08:28 – I’m still debating with myself whether to bother to vote Tuesday. If I do, it would be either to cast a meaningless vote for Johnson, whom I’d actually like to see elected, or an ultimately equally meaningless vote for Romney, whom I detest only slightly less than I detest Obama. When you consider that I have very little confidence that the votes will be counted honestly, that makes my vote meaningless squared.
“A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.” –Lysander Spooner
10:35 – Barbara just told me that she’s not going to bother to vote this year. She said last time she voted that that was the final time she’d vote, and she’s not changed her mind. So I’m going to join her in not voting. As OFD has said, I’m afraid that the time is fast approaching when bullets will replace ballots. Fortunately, I come down solidly on the better-armed side.
10:37 – It occurs to me that we need a yard sign: None of the Above.
A non-vote is a vote for the incumbents. If you want to send a message, vote Libertarian. If you want Obama out, vote for Romney. You can vote him out in four years.
A vote for Gary is not meaningless. It sends a message. He won’t be elected, unfortunately, but by getting off your arse and down to the polling booths and actually voting for Gary and against the tow major party cretins you’ll send a message that both major parties *will* notice. At least the back room boys will.
Increase those Libertarian numbers! Every election makes them more credible as their following enlarges and some actually get elected.
The game is rigged.
I keep hearing about polarization of US society. What do they expect when the Republicans are nearly all lunatic right and the Democrats nearly all the lunatic left? We have the Libertarians as the sane, moderate center, but they can’t be elected. The Republicans and Democrats make sure of that.
Is it? Who by, the Illuminati?
You mean someone actually rigged the game so Bush II got elected? Twice?
No, it’s rigged by the self-elected who rule us. The Democrat and Republican parties are merely wholly-owned subsidiaries of this group, very few of whom have ever held elective office. They don’t need to; they run things through their elected Democrat and Republican politicians, who are largely puppets.
The puppet masters are smarter than us Bill. How do you think Dubya got the Republican nomination in 2000?
The game was certainly rigged in New York in 1999 or 2000. All of the other Republican candidates were scratched off the ticket under one excuse or another and, IIRC, the Libertarian Party didn’t appear on the ballot that year. Machine politics at its finest.
One of their biggest games is that whoever is in control, runs the redistricting process. When Repubs or Dems get in, they change the boundaries so it perpetuates them for several terms—usually until there is a complete sweep by the opposing party, then the process starts all over with the other party in control of the boundaries.
And yeah—New York and Illinois politics are perhaps the most crooked in the nation. If you are in law enforcement and want a lifetime’s work, just spearhead an effort to fish for wrongdoing in those states. You will eat forever.
Robert is, of course, right on the money as to who rules us and how. We can’t rid ourselves of them by the usual legal means of elections and suchlike. That leaves the alternative.
Oh, and on a somewhat related note; during this last bit of storm drama here in the Northeast I was out doing a few minor errands and made the rounds of several hardware stores. Two items that could not be found at any of them for love or money were D batteries and lamp oil. A word to the wise.
The only things we have that use D cells are a couple of old fluorescent Coleman lanterns. I thought about replacing them with LED models, but we have plenty of LED flashlights, booklights, etc., all of which use AAA cells. I think we have enough D cells on hand for about three changes in the lanterns.
I’m not sure but I think the only item here for D cells is our Grundig Satellite radio which we normally have plugged in anyway, and it is a beast to carry around with batteries. And we have a ton of AA and AAA batteries for the other stuff but need a charger and are also gonna be looking at generators and something that will pump our well water if the juice goes out.
I was kinda surprised at the run on lamp oil, though, and we have quite a few of those lanterns here that we’ve been scarfing up over the years.
Apparently, and this is worth noting for those still living in some version of Megalopolis (and we’re technically at its northern terminus); those stores down in NJ, NY, CT and Long Island got their shelves cleaned out and then cleaned out again after the storm passed. And I don’t know how much is sheer media hype but lots of reports of people arming themselves and making sure the whole world knows it.
Chuck wrote:
“One of their biggest games is that whoever is in control, runs the redistricting process.”
That doesn’t happen here, fortunately. Redistricting is run by an independent commission. The parties make suggestions but the commission makes the final decision, even about the names of electoral districts.
I wonder if the NY/NJ clusterfark will make voters think twice. Obama goes through for a couple of hours and people have to dumpster dive and arm themselves. Why didn’t they just send through some tank units with blades and clear some roads. Send in the mobile kitchens and start feeding people. Set up the mobile showers and potable water units. Seems so easy. No, let FEMA and the Red Cross screw it up. What was Bloomberg thinking about the marathon. Now cancelled, but WTF?
I’m not sure I know where NC stands right now. A month ago I had heard it was a toss up.
