You're at a carnival, 10-15 feet from you are 6 metal milk jugs. You win a stuffed animal larger than an 8-year old if you can knock them all down. You paid $3 for this opportunity. Do you like your chances to succeed if you have two balls in your hand, or three?
Trump is right- the election process is rigged, but not in the way he thinks.
Words like oligarchy, propaganda and conspiracy theory will cause plenty of people to dismiss your viewpoint. If you run at them with expletive-laden, hair on fire talk about a rigged election- I too would dismiss you. The below is currently being largely ignored on my Facebook page, as I don't work at CNN, the Associated Press, or the Huffington Post. Hell, it'd be ignored even if I did work there. So, I am posting it here as well, so it can be ignored in two places instead of one.
Overall topic is this election, but also the election process, polling, media coverage, and legitimacy of getting more options on the ballot that cannot be ignored by polls or the media.
Instant Run-off Voting, John Stuart Mill mention, Representative Government- I'm in! Only thing he got wrong in this video is that we do not have a democracy, and the U.S. has never had one.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/09/10/how__why_other_countries_have_ended_the_2-party_system.html
The first 20 posts to Facebook dating back to October 2nd 2016:
Posted Oct. 2
Day 1
In
an effort to offer more digestible considerations, I will offer my
controversial opinions, historically relevant
facts, and educated conclusions every day until the election. Work with me here- and spoiler alert! On Lost
skip to the next paragraph if you are binge-watching the series on Netflix . .
. . . You didn’t know Lost was about
a group of passengers from a plane crash on an unidentified island being
ushered from purgatory either to heaven or to hell.
Most
prevalently alluded to theories of the universe are derived from:
1-Science
(biology, natural selection, Darwin), 2-religion (creationism, biblical, god) and
3-intelligent design – we are very familiar with the first two, but what is
that third one?: “the theory holds that certain
features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an
intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.” Put another way- “living organisms are so
complex that they must have been created by some kind of higher force.”
Which
side are you on?
Day 2
Kitzmiller
v. Dover – on December 20, 2005 “A
federal judge ruled . . . that it was unconstitutional for a Pennsylvania
school district to present intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in
high school biology courses because it is a religious viewpoint that advances
‘a particular version of Christianity.”
Day 3
“…the
Dover trial and its associated media coverage made me aware that I needed to
make my argument in a more prominent way. Many evolutionary biologists had
acknowledged that they could not explain the origin of the first life
beginnings of voter tendencies. Leading theories failed in large measure
because they could not explain where the mysterious information present in the
cell came from. So it seemed there were
no good counterarguments to the case I wanted to make. Yet various avoidance
strategies continued to work because the argument did not have sufficient
public prominence to force a response.
Too few people in the public, the scientific community, and the media
even knew about it. And yet it provided—arguably—one of the most important and
fundamental reasons for considering intelligent design.” - Stephen C. Meyer pg. 6 of the prologue for The Signature
in the Cell
Day 4
[ ] brackets represent slight alterations to
Stephen C. Meyer’s reason for writing a 500+ page book concerning a third
possibility about how the universe was created; I hope he will forgive me for
co-opting most of his words to prove a point that has more bearing on your life
and life of future generations of Americans:
“…the
[presidential election] and its associated media coverage made me aware that I
needed to make my argument in a more prominent way. Many [political pundits]
had acknowledged that they could not explain the [beginnings of voter
tendencies]. Leading theories failed in large measure because they could not
explain where the mysterious information present in the [vote] came from. So it seemed there were no good
counterarguments to the case I wanted to make. Yet various avoidance strategies
continued to work because the argument did not have sufficient public
prominence to force a response. Too few
people in the public, the [political] community, and the media even knew about
it. And yet it provided—arguably—one of the most important and fundamental
reasons for considering [another political party].”
