I'll likely vote as I did in 2008, but with the willingness to vote differently if the economy goes to hell far more than it already is... for a third party.

I would say Huntsman and Romney are ok, just not really appealing to me. Paul strikes me as fullashit. And the rest seem to believe in fantasies instead of reality. Which is fine. They can. I just don't have to vote for them.

Ron Paul, some evidence exists that he is a racist. But the stuff we can prove is bad enough. He wants to repeal Roe v. Wade. He wants to abolish the Federal minimum wage and OSHA. And he has co-sponsored 4 separate bills that included the language “...human life shall be deemed to exist from conception,” which creates a whole new legal gray area for the legal rights of women. Pro choice or pro life, imagine a women having to prove in a court of law she didn't cause her miscarriage even unintentionally. Involuntary manslaughter "is the unlawful killing of a human being without malice aforethought, either express or implied." I think Santorum is for this too.

Romney's stance on any issue changes to whatever it needs to be at any given moment. Plus he's smarmy. And he was against the big auto bailout. Imagine if we had lost all those jobs too. And Romney is for deregulation. ISN'T THAT WHAT CAUSED THE ECONOMIC MELTDOWN???? I want a new Glass-Steagall Act, and Obama isn't likely to do it. But Romney is more likely to go in the opposite direction.

I thought Huntsman would be OK too, he's the best of the bunch as far as I can tell, but he backed down on several of his opinions during the primary so far just because he got a little pushback. I think he flopped back though. No spine. Plus, he can't get elected, the hardcore Republicans won't ever forgive him for working for Obama.

EDIT: (Since I'm a registered republican, I'll probably be voting for Huntsman in the primary, not that it'll matter by the time Ohio gets to vote).

To serve as some kind of safeguard against rampant Republican insanity — turning Medicare into a voucher program, privatizing Social Security, invading Iran, eliminating taxation on capital gains and estate transfers, shutting down the EPA and FDA, turning over education entirely to the states, etc.

I wondered what the hell ChrisW was blathering about on Johnny Depp.

Someone has since explained to me that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh this week are making a big deal out of a White House party for the children of U.S. troops that had a pirate theme. Evidently, Johnny Depp was there in pirate costume. The White House posted pics and video of the party on its Web site and announced it to the press. There were a few stories.

And yet -- this week, Fox and Rush decided it was a cover-up.

Naturally, within 24 hours, ChrisW decides it was a cover-up.

What a sad little boy ChrisW is, having to be told what to think. He must sit by his radio and TV every morning awaiting his instructions. Can the poor dear even dress himself?

The Army has regulations to cover the standards of that. Now that you mention it, that's probably a large part of the reason he went back in. Too bad he's getting shit-canned in April.

My father said he didn't like the Army because he resented being told what to do all the time. I can see ChrisW being the reverse: He needs to be told what to do, when to shit, what to think, how to dress, when to eat.

It's my fault. I treated a leftist like he was capable of comprehension or progress. It's been a long week, forgive me.



If you are a kid just out of college and haven't gotten that first job yet, you have lived a very very coddled life for a quarter-century. The left says you're incapable of acting like an adult yet. That college money was well spent. Why should the government do anything when mommy and daddy will probably leave plenty of money when they die if they've carried a child in his/her mid-20s? "You might get sick!!!"



If you don't buy the insurance the government orders you to buy, you get that free prison health care. But it's a tax, so it's totally legal, unless they want to say they aren't raising taxes. Boy those insurance companies are crooks and not regulated enough. Let's get 'im!



People are obligated to pay to keep you alive no matter what?



See, to me insurance is betting that something bad will happen to you, and you are simply whining well-deserved bitches about how miserable your life is trying to make people cater to your every whim for when something bad happens to you when you can simply save time, energy and money and not re-arrange the whole f*cking government to suit your obsession with insurance companies.

You're free to see things differently, but this is why co-existence is impossible. The leftist cannot exist unless they are impeding other people. Just because your life revolves around prospective doom and gloom doesn't give you entrance to other people's pocketbooks. How many jobs have been lost already to a bill we had to pass to find out what was in it and already had to make a bunch of modifications to which just makes the already idiotic spending more ludicrous.

Fair odds that this time next year we'll be readying for all-Republican dominance in DC and Obama will be on his last week as President rather than finishing his second month as lame duck, but insurance companies are your big obsession.



If you say so.



See, this is what I never understand, why do you care about race at all? At. All? It is so stupidly contradictory of everything you claim to believe about race, ethnicity, culture or discrimination (which you commit an act of when you order a steak instead of a hamburger) that I can't imagine why you seek to be so divisive.

I guess appointing the first American to the Supreme Court wouldn't have the same appeal.



Who covered up those shipments of guns that killed a bunch of Mexicans, told his boss he was informed of all that at a different date than he told the prosecutors, who fights for the right to intimidate people at polling places and thinks we're a nation of cowards. But at least you applaud his skin color. That's liberal judgement for you.



Immediately breaking his promise to give the public five days to comment on legislation before he signed it. That's the sort of strong decisiveness that makes you swoon, doesn't it (but would be evil hypocrisy in a Republican)?



Suck another dude's cock and get taxpayer entitlements. You don't have to settle for Barney Frank.



