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The upcoming SCOTUS appointments will impact multiple generations at a time in our country's history where there is zero moral compass. I for one, with two young girls, am not voting for myself, but for them. The lower federal court system has been sharply moved left under Obama and the SCOTUS is the only thing left that can counteract that.

"Trump is an ill prepared, unstable, impulsive, unprincipled, self serving and promoting fraud with no experience whatsoever"
Principle should one area where you fail. Look at yourself. Look in the mirror. You see a miserable ill prepared, unstable, impulsive, unprincipled, self-serving human being. Who has no clue--just spit out words.
Meaningless words that sound good to you. "Unprincipled" You are unprincipled, but now you throw that word around and claim that the person you don't like is unprincipled.
You are a pathetic person.

One will be president--that's all that matters.

frankiel has Trump down to a T - if you can't see that, then you haven't paid much attention to his rise in the R party and you are high on Martian drugs.

even if he's right. My statement still stands

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Those DO add up to justify voting for Trump - easily.

this way? I am picking the one who's views are more along the lines as mine.

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creating an incentive for people in the next election to find an alternative candidate, you know one like Bernie Sanders, who was never a democrat until he realized he could get more votes that way because of all the immature college students or irresponsible others who want everything for free.

Neither is acceptable.

you are failing because you are never right. By voting for neither you are voting for Hillary. Pure and simple.
You can rant on about how principled you are. (I suspect you are not) But make no mistake, when you vote for neither, you are in fact voting for Hillary.

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is you are overwhelmed with all issues fed by media. You know too much, but your mind is not well-organized to allow you to prioritize those issues. You can't figure out the order of your needs or of what you don't need.

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Of course there is. For example if there is a candidate who in all respects comports with my economic and social views, and will appoint nobody but conservative judges, but is for mandatory euthanasia of terminally ill people, and he or she is running against a dyed in the wool communist who I think would bankrupt the society in general and my family in particular, I can't vote for either even though the first candidate is in almost all respects far superior and aguably far the lesser of the evils to society at large. However, morally, I can't go there.

I know that Putin lovers like you may have a hard time with that concept but there it is.

I agree that at some point, the evil of the two choices could be so bad that it would seem that we are morally obligated not to vote for either. But, I don't think we are there yet.

Hillary is for euthanasia of the very young, so I can't vote for her.

But, Trump doesn't support anything bad other than enforcing our immigration laws. I strongly doubt he will have SS troops going house to house looking for Mexicans. But, he might enforce the immigration laws against companies who employ illegal immigrants, you know, like Bill Clinton did in the 1990's.

So there's nothing wrong with protectionist trade policies or calling into question our commitment to NATO, among other things. So much for the traditional Republican platform.

And I think you should read the transcript of his speech last night before you make the SS comment.

There may be things "wrong with protectionist trade policies," but I'd hardly call them evil or immoral.

"Questioning our commitment to NATO," ... actually, he questioned other NATO members' commitment to NATO, and said if they don't step up, we may reduce our commitment to their level of commitment. Right are wrong, that is hardly an evil or immoral thing to do in peace time.

"[T]raditional Republican platform," ... who cares about that? Certainly not Trump. Certainly not you. Either way, setting that aside is not evil or immoral, or HIllary would be the most evil person in the election.

"And I think you should read the transcript of his speech last night before you make the SS comment." I will. I admit I didn't get to listen to it. Did he say he would go house to house?

I remember in the 90's the Clinton administration raiding construction sites, gathering up illegal aliens and taking them to the border. Companies had to certify that their workers were not illegal aliens, or they faced fines. I remember having to certify that I was a citizen when I applied for jobs. Enforce that rule, and provide entitlements only to citizens, and the situation will solve itself. No round up is needed. They will round themselves up.

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You think I'm drawing a distinction that I am not. Feel free to read those words as meaning the same thing if you think I'm trying to trick you.

I essentially agree with you that it has to be something very fundamentally wrong with both to take the position. The hypothetical shows that with both candidates.

Hillary is obvious as to what's wrong. Don, I do perceive as a threat to the system and as unqualified for all of the reasons stated previously. There isn't a lesser evil there enough for me to vote for either.

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Obama at least had experience in state government and four years in the Senate.

Trump has zero experience at any level of govt.

Obama also taught con law in law school. Trump doesn't even know how many articles are in it.

At least, he didn't teach what most people think of when you say "Constitutional Law." He taught things like "Current Issues of Racism and the Law" and "Voter Rights." Sure, those courses touch on Constitutional Law, but as far as I can tell, he never taught the basic Con Law courses. I think calling him a "Con Law professor" is meant to make his work at UC more grandiose than what it was. I'm not denigrating his work there; I'm just calling it what it is.

