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To be fair to Johnson, if someone asked me, in person, about Aleppo, I would probably draw a blank at first, too. But that's because I don't think I've ever really heard the word. Read it a lot in print, just not heard it aloud, so it would probably take a moment to make the mental connection.

I read 90% of my news, which is why I'm far less likely to have heard it rather than read it.

Just my conjecture, but I suspect the vast majority of people professing disgust and horror that Gary Johnson didn't immediately know where Aleppo was could not identify Syria on a map.

I can identify Syria on a map, ffs, but ad hominem away if you like.

I give him props for not BSing his way through an answer.

Knowing when you don't know something is just as important as knowing something.

 jasper76 wrote:
I can identify Syria on a map, ffs, but ad hominem away if you like.

It wasn't meant to be an attack on you or anyone else, and I apologize if it came across that way. My point was that I just don't think it was a very big flub, even for a presidential candidate - and certainly not the way it's being spun. Most people know it's important that ISIL is defeated, but know many people know their self-professed capital is Raqqa? I hazard, not many. Is it really important to having a general idea how ISIL being bad and needing to be defeated?

I don't care about the guy at all, but my 2 cents, he's running for president, not head of the geography club.

 d-usa wrote:
I give him props for not BSing his way through an answer.

Knowing when you don't know something is just as important as knowing something.

Yeah, you put that a lot better than I did. Gary Johnson is weak on foreign policy, and that's not necessarily a dealbreaker. So is Trump, and I think that's the least of his problems.

@Ouze: No worries.


I prefer a candidate who immediately knows the regions of the world though experience to a candidate running on generic slogans like "no intervention" (yeah right)

I don't thi K Gary Johnson has credible bona fides to be CIC. I've been following his campaign and even agree wig some of the underlying messages, but he wil not be ready on Day 1 to do much of anything beyond just to be instructed...same criticism holds true and equally (if not moreso) for Trump.

 djones520 wrote:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/photos/earpiece.asp

And there were attacks based on Obama's teleprompter use in 2008, the earpiece thing is just a (very) minor riff on that.

 whembly wrote:

Local party <> National party.

No, but they are mutually influential.

 whembly wrote:

The Office of the Presidency is a big fething deal (as Joe Biden would say).

Biden was talking about healthcare, specifically.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I am confused at what we are supposed to be seeing. She's just drinking some water.

This here sums up this campaign more perfectly than anything else I've seen. Because, yes, she's drinking some water, and some people are trying to make out that there's some secret hidden in that, because the right wing noise machine has gone past ridiculous, gone past parody, and is now appearing to being running some kind of surrealist meta-commentary on the vacuous nature of existence. And it still keeps getting posted here as news.

And North Korea is setting of another nuke. Let's see how this might shake up the race.

 whembly wrote:
Whoops... my bad guys.

No, not your bad. Fraz's link is shockingly biased. It writes as if the only ethnic conflict was inflicted on poor Serb victims. But in reality the tensions went both ways, with both sides having their fair share of victims.

Then what was left of the Yugoslav National Army, which was by now basically purely Serbian, rolled in and started laying saturation artillery fire on cities and lining boys up in the street and shooting them.

Fraz seems to have concluded that we shouldn't have tried to stop that because the Bosnians started it. He's wrong about the Bosnians starting it, but even if he was right...


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 whembly wrote:
I least he had the integrity to respond later by saying 'I blanked'.

That isn't 'integrity', it's minimisation. It's exactly the strategy that Clinton is using, that you get so mad at her about.


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 djones520 wrote:
There is nothing at all partisan about this. The 4th person in line to be President, was mishandling classified data. We know for an absolute fact that this data HAD BEEN MARKED AS CLASSIFIED, and she was still openly corresponding with it through unsecure means. If you buy her bs story that she was unaware what the markings meant, markings that are identically used across all branches of the government, so that there can be no confusion about them, the only one buying into partisanship koolaid is yourself. A woman who had spent nearly two decades in the highest tiers of our government, dealing with classified data on a nearly daily basis, did not know what those markings meant? You need to put the cup down.

