Voted for Chase Oliver because they both suck and he sucks less (also FL is a Red State now). I do believe we need to convince Justin Amash to actually run for president. Yes he’d have 0% chance of winning, but he would get the values that the Fifdom largely agree with out there.
Also neither major candidate has talked about repealing the Jones Act. Fuck the Jones Act.
Yes. bleep the Jones act. How bout get rid of the EX/IM bank, sugar, alpaca, corn and EV subsidies (ICE subsidies too). While we are at it, how bout no more state/local tax incentives for new businesses, subsidized casinos, or subsidized stadiums.
Policy is so much more important than the stupid horse-trading political chatter.
Every time someone complains about Trump & his surrogates’ disdain for Puerto Rico, I ask, “So has your guy done to end the Jones Act?” To which I get blank stares.
Subordinating truth to politics is a game in which tyrants and bullies always win (a sentiment from Orwell). I grew up really liking Abraham Lincoln and read and learned a lot about him for reasons that I did not fully understand until I got older. He was the first individual of significance politically after the last of the founders, James Madison, had died almost 2 years before in 1838, when Lincoln gave his first significant speech in Springfield Illinois. He wrote about the topic "The perpetuation of our political institutions." He was worried about the sustainment of the Republic without the revolutionaries who had built it to preserve the constitution. It essentially boiled down to ordinary people exercising wisdom and restraint to respect and revere the law, even defending the law when it was unjust until it could be changed. The other point was "Reason-cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason-must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense." In the midst of the abject and unrelenting stupidity of our current political climate and the pathetic options we have for candidates keep in mind that Americans have kept the experimental alive long past the due date of when other Democracies have died. Who has our kind of history? I would never want to live anywhere else in the world. Have a good Tuesday everyone.
Is that the same speech where he worried that without the project of building the Republic, future leaders would focus on building up themselves? The dude got it.
I've decided to show up at my polling location, vote against all of my local Democrat incumbents, leave the presidential vote blank, take off my boot, beat myself over the head with it 8-12 times, and see if that motivates me to vote for either of these absolute turd-loafs.
I relate to a lot of what’s been discussed in the emails, but especially to the last message about the guys not getting drunk enough on air. We need more of that and what better time to start than tonight!
They still need to release the full audio of Matt absolutely hammered after the first debate (I think it was the debate). They gave us a couple clips in the following episode, but we need it all!
If Trump wins I'll send them a bottle from Trump Winery. It's not too far away from where I live. I sent one once before but it was as the lock downs were going into full swing. I fear it (and a lot of other fine booze) got lost in the shuffle :-(
Thanks Matt, what well-written selections and arguments. I'm pleased to count myself among your listeners/e-mailers/chat-ers, most of whom I see as Garrison Keillor once saw all the children of Lake Wobegon: above average :-)
I decided not to vote. I hate Trump and wish he'd never gotten into politics. In his first administration, everything he did seemed like a scam designed for him to pilfer from the government. He betrayed the Kurds with that military pull-out and Turkey immediately invaded. He has a Trump Tower Istanbul, which seems like a perfect opportunity to launder a bribe. Supporting him seems like joining a financially exploitative cult. He's a big, fat turd.
That said, the Dems used how awful he was as an excuse to become awful, themselves. Their never admit fault stance on the race and gender stuff, even as it's costing them voters who supported Biden the last time, needs a slap in the face and a stern, "what the fuck's wrong with you?". Trump can't admit he's ever wrong about anything. If he's an evil madman, why are the people calling him that copying his moves? I think Joseph might have a point in his rationale for voting for Trump that the Dems' positions on things constitute a greater long-term threat than Trump. They're a cult of true believers. At the same time, I can't bring myself to vote for Trump.
I'd have been open to voting for either if they'd offered me anything good enough, but neither is offering a set of policies that seems more good than bad. Both are going to rack up more debt rather than pay off what we owe. The country I live in just elected a Nobel Prize winning physicist as president and we have the choice between a pretend McDonald's French fry cook and an allegedly pretend McDonald's French fry cook. WTF, America?
I say the same thing, it’s almost like the democrats don’t WANT our vote. “Hey we’re going to coronate Kamala even though she can’t even get more than 1% in an open primary.” And “Hey, we’re going to choose leftist Walz instead of the obvious choice of a moderate like Shapiro” and so on. It’s Own Goal central with the Dems. I’m still so salty about their 2020 bullshit I voted for Trump. But fuck him too.
I just joined team kmanguward. New Mexico (where I live) doesn’t allow write-ins, which is a shame because after agonizing over who to vote for through this entire rancid cycle, I decided to vote for Gary Johnson for the sixth time (I voted for him in ‘94, ‘98 [Gov], 2012, 2016 [Prez], and 2018 [Swamp]). Didn’t know about the no write-in rule, so I wasted an hour getting a ballot only to rip it up in disgust. Civic duty done. Beer me.
