Barry's Bar

[Barry Goldwater]

@Dan You and me both, man. I believe the American public crucifying Rubio for his robotic meltdown in the lead-up to the NH primary, while continuing to boost Trump to higher heights despite (or even BECAUSE OF) him saying much worse things on a near-daily basis, is yet another of many signs that our collective intelligence has been nosediving for a while, and it ain't just because I voted for him in the VA primary. Now we've more or less thrown away an eminently winnable election against the weakest & most disliked Democratic candidate in like 30 years As far as I'm concerned, the only way the GOP can salvage this situation (and my vote, at least) is if the delegates remember that ours is the party of constitutional republicanism and not mob rule, revolt & show Trump the door at the convention - considering his ongoing crash in the very same polls he loves so much, they could nominate a ham sandwich at the convention and it'd still probably do better than he does by November. Even if the Trumpeters leaving en masse leads to a Republican defeat anyway I'd rather we lose with dignity than lose with Trump, the latter of which is pretty much inevitable now that he's proven he has no way or even any remote desire to appeal to anyone outside of his xenophobic blue-collar & alt-right base.

@BF I suppose this means a second Scottish referendum and even Irish reunification are back on the table. I don't really have a dog in the fight since obviously I'm not British, though as a guy who values patriotism & national autonomy I guess I'd lean towards the Brexit - but I hope its proponents were aware of its flaws as they headed to the ballot box, including the risk that they might be rupturing two unions instead of one. This really is a year for unexpected & far-reaching developments in politics all over the world.

Edit: Then again, as a proponent of patriotism & national autonomy I also don't have an issue with a 2nd Scottish referendum or Irish reunification (and I know quite a few relatives who would be immensely happy if the latter occurs), so yeah

[Dan the Man]

@Dan You and me both, man. I believe the American public crucifying Rubio for his robotic meltdown in the lead-up to the NH primary, while continuing to boost Trump to higher heights despite (or even BECAUSE OF) him saying much worse things on a near-daily basis, is yet another of many signs that our collective intelligence has been nosediving for a while, and it ain't just because I voted for him in the VA primary. Now we've more or less thrown away an eminently winnable election against the weakest & most disliked Democratic candidate in like 30 years As far as I'm concerned, the only way the GOP can salvage this situation (and my vote, at least) is if the delegates remember that ours is the party of constitutional republicanism and not mob rule, revolt & show Trump the door at the convention - considering his ongoing crash in the very same polls he loves so much, they could nominate a ham sandwich at the convention and it'd still probably do better than he does by November. Even if the Trumpeters leaving en masse leads to a Republican defeat anyway I'd rather we lose with dignity than lose with Trump, the latter of which is pretty much inevitable now that he's proven he has no way or even any remote desire to appeal to anyone outside of his xenophobic blue-collar & alt-right base.

I would fear greatly for the future of our country under both of their administrations. I've heard people tell me not voting for Clinton is the same as voting for Trump (and vice versa) and I so resent that entire sentiment. I have friends who support both candidates, and when a Clinton supporter asked me why I would never vote for her I said "well, for one thing she's not pro-life and I won't ever vote for a pro-choice candidate." Her response was: "But I thought she was pro-life." Hillary Clinton, the woman who said a just a year ago that religious codes need to change to allow for abortion, is apparently pro-life. Who'da thunk it. These are the kinds of people who are going to go to the polls and vote without really knowing a damn thing about either candidate except how he/she makes them feel. Who gives a crap about policy, anyway?

On the Trump side, most of the people I know who support him love the fact that he doesn't care about being politically correct, and that the SJWs hate him. They're voting for him purely in the interest of pushing back against the radical leftist machine in this country. I can sympathize with that, but electing an ignorant bully like Donald Trump is not the way to do it. His meeting with a few hundred Evangelical leaders a couple days ago was also pretty damn dismaying. Wolves in sheep's clothing and/or sellouts, every single one of them. Trump's great real-estate empire has led him to own and make money off of about 4 strip-clubs: How they can turn a blind-eye to the fact that this makes him a profiteer from vice, and also compare what he has done to the sins of Biblical heroes like King David, is totally beyond me. Watching so many members the conservative establishment scatter like cockroaches to back Trump has been vomit-inducing. I don't think there's going to be any great revolt against him at the convention, unfortunately. If that was going to happen, I think Paul Ryan would have been a little more outward about opposing him. Certain party leaders aren't endorsing him, but they aren't standing up to him either - and I don't blame them because that's not the way the political stream is flowing at the moment.