Day 5
"A discriminating irreverence
is the creator and protector of human liberty." - Mark Twain
"If you never write anything
save what is already understood, the field of understanding will never be
expanded." - Ezra Pound
“There are
seven sins in the world: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience,
Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without
humanity, Worship without sacrifice and Politics without principle.” - Ghandi
Day 6 (Clinton I)
Hillary Clinton: "Every piece of
legislation, just about, that I ever introduced (in the U.S. Senate) had a
Republican co-sponsor."
“But if
someone says, as Clinton did, that ‘Just about every piece of legislation I
introduced had a Republican co-sponsor,’ we think most listeners would expect
better than 30 percent of the legislation introduced by Clinton would include a
GOP co-sponsor.” http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jan/20/hillary-clinton/spot-check-hillary-clintons-senate-record-immolate/
Saying
that about (let’s say 90% = just about every piece of legislation had
bi-partisan support) when only 30% actually did- that is a tremendous
oversight, an awful assumption, and a terrible lie. If I owned a rib joint and I advertised that
90% of my rib meat was from a cow or a pig when only 30% of it was, would you
eat there if later you found out that vole bladders were serially wood glued to
the femurs of shitzus?
You
shouldn’t be able to make claims like that, have them not be true, and continue
to receive more support from the voters than the true percentage in any of your
claims (30%). Thankfully, her percentage
isn’t much higher than that.
Unfortunately, her election to the highest office in the nation is more
probable because . . .
Day 7 (Trump I)
.
. . A major party’s nominee for president of the United States should not have
the below answer to the question asked.
Since I’m not running for president, my inability to answer the same
question should not be so striking. I’d
say that sporting the answer below about the nation’s monetary value is kind of
a bigger deal than whether or not a former governor has picked out a favorite
current world leader. Maybe it is just
me, but I don’t grade on a curve when deciding who is more worthy of my vote
for president; I don’t penalize someone who hasn’t had his own reality
television show. See the link which
follows for more vague, ineffectual answers to legitimate questions:
Should the US Return to the Gold Standard in Which Coin and
Currency Are Backed by Gold?
"[Josh McElveen:] Can you envision a scenario that this country ever goes back to the gold standard?
Donald Trump: Well, in some ways, I like the gold standard. In some ways, I like the gold standard. There's something very nice about the gold standard. And you have to go back at right time when gold does the old crash-o. But, you know, there's something very nice about having something solid. We used to have a very very solid country because it was based on a gold standard. We don't have that anymore. There is something very nice about the concept of that. It would be very very hard to do at this point. And one of the problems is we don't have the gold. Other places have the gold."
"[Josh McElveen:] Can you envision a scenario that this country ever goes back to the gold standard?
Donald Trump: Well, in some ways, I like the gold standard. In some ways, I like the gold standard. There's something very nice about the gold standard. And you have to go back at right time when gold does the old crash-o. But, you know, there's something very nice about having something solid. We used to have a very very solid country because it was based on a gold standard. We don't have that anymore. There is something very nice about the concept of that. It would be very very hard to do at this point. And one of the problems is we don't have the gold. Other places have the gold."
Source: Pittsburgh’s Action News 4,
"Conversation with the Candidate: Donald Trump," www.wtae.com, Mar.
31, 2015
Should
you vote for someone whose answer to that question is indistinguishable from
the words your 6th grader would choose to include in a paper about
the same topic?
Day 8 (Johnson I)
So
far, I may have misspelled or cumbersomely-worded something or other; hopefully
that isn’t enough to make you discount every other thing I’ve gotten right.
It
has been a week since I started this daily post approach and most of you have
probably already tuned me out. I can
play that game- I tuned out all the noise surrounding a presidential
candidate/former governor’s inability to name a favorite foreign leader, or his
failure to recognize the name of Aleppo, a Syrian city beset by war. He thought “Aleppo” was an acronym for
something. Man, is he goofy- ‘I aint
votin’ fer him.’ Are those problems
equal to a candidate not knowing how to adequately answer a question about the
gold standard; a candidate’s playing dumb by using a private email server while
conducting international government business- despite 30+ years being given
credit for her savviness; a candidate’s failure to turn over tax records after
repeatedly being asked for them (if I have time later I’ll get back to that); a
candidate stating how often she has introduced and fought for bills in the
senate that were distinctly bi-partisan in nature, when it has been proven they
were not. No question mark.
