The Worst Thing I've Ever Written!

I'm about to write something that is going to be unsettling for a few of my friends. It probably should be, because in all honesty, it's a little unsettling for me. This "election" has been a shit storm. A real horror show. I abhor the two major party candidates and just like the last election, I'm voting for Gary Johnson....hell, maybe not at all. It's strange thinking that a Gore vs Bush race would be awesome right now. A welcome sight almost! That's how bad these candidates are. With that....


I've come to this conclusion....as much as I don't want to see President Trump, I want to see President Clinton less. 

I don't know what kind of instability that may create, and even as a father of two teenage girls, I don't want to see the corruption win. Clinton is a scoundrel that has allowed the DNC and establishment media to cook her primary and then the general election. How any Bernie Sanders supporter can vote for her after the games that were played before and during the Democratic primary is baffling. I guess the same way Obama supporters are voting for her after the things she said and implied about him in 2008. That's not even my point. The GOP tried to openly screw Trump, so it's not like both parties were not trying to manipulate the outcome of the primary and basically tell a large portion of their voters that their votes were not meaningful. The establishment didn't want it, so they did or tried to "fix" the results.

I'm just tired of some stuff. I have been for years, but it's come to a head during this election cycle. I'm the guy that loved the early versions of both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements. They got overran by the political parties, but at their birth and infancy, those movements reflected an anger and resentment towards the establishment that I couldn't help but be proud to see. 

I'm tired though. I've had enough. I'm tired of Soros. I'm tired of the Koch's. I'm tired of the Clintons. I'm tired of the Bush family, and I'm tired of Romney. I'm tired of Rush Limbaugh. I'm tired of Mitch McConnell. I'm tired of people like Nancy Pelosi and Paul Ryan telling me that their values are everyone's values. I'm tired of having to watch the same tired assed people run this country like it's their personal playground of wealth and power accumulation. As if they are entitled to it. I'm tired of the establishment media manipulating stories and headlines to create public opinion, instead of actually reporting. I'm tired of seeing corporate America fucking the American worker. I'm tired of hearing about us pouring money into countries that hate us. I'm tired of money disappearing by the millions (billions?) unaccounted for. I'm tired of Bill O'Reilly. I'm tired of Hannity. I'm tired of Chris Matthews. I'm tired of hearing about congressmen and senators sending "dick pics" to underage girls and/or molesting children. I'm tired of us being so cavalier about our place on the planet to the point where people in our government laugh at assassinating the leader of another nation. I'm tired of being the UN's lap dog and being the police force for the world. I'm tired of our imperialistic neocon foreign policy that has created a less safe world. I'm tired of young Americans having to die for a foreign policy that is in the best interest of Halliburton and major mulit-national corporations. I'm tired of us droning civilians and creating situations where more dangerous terror groups arise from the smoke and rubble. I'm tired of being told that single payer healthcare is "socialist". I'm tired of being told "Obamacare" is working. I'm tired of watching political leaders pushing morality through legislation. I'm tired of seeing politicians cater to the wealthy, to Wall Street, to major corporations that are slowly monopolizing our culture and society. I'm tired of seeing both parties manipulate the rules to keep them in power and marginalize the lives of the average citizen. I'm tired of everything having a damn dollar sign on it. Mainly, I'm just tired of being tired of stuff. 

That's not an endorsement of Trump. I'm not voting for that foul chucklehead. No how, no way. I realize that he may do absolutely NOTHING about any of the above. That's not why I'm where I am at with this. I'm ready to see this BS with our two parties and media come to a head. I want both parties to eat their heads as they try to figure out "what went wrong". It's time for things to change.....and not with some marketing slogan.....but in a tangible way that we can see and feel. I'm ready to see some establishment burn for a change. Hillary Clinton is the face of political corruption and no matter how foul Donald Trump is, it shakes me that we are going to reward that corruption. Either way, we can't go back. We have decided who we are and it's hard to say we are a "decent" people. 

I want to see the corruption, arrogance, and entitlement lose. So, there is my "endorsement" of a Hillary loss. Will that happen? I don't know. If you know me or have read this blog over the years, you know I'm not a big fan of establishment. Establishment gets fat. Establishment gets complacent. Establishment gets hungry for more and more and doesn't care if others get less and less. Establishment wants to control how you think and feel. Establishment wants to limit your options while seemingly giving you more. Selecting from a hundred pieces of shit is still having to select shit.