The partisan crap is not in thinking Clinton did nothing wrong. The partisan crap is somehow believing that mishandled security makes Clinton as unqualified and incapable a president as the guy who doesn't know what the nuclear triad is.


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 whembly wrote:
My vote has to be fething earned.

I believe you voted for Bush twice, so that's debatable.


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 Ouze wrote:
Just my conjecture, but I suspect the vast majority of people professing disgust and horror that Gary Johnson didn't immediately know where Aleppo was could not identify Syria on a map.

Your conjecture is probably correct. But I will speculate further, that most people who are professing disgust that Johnson didn't know what Aleppo was, and couldn't find Syria on a map, are probably not actually running in the election to become President.


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 Ouze wrote:
I don't care about the guy at all, but my 2 cents, he's running for president, not head of the geography club.

Aleppo isn't just important because it might come up in a pub quiz. It's important because it's at the centre of the refugee crisis that is underway right now. Having any idea of what is actually happening in Syria right now means having knowledge of Aleppo.

Johnson doesn't have that understanding. Now, that isn't a deal breaker for Johnson voters, because they're voting for him as 'not those other two people'. But it is pretty clear he's not a serious presidential candidate, something that should have been clear before now given his voting numbers.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
To be fair to Johnson, if someone asked me, in person, about Aleppo, I would probably draw a blank at first, too. But that's because I don't think I've ever really heard the word. Read it a lot in print, just not heard it aloud, so it would probably take a moment to make the mental connection.

I read 90% of my news, which is why I'm far less likely to have heard it rather than read it.

But you also aren't a presidential candidate in an interview you knew was coming. I can understand blanking on a name if you're ambushed with a question about it, but if you're going into an interview at the same time that the mainstream candidates have the national security debate prominent in the news you really should be better prepared.


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 djones520 wrote:
We all know that anyone of us who had done what she did, would be in prison today.

Except, as has been pointed out in this thread already, people who did very similar things (including republicans, so this isn't just partisan politics favoring democrats) did not go to prison. You can talk all you want about how seriously classified information is treated, but the indisputable fact is that if you are a high-level government official who is careless with classified information you're probably going to get off with nothing more than a "don't do that again" warning unless you deliberately leaked information.

There's a lot of talk about how both candidates have problems with their backgrounds. Let's just lay this out on the table...

Trump;
While planning his Atlantic City casinos, Trump was asked by state and city officials about the financial stability of his plans. He said he had great deals with the banks, and wouldn't use junk bonds that are for idiots. Trump then funded the casinos with junk bonds at 14%, they went bust and while Trump was lucky to walk away few others were. The failed casinos have left an economic impact on Atlantic City to this day.
Trump’s has a long record of refusing to pay contractors, and happily forces them in to the courts knowing most can't afford it and will just let Trump get away with it.
Trump University was set up as a hard sell scam, attracting people with little financial knowledge, then pressuring them in to buying incredibly expensive seminars on false promises. When this was exposed and it collapsed Trump tried to set it up again as Trump Institute.
When the Trump U and Trump Inst scams were investigated by state authorities, Trump made donations to the attorneys general involved, and shockingly enough they then decided not to investigate further.
Then there's the Trump Network, which used a pyramid scheme to try and sell people on a secret (bs) lab, that you would send a urine sample to be analysed so a course of multivitamins could be proscribed.
Then there's Trump Model Management, which asked foreign models to lie to get in to the country where they would work illegally. The models were paid almost nothing and lived in squalor.
Trump makes heavy use of foreign guest workers at his resorts. Getting visas for these workers involves claiming that he can’t find Americans to do the work.
Trump has violated anti-trust laws, resulting in fines in excess of $750,000.
He has now employed Roger Ailes as a senior advisor. Ailes was free to take the job behaviour he'd just been fired from FOX News after being exposed as a serial abuser of women over decades (he was sufficiently notorious in 1968 that Nixon's administration refused to give him a job... Nixon knew this guy was ethically dodgy). Trump sees no problem with this and his happy to give a job to a man who could have molested more than 25 women.


Clinton
Failed to properly secure her emails in her role as Secretary of State.


Truly, how can we seperate these two?