If
you have three children- and one steals money from your purse to buy drugs, the
second lies by telling you they got an A- on a math test when they got a D+,
and the third accidentally drops a few grapes on the floor, do you punish them
all equally by sending all of them to their rooms for 2 hours, no cell phones,
television, driving privileges, or dessert for a week?
Jimmy
Kimmel- hilarious and thank you- because I can take a joke, and because a third
party candidate registered enough for you to dismiss him while accidentally
legitimizing him. When will Kimmel’s-
“Are you more corrupt than Hillary Clinton” skit dismiss her as a serious
candidate, or a sketch- “Are you less self-aware than Donald Trump” be offered
up to the 5% of the public who prefer Kimmel to Fallon?:
Day 9 (Clinton II)
Leaked Democratic
National Committee emails
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, following a chaotic scene
at a morning meeting where she was loudly jeered by Bernie Sanders supporters.
“[Debbie]
Wasserman Schultz [DNC chairwoman] changed her plans as the fallout deepened
from leaked DNC emails that appeared to show the committee favoring presumptive
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over Sanders during the primary. It became
clear Monday that the convention floor could erupt in anger if she gaveled the
convention into session or sought to speak.”
"On
behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere apology to
Sen. Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the
inexcusable remarks made over email," the statement said. "These
comments do not reflect the values of the DNC or our steadfast commitment to
neutrality during the nominating process. The DNC does not -- and will not --
tolerate disrespectful language exhibited toward our candidates. Individual
staffers have also rightfully apologized for their comments, and the DNC is
taking appropriate action to ensure it never happens again."
If
someone breaks into your house, defecates on the floor and steals your 4k
television you paid a month’s salary for . . . yeah, a simple apology ought to
do it- no investigation necessary. What
has Hilary really done wrong?
Day 10 (Johnson II)
See links below for information on Johnson. This isn’t just
about how you are voting for someone who doesn’t have a chance to win, who isn’t
the perfect candidate, who is a good option to spend your vote on in support of
your conscience, and on the big picture.
And if it were, that would be enough, not just in this election, but in
any of them. Your vote does have a
purpose larger than the next four years of making sure the candidate you hate,
doesn’t prevail over the candidate you extremely dislike. Your attention span can’t be that short that
determining who most conspicuously aligns with your positions in the majority
of the top 50 issues isn’t worth 30 minutes of your time:
60%
of the American people, all things being equal, would vote for a third party
candidate and the only reason you really won’t, at the end of the day, is
because he doesn’t have a chance to win.
Again, that is the most obvious example of a self-fulfilling prophecy I
have ever encountered. We prove it every
year by voting for the two major party candidates and not voting purposefully:
Did
you not vote for your choice for prom king or queen because in highly
sanctioned and impressively questioned “in-crowd” debates, people in your
senior class weren’t planning on voting for your preferred candidate? If not, good job not buckling under peer
pressure. If your M.O. has changed since
then, that is unfortunate. If your M.O.
is the same as it was back then, that is despicable; thing is, you not only
have more to lose now, you lose the right to be disgusted with the very process
you don’t have the collective will to change.
Day 11 (Trump II)
At
this point, I could probably leave Trump out of this, but he’s still polling at
38% nationally. There was an episode of
the original Twilight Zone where a ship of aliens came to earth to bring people
back to their planet “for dinner.” The
people still giving Trump their vote after the last week’s worth of news are
like the people who, in zombie-like fashion, keep getting on the alien’s ship,
after they are being told they are literally going to be eaten alive.