Just to make this perfectly clear, I am NOT endorsing a vote for Donald Trump. This is my feeling and not meant to be something that should cause others to rethink their position. I'm not writing this for influence, I'm just being honest about the conclusion I came to a few days ago. It was rattling around in my head for awhile.....but I'm settled on it now.

Here is an analogy (in italics below) that I hope will explain why I want Hillary to lose and how I'm not rooting for a Trump win. If anything....I'd rather see most people vote for anyone other than a Democrat or Republican. That too will bring change. We pay lip service to that sort of change though. To many people rooting for their team over the good of their country. It's time for things to change and there is one person of all the people running that isn't going to change anything and that person is Hillary Clinton. If the best reason to vote for her is because she doesn't have a dick, well, that says quite a bit.

I walk up on Gary Johnson, Donald Trump, and Hillary Clinton. I'm carrying a bucket of water.  Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are on fire and Gary Johnson is thirsty. I give the bucket of water to Gary Johnson to quench his thirst. If I also happen to have to piss, I would piss on Trump.

Presidential Election: President Obama vs Mitt Romney

I suppose I will go out on a limb and make a prediction on the election. Just to make sure that I'm clear from the onset, I will be casting my vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. I made that case awhile back on this blog and nothing has changed for me on that. I don't believe that Romney or Obama are candidates who represent the sort of real change it's going to take to get our nation back on track from a fiscal standpoint or an international one. Gary Johnson is the type of leader we need. He is a candidate that is willing to talk about the issues facing our country in an adult manner. If Gary Johnson had been given just half the media attention the two mainstream candidates have been given and he had been in the debates, I am of the opinion that we would be looking at a real three way race. Instead, the Democrats and Republicans keep the power on lock down and the nation is worse off for it. 

That said and out of the way, I believe Mitt Romney will win the White House on Tuesday. I admit that I am not some political prognosticator and I've never been good at figuring out what polls and such mean. We've seen polling off time and time again over the past couple of decades and I feel like they could be off again this time as the dynamics of the country continue to change. People are more cynical about politics these days and the ability to reach people to do polling is getting more difficult, especially when trying to identify who will actually go out and vote. 

An example of this is the recall election for governor from a couple years back in Wisconsin. The polling had it a virtual tie, but the final vote was a 7 point win for Scott Walker. That's some major league fucking fudging up right there. 

I posted this (below) on an online forum today and this is all my "reading the tea leaves", and comes from no real experience in doing so. Take what I say with a grain of salt, as I'm simply interested in politics and the dynamics of the race.

The polls, however, ARE showing it close in Florida, yet nobody is campaigning significantly there at this time, but they are going nuts in Ohio. The RCP (realclearpolitics.com) average in Florida is closer than Ohio and Wisconsin, so it seems like THAT would be the battleground state that Romney would be hammering on, but again, it's not.

The time they are spending in Ohio and Wisconsin really says that those two states are in play more than Florida. Follow me.....Florida is a 1.4 on the RCP to Romney. Wisconsin is a 5.4 for Obama and Ohio is a 2.9 for Obama. From looking at the polls, it doesn't seem to make sense that Obama would be making 3 stops in Wisconsin today. If he really had it locked down, why is he there just as many times today as he was in Ohio?

Given that, it's likely that those two states hold the keys (Wisconsin/Ohio) and are really in play, despite the polling suggesting that Obama has a lead. A bigger lead in those two states than in Florida, yet Obama is doing most of his campaigning there. If Romney can't win the White House without Florida, and it's really just a 1.4 lead for him, it seems like he'd be spending a lot time there, but he's not.

There has to be something that is running that dynamic and I'm interested in trying to figure out what that is. Do they have internal numbers that are showing the reality of the race and the public polling is off? Hell, RCP has Virginia a dead heat, yet there is little action there.

