I've been saying this for a while now, but people really don't know how to really drive. The vast majority of people can safely do their daily commute, but the instant they get into a situation where they are outside of the very small performance window they are used to, they are just along for the ride and have no fucking clue what to do. The vast majority of people have never tried to emergency stop. Most of them freak out when their brake pedal starts "throbbing", and have no clue that's the ABS working. Getting people out to the track and taking them for their first-ever high-performance laps, you can see the "woah" in their faces as they just start to begin just how little they know how to drive. This normally wouldn't be a problem, historically, because cars were shitty enough that people didn't want to go stupidly fast in them because it actually felt fast. These days, the cheapest piece-of-shit $12k car can safely do 100 mph, and that level of comfort gives the driver a false sense of security and an over-developed sense of ability. Just watch people drive in the year's first snowfall and you'll see all sorts of problems and people not taking responsibility for it.
Interesting article on why Trump will win the general election: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/01/i-was-wrong-trump-will-be-the-next-president-commentary.html I think that's going to be the problem for democrats and hard line Trump haters. I thought Clinton would run a much better campaign too. I backed Sanders, but in all seriousness the race should never have been that close. Sorry to go back to it again, but the money in politics issue is a big one, and Trump is going to use it to pull independents towards him. It seems like Hillary tries way too hard to appeal to everyone at the same time, and it doesn't really work. At least to me. I think the more attention people pay to the campaign the more votes she'll lose. She needs low information voters. Trump needs the crazy, frothing at the mouth, yell at the wall voters and he already has them. Who knows? This election is so insane already, I wouldn't even be that shocked if Gary Johnson gains momentum. Funny enough, I think he has a decent chance to not necessarily pull from just independents, but people already in the republican and democrat bases. Remember, Trump won independents in the primaries, but the general population hates these candidates, and Johnson isn't a through and through anarchist libertarian. I just think it's funny that some people are saying Trump has no chance. De javu? These same people also think Trump is just winning the votes of white racists (he is, but not only this group). Johnson is currently sitting at 10 in the national polls. 5 more points and he'll get a spot in the debates. Speaking of unpopularity:
I don't think Hillary has the ability to run a good campaign because of everything that everyone already knows/thinks about her. Her ridiculous pandering and obvious dishonesty about all of her scandals. She doesn't make it easy to like her when she goes on tv and says one thing, denies a bunch of shit, and then new contradictory evidence comes out the next day and makes her look worse. What would have helped her tremendously would have been to address the criticisms against her and for once, come across like a real person. Granted, that's a pretty tall order for any politician, but she has a bad history of stupid gaffs, obvious lies about war zone experience, what the definition of classified is, and countless others. And I don't even consider myself a republican. And if Gary Johnson somehow gets he 15% he needs to get on the debate stage, that would be monumental for 3rd party candidates.
I hope he does because I do want to hear more about his stances. His tax policy sounds absurd, and his immigration policy almost seems to be fuck it, let everyone in, but I don't really know a whole lot about it. Aside from being in a third party, I think he would have no chance anyway because of the massive cuts he wants to make to the military. Americans don't like to hear that. Some favor cuts, but hardly any favor cuts at the level he's talking about. Personally, I love his foreign policy, but that's just me.
Not to mention, he's also completely unvetted. No one has publicly tried to attack him. Most just professionally disagree with him. If he's got skeletons, or even a sexual harassment claim against him from the half-retarded french fry girl from his first job, it could end his run pretty quick.
Since I intend to vote Libertarian (morally-speaking that's the party I most closely align with), I'm actually really interested in hearing the reasons both for and against. Biased and un-biased, have at it. I want to hear it all and learn from it all. I think we can all agree that the current presumptive two choices are not necessarily the ideal for us voters, so it's an interesting time. Especially now that a third party, whomever they are, look to be gaining ground in the polls and in the media. TiB: educate me.