If
you watched, or heard about any of the issue “discussion” offered by the
republicans during their primary debates, where they talked about how much they
sweat, or the size of a man’s hands equating to the size of his manhood, again,
I laugh at the idea that third party candidates have exclusivity on crazy, or
incompetence, unkempt, or goofy. http://time.com/4242827/donald-trump-marco-rubio-insults/.
Trump: “Little
Marco Rubio is just another Washington D.C. politician that is all talk and no
action #RobotRubio” (via Twitter)Rubio: “He’s always calling me Little Marco. And I’ll admit he’s taller than me. He’s like 6’2″, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5’2″. Have you seen his hands? They’re like this. And you know what they say about men with small hands? You can’t trust them.”
Trump: “He has really large ears, the biggest ears I’ve ever seen.”
Rubio: “Donald is not going to make America great, he’s going to make America orange.”
Anyone ever heard the rumor that an additional party’s inclusion into elections has the very advantageous benefit of raising the topics up for discussion and the level of issue debate? How is that bad for us? And how is it good for the democrats and republicans (including for Reagan, Carter, Bush II, Bill Clinton, Warren G. Harding, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon, Kennedy, Howard Taft or Abe Lincoln)? Your continued compliance is exactly what they need and there is no threat that you are going to stop giving it to them.
Day 12 (Clinton III)
New York Has Done More for Hillary Than She Has for New Yorkers
Clinton herself would be hard-pressed to come up with a list of actual
accomplishments achieved as Senator
http://observer.com/2016/04/new-york-has-done-more-for-hillary-than-she-has-for-new-yorkers/“Ms. Clinton had no ties to New York, but it was the safest bet to start her own political career.”
“Of the 189 Senate bills that their lobbyists identified as significant banking or finance legislation, she cosponsored only 25,” wrote the Boston Globe this past January. Of those 25 bills, most were backed by Senator Chuck Schumer of the Senate Banking Committee. With Ms. Clinton stepping aside to let Mr. Schumer take the lead, some of the largest financial firms including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Bank of America poured donations into the Clinton Foundation and paid exorbitant speaking fees to both Bill and Hillary.
Day 13 (Johnson III) October 14
Very
few of my words this time- just click the links and play the video:
Hit play:
The
only political problem bigger than the one described in the link below, is the
utility (and outdated generalities) of the Constitution, and what type of
business those who choose to defend it, or to appeal to it, have transacted in
its name. Gun control and campaign
finance are just two examples. Enjoy:
Day 14 (Trump III) October 15
If
you are voting for Trump because he is passionate and an outsider- well, no one
who has made the amount of money with the business deals he has, and avoided
paying taxes, with that much pride, is an outsider. I am not someone who thinks taxes should be
raised on the rich, just because they have a lot of money- until we cut
spending, cut donations to foreign nations, eliminate no-bid build military
contracts, stop presidents from vetoing, or congress from voting down, bills
mandating “buy American” clauses, and improve our trade policies. Once we clear up all of that, we won’t need
to tax the rich anymore and we can give tax breaks to the middle class, which
is a promise many politicians declare and very few ever achieve.
I’m
not including links to Joe.conservative.com’s blog or welfareRus’s Instagram
page.
Just
some random site pronouncing the words of Trump truth or lie:
Day 15 (Clinton IV) October 16
In
Clinton’s defense, in anyone’s decades-long involvement in politics some
conspicuous activity is bound to occur and for much of it, no amount of
truth-telling or mea culpa will
appease her detractors. But the number
of smoke signals these issues have sent up is enough for me to find another
party to vote fire, er . . . for.
Course, I’d be voting for another party if just one of the referred to
“scandals” was a thing.
As
for the emails/server scandal, you cannot get to where she is and has been,
raise the money she does, brokering the deals, convincing this senator to side
with you and these legislators to change sides (regrettably, I’ve watched two
seasons of “House of Cards”) and then plead ignorance when plenty of your
career has been made by gaming the system.
If
this is a game of poker and you bet me an Aleppo, I will see that with a
Benghazi and raise you a Whitewater.