You can also look at where they are spending their money and see how it could play into what the campaigns are seeing. Romney is spending roughly 5.5 million on ads in Ohio and about 5 million in Florida. Obama is spending almost 6.5 in Florida and 9.5 in Ohio. The highest spending PAC for Obama is outspending the highest PAC for Romney in Ohio. PACs for either campaign are not spending much in Florida at all. In Wisconsin, Obama is spending over 3 million and Romney is spending 1.5. By virtue of the spending, it looks like it's all about Ohio for Obama, as he is spending nearly double what Romney is in the state.

Romney is also making trips to New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. He's making trips to Democrat leaning states when Florida and Virginia tied? Either Romney is sunk and trying to throw "hail mary's" all over the place, or he is sitting comfortably in those two states.

Can you see how that is sort of strange? Are the polls off like they were for the Wisconsin recall? The polling there had it a dead heat, but Walker won by 7 points.

In watching a couple of speeches today, Obama has been wildly negative on Romney, while Romney is talking about getting to work on November 7th. Obama's crowds are very small compared to '08 and Romney is getting a lot of people out. Definitely anecdotal, but just part of "reading the tea leaves" that I find interesting.

UPDATE: Romney is going to Virginia twice on Monday and Bill Clinton will be in Pennsylvania for 4 rallies. Obama will be in Virginia and Ohio. It's probable that the candidates are going to hit as many stops as possible and we will likely see each of them stop in as many as 3 states on Monday. 

With all that in writing, I will go a bit further and predict the battleground states and the electoral margin. I think Romney will win Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Iowa, Colorado, and pick up a big upset in Wisconsin. I believe Obama will take Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota. 

Electoral Count? Romney 295 Obama 243

As a reminder, please do not take this as any sort of endorsement of Mitt Romney from my end. I just thought it would be fun to make a prediction. No matter how it turns out, it will give me a topic next week! 

Gary Johnson for President in 2012!

I haven't written anything for this blog in about two months. That's an incredibly long stretch for me, and since I have my work week done, I've decided to get in some writing. 

I've pretty much been a Republican my entire adult life. I voted for Bush 1 over Clinton. I voted for Bob Dole. Hell, I voted for W.....twice! But enough was enough. I started checking myself and thought about my beliefs back in 2007. When I dissected how I thought and felt about the issues in a real and personal way, I started to find out that I didn't really buy into what the GOP was selling, especially on a social level. I still couldn't bring myself to vote for Obama, so I didn't vote at all. John McCain had gone from a middle of the road Republican to a right winger, just to get the nomination over Mitt Romney. This time, Romney has done the same thing and swung even more to the right. I still don't identify with the Democrats, and after seeing how Obama pretty much continued the Bush Administrations policies in many areas, I knew I was losing my political identity. 

But, in the last four or five weeks I have started seeing some articles about Gary Johnson. I took a couple of those "What are you?" political tests and saw that I fall in line, largely, with a libertarian point of view. I have decided to embrace that, while maintaining my preference to not strictly align myself with any party. It's a bit liberating to not have to defend the indefensible, which is the monopolized system we are currently in. 

Learn More About Gary Johnson!

You see, Gary Johnson gives me someone to vote FOR and not against. I don't see voting for the "lesser of two evils" as some sort of triumph in American politics. I see it as a disaster in the making, where politicians can pay lip service to the mainstream American as they gain power and wealth by setting our system up to cater to the wealthy and multi-national corporations. Why would a politician really address your concerns? You don't make large contributions. You don't throw fund raisers. You just vote. And if you only have one other choice, you just have to cling to the party you ALWAYS support as if this is one big sports rivalry like the Yankees and Red Sox. A two party system is agreeable to the Dems and GOP, because even if they lose an election, they are only one cycle from regaining power. They only have to fight the "other side" and they don't have to contend with other ideas. We have become a country of liberals and conservatives instead of a country of Americans. We have sold out the idea of America to belong to a club that we refuse to disagree with because we have invested in it on a prideful and psychological level. It's sad. 

With that, I am proud to say that I am going to vote for Gary Johnson. Johnson has more governing experience than either of the two major candidates and he has actually started a business from the ground up. When Johnson was in college at the University of New Mexico, he earned money by being a handyman. He went door to door searching out work opportunities. Over the years, he was able to grow from a one man show into a business that was worth $10 million! He didn't get that money from his daddy,and yeah, he built that! 

