text: FINAL Presidential Poll for 2012 - Page 3 - Elections - THE FORUM for Ayn Rand Fans
  Since New Jersey is going to go for Barak the Obamanation I am going to write in a vote for C'thulu.
  I am sick and tired of settling for the lesser of evils. I am voting for the greatest of evils.
  Then why bother to 'vote' at all? Why fight your way through the neo-Carter gas lines and rationing to get to the polls only to make an obscure statement that the vote-counters won't understand, will not count for anything, will do no good for anything, and no one else will see? If you don't take voting seriously then indulge your frustrations here and save yourself the effort of the trip to the polls.
  There may be candidates for other offices and measures on the ballot that are worth voting for or against.
  If someone refuses to vote for the "lesser of two evils" then it doesn't matter that there are other candidates or ballot measures that are worth voting for or against precisely because they are the lesser evil. Being "tired of voting for the lesser of evils" is being tired of reality. It is the only choice we have, like it or not, so it had better be used for what it is for anyone who does not want to accelerate the greatest of the evil. That is what it means to take voting seriously as voting and not some other kind of game as a bitter substitute.
  elliott.ohara 0
  Some conservatives are now better than that and the 'liberals' are now a lot worse, but she sure could have been talking about John McCain four years ago. Remember during the debate season how he and Obama went as guests on a TV show together, outdoing each other oozing support for endless ways to sacrifice?
  Sure, I remember, but her point in the video was that conservatives are religious based Altruist. From my observations, Romney most certainly fits that mold. Yes, a vote for Romney may slow the train a bit, but it will do nothing to promote the morality of capitalism. It may, however, promote the "ends justify the means" altruist version of a mixed economy that Romney promotes.
  @elliott, with Romney we're just trying to stop the total hemorrhaging of freedom caused by the ObaMAO regime.
  BTW, what martial arts are you involved with?
  On another refreshing random note, fortunately not all blacks are Obama drones:
  Been studying Brazillian Jiu Jitsu for about 4 years. Altruists bug you much less when you can choke a buddy at the end of the day!
  It's good one you need to defend yourself against a thug in the New Black Panther Party. I took WIng Chun for a little bit. Never tried BJJ, I bet if you combine BJJ with WC you'd be one bad mofo.
  If you want rapid updates on what's happening tonight, check out Ace of Spades live blogging:
  http://ace.mu.nu/archives/334503.php
  Romney isn't promoting any philosophy. He and Obama are the result. Almost anyone today would state that the basis of morality is religion and sacrifice and no politician who wants to be electable would state otherwise. The only question left for them is what implicit sense of life is guiding them despite that and which wants to impose the least sacrifices. Politics isn't the place to debate philosophy, it is the consequence. You vote for a candidate as one of the usually two possibilities to run the government, not to endorse a philosophy.
  For what it's worth, Townhall seems to be ahead in updating reporting of results: http://townhall.com/election
  This is a serious blow, but the world didn't end tonight.
  On the bright side, and I don't mean this sarcastically, the economy will probably be an unmitigated disaster by the time The Anointed One's term ends. That could be ripe for a rightwing revolution in the polls.
  But "Bush did it". The Republican House is going to be continuously smeared as getting in the way of "progress". When they give in they will still be smeared and the dominant media will spread it. You cannot assume that people can on their own learn what is right from the negative consequences of their own premises and actions. They don't learn that way; they only become accustomed to the new level of general deprivation, while the impact hurts individuals and smaller groups non-uniformly so the worst does not become a political issue. They won't miss what progress never happens because it is suppressed and no one realizes what could have been possible. We will be told again and again that capitalism and freedom caused all the problems so we can't "go back" to that, and most people will keep believing it even if they don't like what they are caught up in.
  Obama isn't the cause of this, he is simply cashing in. You could see it coming. We came very close with the very radical Gore and Kerry, and now a radical agitator demagogue and "organizer" with no productive accomplishments, who can only grab power and destroy, has won twice, despite -- or perhaps because of -- all his off-teleprompter slips and other recordings found that reveal what he is and his nihilistic goals for "fundamental change". Such destruction could not have succeeded without the culture going first.