He did get promoted from adjunct to "senior lecturer," but he was always part time. (I'm not sure what the difference is, since they are both part time positions. Perhaps one pays more, or guarantees more classes? Who knows.)

He was barely a senator before he started running for President. He was a state senator, though.

I give more credit to running and owning a company, than I do his other experience.

To each their own.

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You seem to be happy in your ignorance, but let me offer an analogy for you:

Suppose I am talking to a group of veterans, and I say, "Yeah, I was in Iraq, too." They would take it to mean that I fought in Iraq with the military. If they later find out that I took a vacation there 10 years before the war started, they will feel mislead. Sure, I can sit back and smugly point out that technically I didn't lie to them. But, I think in this a-political example, you would agree that I did mislead them anyway. That is the only point I'm making. Perhaps technically Obama taught constitutional law (just like I was in Iraq), but both examples are nonetheless misleading.

It would not be a stretch or misleading to say I taught con law there. That's pretty much what that course is. Much different than suggesting that vacationing in Iraq constitutes military service there.

Again, I'd be interested to hear what other lawyers have to say. If someone told you, "I teach Con Law," what would you think?

An upper level race and discrination course that you prolly need con law I and II to take is clearly teaching con law. That's almost entirely what that course is.

He was elected to the senate in 2004. Served from 1/05 through 11/08. Four years service.

He did teach con law. Never said he was a prof. Although apparently, UC so considered him to be.


Link: http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/obama-a-constitutional-law-professor/

I think you are a lawyer, no? If I'm at a cocktail party, and I meet someone, and they say, "I teach Con Law at the University of Chicago School of Law," without further elaboration, then I assume they mean "Constitutional Law" which is a class that all lawyers are required to take as 1L's (first year law students) and which are taught by full professors, not adjunct or part time professors. I don't assume they mean a seminar on voting rights, or race and the law, or whatever, which are elective courses usually taught by part time professors. If I found out the truth later, I would assume that this person was trying to trick me and impress me by giving an impression that they were more important at the law school than they really are.

That link doesn't actually say what the courses were that he taught. It just uses the general language which is misleading. When I did the research, it turned out that he did not teach Con Law. Granted, it is possible that my brief Internet research is wrong. But, the link you provided does not say that I am wrong.

Also, I said he was in office for a year before he started running for president. Maybe it was 18 months.

He clearly had four years of service before being elected. He also had over 700 days before he announced.

You also know he has far more experience with and knowledge of the Constitution than Trump. I don't know if he actually taught con law 1 or seminars that deal with constitutional law. He did teach the subject at law school and was editor of law review at Harvard.

The gist of what I said is far more accurate than the gist of what you said on the subject.

First day in office in the Senate: January 3, 2005.

He announced his candidacy on February 10, 2007.

So, I was wrong. He had 24 months in office before running, not 18 or 12.

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Of course I know Obama had far more experience with and knowledge of the Constitution than Trump. I never said otherwise, and I never tried to give that impression. I'm not sure how you could have gotten that from my posts.

This is not misleading. He had that service when he assumed the presidency.

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He's a first term senator that's never there.

Ned used to be a good poster. Now he's another partisan hack.

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this question? Since it seems you truly have difficulty to see who is the more evil one based on your moral standard and therefore both Hilary and Trump are equally unacceptable to you, my question to you is: Can you tell which evil is more powerful now? Both Nazism and communism were evils back to 1930s. But obviously we all agree Nazism (Third Reich) was more powerful than communism then, right? Similarly, please tell us who of two evils you think currently is more powerful?

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Trump is worse.

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That will be one nickel.

of unacceptable of the Two"

What kind of mind produces that gibberish?

Perhaps a small one but it's there.

I also cannot put his finger on the nuclear trigger.

That simple.

Missed opportunity.

Although, maybe today's voters don't even know what a nuclear bomb can do. We haven't detonated one in, what, 25 years? Who knows if they even work anymore? It was old technology in 1991 when the last underground test was made. You probably don't have to worry about the nuclear trigger anymore.

LBJ wasn't one to miss an opportunity.

We were taught, in middle school, to drop and hide under our maple desks, in the event of a Russian nuke...

Talk about social engineering!

done if we actually got nuked."

Being under a desk may help. Being low may help....may shield you from glass and other blast wave projectiles, not to mention initial radiation. You may be just outside the 100% kill zone, and every bit of stone and metal you get between you and the blast, between you and the radiation, between you and falling building materials...it all helps.

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When you see the flash, fall towards the flash, face down, top of your helmet towards the flash, hands under your head covering your face, heels together with the insides of your feet flat against the ground (low profile, mind you).

Seemed kind of funny at the same time. But, you have to play the odds, right? This guy survived two bombs. He was on a business trip to Hiroshima. That didn't work out well, so he went home...to Nagasaki. Bad luck, and yet, he survived both.


