Why I’m Voting Third Party

I should probably preface this by pointing out that I live in a state where it’s practically impossible for a Democratic Party candidate for President to lose. The last time a Democrat lost New York was in 1984 (the actual year, not the dystopian Orwell novel) when Walter Mondale lost everything except Washington, DC and his home state of Minnesota to the B-movie actor Ronald Reagan.

So it’s entirely possible that I’m only taking this position because I don’t have to face some moral dilemma over what might happen if too many New Yorkers, including myself, voted for a third-party candidate instead of  Obama. I’d like to think that if I lived in Ohio or Florida or Virginia or some place like that I would be consistent in my principles. But I can’t really know that for sure unless I were actually in that position, and I’m just not that interested in testing that by moving out-of-state to find out.

Green Party Presidential Candidate Jill Stein on Alternative Medicine

Jill Stein is the Green Party’s Presidential candidate, having beaten Roseanne Barr for the nomination back in July. While the party might not ever regain the popularity lost from its perceived role in costing Al Gore the 2000 election, this is definitely a turn in the right direction. The last two GP Presidential candidates were extremely embarrassing for those of us in the party who aren’t deluded cranks or spineless wimps. Cynthia McKinney (2008) was a 9/11 truther conspiracy nut. David Cobb (2004) ran on a ‘safe states’ strategy designed to promote the party while allowing John Kerry to still win enough votes to beat George W Bush’s re-election bid. The strategy failed miserably at achieving both goals.

Stupid Republicans To Give Us All Their Money

Right Wing Watch has just been cold chillin’ at the Tea Party Unity Rally with a video camera, turning it on at random times to catch the totally insane stuff whoever happens to be speaking at the time bleats out. And now they caught some good news from the short wave ham radio operator Neal Boortz (Handle: Bald Eagle).

Unions: Not As Progressive As You Think

In the past few years this myth has surfaced about unions. The myth is that they’re full of liberals. They’re not.

This is contrary to what the Glenn Becks of the world would have you believe. But those of us who are actually in labor unions (I’ve been a Teamster for the past 10 years) know otherwise. We know it because we go to work with people with Republican bumper stickers on their trucks and who wear T-shirts that say things like, “It’s not a bald spot, it’s a solar panel for a sex machine.” Some of them are even so conservative that they are against the union itself even though they’ve been voluntarily working there for decades and could easily have gone into management at any time.

Scott Brown Has Discovered the Communist (i.e. Pro-Voting) Conspiracy

When one of The Poors vote, Republicans have a sad.

The conspiracy started when Bill Clinton was sworn in as President in 1993. That same year, Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which required local and state governments to offer people a voter registration form when they renewed their driver’s license or applied for welfare. As a compromise to Republicans, it also required boring assholes to make exaggerated claims of inconvenience at the hands of the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is not nearly as terrible as said boring assholes would have you believe.

Republican Candidate Runs Campaign From Jail

Hey, if Eugene Debs can run a Presidential campaign from a jail cell where he was serving a term for violating the (pretty clearly unconstitutional) Conscription Act, then surely Fred E. Ray Smith can run for the Oklahoma State Senate from his jail cell where he’s doing time for being a deadbeat dad who drives around with an open container of alcohol, right?

Of course he can! And since he’s a Republican and this is Oklahoma, he will almost definitely still win. The best part is how his campaign manager / fiancé responded:

Democrats Distance Themselves From Future Senator / Gay-Hating Lunatic (D-TN)

Mark Clayton (D-TN)

I’m no big fan of the Democratic Party in general. Sure, they’re better than the Republicans. Dogs and cats know that. It’s not a tough hurdle to clear. But they’re still way too conservative and spineless to warrant much respect.

So it’s nice to see them now encouraging their constituents to write in a candidate rather than vote for the member of a bona fide hate group who won their nomination for the US Senate from Tennessee. Republicans could learn something from that if they were capable of learning anything.

A Majority of Americans Would Vote For an Atheist President

The inauguration of President Myers.

The good news is that a recent Gallup poll indicates that a 54% majority of Americans would vote for an atheist in a Presidential election. That doesn’t mean they would just vote for any atheist, though. It might be more accurate to say that a candidate’s atheism wouldn’t prevent 54% of the population from voting for them.

Sarah Posner Interview

Sarah Posner is the author of  God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters and senior editor at Religion Dispatches where she covers politics. We talk about Republicans, contraception, my gambling debts, religious code words, the possible problems Foster Friess had with girls in high school, and lots more.

Alex Jones is the King of All Crackpots

I first heard about Alex Jones during one of my first breaks home from college, catching up with a friend from high school. He went to college in Meadville, PA, at the same school which after one semester drove Trent Reznor into the happening nightlife of Cleveland and probably fueled his angst-based career for the next 20 years.

So there wasn’t much to do in Meadville. One thing to do was drive around delivering pizzas to townies while listening to the Alex Jones radio show. That’s what my friend did. This was in the days before iPods, so unless you wanted to drag around your CD collection and risk it getting stolen by Alex Jones fans for crystal meth money, radio was your only option.

So we would get stoned and laugh at the crazy man yelling about the global “elite” in his documentaries. It’d be fun to pick apart the fact from fiction and to try to identify the point where reasonable concerns about government waste turned into the fever-dream rants of a paranoid lunatic. So yeah, the drug war is bullshit, but it’s not part of a UN plot to end American sovereignty.