  Elections didn't all used to depend on only one or two 'swing' states. "Blue creep" has moved across the country for decades, with one state after another falling in progression, making it almost impossible to win national elections against progressives, or state elections within an increasingly large number of states. As this creeps across the country the more radical leftists become more and more emboldened. 'Mainstream' Democrats are now more and more radical leftists. This has become quite apparent in states like Massachusetts and Maine for some time now. It is stunning how entrenched they are. It showed what was coming nationally for anyone who cared to look. There are now several extremely radical left Obama-style statists, not just "liberals", in influential positions in both the House and the Senate, as well as running the administration.
  There has already been a 'right wing revolution at the polls' against this. There is an active movement of highly motivated and largely good people opposing it, but it isn't enough. "Tea Party" election victories are possible only locally, which is why for the most part it has been in the House and not the Senate or nationally. The comprachicos and leftist intellectuals have taken their toll, dominating education and now the media, leaving no way to get through to enough people to make a difference politically. We can only largely talk and be understood among ourselves, with no time or means left to grow beyond a dominated minority.
  With over half the country in this position, it is most likely over -- it is only a matter of time, how long anything can still last, the particular unpredictable pattern of descent, and who is screwed most severely first on the way down.
  "The trouble with saying 'I told you so' is that it means it's too late."
  It's Twilight in America
  ... This is so not the America of 1776. There are still good and great people to be found in this society, and some of them will perhaps still manage to flourish, unless liberty perishes altogether and some kind of a dictatorship takes hold in coming decades. (It certainly can, on our current course, especially with continued debt, deficits and economic decline.)
  I often wonder what's next for this country. Now we know. Half the country is in some form committed to freedom and individual rights, and half committed to the "freedom" to have what they want, actually or potentially provided by others. It seems to me like this is a recipe if not for a civil war, for a steady disintegration of the society and political system we have up until now taken for granted. How much longer can we take it all for granted?
  Obama has won, and it's twilight in America.
  It's not twilight in America because Obama won. Obama won because it was, sadly, already twilight in America.
  But this is worse than being forced to "take care of people". This being run by egalitarian nihilists who were told by an agitator 'community organizer' to vote out of "revenge" and want to drag everyone down to a lowest common denominator in the name of "social justice". This is very dangerous and very ugly.
  Those of us who yearn to think, live self-responsibly and independently must share a society with a plurality of people who would rather force others to take care of them.
  I think it is rationalism to say this because we don't know the motivations for why many independents voted for Obama in the first place. Obviously the diehard leftists are diehard leftists, with all the associated moocher/looter principles on display. But many people I know who voted for Obama, I don't think they did it because they want to mooch; I think it's sincere confusion about what abstract concepts like freedom, liberty, individual rights, etc, actual mean when it comes to practical application in politics. When you couple this sloppy thinking with a media who will obliterate all Republicans while sucking-up to all Democrats, I don't know how you can expect any independents to make any rational decision, especially considering all the brain-washing and lack of education from K-12 schools and Big Education at the college level. The only thing that keeps me sane is that there are far more independents than we realize who will be willing to vote for Republicans if they properly understand the issues, and what is at stake.
  Regardless, people still vote with their feet: Red states are growing, and Blue states have low or negative native population growths and crumbling economies.
  And on a positive note: in terms of local elections some good things happened. Michigan struck down a proposed amendment to put collective bargaining into the state constitution. And that's for a state that leans to the left!
  The comprachicos and leftist intellectuals have taken their toll, dominating education and now the media, leaving no way to get through to enough people to make a difference politically.
  The legacy media is the dinosaur to the internet's asteroid, so on that front I'm optimistic. Many traditional mainstays of TV news have crumbling ratings.
  Education is terrifying. The leftists control the whole thing, from K-12 to the universities. Something has to be done to counter this
  They won't miss what progress never happens because it is suppressed and no one realizes what could have been possible.
  http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkbjvn9ud91qil96wo1_500.jpg
  I agree. The Democrats did not get control of the House so they will not be able to spend us to death all that quickly.
  Also, the U.S. survived the Civil War and a Jimmy Carter administration. All hope is not lost.
  The Democrats did not get control of the House so they will not be able to spend us to death all that quickly.
  The people who were slaughtered in the Civil War did not survive it. Obama's egalitarian nihilism and political appointees are much worse than Carter's malaise. Washington has already 'spent us to death' and this will escalate. The House Republicans have continued to go along with raising the debt limit and will now be further intimidated into 'compromising' more. This is happening quickly. The consequences are irreversible and becoming worse.