How do you make hate a crime and how do you prevent hate crimes as distinct from preventing other forms of crime? This is another one of those makework white collar social programs that suck off the taxpayer money and produce nothing of value, isn't it?



What, Government Motors that keeps finding new ways to lose taxpayer money? Remember when Obama said he had no desire to run a car company? Holy fuckin' shit!



Arrange for ransomers for a large group to fool leftist rubes who want to pretend they're about kicking Taliban ass momentarily instead of onesies and twosies which might be more logistically convenient? Unless you're saying that he was on the ground catching them himself.

Please. You're a Michael Moore leftist and we know it. Don't try to pretend that deciding *not* to let him live a while longer was some agonizing heroic ordeal. You're awfully trusting of all the multiple versions of the killing (where his wife was, for instance) as well as the rush to put this information out in the press, where a bunch of those SEALs were shot down later. Not to mention how many people we had to kill to get for so long to get that far. By this way, is this still a war of necessity?



You mean that despite delaying the order that might have effected the prisoner's release during an earlier escape attempt, he bravely said "next time that happens you can shoot the bad guys without calling me for permission" and that wins your admiration. Wow. Do you think Chris Rock or Wesley Snipes can get buff enough to play him in the movie?

Say, without Googling, can anybody name the guy who did the actual shooting? Bonus points if you know his pay grade.



How many blacks have they put in camps so far? Is there still possible war with Egypt since only one country has oil fields and the other has a big Army? Christians under a pogrom like sweeping elsewhere in the Muslim World (like Nigeria and Egypt)? Qaddaffi's sodomized corpse is worth him riding around in the open air for three months, including the time after Obama plugged bin Laden. You see the price tag and say 'yep'? So what's Syria, some completely different thing?

Say, how's he doing in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Central Africa, Iran and all the other countries we're at war with that never attacked us on 9/11? There is no sense whatsoever to Democratic warmongering other than no Victory (it reminds Obama of Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender treaty and absolutely no one in the media thinks anything of it because they are tough on Democrats, darnit. And they're educated.)



I don't accept your claim to mind-reading abilities. Prove you have the slightest clue what goes on in the minds of millions of people you have so much contempt for. I'd be willing to pay you to submit to electric shock treatments in exchange for six months of marking the findings.



Just because you want to pretend so badly that they are true doesn't keep you from willfully misrepresenting people equal to yourself. Your team's the one counting people by skin color instead of their character, throwing out scientific data you don't like and hiding this from others who ask, conspiring to eliminate anyone who disagrees with the dogma for any reason. It's all right to keep extremely wealthy and influential members of the 1%'s names off the guest roster when they have private access to the President. Who could be safer than a Hollywood star and director? The "most transparent administration in history.



I'll grant that saying you "hate America" is a simplistic way to describe the despicable views you have a large percentage of your fellow Americans and everything they stand for, even though you incorrectly feel entitled to their property and you want the law to back that up with force. This is totally against everything American democracy stands for and your statements and principles are virtually identical to all the other same stupid generalizations and socialist bromides that virtually every other liberal spouts which serves only to weaken and tear down. In short, you sir, hate America.

But I don't ask you to prove otherwise. Because I don't care. As far as I know, you're still an American. If you aren't willing to grant the same respect then co-existence is impossible: civil war is inevitable. The Occupy movement demonstrates your side is a bunch of weak-willed sissies who won't pick up their own mess much less stick it out a winter much less keep their own area from becoming such rapefests.



It's things like this that really make it clear you're making your own projections and it is a waste of time pretending otherwise. I'm not even going to benevolently assume there's individual exceptions. Individual exceptions are the bad right-wingers, who are otherwise pretty good overall, as are human beings in general. Leftists are hardwired to put the most political spin on as much as they can. They do not create, they corrupt. They always rush off to join the newest hope of revolution (the cadre of OWS, for instance) or they leech (everyone else).

Seriously. How bad do things need to get with Democrats in charge for year after year before it sinks in that they are everything standing in the way of improvement?

I notice everybody's fine about imminent war with Iran, the one we kept hearing Bush was eager to start. Suddenly we hear that it would be a military cakewalk and the mullahs would be dooming themselves by blockading the straits. Any of your alarm bells going off? "QUAGMIRE alert! Exit Strategy required!"

Yes, those paper clips don't sort themselves!

Wow there is a lot there to respond to, I hope you'll not mind if I do one at a time, as time allows...


First off:

Most family insurance plans stopped covering kids when they graduated college. It often takes a few years before you get a job with decent health benefits. Very common.

If something happened to you in that in-between time, you were screwed. Financially. No job or health insurance. Even if the parents help, it's way more cash to outlay than if you would have been covered by their insurance. Now you are covered until 26. This is an improvement that will help people.

How do you figure that? A little sweeping generalization yourself there? Everyone who goes to college was "coddled?"

Many people struggle to put their kids through school, and the kids often work multiple jobs all-year round. Crappy jobs, mind you, some easier that others granted, but how do claim they are coddled for twenty-five years?

When you commit a crime against a person, you have committed a crime against that person.

When you have committed a crime against a person because of race, religion orientation, whatever, you are trying to terrorize or intimidate a community of people. It is meant to send a message, to counteract any message from the crime.

The same logic applies to why their are special laws against committing crimes against police, above and beyond the normal laws. Because it is meant to send a message.