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 djones520 wrote:
We all know that anyone of us who had done what she did, would be in prison today.

Except, as has been pointed out in this thread already, people who did very similar things (including republicans, so this isn't just partisan politics favoring democrats) did not go to prison. You can talk all you want about how seriously classified information is treated, but the indisputable fact is that if you are a high-level government official who is careless with classified information you're probably going to get off with nothing more than a "don't do that again" warning unless you deliberately leaked information.

Exactly, and if you're Cheney, you can get away with deliberately leaking classified information to hurt a political rival. Cheney is responsible for leaking the identity of an intelligence agent simply because his wife publicly disagreed with him.

 skyth wrote:
Exactly, and if you're Cheney, you can get away with deliberately leaking classified information to hurt a political rival. Cheney is responsible for leaking the identity of an intelligence agent simply because his wife publicly disagreed with him.

Gender swap, the CIA agent was the wife, the public dispute was by the husband, who made the shocking, disloyal argument that Hussein hadn't tried to get any uranium from Africa, which of course turned out to be completely true. And it was actually taken seriously, Scooter Libby was made the fall guy to save Cheney, and he ended up getting a 30 month jail sentence. Bush didn't use his full presidential pardon, but did commute the sentence so that Libby never served a day. Incredibly, there was little outrage about this among the usual suspects of the dakka politics threads.

But of course, it all comes back to that notion of 'deliberate'. There was a deliberate decision made to expose Valerie Plame as a CIA agent to punish her husband. 30 months is probably excessive, but a federal penalty does make sense. On the other hand, there seems to be a lot of people* who believe any kind of poor security practice is deserving of federal jail time, and frankly that's just obviously silly. Set your password to "password", three months for you!



*Who all happened to hate Clinton before this began... coincidence!

 djones520 wrote:
A vote for Johnson is a vote that is being cast against Trump. It is also being cast against Clinton. This isn't a set binary solution. Both primary candidates are pieces of gak. One is an extreme narcissist, and the other one should be in court fighting to not spend the rest of her life in prison. There are other options, and it is not a waste exercising your right to not only acknowledge it, but use it.

It's binary in that there's only 2 options that can win it. Vote for neither is vote that has no effect on result.

tneva82 wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
A vote for Johnson is a vote that is being cast against Trump. It is also being cast against Clinton. This isn't a set binary solution. Both primary candidates are pieces of gak. One is an extreme narcissist, and the other one should be in court fighting to not spend the rest of her life in prison. There are other options, and it is not a waste exercising your right to not only acknowledge it, but use it.

It's binary in that there's only 2 options that can win it. Vote for neither is vote that has no effect on result.

Exactly. Voting for anyone but Trump or Clinton is equivalent to staying home on election day. It might preserve your moral high ground of "I didn't vote for either of them", but it's irrational to believe that you have anything to say with that vote.

 d-usa wrote:
And North Korea is setting of another nuke. Let's see how this might shake up the race.

I will make the bold prediction that it will have no impact at all.

 sebster wrote:
But I will speculate further, that most people who are professing disgust that Johnson didn't know what Aleppo was, and couldn't find Syria on a map, are probably not actually running in the election to become President.

Wellllll, neither is Gary Johnson, statistically.

 Easy E wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
And North Korea is setting of another nuke. Let's see how this might shake up the race.

I will make the bold prediction that it will have no impact at all.

Yeah, I think the lines are pretty much drawn already. Pollsters keep talking about the large numbers of undecideds in this race, but that doesn't make any fething sense. I'm sure there are many people who don't like either candidate and probably won't vote at all as a result. But I just can't imagine many people who are motivated to vote are also completely on the fence. These candidates are *wildly* different. Some of those 'undecideds' are in the 'liar's box,' as I once heard it described.

 Sarouan wrote:

 whembly wrote:


My vote has to be fething earned.

I find it highly ironic, since everyone knows here you're a Republican hardcore supporter, no matter what happens. Even when you say you don't vote for Trump, the way you ALWAYS charge Clinton no matter what actually make you going the way of the Republican candidate. Who is Trump.

