

                            3. We should have taught those children, and not have handed them over to statists to raise.

                3. I remember someone proposing a method to do just that with a historical precedent in the US for working in comments on this very blog.

                   He was accused of being a Democrat false-flag 🙂

                   1. which he wasn’t, but he is politically loony. Hi Herb. Yes, you are. You WANT it to burn down. You are doing your best. And in that I swear to oppose you to my last breath.

                      1. I just want to burn down the GOP. I will openly admit to that. It is a party that works very hard to be a “me too” opposition up to and including forcing out the first politician to lead them to a majority in both houses of Congress and then holding it for two successive elections.

                         You have to have an empty lot to build on. The US electoral system has two lots currently occupied by Democrat Panopticon and GOP White Tower.

                         We can remove either to build a new party but I think the GOP is the more likely candidate.

                         I’m not sure, based on this comment and a certain paragraph in your post, if this means we can be friends or can’t.

                         1. We can’t burn the GOP. It doesn’t work that way.
                            That you genuinely think it does is the only reason we CAN be friends.
                            BUT take a hint from Nightwatch. Herb, you ought to be indoors.

                            1. It’s on the shelf but I haven’t read it.

                               If we can’t burn the GOP what is to be done? If it was done once (to the Whigs) why can it not be done again?

                               I guess we could just gut, which is arguably what burn means. Given ballot access advantages (something I have watched the LP be clueless about by squandering them when they got them) taking over a gutted husk would make the turn around faster.

                               I honestly think the biggest job in a Trump administration is the win the resulting GOP internal civil war. Trump probably won’t remake the party in his image (his campaign didn’t seem to have any interest in installing local people with their large vote by getting them to committee meetings here…something Cruz would have done) so there will be a power vacuum.

                               If Trump wins I think I have to seriously consider getting on local committees.

                            2. We have to take over the GOP from the inside. We HAVE been doing it, incrementally. If you don’t think so you don’t realize most (real, Ryan isn’t one, no, no matter what the media and Trump sold) of what we call RINOS were mainstreamers in the seventies.
                               Yeah, the GOP COULD burn down, suddenly and terribly given a sufficiently large catastrophe. So could the Dems. But laying a bet what emerges is better is… risky. The chances are it will go one of the other ways (and there are many ways to go. Hence the Earth Revolution series.) Work incrementally and slow. Even if we never see the results in our lifetime.

                            3. We do it the way Reagan did it, taking the party away from the Rockefeller Republicans.

                               And this time we don’t give it back.

             2. But it won’t. I mean, I wish it would send that message, but it won’t. They know very well we hate them both. Whether they both want us to go for Hillary is something else.

                1. Most Utahns who are voting for McMullin are doing so because they believe that the other two parties have failed utterly to represent them. They are very open about communicating that. McMullin is very open about communicating that. If the leadership of the two parties continue to be stupid and blatantly ignore it, even after loosing electoral college votes, then that just means that McMullin will have fertile ground to establish a third party as he plans to do.

                   1. We did that here in Alberta – Social Credit Party, 1935. Never won a federal election. Never contended in a federal election. Never finished better than fourth in a federal election, for that matter. Hung around as the governing party in the province until 1971, by which time they had grown to be old pols the same as anybody else’s old pols, and we had to take them out behind the barn and shoot them.

                      Establishing a third party that is viable on the Utah ballot means zilch on the federal stage.

                      1. Did politicians on the federal level have to modify their stance to appeal to those in the Social Credit Party? If so, then perhaps the Social Credit Party accomplished more than you give them credit. I honestly don’t know the history of this specific case. I don’t know what caused it to come about, its goals or what was or was not accomplished during its existence. I do know that there is widespread dissatisfaction with both parties in the US right now.

                         1. No. Federal politicians simply ignored Social Credit altogether.

                      2. Not quite true. If the third party wins a presidential election in the state, it gets Electoral College votes and could conceivably throw the election to the House of Representatives to decide. And a state third party can elect congressmen and senators. The Conservative Party in NY elected a US senator in the 1970’s, as I recall.

                         1. I absolutely guaran-damn-tee you that the third party will not win the presidency because of such shenanigans. The most it can possibly do is change which of the major-party candidates wins.

                            And yes, yay for the Conservative Party in New York. They sure showed ’em! Now what did they achieve exactly?

                            1. What did they achieve? The elected one of their own as a US Senator. Was I not clear?

                            2. Yeah, they elected a senator. Then they faded into oblivion. What was that senator’s legislative record? Did any laws change because one senator from New York came from a third party? Did that senator have any influence on public policy? Did the Conservative Party become a viable player on the national stage?

                               Electing a politician is not an accomplishment.

                            3. Electing a candidate to office is most definitely an accomplishment. If you think otherwise, what do you imagine is the point of a political party? At any rate, the NY Conservative Party is still very active and has elected other candidates to office:

                               https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Party_of_New_York_State

                               And just the fact of their existence has had an effect on the Republican candidates that have been put forward in NY.

                               Your attitude is that no third party can succeed, and that we’re stuck with whatever the two major parties put forward. I presented evidence that that isn’t always the case, and you sneered at it. No room here for rational debate, it seems.

                            4. “No room here for rational debate, it seems.”

                               Not if that is what you deem rational.

                            5. Well, obviously the point is that a third party has to keep building and widening its scope on the local level, where it’s a lot easier to win and where you can build credibility. If a party only gets a few candidates elected way back when and doesn’t build on that, it is not going to get anywhere.

                            6. Well, the wikipedia link shows a good number of Conservative Party office-holders at the county level in NY (currently), which is one of the things that was an article of complaint (here) about third parties. I don’t think they’re a failed party by any means.

                            7. New York state’s rather idiosyncratic election laws allow a candidate to run on multiple ballot lines, so that James Buckley (brother of an other Buckley somewhat more influential) ran as both the Republican and Conservative party candidate.

                               For a number of subsequent years it became a matter of some importance for a Republican to get the dual listing, and for a Democrat to get listed on the Democrat and Liberal (whatever they called themselves; last I knew it was the The Rent’s Too High” party*) in order to fend off ballot bleed off from their flank.

                               *Joking; I believe the actual major liberal alternate is the Working Families Party, although they may have finally acknowledged their ideological identity and named themselves the Marx Is God party.

                            8. Not fighting with you either, no matter how much you try.

                      3. Yep. Inertia is a b*tch.

             3. Curious why you hate the Electoral College system? Wyoming has three times the influence they would in a straight popular vote. (Actually, just my own metro region would more than balance your entire State – twice over. And Tucson is not considered a “big” city.)

                1. Eliminating the Electoral College would permit rotten boroughs (e.g., California, Illinois) to manufacture enough votes to determine the presidency; as is they can only determine a significant but not determinative number of electoral votes. The EC acts as a circuit breaker limiting the effect of election fraud.

                   Living in the “battleground state” of North Carolina I advise you to count your blessings and enjoy your commercials touting face masks, boner pills and Popeil’s many fine products rather than an unceasing onslaught of ads telling you how evil the “other” candidate(s) will be if elected.

                   1. In a really close election like the one between Gore and Bush, do you really want recounts across the whole country?

                      1. Yes.

             4. You had best thank your deity for the Electoral College, because the BosWash corridor, Chicago, and the Left Coast would rule the country. There’s a reason the Founders hated “mobocracy”.

                1. Yup. The Electoral College is why our views are even minimally tolerated.

                   1. I’ve heard in the past proposals to abolish the Electoral College.

                      1. Yes you have. It usually comes up after every presidential election, and almost always from the left, which doesn’t like the concept of decentralization in any form.

                      2. The problem isn’t so much the College as how the state’s electors handle their votes.

                         In my state, it works more or less like Lord Vetinari’s “one man, one vote” system: we hold elections for the public, but the Electors only use that as a “recommendation” for their votes, which are the only ones that count.

                         No, they’re not elected, or in any way responsible to the people.

                         Funny, that…

                         1. But how many instances of “faithless electors” have their been in history? It’s pretty unusual (as in almost unheard of) for an elector to vote other than for the candidate who won the election in his or her state.

                            1. In 1956 one of the Oklahoma electors did not vote for Eisenhower but for a local pol. In 1960, Alabama elected a mixed group of electors so the Alabama electoral vote was split between JFK and a local segregationist (forget his name) although the present history books ignore that. But none of them have affected the actual election – that I am aware of.

                            2. In 1972 one GOP elector voted Libertarian.

                               Notice the three examples all occurred when it would have taken many, many unfaithful electors to swing things.

                               Also, and Micha Elyi will probably back me up here, elector slots are generally awarded to long serving volunteers/local level party officials who have never held office and never will. It’s the advanced form of being a delegate to the national convention.

                               The odds of such people going off the reservation is very low due to the social pressure they face. These are people whose identity and social status derives to a large degree from being a member of their party. Being a faithless elector would bring more damage socially to them than dropping trow and waving your Anthony at everyone at a Superbowl party would do to most people.

          2. Math is hard!

          3. Voting to improve things is good – when you’re not under an actual attack on your personal liberties (or likely to experience one during the term of the electee). When you are, then prudent voting needs to be defensive.
             E.g. – when arrows are flying, raise your shield. Only while you are adequately shielded to survive awhile longer can you afford to shoot back.

12. I’ve been advising everyone who asks me, that if your state is guaranteed to go for Clinton or Trump (here in Tennessee, Trump will definitely win, no matter what) you should vote for your principles and select the candidate who best represents them, even if that candidate has no chance of carrying the state. But if your state is in play for both major candidates, you have a harder decision to make. If you truly believe that both of the major candidates are equally horrid and will represent a society-ending regime, then you still need to vote your principles as mentioned above. But if one or the other is even moderately less disgusting than the other, you should vote for the one who will do the least damage to our country.

    As Sarah says, we’re in for four years of pain no matter who wins (unless against all odds Evan McMullin takes Utah, neither Clinton nor Trump makes it to 270 electoral votes, and the House picks McMullin over the other two–yeah, I know, the Sweet Meteor O’Death is probably more likely). So what we all need to do is roll up our sleeves and work as hard as we can to minimize the damage the feral government can do to us. For me, that means working for an Article V convention, which the Feds would have no control over. Might it not work? Of course it might not. But what else is left to us?

    1. This

    2. Ah. So you want Trump to lose unexpectedly in guaranteed districts.

       Every vote counts. It is never a slogan.

       1. Perhaps you didn’t read what I wrote. Your vote is your own, to cast as you believe best. Yes, every vote counts. But you can’t count on my vote just because you really, really want it. You have to convince me that voting for your candidate is the best thing I can do with my vote in this election. And that’s exactly what I advised people to do: cast your vote in the best way you can.

       2. “It’s not who votes but who counts the votes.” Heard that somewhere-

    3. I’m imagining the reactions of the usual perps to a House delivered President McMullen. There is little History to go by in such judgment, but what there is ain’t purty. Ya think “Bush: Selected, not Elected” was ugly? Look back to the Adams (fils) vs Jackson “decision”, aka “the corrupt bargain” and imagine it with internet aided velocity and ferocity.

       America’s First ‘Rigged’ Presidential Election
       Andrew Jackson’s outrage over his 1824 defeat by John Quincy Adams shows the havoc that claims of a fixed election can wreak on the winner
       Andrew Jackson had every reason to consider himself the victor of the presidential election of 1824. In a hard-fought campaign, he had won the most popular votes and electoral votes, too. But because he didn’t gain an outright majority in the Electoral College, the election was thrown into the House of Representatives, as the Constitution stipulated.

       There Jackson faced his top rivals for the White House, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and Treasury Secretary William Crawford. With Crawford out of contention because of an incapacitating stroke, it was plain that either Jackson or Adams would carry a majority of the 24 states that then constituted the union.

       The key to victory lay with the wily speaker of the House, Henry Clay of Kentucky, who also had been a candidate for president but had finished well behind. After a series of discreet and carefully indirect conversations with Adams, Clay was persuaded that he would be asked to serve as secretary of state in an Adams administration, thus improving his own future presidential prospects. Clay announced his support for Adams.

       Privately, Clay also appears to have persuaded the congressional delegation of his native Kentucky, as well as those of Ohio and Missouri, to throw their support to the standard-bearer of old New England. Adams carried all three states on his way to a stunning first-ballot victory in the House of Representatives. The moment Adams named Clay as his secretary of state, an enraged Jackson began claiming that the election had been rigged.

       1. I’m always amused (in an annoyed sort of way) when a candidate complains about “rigged” when everything goes according to the rules…particularly when, if that candidate wins by the exact same rule process, they are happy to declare victory.

          Thus, we see that the Electoral College is evil, and we should go with the Popular Vote when Al Gore can’t become President…but if only Ohio would go to John Kerry, despite Kerry having already lost the Popular Vote, because…reasons, I guess!

          (This is assuming that the “rigged” efforts are all within the rules. The Dead of Chicago voting, to be sure, are definitely examples where the elections are “rigged” in violation of the rules…and *everyone* is justified in complaining about that!)

          1. It does sorta depend on the meaning of “rigged,” don’t it?

             I think the MSM “rigs” the election by consistently defining the battleground in terms favorable to the liberal candidate. Thus the question has been “Is Trump temperamentally qualified to be president” while Hillary’s (mal)qualifications are barred from discussion.

             Or that the oft-debunked “Women are paid only 77% of what Men make” is accepted myth.

             We shan’t even get into the various questions about whether government involvement in every day activities — such as what employers think an employee’s contribution is worth — is necessary. Frankly, the “debate” is even more rigged against the libertarian assumptions.

             1. I’m a simple woman. I call an election “rigged” when Democrats get to vote 2 – 200 times more than Republicans.

                1. Or vice versa.

    4. I know, the Sweet Meteor O’Death is probably more likely

       538 said last week Trump had a better chance of being President than the Cubs did of winning the World Series.

       Just sayin’.

13. Was talking with someone who had a hard time sleeping last night or the night before. Kept waking up from end-of-the-world nightmares. They were different every time, variations on a theme. Figured it was election anxiety and possibly influence from campaign commercials.

    “There are no good choices.” Which means, as I once explained someone wondering about Truman in 1945, we need to find the least lousy of all the lousy choices.

14. I haven’t quite decided yet. Come Tuesday, I might still put my vote in for Trump. I know my husband is planning on voting for Johnson.

    Either way, I’m not happy about it.

    I think Hillary will do for sexual relations (which is probably not phrased right) what Obama did for race relations.

    And Donald and Hillary were best friends before the election season, they’ll be best friends afterwards (right at the moment, they might hate each other, but that doesn’t mean much).

    1. Maybe, maybe not on the friendship thing.

       If Trump wins, Hillary is going to be enraged. Obama stole the nomination from her eight years ago, and to have Trump steal the election from her now? Plus, there are hints that something is wrong with her health, and she might not be able to stand the rigors of a campaign even four years from now. This might very well be her last chance to win the presidency.

       If Trump wins, I don’t think that they will be friends.

       1. “Plus, there are hints that something is wrong with her health …”

          I understand that at a rally yesterday she announced she was “sick and tired.”

          Clinton: ‘I am sick and tired’

          I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you’re not patriotic, and we should stand up and say, “We are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration!”
          April 28, 2003 at the annual Democratic Party Jefferson-Jackson-Bailey Day fund raising dinner in Connecticut.
          (Wiki)

          I am “sick and tired” of Hillary, so I am voting Trump.

       2. I don’t know. She stayed friends with Obama.

          1. Did she? She served in his administration. And she’s made nice to him to try and pick up his voters. But the general rumors have been that the Clinton Camp and the Obama Camp are not exactly friends with each other. Are they friends? Or is it simple political expediency?

             Plus, after her 2008 loss, Hillary still had another shot. I don’t know if that’s going to be an option if she loses this year.

          2. Could Hillary afford to not appear to be friends with Obama?

             As for Trumps’ “friendship” with the Clintons, what business man (who claimed to be Democrat) would not want to appear to be friends with the Clintons?

             1. No, no, Drak. He was one of their closest friends. It’s different. Compare him to, say, Steve Forbes.

                1. Sarah, you probably need to ask your parents for a candid estimate of how much money and support they paid the Party just to be allowed to work and live.

                   Or heck, you could always ask my wife, who was born in New York and watched her father doing similar things to keep his business (and losing his nursing home business when he got “outbid”).

             2. “Could Hillary afford to not appear to be friends with Obama?”

                It seems certain there ought be a scene from The Godfather along the lines of “It’s nothing personal; it’s just business” to be referenced here.

             3. IIRC, right before he announced his presidential run, Trump phoned the Clintons. So Trump appears to have been closer than just an “appearances” friend.

       3. They’re both pretty thin-skinned…

    2. I think Hillary will do for sexual relations (which is probably not phrased right) what Obama did for race relations.

       I get what you are saying and part of that will be how you phrased it being exactly right.

       I don’t think it is an accident that the Alt-Right has a major strand that grows out of MRAs and pick-up artists and they hit the national stage in an election including an icon of feminism (Hillary being an icon of feminism shows what a joke feminism is).

15. Thanks. I came to the same conclusion, myself, a couple of months ago. Haven’t been posting so as to keep from being offensive. The Supreme Court is what decided it for me.

16. The vitriol from the press pretty much locked it in for me. Well, that and Johnson’s choices where he decided that he needed to sit on the left side of the fence on issues (RFRA and his VP’s support of Breyer as an example justice). We have two doses of poison at the moment. One will be sugar coated and insidiously dangerous. You’ll be told its pure candy by everyone else and even as the bodies pile up that its something else’s fault. The other is disgusting, and the actual lethality is vague. But there will be a full court press to stop it.

17. Regarding wire brushes and decon, we were told in the two day class I took in the ’80s for a film badge (per 10CFR50) that they don’t really do that.

    Oh, That was hyperbole. More caffeine is indicated.

    And I’m going to hold my nose and vote for Trump. The situation is summed by the cartoon I saw (I think on http://www.imao.us) of two revolvers with which to play Russian roulette. The one labeled Trump had half the cylinders loaded. The one labeled Clinton was fully loaded.

    Someone at the State Fair wearing a Trump/Pence sticker told me that people were avoiding the table where the Democrats were handing out Clinton stickers–they were swerving out of the way like it was something dropped in the cow barn (missed that one this time). I travelled across three counties this past weekend (not through any big cities, not the Triangle by any means, but eastern) and so only three or maybe four Clinton yard signs, all on the highway right of way. I think NC holds red for Trump, Senator Burr, and Governor McCory.

    1. sic, only *saw* three or maybe four Clinton yard signs, and I think they were all on the side of the road.

       1. No Hillary signs here, but barely any Trump signs, either. The most common thing I’m hearing is the phrase “We don’t have much to chose from.”

          1. I’ve seen *one* sign in my entire town, which went up the day early voting started. Trump, if it matters.

             Usually the yard signs are all over the place months in advance.

             I sort of get the impression neither party gives a damn which way my state votes…

       2. We actually saw a Trump sign here in Encinitas! Had to drive around the block just to make sure!

    2. OK, perhaps that’s civilian, and the resident nukes from the intermittently submerged service can speak with more authority on this topic all around, but military field decon was stiff brushes (not wire) and lots and lots of ambient (i.e. ice cold somehow) water when this experience passed my way last.

       1. Yeah, those 54Bs (chemical decontamination troops for you civilian minded personnel; i.e., they washed trucks for a living so that others might live) went through those long-handled brushes like they were fresh popcorn when I getting them at the self-service supply store. I only had the experience once when they had me go scrub the accelerator pedals on the vehicles that one time I worked a decon line. (I was a supply clerk.) That was a few years after my limited civilian training, but I did remember the part about tabbing your tape.