If so I hope you do vote and while I’m no real fan if Mitt boy the most important thing at stake is the future of SCOTUS. I really don’t want to see Obamy have that choice. It will last a lot longer than four years. We sure as hell don’t need another ‘Wise Latina’ or ‘Kathy Bates’.
I am never voting for the lesser of two evils again. Nothing, not even the SCOTUS is more important than establishing Libertarians as the viable alternative. Republican appointments to the SCOTUS have been a significant disappointment to me, as they threw out the Constitution as surely as the Demo appointments have. Since we do not stand on the Constitution any longer, it literally makes no difference who the appointees are. Nothing will change, and if you examine the record, Republicans have aggressively challenged our civil liberties, culminating in GW’s abominal ‘Patriot Act’, which the SCOTUS, in most cases, has refused to hear, leaving affirmations of the Act in place. We have reached the point where I actually trust the Dems on civil liberty issues more than I do Repubs.
“Is it? Who by, the Illuminati?”
Close enough. Or one can shove one’s head deep into the sand and pretend to believe that we still have any semblance at all of truly representative government here and that any of the contemporary politicians will either make things better or at least not make them any worse.
Let me educate whomever: We are ruled by a corporate fascist oligarchy composed of various criminal and treasonous elements. It matters not a whit which fool they put in the WH or on SCOTUS and the Congress has been a joke for so long it’s not even funny anymore. We are heading inexorably toward some kind of meltdown, whether The Great Default or a series of events and circumstances which will cause the whole unsustainable house of cards to fall. Short of a bunch of fallen, broken and sinful human beings coming to their senses, or divine intervention from Jesus, Allah, Buddha or the FSM, we are going down a whole new road for most of us and there will be much pain. Maybe not as much as in other parts of the world, but painful enough.
To believe that we can somehow shore up some nifty libertarian candidates in such a way as they get to Washington and are not immediately suborned by the evil and pernicious climate there and will begin to turn this Leviathan of 320 million people around is to also believe in Santa, the Tooth Fairy and The Great Pumpkin. You’d better get Charlie Brown to front you a ticket for the clue train.
Do nothing then, eh? Typical.
Enjoy your ride down. If you think that there is some future Tom Jefferson who’ll lead you out of the darkness, I can get Charlie to buy you a ticket, too. From where I stand, what you’re doing is quitting.
Nope, not quitting at all. Preparing. Semper Paratus.
As for Jefferson, it is increasingly doubtful we shall ever see his like again; he was a bright star in a firmament of bright stars, despite his mistakes of judgement in later life and turn away from what he’d originally espoused.
In fact, there is no one to my knowledge on the political horizon that is fit to buff the least of the Founders’ shoes.
We will have to make the necessary changes with the people we have.
In the absence of compelling, logical reasons to vote in the choose-between-two-lying-thieves election, we see the fallback argument: personal insults. Spoken like a true tool of the Ruling Class. Or a victim of Stockholm Syndrome. Or a house nigga.
“It occurs to me that we need a yard sign: None of the Above.”
Not even Gary?
Gary is very far from the libertarian dream white horse to come riding to the rescue. He strikes me as perhaps a very capable snake-oil salesman or carny barker. And has about as much chance of being elected dog-catcher as Patrick Buchanan has of becoming the Headmistress of Hadassah.
There. Is. No. One.
Okay, okay.
read this one…
http://takimag.com/article/should_you_vote_for_president_andrew_napolitano
Yeah, I read the judge’s piece the other day; he is a good man and a true American patriot but I differ with him on this, first, as a Roman Catholic who cannot stomach several of Johnson’s beliefs, platform planks, whatever. But also because I think it is far too late for this particular single step leading toward the libertarian free market Paradise. We are now about to pay the piper, a very serious correction is in store for us, and there is nothing that Governor Gary or any army of true-believing free market libertarians can do about it.
We’re going to do that thousand miles, alright, but the single step the judge is talking about is a step backwards, toward continuing to play this shameless game of charades, and I wasn’t going to say it before but I will now: to participate in this game again is to perpetuate this regime and give it the cover it needs and craves. To vote here in this country now is the same as voting was in the old Soviet Union or as it is currently in Cuba or North Korea.
I got a record number of poll calls this week. Almost a hundred. I set my ooma phone to send everything directly to vm. I can review any vm’s as they are emailed to me.
Increasingly, voting in the US is the same as voting in Saddam’s Iraq: numbered ballots which were tied to the voter so the ruling party could, and did, make sure that everyone voted and voted the right way.