I have a lot of thoughts on this. Very few of them are positive.

@BF I suppose this means a second Scottish referendum and even Irish reunification are back on the table. I don't really have a dog in the fight since obviously I'm not British, though as a guy who values patriotism & national autonomy I guess I'd lean towards the Brexit - but I hope its proponents were aware of its flaws as they headed to the ballot box, including the risk that they might be rupturing two unions instead of one. This really is a year for unexpected & far-reaching developments in politics all over the world.

Edit: Then again, as a proponent of patriotism & national autonomy I also don't have an issue with a 2nd Scottish referendum or Irish reunification (and I know quite a few relatives who would be immensely happy if the latter occurs), so yeah

This is pretty much how I feel about it too. I'm not one to tell somebody else how to run their country, we've established that mine has enough problems of its own , but as far as I'm concerned London should be allowed to govern its own affairs without input from Paris, Brussels, Berlin, etc. Agree or disagree, history was made today. I'm interested to see what the future may hold. Also somehow, somewhere, Charlemagne - recalling his dream of a unified Europe - is rolling in his grave...and I am absolutely okay with that.

[Pericles of Athens]

In reference to the British voting to leave the EU.. Tiocfaidh ar la, if any good can come of this it's unification of the Emerald Isles and a resurgence of Scotish nationalism. What's good for the English isn't good for Scotland and even Northern Ireland.

As as for the elections.. Trump is a criminal, Hillary is a criminal, and I'm voting for Jill. the system.

[Dirty Chai]

On one hand, I like ethnic groups having their own autonomy, but on the other hand, the downfall of a system that collectively makes friends of the European nations and actively helps in an umbrella sense.. makes me sad. That said, no ethnic groups were losing autonomy under the EU... "Brussels" only dictated what codes would be used in EU nations for items traded between them, such as eggs at the market.

EDIT: The big thing is that, yeah independence romanticism is nice, but they actually just made their nation weaker, not stronger. Their influence on Europe will dwindle. They will be economically on their own. They'll have to renegotiate every trade deal. It could possibly never really recover for a couple decades at least. Meanwhile if you look at the voting numbers, it was largely rural baby boomers who voted to Leave while their children in London all face-palmed when the results came out and they got screwed over by their grandparents. London will no longer be the financial stronghold it was under the EU. And in the coming decades, it will be younger generations dealing with the consequences, not the baby boomers who made up the majority demigraphic who voted to Leave (because they'll retired now and starting to die off).

[Barry Goldwater]

I would fear greatly for the future of our country under both of their administrations. I've heard people tell me not voting for Clinton is the same as voting for Trump (and vice versa) and I so resent that entire sentiment. I have friends who support both candidates, and when a Clinton supporter asked me why I would never vote for her I said "well, for one thing she's not pro-life and I won't ever vote for a pro-choice candidate." Her response was: "But I thought she was pro-life." Hillary Clinton, the woman who said a just a year ago that religious codes need to change to allow for abortion, is apparently pro-life. Who'da thunk it. These are the kinds of people who are going to go to the polls and vote without really knowing a damn thing about either candidate except how he/she makes them feel. Who gives a crap about policy, anyway?

On the Trump side, most of the people I know who support him love the fact that he doesn't care about being politically correct, and that the SJWs hate him. They're voting for him purely in the interest of pushing back against the radical leftist machine in this country. I can sympathize with that, but electing an ignorant bully like Donald Trump is not the way to do it. His meeting with a few hundred Evangelical leaders a couple days ago was also pretty damn dismaying. Wolves in sheep's clothing and/or sellouts, every single one of them. Trump's great real-estate empire has led him to own and make money off of about 4 strip-clubs: How they can turn a blind-eye to the fact that this makes him a profiteer from vice, and also compare what he has done to the sins of Biblical heroes like King David, is totally beyond me. Watching so many members the conservative establishment scatter like cockroaches to back Trump has been vomit-inducing. I don't think there's going to be any great revolt against him at the convention, unfortunately. If that was going to happen, I think Paul Ryan would have been a little more outward about opposing him. Certain party leaders aren't endorsing him, but they aren't standing up to him either - and I don't blame them because that's not the way the political stream is flowing at the moment.