Let me once again suggest that all elections have an option for "None of the Above". If that gets the most votes, everyone on the current ballot is barred from running again for one cycle, and there's a snap election with a new slate. Continue until someone gets a plurality.
I voted for myself for every office, as I do in every election. I will be waiting breathlessly to see if I won.
That aside, I think both candidates are hot garbage. I'm hoping for maximum gridlock. I'd be fine with Harris winning and the Republicans winning the Senate. I'd also be fine with Trump winning and the Democrats holding the Senate. If I were willing to vote for someone I hate and thought voting strategically made any real difference, I would've voted for Harris since there's a pretty high probability of the Republicans taking the Senate and holding the house.
Definitely want gridlock. I'd have felt fine voting D for president and R elsewhere except that it's just Kamala. Yes, someone has to be the first female president, but her? Awful.
I used to do that until one year my wife convinced a bunch of our friends (and their friends etc.) to write me in for a low level county position in an off year election. I was legitimately worried I was might find myself in office. Never again.
Probably should have voted for RFKJ (on the NM ballot) because if Trump wins, I want RFKJ to look sufficiently disloyal so that he is appointed to no position more significant than a newly created Department of Roadkill.
In response to Ryan's question re: sourcing better candidates, I think the solution is fairly simple: pay them a shit ton of money. Congressmen/women earn $1M/yr, Senators earn $2M. Plus they earn a massive deferred bonus ~5 years down the line if specific metrics are achieved (e.g. GDP growth, inflation, crime rates, reading/math comprehension). Additionally, they should have larger budgets to pay their respective staffs. This is obviously overly simplistic, but the point is to align incentives: incentivize our best and brightest to seek public office and once they’re in office, incentivize them to enact pro-growth policies that have a lasting effect beyond their terms. The problem is that nobody currently in office is incentivized to make this type of change.
More than half of current members of Congress have net worth of more than $1M. Granted, that's not their salary (I imagine a good bit of that is tied up in real estate), and it still leaves half with net worth less than $1M, but I'm not sure money is what's preventing more people from running for Congress. But maybe I'm wrong.
The idea of deferred bonuses is interesting but I do worry that it would lead to policies that inflate those metrics without necessarily making things substantially better.
I think I would prefer approaches that make elections more competitive. There are two many safe incumbents and too many seats that are safe for one party or the other, which shifts competition to the primaries.
While financial incentives are usually a reliable way to incentivize better talent, I'm not sure it translates well to elected offices. State compensation for legislators demonstrates this well I think. The top 5 highest paid legislators are in NY, CA, PA, IL, and AK. I guess I don't know much about Alaska politics, but I don't think NY, CA, PA, and IL are paragons of quality in elected officials. Another way of looking at it, NJ legislators are paid half or less than those in PA and NY despite pretty comparable COL. I don't seem much daylight between the effectiveness of the legislatures in any of those states. I guess Josh Shapiro is on the better end of the spectrum, but the range of base pay between the governors of those three states is significantly less than that of state legislators.
I think state pay is illustrative because that's how most people get to federal office. The problem at the top of the ticket is that good people get filtered out earlier in the process.
I think there are two major barriers (that are well trodden complaints but, I think, worth raising): 1) the cost of running is exorbitantly high even for low level races; and 2) the all or nothing nature of FPTP voting means the risk is exorbitantly high as well. I think if running were free, plenty of good candidates would jump into any given race. Of course, that's not a viable option, I definitely don't think it's a good idea to go the public funding route. So, we're left with reforming how we vote. I think there's a lot of merit to ranked choice voting because it provides a clearer picture of what people actually want. It may not break the two party system, but the increasingly common retreat to stupid extremes could be tempered if the eventual winner is confronted with voters who are voting less strategically and closer to their actual politics. The good ones will read the tea leaves and win and raise through the ranks.
Maybe that's all bullshit, but I'm partial to it at the moment.
Voted for Chase Oliver because they both suck and he sucks less (also FL is a Red State now). I do believe we need to convince Justin Amash to actually run for president. Yes he’d have 0% chance of winning, but he would get the values that the Fifdom largely agree with out there.
Also neither major candidate has talked about repealing the Jones Act. Fuck the Jones Act.
Yes. bleep the Jones act. How bout get rid of the EX/IM bank, sugar, alpaca, corn and EV subsidies (ICE subsidies too). While we are at it, how bout no more state/local tax incentives for new businesses, subsidized casinos, or subsidized stadiums.
Policy is so much more important than the stupid horse-trading political chatter.
#neverTrumpHarrisOliver
Alpaca subsidies?