Day
16 (Fairness, Hypocrisy, Objectivity, Ineffectualness, Crazy, Corruptness,
Incompetence, Stupid) or FHOICCIS (pronounced- FOY-chees; derivation =
Portuguese)
Gary
Johnson isn’t perfect, and his candidacy, like everyone else’s in the history
of politics, in any nation you could name, is not without its flaws.
Since Clinton and Trump voters don’t start with their candidate’s obvious
challenges, I didn’t feel compelled to shoot myself in the foot, by
highlighting Johnson’s minimal ones, before this train to nowhere ever
got started.
My
logic on the big picture of revolutionizing the election process is still sound
despite the anecdotal, and legitimate, complaints expressed about Johnson in
the link below. If one negative report (or two or ten) scandals were
enough to derail a candidacy, no republican or democrat would have been elected
since the inception of the country. You lose discussions of any magnitude
by not knowing the other side as well as you know your own, by being a hypocrite,
by not conceding points where your side is weak, and if no one pays any
attention to what you’re saying/writing. Hello?
After
having read the above article (which I found because I am playing fair), let’s
play Red Rover? Yes? Here is how it would work: we get 3
lines of 20 negative things/scandals (examples are- [Clinton] private email
servers, [Trump] woman groping, [Johnson] no BFF in the world leader community);
next, we turn those “scandals” into humans, and have the three lines each hold
hands separately. Then, we take turns calling out the personified
scandals; the scandals run into one of the other two lines to see which lines
break.
To be continued . . .
Day
17 (Red Rover- FHOICCIS [pronounced- FOY-chees] continued)
In
this version of Red Rover, there are five lines- one line for each candidate
you could vote for for president if all things were equal. In Clinton’s
line, to start, are all of her redeeming qualities, the things that would
ordinarily make us want to vote for her- she’s got experience, is tenacious, is
a woman, she’s done plenty for the downtrodden and the disabled, served in
plenty of offices- which does give her a good idea on what it would be like to
be president.
Jill
Stein, Gary Johnson and even Trump each also have their own lines, for each has
some requisite good qualities that have been, and are, appealing to hundreds of
thousands and millions of voters. If they weren’t that appealing they
wouldn’t even be at 1-2% of the vote according to polls, the construction of
which, themselves are as fraught with concerns as the candidates they
legitimize.
The
fifth line I referred to is one massive line of crap, because it is populated
with all of the concerns a voter should, and does, have about the respective
candidates. This line isn’t any longer this election year, but we are
more familiar with these personified issues than we normally are. Since
there are about 50 people actually running for president and on the ballot in
at least one state, or seeking a write-in vote, and so I can keep this metaphor
palatable, I stopped at 4. You didn’t think a proponent of getting 1-4
more political parties legitimized would use a Red Rover metaphor featuring 2
lines did you?
In
this fifth line are things we don’t like about each of the candidates-
Johnson’s lack of foreign policy knowledge, Clinton’s email server, Stein’s
inexperience, and Trump’s wall building ideas no matter the cost. Assume
that each candidate has all their own problems (let’s refer to them as
skeletons, as it is 2 weeks from Halloween); but we have to assume that Clinton
and Trump have more. Hey, they’ve been in power longer, and let’s face
it, when you get the reward of all that unbalanced media coverage, name
recognition, poll better because you have tens and hundreds of millions to
spend on an election, it is your fault you have more skeletons.
Legitimize a couple more candidates and parties by changing the coverage,
take them seriously, and do your worst.
Up Next . . .
Let’s play.
October
19
Day
18 (Red Rover- FHOICCIS [pronounced- FOY-chees] continued)
Game
on!
Example:
“Red Rover, Red Rover, send Benghazi on over!” From what I
understand about this issue, it isn’t the end of the world. Is there
someone out there who thinks it is? Probably. So, I would assume
they couldn’t vote for Clinton because of it.
