Category: News and Views
so, what do you all think of the GOP primary? and if you're a right winger who's your candidates of choice?
Mine are
1. Newt Gingridge
2. Herman Cain
3. Rick Perry
Hi Rachel. You had to ask!
I'm not a Republican so my choices are:
1. Obama.
2. Obama.
3. Obama.
Bob
I probably won't vote since A. I've lost any faith I might have had that our votes actually make a difference and B. We're talking about politicians here. They'll say anything, and I mean anything, to get elected, but once they are they turn around and do something totally other.
Newt in my opinion is the lowest piece of crap I've ever seen. As his first wife was going through Chemotherapy and laying in a hospital bed newt hands her divorce papers and demanded she sign them all while his daughter was crying and begging him not to do this.
Seriously the guy is scum. Not only did he do this, but he also had an affair on his first wife while she was dying of cancer, so then he married his mistress, then cheated on her as well, and is now married to his second mistress. All this time this piece of shit has been going on about how homosexuality is immoral and destroys the sanctity of marriage.
He is also a draft dodger, and a dead beat dad.
Newt has also stated that he wants to repeal child labor laws so poor children can become janitors at the schools they attend.
he's also stated that anyone who has taken money from Freddy Mack should be in jail, even though he himself received nearly 2 million dollars from them.
Cain is an idiot, well he's more then that. He's possibly guilty of sexual assault against Sharon Bialek. This man has had more sex scandals in the past few months then newt and Bill Clinton combined.
Not to mention he's a complete moron, his 9 9 9 idea is based on bad math, and shear lack of knowledge on how the financial world runs. He understands nothing about foreign affairs not to mention he to thinks homosexuality destroys the sanctity of marriage.
Anyone else see a pattern yet? All the GOP candidates who know nothing about the sanctity or marriage complain that we must protect it.
Rick Perry Can't remember three simple things, seriously I think this guy either has a drinking problem or a drug problem of some kind. Hell this is the same guy who mistook 21 as the voting age. He's like George Bush only dumber.
Most of the GOP candidates are anti-science (all of them are creationists) and want to teach creationism in our science classes, anti-education (Of course you have to keep the public stupid so they keep buying their crap) All of them except Ron Paul want to keep pandering to the rich while the rest of us pay the bill, while at the same time they want to kill social programs because these programs are socialist, well that is unless they can benefit from it (can we say Michelle Bachman?). The list goes on and on.
no thank you I will vote for Obama. Hopefully we can vote these tea baggers and Republicans out of office so Obama can get something done.
Brian, I kind of don't blame you on the voting issue:
It's hard to want to support a rotten system. However I would rather see Obama get reinstated because he is the lesser of the evils.
There is that I suppose. Because while I don't necessarily like Obama I like the GOP folks even less. But that's politicians for you, they're hypocrites each and every one of them.
I think when you go to the poles you have to ask yourself the following question:
"Who do I dislike the least?"
If! I ended up going to the poles, which I doubt, I'd probably write in someone else. Homer Simpson maybe. LOL.
lol
While I don't agree with the European requirements that people vote, it is your civic duty if you are an American and of age. I don't think it's a right: it is an obligation. A right means you can choose to or not, without consequence.
Am I jaded? Yes. Disgusted with the whole political process? Absolutely. Find a bunch of talking heads worthy of being chopped off? Sure.
However, as long as I call myself an American, have U.S. citizenship and benefit from what this country has to offer, I'm going to go vote. You don't have to have faith in the process, or anything at all, to do your duty. And for us as blind people, we now have access to more data than ever before. I remember when all you could get was propaganda on tape, or the voter's pamphlets. Now you have sites like Votesmart.org and others which have real data on bills that your congresspeople voted on.
And for you and I, they are more and more trying to make the voting experience the secret ballot it was intended to be.
While some in America may now talk of writing in Homer Simpson, women in Afghanistan died trying to get to the poles and vote, in a political situation far more precarious than ours. In a scarce few years, it will be 2020, and unless I am mistaken that may be exactly 100 years since women in America were allowed to vote.
As usual, there is apparently no data on the blind and voting, so I don't know when the first moves were made to provide assistants at poling places. I imagine that was probably much later. We all know getting assistance from a family member can be very dicey if they are all ideology / temper tantrums and no capacity to understand the gravity of the situation.