Link: Tsutomu Yamaguchi

The most important way US elections are rigged is not voter disenfranchisement, touch screen voting machines or tampered software in ballot scanners, but media manipulation of public consciousness about the candidates.

The 2008 "election" was a choice between the Rockefeller Republicans and the neo-cons, between the Council on Foreign Relations (Biden) and the American Enterprise Institute (McCain), between the old guard of foreign policy and the crazies.

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.
-- Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in our Time
(one of Bill Clinton's teachers at Georgetown University)

Republicans play hard ball and the Democrats play hardly have balls.
-- Swami Beyondananda

Yes there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats. One has no heart and the other has no has no spine. But they both work for the same crime syndicate.
-- Joe Bageant, November 20, 2009, One party has no heart, the other no spine

"'Bipartisan' usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out."
-- George Carlin

Give the people a choice between a Republican and a Democrat who talks like a Republican and they'll choose the Republican every time.
-- Harry S. Truman

Corrupted by wealth and power, your government is like a restaurant with only one dish. They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side. But no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen.
-- Huey Long

It is my belief that since the JFK assassination the secret government, the CIA and the [Military Industrial Complex], have been running the show. They have not allowed anyone to become president, from either party, that was not under their control.
-- Bruce Gagnon, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space

I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.
-- Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, about Chile prior to the CIA overthrow of the democratically elected government of socialist President Salvadore Allende in 1973

Eggsactly

If we couldn't morally choose the lesser of two evils in a binary election (which our is), then Catholics would have to sit on the sidelines in every election, most probably, and that would be a morally perverse outcome.

Regarding the candidates: Hillary is corrupt. Trump is an un-PC executive. Johnson is not a choice.

Hillary: Mostly, I want to stop her from corrupting the system and making money off of her public service while driving the country into the crapper.

Trump: In my experience, being a good executive does not often correlate to being likeable. One of the best CEO's I've known personally would not be much more likeable than Trump as a person. He was funny at a company dinner (usually very un-PC, proabably because he was CEO and he could be, so he was), but he could be a challenge on a personal level. And yet, I would let him run my company any day. The guy could process information; he was flexible (non-dogmatic), but he was decisive. He understood risk: he could weigh it and adjust to it, but he was never paralyzed by it. Trump strikes me as very similar to that guy. His dogma, to the extent he had it, was dogma about managing people and operations, not dogma about specific outcomes (other than successful outcomes). This approach is foreign to politicians.

Johnson: Unless and until Johnson gets on the debate stage, he is a non-starter in this discussion. I don't begrudge anyone who decides to vote for him as an exercise of their free choice; but he doesn't enter the morality equation until he has a chance to win. Amazingly (given the other two candidates), he doesn't.

The question is at some point is there a situation were both electable candidates are not acceptable, and there isn't a lesser of evils situation? If so, where is that point for you.

For example respond to my hypothetical to Stalin above.

Keeping him out of the Oval Office is a vital national interest. It's hard for me to think of a major candidate who would not get my vote in a matchup against Trump. Nixon? Absolutely. Romney, Dukakis, Bush 1 and 2? No question.

It might be the lesser of two evils, but one evil is significantly lesser.

These two are also the most Nixonesque since that time.

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Whether you like the way he did it or not, he ended the Viet Nam war Johnson gave him. He opened up relations with China, which, until they started their current militaristic bullshit was a good thing. He started the EPA which, before they became enviroNazis did a lot to force industry to clean up their act. He didn't whine and moan when Kennedy stole the election. Was Watergate and his enemies list despicable? Yes. Was it worse than Obama's criminal use of the IRS to punish his political enemies? No.

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In Nixon's case that he didn't believe in the Constitution and was willing to commit criminal acts mostly in the coverup to keep office. By the way one of his more minor offenses was the use of the IRS against enemies.

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Link: http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/stalin.htm

Koba's flaws may have been greater but so were his achievements.

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You have a purely subjective view of Trump as a demagogue, which is embarassing in and of itself because you have let MSNBC and CNN spoonfeed you their point of view.

I wrote-in my vote in 2008 and wound up with Obama, who sucks on toast.

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He does, however, have ears and has heard the things that Trump has said.

I hear the same word over and over, and most people don't know what it means. I know no one who is enthralled with Trump to the point they will wash his feet. The only people I know who support him do it because he has vastly better ideas on how to run the country than the Beast. The NeverTrumpers cower in the corner, complaining about Trump's personality and tweets, while he has done an outstanding job attacking the systemic racism in the Democratic party towards blacks, explaining how he will repatriate overseas profits and get investment in America moving again, how he will strengthen trade agreements, how he will actually install a borderI(!), and how he will appoint the right judges. It is amazing to me that NeverTrumpers are willing to sacrifice all of that over his personality, and I can only conclude that they're paranoid.

