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Never Trump

That's how your posts have come across to me, but with a hint of anger.

Once again, it's apparent you like to express your opinions with no evidence, wide-sweeping generalizations, little attempt to say things within the context of the discussion, absolutely no willingness to learn, and zero persuasive power. In sum, your comments appear to be those of a troll, because there is absolutely nothing to say to these, except for "cool."

Find one post within the context of a discussion, i.e., evidence was supplied in a previous post, where I am guilty of any of the bolded points. Or are you just flippantly shooting out of your *** again? I will give you that there is anger. I am fine to live and let live on many things. Trump isn't one of them. His candidacy has shaken my very being, so yes I am unsettled.

As far as not learning from people, I can't help your perception. I learn from many people on this forum, and I am willing to be proven wrong or swayed on anything if there is evidence and the person making the claim is not obviously an idiot. I normally learn about things other than basketball the most from a few select posters on this forum, e.g., Red, Jonah, Siro, Dalamon, and occasionally you, when your posts aren't buried so far under sarcasm and supercilious sanctimony (there are a few others as well). I will admit that I am also pretentious at times and respond to people's comments in a less than helpful way. What will you admit? I get enough horse **** around the internet. I appreciate when people don't speak it.
 
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I dont believe its as rampant as its made out to be. Its a very small number on both sides who make a lot of noise. I dont subscribe to this new definition of racism either. Where only white people can be racist. Thats a new narrative being pushed by the left too.

I dont believe that just because someone is white they have to admit they are part of the problem. Thats actually racist.

I believe that in America you can have a good life no matter what your skin color is. Its all about your attitude. There is plenty of evidence to support that too.
I want to respond to this but I'm not sure you want to actually have a discussion about it. If so I'll take the time to respond later.
 
Blah blah blah. Racist. Blah blah blum blah racism. Blah blah blah. Racist. Deedo deedo dooey blah brum brum room vroom vroom blah blah racists.

There. I tried to come down to your level and speak your language. Were you able to understand that?

Triggered.
 
franklin, you see racism helping people on many occasions?

Maybe referring to affirmative action?

I was thinking more of how some of us subconsciously treat AA's better because our latent racism makes us feel guilty and uncomfortable. For example, I've found that I have a tendency to tip black waiters a little heavier. I think a lot of people promote black people for similar reasons and not purely for Affirmative Action. That and they tend to be cooler on average than white people. << Don't fract me for that racist comment.
 
Informative, data-based article by Sam Wang on the increasingly partisan divide of presidential elections:

https://prospect.org/article/hardened-divide-american-politics-0

"Although news reports and commentators during this year’s presidential election have focused on twists in the race and shifts in polls, the real story about campaigns since the mid-1990s is how little movement there is during a general election. American voters are much less open to persuasion by the other side than they used to be.”

The decline in the volatility of the electorate over the course of recent campaigns is what allows aggregators like Wang and Nate Silver to predict not only the outcomes of elections so early and accurately, but to assign high probability ratios with such confidence. Clinton had a bad week prior to the first debate, but since that time she has bounced back and is nearing her highest levels of win probability. Wang, as of today, has her at a 93 percent chance of winning and Silver has her at over 80 percent.
 
I was thinking more of how some of us subconsciously treat AA's better because our latent racism makes us feel guilty and uncomfortable. For example, I've found that I have a tendency to tip black waiters a little heavier. I think a lot of people promote black people for similar reasons and not purely for Affirmative Action. That and they tend to be cooler on average than white people. << Don't fract me for that racist comment.

This is the best post ever.
 
Doubling from 1.2 million votes in 2012 to a possible 2.4 million in 2016 would be impressive to some and a disappointment to others, especially considering Johnson is running against the two most unpopular major party candidates in modern history. Whether it’s one or two percent of the vote total doesn’t really matter, the Libertarian Party is still a fringe party, not anywhere close to being a real contender in presidential politics.

I have many libertarian values (ending the war on drugs, cutting the bloated defense budget, reducing military intervention, ending corporate welfare, and curtailing government surveillance, to name a few) and hope this continued failure to connect with the electorate causes sincere reflection and a revaluation of strategy and priorities within the Libertarian Party.

Despite your protestations, there are a lot of people, both libertarians and potential supporters such as myself, that are upset about the Koch brothers influence. It’s even possible that corporate, Koch-style libertarianism, expoused by the Cato Institute and Reason magazine, might be part of the problem, a legitimate reason for the party’s inability to escape fringe status.

Here’s a critique from Noam Chomsky, a left libertarian, on the Koch brand of libertarianism:

"Well what’s called libertarian in the United States, which is a special U.S. phenomenon, it doesn’t really exist anywhere else — a little bit in England — permits a very high level of authority and domination but in the hands of private power: so private power should be unleashed to do whatever it likes. The assumption is that by some kind of magic, concentrated private power will lead to a more free and just society. . . that kind of libertarianism, in my view, in the current world, is just a call for some of the worst kinds of tyranny, namely unaccountable private tyranny.”

