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Jill Stein and Gary Johnson Debate Online Tonight
Starting at 7 p.m. EDT (4 p.m. PDT), the Green and Libertarian candidates for President are debating on the Independent Voter Network. You can catch it via a Google+ hangout or Youtube both live and afterward (no word on flashless user unfortunately, unless anyone knows how to access youtube live streams). Since the big two candidates got some time here on Slashdot, we figured you guys might want to argue amongst yourselves about the third party platforms too. Note that there will be another debate with more candidates on Tuesday.
...is kind of hot.
Hey, I'm old.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
There is only one political party that has been in charge of deleting rights for the last century; Repubmocrats. .8% incidental protein and .1% inert ingredients.
The Libertarians and Greens ARE honestly the REAL candidates along with other non-Repubmocrat offerings.
Repubmocrats are 99.1% plastic,
Leave First Post to the professionals.
Thanks! I got stuck in traffic and edited this up real quick (I blame traffic, I thought I had an extra hour). Just a quick tip: if you tag the story typo or typoinsummary, a jabber bot complains at the entire editorial team.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
I don't see C'thulu on the list. He belongs there. I'm tired of choosing the lesser evil.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Seriously, you'd think with his connections...
OTOH how do you know he didn't serve already, remember the VP during W's terms?
MY OTHER COMMENTS
The tea partier will hit you over the head with a pound of sacred dead tree matter, while explaining why corporate interests trump all else. Libertarians will just quote Ayn Rand instead.
and everything out of a Democrat's mouth boils down to "fuck you, give me yours"
Democrats and Republicans can reliably count on their party line votes, regardless of how they flip flop. That's why they focus more on the "independent" vote, come election time. The only way to influence the major parties anymore, is to show a significant uptick in the third party you most support. At the very least, you can affect the talking points of the next election.
The tea partier will hit you over the head with a pound of sacred dead tree matter, while explaining why corporate interests trump all else. Libertarians will just quote Ayn Rand instead.
So, the libertarians try to use two pounds of dead matter? Gotcha.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Why are the red states the ones that get more from the government than they give?
Well, I think that adequately sums up the various positions we're going to see in this thread. Good work everyone!
I believe the precise explaination they give is "you dont need it". Im pretty certain Obama actually used those words ("they dont need it", in the context of taxation on the rich), and certainly ive seen that here on slashdot.
Who, precisely, was elected to determine how much I need, I still havent heard.
Now that you're old and stupid, you'll just keep making the same old mistakes. Gotcha.
while the Tea Partiers believe in a big government morality police
Thats an absolutely fascinating theory. Im just struggling to find its connection to reality.
Tea Partiers are generally okay with increasing spending on the military. They generally are okay with medicare as well given their demographic. Tea Partiers are also okay with the government telling people what they can ingest and who they can marry. For all their rhetoric about smaller government, they just mean it on things they don't like. They're not really for limited or small government when it comes to issues they support.
This isn't the first 3rd party "debate" I've seen between these candidates, and the one thing I've noticed about all of them is that they never directly address each other. This is lame.
It's amazing to me that of all the things Paul Ryan could dislike about Ayn Rand's works the thing that seems to bother him the most is that Rand and her views were "atheistic". That her views were "atheistic" is what I liked the most about her writings.
Warning: This sig is not thread safe. For more information see Slashdot's sig policy.
while the Tea Partiers believe in a big government morality police
Thats an absolutely fascinating theory. Im just struggling to find its connection to reality.
war on drugs?
war on fags?
war on damn dirty mexicans?
war on contraception?
war on evilution?
Look, Republican, Democrat... whichever party of big government you support, that's all good. Pick team blue if that floats your boat. But after the 3.5 years this president has had, no sane person should ever even consider voting for this guy. Doesn't mean Romney should get your vote - particularly not if you are a died-in-the-wool team blue fan of the big state (as opposed to a died-in-the-wool team red fan of the big state). But by no possible measure has this guy earned a chance at your vote. In addition to bringing forward all of the worst of Bush - on the war, crony capitalism, the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretaps, deficit spending, gitmo, on and on -- he's brought it to a new level with the drone strikes, secret kill orders against american citizens, deportations of immigrants, raids on medical marijuana dispensaries, etc. Even his crowning achievement of "healthcare reform" is a dud whether you supported national healthcare or opposed it.
