Tag: Jill Stein

Chardonnay Grandmas Can Be Russian Assets, Too

Mike Viola
Mike Viola
2013
 

Hillary Clinton can make ridiculous Russia claims about Tulsi Gabbard and Jill Stein without the barest of evidence and it’ll be greeted with nodding heads from ostensibly serious journalists, not to mention the years-long investigation into the Trump-Russia theory based on nothing but unsubstantiated opposition “research.”

But overall, there’s nobody I can think of in American politics who has been a bigger asset to the Russians than Hillary Rodham Clinton herself. No, I don’t mean she colluded with Russia in any meaningful sense. But Hillary Clinton has unintentionally aided Vladimir Putin in weakening the US military’s credibility abroad while sowing discord and undermining American institutions at home.

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Three Martini Lunch

Mooch Gets the Boot, Venezuela in Crisis, Stein Gets Crazy

00
Hosted by Greg Corombos & Jim Geraghty

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America approve of White House Chief of Staff, John Kelly, firing Anthony Scaramucci, who Jim asserts was simply wrong for the job. They also condemn Nicolas Maduro for tightening his hold on Venezuela as a sham election gives him the power to replace representatives of the opposition-controlled legislature.  Jim and Greg mock Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presidential candidate in 2016, for her ridiculous comments made to MSNBC that North Korea is threatening the US because we “cornered them into feeling like they have to develop a nuclear weapon.”

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[Member Post]

SkipSul
SkipSul
4620
 

Some of Jill Stein’s most enthusiastic supporters were out in force today, attempting to stoke interest in the recount lawsuits. However, DC Comics legal representatives intervened with a trademark infringement lawsuit, further complicating this already fraught post-election season, and the ladies involved were all arrested. Further hijinks ensued when one of the ladies was instead […]

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Don’t Reward Bad Choices: Vote Third Party For President, Republican for Congress

Brian Wolf
Brian Wolf
3213
 

shutterstock_495755698We have come to an election in which there seems to be no way to win. At first glance, the election seems binary and the two choices we are given are unthinkable. In Hillary Clinton, we have someone very probably guilty of crimes not merely of corruption but crimes that endangered our national security. No one that really cares for the country should vote for her to be president. Turning to the Republican alternative, you find Donald Trump. His ignorance of policy issues and his reckless, ignorant, and dangerous foreign policy pronouncements should give you pause about his fitness for office. Looking at his character, you find even more horrifying information. He is a man of  privilege who gained success from gaming the system and legal tricks, and his sense of entitlement leads to his mistreatment of women and gross statements about their treatment at his hands. How can such a man lead a nation like the United States?

Politics is not generally binary and this election is no exception. There are ways to do good with your vote and help our country despite Trump and Clinton. No matter who becomes president we will need Republicans in Congress to put a brake on their excesses. Senators Ben Sasse, Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, Rand Paul, Pat Toomey, Kelly Ayotte, and many other honorable men and women need to the leaders in the Senate. Voting for the Republican Senate candidates (and hopefully having them often out-perform Donald Trump in the election) will send a powerful message to Washington. It will give the Senate Republicans the mandate and confidence to oppose the wild excesses of the president.

Even on the presidential level, there are ways to send the message of disapproval. In a blue state, vote Jill Stein to split the liberals in your state; in a red state, vote for Evan McMullin or Gary Johnson to remind the Republican party that the Democrats’ nomination unfit candidates for office is no reason for the Republicans to follow suit. Vote to keep the House because of Paul Ryan’s great work there and House Republicans’ many stands for freedom over the last six years.

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Break the Left: Vote for Stein

Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
1511
 
By Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Jill Stein By Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link.

Two months ago, I suggested that those not voting Trump may wish to consider voting the Green Party’s Jill Stein instead. I would like to say my rationale is that, in a general election filled with absurd candidates, you may as well vote for the most absurd of the bunch, but really there is some strategy behind it. Although the Libertarian Party garnering enough votes to receive FEC funding is less of a threat now, the Right is not coming out of this election season in one piece. A vote for Stein is a vote to encourage the Greens to keep at their efforts to fracture the Left, which would at least help even things out.