But
to be fair, when the Johnson line yells out “Red Rover, Red Rover, send Aleppo
right over!” the people in charge of the FHOICCIS rating would also judge that
faux pas as mildly incompetent, but abstain from nailing him to a cross or act
like he laced macaroni and cheese with Benadryl and fed it to the kids he was
babysitting when he was fourteen. If the personified issue causes the joined
hands to separate that implies the FHOICCI score was too high, and sheds light
on why someone inclined to vote for Clinton would still find her candidacy
defensible. If in a discussion with
someone on these issues is disgruntled by your challenge of their candidate
raises their voice or points fingers, their objectivity has to be questioned,
it just has to.
The
more broken, and separated the respective lines (which, remember, were
populated by the qualities that make that candidate appealing) the less likely it
is that you should vote for them despite your conscience.
After
a game of Red Rover, Trump’s line will look like the aftermath of the
Hindenburg and Clinton’s like a car crash victim in the ER on life support.
Day 19
One
more specific thing here on this subtopic, and it is important. Time, as
it always does, vets the unknowns- (after all, those who voted for Reagan
couldn’t have known that he would exchange weapons for hostages despite an
embargo, or Nixon would think secretly videotaping the events inside of the DNC
was a good idea). Looking at Nixon’s FHOICCIS score- well it is pretty
substantial- crazy, stupid, corrupt and incompetent- a quadruple FHOICCIS score.
You couldn’t have predicted that.
Let’s
assume Presidents Johnson or Stein may turn out to be highly ineffectual,
registering something on the FHOICCIS scale. I include fairness and
objectivity as measurables in the FHOICCIS calculation for a reason, because we
need a way to judge the other six.
All
I am getting at here, the crux of the problem, is that you can’t give Clinton a
pass on the 25 things that raise her FHOICCIS score to unheard of levels, if
candidate Trump wasn’t around, and denigrate a third party candidate because of
the 5 you heard someone mention, who heard it from someone else who watched the
48 seconds the local news devoted to its political update.
Assuming
a third party candidate gets elected at some point in the next 40 years, ask
yourself, in all fairness, were the non-traditional candidates (Green, Libertarian,
Independent, or one that doesn’t exist yet) ineffectual because they don’t know
anything about the dichotomy of inner city violence and racial outrage? Is
it because the currently ancillary parties can’t figure out how the poor, the
hunyucks, or the 2nd amendment fanatics, still obtain semi-automatic
A15 rifles, or did they fail because the NRA has spent tens of millions to
discredit their views, beat down any opposition by any lawmaker that would
co-author a bill to limit rifle sales at gun shows because the NRA funnels
millions into the re-election campaign of the republican or democrat who has
much to gain if the additional party politicians are ineffectual should they
actually beat this system I’m about to start showing is actually rigged (though
not in the way Trump contends)?
In
a response to one of my tweets in support of voting for a third party, someone
tweeted something about how we should ask the people in Maine how that worked
out for them. Look, you go out to eat
often enough, and you are eventually not going to like the service, the food,
the experience, the location, or the cost.
But you still go out. The problem
here is, too many people keep going to the same damn restaurant, complain about
the same things, try a new restaurant one time and go back to the same
restaurant that they forgot they hated. Keep
trying- now, I think that is a pretty good tip.
Day 20 (Blast from the
Past-Gore)
Source
of the quotes within this post courtesy of:
“Mrs.
Clinton may also get an assist from one Democrat who has been largely quiet
about the race, but can testify to the importance of resisting the third-party
temptation: former Vice President Al Gore.”
Seriously,
she is appealing to the logic of Gore, who lost the election of 2000 because he
was a horrible candidate, who was beaten by another horrible candidate. If she loses this election, she is to blame,
not someone who is trying to keep the other candidates, two entirely deficient
political parties, and one overtly corrupt election process in check.
“ . . . after spending much of the
summer hammering Mr. Trump, through both ads and stump speeches, it appears
Mrs. Clinton has convinced many voters that Mr. Trump is not qualified to be
president but has failed to win them over to her own candidacy.”
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