Lord I don’t need to learn something new today
Yup: thriving industry. They are sold explicitly as tax chicanery.
Holy shit, I just became an alpaca farmer!
Wait till I become president: I'm shutting you down, buster.
(Puts all property in the name of "Buster" the alpaca.)
I have completely forgotten about the Ex/Im bank until now
Every time someone complains about Trump & his surrogates’ disdain for Puerto Rico, I ask, “So has your guy done to end the Jones Act?” To which I get blank stares.
Subordinating truth to politics is a game in which tyrants and bullies always win (a sentiment from Orwell). I grew up really liking Abraham Lincoln and read and learned a lot about him for reasons that I did not fully understand until I got older. He was the first individual of significance politically after the last of the founders, James Madison, had died almost 2 years before in 1838, when Lincoln gave his first significant speech in Springfield Illinois. He wrote about the topic "The perpetuation of our political institutions." He was worried about the sustainment of the Republic without the revolutionaries who had built it to preserve the constitution. It essentially boiled down to ordinary people exercising wisdom and restraint to respect and revere the law, even defending the law when it was unjust until it could be changed. The other point was "Reason-cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason-must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense." In the midst of the abject and unrelenting stupidity of our current political climate and the pathetic options we have for candidates keep in mind that Americans have kept the experimental alive long past the due date of when other Democracies have died. Who has our kind of history? I would never want to live anywhere else in the world. Have a good Tuesday everyone.
Is that the same speech where he worried that without the project of building the Republic, future leaders would focus on building up themselves? The dude got it.
https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/abraham-lincoln-speech-to-the-young-mens-lyceum-of-springfield-1838
"Fruity forcefield" is next-level, Steven.
I've decided to show up at my polling location, vote against all of my local Democrat incumbents, leave the presidential vote blank, take off my boot, beat myself over the head with it 8-12 times, and see if that motivates me to vote for either of these absolute turd-loafs.
I relate to a lot of what’s been discussed in the emails, but especially to the last message about the guys not getting drunk enough on air. We need more of that and what better time to start than tonight!
They still need to release the full audio of Matt absolutely hammered after the first debate (I think it was the debate). They gave us a couple clips in the following episode, but we need it all!
Yes!
If Trump wins I'll send them a bottle from Trump Winery. It's not too far away from where I live. I sent one once before but it was as the lock downs were going into full swing. I fear it (and a lot of other fine booze) got lost in the shuffle :-(
Thanks Matt, what well-written selections and arguments. I'm pleased to count myself among your listeners/e-mailers/chat-ers, most of whom I see as Garrison Keillor once saw all the children of Lake Wobegon: above average :-)
I decided not to vote. I hate Trump and wish he'd never gotten into politics. In his first administration, everything he did seemed like a scam designed for him to pilfer from the government. He betrayed the Kurds with that military pull-out and Turkey immediately invaded. He has a Trump Tower Istanbul, which seems like a perfect opportunity to launder a bribe. Supporting him seems like joining a financially exploitative cult. He's a big, fat turd.
That said, the Dems used how awful he was as an excuse to become awful, themselves. Their never admit fault stance on the race and gender stuff, even as it's costing them voters who supported Biden the last time, needs a slap in the face and a stern, "what the fuck's wrong with you?". Trump can't admit he's ever wrong about anything. If he's an evil madman, why are the people calling him that copying his moves? I think Joseph might have a point in his rationale for voting for Trump that the Dems' positions on things constitute a greater long-term threat than Trump. They're a cult of true believers. At the same time, I can't bring myself to vote for Trump.
I'd have been open to voting for either if they'd offered me anything good enough, but neither is offering a set of policies that seems more good than bad. Both are going to rack up more debt rather than pay off what we owe. The country I live in just elected a Nobel Prize winning physicist as president and we have the choice between a pretend McDonald's French fry cook and an allegedly pretend McDonald's French fry cook. WTF, America?
I say the same thing, it’s almost like the democrats don’t WANT our vote. “Hey we’re going to coronate Kamala even though she can’t even get more than 1% in an open primary.” And “Hey, we’re going to choose leftist Walz instead of the obvious choice of a moderate like Shapiro” and so on. It’s Own Goal central with the Dems. I’m still so salty about their 2020 bullshit I voted for Trump. But fuck him too.
The Democrats don't want the vote of anyone who would consider for even a second voting for someone as odious as Donald Trump.
And that’s how we get four more years of Trump
Is MM going to be with TFP or TFC tonight? The answer to this question will likely be decisive for my viewing/listening decision.
Both. As will Kmele & I. Plus, the latter two of us will also be on Reason w/ Nick Gillespie!