On top of all of that you've got the abysmal economy, shrinking workforce with high unemployment, huge monetary expansion.... Holy crap dude, how could you even think of voting for this guy!?!? Forget what he says, look at what he's actually done!
Listen to the weirdos in the Libertarian/Green Party debate and see if you don't find someone who you could actually support for a reason other than "Yeah! Go Team Blue!" If you are a progressive, Jill Stein represents your views way, way, way more than the candidate with a big "D" after his name. (in the interest of fairness, for you conservatives - take a look at Gary Johnson. He's way, way, way more of a constitutional conservative than your candidate with a big "R" after his name) But for god's sake, don't vote for the guy who's already proven that he's not up to the job.
I guess Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J were busy tonight.
I doubt these two candidates sincerity, I am suspicious of their motivation and I encourage their supporters to think very carefully before voting for them.
There is not going to be a third party that breaks into the US political system nationwide. It's not going to happen because it cannot happen. The system is specifically designed for it not to happen, and the sooner supporters of these two lunatics get that message, the better off they will be.
On the other hand, there is certainly a place for political outsiders in the local elections, where they could actually have an impact. Most significantly, by influencing one of the two existing political parties. And it's much easier than you might think. Just about anywhere in the US, an average person could become a party committee member practically just by showing up, and once you've done that, now YOU are one of the people who picks primary candidates and who gets on the ballot and who doesn't. School boards, park district boards, but mainly members of the local party structure is the way to go.
That's how the tea party did it. They started showing up (albeit with corporate money in their pockets) for everything from the local school board to party precinct captains to committee members, and they ended up completely taking over the entire Republican Party and bending every elected Republican to their will. Just like that.
If you don't like the way politics works in the US, there are plenty of ways to approach changing it, but if you think you're going to do it by voting for a Libertarian or Greenie or some other third party candidate for president, you might as well just go jack off in your shoe for all the good it will do you. And that's without the rather questionable agendas of the two candidates named in this story.
Just think: Who stands to gain the most if a bunch of people vote for Ron Johnson? Jill Stein? Do you think that fact is lost on the Republican and Democratic parties? Do any of you believe that either Johnson or Stein is going to be elected president?
You are welcome on my lawn.
"Who, precisely, was elected to determine how much I need, I still havent heard."
That has always been the problem. Who determines how much I need, and what the definition of 'need' is anyway, and who determines my ability. Who is more qualified than I am to make those decisions as they apply to me?
My argument is no one.
There is a lot to like in the Green platform, but they have a serious issue with "free" health care, education, and so on. There is no free. Some one has to pay for all the goodies, and they are being as cagey as Romney in not saying who is picking up the tab.
You mean "teach a man to fish if he's already wealthy enough to afford to pay for his education." Free public education is another thing Rand was against.
The Tea Partier will get uncomfortable if you bring up drugs. And the Libertarian will be able to argue you into a deontological system of ethics based on the non-aggression principle. Alternatively: one will talk about Sarah Palin, and one will talk about Murray Rothbard.
Absolutely well said. I really wish someone could go on all of the national TV stations during prime time and announce this. It boggles my mind how passionate people get about voting for their guy, because the other guy is purely evil! Really...why do we seemingly always end up with evil then? Why don't we stop voting for evil, and kick evil out. There's no room for evil anymore. Time to get a few people with a clue who aren't completely bought out to all of the lobbyist interests.
-> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.
everything out of the Libertarian's mouth boils down to "fuck you, I got mine"
What you've said has no connection to reality.
Plenty of libertarians are not financially wealthy (I am downright impoverished - by choice). Plenty of libertarians donate to charity. People who want to protect what's theirs from competition are likely to turn to government for help, which is how we get all those cronyist regulations. Libertarians believe that all people are equal in their negative Rights.
Everything out of a real libertarian's mouth boils down to "violence is wrong", including violence by governments to buy loyalty of the mob with stolen loot!