    3. And I’m going to hold my nose and vote for Trump. The situation is summed by the cartoon I saw (I think on http://www.imao.us) of two revolvers with which to play Russian roulette. The one labeled Trump had half the cylinders loaded. The one labeled Clinton was fully loaded.
       ———————-

       Thomas Sowell made a similar comment. Except he compared voting for Hillary to playing Russian Roulette with a shotgun.

    4. And, for the record, it really was the person I spoke to at the fair who called NC for Trump; I just seconded.

    5. Regarding wire brushes and decon, we were told in the two day class I took in the ’80s for a film badge (per 10CFR50) that they don’t really do that.

       Nope, wire brushes make it worse by cutting the skin and allowing the radioactive materials to get into you.

       If Hillary wins I’m going to have to go over “what to do if there is a nuclear blast” with the wife…in fact, I’ll make sure she has a go back ready to go to her parents (my family probably isn’t a good choice…College Station is downwind from San Antonio which I expect to be a primary target before we get to city busting).

18. Until last week I entirely agreed with you. Now after seeing how elitist the NeverTrumpers have become, I am voting for Trump in his own right.This depreciation of American society in favor of international norms has to stop.
    I cannot despair. This society was born long before America, and if we must, we can build it again. And this time around we have learned more lessons.

    1. Er. I haven’t seen any NeverTrump elitism. Also, did you read my post?
       As for the society born long before America (rolls eyes.) There was one. IT wasn’t America. If you think it was, you have no clue of history.

       1. Not that feralplum meant the following.

          But you can say America as a society existed before the US. 😉

          As for “elitist NeverTrumpers”, some of the NeverTrumpers are establishment Republicans. 😦

          1. No, they’re not. All of those swung behind Trump.

             1. There are a number of establishment Republicans at National Review who are still vocal Never-Trumpers.

                1. I’m still a vocal Never-Trumper. I’m not voting for Trump. I’m voting against Hillary.
                   ANYONE who calls Thomas Sewell “elitist” needs his bottom paddled hard, and to be seated in a corner with a dictionary.

                   1. Sowell, afaik, has encouraged people to vote for Trump as a vote against Hillary. As I mentioned above, he compared voting for Trump to playing Russian Roulette, and voting for Hillary to playing it with a shotgun.

                      I suspect that the NeverTrumpers being referred to are people like George F. Will, and Bill Kristol. At least some of the Bushes are also supposedly voting for Hillary (though Jeb made a comment about “President Johnson” at one point, which leads me to believe that he’ll be voting Libertarian on Election Day).

                   2. That’s why I can’t consider you a #NeverTrumper.

                      #NeverTrumpers are people like Erickson who have made it clear that they would rather Hillary win than have to face the idea of a Trump victory.

                2. “There are a number of establishment Republicans at National Review”

                   What are you babbling about? There aren’t any “establishment Republicans” at National Review at ALL.

                   1. OK, what do you call them? And don’t be an arsehole about it, as you were with this remark.

             2. If so, somebody forgot to tell John Kasich and George “I hope for a Hillary landslide” Will.

                There’s a good many of those Vichy Republicans in the party who’d rather collaborate (or just roll over and play dead) with the Democrats because they’re part and parcel of the same elitist, aristocratic-in-all-but-name social circles, and they don’t want to do anything to risk their dachas in the woods. And you wonder why people are turning to Trump?

                It doesn’t help that establishment “conservatives” haven’t actually “conserved” anything, in large part because they keep bringing philosophy to a street fight. Tocqueville and Hayek are irrelevant when you’re being punched in the face.

                Trump isn’t going to destroy the Republican Party. The GOP establishment has already destroyed it. The base was ready to walk long before Trump showed up. And I’ll be honest: Part of the reason I’m voting for Trump (yes, I would have preferred Walker, Perry or Cruz) is because I’ll take great pleasure in flipping the bird to the wannabe aristocratic elites that are running my country into the ground. Even – especially – the ones who call themselves Republicans.

                And the rest of the reason is to keep the Unindictable Dowager Empress Nazi Catlady out of the Oval Office. Imagine a completely above-the-law Hillary taking office a few months from now while waging war with the Russians abroad and the FBI – and half the electorate – right here at home. I should be worried about *Trump* being a fascist?

       2. America is better, but there were prototypes. Many of the American revolutionaries were the grandkids of those who fought King Charles to establish parliamentary supremacy. Then had a short lived republic. And then lost and skedaddled.Many thought they were fighting for their rights as Englishmen under Magna Carta and the 1689 Bill of Rights. We did those ideas much better in 1789. We even learned from Montesquieu and some of the French.

          As for the elitist Never Trumpers, I have been following Ricochet. Some of those establishment Republicans who do podcasts there are most certainly voting for Hillary because Trump is beneath them. A few have even convinced me that anyone who puts the American people first is a cretin. Jay Nordlinger: [perhaps quoting WFB] ‘I am as patriotic as anyone from sea to shining sea, but there is not a particle of nationalism in me.

          I do put my fellow citizens – born and naturalized – ahead of other countries. I do read your posts. And I almost always agree..

       3. The only pace I’ve seen elitism is from the Twitter accounts of the consultant class who are pushing McMullen. They’re generally good people, but I think they are somewhat desperate. If Trump wins without tons of consultants doing all of the consultanting stuff (and sometimes getting a commission on ad buys) candidates might begin to think that the consultant class isn’t as vital as is widely believed. A Trump victory might break their rice bowl.

          1. I sense a similar fear among the Get-Out-The-Vote class over Trump’s failure to mount an effort there … as if Americans have to be <I<driven to the polls (admittedly, some do need a ride.)

             I am confident that if Trump does win it will be despite the lack of a GOTV expenditure. It will say so in all the papers.

       4. Agreed. Smug, sanctimonious, and disingenuous, but not actually elitist.

          Think Glen Beck, Erick Erickson, Ben Shapiro and Jonah Goldberg on a really, really bad day (not that I blame him much. But it was disturbing to read him pulling the prog trick whereby one mocks the opponent for his utter failure to schnozzell, then three ‘graphs down accuses him of perfidy for … schnozzelling. ?!?)

          The tell is their inability to perceive the first-amendment Trump voter.

          But as far as I’ve been able to perceive, the honest NeverTrumpers* (post primaries/Republican National convention) have only ever been mean to people on the internets. Put your big girl panties on and make peace with them, because unlike Hillary supporters, they haven’t been inciting and committing violence against you.

          We have a common foe. Let’s hang together.

          Side note: the weirdest thing about this election has been reading (and watching) pro-Hillary (and some NeverTrumper) posts actually fill me with a warm glow-y desire to vote FOR Mr. Trump. I have to go and pull up YouTubes of him specifying to remind me why I dislike him.

          (*as opposed to actual Hillary shills)

          1. Think Glen Beck, Erick Erickson, Ben Shapiro and Jonah Goldberg on a really, really bad day

             As someone who has called into his show multiple times that is Erickson on a typical day…he is a sanctimonious SOB convinced he is smarter than everyone else on a Hillary level.

             But as far as I’ve been able to perceive, the honest NeverTrumpers* (post primaries/Republican National convention) have only ever been mean to people on the internets.

             See the above Erickson…he also is happy to deploy the “a third party vote is a vote for the Democrat” argument…except when it comes to Trump.

             We have a common foe. Let’s hang together.

             I’d be happy to but Erickson, who I consider the archetypical #NeverTrumper, has insisted he will only hang separately.

       5. I haven’t seen any NeverTrump elitism

          Erik Erikson isn’t your local drive time talk radio host 🙂

          John Kasich just “courageously” voted for McCain after signing the same party loyalty pledge such a big deal was made about Trump having to sign last fall (it was a requirement to be on the SC ballot). Apparently it had a #NeverTrump clause (and I suspect a #NeverCruz one as well) in invisible ink.

          1. See also the entire staff of National Review.

             1. National Review has kept me sane. Even now. When it seemed all my libertarian friends turned rabid trumpers overnight, they were an anchor of sanity. And they’re not wrong in anything they say. I chose to vote for the horror with my eyes open.

                1. There is a cancer in this nation. None of the choices on offer are good. Not voting against Hillary is pretending there is no cancer or (more probably) that the treatments for it are worse than the cancer.

                   Trump is likely not the cure, but he may be a stop gap buying us time, and he is certainly no worse than accepting the disease.

                   National Review is a mode of what a healthy Republic could be, and thus has an obligation to preserve its essential purity, an obligation not binding on the rest of us.

                   Besides, their editors and staff are not in battleground states; they’re voting in NY, Dc, Maryland and Virginia — their votes are spit in the ocean.

                2. Agree on the National Review, along with you, Glenn Beck and the Right Angle/Trifecta group. Even though many of the people that have opposed Trump have reluctantly decided to vote for him…

                   I’m on the other side of that, sticking to not voting for the horror, but I’m perfectly fine with others choosing that path if they believe Clinton is that much of a threat. Personally, they kind of fooled me back in 2008 with the same line, vote for McCain/Palin because Obama will destroy everything, so I’m trying to avoid that again. It seems like every time they manage to force people on both sides into voting against candidates, we get even worse candidates the next time around because that’s the best way for them to keep people from fleeing for the hills.

                   1. Well, to me at least Romney was a better candidate than McCain. But what you’re seeing is the effect of the press. EVERY time the GOP loses, the press convinces them they were insufficiently left. NO, seriously, that was part of the shake up at PJM post 2012. “We need to attract more leftists.” WHAT?

                      1. Yep…and four years later it is what makes Romney the “most electable candidate” and was what was supposed to make Jeb the “most electable candidate” this year.

                      2. Oh, and gave McCain strength on the claim, “but the media likes him”.

                         1. In defense of McCain, he was the MSM’s idea of what a Republican should be: willing (eager) to “reach across the aisle,” openly critical of conservatives, and frantic to curry the MSM’s favor.

                            Think of him as the nerd allowed to hang about with the cool kids, fix their computers and imagine he is part of their clique.

                            1. Honestly, just as McCain was the Republican that the media liked and thus supported, Trump is the Republican that they hate, but wanted to win the primary. That’s why the media sat there and gave him countless hours of earned media all the way through the primary while ignoring many of the other candidates.

                            2. With the eager assistance of the GOPe in no-platforming Cruz especially.

                            3. The number people who were yelling, “it’s a trap” and weren’t listened to about that still amazes me.

                               He was the MSM’s perfect Republican until he got the nomination.

                            4. Nyah; the MSM’s perfect Republican is dead. They loved Reagan and Buckley only once they were gone and could be employed to bash present conservatives.

                               Call him the MSM’s near-perfect Republican until he got the nomination.

                      3. 2012 – feel free to tell me to butt out if it’s confidential, but was that why Kruiser Control, Week in Blogs, and a few other PJTV shows stopped?

                         1. I THINK so. You must understand this was my impression, from the pep talks we got saying “we must appeal to the youth and the left.”

                            1. The thinking was probably along the lines of, “You don’t win converts by preaching to the choir.”

                               OTOH, messaging counts; you don’t win converts by diluting your content, as Reagan proved.

                            2. Unfortunate – after that my only PJTV vi viewing was trifecta and the occasional instavision.

                               Is it just me, or, insty aside, has the site slowed down considerably (in terms of new articles) from a few years back?

                            3. I have subscribed to support the trifecta boys in their new venture — Right Angle — They were in no small part responsible for younger son’s political education, so I owe them.

                            4. Yeah, I’ve been subscribing to Billwhittle.com since they broke off PJTV. I’ve been following him since ejectejecteject. (Though, I like Steve Green more.)

                            5. Steve is a drinking buddy. 🙂 and yeah, I too followed Bill since ejectejecteject

                3. Heh. Speaking of National Review …

                   
                   From Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt newsletter:

                   ADDENDA: As mentioned on this morning’s Hugh Hewitt show, I voted absentee this year, and voted for Evan McMullin. Needless to say, I instantly got the typically calm and easygoing response from Trump fans you would expect. Hugh made the argument that because Clinton’s actions with her private server are now so clearly harmful to national security that even a Never Trumper like me has to be rooting for his victory. (It’s easier to root for her defeat than his victory.)

                   Hugh convincingly argued that there will be more opposition to Trump’s unconstitutional instincts than to Hillary’s. If both are likely to face criminal charges and an impeachment attempt against their abuses of power, Trump will face opposition that Hillary will not. In short, “You have to vote for the lesser Constitutional crisis.”

    2. If by “elitist” you mean “principled,” I’ll agree with you. Otherwise, what you said is just silly.

       1. Also silly in the context of my post. Also Feralplum has always been a Trumper in these comments.

          1. Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying that someone who, in a political context, said, “Up until recently I held the same opinion as you. Now, because of (thing I’m railing about), I’ve decided to vote the other way” would… LIE? Say it ain’t so, Joe! Surely all those people who “always voted Republican, but I’m voting Obama this time because ‘binders full of women’!!1!eleventy!” MUST be honest, upright, honorable men! (So are they all, all honorable men.)

    3. And am reminded of…
       

       1. ROFL

          1. Indeed!

       2. Time to go down to ground level and get a chainsaw…

19. I am reminded of a 1976 Mad Magazine cover that applies to this election:
    https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.madcoversite.com%2Fmad187backid.jpg&f=1

20. *hands out “I’m Voting” clothespins with comfortable silicon tips for noses*
    Let’s place blame where it really needs to be shoved–the political parties, BOTH of them. The Democrats forced the process to produce Hillary, and the Republicans *tried* to force the process to produce Jeb. And then Rubio. If they had actually, you know, allowed the voters to choose we wouldn’t have this dog’s breakfast. The media helped, of course, but they are really a bunch of idiots or Trump wouldn’t be where he is now. They simply couldn’t cope with an end-run, and their OODA loop is full of squirrels.

    For those still wrestling with their conscience, just consider how much damage Hillary has done recently without being in office of any kind. She may have gut-shot the FBI. Now, imagine that she can do the same thing LEGALLY. She must be stopped.

    1. Thanks. I’ll probably vote tomorrow. Maybe. I might be so steamed after the health insurance options meeting today that I need to wait.

    2. I’ve seen one article that suggested that the Establishment didn’t really get behind a candidate; as for myself, I definitely remember everyone waffling over all the choices (even over Trump). At most, only *some* people were trying to force us to have Jeb, and this isn’t sufficient reason to choose such a lousy candidate in his place.

       (I was elated when Jeb dropped out; now, I’m actually pining for him a little bit!)

       Basically, the article talked about a study that made the case that, ultimately, the Establishment chose the candidate — which caused the Establishment to ignore the candidates, figuring that one was certainly going to be chosen over Trump, confident that the Establishment wouldn’t choose him — and when it became clear that Trump had a chance, the Establishment was angry about the study, saying “According to this study, this wasn’t supposed to happen!” but the authors of the study pointed out that the Establishment has to *choose* someone, and this election, no one had chosen anyone, leaving the door open for Trump.

       1. Ditto on pining for Jeb just a little.

          1. “Jeb! Not as bad as those two!”

             Of course that same slogan would apply to everyone but Bernie.

          2. Seems to me like the last two Republican candidates have rolled over and thrown the election. Romney certainly did and McCain’s treatment of Palin was deplorable. Neither was willing to ask the right questions of the magic negro. We need someone to ask hard questions and Jeb Bush couldn’t or wouldn’t.

             1. The perception of Romney is largely created by the “media cone of silence.” When you say stuff like this, it’s like saying that the sad puppies are racist. It’s a media thing.

                1. “The perception of Romney is largely created by the “media cone of silence.” When you say stuff like this, it’s like saying that the sad puppies are racist. It’s a media thing.”

                   Or like saying that Trump supporters are all alt-right?

                   Sarah, I think you and many other people (drloss, you are top of the list) need to read this, and then let us know what percentage of your countrymen you think fall into the category of “alt-right” aka the new “raaaaacist”.

                   Another possible answer is that there are so many racists — or near-racists ready to become full racists are soon as the Go Sign, the Racist Bat Signal, is flashed up to the sky — that it requires the extreme measure of throwing a presidential election to make sure that this faction is checked and the party is kept from being “hijacked” by this largish force.”
                   *****
                   “3. Assuming, once again, you agree that the party is so stocked with racists and anti-semites that it’s necessary to throw an election to keep their twisted claws off any kind of real political power: In what sense do you disagree with Hillary Clinton’s claim that “about half” of Trump’s supporters could be put into a “basket of deplorables,” irredeemable in their racism?

                   It seems to me the only sense you could disagree with her is in an insincere sense. You would disagree out of obligation — without actually finding any large error in her claim. Maybe you’d disagree it’s not one half of Trump voters; merely two fifths.

                   4. If you really believe the party is this stuffed with Jim Crow revanchists, White Supremacists, and outright Nazis — what could possibly compel you to remain part of such a disgusting company?”

                   Change party to country; the questions still need an answer.

                   1. I have read sufficient reports from people I deem credible about alt-right targeting that I will not discount it as false.

                      However, I would not be surprised to learn that much such targeting should more properly be written “alt-right targeting” and is as much the false flag operation as TEA Party “racists” or “violence” at Trump rallies. For that matter, I generally apply “Niven’s Law: No cause is so noble that it won’t attract fuggheads” and judge by the discernible logic of arguments.

                      The Left is piss-poor at running anything (except into the ground) but they have a real knack for disrupting the activities of others.

                      Sort of like a Fallen Angel of whom I’ve heard tell.

                2. “The perception of Romney is largely created by the “media cone of silence.” When you say stuff like this, it’s like saying that the sad puppies are racist. It’s a media thing.”

                   Kind of like the media thing defining Trump supporters as “alt-right” aka “raaaaacist”.

                   That term alt-right has been thrown around this blog in much the same way that the PKs lump us in with Vox Day, implying that we’re either too gullible to keep from being taken in, or are too dishonest to admit what we really believe.

                   Sarah, I think you (and several other people) need to read this, and then let us know what percentage of your countrymen you think fall into the category of “alt-right”. Ace sums it up pretty well:

                   Another possible answer is that there are so many racists — or near-racists ready to become full racists are soon as the Go Sign, the Racist Bat Signal, is flashed up to the sky — that it requires the extreme measure of throwing a presidential election to make sure that this faction is checked and the party is kept from being “hijacked” by this largish force.

                   ******

                   3. Assuming, once again, you agree that the party is so stocked with racists and anti-semites that it’s necessary to throw an election to keep their twisted claws off any kind of real political power: In what sense do you disagree with Hillary Clinton’s claim that “about half” of Trump’s supporters could be put into a “basket of deplorables,” irredeemable in their racism?

                   It seems to me the only sense you could disagree with her is in an insincere sense. You would disagree out of obligation — without actually finding any large error in her claim. Maybe you’d disagree it’s not one half of Trump voters; merely two fifths.

                   4. If you really believe the party is this stuffed with Jim Crow revanchists, White Supremacists, and outright Nazis — what could possibly compel you to remain part of such a disgusting company?

                3. I remember reading an article about how the Red Cross was complaining because the Romney campaign had held a drive to collect goods for victims of Sandy, and the Red Cross preferred when people gave them money instead (the official reason *cough* being that the Red Cross couldn’t vouch for the quality and/or safety of any goods that didn’t come from an “approved” source).

                   Reading that article caused me to reflect on the fact that this was the first I’d heard about the Romney campaign collecting goods for victims of Sandy, as the press had never bothered to report on it until the Red Cross criticized it.

                   1. You mean the way they criticized Trump over his donating relief supplies and personally accompanying them to Louisiana during the flooding after he was the nominee?

                4. Yes…

                   But Mr. Trump isn’t racist any more than was Mr. Romney (probably less). And the media tried it on with him just the same.. And it didn’t work. What gives? How did he turn the inevitable “it’s a corrupt prog media, nothing we can do” paradigm on its head?