Honestly, having read you all this time, I highly suspect you will, in the end, vote for Trump. You always show a negative picture on everything Clinton is doing, you are willing to accept any lie told by the Republican "War Machine" - and you absolutely hate Clinton, to the point you even don't care about facts. Everything you're doing here is, eventually, working for the Trump side. You may say otherwise, but your interventions on this topic are quite talking for you.

This isn't a teamsport where we're only faced with two options.

Even as a foreigner, I can tell that's how your voting system actually works. It is technically about voting between two options, in the end.

I'm not saying it is wrong or right. It's a good thing to question it. But like sebster said before, just voting for a third party with actually no real base able to support them is like voting blank - and give strength to the people you actually don't like.

But I highly suspect you hate Clinton more than Trump, so if you can hurt Clinton more, you're perfectly fine with this, even (especially?) if that means Trump is winning. That's the conclusion I've made by reading all your posts here.

Then I'm happy to inform you that your conclusion is incorrect.

I'm neither for Clinton nor for Trump.

I'm perfectly willing to let Republican's electoral chances burn for allowing someone like Trump to take their nomination, EVEN if that helps Hillary Clinton or Democrats. (as if my piddly little vote would decide such a fate).

We *do* have other parties here in the states.

It's a stance that I've taken quite a bit of flack for by other Republican voters (alt Right / Trumpian Cult / GOP fanatics) on other political forums that I participate on... but, nevertheless, I cannot in good conscious vote for either of them.

So, I'm going to say this with more feelings:
I will never vote for Clinton nor for Trump. Since I have this weird idea that in order for me to bitch about my elected officials, then I must participate in the election process... so, where does that leave me?

-Libertarian Party Gary Johnson
-Green Party Jill Stein
-Independent Conservative Evan McMullin

One of those three will be checked when I vote in November.

If you believe I'm throwing my vote away? Go for it.

But, you'll not shame me over my justifications in not voting for either Trump or Clinton.


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 d-usa wrote:
And North Korea is setting of another nuke. Let's see how this might shake up the race.

I can't see how it'll shake things up.

The Korean Peninsula is already in a state of mutually assured destruction.

 whembly wrote:


-Libertarian Party Gary Johnson
-Green Party Jill Stein
-Independent Conservative Evan McMullin

One of those three will be checked when I vote in November.

If you believe I'm throwing my vote away? Go for it.

Voting your conscience is never throwing your vote away. It's not betting, where you win something if your horse wins. If enough people did it, it would surely push one of the parties closer to that agenda and subsume it, or be overtaken by it, and that starts by dropping the idea that you're "throwing your vote away" if you do your part to make the change you believe in.

The only wasted votes are the people who don't show up.

 Ouze wrote:

 whembly wrote:


-Libertarian Party Gary Johnson
-Green Party Jill Stein
-Independent Conservative Evan McMullin

One of those three will be checked when I vote in November.

If you believe I'm throwing my vote away? Go for it.

Voting your conscience is never throwing your vote away. It's not betting, where you win something if your horse wins. If enough people did it, it would surely push one of the parties closer to that agenda and subsume it, or be overtaken by it, and that starts by dropping the idea that you're "throwing your vote away" if you do your part to make the change you believe in.

The only wasted votes are the people who don't show up.

100% agree with you and thanks for putting that into words much better than I did.

 Ouze wrote:
Wellllll, neither is Gary Johnson, statistically.

Is a fair point ,well made


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 Ouze wrote:
Voting your conscience is never throwing your vote away. It's not betting, where you win something if your horse wins. If enough people did it, it would surely push one of the parties closer to that agenda and subsume it, or be overtaken by it, and that starts by dropping the idea that you're "throwing your vote away" if you do your part to make the change you believe in.

The only wasted votes are the people who don't show up.

I think it really depends on how you view the major candidates. If a person truly cannot see any difference between the major candidates, then moving to a third party is sensible.

The issue, of course, is with the fairly ridiculous position that there is no difference between the two major party canddiates. A person may personally dislike Clinton, may even think in another circumstance that breaking security protocols on emails might be quite serious, but it's fething straight up delusional to consider Clinton no different in quality to Trump.

 sebster wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
Voting your conscience is never throwing your vote away. It's not betting, where you win something if your horse wins. If enough people did it, it would surely push one of the parties closer to that agenda and subsume it, or be overtaken by it, and that starts by dropping the idea that you're "throwing your vote away" if you do your part to make the change you believe in.