--libman
How many pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, anti-religion in government, anti-war Republicans do you know? Libertarians may be to the right of Republicans on fiscal issues, but they are to the left of Democrats on social issues. Even Cenk Uygur, as progressive as he is, remarked how much further left Johnson was on many issues than most Democrats. There are some libertarian leaning Republicans, but the RNC showed us all exactly what the GOP thinks of that faction of their membership.
That has always been the problem. Who determines how much I need, and what the definition of 'need' is anyway, and who determines my ability. Who is more qualified than I am to make those decisions as they apply to me?
Whether you are more needy than all the other people who also want something of a limited resource? You may be the most knowledgeable about your own needs but also the least objective. And if there's no relationship between ability and reward because it's all based on need you have an equally strong biased interest in not measuring your ability correctly too. Why work hard for no benefit? So then you have to bring in arbitrators to determine if you're really that useless and needy as you claim, but then they aren't neutral but rather biased and corrupt. Then it becomes more about gaming the system than actual abilities and needs, which is a self-enforcing circle. The less actual ability and need matter, the more people try to game the system and the more corrupt it gets.
By US standards I'm probably a socialist in that I want good social safety nets but for general employment you need rewards to be related to effort and results, not just needs. Because I do a kick-ass job and deliver great value to society I feel I deserve more money than the person who does a crap job, even if we're practically equal and as such have the same needs. Real needs like health care I think should be covered, but I don't feel bad about me eating out at a fancy restaurant or going on a two week vacation to a tropical getaway and he doesn't even if does his job to the best of his ability - it's just not that good. I'm not too hot on mass wealth redistribution though, only that there's a base floor provided for everyone.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You know that little factoid is going to make your lives a world of pain when the trolls see it, right?
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Christian individuals, and christian charity organizations, provide the great majority of all the funds and labor used to help disadvantaged people in the USA and abroad. It's a simple fact, despite your wishful truthyism.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It isn't about whether everyone has exactly the same amount of money. The amount of imbalance though can be unhealthy. Consider a rose. Roses grow best in an acidic soil. The optimum pH is between 6.0 and 6.5. If I just heard "roses need acidic soil" and started pouring concentrated hydrocloric acid on the base of the rose bush, it would die.
Likewise, a certain amount of financial equality is good. Entrepreneurs and business owners can end up with quite a lot of money providing goods and services to the world. Individuals can inherit wealth and live on the interest its investment brings in. There is nothing at all wrong with this. However, when things go to an extreme they can have extreme consequences. Just like the rose bush, you need to keep things in balance in order for the economy to be healthy.
If you try to institute a soviet/communist style control and equalize everything, you crush a lot of the incentive to achieve in an honest way. The incentive to achieve through corrupt practices will flourish, however. I use Russia/USSR as an example. If you willfully go the other way and allow the few to obtain and control the vast majority of the wealth, you eventually end up with a lot of dead wealthy people and a river of blood in the streets. I can also use Russia/USSR as an example of this as well. Also France.
I'd kind of like to keep the rose bush alive and healthy without having to feed its roots with blood.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
The people you are talking to don't care about the truth. They're like the idiot who told my in-law that Romney said women who were raped were "asking for it". I am not sure where this idea even came from. My best guess is somehow Todd Aiken's statements about women "shutting down" a pregnancy due to rape got morphed into this disgusting lie attributed to a totally different person.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
You know, I asked the very same thing years ago, and was told that because I had more, I should feel proud to give to those who have less. Funny how these noble sentiments go out the window as soon as the "wrong" politics get involved, eh?
The problem with republicans claiming to be against redistribution while benefiting from it isn't that redistribution is wrong, it's that the hypocrisy is irritating.
Whatever happened to the avid discussions concerning Vote Swapping and Instant Runoff Voting? I liked when those topics were on the forefront because they gave me more hope than any of the candidates for fixing the seemingly impenetrable wall of muffled cries between the citizens' desires and the ruling bodies.
I don't ever want to vote against. I want to vote for.
[Sad face here]
Scarce, scared, scarred, sacred... -Col. Bruce Hampton
No, everything out of a libertarian's mouth boils down to "fuck you, politicians and government, let us pursue ours, get ours, enjoy ours, and do what we all want as long as it doesn't negatively impact another unwilling person".