                   That’s the dimension that brought a lot of conservatives on board to support Mr. Trump as a candidate.

                   1. No, Trump isn’t. But his supporters online are.

                5. Some me the Romney attack ad against Obama half as vicious as the stuff run in Florida against Gingrich.

                   Until then I’m not buying “The perception of Romney is largely created by the “media cone of silence.” “. I saw his own ads against his primary opponents and those against Obama. They told me who his real opponents were.

                   I’d put it less as he rolled over and more as he thought he could coast in based on the economy while fearing attacking Obama would actually lessen his vote but he clearly put more energy into the primary than the general.

                   1. Actually, Insty put it pretty well:
                      https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/245789/

                      “I’m increasingly concerned that the neutralization of the Tea Party movement — an effort by both major parties — may have convinced a lot of people that civics-book style polite political participation is for chumps.”

                      I am not a chump. And I refuse to keep trying to abide by rules that amount to Calvinball just because I am worried about being called “alt-right”.

                      1. “I am not a chump.”

                         All the chumps always say that. As do many of the non-chump persuasion.

                      2. Sounds like you’ve gone through something parallel to my evolution the past six years.

                         I feel like I was conned out of a lot of hours and money by GOP candidates. I’ve done most literature drops and calling. I am NOT a people person. When I briefly had a job that had a sales component I think I did maybe three cold calls.

                         I’ve done more than that an hour for GOP candidates.

                         Micha likes to say you need to work it or its your fault. What about those of us who worked it in good faith to install what we got expecting something else.

                         We were chumps…huge chumps.

             2. McCain lost when he suspended his campaign, went back to dc and back stabbed the house republicans to pass TARP.

             3. Romney didn’t throw the 2012 election. He lost because the best argument for replacing Obama, the PPACA, was one Romney simply couldn’t make without looking like a fool – because he’d implemented a quite similar law as Governor of Massachusetts. On that subject the poor man was reduced to babbling about federalism, which cut no ice with the voters. He meant to win the election, but his past record sabotaged him.

                1. I disagree. Romney lost because –

                   1.) Candy Crawley
                   2.) He had to try and find a way (pretty much impossible) to fight back against one of *the* most absurd attacks that a candidate has ever had to deal with. Namely, “binders”. It wasn’t ever really clear exactly *why* Romney’s comment about having resumes from women in binders was the height of sexism, but somehow it was used against him in this fashion.
                   3.) Sandy struck at just the right time, coupled with Chris Christy and the fawning press, to make Obama look good right before the election.
                   4.) Todd Akin became the face of the Republican Party that year, and refused to step aside even when nearly everyone (except Huckabee…) in the party encouraged him to do so.

          3. No more political dynasties.

             Two presidents from the same family are more than enough.

             1. Yep. I know. That was my main thing. It still is. The democrats, at heart feudalist, are already talking about Michelle Obama as president. (shudders.) Hell no, the buck stops this election.

                1. I can see Chelsea to “claim the legacy stolen from her mother” in 2028 or so.

                   In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if we continue on this current course that 2028 or 2032 is Chelsea versus one of the third generation Bushes.

    3. Please make sure to dispose of those clothespins responsibly! Rumours that Billy Jeff is attempting to collect them for use when he is First Laddie* are unfounded but not unbelievable.

       *First Laddie. Does anyone else recall the broad denunciation of “Lad Culture” and “Lad Mags” that characterized the blowback against [magazines whose titles escape me at the moment.]

    4. The FBI has been losing credibility for a long time. And now that their forensic tech and fingerprint databases have been called into question, even local PDs don’t have much use for them.

       1. Talk to local cops and they never had much use for the “feebs”.

          In the past local prosecutors liked using “FBI Lab” forensic evidence much like movie producers like slapping “Skywalker Sound” on pretty much every film – it added prestige. Now the FBI Lab brand has been tarnished such that no matter who does the lab work it will be challenged by the defense as botched or purposefully tampered with, so prosecutors now have not much use for the FBI.

          As far as I know they have lots of resources that are unique for handling kidnappings, and out here they have a pretty strong locally based cyber crime group that has built up pretty extensive ties to tech companies. Other than that – I dunno – bank robberies maybe?

          1. Only because Federal banking law requires it.

          2. No, no — you gotta watch Die Hard to see the important role the FBI plays in crisis situations!

    5. Nailed it.

       All of us out here in reality land are just trying to square our consciences and our duties as citizens with the current crappola sammich.

       May God grant us good judgment and have mercy on this country.

    6. If they had actually, you know, allowed the voters to choose we wouldn’t have this dog’s breakfast.

       I’m going to have to disagree here…I think a “Trump” (meaning someone out of left field with no real political experience or even awareness) was assured the GOP nomination in February of 2015 when the GOP summarily caved on executive amnesty after running on it in 2014 to gain the Senate. After the Bush administration and not living up to promises made in 2010 (which probably couldn’t have been completely) and pushing Romney in 2012 when he was the only one not credible on Obamacare (even if that lack of credibility was unfair it was real) and pushing through the fiscal 2015 continuing resolution sans HSA in November after winning the election instead of holding off on a full year until January the February cave in face of a shutdown threat (what, you didn’t see that coming) was one straw too many.

       Cruz thought he would ride it but he died in large party due to guilt by associate and GOP knives. The other non-politicians thought they could ride it but none channeled anger quite like Trump. Carson was too gentle. I think if Trump hadn’t jumped in Fiorina would have gathered in that wave combined with the “it’ll take a woman to beat a woman” argument.

21. It would probably be wrong to argue Trump is marginally better than Hillary; more accurately, he may be as bad as her. When I look at “Has temperament to be president” on my candidate check list, neither gets a check mark. But when I go the rest of the way down the list Hillary is a column of X’s and Trump’s column has a few question marks. Trump may not know much about the economy, to look at Sarah’s rxample, but everything Hillary knows about economics is wrong, and Trump’s economic advisers (should he only listen*) are quite good.

    So we turn to the other check list: Does this candidate confound the right people? Big check in the Trump column. Which candidate’s supporters will I more seeing sunk into the slough of despair in defeat? Big check in the Trump column. Which candidate will be more constrained by the traditional institutions of American culture? Big check in the Trump column.

    I have no reason to vote for Teh Donald, but more reasons to vote against Hillary. Looking across the states I see a resurgence of Republican conservative (not always the same thing, sadly) governance and it takes time for the prospects to rise to the big leagues. Trump vs Hillary is, hopefully, the last excrudescence of the zit that is socialism in America, and after this pus drains from the surface of our society we will see the deeper health dominate.

    *He may — Trump does not strike me as micromanager; he may treat the presidency as even more of a day job than the current occupant, in which case personnel is policy.

    1. Trump can listen to advisors, as evidenced by the quality of his recent speeches.

       Keeping POTUS Donald personally off twitter after the election would even out a lot of the kerfuffles.

       The Dowager Empress, on the other hand, takes campaign direction extremely well – her campaign is completely preprogrammed, based on exacting analysis of focus groups and extensive continuous polling, yielding the mathematically precise assessment of New York’s and DC’s best minds needed to completely obscure her underlying “personality” and “values”. But after the election, all bets are off, and I doubt even co-president Bill (who is not the same as Cosby at all because Billy Jeff didn’t drug them) would hold any sway whatsoever.

    2. While Trump confounds the right people, he also confounds the wrong people. What’s kindof scary is that with this latest Comey email scandal, Hillary’s confounding some of the right people as well!

       With Obama’s Iran deal, I’m half afraid that a nuke is going to go off in Washington DC. With the way this election is going, I’m now significantly more than just half-afraid that I would consider that a good thing…

       1. So long as it was small enough that the blast effects wouldn’t be appreciable in NoVA, I’d be for it (I have sisters in Mclean and Burke, VA).

          1. As much as I’d like to see Congress, the White House, most of the Supreme Court, and a huge amount of bureaucratic regulatory agencies in the blast radius, it’s thinking about all the innocent people living within that radius that gives me reservations about considering such an event a good thing.

             (I don’t have relatives who live in or near Washington DC, beyond a nephew who spent a couple months there as a page, but just because I don’t have relatives there, doesn’t mean that I want other people lose relatives who live there. Excepting the relatives who are bureaucrats, representatives, senators, Presidents, etc…)

             1. The DC nuke was the best part of Stross’s Merchant Princes series.

22. Despite being NeverTrump, this I can work with. Just don’t tell me he’s the President America needs, and we’re cool.
    (It also helps that I know where my home state’s going to go.)

    1. Mine is supposedly locked blue, except… it’s within the margin of error, and there are people like me.
       And OMG. My cat would be a better president than either of the scary evil clowns.

       1. I’ve said it elsewhere. It’s like a choice between a family of raccoons and a possibly rabid possum. I’d definitely choose your cat sight unseen over our current options.

          1. Opossums don’t carry rabies; their body temperature is too low for the virus to live. Opossums are quiet and generally don’t bother people, unlike raccoons, which just cost me several thousand dollars’ worth of roof repairs…

             1. Fine! FINE! I AMEND MY ANALOGY! Trump is now a nutria!

                1. +6

                2. Except that according to several of my LA relatives / acquaintances, “them’s good eatin’!”

       2. Mark Twain had an excellent essay about how having a Royal Family of cats would be an ideal solution to the whole governing issue… Plus, kitties! The Internet was invented to spread the way of the Cute!

          (Alas, I think Havelock would do his very best to “bury” the whole of DC. He knows poop when he sees it…)

          1. We could run the government on the revenue off the kitten videos!

       3. My psychotic rescue dog would be a better president than either of the scary evil clowns. Heck, the cartoon-character ticket of a dead cat and a talking penguin would be better. Even if they came with 100% of the cartoonist’s policy ideas. After all, neither your cat nor my dog, nor some cartoon characters can actually SIGN a bill into law!

          1. Your psychotic rescue dog? Heck, Calvin Coolidge would be a better president and he’s been dead over 80 years.

             I have been off-handedly reviewing the history of the competition and aside from Aaron Burr can come up with no more detestable candidate for the presidency than our current pair.

             1. Heck, Calvin Coolidge would be a better president and he’s been dead over 80 years.

                How can you tell?

                Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

                1. Zombie Calvin Coolidge for President 2016. That’s a republican I can support. 🙂

             2. Silent Cal? Yeah, I’m tired of listening to ’em talk, too.

    2. No, Trump is not “the president America needs.”

       I’m not even sure he is the high colonic America needs.

       
       Hillary. to extend the metaphor, is definitely not the Nurse Ratched America needs.

       1. Amen.

23. “Fraud has not been proven.”

    “Senator Al Franken.”

    The prosecution rests.

    1. *grumps severely about Sen. Fraudken*

    2. Contest the results, keep demanding recounts until enough votes can be “found” to swing it your way, then declare victory.
       That Al Franken?

       1. That’s the one, amazing what turns up in people’s car trunks!

       2. See also WA state governor.

       3. That’s pretty much what they tried to do in Florida in 2000.

24. As a wretched foreigner, I don’t get a vote. Canada already had our election, we elected Hillary-Equivalent, Justin “Shiny Pony/Small Potatoes” Trudeau. That’s going exactly as well as you might imagine.

    The reason I’d vote for Trump, given the chance, is the media. Trump is a New York City limousine liberal. The only advantage you get with him in the White House is that nothing gets done. Four years of sabotage, foot dragging and back-stabbing in the high levels of government. That’s good. If they’re busy screwing each other they don’t have time for you.

    The media, however, needs a comeuppance. They dearly need a cluebat to the forehead. Immanent bankruptcy seems to be making no impression on them at all, they continue to double and quadruple down on their same old crap.

    The Canadian media still maintains a thin veneer of respectability, their bias is merely obvious. The USA media has abandoned all restraint and is attempting to bludgeon you proles into doing what you’re told. No lie of omission too egregious, no lie of comission too heinous.

    They need to fail. You need to beat them. Its a fucking war my friends, Sad Puppies writ large. No third party crap this time out. A vote for Trump is a swing of the Cluebat of Truth upside the head of Pajama Boy and all his little friends.

    1. A-bloody-men, my friend. The establishment media is so bloody corrupt, nothing sort of rendering the bastards mute and jobless will fix them for good.

       1. That seems to be a common sentiment south of I80 in Illinois. I have not seen the dhimmicraps running so scared in all the 19 years I have lived here. The local republican party offices have started mailing out flyers calling out Mike Madigan as the root of all evil here (the TRUTH!!!), something they have not done before. The state republican establishment has lost a lot of their control over the local organizations, especially the ones the TEA party types infiltrated.

          1. “The state republican establishment has lost a lot of their control over the local organizations, especially the ones the TEA party types infiltrated.”

             *hollow laugh*

             Yes, that was our original cunning plan … to take over the local GOP organizations and bend them to our constitutionally responsible will. A ground-level insurrection, gradually working our way up.

       2. Also as a non-American, as far as I can see, looking on from the outside, the whole of the US governmental structure, media and bureaucracy has become absolutely corrupt, anti-American and appears to want America to cease to exist as quickly as they can force it to do so. They appear to have created completely insane, wish-fulfillment, bubble lives, in which a pretend magic utopia exists if they can just ignore all things that aren’t “magic utopia”. They are happily going about destroying American civil society and imposing a strict rule of chaos instead! The most disturbing thing is that the GOP turned out to be actively involved in this too. It appears that America has apparently been ruled by a conspiracy that amounts to a ruling single party for at least 20 years.

          That is why Donald Trump is so surprising. At first glance he should be one of the ruling class and behave just like them. I’ve seen many on different sites stating he is one of them and everything he does is fake, that he doesn’t want to be President and only wanted to get his friend Hillary elected. That was a possibility up until that fund-raising event with the Catholic Church where Donald Trump got up and called Hillary and her ilk out as corrupt.

          Anyone publicly doing that to such an elite group has signed their own death warrant. Even as President Trump will be under continued threat from all the political enemies that single event alone created. To combat that threat Trump has to do what he said he will try to do: “Clean the swamp”.
          Whatever else Trump has done – that was a brave act. It wasn’t a nice act but how could such a thing be done nicely – it cannot. Which is why none of the other Candidates could do such a thing – they are too politically trained – too nice. Also it is an act from which there is no going back. Donald crossed the Rubicon that night.

          This meant that Donald Trump is doing his best to save America.

          It strikes me that at heart Donald Trump is a romantic who has a dream of an America based on the Constitution – a dream not unlike Sarah’s.

          1. I think it’s the culture. The universities teach anti-americanism, even in America. To be patriotic is frowned upon. The culture teaches “perfection of nihilism” even in entertainment.
             And this is why and the trenches in which I fight.

             1. As a furiner who lived in the USA for 10 years, it is not the culture. It is the MEDIA. Hollywood and television between them portray the USA as a fricking shooting gallery with Boss Hawg running it. Been that way since the 1960s.

                When I first moved to New York in the ancient times. very, very reluctantly I might add, I used to keep a loaded FN-FAL handy. In case the neighborhood turned into a Sam Peckinpah movie. Twenty rounds of F*** YOU!!! for the first twenty through the door.

                That was my expectation of how it was going to be. Imagine my surprise to find I’d been getting lied to by my television my whole adult life. Systematically and completely.

                1. Years ago I was part of a Linux advocacy group that hung out together on a particular IRC channel. One of the members was a young Spanish guy who believed he knew everything there was to know about the US since he’d seen lots of movies. We used to goof on him, saying the most extreme stereotypical things we could think of, then trying to go beyond those even, to see when he’d realize we were shining him on. It was only occasionally that he figured it out–he was convinced that the stuff he saw in films was an accurate portrayal.

                   We’d say things like, “No Manolo, it’s not at all like what you see in the movies! Why, I haven’t been involved in a serious gunfight in almost a month! And no one has been badly injured in any of our high-speed car chases in more than 3 months!”

                   1. My sons in late night chat sessions with gaming partners around the world have found out the most fascinating things. For instance, the US is a military dictatorship. There’s gunfights everywhere. ETC.

                      1. You forgot: Americans are also woefully ignorant of the world outside our borders.

                         1. Wait…there’s a world outside the US?

                            1. ALLEGEDLY. But it’s a shadow world that tends to echo our mistakes, only bigger. Let’s not make mistakes.

                            2. I had been wondering whether there is any country that emits, on a per capita basis, more missionaries than the US. (Given the Mormon requirement, I suspect not.)

                               Beloved Spouse suggested China, but I pointed out a) it was on per capita basis and b) spies are not missionaries.

                            3. @RES: country no but perhaps a continent: Africa.

                               Africa is sending missionaries to the US because they hear about our empty churches and feel sorry for us. That is not a joke.

                      2. Since we were bought by Toshiba, we get a lot of Japanese managers and engineers coming on a 1-2 year rotation. Many are surprised that we are not a shoot-em-up dystopia.

                      3. A military dictatorship? How does that one work?

                         1. I don’t know. The boys don’t get it either. We apparently have a 9 pm curfew, though.
                            It’s amazing what people get from movies. Like when kids are in trouble for violating curfew, people abroad might think it’s a nation wide curfew for youth (we had those in Portugal when I was young. I once escaped through a coffee shop’s bathroom window. Never mind.)
                            My nephews, who are not stupid, had somehow decided there was a bank where only rich people could deposit money. So–

                            1. Wait, there’s a bank where only rich people can make deposits?

                               Does that mean rich people can only put their money in, but never get it out? (Sounds like taxes.) Is their jingle “Welcome to the Banco California, such a lovely place,…”?

                               Or a bank where only rich people are allowed to bank? (Sounds like Cyprus. Double toasters if you speak Russian.)

                         2. Kinda like Venezuela…

                2. And books. And art. And….

             2. Presented without additional comment:

                When College Students Think America Invented Slavery
                By David French — October 31, 2016
                Here’s a revealing story, from the College Fix:

                For 11 years, Professor Duke Pesta gave quizzes to his students at the beginning of the school year to test their knowledge on basic facts about American history and Western culture.

                The most surprising result from his 11-year experiment? Students’ overwhelming belief that slavery began in the United States and was almost exclusively an American phenomenon, he said.

                “Most of my students could not tell me anything meaningful about slavery outside of America,” Pesta told The College Fix. “They are convinced that slavery was an American problem that more or less ended with the Civil War, and they are very fuzzy about the history of slavery prior to the Colonial era. Their entire education about slavery was confined to America.”

                Not only did professor Pesta’s students demonstrate a formidable level of ignorance, they were also increasingly politicized:

                What’s more, he began to observe a shift in his students’ quiz responses in the early 2000s. Before that time, Pesta described his students as “often historically ignorant, but not politicized.” Since the early 2000s, Pesta has found that “many students come to college preprogrammed in certain ways.”

                “They cannot tell you many historical facts or relate anything meaningful about historical biographies, but they are, however, stridently vocal about the corrupt nature of the Republic, about the wickedness of the founding fathers, and about the evils of free markets,” Pesta said. “Most alarmingly, they know nothing about the fraught history of Marxist ideology and communist governments over the last century, but often reductively define socialism as ‘fairness.’”

                In my experience, modern education reform doesn’t expand students’ knowledge of American history, it largely just shifts the focus to the Left’s favorite topics. When an overwhelming majority of students identify Thomas Jefferson as a slaveowner and not also as a former president, we know that high school instruction is skewed. When students don’t understand the historical reality and context of slavery, it’s easy to understand how they might look at America as uniquely guilty — rather than unusually committed to abolition.

                I am in favor of broadening history instruction to, for example, tell stories of the American South from the slaves’ perspective or to tell about western expansion through Native American voices, but not to the exclusion of other instruction. History is extraordinarily complex, and we don’t do anyone any favors by narrowing course offerings until they present only or mainly the preferred narrative.