I can't wait for the complaints of the media and George Soros stealing the election from him as he gets waxed.

who failed to unify behind the Party's nominee. The fact that Jeb, Mitt, Ted, John, and others have withheld their support is unforgiveable. The Party ceases to be a Party if it cannot unite behind who the voters chose. If Jeb or John win the nom in 4 years, why should Trump supporters stand with them? They can go f themselves.

I am not fighting a good fight or whatever you call it. Just calling out those people who have the wrong thinking.

The other conservative with strong support in the primaries, Rubio is at best giving him lip service.

This isn't just moderates like me. Tells you something when all wings of the party despise him that badly.

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They agree with his positions, but they still won't support him because they do not like him. And that is not a sufficient reason to allow the country to continue to spiral into weakness.

Hey look, I can sit in my house with my Beretta and feel safe and talk about my "principles," but I want a better country for my children. Allowing the Beast to be elected is not the way to go about that.

It's not ideology so much, but rather fitness for duty.

He's been handling money and building buildings all his life, so he certainly has experience working with the government. What kind of qualifications are you looking for?

As far a "fitness," fine, the lawsuits are ridiculous. Comments have been stupid. There have been bad campaign missteps. If that is what is getting the NeverTrumpers upset, then nothing will change their mind, and they can welcome the Beast.

He also has no real idea of how govt operates and no interest in finding out. I doubt he understands basic eighth grade civics about the operation of each branch and what's in the Constitution.

He also has no core principles or beliefs. To the extent he has any minimal ones, they tend toward the left. In and of itself that's not disqualifying. He is impulsive and lacks mature judgment. He is also petty and vindictive to the nth degree. He is not good at details or organization. He's not a great businessman. He is a great real estate idea guy and developer. There is a big difference between those two. He is also a great self promoter and reality TV guy. None of these skills equal a chief executive of the most powerful nation on earth. The things you mention about him are simply visible symptoms and evidence of this.

Finally, he will demagogue up any issue simply to get elected. He no more believes this immigration crap than I do. Historically, he's been a moderate on the subject who took Romney to task over it in 2012. The fact he will say anything to get elected is very disturbing when coupled with the above.

In short, he's unqualified.

He also has no real idea of how govt operates and no interest in finding out. I doubt he understands basic eighth grade civics about the operation of each branch and what's in the Constitution. -- He knew what judges should be on his shortlist. He has more than an idea. He also has help in Pence to deal with Congress.

He also has no core principles or beliefs. To the extent he has any minimal ones, they tend toward the left. -- See the judges he listed. Also understand that centrist views are historically American views and he will be effective at making progress on a host of issues because of his centrism. I am actually glad to see you figured out he's a centrist.

In and of itself that's not disqualifying. He is impulsive and lacks mature judgment. He is also petty and vindictive to the nth degree. He is not good at details or organization. He's not a great businessman. He is a great real estate idea guy and developer. There is a big difference between those two. He is also a great self promoter and reality TV guy. None of these skills equal a chief executive of the most powerful nation on earth. The things you mention about him are simply visible symptoms and evidence of this. -- Personality issues mostly, can't argue with you there. Not a big enough reason to not vote for him.

Finally, he will demagogue up any issue simply to get elected. He no more believes this immigration crap than I do. Historically, he's been a moderate on the subject who took Romney to task over it in 2012. The fact he will say anything to get elected is very disturbing when coupled with the above. -- He's already working with Mexico. We need a border and we need to deport people who come here and commit crimes. Those are his minimum planks, and it's a good start.

In short, he's unqualified.

and expresses some doubt about their safety.

And Jill Stein is a loon.

I may write in someone.

Who knows. Not the looniest thing by far coming out of this race for sure.

Fortunately, it's a pure protest vote.

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I attended a Libertarian "rally" for him way back when. He spoke and then accepted questions. The most extreme libertarians started tearing him down for not being radical enough. I was fascinated by it. There are always the extremists within any party that have to be pleased, I guess.

Johnson is personally quirky. Amazing he got as far as he did as a GOP politician in a bluish state.

They are like Ralph Nader and Ron Paul. Everyone agrees with a few things they say, and don't like the rest.

When I was a Libertarian (capital "L"), I always thought people (even Libertarians) had a higher standard to be a Libertarian than they imposed on people who called themselves Democrats or Republicans, and yet didn't embrace the party platforms 100%. Disagreeing with the Libertarian Party on a few issues is not a bar, and should not be a bar, to being a Libertarian or voting for one...just like with R's and D's.

As it is, every time a Libertarian would get some traction (more than 1%), the media would start grilling them on prostitution (a major issue for the presidency in the eyes of the media, apparently). "See, they are looneys! They love prostitution."

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