New York has used mechanical voting machines for longer than I’ve been alive. In every election that I remember, you get a numbered slip of paper when you sign in and then hand the slip to the machine attendant. She’ll fiddle with something in a side panel of the machine and then allow you to vote. Prove to me they aren’t connecting votes to voters. (And that proof will need to meet a very high hurdle to pass my skepticism, given that at times it’s been shown that machines were pre-loaded with votes.)
New, electronic voting machines have almost completely opaque operation. Not only the vendors but the boards of election resist any efforts to get a third-party audit of the hardware or software. Same burden of suspicion, given the recurring “mistakes” of preloaded votes and misread votes.
Absentee ballots have always been subject to monitoring as well as manipulation.
These are just examples I’m personally aware of. I doubt much research would be needed to find similar in most states.
Really, house nigga?
Fuck you and your horse.
I’m hoping Romney wins Tuesday. I don’t think things will change much unless he gets both Houses with a win. Most of the people in this forum (including me) would shit their pants if Romney turned things around. I remember his promise during the debates of eliminating the Dept of Ed. and others. Probably a lie. But wouldn’t it be a great start.
I wonder if the inner cities will really burn themselves down and loot the stores that make it a community if Romney wins. That will really be sad for those that just want to live their life. I may have to reconsider living in Vegas. Not very survivable in the desert when the Barackolypse comes.
If memory serves, I saw a recent nooz clip about some planeload of mil-spec absentee ballots, several hundred thousand of them, that crashed and all was destroyed. This administration has done its damnedest to stonewall all absentee ballots, particularly the mil-spec ones, and the electronic voting machines around the country…I mean…words fail me here. What a great opportunity for us to be hornswoggled yet again! These can be hacked six ways from Sunday and for more boffo laffs take a look at the companies that make them and who is on their boards, who they contribute to, and what relationship they have with various political factions in this country. But it’s like the cops; if there IS an audit or investigation, they will do it themselves and generate the usual predictable verdict.
Tell ya what: if Mittens wins and is clearly and significantly turning the right things around, I will eat whatever humble pie anyone wants to serve me. Publicly. And gladly.
She’ll fiddle with something in a side panel of the machine and then allow you to vote. Prove to me they aren’t connecting votes to voters.
I worked for a group that did post-election results reporting, before the rise of computerized reporting from county offices. I got to look at the machines up close while results were being tallied here in Houston.
The mechanism at the side was simply an “enable” handle that allowed you to enter the booth, pull the main lever to close the curtain and vote. There was nothing that could be used to enter any data.
I would like to see Romney start off with Rick Perry’s suggestions for the first day:
1. get rid of Departments of Energy, Education and Housing
2. reduce EPA manpower by 90%
The EPA has post election plans for us:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/november-surprise-epa-planning-major-post-election-anti-coal-regulation/article/2512538#.UJbkMoW1-AI
This climate change nonsense will be the death of our society in the USA. Our economy is built on cheap and plentiful electricity. Any limits or unrealistic costs on electricity in the USA will just cause more jobs to move to China, India or any of the other third world countries where you just throw in a diesel generator and no one cares.
On the bullets versus ballots, it is a given to me that a civil war in the USA will last 4 to 5 years. Maybe 20 years. No one has enough ammo, enough protection (a fortified bunker with land mines) and enough food to last that time period. Medicine dependent people such as yours truly will also die quickly.
The population die-off in the cities will be tremendous as the food distribution network fails within 30 days. If one lives anywhere close (100 miles) to a medium sized city then one will be over-run. The hordes of starving people will go over any obstacles to get your food or animals if they think you have any. Bicycles can go amazingly far for desperate people. It will be medieval.
I am totally amazed at how many people in Hurricane Sandy were totally unprepared. Then I realized why, they are government dependents and have little cash for buying survival supplies. Nor does anyone have the expertise anymore for canning food, curing meat, etc. Is that 47% of the USA population?
@ech: That’s good to hear, though it doesn’t necessarily say anything about the New York machines. The fiddling usually takes several seconds, longer than I’d expect a single lever twist to take. Note that I don’t have any real reason to think anything underhanded is going on, just a generalized suspicion of everything involved.
@OFD: Yah, I’ll often say something along the lines of, I’d be delighted to be proved wrong. Not that I’m anticipating delight as a result of this year’s election. Look at the 1994 Republican Revolution and the 2010 Tea Party Takeover and how quickly the firebrands were sucked into the Washington muck.
@bgrigg: I don’t have a horse but I’m hung like one, which gives me the self-confidence to laugh off your pitiful insults. And you do realize that you’re just proving my point about not having logical arguments, right?
As to being hung like a horse, I used to have a Vietnamese boss called Hung, and we’d make jokes about him being “Well Hung”. He didn’t seem to mind… 🙂
OFD wrote:
“There. Is. No. One.”
Oh bull!