                Indeed, this phenomenon helps create the worst kind of student — the condescending ignoramus. They’re condescending because they know the “real” history of our nation. They know how bad we really are. Yet they truly know very little, and they certainly lack perspective. Good for Professor Pesta to introduce some balance. Now, if we can only find a few thousand professors like him, history might have a fighting chance.
                — — —

                Okay, one comment: We’re doomed, doomed I tell you!

                1. I went to school in the 1960s and 1970s. As far as I can remember, there was no mention of slavery outside the USA until high school, when we were told that “civilized” countries had voluntarily disarded it ages before it had to be put down by force here.

                   Why do college students believe America invented slavery? They were probably *taught* that.

                   The disconnect between schools and colleges is profound; at least, colleges seem to have no ide what the schools teach.

                   1. Slavery was already old when the Bible was written. It’s clear from the passages in Leviticus that deal with slavery that it was an old and accepted institution.

                      1. …and, that it was practiced differently in different times and places. E.g., there was the “forced labor” of the remnants of the tribes Israel conquered, AND there was the freeing of Hebrew slaves in the 7 year “Sabbath” years, and of all slaves in the 50 year “Jubilee”; etc. etc.

          2. “This meant that Donald Trump is doing his best to save America.”

             “I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.”

             Hillary is too embedded in the current culture to do the right thing except when absolutely expedient (e.g., her vote for the invasion of Iraq) but even then she will revert to her cronies as quickly as practical.

          3. Whatever else Trump has done – that was a brave act. It wasn’t a nice act but how could such a thing be done nicely – it cannot. Which is why none of the other Candidates could do such a thing – they are too politically trained – too nice. Also it is an act from which there is no going back. Donald crossed the Rubicon that night.

             This is the kind of thing I mean when I say he is probably running from very different motives than anyone, including most of his supporters, assign…he’s not a US politician and we’re all trying to view him through that lense.

    2. I’d say you have a pretty good handle on the situation…

    3. I hate the media more than I hate either Party.

    4. I dunno. As far as I’m concerned, Trump is as much the media candidate as Clinton is. No matter who wins, the media’s death-grip on democracy remains unbroken, IMO.

       1. Clinton is the candidate they love to cover for, to propagandize. She gets undeserved positive coverage.
          Trump is the guy they love to uncover, to scandalize, to air the dirty laundry of. He get lots of deserved negative coverage.

    5. No problems, come on down and vote as often as you can. Lots of others are too.

    6. I thought Trudeau was more an Obama equivalent than Hillary.

       Hillary is many things but not a shiny pony. At best she is the evil pony princess Nightmare Moon in the Hieronymus Bosch version of My Little Pony.

25. My answer to demands that Vote Fraud exists is that the burden of proof is the other way: they must prove it does not, or not in any material way.

    In a corporate audit the first test of a company’s financial statements is a test to see whether there are controls in place to prevent (or find and correct) error and fraud. The next step is to determine whether these controls are followed and are effective. A simple example with which most of us are familiar is counting the cash drawer at the end of shift (or, even better, at random intervals during a shift.) If there is no effort to count the drawer, there is no control and the auditor must initiate more extensive (expensive and intrusive) procedures to determine cash balances.

    And state, in the audit report, that “material weaknesses were found in various financial controls.”

    Friend, I assure you that material weaknesses exist in our controls against vote fraud. Therefore I must assume that because fraud can occur undetected, fraud will occur. It is up to those denying its existence to defend their claim.

    1. That’s why I keep beating the drum about getting involved in the polls somehow. Either by working, or with one of the parties as a poll watcher.
       You don’t have to be a little old lady.

       1. Of course, the jurisdictions where the fraud is occurring are the ones where the Democrats routinely throw out the Republican poll watchers by accusing them of violating the rules.

          1. In this case, we got to stop the rot from spreading. The bad, corrupt districts have often been bad and corrupt since Boss Tweed was ensconced in Tammany Hall. Not much we can do about those… but you may be able to make a difference in Your precinct.

             1. The problem is that the larger the geographic area, the less difference it makes. Think about it: the elections we are 90% confident have been determined by fraud are either national by state (President), or statewide (Senator, Governor, Secretary of State, etc.)

                Where do you think this HUD policy of exporting little conclaves of blue city welfare clients, refugees, illegal immigrants, etc. comes from? Once they have enough enclaves where they can manufacture enough votes to tip the election, game over.

26. I have not voted for a candidate since Ronald Reagan. I’m sick of that.

    I did vote, though. Given the nature of our business, early voting is popular here. Weather’s supposed to be nice, but Murphy chortles at such things. Honestly, if it wasn’t for some other elections, I might not have.

    I’m seeing an unexpected bright spot: A wholesale disgust with the mainline media over how they’re covering the election, from Trump to the Clinton scandal du jour. That they’re going after Comey and not Clinton has not been missed. Regardless of who wins on November 8, the mainliners have lost hearts and minds. Since they don’t realize that, it will be some time before that’s turned around.

    The downside is that rumor gets more attention than it should, and is already happening on social media. That will only make a bad situation worse.

    On open primaries: That’s a state-by-state thing and I doubt there will be much movement, especially where one party dominates local elections while another the national. That was how “Stealth Republicans” operated before some of us became outright Republicans.

    1. Wisconsin has open primaries. One year the (major?) Parties tried to bypass that with caucus instead. Result: Low turnout for everything. I can see eliminating open primaries, but it needs to be done properly. I do not pretend to know exactly what that is, nor that it might be the same in every state. I can say that I do like being registered as a VOTER and nothing else, no party affiliation. But what I like and what is {most workable, best for all} are not always in alignment.

       1. You say “low turnout” like it is a bad thing. People who only decide based on 30 minute TV news shows or talk radio are as big a problem as open primaries.

          I’d love to see all races go caucus or even convention at that level. Everyone could still vote but:

          1. To pick a party’s candidate you have to be part of that party enough to register for it and get out to the caucus. Put the “primary” part at the end and make them sit though the local organizational meeting and be part of that process, ie be active in the party.

          2. Would have to really want to do so which, while an imperfect filter, is still a bit of an informational filter.

          1. It wasn’t just low primary turnout. The caucuses were about empty as well. It was “So… the Hell with all of it, then.”

    2. I’m another one who hasn’t voted FOR anyone for President since Reagan and did vote for Trump. Here in Colorado it’s all mail-in, and since I no longer see my vote changing, I went ahead and dropped it off yesterday.

       Maybe I’m totally wrong in my belief Trump may do some good things, but I’ve been wrong before. I voted for Perot in 1992 because I couldn’t stomach Bush 41 and his problems with “the vision thing” again. I thought maybe the GOP would learn a lesson and figured the country could stand 4 years of Clinton.

       The one who learned a lesson is me. The country had 8 years of Clinton and what the Dems learned when they dug in and got him through impeachment has done major damage. The GOP learned nothing and went on to Dole, Bush 43, and McCain. I’m not doing the 3d party thing again, and I have to wonder if the people here who are voting Johnson know he’s an open borders guy. I heard him say so in a radio interview.

       So I started out wanting Walker, switched to Cruz, and now voted for Trump. When the Gingrich Congress won, I thought, “If they do one single thing they’ve promised, I’ll think well of them forever.” They did. I feel the same way about Trump. He can’t do some of the things he’s talking about, but if he nominates decent judges, closes the border, or stops sending Americans to die in deserts for nothing, etc., I won’t regret my vote.

       I voted for Reagan with nothing but hope, no real belief. Belief didn’t come until he fired the air traffic controllers. It wasn’t that he did it; it was that when the media and the Dems revved up their hysteria machine, he didn’t modify, back down, or appease, he ignored them. That’s what I have this time too, hope, but also an absolute conviction Trump will be better than Clinton.

27. The last time I voted in person, our polling place was in a hotel conference room. We got there with maybe an hour to spare. Saw a couple people rip off the gift shop as they left, laughing about voting for Obama to piss off their parents. I said something about the shoplifting and was immediately turned on by everybody else. Guess I was the only Republican in the room.

    This year I’ve gotten calls from my sons school about him being a racist. Well, not a racist but he says he’s supporting Trump and calling all the other kids in his class idiots for thinking Clinton was anything but a crook. That got a *look* from me while the teacher had to explain how, exactly, he was wrong, with evidence please. I was told it wasn’t a very nice thing to say. They were told exactly how much money this family has given to this school since it opened and how I expected him to be treated. He now eats his lunch with his Bible and Robotics teacher and they talk about whatever he wants to talk about.

    I was informed by two of my younger coworkers over the summer that if Trump wins, there won’t be anymore Mexicans which means there won’t be anymore tacos. They were voting for the tacos. The only words I could say were “You know that’s not how it works, right?”

    We don’t talk about politics at work much but my new boss was showing me pictures of the tiffany blue gun her teenage daughter got for her birthday and lamented with me about the tragic canoe accident that took all of ours.

    There’s hope. It’s slim and there’s going to be a lot of pain but there’s hope. Now, I need to buy another bottle of whiskey for the election night coverage.

    1. Bible and Robotics teacher

       That’s one course? Or two taught by the same person? Either way, it sounds like a pretty cool school.

       1. Two classes, same teacher. Kinda looks like a biker minus the tattoos. Very cool teacher, not sure about the school but better than most of the alternatives.

    2. “… if Trump wins, there won’t be anymore Mexicans which means there won’t be anymore tacos.”

       I think that I have been eating at Taco Bell since the Nixon Administration and cannot recall ever having seen a single employee who appeared Mexican. While I confess to not having a clear idea what a “Mexican” is supposed to look like, I am pretty sure they are not supposed to look like the types of employees I’ve seen at Taco Bell.

       Having briefly considered recent revelations about that for which “taco” might be slang or euphemism (see: Sausage Fest), I am fairly confident Americans will be eating tacos for a very very long time, regardless of the Mexican population in the United States.

       (My apologies to the management for intruding images best left outside the door or, at the very least, in the mud room.)

       1. Tacos, curry, calamari, dim sum, sushi, kimchi… what was the subject again?

          Ah! “Cultural appropriation *is* our culture!”

          1. There is a little shop in American Fork, Utah (city named to distinguish it from Spanish Fork) called “TemptAsians” that was founded by people from Hong Kong, who lived in Scotland for a few years. The shop generally sells Indian Curries (as a result of so many Indian and Pakistani people living in Great Britain) *including* a menu item called “Scottish Curry”.

             So, yeah, America has cultural appropriation so up our wazoo, even the immigrants do it, several layers deep!

             1. Don’t you mean ‘American Fark’.

                😛

                (yes, I’ve met people from there)

       2. I may have made a similar statement at another time about the proximity of Mexicans to my taco (my husband being of Italian and Scottish extraction) but bit of course I meant the ones I make every couple of weeks at home. And I’m fairly certain the person running the last taco truck I ate at was Asian of some description.

          1. Out here in the Glorious Peoples Republic of California in the Valley of Silicon, if it were somehow possible to magically deport all the undocumented immigrant worker persons of south-of-the-border birth, all of the restaurants would fold. There’s hardworking people from Latin America working the kitchens of every type of restaurant from fast food all the way up, for every type of food – basically everything other than family-staffed places, and most of those as well once the kids are off to college and they run out of nephews.

       3. A lot of Mexicans making sushi at the Korean-Japanese sushi place run by a Chinese family.

       4. Some years back during the flap over the “racist” Taco Bell commercials with the Chihuahua, a couple of Mexican-American co-workers – brothers – told me that there was nothing racist about the dog. What he found racist about Taco Bell was the nasty crap they pass off as “Mexican” food. 😛

          They were also generally opposed to illegal immigration, either, and *their* parents were legalized by Reagan’s amnesty. Their take was that Mom and Dad were Americans who got here as soon as they could (and didn’t feel like waiting in line to get in), while the newer “immigrants” didn’t give a damn about America and just wanted access to the welfare *they* were paying for.

       5. I had a roommate whose parents visited THEIR parents in Mumbai religiously. She had gorgeous waist-length black hair, and was hired by the local Taco Bell explicitly so that customers would think they had Mexican employees.

          The stupid, it burns…

28. This is the kind of situation we get when our leaders sell out the country to foreign interests for the sake of their personal enrichment. Looking beyond Trump is important because represents the population of Americans that are looking to tear down the oligarchy trying to take control of our country. It’s better than being a German meekly waiting for the third world savages to kick down your door and rape your wife.

    The alt-right has every reason to be enraged at the assault on the fabric of our society. They’re primarily made up of unsatisfied young people who want to make America into the vision they were told stories about. This is the result.

    1. Unfortunately they realize the left is wrong, and turn everything the left says on its head. Which is still left, but now genuinely racist blinkeredly nationalist and still protectionist and stupid.
       SIGH. This too shall pass.

       1. They fail to realize that merely reversing the polarity of a problem does NOT remove the problem.

          1. Yep.

          2. I thought reversing the polarity ALWAYS solves the problem. That’s what Scotty taught Geordi La Forge.

             You mean… Star Trek is -wrong?-

             I’m going to my safe space now.

             1. Nonono – You have to run a tachyon burst through the main deflector array, also known as the La Forge Maneuver. That’ll solve all your problems.

                1. Can’t hear you, I’m sucking my thumb too hard.

                2. Or you can bounce the graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish – isn’t that the way we do things here? Or are we just making shit up as we wish?

                   1. That sounds about right. Hold my beer, I got this!

             2. And there is the (in)famous “reverse the polarity of the neutron flow” that was used once (Dr. Who, John Pertwee era) but was such a thing as to be remembered as if it were used more. “Reverse the polarity” was used several times, but the neutron flow line was unique.

                1. Maybe he just misread the line, and it was supposed to be, “reverse the hilarity of the neutron flow.” Can’t have those neutrons giggling and poking each other in the ribs with their elbows, this is serious stuff!

          3. Forced to choose between the Hitler Youth and Mao’s Cadres, I will note that the Hitler Youth a) don’t demand you agree with them before they kill you and b) are much snappier dressers.

             1. *giggles!*

       2. I’ve been calling them the “half-cured”.

       3. It’s both better and worse than that.

          They reverse the polarity on SOME things, but not all.

          So… some are blinkered nationalist (as opposed to patriotic), some are protectionist (as opposed to anti-Globalist. UN delenda set), some are various shades of ignorant about politics, economics, philosophy, biology, and theology (just to name the major errors I’ve run into)

          Mostly, they’re young.

          I know, it’s… challenging. It’s also an opportunity.

    2. “The alt-right has every reason to be enraged …”

       Unfortunately, rage is not the optimum emotion to apply to our current predicament, any more than it helped address the failures of the French Revolution.

       1. Being calm and reasonable got us eight years of the Mom Jeans President, the so-called “JV” terrorists left to flourish, the invasion of Western Europe by people that hate the West and want to destroy it, terrorist attacks on the American homeland that have left over a hundred people murdered, and the reaction of our leaders has been “America can absorb terrorist attacks.”

          I’m sorry, are we supposed to be watching Netflix and hand waving all of this as “oh it’ll be fine”? Are we supposed to remain fat, dumb, and happy because America is too big to fail?

          Complacency is death. I’m scared of what’s happening and that makes me angry. What makes me even more angry is how the older adult of society who were supposed to make sure this didn’t happen decided that the culture and political wars were not worth fighting and allowed the Left to drive us into this ditch. And then those people have the nerve to complain that the tone of the new invigorated movement doesn’t suit them.

          If we have any alternatives, I’d love to hear them. But the longer this goes on the more apparent it becomes that the cake is baked.

          1. What makes me even more angry is how the older adult of society who were supposed to make sure this didn’t happen decided that the culture and political wars were not worth fighting and allowed the Left to drive us into this ditch.

             Decided it was not worth fighting, eh? That is not exactly in line with what actually happened – if there was no opposition, from the end of WWII through today, you would see a very different America indeed. It’s the very fruits of that opposition, fought tooth and nail across the entire society, that has yielded where we are now – balanced and now tipping, yes, with gains is some arenas and losses in others, but compared to the potential long-fallen-into-the-abyss, not really that bad off.

             And as a rule, as you become an adult you get to take up the banners and start fighting the fight. Complaints about how the prior generations didn’t win it all on your behalf so you could kick back and enjoy utopia (hint: there is no utopia) do not recognize that every generation inevitably faces it’s own test. In the past the test was “don’t let the USSR take over the world”, and in the course of the Cold War, it turns out that generation, eventually led by Reagan, chose to, you know, actually win the Cold War instead of somehow eradicating the left.

             And now it happens that your test, while open book, is a challenging one. The WWII generation is mostly gone, but the folks who fought in the long culture wars from the Cold War through The End of History, and then after 9/11, through the History Strikes Back era to today, sometimes falling back to preserve the ability to fight, and sometimes advancing (go look at gun laws 1976-2016 and tell me no one’s been fighting) are still around and still fighting wherever they can. Many here are doing what they can. Our lovely hostess Sarah is one of them.

             Despair is a sin. Complaining about how the world is not all unicorns and rainbows is annoying. Picking up a dropped shield and pike and getting on line is contributing. Choose wisely.

             1. The biggest problem is that the problems you are looking at aren’t as big as the media tells you they are.
                Evil people want you to believe that our country’s problems are bigger than they are, because they want you to despair. A desperate person is more willing to follow evil people. And that will make the bad things you are trying to avoid actually happen.

                1. Lately, I’ve learned when “This is what the media is focusing on, and it’s not that important” happens, to wonder “What are they trying to distract us from?”

             2. Amen. Other people’s children were obviously not exposed to political history.
                Mine were because I enjoyed metaphorically speaking smacking them on their little snouts, until they studied.
                The Alt.right has not clue they are actually running back INTO the errors of that old horror, Woodrow Wilson.

             3. …through The End of History, and…

                My claim to being ancient is at least partly that why, yes, I have lived through “The End of History.” }:o)

          2. Who said anything about “[b]eing calm and reasonable”?

             Do you know no emotions besides passivity and rage?

             Try being resolute and determined. Watching Die Hard and learn from John McClane, not Hans & Karl.

29. Just found these instructions on how to delete secret emails:
    http://www.bleachbit.org/news/how-delete-secret-emails-microsoft-exchange

    1. The email to the Weiner-Abedin household pointing to these instructions apparently was redirected by Outlook to the spam folder.

30. It’s a pathetic state of affairs when you can’t find a lesser evil to vote for on the national level. However, I am going to happily vote for or against several state and local candidates and bond proposals and referenda.

    1. This is a big reason why it’s not “throwing your vote away” to go vote for a third-party candidate. Sure, I might not be able to bring myself to vote for Trump, or against Hillary, or whatever, but I can get up and vote for a candidate I choose…and then proceed to vote down-ticket for all those other choices. We *might* get a Congress willing to stand up against whoever takes the office. Or not — but at least we tried — and we should primary those spineless Republicans that *don’t* stand up against them!

       I’m at a loss as to why we believe the President is the only race that matters…indeed, this is probably the biggest failing of the Libertarian party!

31. Here was my theory back in the spring, and I haven’t seen a reason to change it.

    The Congressional Democrats will side with Secretary Clinton. The media will side with Secretary Clinton. And after seeing how they’ve failed miserably as an opposition to President Obama… The Congressional Republicans will not be an effective opposition to Secretary Clinton, even if they somehow GAIN power.

    The Congressional Democrats will fight Mr. Trump tooth and nail. The media will fight Mr. Trump tooth and nail. And given how they’ve tried to distance themselves from Mr. Trump, the Congressional Republicans will not support him in anything where he does not have massive public backing.

    If you want a curb on overreaching Executive power — and I do — a Trump vote is the only choice.

    1. That is an excellent point, one worth repeating.

       The media will actually do their job if Trump gets elected. They will dig dirt on that guy like badgers.