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Other Candidates Got Your Down? Hoist Yer Stein!

Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
9012
 

American Stein HoistPolitics is a dirty game and nobody has to like federal funding of elections to be resigned to the observation that it’s unlikely to go away anytime soon. Given this observation, what might we do with it? The virtue of strategic, rather than principled, voting – or rather, the assertion that strategic voting is, in reality, the only form of principled voting – has many champions among the Ricochetti this year. Nonetheless, even if we grant that the odds of one’s vote being decisive are large enough in swing states that swing-state voters should feel morally obligated to choose between the two lead candidates (those odds are around one in ten million), many of us live in states so far from swing that they’re not even on the playground (our odds are more like one in a billion).

As of this morning, my state has around a 0.2% chance of tipping the election, and is one of 20 states whose voter power index is under 0.1 (a vote in New Hampshire is more than 50 times more likely than mine to decide the election), according to FiveThirtyEight. (If you don’t like Nate Silver’s methodology, feel free to substitute whichever prediction system you trust most.) Meanwhile, Gary Johnson is polling at around 8 percent nationally. Now, it’s common for polling to overestimate the share of votes third-party candidates will get. Nonetheless, if Johnson is polling at 8 percent now, he has a serious chance of crossing the threshold necessary for the Libertarian Party to receive FEC funding, which is 5 percent of the popular vote. Moreover, as @matt.corbett put it in his recent OP,

As a matter of good public choice theory, sitting out or voting third party (or advocating either) is entirely defensible as part of a long-term strategy. The great paradox of voting coalitions is that the least reliable members have the most influence… Influence can only be re-established with credibility, and credibility can only be re-established by action. An election where “your” candidate is openly contemptuous of you and is most likely a loser anyway is the ideal time to protest vote.

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Johnson, Stein, McMullin Locked Out of Presidential Debates

Jon Gabriel, Ed.
Jon Gabriel, Ed.
9918
 

jill-stein-gary-johnson-evan-mcmullin-green-party-2016The system is rigged. The Commission on Presidential Debates announced today that the only candidates to be invited to the first scheduled debate are Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. While claiming to be non-partisan, the CPD has again demonstrated that it is instead bipartisan — a racket designed to protect the interests of the Democratic and Republican parties against the threat of other options.

CPD’s official selection criteria are as follows:

  1. Candidate is constitutionally eligible to hold the office of President of the United States.
  2. Candidate has achieved ballot access in a sufficient number of states to win a theoretical Electoral College majority in the general election.
  3. Candidate has demonstrated a level of support of at least 15 percent of the national electorate, as determined by five selected national public opinion polling organizations, using the average of those organizations’ most recent publicly-reported results. These polls are from ABC-Washington Post; CBS-New York Times; CNN-Opinion Research Corporation; Fox News; and NBC-Wall Street Journal.

Libertarian Gary Johnson has been endorsed by four major newspapers and is on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. This means he obviously meets the first two tests but fails to achieve the arbitrary third test. The banning also applies to his running mate Bill Weld who will not be allowed to attend the first vice presidential debate. Johnson expected this result, but remained disappointed:

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The Pre-Pre-Debate Debate

Valiuth
Valiuth
227
 

With both the Republican and Democrat conventions over, the general election has begun in earnest, meaning that we’ll know which doom our future holds in fewer than 100 days. Part of what will determine said doom are the august (well, September and October, actually) presidential debates, and the less-august vice presidential debates. Already, controversy is swirling around them. The debates are organized by the Presidential Debate Commission, an ostensibly non-partisan 501(c)3 organization that has been doing this since 1987. The current controversy has to do with the dates and times of the debates, which will apparently overlap with the the observance of America’s national religion (football). This post though isn’t really about the scheduling of these debates — it’s probably impossible to find a time slot that doesn’t overlap with something that will draw complaint — but about who should be in the presidential debates.

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