Gary is a highly successful former governor of New Mexico and got things done, staring down the big spenders who wanted to keep the system as it was. Unlike the Tea Party pussies who were subsumed into The Borg almost at once.
Mr. Hung probably did not know what it meant.
Speaking of humble pie, here’s an interesting article. Usually, I do not take the Telegraph seriously about anything, but hopefully this is correct as it does not involve politics or economics.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8843158/Why-Hitler-hated-being-called-a-Nazi-and-whats-really-in-humble-pie-origins-of-words-and-phrases-revealed.html
Humble Pie?
Dependent on medicine?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZMmV6xXYFw
So is Hurricane Obama coming in Tuesday night? Or is it going to be a dud with celebrations and riots? I think I am going to fill up all our cars gas tanks tomorrow.
Steve Marriott in Humble Pie after Frampton left. Marriott was one of the best rock ‘n’ rollers of all time. He formed one of my all-time favorite groups, Small Faces when he was a young teenager. They were terrifically popular in the UK, but their style—mod music—never really caught on here in the US.
My favorite song of theirs was “Tin Soldier”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcKZoFRpZCI
Have I said all this before? That’s the trouble with getting old—can never remember who I have told what. The black girl is LA-born PP Arnold, who started with Ike and Tina Turner. She had a terrific career backing ‘soul’ based songs—especially in the UK,—and still performs as a solo act today. Brought up in a family of gospel singers, she married early, had 2 kids, and was doing menial work when a friend told her that Ike Turner was desperately looking for a replacement of a girl for a trio who backed out at the last minute. Arnold attended a show to be sure, and was beat up by her husband upon returning home. That cinched it; she left him and joined Ike and Tina.
That video is lip-synced. There may be a Hammond on the original song, but the prominent keyboard instrument is a Rhodes piano, not present in the picture.
As a child, Marriott was cast in the London version of “Oliver”, but left the stage for music. In 1968, Marriott left Small Faces saying he believed they had recorded every decent rock song it was possible to record, given that they all hated each other and did not speak to each other for another 10 years after he quit. Marriott had been working with Peter Frampton and together they created Humble Pie, while Small Faces changed name to Faces and became the permanent backing band for Rod Stewart.
The song you will remember, if you are old enough, is this one (also lip-synced); Marriott would have been 19 when the song was popular in the US:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJzcF0v1eOE
Beat Club—from which that was taken—was a German TV show originating in Bremen. Damn Germans ALWAYS alter songs, and in that clip, they faded out before it was over. Typical.
Smoking was a definite health hazard for Marriott, as a cigarette burned down his 16th century house with him asleep in it.
Speaking of Hammonds and Rhodes, Clavia of Sweden makes the Nord synthesizer that sounds so like formerly big, heavy instruments, like the Hammond B3, that in comparisons I have heard, I cannot detect any difference whatsoever. They even duplicate a Leslie box.
http://www.nordkeyboards.com/main.asp?tm=Products&clpm=Nord_C2D&clncm=Information
Problem is they are so light-weight at 35 pounds (compared to a B3 that is around 600 pounds), that they have become one of the most stolen musical instruments when unattended backstage.
The Nord C2D can duplicate a Hammond B3 tone wheel organ with Leslie effect (spinning twin speakers that produce tremolo), plus a Farsifa and Vox electronic organ. Only $3,485.00 for the C2D from Amazon. Actually, a rebuilt B3 could be cheaper.
Thanks for that info on Marriott & Humble Pie, Chuck; I’d forgotten most of it but very much remember rocking to them and also the Faces when Stewart was with them.
You ever catch the young Rod Stewart on that Jeff Beck album? He was just a kid, then, and carried the bags for visiting American bluesmen to London.
Yeah. Actually, Marriott indirectly gave Stewart his dues. When Marriott left Small Faces, the remaining band members looked around for someone who sounded the same. At that time, Stewart’s voice was not so gravelly, so Rod it was. At first they were known as just Faces, but Stewart quickly got his name first on their billing.
I’m voting for Romney. We have dug a huge hole, and Obama has done more than any President to make it deeper. Obama clearly intends to do four more years of the same, if not worse because he won’t be running again in 2016. I very much doubt that Romney will be bold and decisive enough. My speculation is that Romney will make steps in the right direction, but that they will be too little, too late. Which is better, a guaranteed catastrophic failure or a one percent chance at success?
If you pin me down by political parties, I’m a Republican, but at the moment, I’d much rather see the Libertarians in power, with the Republicans as the party out of power, and with Democrats as a fringe third party.
Then vote Libertarian and help advance the real solution.
We are going to have to get rid of the Electoral College in order to get more than two parties. Voting for the President and Vice President separately would help also.