       Hillary, quite the reverse.

    2. Also, note that when Nixon crossed the line, members of his own party came to him and told him they would support his impeachment. When Clinton crossed the line, crickets. There are quite a number of Republicans who would be eager to impeach Trump, should he do any of the untoward things the Left claims he will, and I doubt there’s a single Democrat who would vote to impeach Hillary.

       1. This is why we are dropping our Republican affiliation and going independent. RINOs everywhere. Eh tu Brutus?

          1. Actually, I’ve come to accept I was a RINO all those years.

             Things are defined by what they are and not what we wish them to be. Especially after the W administration there is no way to argue that the GOP isn’t exactly the party that people generally call RINOs want.

             The conservatives and small government types have been the true RINOs, calling themselves Republican, voting Republican, and often working for the party, all while wanting something that the GOP was not.

             1. I think a good portion of Never Trumpers are people who have always thought of Republicans as the Small Government Party, who realize that the nomination of Trump (a life-long Democrat) that they were wrong.

                I have a feeling that those of us in such a position are going to find ourselves party-less, at least for a while…

                1. Yeah, that’s exactly how it was with me. I was even a delegate to the state GOP in 2012, which greatly bumped up my disillusionment about the process, and the nomination of Trump and his treatment of the states that opposed him was so disgusting that I left the party entirely this year.

                2. And my question is, “Did you just realize this with Trump?”.

                   Sorry, not buying it. I’m convinced the #NeverTrump in the punditry and commentariat are strictly involved in a class conscious choice to not be associated with “those people”. They have long been embarassed by their voters and Trump was their excuse to prove to their cultural and class mates on the left they were good urban sophisticates.

                   If this was really about policy they would have opposed the GOP post Medicare Part D even if it meant electing Democrats but they didn’t. They were fine with bigger gov’t as long as they were in charge.

                   Once big gov’t wouldn’t come from people with Prestigious University Degrees and well heeled pedigrees the #NeverTrump crowd had the vapors and fainted. When the Erick Erickson, George Wills, Bill Kristols, and George W. Bushes of the world came to they were “forced” to support the last member of their class left standing: Hillary.

                   1. Straw that broke the camels back. I’ve been aware since ~2002 that they weren’t reliable small government, but figured that they had the slimmest chance of being redeemed. That tiny hope faded this year.

                   2. I notice that your list of evil elitist NeverTrumpers is… rather selective.
                      You leave out people like David French, Jonah Goldberh, Kevin Williamson, and Jim Geraghty. Guess that wouldn’t square with your narrative.

                      1. Oh, we do include them. Every single one of the NRO people you list is an open borders squish who firmly believes in inviting the rest of the world to move here even though there is absolutely no economic justification for doing so.

                3. I think so too. I include myself. I changed my voter registration.

32. voting this season is like Russian Roulette, with Hillary, you get a semi-automatic, with Trump, you get a .38 revolver and get to spin… I think I will spin….

    1. Of course, this doesn’t help that (1) I’m convinced that the revolver’s chambers are all full of bullets, and (2) isn’t that the revolver that had a squib last time we took it to the range? I haven’t yet tried to remove the bullet stuck in the barrel…

       And, to further complicate matters, *this* game requires us to pull the trigger twelve times…

       Sigh. I’d like to say that at least we aren’t trying to play this game with an “Atomic Annie” gun (a nice weapon designed to deliver atomic warheads 50 miles away)…but Obama’s Iran deal has even put *that* on the table…

       Hold on to your hats! This is going to be a *very* bumpy ride, to say the least!…

    2. with Hillary, you get a semi-automatic

       I disagree. Sanders would have been a semi-automatic. Clinton is a mini Uzi.

33. Trump is…questionable. Hillary is not; she has proven untrustworthy and only out for herself. The Media Minions of the Left will attack Trump, but roll over and play dead for Hillary. Hillary Delenda Est!

34. I fully understand. I’m not “for” Trump; I’m against Hillary.

35. An additional consideration, on an issue where there is a difference between the two candidates: Hillary will repay support the Teachers’ Unions in their efforts to block charter schools. Trump will support charter schools and owe the TUs nothing.

    Even more broadly, while Trump assuredly views unions as something to work with, he won’t be beholden to them and won’t be hesitant about “firing the Air Traffic Controllers.” A Lois Lerner embarrassing him will be informed in no uncertain terms that “You’re Fired!”

36. I was considering restarting the morbibund blog by penning something on the election – and I’ll skip it now. Sarah has said exactly what I would have. (Except for how much a Trump Presidency would be restrained by the Beltway – a white male heterosexual? C’mon! Nothing there to hold them back, except for the very few who might see a “blowout” for him in their own districts.)

    Otherwise – not going to get into any fights here, any more than Sarah apparently feels like doing. Except to note that I have scant sympathy for those who cut off their noses to spite their faces.

37. c4c – coz today’s going to be busy. T_T

38. Right. Well, I won’t drink but I think I’ll start playing Christmas music. Despair is a sin to which my mind defaults to unless I force it away. It’s been very hard lately and I’ve had to give up reading the news. When it comes to national events, I feel like prayer is the positive action I can take.

    1. Yeah, it’s my sin of choice, too. And I need A prayer life.

       1. These days, I’m praying for wisdom. Because if I get the strength without the wisdom, I’ll need bail money…

          On the upside, it’s November. That means, NaNoWriMo, which means authors are busily scribbling away the stories that folks like me and mine will be devouring in the months and years to come. And, seven days hence, there will still be (for some of us) cats to feed and spoil rotten, kidlets to do same to (and teach them well besides), family and friends who will need our support whatever the outcome may be…

          The story doesn’t end with the results of the election. Thank goodness and aw, nuts, at the same time. We’ve still the business of living the kind of example we want be. There’s still the chore of creating that environment where the wrong people will want to do right.

          Looked at another way, with eyes all squinched up and head tilted Oddly, future generations may wish they were us. Truly. We live in a time of tumultuous change, and awesome things are happening even with the “aw, nuts” stuff that has all of us conflusterated and highly ‘teched. I’d have been looking forward to things like how manufacturing and such is getting more distributed, and how choices have exploded in variety, had I known they were coming when I was younger.

          Making things more awesome can be painfully slow while it’s happening. And it probably won’t look anything like what will come out in the end. And we’ll definitely have to slog through mountains of crap to get where we want to be- and not all of us will make it there before we shuffle off to the Great Library hereafter.

          But *expletive!* do we live in interesting times! Of course the game is rigged- but that’s no reason not to play. We’re Americans! We do the impossible, and the rest of the world may scoff and imagine they coulda done it themselves- but did they? We’ve a future that spans this election, this four-years-of-who-knows-what, and beyond.

          Be not afraid, folks. Fearful things are coming, will we, nill we- but we *will* respond, adapt, and meet those challenges.

39. Slightly off topic.

    My Biggest Problem with “Third Parties” is that we only hear about them around the time to vote for President.

    Where are they when it comes to voting for City Councilmen, State Representatives, State Senators, etc?

    It appears that the majority of “Third Parties” are only interested in running somebody as the “Perfect Candidate For President”.

    Well, the President isn’t an “all-powerful dictator” so if a Third Party is going to do anything good, then they need broad support in “lesser offices” both Local/State and Federal.

    Then of course, there’s the “question” of “what does the Third Party Stand For”.

    The “most famous” Third Party currently active in the US is the Libertarian Party (which I sometimes think of as the Libertine Party).

    What is the Libertarian Party currently most “famous for”?

    “Legalizing Drugs”.

    Which IMO isn’t something to get broad support.

    I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that the general public thinks “Legalizing Drugs” is what druggies would like not something that the general public supports.

    Now I personally think that a Strong Third Party with Strong Public Support would be good for the US.

    Would a Hillary Clinton become a Candidate for the Democratic Party if the Democratic Party had two Strong Parties to fight?

    I don’t know.

    All I know is that the current Third Parties haven’t done a good job of gaining Public Support and just running Candidates for the Presidency isn’t the way to gain Public Support.

    1. Here’s a new third party effort that looks like it might be promising:

       http://thenewamericana.com/

       It’s worth looking into and possibly assisting with if they serious about becoming a major player. I’m not sure about that just yet–keeping an eye on them for the moment.

       1. Look, I’ll be blunt: the problem with third parties is that they by nature attract the malcontents and odds. This is fine. I’m somewhere between Republican and Libertarian (I really couldn’t care less what people choose to put in their mouths, but will defend to the death their right to do so.) BUT this makes it hard for them to move to mainstream parties.
          Is there a route? I don’t think so. And no, I don’t think voting for them is what does it.
          I think third parties become main parties when there is a societal upheaval large enough to shake everything.
          Be patient. My guess is you’ll get it in your lifetime.
          You just have to make sure the third party is Libertarian or Constitutionalist and not “Socialist” or “Heiglian”
          THAT is ultimate our main mission, should we live so long.
          This? Most of it is blue on blue and useless.

          1. Most of it is blue on blue and useless.

             Which is why I’m “taking a break” from responding to drloss. 😦

    2. Libertarians are like Baptists. There are at least 16 flavors, and at least 12 of them refuse to admit that any of the others are the Real Thing.

       O/T, but Dad once told me that there are more kinds of Baptists than everything else put together. Here’s how Dad taught me to count Baptists:

       One Baptist is a missionary.
       Two Baptists make a congregation.
       Three Baptists make a conference.
       Four Baptists make a denomination.
       Five Baptists make a schism.

       1. I differ between the Libertarian Party and small-l libertarians.

          While I’ve encountered some-what kooky small-l libertarians, IMO they’re still not as kooky as the Libertarian Party. 😉

          Now some small-l libertarian will come allow and prove me wrong. 😉

          1. I’m not kooky.

             1. You’re one of the sane small-l libertarians and I’d say so even if this wasn’t “your place”. 😀

             2. Merely eccentric, lacking sufficient funds?

             3. I’m not kooky.

                Uhm, Sarah, we need to talk 😉

                1. Well, she sure ain’t Edd Byrnes.

                   1. Which is presumably something for which Mr. Hoyt (any of them) is very thankful. 😛

    3. Beloved Spouse, a few years back, enjoyed a healthy correspondence with the sheriff of a neighboring county, who was Libertarian.

       But the ballot access rules tend to make maintaining a viable third party somewhat difficult.

       It is almost as if the primary pair of parties do not like rivals in the competition to fleece the lambs, much less a rival who says “maybe them lambs don’t need fleecing.”

       1. “It is almost as if the primary pair of parties do not like rivals in the competition to fleece the lambs, much less a rival who says ‘maybe them lambs don’t need fleecing.'”

          Ya think.

          1. It doesn’t help when the third parties are run by idiots who can’t comprehend basics such as, “If you successfully cross their threshold for ballot access don’t piss it away next cycle” which is doubly true in states with fairly reasonable laws (Libertarian Party of Connecticut I’m looking at you).

    4. Well, we DID have a Libertarian Party in Los Angeles run a candidate (an undocumented illegal alien lawyer) third party. Our candidate lost by exactly the margin of the the Lib vote, and their candidate immediately disappeared from the public eye.

       This was AFTER they had tried to declare themselves the official Republican Party of Los Angeles County, even printing up their own letterheads and renting office space. The court took a dim view of them in the resulting lawsuit.

    5. 3rd parties can go both ways: Seattle has an avowedly Socialist city council-woman. The scary thing, given some of the things she says, is that she isn’t laughed out of hearing.

    6. This is a big problem I have with the Libertarian Party, too. I attended a Republican Caucus several years ago who was angry that a single mother was required to take care of her yard, or otherwise be fined. He was insistent that Provo wasn’t an HOA.

       While party affiliation on the local level is somehow not recognized here in Provo (I’m not entirely sure if it’s a Utah thing — and in truth, we’re just kidding ourselves, because it’s obvious what party a given Mayor is), we could use a good libertarian-ish mayor!

       1. Of all the third parties in existence, the Libertarians are the ones you can least use that attack on though. They have more state and local offices than any other third party, and usually have people running in state and local offices. A libertarian got over 40% of the vote in one of our state representative votes in my county in the last election cycle.

40. “I’m fully aware that he is supported by a bunch of loonies who give a bad name to Republicans“
    Feh, they give Loonies a bad name.
    Far too many in this have gone from people I liked and respected to . . .I don’t know. People who KNEW Trump was no Republican, let alone a conservative, didn’t just decide that, “well, he is gonna get the nomination, I guess I will back him over Hillary”, but went full potato, rutabaga, and turnip, neigh Chuckles son of John, and are ranting how he Is “Just Like Reagan! For Reelzes!”
    People who condemned Trump for his libelous attack on Cruz’s Dad are now defending that said some move (lamely).
    Well, there goes the night.
    I’ll be over here with a bottle of Elijah Craig, A bottle of 1910 Rye, a bottle of Jameson, a bottle of Glenlivet and a bottle of Glenfiddich, giving myself a brain bleaching.

    1. Yeah, I was around for Reagan, albeit he wasn’t a friend of mine, but I can with absolute certainty tell you this: Teh Donald is No Ronald Reagan.

       The only acceptable counter argument would be to show me the vast pile of Trump writings laying out and defending his deep intellectual beliefs that compares to Reagan, In His Own Hand.

       Until then, nope.

       1. First two pages on Amazon:

          Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education in Business and LifeApr 27, 2010
          by Donald Trump and Meredith McIver
          Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into SuccessJan 18, 2008
          by Donald J. Trump and Meredith McIver
          Crippled America: How to Make America Great AgainNov 3, 2015
          by Donald J. Trump
          Trump: The Art of the DealOct 6, 2015
          by Donald J. Trump and Tony Schwartz
          Product Details
          Trump: The Art of the ComebackOct 27, 1997
          by Donald J. Trump and Kate Bohner
          Think Big: Make It Happen in Business and LifeSep 30, 2008
          by Donald J. Trump and Bill Zanker
          Trump: How to Get RichDec 28, 2004
          by Donald J. Trump and Meredith McIver
          The Art of Being a BIG DEALJun 11, 2016
          by Donald J Grump
          Trump: Think Like a Billionaire: Everything You Need to Know About Success, Real Estate, and LifeSep 27, 2005
          by Donald J. Trump and Meredith McIver

          1. You did notice that almost all of them have two credited authors, right? In most cases like that, the non-big-name author is the actual writer of the book, with the big name basically doing a read-through and giving approval.

             1. Yes I did. Fact remains the guy has a bibliography.

                1. Yes but it is not, comparable to Reagan, In His Own Hand.

       2. “But, But, Ronnie was a Dem once Tooooo!!11!”
          Yeah, Reagan changed over a long time vs Trump . . . like say Trump’s support of leftoids monetarily last election cycle, and even better, his calls for Canadian style Single Payer changed DURING the primaries(well he stopped saying he was going to give us Single, and just went with “Fix 0bamacare”which to statists and leftists is Single Payer)

          1. Maybe he meant “fix” as in “neuter.”

       3. I imagine some of the people comparing Mr Trump to Pres. Reagan are hoping for a similar dramatic transformation on the issue they care about (immigration, political correctness, globalism)

          While it’s possible that some people fondly imagine Mr. Trump is comparable in character it is more likely that they are attempting to play a rhetorical game in order to increase the odds of Trump beating Hillary.

          The more irrelevant the issue, the more ridiculous the partisan defenses in order to sway the low-information voter.

41. Some good news from Washington state– at least on the dry side– they’re being VERY strict about checking the voter qualifications.

    So the number of folks successfully voting from multiple houses is going to be much lower. 😀

42. Voting time:
    https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/144589-what-theme-should-we-read-for-our-december-book

    1. Also, reading time. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
       Spoiler free:
       https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/18320450-small-gods—-november-2016—-spoiler-free

       1. Spoilers allowed:
          https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/18320452-small-gods—-november-2016—-spoilers-allowed

43. Trump is a case of Necrotizing Faciitis. Disfiguring and fatal 40% of the time. Unfortunately Clinton is a case of Stage C Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. Fatal 100% of the time. Vote survival, vote Trump.

    1. “Vote for the son of a bitch. It’s important.”

44. I came around to the “Vote against Hillary” side of things a while back. Unfortunately, this then meant that I had to avoid places where Trump’s supporters congregate because they tended to make me start second-guessing my decision.

    On another note, here in the 25th District in California, the candidates for State Senate are Republican Mike Antonovich, and Democrat Anthony Portantino. So as you can probably guess, I was a bit surprised today when I checked my mail and found a mailer for the “Republican choice”, namely Portantino. I’m guessing someone out there is trying to confuse Republican voters.

    (note that the mailer did not come from the Portantino campaign)

    1. Can you share a site? I thought I’d found the most crazy pants Trumpers (I like to know what I’m supporting) and I still haven’t found any worse than Hillary supporters (I.e. they beat up homeless women for giggles)

       1. I’m referring to stuff that cropped up at places like the comments section over at Ace’s blog. Or in the Ace Yahoo group.

          It’s gotten a lot less toxic over there now, though. And at least part of that is probably because Ace has dropped the hammer on people multiple times (at least one of the targets of Ace’s wrath was a long-time commenter who realized that it was probably best if he remain banned from commenting until after the election). And I also tend to avoid a comments section if I realize that the comments are starting to shift from the original topic to Trump. So I don’t see as much of it (though there was the one pro-Trump anti-Mormon idiot a couple of weeks ago…).

          Mind you, I’m not saying that they were worse than Hillary supporters. I’m saying that they were merely bad enough that they made me consider the “A pox on both your houses!” voting option instead.

    2. huh, we’re in the same district.

       1. well, next to it.

45. My scenario for least damage/ maximum exploding heads:

    1. Neither candidate reaches 270 and the election goes to the House.
    2. The House deadlocks 25/25.
    3. Vice President Pence takes over as President in March.

    1. The vice-president is determined in the Senate. Conceivably, the Dems claim enough there to raise Kaine.

       1. No. There’s enough Republicans there that the chances of raising cain aren’t worth tuppence.

          1. Nyahhhh … the Dems filibuster until the new Senate comes in.

             1. Causing McConnell to thank Reid for personally leading the way as he goes nuclear?

                😛

             2. No need to filibuster. The electoral votes are not counted until after the new Congress is seated.

          2. Yeah, I should have specified that my hypothetical included a Republican majority in the next Senate, resulting in Pence being named VP.

    2. The other day, I came up with a nightmare (for me) scenario where, because of the House deadlock, they decide “To heck with it! Any random clown will be better than our current options!” and proceed to randomly pick one Alpheus of Provo, UT to be the next President of the United States.

       I decided that if this happens, my first act would be to call Bill Whittle. The conversation would go something like this:

       (ring ring)

       Whittle: Hello, Bill Whittle speaking.

       Me: This is President-Elect Alpheus.

       Whittle: It’s an honor to speak to you! What can I do for you?

       Me: (in a very tiny, very shaky, unusually high voice) Help!

       I probably will need help constraining my libertarian tendencies, so as not to *completely* destroy everything…at least, not *too* fast…

       I take consolation in realizing that, even if the House did such a thing, I have a greater chance to win the lottery than to be selected President; multiply this by the chance that this scenario happens, and I’m probably very safe.

       (Which means, of course, that this will now certainly happen…)

46. A vote for Gary Johnson is a glass of sherry sipped in an upstairs study with the curtains closed to muffle the sounds of the Jewish stores being looted. “I’ll be no part of that; that will show them.”

    1. It never has, and it has never prevented the monsters from parading in despite of your scorn. This election you have a choice between a vainglorious blowhard and evil on a stick. Worst case, the blowhard is easier to clean up after. Other worst case, the evil leads a ravening mob right through your curtains.