But, you know, if you want to keep having your money taken and keep having people tell you who it is okay to marry and who it is or isn't okay to pray to and what you can and can't consume (in every sense of the word), then the two existing parties have you covered.
The Tea Party essentially started off as a Libertarian movement, of sorts. It was co-opted by the republicans. The right has nothing to do with libertarians any more than the left does (other than some people who are clearly libertarians are subscribed to the republicans or democrats, simply because that's the only way to have a real chance of being part of the process, sadly).
Where is this notion that Libertarian societies are bad for the environment?! Libertarians are not Republicans!
In a Libertarian society it wouldn't be illegal to sue over air/water/land/noise pollution seeping onto your property. The cost to pollution would be so astronomical, it would be infeasible to create a company that pollutes.
Libertarians want government. Therefore, there is a public sector and public property. So your whole post is off-base.
Yes the Constitution calls for the federal government to have a military but that is not the same as calling for our military expenditures to equal the rest of the world combined. Nor is to have a military base in half the countries in the world. Nor is it for us to constantly be at war without ever declaring war.
Medicare and Social Security are not in the Constitution at all. Yeah, people have paid in, but if you're not willing to ax it then you're not really for small government. Regardless of what marriage means historically there is no basis in the constitution for the Federal government to define it. Regardless of what drugs may do to someone there is no constitutional basis for controlling it. In fact, one has to wonder why prohibition of alcohol required a constitutional amendment but prohibition of drugs do not.
For all of your arguments, none address making the government smaller. The military, Medicare and Social Security are what make our government large. You can cut welfare, head start, school lunches, the interstate system, Nasa and whatever else you want but until you start talking about cutting the big three any rhetoric about small government is disingenuous.
Those are separate rights tacked on to the idea of marriage. The status quo is not an argument for itself.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Your citation is here: http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/coalitions/choice
The fact that you even needed a citation for that doesn't speak well about how much you now about the candidate you are talking about. Remember, the OP said GARY JOHNSON is not a third party. There are some pro-life libertarians. I am not talking about them.
Gary Johnson IS for gay marriage. So are many other libertarian candidates. Marriage is a contract. Government should not be in the business of telling people who they can and cannot enter into a contract with. Your claims that Ron Paul only wants government out of marriage for tax breaks needs a citation. Ron Paul doesn't want ANY income tax, so it seems a bit strange that he'd be pushing a position just to increase someone's tax burden.
Yes Ron Paul is anti-war. You are again distorting both Ron's views, and the libertarian party's views with no citation. The same with your claim that everything is a fiscal issue. Personal liberty is a HUGE part of the libertarian platform, as the other reply to your comment has mentioned.
This is a lie. Ron Paul has not endorsed Gary Johnson.
Here is Ron Paul's statements on war...
"Another term for preventive war is aggressive war - starting wars because someday somebody might do something to us. That is not part of the American tradition."
"We as commander in chief aren't making the decision to go to war. You know, the old-fashioned way, the Constitution, you go to the Congress and find out if our national security is threatened. And I'm afraid what's going on right now is similar to the war propaganda that went on against Iraq. They didn't have weapons of mass destruction. And it was orchestrated and it was, to me, a tragedy of what's happened these last ten years, the death and destruction, $4 trillion in debt. So no, it's not worthwhile going to war. If you do, you get a declaration of war and you fight it and you win it and get it over with."
"It should be harder to promote war, especially when there are so many regrets in the end. In the last 60 years, the American people have had little to say over decisions to wage war. We have allowed a succession of presidents and the U.N. to decide when and if we go to war, without an express congressional declaration as the Constitution mandates.
Since 1945, our country has been involved in over 70 active or covert foreign engagements. On numerous occasions we have provided weapons and funds to both sides in a conflict. It is not unusual for our so-called allies to turn on us and use these weapons against American troops. In recent decades we have been both allies and enemies of Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and the Islamists in Iran. And where has it gotten us?
The endless costs resulting from our foolish policies, in human lives, injuries, tax dollars, inflation, and deficits, will burden generations to come. For civilization to advance, we must reduce the number of wars fought."