I have a lot of thoughts on this. Very few of them are positive.


This is pretty much how I feel about it too. I'm not one to tell somebody else how to run their country, we've established that mine has enough problems of its own , but as far as I'm concerned London should be allowed to govern its own affairs without input from Paris, Brussels, Berlin, etc. Agree or disagree, history was made today. I'm interested to see what the future may hold. Also somehow, somewhere, Charlemagne - recalling his dream of a unified Europe - is rolling in his grave...and I am absolutely okay with that.

To repeat a point I once made while chatting with Agg: if I may don my tinfoil hat for a mo' and believe that there exists a nefarious Illuminati-esque conspiracy out to undermine our faith in America's constitutional republican democracy, I cannot think of a better way to do that than this current election cycle. Whether it's the godawful candidates we ended up with, or the childish and willfully ignorant (at this point I refuse to believe anyone can take even a cursory look at Clinton or Trump's record and not realize that they're both monstrously crooked & unfit for office, especially since pretty much all of that information is one Google search away these days) electorate responsible for their ascension, I think I can safely say our system's hit its lowest point in at least 25 years. Of course, whenever I am tempted to actually consider embracing autocracy history is quick to slap me in the face with tons of examples of that going to pot, not to mention the realization that I could hardly condemn smug latte-liberals who think us conservatives are too stupid to breathe if I were to believe that, heh. But just the fact that that thought's crossed my mind is, in my opinion at least, a sign that our country's really slid deep into the gutter. I would at least welcome the delegates dumping Trump at the convention, the Trumpeters' plurality be damned - something that I could not have fathomed believing to be a good idea way back last year, when this was just beginning - since the GOP is ultimately a private organization and the whole point of the American constitutional republicanism it claims to champion is to slam the brakes on the people's will when said people want to do something stupid and/or tyrannical, though I do recognize that it's a longshot.

Concerning Trump's own success in spite of basically everything he's said and done, I too sympathize with the 'stick it to the SJWs' crowd, but I see no point to defeating political correctness if all we're gonna do is replace it with a new brand of PC-ness tailored to our political wing: Trump himself really doesn't take criticism or even hard questioning well (witness him blacklisting the Washington Post for daring to press him about his promise to donate to veterans & accurately reporting his own words over Orlando for just the most recent example), and I'm getting the impression that the majority of his lackeys are troglodytes all too happy to try drowning out dissent by dogpiling the dissenter with memes, name-calling or outright bans (witness the_donald subreddit; no doubt they'd argue that 'hey now, this subreddit is exclusively for the worship of our Orange Messiah, but we have another subreddit where you can ask questions', but they ban you for asking questions they deem 'too critical' of Trump as well). I also certainly don't think a declining working class filled with fear & anger over 'immigrants comin' to steal our jerbs', goose-stepping Stormfronters and alt-rightists fantasizing about becoming the philosopher-kings to rule over us mindless sheeple are particularly well-disposed towards the idea of free speech, anyway.

I'm getting vibes that you don't particularly like Carl the Great, by the way

In reference to the British voting to leave the EU.. Tiocfaidh ar la, if any good can come of this it's unification of the Emerald Isles and a resurgence of Scotish nationalism. What's good for the English isn't good for Scotland and even Northern Ireland.

As as for the elections.. Trump is a criminal, Hillary is a criminal, and I'm voting for Jill. the system.

I suppose there's a dark irony in the English having spent so much blood & resources over the centuries to ensure they'd keep lording over the Irish and Scots, up to and including committing ethnic cleansing, only to be undone by - of all the things in the world - a (mostly, since there was that one MP who got assassinated by an anti-EU ultranationalist not too long ago) peaceful referendum that wasn't even about Ireland or Scotland. Doubly ironic in Scotland's case too, considering it's only been two years since they decided to stay in the union by a different referendum.

Assuming Trump really doesn't get dumped at the convention, I'll be joining Dan in writing in Rubio (might as well since I already voted for him once, in the VA primary). Well, that or write in a Stannis the Mannis-Onion Knight ticket.

On one hand, I like ethnic groups having their own autonomy, but on the other hand, the downfall of a system that collectively makes friends of the European nations and actively helps in an umbrella sense.. makes me sad. That said, no ethnic groups were losing autonomy under the EU... "Brussels" only dictated what codes would be used in EU nations for items traded between them, such as eggs at the market.