I don't know that money in politics is playing such an issue, except in the Democratic primaries. Hillary is the establishment candidate and all the money is flowing to her campaign in an attempt to maintain the status quo. Trump is not really beholden to anyone as far as I know. He has run a genius campaign hardly spending any money by keeping himself in the news. The more people talk about him, the more voters get used to the idea of him being president. I don't know if that was his plan or if he's just so obnoxious that he lucked into it. Whatever the case, all the free media attention he has brought to himself has been invaluable. I do know that Hillary, as the anointed nominee, should not have had so much trouble with Bernie. That may mean trouble for her in the general election. If she loses though, I guarantee it will be because "America is just not ready for a female president," instead of any of her character flaws. This election once again boils down to the lesser of two evils: the self-centered egotistical asshole vs. the power-hungry congenital liar. Whom will you choose?
I like the libertarian concept, socially liberal and fiscally conservative isn't the worst thing. My problem is they take this ideology too seriously, and end up just making excuses for why something that's clearly impossible is going to work because it fits into the basic mold. Take their environmental policy. They don't like regulations, great, but then they claim not regulating environmental policies is fine because society is pro environment so companies will be responsible just to promote social good. There's so many reasons that concept is blindly naive, but arguing about it just kind of pisses me off because there's no reason that should be an argument in the first place. I'm pro free market in most areas, but the slavish adherence to it just gets crazy after awhile, inventing reasons obvious incentives are going to move in the opposite direction. I like the hands off approach to social issues. As long as you aren't hurting anyone the government should stay out of it. The main reason I kind of like Johnson at the moment though is his foreign policy is in line with what the last 20 years has actually told us, not 'we're going to do this because 'Murica is awesome'. He's the only candidate I've seen since before the Bush era who has a platform that actually will improve the debt situation. Trump played this up big time. He didn't need to take money from corporations because he's already loaded and of course, the media ran his campaign for him. I don't know if you watched any of his speeches (I didn't watch any from start to finish) but this came up all the time. People who didn't watch the Republican primary unfold think people just voted for him because he's a bigot and he's funny. That's part of it for sure, but it's also that he sold the idea that he was just in it for the people (I know, haha) and he didn't owe anyone else anything. Plus, that wall man, it's going to be huuuuuge.
What kind of bullshit is this? "The Department of Justice is scrubbing references of radical Islamic beliefs from the transcripts of calls Orlando terrorist Omar Mateen made to police during his massacre, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Sunday." http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/06/2...nightclub-gunman-and-police.html?intcmp=hpbt1 This administration seems bound and determined to erase anything and everything that doesn't fit their narrative.
It wasn't at the forefront of the primary because Sanders was really desperate for minority votes and started saying some pretty stupid things, but a lot of liberals are getting so sick of this shit. It's even worse than the 'everybody we don't like is Hitler' stuff.
As much as they may not like him or think him "qualified", this kind of Orwellian insanity is exactly what's driving those with common sense to vote for Trump. At least he recognizes the massive problem staring us in the face. What this administration is doing is sickening and infuriating.
The thing about the Libertarian party is I'll listen to someone tell me what it's about and I'll think "Yes...yes...what the everloving hell are you talking about." I'd never vote for one for a lot of reasons, but when he was just a name doing his thing I thought it was cool Gary Johnson was gaining momentum. Then I actually saw what he was like as a person and he is a fucking NUT. He's at least the fun kind of nut and not the terrifying kind of nut.
You should listen to the Joe Rogan podcast if you want a better idea of what he's like. Doing a bit for Samantha Bee, while funny, is not the best way to learn about his policy ideas. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-joe-rogan-experience/id360084272?mt=2&i=368888841
He did an hour on Penn's Sunday School podcast as well. Quite an interesting dude with a fair bit of history at the state level.
I feel kind of the same way. Libertarians have some good ideas, but their bad ideas are just so bad. The pure libertarians (of which Gary Johnson is not) are certifiably insane.
I do't know much about Johnson, but I posted a week or two ago about the actual constituents of the libertarian party. They are pants on head retarded who believe blind people should be given driver's licenses and the EPA should have next to no powers and business should have zero oversight.
It's a bit like the green party. There are some nice things in there, but then they start talking about the government buying houses from the banks when people can't pay their mortgage and you have to run in the opposite direction.