"For civilization to advance, we must reduce the number of wars fought. Two conditions must be met if we hope to achieve this.
First, all military (and covert paramilitary) personnel worldwide must refuse to initiate offensive wars beyond their borders This must become a matter of personal honor for every individual.
Second, the true nature of war must be laid bare, and the glorification must end. Instead of promoting war heroes with parades and medals for wars not fought in the true defense of our country, we should more honestly contemplate the real results of war: death, destruction, horrible wounds, civilian casualties, economic costs, and the loss of liberty at home.
The neoconservative belief that war is inherently patriotic, beneficial, manly, and necessary for human progress must be debunked. These war promoters never send themselves or their own children off to fight. Their hero, Machiavelli, must be buried once and for all."
Rand said:
The average [public school] graduate has no concept of knowledge. He has the cynicism of a decadent adult and the credulity of a child. His mind is in a state of whirling confusion. He finds himself in the midst of the brilliant complexity of an industrial, technological civilization which he cannot begin to understand.
The purpose of education is to teach a student how to live, by developing his mind. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e. conceptual. He has to be taught how to think, to integrate, to prove by his own effort. This is what the colleges renounced long ago. What they are teaching today has no relevance to anything.
A private school has the right to teach any ideas of its owners' choice, and to exclude all opposing ideas; but it has no power to force such exclusion on the rest of the country. The opponents have the right to teach a wider spectrum of viewpoints, if they so choose. The competition of the free marketplace of ideas does the rest, determining every school's success or failure - which, historically, was the course of the development of the great private universities. If you want to prove to yourself the power of ideas, the intellectual history of the Nineteenth Century would be a good example to study.
Note that Ayn Rand was OK with vouchers during the privatization of education:
Q: So you would support a voucher system?
A: It would work not as a motor of freedom, but as a brake on total regimentation, a temporary measure in a grave national emergency. We are living in a disastrously mixed economy, which cannot be freed overnight. In today's context, the proposal would be a step in the right direction.
[Note: I am not a religious follower of Ayn Rand]
> "Ron Paul is most definitely not in favor of gay marriage. He wants the gov't to stop recognizing marriage entirely so that people don't get the married rate for taxation."
No? From what I can understand, he wants the government to "stop recognizing marriage entirely" for completely logical, completely non-tax-related reasons that, while I am not completely libertarian, I agree with completely. What he and most libertarians, and a number of other people who aren't libertarian, are arguing, is that there should be something, not called "marriage", that two people could get from the government to describe their partnership, and which would have all the effects of being married, but which wouldn't require them to be heterosexual. Then "marriage" could go back to being entirely a religious thing, as it belongs. Quoth Paul, "I am supportive of all voluntary associations and people can call it whatever they want."
(I think libertarianism is generally too extreme on a lot of things, but they also espouse some great ideas...)
But after the 3.5 years this president has had, no sane person should ever even consider voting for this guy.
Well, look, I'm voting Green because pot should be legal and the Libbies want to disband the EPA and Obama is going to win in Illinois in a landslide (and Romney will win Texas in a landslide). However:
When Obama's predecessor took office he was handed a balanced budget, a record high stock market, a lower unemployment rate than in decades, and peace.
When Obama took over, he was handed two wars, a completely collapsed economy, a crashed stock market, a crashed housing market, an almost collapsed banking system, the highest budget deficit in history, and the highest unemployment in two decades.
You expect Obama to fix in 3.5 years what Bush took eight to completely destroy? It takes sixty seconds to slash your car's tires and break all the glass. Can you fix that damage in one minute?
Unemployment is lower than it was when he took office, the stock market is again at its record highs, housing starts are better than when he took office, one of the wars he inhereted is over and the other is winding down, Bin Laden is dead, and you think he's been a bad president?
And Romney wants to fix things by doing exactly what Bush did. That's not only insane, it's fucking moronic.
If you're in a swing state, vote for Obama. He's by far not the best President we've ever had, but he's better than half of the Presidents I've seen in my six decades. If you're not in a swing state, and most of us aren't, vote Green or Libertarian.
Free Martian Whores!
Riiight. I mean, what the fuck has Obama done so far? Oh wait... turns out he's actually done a lot of shit.
http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com/