       1. Trump is Clinton’s hand picked opponent. The Dems and Media handed him the nomination on a fucking plate. It is like Goebbels running against Hitler on the SPD line and you demand we vote for Goebbels because he is not Hitler. Go away you small child before I make fun of you again.

          1. Which makes him different from McCain and Romney how? Both were the media’s hand picked GOP nominee. I sometimes think a lot of the media’s early Bush hatred was due to him defeating McCain in 2000 when he was also the media’s pick for GOP nominee.

             1. The man is a democrat for god’s sake. His views when speaking off the cuff are democrat. That is not true of McCain and Romney niether of whom I voted for in the primary.

          2. Sorry about the small child crack that was unworthy.

    2. Not if you live in New York or any other state were Clinton is sure to win!

47. I’ve read recently about the medicinal and nutritional benefits of tequila and am thinking about asking my doctor for a prescription, if I could get a cheap price from GoodRx. But I promise, if you bring your own bottle, I’ll sit out on the porch with you and we can get drunk together. And shoot at passing cars.

    M

48. c4c

49. Like you Sarah, holding ,y nose and voting for trump on Tuesday in Illinois. Wasted vote but hey got to stand up to the machine.

50. I’m curious whether in the history of our country we’ve had two worse candidates running at the same time.

51. *Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens raise hands *

    1. They’d have to be the spawn of Satan to be worse than the two clowns we now have.

       1. Oh, I don’t know. Satan/Beelzebub might have a shot this election. All they want is our souls.

    2. They didn’t run at the same time; in fact Stephens was never a candidate for CSA President. They were the Confederate Congress’s choices for interim President and Vice President.

       They were unopposed as a ticket in the first formal election.

       But if tickets count, I would put up Franklin Pierce, a drunkard and notorious Doughface (pro-slavery Northern Democrat), and William R. King, owner of hundreds of slaves, who was already dying.

       1. Oh, I’m sure they were crappy candidates but since the federal government was so small back then I doubt they could do the harm that is what in store for us now regardless of who wins.

          while I despise Trump as a loudmouthed braggart and bully he is head and shoulders above an incompetent, utterly corrupt and criminal Hillary as sad as that is.

52. Clinton is particularly dangerous because she combines flagrant corruption with the leftist agenda of gutting civil liberties in the name of “campaign reform” and “fighting hate speech”. See the Democrats’ proposed constitutional amendment.

    She enjoys overwhelming support from the media class and the academy. (During the primary season, 92% of presidential donations from employees of large elite colleges went to Democrats – 65% to Clinton.)

    However, there remains a glimmer of hope. If McMullin can win Utah (and maybe Idaho), the election would go to the House and Senate. But McMullin could make a deal. He could throw his electors to Pence for VP (the third place finisher is not eligible for election anyway), and be elected by the House, on the condition that he resign immediately.

    1. Yours isn’t the first to mention that McMullin hypothetical, but it’s as convenient a place as any to jump in.

       Why do McMullin supporters (and McMullin himself, at least according to Wikipedia) think that a tied EC that throws the vote to Congress is going to in any way favor someone who wasn’t even a name in the national MiniTru media until he announced his run for POTUS in August 2016? And one that’s clearly not one of the Uniparty’s supporters?

       If the vote goes to Congress, I wouldn’t care to bet money on anything other than “elect Clinton/Kaine” as the outcome. She (and he, riding on her ticket) will obviously get the support of her own party (especially those with any sense of self-preservation, given the mortality rates of those who become sufficiently visible as threats to her gaining power 😛 ), and I have exceedingly little faith that the Gutless Obsequious Puppets will vote in great numbers for Trump, whom more than a few of them view as an even greater threat than Clinton to the one thing that really matters: control of the levers of power.

53. You’ve done the same calculus I have, it seems. I’d wondered if you would. The U.S. is set up to handle crony capitalist blowhards like Mr. Trump. All our institutions are badly weakened true, but they’re still there.

    And Mr. Trump will only damage them by accident, on his own. Mrs. Clinton is personally dedicated to laying sapping charges, and she has an entire political machine to help wire them.

    So that’s one bright spot.

    The down side is that you’re probably wrong about nearly everything that you posited (above) about LaDonald’s flaws (I’m not ruling out the probability that you left a bunch out because you ran out of space.) I know a lot of both left and right who think that America’s economic strength came from the opportunity to suceed and profit, when in fact it comes from our freedom to fail. Mr. Trump won’t destroy Amazon because they dissed him. He’ll do it, by degrees, and probably unintentionally, when they suck up to him. Which they will. Our best hope is that he’s Just One Man. We’re designed for that one, so be of good cheer, and vote the down ballot. There’s still local folks with the Tea Party spirit.

    I still haven’t voted for Mr. Trump yet, either. When I think of how I could’ve voted for Mr. Jindal, or even Mr. Walker (you didn’t mention the toxic effects of our public employee unions, my personal bete noire) I want to throw up.
    But I guess I should’ve seen it coming: ever since Reagan, the administrative statists have been trying to scramble back from his accomplishments.

    So I’d like to make a plea here for your reconsideration of your thinking and rhetoric viz the alt. right. The clue is in the name.

    Alternative **and** Right.

    Which means it’s a whole basket of deplorables, some of which are right, all of which are alternative. Which means, yes, some of them are really truly *completely* deplorable, not just play-pretend lefty-defined deplorable, or badly wrong on one political dimension. We have a lot of friends and allies in this mix, even if the only thing we can agree on is that the corrupt media, overweening statists, and regressive left have got to go.

    It’s going to be a long hard slog. But in the end, we win they lose.

    Ca ira, Mrs Hoyt & God Speed.

    1. They are not right. They are committed to the “dark enlightenment”. It’s not rhetoric. I’ve read them extensively. I know the underpinning of their thought. They are nationalists with a statist bend. It is in fact the same old corrupt bargain. Sure, those were pikers compared to the communists, but they too bring a country to its knees (unintentionally, mind.) They too destroy the culture and wealth in the long run.
       Mostly the alt-right are semi-educated children who think they know it all, and their elders who are not NEARLY as smart as they think they are.
       They are all of them people who don’t have a past… and no future.

54. Any of all of you have or know a kid between 14 and 20: the American Legion has an Oratory scholarship contest nationwide, first prize $18,000. They have to prepare a speech on one of certain Constitutional amendments and, if they move up, speak extemporaneously on any of those chosen for the year. Call your local Post for information. (Idaho Post Four said our home school co-op should spread the word to interested parties.)

    It’s about the Constitution, so I’m not even off-topic!

    1. Thank you! My yard ape could do that with bells on.

    2. If you’d told me two years ago… Both the kids excelled in public speaking, the younger one could have collected and that covers more than a year of tuition…

    3. Both the kids also keep talking about running for president as a ticket. May G-d have mercy on the US should that come to pass. Though the epic arguments between them should be very entertaining in that situation.

       1. See about getting one in each party.

          Imagine the presidential debates….

    4. Thanks for the heads up! I’ll pass the word to our US history and government teachers.

55. I watch all this from Canada. Obviously, I have an interest as many awful Americans are threatening to move to Canada if Trump wins.

    But I will suck that up.

    Americans have a choice between a, so far, unindicted criminal and a boisterous vulgarian. There have been vulgar Presidents before and there have been criminal presidents before. (I leave it to American historians to sort all that out.)

    Americans, like you Sarah, also have another choice: between someone who believes that “business as usual” is a good idea and someone who thinks it is a very bad idea.

    I am glad you will not vote for Hilly. It is the right choice and, watching closely from the Great White North, I think there are a lot of Americans making it. But that is not enough.

    Washington has become a cesspool. Corrupt, nasty, self-perpetuating. As one political scientist put it, Trump is the empty gin bottle someone is going to throw through the front window. Micheal Moore, aka the fat bastard, described Trump as a Molotov cocktail.

    That proto-Democrat, Thomas Jefferson, said that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

    We know who the tyrant is, the question Sarah is whether you are a patriot.

    1. I am enough of a patriot — and one who has lived through revolutions — to do what the founding fathers did and exhaust every other possible venue before trying a gamble that might turn out very badly indeed. (Our revolution is somewhat of a miracle that way. Perhaps because it was such a slow boil.)
       Running around the hills with a Kalashnikov sounds like WAY more fun than fighting the war to reclaim our culture, even at fifty three, when my midnight escapes and evading shots are 35 years behind me. They don’t give medals for reclaiming the culture, and if it works no one will remember you at all.
       BUT if you go physical without trying the first, then you already lost. You need to win hearts and minds for the revolution to turn out all right. And the best part? If you win hearts and minds, you might not need to shoot anyone in the fullness of time.
       As for calling Jefferson a proto-democrat: Sir, my intellectual father — Mr. Heinlein — admired Mr. Jefferson. This is where I need to get rude. You may gaze upon my middle finger.

       1. Running around the hills with a Kalashnikov sounds like WAY more fun than fighting the war to reclaim our culture, even at fifty three,

          You have an odd idea of fun.

          Anything that involves others shooting at you isn’t fun. It may be exciting. It may get the blood up and the adrenaline flowing (and trust me, I know how much fun adrenaline is as anyone who has read between the lines can guess).

          It is not however fun. It isn’t even fun when you merely think someone is shooting at you.

          1. having been there, done that, Herb, it is more fun than the culture war. Note I didn’t say it was fun per se.

          2. Speaking as a young ‘un, the idea of actually being able to try conclusions for once and all instead of having to argue with people who would just as soon see me dead as alive for the rest of my life has a certain raw emotional appeal.
             Then I get my head screwed on straight and realize that the fighting would probably go on for the rest of my life.

             1. Yeah. I remember being your age. Vividly.

       2. I will note that the blood which Tommy Jefferson advocated using to refresh the tree of liberty did not include his own.

          1. He wasn’t a patriot? Or just didn’t get killed?

             1. How Thomas Jefferson’s Wartime Record Shaped His Life
                by Michael Kranish
                Michael Kranish is the author of “Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War,” published in February 2010 by Oxford University Press. He can be reached through his website, http://www.michaelkranish.com.

                On June 4, 1781, nearly five years after authoring the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson fled Monticello just minutes before the arrival of British troops. His term as governor of Virginia had just expired, and Jefferson declined to continue his service, leaving the state without leadership during some of its darkest days.

                In his defense, Jefferson made a blunt admission. With Virginia under invasion by a “powerful army,” Jefferson felt he was unprepared by his “life and education for the command of armies.” As a result, Jefferson wrote that he “believed it right not to stand in the way of talents better fitted than his own to the circumstances under which the country was placed.”

                The legislature eventually appointed a governor and launched an investigation into Jefferson’s conduct. When Jefferson later sought the presidency, his conduct would be used against him. He was called the “coward of Carter’s Mountain,” a reference to the woods that Jefferson traversed when he was in flight from Monticello. Another critic, a South Carolina congressman named William Loughton Smith, said Jefferson deserved little credit for his revolutionary writings because he had fled “in times of danger.” There was no great merit in composing “famous written works,” Smith said, if he had done so “without risk of personal convenience.” Jefferson felt so burdened by accusations against him that he wrote that the wound upon his spirit would be cured only by the “all-healing grave.”

                Jefferson clearly was ineffectual at stopping the waves of invading British forces, led first by the traitor Benedict Arnold, then by William Phillips (whom Jefferson once had entertained at Monticello when Phillips was a prisoner of war) and finally by Lord Cornwallis and Banastre Tarleton. Jefferson spent much of his life defending himself against the charge of cowardice, and tried until nearly the day that he died to present his side of the story to historians. Indeed, there was blame to go around. The militia often were reluctant to turn out. Many members of the legislature and the Governor’s Council fled Richmond, prompting the Assembly’s relocation to Charlottesville and culminating in Jefferson’s flight from Monticello.

                But what did Jefferson learn when he was literally on the run, at a time of such torment?

56. I’m not voting for Trump. I did the next best thing though to stop Clinton. I joined the balancedrebellion site, and pledged to vote for Johnson if a Clinton supporter would join me in voting for Johnson, and was matched up with one. Since I already pledged to do this, it would be dishonest of me not to honor it.

    1. Only if you believe that the kind of person who supports Mrs Clinton wouldn’t lie for political advantage.

       1. This. This was my first thought — with no verification mechanism, how would you know the other person had kept their promise? And there should NEVER be any possible verification mechanism, otherwise you’ve dug a trench through one of the foundations of our society, the secret ballot. Which would open the door to buying votes, with all the corruption that always comes with that sort of thing. (Not that politicians don’t ALREADY try to buy votes, of course — but if you could actually verify how any given person voted, it would get ten times worse).

          1. It is possible that a few quixotic people might actually keep their word on such a matter, but in that case one would be conspiring against one’s own vote, that of one’s neighbors, and that of the other person’s neighbors. It is lowdown behavior, in other words.

             But it is much more likely to be part of a “baffle them with BS” strategy to get voters from one side to vote .for the other side, receiving nothing but a fake promise in return.

             And why should someone promising something bad be surprised by this? They say nobody can con an honest man, but it’s easy to trick someone who thinks he’s got an angle.

             Or if you’d rather put it another way, it is easy to trick someone angry and desperate enough to ignore common sense. Anger and depression is a kind of altered state where one wants so much to show them all and make an impact, that strategies like “I will kill myself and they’ll be sorry” seem perfect. Only when one recovers does one realize that it isn’t clever at all.

             You are entering into a suicide pact (as far as your vote is concerned) with some random online troll. Is this reasonable? Can you expect anything good to come of it?

             1. I wonder how one could be confident there even is a “partner” on the other side of such a bargain?

                We live in a world where hardly a week goes by without a call from “Customer Service” saying they need to access my PC to make sure Microsoft Windows is working properly and Nigerian vice-presidents routinely email me offers to make millions of dollars for helping them out.

                1. It requires a facebook account to sign up for, so you’re relying on their verification methods, which are more rigorous than most of the ones on the net by a teensy bit. As for if the other person is following through, it’s a gamble, but if you’re already wanting to vote for Gary Johnson and couldn’t stomach voting for Donny Jingles the European style Nationalist tyrant, it’s a low-risk bet.

       2. That is what I was thinking.

       3. Actually, I have two domains so I can get a lot of email addresses…maybe I should sign up a bunch of times this weekend and get matched up to syphon off some Hillary voters.

          1. Requires a facebook account, not an email account.

             1. Which require a real name and an email address…

                Tina, Roger, Kris, Glenn, Deitrick etc can all be ordered up 🙂

       4. One other thought on this. The people on the other side of this gambit are probably not enthusiastic Clinton supporters, because they would just be voting for Clinton. They’re the Bernie bros and such who feel jilted by Clinton and are looking for an excuse to get out of voting for someone they hate without supporting Trump.

    2. Then yoy’re doing nothing and doing it foolishly, since you’re trusting a Clinton supporter.

       1. Hey, Richard, we too were once young.

          1. Yes, and when I was young I voted for Carter to ‘teach the Republicans a lesson.’ As I said, foolish and dishonest.

          2. Yes, but we grew out of it.

             In my youth the bad bad bad choice for president was Nixon v McGovern. Sigh – I thought I’d never face so dreary a selection ever again.

       2. There’s no trust involved, it’s a low-risk bet since I was already going to vote for Gary Johnson. I know enough about Trump to know that I could never vote for such a person.

          1. (There were 5 candidates in the election that I knew from the beginning I would never vote for. Clinton, Sanders, Christie, Bush, and Trump. Just because they’re the only choices left doesn’t make me change my mind about any of those 5.)

    3. By the way this sort of deal is felony voter fraud in most states.

       1. I have been reliably informed there is no voter fraud and I know this happened in 2000 and 2004 thus it clearly isn’t voter fraud.

          1. Yeah, I’m familiar with those who are skilled at ignoring reality.

             “Jerry Mosna was gardening outside his San Pedro, Calif., home Saturday when he noticed something odd: Two stacks of 2016 ballots on his mailbox.

             The 83 ballots, each unused, were addressed to different people, all supposedly living in his elderly neighbor’s two-bedroom apartment.

             “I think this is spooky,” Mosna said. “All the different names, none we recognize, all at one address.”

             http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/11/03/voter-fraud-california-man-finds-dozens-ballots-stacked-outside-home.html

             This is Darryl Issa’s district, BTW.

       2. Which is another sad reminder of how easy it is to commit a felony without even being aware of it!

          Sigh: We have *huge* problems with our country, don’t we? And that’s even before we get to the election process!

          1. Everyone commits about three felonies a day without knowing it, after all.

       3. https://popehat.com/2016/11/05/randazza-vote-swapping-trump-trading/ “I actually wrote a paper on this issue in grad school (that I published), and then a few years later I upgraded the work to a thesis, which I then also published. The 9th Circuit cited that work (twice!) in coming to the conclusion that it was, indeed, First Amendment protected activity. See Porter v. Bowen, 496 F.3d 1009 (2007).”

          1. You cite the 9th Circus Court of Schlemiels as a source? Seriously?

             1. I’ve read some of Randazza’s recent posts to Popehat and well… i am considering just unsubbing and following up on where “Clark” went.

57. My sincere condolences that this will cost you so much distress. And my sincere thanks that you are doing what you think is least worst for the country.

58. I am old enough to remember 1980 with Reagan, Carter, and Anderson. Those three appear today as well meaning and positive candidates for POTUS, though there were many voices at the time yelling that Reagan or Carter would be a disaster for our country. Clinton and Trump, and Johnson and Stein, are demonstrably worse candidates than any of the ones from 1980 – and I’m talking only about their personal character. I never doubted the sincerity and honesty of Reagan, Carter, and Anderson.

    Voting against Clinton by casting your vote for Trump is ok, I agree she has not earned and does not deserve to be POTUS, but by doing so you are in fact endorsing him. You are saying he is acceptable to you, that you trust he will be less bad for the country than Clinton. What a sad state of affairs that is.

    I recommend you do what I plan to do: vote against Clinton by not voting for POTUS at all. Your vote doesn’t matter to the outcome anyway and by voting ‘none of the above’ you can have a clear conscience about any mess that comes over the next four years.

    And trust in our system – it may not be ideal but it has yet to fail us.

    1. I’m not in any way saying I endorse him. I view the presidency not as a hallowed post, but as a job, done FOR (and these days to) the American people.
       When you’re interviewing people for a position, a position you absolutely need filled, you don’t say “none of the above.”
       I do believe we need to a none of the above, send all the candidates away so they don’t interfere and run it again from primaries. We don’t have that.
       Electing Trump guarantees things only get A LITTLE worse. If that sounds to you like an endorsement, you must think hiring someone you’re sure does drugs until you can find something else is an endorsement.
       Look, we’ve said for eight years, my cat would be a better POTUS than OBAMA. I still believe this. That doesn’t mean I think my cat would be a GOOD Potus.
       We found someone who would be a worse Potus. Two. Hillary and Kaine.
       I don’t think Trump is better than Obama, but at least the directions in which he’s worse are different. Which means it won’t DEEPEN the damage. Which means we might have a chance, eventually, with a lot of luck, to repair it. With Hillary, my “repair” schedule moves another 20 years or so in the future, which my KIDS might not see.
       Also maybe we won’t have a jolly good old world war.
       I might be seriously wrong. I certainly feel dirty about the vote. BUT keeping it out of the Empress’s hands is the best I can do for this country of mine.

    2. When the choice is between a punch in the face or a hit in the face with a sledge hammer, I’m darn well voting for the punch.

       That doesn’t mean I “endorse” the punch. I WILL get one of them, “endorsement” or no. In that light, voting for the punch is an easy, EASY choice.

       This election is like that. Terrible, but still easy.

    3. I know math is hard, but not voting at all, in this election at least, is a real cop out. Voting against Clinton sucks, but the alternative sucks worse. At least Trump is not a lawyer!