EDIT: The big thing is that, yeah independence romanticism is nice, but they actually just made their nation weaker, not stronger. Their influence on Europe will dwindle. They will be economically on their own. They'll have to renegotiate every trade deal. It could possibly never really recover for a couple decades at least. Meanwhile if you look at the voting numbers, it was largely rural baby boomers who voted to Leave while their children in London all face-palmed when the results came out and they got screwed over by their grandparents. London will no longer be the financial stronghold it was under the EU. And in the coming decades, it will be younger generations dealing with the consequences, not the baby boomers who made up the majority demigraphic who voted to Leave (because they'll retired now and starting to die off).

National economic autonomy & robustness in dealing with foreign threats are concerns on my list too, and I don't think the EU handled either particularly well. They've made a hash out of Greece's economic crisis, are being more accommodating of Erdogan's Turkey than even Britain while it was in the EU & can't seem to unite to give Russia a proper economic thrashing for their dickery in Ukraine. (granted, we haven't done the latter either, but I'm dearly hoping that changes once Obama's out of office - this decade has gotten me to believe that though the neocons done ed up in a lot of places, their foreign policy is still sounder than Obama's skittish inability to answer Russia's crotch-punting of Ukraine in kind & putting Assad down for good)

Also, if we look at this from a POV concerned chiefly about American interests, I'd say that anything that binds the UK closer & more tightly - as the Brexit will, since I don't think the Commonwealth is a viable alternative to the EU and Britain really has nowhere else to go - to us, while also preventing the EU from evolving into a fully independent power bloc in its own right, is a good thing in the long run

[Dirty Chai]

"Sticking it to the SJWs" isn't a valid thing; Trump and the Trumpeters just want to be able to be racist & condescending and treat it as factual/mask it as "free speech." Sure, political correctness is annoying, but the answer to it isn't being an asshat. He's just feeding into white baby boomer nostalgia for a time when saying racial slurs was socially acceptable.

That whole SJW/political correctness thing has always felt like something the right just strawmans onto the Left because of some Tumblrites.
Whenever I try to argue my leftist views on something, often the comeback from someone is "oh god, here come the SJWs, political correctness," trying to throw everything I said out the window as if it's all suddenly invalid.

Right wing populism using the blow-own-out-of-proportion "issue" of "Politicial Correctness"

[Dan the Man]

Tiocfaidh ar la

Gesundheit!

To repeat a point I once made while chatting with Agg: if I may don my tinfoil hat for a mo' and believe that there exists a nefarious Illuminati-esque conspiracy out to undermine our faith in America's constitutional republican democracy, I cannot think of a better way to do that than this current election cycle. Whether it's the godawful candidates we ended up with, or the childish and willfully ignorant (at this point I refuse to believe anyone can take even a cursory look at Clinton or Trump's record and not realize that they're both monstrously crooked & unfit for office, especially since pretty much all of that information is one Google search away these days) electorate responsible for their ascension, I think I can safely say our system's hit its lowest point in at least 25 years. Of course, whenever I am tempted to actually consider embracing autocracy history is quick to slap me in the face with tons of examples of that going to pot, not to mention the realization that I could hardly condemn smug latte-liberals who think us conservatives are too stupid to breathe if I were to believe that, heh. But just the fact that that thought's crossed my mind is, in my opinion at least, a sign that our country's really slid deep into the gutter. I would at least welcome the delegates dumping Trump at the convention, the Trumpeters' plurality be damned - something that I could not have fathomed believing to be a good idea way back last year, when this was just beginning - since the GOP is ultimately a private organization and the whole point of the American constitutional republicanism it claims to champion is to slam the brakes on the people's will when said people want to do something stupid and/or tyrannical, though I do recognize that it's a longshot.

I agree completely. To hell with hoi polloi, frankly! This isn't representative government, this has become mob-rule. Our constitution was written with a natural immune system for such things but we've basically overridden it.