  It's not the 2009-2010 Pelosi House, but the ever expanding compromises on ever more radical policies continue to advance and accelerate the statist agenda while the policies already in place, including those like Obama health control not yet implemented, are enforced by the Executive branch.
  The US will "survive" as a place and a country as will every hell-whole elsewhere on earth, but not as what it was and was supposed to be. This is not an academic discussion while we wait until "some day" to change it, it is here now, becoming much worse, and is increasingly hurting people. It matters and should not be dismissed as "oh well, it's not the end of the world".
  "Something"? What? It is entrenched and is undoing the country. This is not a new problem, has no short or medium term solution, and requires some semblance of freedom to last for longer than the country may have left for a long term influence.
  The internet goes around the legacy media, but only to those who read what is relevant. It remains in practice very segmented. You can't reach people who only read something else -- let alone those whose 'education' does not permit them to understand it without extensive remedial explanations addressed to those with the attention span of a flea. The same goes for cable TV stations for even basic news reporting: Fox, such as it is, is more popular but still only reaches a small minority.
  These things are not insurmountable up to a point, but when over half the country repeatedly finds the likes of an Obama most appealing they are deadly.
  People who expect government to provide them with a comfortable life don't think of themselves as moochers; they think it's an entitlement. Of course they are confused. They still believe it. They don't want to work for what they need, they want a "job" on top of a cushion, provided "somehow" through government with images of soaking the undeserving "rich" from somewhere else. In their morality of guilt they feel obliged to vote for welfare statism for the "lower classes" as well as themselves.
  This pertains to everything from professionals in the northeast blue block to the worst of the Obama rabble drooling over free Obamaphones and unable to think beyond that. It includes those "rich" who are milking the system, know they are benefiting from it so don't mind being taxed for what they didn't earn while living in luxury, and are more than eager to keep voting for a political system that provides this setup, The combination of kinds of these supposed "non-moochers" is now over half the country.
  Red states may be growing but they are turning blue in the process. New Hampshire, Ohio, Colorado and others did not used to be "swing states" pushing Democrats into national office. People who move there take their beliefs and voting habits with them. This is reinforced by the educational systems already there.
  There is a net outflow of population from states like Massachusetts -- apparently ordinary people who can't find productive jobs -- but there is still a more prosperous than average economy and standard of living there. It isn't at all "crumbling", like for example, NJ is. But it's largely a consumer economy enjoyed by "professionals" and the political class and those paid to sustain and support them. It includes those in high tech industries around the subsidized universities still allowed to function under some degree of freedom the government hasn't gotten around to attacking yet. (The classic extreme case is the wealth in the "thriving" Washington DC area whose "prosperous economy" consists of serving consumption subsidized by the rest of the country, driven by the privileged political class and those it necessitates, like lobbyists.) Such local economies will not collapse as long as the whole system nationally persists, leaving the beneficiaries quite happy to remain where they are and keep voting for it.
  We will live to fight again on another day. Let us work toward that day.
  I don't think many of them are necessarily "moochers", because there are some key things which don't make sense.
  In this election Obama carried Michigan in the state popular vote.
  However all 6 of the proposals in Michigan got struck down, some of them pretty heavily. Two of these proposals were about giving public workers collective bargaining rights in the state constitution. One of these was to require that 25% of energy come from "green" sources, while mandating a max amount that energy companies could increase their prices. These proposals lost on pretty good margins as far as I'm aware. So apparently the people voted for Obama, but they don't believe in what he stands for?
  Anyone advocating and exploiting government subsidies is a "moocher" to the extent that he exploits it. That includes people who have normal jobs but want more from government and exploit the pressure group welfare statism to get it.
  There is always confusion. No matter how his re-election is explained away as 'confusion', the election and re-election of Obama with the support of over half the country after four years of his America-hating radical left policies, appeals to envy and class warfare division, and the ongoing stagnation of the economy is a new, unprecedented extreme for this country. It would not have happened 25 years ago. This nihilism speaks volumes about the state and direction of the country, not just Obama. Even Obama himself had previously not expected to win if the economy had not improved in terms of "job" statistics. The man is dangerous and his re-election is a significant, very negative milestone that has been passed and probably not reversible.