The only wasted votes are the people who don't show up.

I think it really depends on how you view the major candidates. If a person truly cannot see any difference between the major candidates, then moving to a third party is sensible.

The issue, of course, is with the fairly ridiculous position that there is no difference between the two major party canddiates. A person may personally dislike Clinton, may even think in another circumstance that breaking security protocols on emails might be quite serious, but it's fething straight up delusional to consider Clinton no different in quality to Trump.

I'm not arguing that there's no difference between Trump and Clinton.

They're both bad for COMPLETELY different reasons, in my opinion.

http://m.dailykos.com/story/2016/9/8/1568194/-Multiple-Charities-Tell-WaPo-s-Fahrenthold-They-Didn-t-Receive-Donations-Trump-Fnd-Reported-To-IRS

Apparently a whole bunch of donations that Trump claimed he made on his taxes never actually happened...Now which candidate belongs in jail?

 skyth wrote:
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2016/9/8/1568194/-Multiple-Charities-Tell-WaPo-s-Fahrenthold-They-Didn-t-Receive-Donations-Trump-Fnd-Reported-To-IRS

Apparently a whole bunch of donations that Trump claimed he made on his taxes never actually happened...Now which candidate belongs in jail?

Well, still waiting on the results of that fraud trial he's involved in. I'd put good money down that he's broken laws warranting his imprisonment as well.

I think that unless your core issues are completely off the typical left-right spectrum, it's not really that hard to pick between the two.

Clinton will look to generally expand the role of government, focus on the nation's role in the world, and will appoint liberal judges to all levels of the bench.

Trump will focus heavily on law and order, will focus heavily on domestic policy, and appoint conservative judges.

I know people that have fairly niche core issues, such as ending the role of corporations in society, or on the flip side, people that want no government interference with property rights at all. to those people, both candidates are part of the partisan cabal, and so they see them both as bad,

That being said, it's not hard to figure out which one aligns with your views. It might be a bit tough with Trump because he has so little stated policy, but absent his own views I'm guessing he'll work to advance pretty meat and potatoes republican positions.

OTOH, voting for Johnson, particularly in a Trump loss, sends a very clear message to the GOP that you want less populism, and more libertarianism in your GOP.

In the end, most voters vote pretty strategically. As the nation becomes more polarized, there are fewer "true independents," and what you'll like see are plenty of Johnson voters (from both sides) in states with large margins, and fewer in tighter states.

 Polonius wrote:


OTOH, voting for Johnson, particularly in a Trump loss, sends a very clear message to the GOP that you want less populism, and more libertarianism in your GOP.

This, right here, is my sincere hope.

We'll see if it turns out that way...

 skyth wrote:
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2016/9/8/1568194/-Multiple-Charities-Tell-WaPo-s-Fahrenthold-They-Didn-t-Receive-Donations-Trump-Fnd-Reported-To-IRS

Apparently a whole bunch of donations that Trump claimed he made on his taxes never actually happened...Now which candidate belongs in jail?

When he skipped debates to raise money for vets, he didn't release any donations until the media asked about the fact that he hasn't donated anything yet. So it's nothing new, especially added to the "donated money to a politician via his foundation while claiming the money went to another charity" thing from earlier this week.

 whembly wrote:

 Polonius wrote:


OTOH, voting for Johnson, particularly in a Trump loss, sends a very clear message to the GOP that you want less populism, and more libertarianism in your GOP.

This, right here, is my sincere hope.

We'll see if it turns out that way...

Unless you're also voting for other libertarians down the ballot, then you're just pissing in the wind. You might as well write in Zombie Reagan for all the difference it will matter to the party leadership. They've already written off the third party protest votes for the presidential election as exactly that, and they've already spent the millions in analyzing polling data to prove it. Just stop fooling yourself into thinking voting for Johnson/Stein/etc., while still voting an otherwise straight R or D ticket will make any difference.