Mccain says, “I’ll take this old ink pen and every single pork barrel earmark bill that comes across my desk as president, I will veto it, I will make them famous and you will know their names.”
The name is Mccain.
Last night, Mccain voted for a huge pork barrel spending bill.
Want change? Then you need to change your whole concept of how you vote. Voting the same way, for the lesser of two evils just hasn’t been working now has it?
As much as anything has ever worked, yes
I voted for Barry Commoner (libertarian), and I got Reagan. I wanted to vote Nader, but went with Gore as the better of two evils. I got Bush, but it was so close. I have hated Nader personally, while admiring his views and charisma, ever since. He costs team left 4 points in many swing states. He does this every election. Running a far left campaign that nets 3-4 % of the vote is only helping steer the country to the right. Yet tricky Nader runs a funny car that when he’s seen driving it , he’s spinning the wheel to the left. Actually, he and the people paying him know that while you are watching him steer left onto new tracks, the actual track is being shifted dramatically to the right. He is the pied piper of shallow self absorbed young liberals, leading them like useless rats into a sewer full of wasted votes.
It is a fair country. I suppose the liberal’s real problem is we can’t stomach Rush Limbach , or Ann Coulture long enough to pay them to run. But seriously, to give them Dems a fair shake, they need a far right populist nut job to assure people the axis of evil will be nuked post haste when they get in office. That would be good for siphoning off 5 % of the right side off the Republican base. Tell them with heart felt conviction that you will nuke Iran because you are on a mission from god to bring about the rapture, and you could steal away a lot of Palin fans. Another 5 % easy, that would vote for their convictions. 
The dems should hire Ann Coulture, for a 100 million dollars, to be our Nader. Best $ they could ever spend on a per vote basis.
I disagree. Without the Nader the democratic candidates would become even more centrist. They only reason they don’t now is because they fear they’ll lose votes to a third party candidate is they don’t stay just left enough that they catch most of them. If someone loses an election because of Nader it’s their own fault for not being left enough. It’s because of Nader that Kerry was more left than Gore, and that Obama is more left than Kerry. Nader steared the candidates towards their own party.
Btw, in 2000 Gore was not the liberal that he is today. He was a centrist douchebag and that’s why he lost tons of votes to Nader. In 2000 there was no discernible difference between Bush and Gore.
I would vote to change the system, but “voting your conscience” is what got us 8 years of bush jr.
I though the term was “lesser of two weasels”.
I voted for Ron Paul in the Republican primaries and I think it’s ultimately useful to vote for fringe candidates in the initial selection process because, as Seager pointed out, it has a shifting effect on the party platform as a whole— But the “third party” in this country does not have the capacity to act in the same way the major parties do. They are entirely irrelevant to the general election and this is, virtually, by design. To succeed, they’ll have to grow their organizations outside of the electoral process. A third party platform is far better served acting as a PAC and co-opting the major party platforms rather than trying to support their own, independent of Republican or Democratic influence. I would argue that a person should build towards their consciousness instead of voting for it in third party terms.
No, Gore not being in touch with his base got us 8 years of Bush Jr. He lost the election for himself. Nader wouldn’t have gotten those votes if Gore hadn’t been such a centrist candidate.
Barry Commoner was anything BUT a libertarian.
What you are looking for is a representative democracy, that’s not what we have. We have a Republic. There are a number of features associated with this. The Electoral College is a “winner take all” system which almost guarantees a two party system, both fighting for the center. BTW, if you do the numbers, you realize that people in states like Wyoming have about 2.5 times the voting power compared to people in the most populous states. Almost any parliamentary system would be more democratic, and there would probably be a much larger range of ideologies represented in the government. The best system would be one that allows for second and third choices, so that, for example, one could have voted Nader choice #1 and Gore choice #2 in 2000.
Bob Barr maybe? What else have we got?
He’s not the President yet. Does that argument work for him? 
Apparently this quote is part of McCain’s Brand New Stump Speech
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=188475&title=McCain%27s-Brand-New-Stump-Speech
Meh, they could at least put up somebody who isn’t just a rebranded Republican. (Same argument applies to Ron Paul.)
Bob Barr is rebranded. Ron Paul is not rebranded. He’s been consistent in his brand for decades.
Ron Paul ran as a Republican when it suited him to do so …
With our current system, you have to choose between Republican or Democrat. Neither one is a good choice, so which one do you choose to run under? Can one run for the endorsement of one of these parties. Or does one create their own “brand” like Ron Paul has done?
If you had to choose between fascism or socialism, which would you choose?
Current political leanings show that people choose socialism. I’d even choose that if that was the only option. I’d ultimately choose freedom if that was one of the options.
It’s very unfourtunate that our option is government control in one way, and the other option is government control in a different way.
However, I don’t see the end of corporatism, as there is too much to gain for most of the large organizations that are in bed with the government. The powers that be will not give up very easily.
Well, if you expect[ed] people to vote for you as a third party candidate, or are pushing a platform of non-big-two ideals, you run under neither party.
Actually, I find socialism quite attractive. Everybody cooperates for the good of everyone? Sounds good to me.
I feel like the point of creating a society and a government is to collectively provide ourselves the things that many or most of us wouldn’t be able to provide individually. (For me, those things include: personal safety (incorporating both a justice system and a healthcare system), common utilities, and in an Ideal World, things like shelter and food.)
The only reason these things mean “government control” for us today is that we’ve (/our ancestors have) let it become something over the people instead of for the people.
Agreed. Not going to happen until the system is demolished and recreated.
And you get no attention.
Socialism is fine as long as it is completely voluntary.
Again, that’s fine as long as it’s voluntary. In other words don’t force people into such a system. Don’t steal from others to meet your goals.
Of course. However, if certain persons leverage the benefits of the system for personal gain and don’t contribute back appropriate amounts, where’s the thievery taking place?
That’s up to each organization to determine who gets the benefits and how those benefits are given out. If the organization gives out benefits that can easily be taken advantage of, then they will probably go broke. Nobody will want to fund it. Those failed systems can only maintain themselves by the use of force, which is what we have with the system of government in the US.