    4. Then Clinton gains a vote. Foolish and dishonest to poretend otherwise.

    5. Carter *was* a disaster for the country. Double digit inflation. Malaise. Gas lines. I could go on. It’s worth noting that one of the things that John McCain was lauded for in the military was getting his unit to the point where all of the aircraft in the unit were flight-worthy. Or in other words, while Carter was in the White House, a naval aircraft squadron was commended because all of the aircraft in that squadron could actually fly.

59. I am sorry you feel you have no choice to vote Trump in order to vote against Hillary. I’m serious. I know you’d rather vote for anyone else and are only doing this because of the US plurality system (although I didn’t see it in your list of things to change about our voting oddly).

    I say that as someone who disagrees with you on two major points about him. The destruction of the GOP is something I believe it is overdue and a necessary step to have genuine organized resistance and not resistance in name only due to the nature of our plurality system. The second is I have no idea what Trump is going to do. Sometimes I think he doesn’t know what he’s going to do. What I do think is that unlike nearly every other candidate my entire life he has not spent his life in government and thus is operating from different motives than those candidates. This could turn out to make him worse than any of them although with Hillary around I doubt it.

    The second reason is not a reason to vote for Trump. It is my fairy tale about why it won’t be so bad similar to Glenn Reynolds’s assumption that a GOP president can’t be as corrupt because the press will do their job.

    The first is, however, and for reasons of personal history one I admit I embrace with glee. That glee stems in no small part from what will destroy the party even if Trump loses: the actions of #NeverTrump pundits, organizations, and office holders. That said it is refreshing to be voting for someone for the first time since 1988 (at least in Presidential races) even if he wasn’t my first, second, or third choice (and probably not my fourth either but my third made it to my state’s primary so I never had to sort out below that…I suspect he was fifteenth out of seventeen ahead of Jeb and Rubio).

    But it is the six times I didn’t vote for someone, including being unable to vote for the candidate in 1992 who I had voted for just four years earlier and instead having to vote against his opponent, that leads me to express sympathy. I suspect the closest I’ve been to where you are is 1992. I voted for someone I whole hearted supported just four years earlier and who I thought had betrayed what he ran on.

    This sucks and Wednesday can’t come soon enough.

    1. You didn’t see the change in voting system in my list because been there, done that. Portugal had some 40 odd parties, which was sort of like the Republican primary. The ones who got most attention from the media won.
       BTW it also facilitates weird coups, as in when a group of far left fringe united with the socialists to displace the “right” after the government had formed.
       I want to be wrong, but I wonder if the reason for that was the recent nuclear trial by Russia, of launching a missile from Portugal at the UK?

       1. I suspected that was your reason…the two party system is a clarifying mechanism. What seems to have broken is the ability of third parties to channel disapproval and move one of the two major parties by syphoning votes and either replacing it (once, the GOP) or moving (or both) which happened multiple time with Progressive parties in the late 19th century, possibly the teens, and the 1960s (although the party moved didn’t lose an election due to them).

          I thought Perot had done that when the GOP took Congress in 1994 but Gingrich was both a flawed messenger and the old school GOP united to take him out back and shoot him in 1998 over a lost election (despite them holding both Houses of Congress which those morons hadn’t even been able to win before him).

60. The Captain is not supposed to go down with his ship. He is supposed to be the last one off the ship that can physically leave the ship; as long as there are potential survivors still on board, it is his duty to do what can be done to get them off. If that requires that he stay on board when the ship goes down, that is also his duty. Don’t just go down with the ship; go down fighting.

    1. I don’t think I would know how to stop fighting.

       1. I didn’t mean to imply that you would know how; I was just pointing out that the duty of a Captain is not to simply die with his ship, but to keep fighting for his people even at the expense of his own life. That is the type of Captain I see in you, and would like to think I see in myself.

          1. To quote Patton: “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country”

             1. That is true enough, but I think what Sir Winston Churchill said is also relevant: “Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.” A truth known to anyone who has served in the military, and every parent worthy of the title.

             2. However, Christianity teaches us that martyrdom is a potent weapon….. as did the Boston Massacre and the Alamo.

       2. “We don’t expect kittens to fight wildcats and win; we merely expect them to try.”

          You all know the book.

61. No. As Heinlein said, “I am free because I ALONE am totally responsible for everything I do.” And of all the things I do, the vote is the most consequential for my country.

    We are not allowed to use the word “Hitler,” and I want to make it crystal clear that Trump is NOT Hitler. I invoke his name only to say that the Germans who voted for Hindenburg in 1932 and got Hitler on the same ballot did not know what they did. The only evidence they had of the consequences of their vote was what Hitler SAID he would do.

    I can never vote for a man who has called for the use of both torture and terrorism. I will not have that indelible stain on my soul.

    Otherwise, I fully agree with you, and I do not condemn you for your vote because Trump has only TALKED about doing these things. He hasn’t actually done them. Fortunately he isn’t likely to get the power. No matter how well he is doing this morning, I fully expect Hillary’s last November Surprise to explode in the next two days and destroy his chances. Then you and I will be on the same side, fighting for the Constitution against the most corrupt, criminal president in American history.

    1. We’re still on the same side. We’ll have to fight against Trump if he wins, too. it will just be marginally easier.

       1. accordingtohoyt “We’re still on the same side. We’ll have to fight against Trump if he wins, too. it will just be marginally easier.”

          I totally agree.

    2. I’m sorry, but it that’s your reasoning, you’re an idiot.

       You think Clinton has any problem with torture or terrorism (what’s the claim that Trump called for terrorism, by the way? I missed that one), as long as they are against people she doesn’t like?

       It’s very simple: Trump will be opposed by the Democrats, most of the Republicans, and the media. Hillary will be allowed to run rampant, just like Obama has. Heck, Trump might even get impeached! Hillary won’t, just like Obama, because she’s the first female President and it’s all historic and stuff.

       Even if Trump were actually WORSE than Clinton, a Trump Presidency is likely to turn out far better for us, just for that reason.

       1. Also he doesn’t seem to hate US personally. Hillary does.

          1. You’re deplorable.

             1. Why, thank you.

                1. Given progressives’ predilection for co-opting and redefining words, it does my heart good to see what has happened to Hillary’s “deplorables” insult.

                   1. Considering what happened to the “vast right-wing conspiracy”, this should not have taken them by surprise.

                      1. I REALLY am dieting!

             2. Heh. I absolutely detest Trump, and can’t bring myself to vote for him, but when Hillary said that about Trump supporters, my gut reaction was “Well, you’d probably consider me deplorable and irredeemable too, because I don’t support your agenda any more than *any* Trump supporter…”

       2. I remember Reagan’s policy of Strategic Ambiguity. I am not saying we should torture* our enemies, but I don’t mind their thinking we might. Given my choice, every prisoner would believe he’s about to be interrogated by Hannibal Lector … because, ironically, that would reduce the likelihood we would have to torture information out of the poor slobs.

          *It is not appropriate at this time and in this venue too determine a strict definition of “torture” but we ought acknowledge that it falls between “serving supper with no pudding” and “permanent physical damage.” Too often in the past people have debated whether the US ought employ trture without defining what torture actually might entail.

          1. Obviously, precisely why Trump would not take using nuclear weaponry off the table.

       3. “what’s the claim that Trump called for terrorism, by the way?” Trump advocates the extra-judicial, targeted murder of terrorist’s families without distinction of innocence or non-combatant status. That meets the definition of terrorism, “targeting of innocent persons for political reasons.”

          1. Cite?

             1. “Terrorism: Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.” – US State Department, http://www.state.gov/j/ct/info/c16718.htm.

                1. The key phrase there would seem to be “politically motivated violence” — arguably that would not be Trump’s purpose.

                   It doesn’t matter unless he actually does it. Threatening “terrorist” attacks is not terrorism and may prevent actual terrorism by deterring potential terrorists.

                   Promising to “play by the Marquis of Doonesbury” rules, OTOH, may encourage terrorists who’ve gamed out how to exploit those rules.

                   1. RES: As Mr. Clauswitz so accurately noted, all war is politically motivated. But not all killing is war. And yes, clearly there is a difference between threatening and doing, but I am paying Mr. Trump the respect of believing he will do what he promises. It’s interesting that your defense of him relies on the belief that he is lying.

                      As with the use of nuclear weapons, I fully support threatening any justified use of force. I never want to see nucs used again, but I DO want everyone on earth to remember that only one country HAS used them, and think very carefully about screwing with that country. The distinction is, I do not and never will support murder. Not with a nuc, and not with a knife. Nor will I give the sanction of my vote to someone who does.

                      1. I bow to the superior knowledge of war held by Mr. Churchill, who noted, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”

                         Lying to the enemy is a strategic tool and in time of war a necessary one.

                         It is not that I defend Trump on the basis his possibly being lying. it is that I defend him on the basis that we do not know what he will do.

                         I realize subtle distinctions are not your strongest point, but once you mature you will learn that there is often a vast space between what people say they will do and what they actually do; many reasons underlie this gap, some good, some bad, and discussion of Trump’s would seem without point.

             2. He specifically mentions “take out their families” near the end of this video:

                Just before that, it sounds like he’s about to merely say that civilian casualties are something that are going to happen when terrorists are using them as human shields, but then he goes straight to that.

                I still think he’s a less bad option than Hillary, but that one was pretty bad. We’re supposed to be about NOT attaching what is referred to as “corruption of blood”.

                1. Thank you

          2. Awaiting your denunciation of Dresden and Hiroshima in 3…2…1….

             I’m always amused by people who make the mistake of trying to refute Sherman: “War is cruelty and you cannot refine it.”

             Wars are won when the enemy is unwilling to fight you because you make it obvious that the price is too high. That’s why the Axis lost WWII, and we’re currently losing the war with Islam. The difference, of course, is that our price demanded only surrender; Islam demands slavery.

             1. Hell, I just want a reference to his denunciation of Obama who has been happy to target vehicles and buildings with multiple innocents to get one terrorist on a regular basis.

                1. Sorry to disappoint you. As I have repeatedly stated, terrorism is the intentional targeting of innocents, not the regrettable death of non-combatants proximate to a legitimate target. Even Obama can accidentally do something right sometimes. Killing terrorists is one of the few actions I have to give him credit for; I just wish he’d do a lot more of it.

             2. I remember the Eighties complaints that Reagan never promised proportionate response, nor laid out a doctrine of response to ensure the Russkies wouldn’t push us into a nuclear war. Wily ol’ Ron simply sat back and said, “Let ’em worry; it might make them think twice before attempting anything.” Why, his resistance to following Lefty instruction was so much it caused Sen. Kennedy to attempt back channel negotiations to get the Soviets meddling in a US presidential election.

                Leftism: no matter how many times (nor how spectacularly) it fails, their response is always “do it again, harder.”

                1. That was certainly JFK’s, Teddy’s, Chris Dodd’s, Bill Clinton’s, and Anthony Weiner’s response.

                   I’m starting to see a pattern.

                2. I remember the “Let’s Promise To Never Do A Nuclear First Strike” thing.

                   The Soviets were “willing to promise that” but even if the Soviets were honest, a US promise would have given the Soviets the “go ahead” to attempt conquest via conventional warfare. 😦

             3. “Awaiting your denunciation of Dresden and Hiroshima”. I hope you packed a lunch, because you are going to have a long wait. I have spent my life denouncing those you slur my country as terrorist for the horrible but justified bombings of Germany and Japan in WWII, including the atomic bombings. Please pay close attention while I explain this one more time: Terrorism requires the TARGETING of innocent non-combatants. Collateral damage to innocents proximate to a legitimate target is terrible, but it is an unavoidable consequence of war.

                1. Dresden was scarcely a military target, legitimate only by extreme rewriting of the definition.

                   For that matter, the World Trade Center, as a major financial interchange, was a legitimate target of those seeking to end American domination of the world economy. Collateral damage to innocents proximate to a legitimate target is terrible, but it is an unavoidable consequence of war.

                   1. “the World Trade Center, as a major financial interchange, was a legitimate target”

                      Well, Res, I appreciate your clear and unambiguous support of terrorism. I only regret that protecting the country from it has the unavoidable effect of keeping you safe too.

                      And no, terrorists do not get to arbitrarily murder thousands of people because you and they think free enterprise is a legitimate cassus bellum.

                      1. “Well, Res, I appreciate your clear and unambiguous support of terrorism.”

                         So why were you talking out of your other face when actually fighting them like it was a war came up? Oh, and in case you’re wondering, attacks on economic targets are both a causus belli AND a legitimate target.

                         1. Many people, most of them without military experience, think that the nature of war is unrestrained murder; that there is no such thing as a crime in a war. On the contrary, war is the disciplined use of legitimate violence. Don’t tell me about fighting a war; I have done it. So did the Nazis, but the fact they were at war did not justify the mass murder of millions of Jews.

                            Fighting like it is a war does not mean terrorist attacks on innocent targets. That is the same terrorism we are fighting. To paraphrase George Bush, I will make no distinction between the terrorists I am trying to kill and those Americans who disgrace their country by copying them.

                            If you believe that the restrictions placed on American soldiers in the War on Terror have been foolish, counter-productive, and a moral offense against those we have asked to protect us, the I am in complete agreement. What you fail to grasp is that evil does not justify evil. Evil must be fought and crushed without becoming the thing you want to kill.

                      2. I said it was a legitimate military target, I did not say it could be attacked with impunity. I realize the distinction is subtle and may have escaped you, but the distinction exists nonetheless.

                         1. You made the blindingly obvious statement that the World Trade Center would be a legitimate target in a declared war. You did this in the context of a discussion about TERRORISM. You could also have said that if the towers had been destroyed by an earthquake it would not have been terrorism. Both are true, but the 9/11 mass murders were neither an act of war nor of God, but of TERRORISM. By making this argument it is reasonable to conclude that you are equating terrorism with legitimate acts of war.

                            I believe you did this to try to defend Trump’s advocacy of terrorism. If so I offer you the opportunity to directly and unequivocally say what you think of the 9/11 attacks: Were they legitimate or unspeakably evil? No weaseling or lecturing about subtlety or nuance like you were John Kerry. Do you support terrorism or not?

                            1. “You made the blindingly obvious statement that the World Trade Center would be a legitimate target in a declared war.”
                               (Emphasis added)

                               Who said anything about a DECLARED war?

                               For somebody who fancies himself observant about the blindingly obvious you certainly do read carelessly.

                               Further, terrorism is a tool of war. In war all methods are legitimate, if you win.

                               Acts of war can be both legitimate and unspeakably evil. War is inherently an unspeakably evil exercise. It is also, on occasion, a necessary exercise.

                               In answer to your unwarranted “demand” – fuck you. What presumption. The world doesn’t care what I think, it has made that quite clear by now. I don’t care what you think, because you have made it quite clear you don’t think, you merely jump to conclusions and backfill at your convenience.

                               Therefore my opinion of terrorism remains my own.

                2. Nah, I don’t expect a response from a hypocrite.

                   Someone decides that he wants to wage a war: go for it. Part of the cost will be your family. And the family might want to think about whether they’re down with the consequences of not putting him in a straitjacket first.

                   Want to avoid those consequences? Don’t start none, won’t be none.

                   1. So then, if your brother, father, cousin, or step-mother-in-law commits a world class atrocity on the scale of 9-11 without your knowledge and against your will, I can come by your house and kill you? And that’s fine with you? Or are you a hypocrite?

                3. So, Res, neglecting your cogent argument consisting of “fuck you,” let’s summarize your defense of Mr. Trump.

                   First you decided to justify his support of terrorism by telling us that the World Trade Center was a legitimate target. When I called you on obscenity you proceeded to weasel about the subtlety of your comparison. When I invited you to stand up like a man and tell me plainly, do you or do you not support terrorism, you continued to weasel by focusing on the sophisticated nuance of the distinction between war and declared war.

                   You then went on to tell me that anything is permissible in war as long as you win, putting yourself in agreement with such advance philosophers as Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot.

                   It is clear that you have the same capacity for reasoned discussion as any second grader, and the moral development of a thug. Continued discussion with you is not worth the sacrifice of innocent electrons.

                   1. Golly, Mike, your inability to comprehend what you read continues to amaze.

                      The “Fuck you” was not an argument but a response to your presumption to DEMAND I answer your tendentiously posed question. You have no standing to demand anything, much less that anybody respond politely to your “Have you stopped beating your wife” queries.

                      On the substantive points, such as they are…

                      I never justified Trump’s support of terrorism; I refuted your claim of such support by pointing out that it is only rhetorical. I realize subtlety and nuance are beyond your comprehension, but it exists, nonetheless, and recognizing them does not constitute weaseling.

                      “When I invited you to stand up like a man and tell me plainly …”

                      I disdain your right to define manhood, or me. I spoke plainly, but you demanded an answer to an invalidly phrased, loaded question,

                      And realistically, Stalin and Pol Pot were right: winning is everything in war. Only an idiot would argue that nobly losing was acceptable. That is a pragmatic stance, not a moral opinion, because morality is something that doesn’t matter to war.

                      Your ad hominem arguments amuse and represent the most intellectually honest assertions you’ve made to date. I bow to your undoubtedly superior familiarity with second graders and thugs. I wish I could opine on the merits of “continued discussion” with you but have yet to perceive evidence you cared to engage in any sort of discussion that doesn’t entail your putting words into other people’s mouths.

          3. Er…not the definition of terror I usually hear. As a thought experiment, one could “target (and execute) innocents for political reasons” all day — say, by making people whose political party you disagree with live in parts of Chicago, or whatever — and as long as your method of doing it and the publicization of each event doesn’t spread a mass terror, you’re not being a terrorist.

             Terrorism seems to be about highly asymmetrical violent psyops warfare conducted on the enemy’s ground.

             If a Trump (or Obama) chooses to disregard the presence of a terrorist target’s family in the target zone, that’s something else. Calling it terrorism is imprecise.

             1. When used by leftists against their opponents (Republicans or, in this case, veterans) terrorist and torturer are the replacements for racist, sexist, and homophobe given how devalued those words have become now merely meaning, “I can find a black or Hispanic, woman, or homosexual who disagrees with you”.

                Hell, even I’m a homophobe according to many liberals I know which I find hysterical.

                1. Granted. Michael H indicated a conservative bent, above, so I was addressing him as someone to whom generally-understood definitions & precision of speech matter.

                   1. Correct in all aspects.

             2. “not the definition of terror I usually hear” Please see the reference to the US State Department definition provided in my post, above. So to clarify the detail which you are avoiding, I mean targeting for serious and direct attack, including murder or kidnapping, not living in a bad neighborhood. Ironically, “terrorism” does not necessarily include or promote actual terror, which is why it is a very poor label for a very terrible atrocity. It is often a psyop, but its essence is attacks against innocent people.

                And no, disregarding a terrorist’s family in proximity to a legitimate target is NOT terrorism, nor did I say or imply this. Intentional targeting of non-combatants is.

                1. OK, we’re largely in agreement on a lot of the details.
                   I don’t much respect the State Department as a dispositive authority for moral philosphy, however. Your analysis seems heavily based on accepting their definition, but I am not completely in step with your characterization of “terrorism” as not including or promoting actual terror.
                   I think from observation and analysis by others, that it is generally intended to do so (whether or not it accomplishes the intention), and that the practitioners of it intend to use the resulting terror as a political tool (parallel to but not the same as war).
                   I think conflating terror-for-political-cause with undisciplined revenge against tribe or family, etc. that results in “intentional targeting of non-combatants” just leads to imprecise analysis and response. Motives matter.

                   1. Well, I too think we are in general agreement. I also want to clarify that unlike Trump, Hillary actually HAS committed crimes, and for that and many other reasons I hope to see her defeated. But that doesn’t mean I can vote for Trump.