Johnson got into politics in 1994 for the first time and ran for governor in New Mexico. That's a really high place to begin for a guy just starting out in politics. Against conventional advice, he started his campaign using some of his own money and ran as a Republican. Mind you, New Mexico is a largely Democratic state, so not very many people gave him a chance to even get the party nomination, let alone to actually win the governorship. As these sorts of stories can go, he defied the odds and won the nomination and then the general election! Why did he win? Because he spoke to the ordinary citizen. He was (and is) a proponent of small, less intrusive government. He is a leader in the fight for personal freedom and he is a man of his word. True to showing that he wasn't bought and sold by any party, Johnson used his veto power to shoot down any piece of legislation that wasn't necessary to the state or the government. Wasteful spending was eliminated. 

When he ran for re-election, he simply campaigned on the success and fulfillment of his word from his first term. It was expected that he would have a tough time winning a second term, as he was running against a Hispanic opponent. The pundits proved how out of touch they can be by simplifying people down to being robots who are only capable of voting for "their own kind". Johnson won easily and continued to govern as he had before. He made the availability of school vouchers and the elimination of war on drugs central pieces of his agenda and he also opposed the building of private prisons. An industry that should give EVERY American pause about how we create and enforce laws. 

Meet Gary Johnson!

Gary Johnson is the real deal. He has a record that is one of success, met expectations, and kept promises. He tried to run for the Republican nomination, but was largely ignored by the GOP and the press. The party abandoned him, so he went about his business and embraced the Libertarian Party, much the way Ron Paul has in the past. Johnson and the Libertarian Party have worked hard and he is now on the ballot in 47 states. The Republicans have tried to block him from getting on the ballot in three other states, but Johnson is fighting those efforts. It's not likely that you will see him in the presidential debates, even though he meets all the criteria but one. He isn't at 15% in the polling. He may have never reached that point anyhow, but it's impossible to know because he isn't listed on polls and the pollsters only focus on Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, or "other". It's a bit of a scam. It is specifically designed to keep anyone except Republicans and Democrats out of the conversation about our nation.  

Is Mitt Romney Scared Of Gary Johnson?

I've been told I'm wasting my vote and I beg to differ in a big way! How is my vote wasted if I am voting for the person I believe in and who most reflects my values? Wouldn't I truly be wasting the right to vote if I simply cast my ballot for the "lesser of two evils"? Wouldn't I have to consider myself intellectually dishonest if I only voted for a person because of some sort of misguided allegiance to a party that doesn't have the countries best interest at heart? 

Gary Johnson is the only candidate willing to be an adult. To be open and honest about the state of the country and what needs to be done to start us going in the right direction again. Here is a rundown of a few of Johnson's beliefs and proposals for restoring America;

1) simplify the tax system, abolish the IRS

2) a strong defense that isn't into nation building and forcing our political will on others

3) he opposes censorship

4) he opposes the War On Drugs as it is currently

5) he wants to cut the federal budget by 43%, and allow states to get involved with Medicare to suit their citizens better

6)  he advocates state's rights

7) he is for balancing the budget immediately

8) he believes the Federal Reserve is devaluing our currency and wants to eliminate it

9) he supports the rights of individuals over the state

10) he believes corporate welfare should be shut down

11) he is against lobbying

These things are not out of step with most Americans. Gary Johnson is for all the things that most Americans say they are for and what the two major parties SAY they are striving for. But the results have not shown it. The Democrats and Republicans work their agenda the way they want to, not how the American people want it done. Those parties work for the wealthy and corporations. Sure, they will throw out some sound bites that make people believe they are in tune with people who have lost their jobs, their homes, and are struggling to pay their bills. These parties are directly responsible for the destruction of our manufacturing base which has crippled the middle class, but they will NOT do anything to solve those problems. 

The choice is simple for our country. Continue down the path we are on or start making changes. Gary Johnson may not win this election, but the tide has to turn somewhere. Why not now? Why not here at this point in history? Why can't we look back at 2012 as a point in time where we decided that things had to change? If Johnson got just 10 or 15% of the vote, it would be a huge wake up call for our mainstream politicians and this country. A voice will have been heard. I think our nation is worth it.