I just joined team kmanguward. New Mexico (where I live) doesn’t allow write-ins, which is a shame because after agonizing over who to vote for through this entire rancid cycle, I decided to vote for Gary Johnson for the sixth time (I voted for him in ‘94, ‘98 [Gov], 2012, 2016 [Prez], and 2018 [Swamp]). Didn’t know about the no write-in rule, so I wasted an hour getting a ballot only to rip it up in disgust. Civic duty done. Beer me.
Let me once again suggest that all elections have an option for "None of the Above". If that gets the most votes, everyone on the current ballot is barred from running again for one cycle, and there's a snap election with a new slate. Continue until someone gets a plurality.
I voted for myself for every office, as I do in every election. I will be waiting breathlessly to see if I won.
That aside, I think both candidates are hot garbage. I'm hoping for maximum gridlock. I'd be fine with Harris winning and the Republicans winning the Senate. I'd also be fine with Trump winning and the Democrats holding the Senate. If I were willing to vote for someone I hate and thought voting strategically made any real difference, I would've voted for Harris since there's a pretty high probability of the Republicans taking the Senate and holding the house.
Definitely want gridlock. I'd have felt fine voting D for president and R elsewhere except that it's just Kamala. Yes, someone has to be the first female president, but her? Awful.
The Prophet Iannucci exacts his revenge on the naughty, naughty colonies.
I used to do that until one year my wife convinced a bunch of our friends (and their friends etc.) to write me in for a low level county position in an off year election. I was legitimately worried I was might find myself in office. Never again.
Office? Or did you mean orifice?
Probably should have voted for RFKJ (on the NM ballot) because if Trump wins, I want RFKJ to look sufficiently disloyal so that he is appointed to no position more significant than a newly created Department of Roadkill.
He was born for that job, honestly.
I can’t let him take my fluoride, my teeth are bad enough already.
Steven’s email brought a huge smile to my face!! Hilariously written. 😃
Read up on Abdominoperineal resection before you go making asshole possession accusations.
In response to Ryan's question re: sourcing better candidates, I think the solution is fairly simple: pay them a shit ton of money. Congressmen/women earn $1M/yr, Senators earn $2M. Plus they earn a massive deferred bonus ~5 years down the line if specific metrics are achieved (e.g. GDP growth, inflation, crime rates, reading/math comprehension). Additionally, they should have larger budgets to pay their respective staffs. This is obviously overly simplistic, but the point is to align incentives: incentivize our best and brightest to seek public office and once they’re in office, incentivize them to enact pro-growth policies that have a lasting effect beyond their terms. The problem is that nobody currently in office is incentivized to make this type of change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_members_of_the_United_States_Congress_by_wealth
More than half of current members of Congress have net worth of more than $1M. Granted, that's not their salary (I imagine a good bit of that is tied up in real estate), and it still leaves half with net worth less than $1M, but I'm not sure money is what's preventing more people from running for Congress. But maybe I'm wrong.
The idea of deferred bonuses is interesting but I do worry that it would lead to policies that inflate those metrics without necessarily making things substantially better.
I think I would prefer approaches that make elections more competitive. There are two many safe incumbents and too many seats that are safe for one party or the other, which shifts competition to the primaries.
While financial incentives are usually a reliable way to incentivize better talent, I'm not sure it translates well to elected offices. State compensation for legislators demonstrates this well I think. The top 5 highest paid legislators are in NY, CA, PA, IL, and AK. I guess I don't know much about Alaska politics, but I don't think NY, CA, PA, and IL are paragons of quality in elected officials. Another way of looking at it, NJ legislators are paid half or less than those in PA and NY despite pretty comparable COL. I don't seem much daylight between the effectiveness of the legislatures in any of those states. I guess Josh Shapiro is on the better end of the spectrum, but the range of base pay between the governors of those three states is significantly less than that of state legislators.
I think state pay is illustrative because that's how most people get to federal office. The problem at the top of the ticket is that good people get filtered out earlier in the process.
I think there are two major barriers (that are well trodden complaints but, I think, worth raising): 1) the cost of running is exorbitantly high even for low level races; and 2) the all or nothing nature of FPTP voting means the risk is exorbitantly high as well. I think if running were free, plenty of good candidates would jump into any given race. Of course, that's not a viable option, I definitely don't think it's a good idea to go the public funding route. So, we're left with reforming how we vote. I think there's a lot of merit to ranked choice voting because it provides a clearer picture of what people actually want. It may not break the two party system, but the increasingly common retreat to stupid extremes could be tempered if the eventual winner is confronted with voters who are voting less strategically and closer to their actual politics. The good ones will read the tea leaves and win and raise through the ranks.
Maybe that's all bullshit, but I'm partial to it at the moment.
Where did you get this picture of me from Matt?
Waiter! duck à l'orange with a side of crushed coconut, please.