                      Also, I don’t accept the State Department as argument from authority, I accept it because it describes terrorism precisely, defining exactly what I am fighting against. If you have a better definition I would like to hear it.

                      Yes, terrorism often promotes terror, but legitimate acts of war sometimes do, too. Talking to combat veterans, I’d go so far as to say they almost always do so. For that matter, horror movies promote vicarious feeling of terror. I stand by my statement that the fundamental evil of terrorism is not terror, it is attacking innocent people.

62. And no, I won’t be doing much defense of my comments here. I don’t have any way to get online except during work breaks, most of the day. I need to urinate and hydrate, to feed my belly and rest my feet. I do not need to argue my case that badly.

63. Pingback: S.A. Hoyt: Begrudging Trump Supporter | Miller's Tales

64. I really don’t understand how this decision is all that hard for people. Really.

    Hillary Clinton has a decades-long record of corruption. She has, by her own admission on national television (DEAD SERIOUS on that, no other evidence necessary), committed serious felony violations of the Espionage act (makes the stuff people have gone to PRISON for regarding that, just during the Obama administration, look like angelic behaviour).

    Trump has none of that. Oh, we have best guesses that he might be lousy. He’s certainly a ridiculous liar, just like her. He MIGHT turn out badly.

    I’ll take “might” over “as certainly as anything can be known” every day of the week.

    And heck, even if he is terrible, everyone on both sides of the aisle will be after him. Hillary would be allowed to essentially get away with everything, just like Obama has. Just on that alone, even if he WAS known to be as bad as Hillary, he’s still an EASY EASY EASY choice.

    Really, why is this hard for anyone?!? Literally, every complaint* I have heard about him, I have exactly the same complaint, AT LEAST as badly, against Clinton.

    *OK, there’s no claim that she has sexually assaulted anyone… instead, she has defended and covered for a multiple rapist and sexual assault-er (Bill) for her entire career, including doing her best to destroy the women who dare to come forward (over the course of decades, not just when there’s an election on). How is that any better again?

    1. it’s difficult because we’re being forced to choose the form of our Destructor. Trump is a democrat. A vote for him is a vote for socialism. I’ve done that in the past, granted, in similar circumstances. it ALSO didn’t turn out well.
       I disdain cooperating in my own oppression.

       1. Fred Reed said “Trump makes me nervous. Hillary makes me want to take poison” Fred’s a curmudgeon, but beneath is rhetoric there’s usually a flock of acute observations.

          I got read out of the Conservative movement by the egregious Frum for opposing the Iraq invasion (although before he died Bill Buckley tried to bring some us back because he thought we were right to oppose that war) so I owe no obligations to anyone other than normal patriotism.

          I agree with Fred. Hillary is arrogant, and doesn’t understand or respect Putin and Russian power. Having been a Cold Warrior most of my employed life, I watched in horror as President Clinton took the anti-Slav side in the Balkan Wars, thus making Russia our enemy; then proceeding to drop the Lower Danube bridges ruining a lot of Slavic economy. And still didn’t understand why that made the Russians furious. I’ve yet to discern the US national interest in that.

          We almost went to war over Russian missiles in Cuba. We are putting missiles in the Baltic Republics. Much of Estonia is a suburb of Leningrad. Oddly enough, the Russians are afraid of an anti-Russian pact formed in the Cold War against the Communist Soviets, but maintained after the Warsaw Treaty Organization was dissolved.

          Trump makes me nervous. Hillary scares the hell out of this ols cold warrior.

          1. “Trump makes me nervous. Hillary scares the hell out of this ols cold warrior.” — THIS was my final decision factor. It seems to be L. Neil Smith’s too, talk about a weird coalition forming here.

          2. Frum? David “No Labels” Frum? Being read out of the Conservative movement by him is … being called ugly … frog.

             1. Heh. Speaking of the devil we know …

                Apparently Mssr. Frum attempted to build “the Conservative case for voting for Hillary.” Power Line’s Paul Mirengoff demonstrates that the foundation is inadequate to support his argument’s structure.

                Golly, Dr. P — when you get read out of a movement you get read out by the “best and brightest.”

                1. I’m pretty sure Mr. Buckley regretted letting the egregious Frum write that editorial. He never said that — at least to me — but he did say he regretted it was done, and had he known then what would happen in Iraq he never would have approved that editorial. I knew Mr, Buckley for a long time, although as an associate of Possony mostly. He seemed not himself in those times; perhaps he was more ill that we thought. I prefer to remember him as he was in the 60’s. Frum, of course, was eager to denounce anyone who questioned the wisdom of democratizing Iraq. Like Albright: what’s the use of having a splendid army if we don’t use it.

                   Oddly enough that’s what George Washington asked before disbanding the Continentals.

                2. I saw that article, but couldn’t make it all the way through, because I’m on my company laptop and don’t really want to explain why I’m bringing it in in a bag that rattles when i shake it.

          3. Mr Pournelle,

             Frum’s editorial — I read it at the time, and the responses, and Frum’s counter-responses — was not directed at those who opposed the Iraq war. It was directed at two groups: those who wanted the US to -lose- in Iraq, and those who fantasized that the Iraq war was an evil plot of Israel. At people like Pat Buchanan, Jason Raymondo, and post-dementia Joe Sobran, for example, all of whom he called out by name.

             I don’t believe you fell into either of those categories, and I’ve always found it rather odd that you took Frum’s editorial as being aimed at you.

             Full disclosure, I’m very much not a fan of Frum, a self-promoting jackass who subsequently read -himself- out of the conservative movement after the 2008 election, and has been a petulant irrelevancy ever since.

    2. That both sides would go after him is not certain, after the RNC rolled over for him, and after the media concealed all the juicy oppo during the primaries.

       One could argue that Trump is better positioned to institutionalize bipartisan tyranny than Clinton.

       Clinton has poor risk assessment, and should backfire in useful ways.

       1. Meh, I really, really doubt that. If Trump gets elected, the media, Democrats and establishment Republicans will be after his head. Assuming he even wants to act on his various promises, he’ll have zero political capital to spend and be thwarted at every turn.

          One bright spot with a Trump presidency is that if he tries to rule by royal fiat (executive orders) like Obama and very certainly Hillary, the courts will leap at the chance to limit that power. With Hillary they’ll sit on the sidelines as long as possible.

          The bottom line is that the big winner of this election will be the loser. Whoever wins will be served up a big steaming pile of crap on both domestic and foreign issues. Either candidate will deservedly be despised by millions of citizens and will most likely get absolutely nowhere on their agenda.

          The ‘loser’ will be able to sit back and say ‘I told you so’ with every disaster that occurs. The ‘winner’ will go down in history as the most despised, incompetent President in history making Carter look Lincolnesque in comparison.

65. I hate early voting. I hate anything which makes voting easier. I wish you had to prick your finger and squeeze a drop of blood in order to vote. If it is not important enough to you for a little pain, then you have no business voting at all. But, I am an elitist and subscribe to the Lazarus Long school about the different forms of government……and the Professor de la Paz theory on rational anarchy being my personal favorite.

    1. Most of these things that allegedly make voting “easier”, I am convinced, merely make voting fraud easier.

       While I consider it a duty to vote, I consider it a more important duty to know what you’re voting on — and if, for *any* reason, you aren’t all that informed, then there’s no reason for you to vote. That’s one thing that annoys me about “Go out and vote, no matter what” campaigns. If you’re not interested in politics, you’re better off abstaining altogether (which is a perfectly valid vote, by the way: it happens all the time in Congress, of all places…).

       1. With regards to “if you’re not all that informed…” – easy to overdo this, along the lines of insisting on the perfect being the enemy of the possible.
          Granted, if you know nothing, don’t choose. But if you know enough to suggest one choice is better by your values, by all means vote – otherwise you’re leaving the ultimate governance of the country to those who believe they are elites. And our elites have been failing us.

          1. I will make a confession here: sometimes, when I haven’t researched the local elections as well as I ought, I have accepted an offered voting guide from a left-wing group at the designated distance from the polling place and voted against everyone they supported unless I had a reason to do otherwise.

             1. Good use of their guide then huh? *gringringrin*

             2. That is an excellent strategy, one essentially endorsed by RAH himself. Think of it as effectively using your opponent to do your research.

                1. Not essentially endorsed by RAH but actually described in his political how to book (published in 1992 as How to Take Back Your Government…I don’t remember the original title from the 40s). He described what to do when asked for an endorsement in a primary you hadn’t followed and said recommend the opposite of the newspaper you most routinely disagree with (this being from an era when most cities had at least one paper on each side).

             3. Oh, Lord, the local leftists have decided Marsh and I are Bernites. The Lord alone knows what got crossed there. HOWEVER not only did Bernie-people (still with bumpersticker) try to convince us to vote downticket even if we think Hillary is a horror, but they also handed us piles and piles of material. I was saving one that started with “Health care is a right” to fisk, but I seem to have lost it. Or maybe tore it up in a rage, because, well… it made me fairly sick.
                Anyway, we have plenty of that…

                1. The frightening thing is Bernie was the reasonable and responsible choice the Democrats had in their primary.

                2. I thought of posting an “I knew it! You’re really a socialist!” comment, but I was concerned that you might reach through the internet and strangle me before you realized it was sarcasm. 🙂

                   1. It’s a risk. Though G-d hasn’t given me that power, yet. YET. I keep asking. “Lord, if you’re not going to take care of the stupids, can you give me the superpower to reach over the internet and–“

             4. Not bad – it IS a degree of becoming an educated voter, after all, & provides a more-reasonable basis than just guessing or believing everything in the voter guide.
                The next step up is to spend what time you can afford for research on the few positions you believe will have the most effect on how you live. E.g. in Washington state-level races, I’d focus on Governor and our elected State Supreme Court justices.

66. Mrs. de Winter is truly sucky, I agree, but Rebecca’s Tale, by Sally Beauman, is a great wrap-up of the trilogy – very much worth reading.

67. Pingback: Trump - The Less Evil Choice - L'Ombre de l'Olivier

68. The non-tyrant choice is to stop obeying bad laws. This worked great against gun registration in Connecticut in 2014.

    When you vote for the lesser evil, the evil bioaccumulates faster than it clears. Your candidate may be a short-term win, but voting for anyone but a saint is a long-term loss. Saints are rare, and founding a new political party doesn’t create more of them.

    1. Yes, saints are rare. Saints who choose to enter the political competition are vanishingly rare; you’ll not have enough office-holders to perform the minimum functions of government if you limit yourself to them for candidates.
       Better to have a political system that does the least evil it can, using imperfect humans; and which avoids making corruption attractive.

       1. There are no “minimum functions of government”, because justifying government is a circular argument. Stop believing that an organization you’ve constructed for crime control is exempt from observing the crime control rules.

          1. You is stupid, yes, you is.

             Defense and law enforcement are necessarily government functions because whoever controls them will be the government. Government is force.

             1. Steve, it’s MikesMoniker. He’s BARELY coherent. Don’t bother.

             2. Defense and law enforcement are opposites of one another. They shouldn’t be confused. Consider a man on the street getting mugged by a street gang. Both the victim and the mugger are doing politics, a word which means humans interacting through violence. The victim is doing self-defense. The attacker is doing government, he’s forcing a peaceful, honest innocent person to do something he doesn’t want to do. Self-defense and government are opposite sides of a violent political interaction.

                You would have me believe a street gang is just a majority ratifying a new “social contract”. Imagine a group of thugs, and increase the number. When there’s 2 in the gang, they are muggers. 20: street gang. 200: mob of rioters. 2,000: Norman Rockwell small town.

                Once the street gang member count size reaches the size of a village, the human monkey-politics instincts tell us it’s not a street gang, it’s a “legitimate” majority.

                1. No, it means that before the street gang gets to that point, a group of that small town’s citizens is authorized by the citizenry to hunt them down and exterminate them. That group is under the control of the majority of the citizens who have a vested interest in screening out psychopaths.

                   1. That defensive plan didn’t work in 20th century China, Russia, Germany; the modern Middle East, and who has banned US insurance companies from offering major medical health insurance?

                      It was a plausible approach, but humans have experimentally tried it and it mostly didn’t work. Now it’s time to try something else.

                      1. Except that if it didn’t work you would be fighting off a gang instead of denying facts here.

                         1. I have never been sent a letter demanding tribute by people living across an ocean. Instead, the people demanding tribute are my neighbors, who demand I help build more of their low security prisons for indoctrinating children, otherwise the people living across an ocean will attack. There is no proof of this, it’s simply asserted repeatedly for 12 years. A big lie.

                            There are about 3,000 counties in the US. What exactly is the objection to letting one of them be libertarian, so the libertarians can demonstrate by example just how bad of a system it is? MTV’s The Real World: Libertarians.

                            The only thing government is actually competent at is imposing government, and even that is slipping.

                            1. Actually, Mike, I like your idea: of “letting” one county (or local equivalent polity) try to be as pure-libertarian as it wants. I very much believe in the idea of the states, and probably their sub-polities, as “laboratories of democracy” — but they need to be honest and reasonably courteous with their neighbors about it, too… by which I mean others (your county’s neighbors, or citizens of the state or nation generally) should not have to pay for your experiment.
                               Examples:
                               — if your pure-libertarian county were to attract more than its share of bums (a subclass of homeless), illegally-resident-in-the-country aliens, and people who form small groups to prey on others for subsistence and entertainment (a.k.a. gangs), I don’t see any reason why polities external to the county should provide any material assistance, other than maybe allowing vetted immigration from within the county as a means of escape for those who don’t like it so much after all.
                               — if your county has zero collective standards for gunfire, that’s ok, but don’t be firing celebratory guns across the county line

                               I’m sure you can think of other things that might cross boundaries that would cause problems with your neighbors; having reasonably courteous ways of minimizing these and fairly sharing the costs of doing so between your county’s residents and theirs would facilitate your libertarian experiment.

                            2. US States are too big of an area. Start with a county, maybe some unpopulated Western desert area that the federal government mostly owns today.

                               I don’t see any reason why polities external to the county should provide any material assistance [against street gangs]

                               I completely agree. Of course in a libertarian county the police are not protecting robbers with Zimmerman prosecutions, and would-be victims will shoot back on the spot. I expect to see the quick invention of a lot of personal weapons which disable rather than kill, because most people don’t want to kill. Small bullets with jellyfish sting poisoned tips, for instance. The analytical mistake you’re making is called “static analysis”, where you make a rule change but pretend humans don’t fully adjust to the new regulatory landscape. This is a fallacy, a form of straw man.

                               I’m sure you can think of other things that might cross boundaries that would cause problems with your neighbors

                               A proper libertarian county does zero pollution. You don’t get to litter your power plant smoke or factory process water into another’s air or water. In a libertarian county, police don’t pretend the corporate veil protects executives against crimes, so polluting executives can be more easily confronted. In a libertarian county, there are no “police”, because police are a monopoly granted by government, and there’s no government.

                            3. In your theoretical Libertarian county (but you really mean anarcho-capitalist) everyone would get robbed blind, assaulted, and likely murdered by the waves of criminals.

                            4. everyone would get robbed blind, assaulted, and likely murdered by the waves of criminals

                               What experimental evidence shows this to be true? You’ve just implied that wagon trains could not have settled the US West, because all of them would be destroyed by bandits.

                               The book Leviathan by Hobbes makes the assertion that humans cannot exist in proximity unless they all submit to a ruler. This is just an assertion, there isn’t any experimental evidence given for it. Rulers work very, very hard to disallow any possibility of experimental test. Maybe rulers don’t believe their own political theory?

                            5. “there isn’t any experimental evidence given for it”

                               Could it be, that in all human history and beyond, nobody has attempted such a code?

                               Or is it likely that no such group prospered or even survived.

                               If you actually look into History you will find numerous such attempts, but no successes. Perhaps because “kings” write the History, but if that is so how come those kings were able to do so?

                            6. Or is it likely that no such group prospered or even survived.

                               Libertarians emigrating from Europe to North American did briefly, but then were re-conquered by their children. In particular see early history of Pennsylvania.

                               Perhaps because “kings” write the History, but if that is so how come those kings were able to do so?

                               The libertarian engineering problem is not completely solved yet, if it were libertarians would already be living in Libertopia today. I believe these are the only remaining problems: 1) Only 1% of humans are born freethinker. This can’t be altered by parental genetics, educational, or political environment. 2) Libertarians need to invent defense mechanisms which work against a 100:1 numerical disadvantage, to at a minimum produce the stalemate of MAD. 3) Libertarians need to emotionally accept a partial separation from the rest of humans, because 99% of their children will not be freethinker and can’t be trusted. I expect the 1% of freethinkers worldwide can organize for self-defense using Internet means, and can continue to live immersed in cultures which wish to rule them. Success is when others can’t pick their pockets or break their legs. Enclosing culture doesn’t have to approve of them, it has to merely not touch them.

69. Yay! Hillary lost!

    Congratulations to all my correspondents who helped make this triumph for Western Civilization possible (Sarah)! Plus, you did it without making me responsible for the Trump Administration. Thanks for the best day of the last 8 years!

    1. One worst case scenario, eliminated. Now lets hope Trump exceeds my low expectations and doesn’t turn into a similar worst case scenario.

       As for Sarah’s vote, I guess she lost the skirmish but won the battle on this one. Colorado went to Hillary, but Trump won anyway.

       1. No state that votes by mail EVER goes republican. Have you noticed?

          1. I’m frankly gobsmacked that Trump won. Despite what you said about vote by mail, do you think the machine refused to help her?

             1. I think at least some of it was simply that they knew Trump would and could fight back and wouldn’t give a tinker’s damn about any “consent agreement”. And that when the fraud was exposed a whole bunch of people would start hunting Democrats.

             2. Not in CO.

                1. I tend to agree with the comment above yours, but it’s much easier to tracelessly interfere with the mail vote, so they probably felt safe there.

             3. Michael has, in his arguments, seems to have raised a philosophical question about morality: I.e., whether it is, or is not, more moral to choose the less immoral of two actions when those are the only choices that will affect the outcome. I suspect this has been well and truly dealt with by philosophers in history.

          2. There’s only 3 states that do the general election by mail, and of those only Colorado is a swing state, the others being generally solid Democrat except in landslides. I wonder what kind of verification can be done to this though? Could you go find a list of everyone who voted by mail and ask them if they actually voted? On those people at the precinct who were told that they already voted, could they challenge their mail-in ballot with an ID? Maybe that’s something that could be put in.

             One thing on the polls though, all of the western swing states, Clinton outperformed the polls, but all of the eastern swing states, Trump outperformed the polls. New Mexico doesn’t have mail in ballots, but Clinton outperformed the polls by a larger margin than in Colorado. Nevada by a smaller margin. http://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/2016-election-results-coverage/?lpup=18315141#livepress-update-18315141

             1. :I wonder what kind of verification can be done to this though? ”

                I think standard auditing procedures would work. Take a random sampling of perhaps 5,000 “voters” and interview them about whether they mailed in their ballot. If a significant portion of the sample reveals flaws perform a more in depth investigation.

                You would also want to look for “non-voters” to confirm they did not mail in their ballot.

                I leave details to the statisticians and auditors who’ve greater exeperience than I.

                1. As a general thing: performance auditing of all government-run processes, including elections. Spending 1% of the budget would likely get >20% improvement in efficiently accomplishing the defined mission, and only the mission.

                2. Makes sense.

                   BTW, updated version of those poll margins show that Trump outperformed the polls in Colorado too.

                   http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-missed-trump-we-asked-pollsters-why/

    2. ” “And who will help me eat my bread?” asked the Little Red Hen.”

    3. This is me too.
       I’m not excited about Trump, but the relief… oh, the relief.

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