I'm going to take a shot at this, and say probably it wasn't till the 70s that any sort of voting booth assistance was put in place. And that was probably on a state-by-state, or maybe county-by-county, basis.
The point is, you can where people before you could not. And doing your duty doesn't imply you have faith in anything. Nowhere is there a requirement you have faith in the system. But painting all politicians as 'all the same' is first historically inaccurate, and second, just a way for people to absolve themselves of any responsibility.
Look like Cain bowed out of the race. I guess there were too many allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault.
Voting is a right. There's nothing that says we're required.
Voting is a priviledge not a right.
As with all priviledges, you can either use it wisely (vote for someone whom you believe could bring about the changes you want), or you could throw it away (not voting, or voting for Homer Simson).
But beware, if you disabuse it too many times you could lose it.
Bob
Right or privelidge I am frustrated with the whole business.
As are many of us. Fortunately, to use the privilege, or do your duty, does not require one be contented with the process. Not at all.
Isn't that a shame? So many citizens have had it with the way things are yet we roboticly do the duty.
And, what else would you propose. There is nothing robotic at all about taking the time and effort to research, and vote for your individual interests. Because even though those interests to you are yours, they are most probably the interests of many other people.
The robotic thing to do would be just to claim all politicians rae the same, and do nothing. Though that is an insult to the fine engineering that goes into modern robotics.
Perhaps, then get rid of the electoral college if our views mean so much.
Exactly. It's their vote, not ours, that actually decides things. I don't even think my folks are going to be voting. Because I'm frankly sick and tired of voting for someone just because they might be the lesser of two evils and all that, particularly if, as I've begun to believe in recent years, our votes make little to no difference in the grand scheme of things. But so far none of the candidates we've been hearing about really sets me afire with the desire to vote for them. Newt least of all. Hell, whenI voted last time I voted for McCain even though my heart wasn't in it. Of course nor was I too enthralled with Obama and therefore wouldn't have voted for him either despite the fact that he actually seemed, SEEMED being the operative word, to get right to the point whenever he was asked a question during the one debate I watched. McCain seemed to do a lot of hemming and hawing, sort of the way Kerry did in his debate with George Dubya. But Newt just sets my teeth on edge for some reason, and it's looking right now as though he's going to be the GOP nominee. So no, I probably won't be voting this time since once again I'd be, as Margorp put it, robotically doing my duty with the rest of the wretched masses and that would be all.
Historically, the electoral colledge was put in place to limit the power of the people. The fear was that we'd have absolute power.
If we went by the popular vote Al Gore would have been president, and Bush would be an also-ran. What a different world it might have been.
Bob
The following is not in defense of the electoral college. I for one think it's time to rethink that.
However, the actual reasoning for the electoral college was to provide smaller jurisdictions as much of a voice as the larger ones. In other words, a state like Oregon to have the same voice on continuing education of the sciences as, erm, well, sorry Bob, but ... Texas.
We even see it in our own state out here where the rural east half, paid-for mind you by those of us in the industrious west half, feels underrepresented all the time on statewide issues. These sorts of things make me glad I don't make a living at politics.
But anyway, whether you vote for the President or not, your local state ballot measures and state Congress people are likely to affect your immediate sphere a lot more than does your vote for the President. And since these votes are not subject to any electoral college, that point is moot. Plus you are much more likely to vote with a lot more direct knowledge on a local issue.
And if you're like Oregon, with an extremely open ballot initiative process and outside big money putting measures on the ballot that would benefit out-of-state interests at your expense, you may well want to at least vote locally.
Oh I certainly vote locally. I am certainly not happy about the rubbish happening around my area.
Originally the electoral college was devised with the thinking that folks would know their local folks much better than some national person. Now, with the advent of radio, television and the internet your chances of knowing the national person is much better than your chances of knowing some local jerk.
Bob
All the more reason to get rid of the electoral colledge.
I agree with those who say get rid of the electoral college, it's an outdated practice that's not needed in modern America.
Just like so many things that only serve the "big boys."
Here here. I could raise a Dr. Pepper to that.
I'll certainly drink to that.