Another critique from Matt Yglesias, not someone who identifies as a libertarian, but who shares many libertarian values, just not the corporate stooge aspect of libertarianism that currently predominates:

"Thinkers affiliated with the libertarian movement have had many smart things to say on individual topics, but the overall concept of a state apparatus that simply sits on the sideline watching the free market roll along is impossibly utopian. People are going to try to manipulate the state to advance their own ends. . . The predominant cause of people seeing libertarians as shills for business interests is the fact that an awful lot of shilling for business interests does, in fact, take place under the banner of self-described libertarian institutions.”

A few years ago Ralph Nader suggested a left-right alliance between his supporters and libertarians to help dismantle the corporate state that controls so much of our politics and our daily lives. Needless to say nothing ever came of it. It’s hard to turn your back on the tens of millions of dollars the Koch brothers have provided over the past few decades to influence the direction of libertarianism in the United States, but it might be the best opportunity for libertarians to break free and finally become competitive.

It is strange to me that you would come up with a list of reasons to vote for Johnson(none of which are issues that anyone expects Clinton to address) and then say that the problem is Koch money(which GJ is not getting). The candidate that you are supporting is the definition of a corporate sponsored politician. The major corporations sponsor the major parties, the major media outlets, but you would ignore all that and point the finger at the relatively meager support the Libertarian party gets from a select few business people and corporations. Let's not pretend that the libertarians are the ones who are bought or that they are worse in this regard when they clearly are not. As far as a Libertarian liberal coalition I think you would be surprised at some of the ideas and proposals that come out of placess like CATO.

[video]https://www.cato.org/multimedia/events/our-hands-plan-replace-welfare-state-raising-floor-how-universal-basic-income-can


As I've said before I'm not exactly a libertarian but shrinking the size and scope of the US government is a huge concern of mine and a big reason why I vote Libertarian in federal elections.

I think that you and Mr. Chomsky have fallen for an argument that ultimately led the Bolsheviks to destroy the International labor movement as well as every legitimate revolution of the people that had the real promise of delivering freedom, democracy, and socialism to the masses(Catalonia comes to mind). Yes there are social Darwinists both within and that support the libertarian party/platform. They would agree with your assessment that without the state they would become even more powerful. I believe that's just not correct. The state has created our current private power structure and without a strong state it could not exist. Further while I agree with you that private power can be dangerous I do not think that focusing ever more power in a state is a good idea. As Mr. Yglesias points out "People are going to try to manipulate the state to advance their own ends".

This "solution" to private power gives the powerful a tool with which to commit violence with near impunity and further secure their station.

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It is strange to me that you would come up with a list of reasons to vote for Johnson(none of which are issues that anyone expects Clinton to address) and then say that the problem is Koch money(which GJ is not getting). The candidate that you are supporting is the definition of a corporate sponsored politician. The major corporations sponsor the major parties, the major media outlets, but you would ignore all that and point the finger at the relatively meager support the Libertarian party gets from a select few business people and corporations. Let's not pretend that the libertarians are the ones who are bought or that they are worse in this regard when they clearly are not. As far as a Libertarian liberal coalition I think you would be surprised at some of the ideas and proposals that come out of placess like CATO.

[video]https://www.cato.org/multimedia/events/our-hands-plan-replace-welfare-state-raising-floor-how-universal-basic-income-can

As I've said before I'm not exactly a libertarian but shrinking the size and scope of the US government is a huge concern of mine and a big reason why I vote Libertarian in federal elections...

I’m not to a supporter of Clinton or the Democrat Party and agree that both are too heavily influenced by corporate contributions. I’ve argued here against Trump because his candidacy poses a unique and immediate threat whereas Clinton would be more of the same.

The Koch brothers are a separate problem. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars influencing the Republican Party because that's what it takes to buy a metaphorical battleship and steer it in their direction. They only have to spend tens of millions of dollars to buy the Libertarian Party because it’s just a tugboat in the political ocean. That doesn’t mean I can’t be concerned about the direction of unchecked corporate dominance they’ve steered for the Libertarian Party.

I listed some areas of agreement with libertarian values and most involve curtailing the scope of government, however, I prefer cutting with a scalpel whereas too many old-style libertarians want to use a hatchet. The video you posted, rather than supporting any kind of left-right alliance, highlights this basic disagreement. The issue is universal basic income (UBI). Andy Stern, former union leader, wants UBI to replace programs such a food stamps and help, possibly dramatically, reduce the size of the federal government. Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, wants to completely eliminate the welfare state through constitutional amendment and replace it with a below subsistence level UBI.

In an alternate universe, the alliance Ralph Nader argued for and worked for back in 2014 would have made for a dramatically different election in 2016. Realistically, though, he was too old even then and a Nader/Johnson ticket was just a pipe dream. Still, I'd like to see a modern, moderate version of libertarianism replace the current Libertarian Party. The Libertarian Party has too many fossilized fringe ideas that have not been updated since before 1980 when David Koch ran as their VP candidate and it will never have a chance to become a major national party until it publicly repudiates some of its more extreme Koch influenced positions.
 
Keith Olbermann once again pointing out how seemingly inconsequential acts have huge ramifications. Few people in the history of the world could see where they were heading when they slowly changed their government forever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTBi8iqnhfk
 
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