Concerning Trump's own success in spite of basically everything he's said and done, I too sympathize with the 'stick it to the SJWs' crowd, but I see no point to defeating political correctness if all we're gonna do is replace it with a new brand of PC-ness tailored to our political wing: Trump himself really doesn't take criticism or even hard questioning well (witness him blacklisting the Washington Post for daring to press him about his promise to donate to veterans & accurately reporting his own words over Orlando for just the most recent example), and I'm getting the impression that the majority of his lackeys are troglodytes all too happy to try drowning out dissent by dogpiling the dissenter with memes, name-calling or outright bans (witness the_donald subreddit; no doubt they'd argue that 'hey now, this subreddit is exclusively for the worship of our Orange Messiah, but we have another subreddit where you can ask questions', but they ban you for asking questions they deem 'too critical' of Trump as well). I also certainly don't think a declining working class filled with fear & anger over 'immigrants comin' to steal our jerbs', goose-stepping Stormfronters and alt-rightists fantasizing about becoming the philosopher-kings to rule over us mindless sheeple are particularly well-disposed towards the idea of free speech, anyway.

Welcome to the age of the echo-chamber, I guess. I almost understand it a little more from the Trumpeters because their candidate does have the media gunning for him almost constantly (outside of Fox anyway...), as opposed to vanguarding for Hillary and every liberal candidate before her.

I have complicated feelings towards the alt-right. When they're right, they're right, but when they're wrong...they are oh so wrong. I guess mostly I kinda pity them: In a way, they're a generation of left-wing dominance come home to roost. They're people, young men mostly, who have built their entire personalities and private lives around contradicting the cultural force that the social-justice movement has become. Like I said, I'm all for sticking it to the SJWs, but I fear what comes with it. We're headed for fascism of one kind of another no matter who wins.

I'm getting vibes that you don't particularly like Carl the Great, by the way

A usurper and a hack! A HACK I tell you!

[Dan the Man]

"Sticking it to the SJWs" isn't a valid thing; Trump and the Trumpeters just want to be able to be racist & condescending and treat it as factual/mask it as "free speech." Sure, political correctness is annoying, but the answer to it isn't being an asshat. He's just feeding into white baby boomer nostalgia for a time when saying racial slurs was socially acceptable.

That whole SJW/political correctness thing has always felt like something the right just strawmans onto the Left because of some Tumblrites.
Whenever I try to argue my leftist views on something, often the comeback from someone is "oh god, here come the SJWs, political correctness," trying to throw everything I said out the window as if it's all suddenly invalid.

Having met many of them - and having disagreed with them vehemently, so it's not like I'm trying to defend them here or anything - I think you'd be wrong. A lot of them are perfectly reasonable, rational people, who are desperate to oppose something that they believe is out to destroy them. I know that sounds jingoistic, but these are precisely the kinds of people that SJW-types (who absolutely exist, by the way, though many try to say that they're just a caricature - just walk onto any given college campus) would say have no place in their view for society. Their entire fight is essentially for survival. I don't think most of them are actually racist at all, they just say nasty things as a means of slaying the sacred cows that the far left has set up over the last 50 years or so. It's not nostalgia, it's counter culture: Completely intentional and purposeful.

Again, this doesn't go for all of them, but it certainly goes for the ones I've met. I'm sure plenty of them really are just drooling idiots. We live in a time where nobody really cares to understand where anybody is actually coming from: We just pigeonhole people into ideologies because it's easier than actually getting to the bottom of what anybody actually believes. So to make a long story short, it's shameful, but all too familiar, that the most extreme members of both sides of the political spectrum have overshadowed the whole, and are monopolizing the debate. For the record, I don't think you're an SJW.

[Barry Goldwater]

Gesundheit!

I agree completely. To hell with hoi polloi, frankly! This isn't representative government, this has become mob-rule. Our constitution was written with a natural immune system for such things but we've basically overridden it.

This is part of what frustrates me when people go 'oh, to hell with what the Founders thought, they were a bunch of racist fogies who lived in a different century'. Yes, they were flawed (some rather more severely than others) as all humans are, but they got quite a few things right too, and working limitations on the whims of mob into the Constitution was one of those things. These naysayers may argue 'bah, the Founders wanted to crap on democracy', to which I say: the majority of the South's population long believed in keeping blacks disenfranchised & brutalized too, you know, and the KKK & other Reconstruction Era paramilitaries like the White League were hardly secretive conspiracies, they acted openly as champions of mob rule & all that it brings.

Welcome to the age of the echo-chamber, I guess. I almost understand it a little more from the Trumpeters because their candidate does have the media gunning for him almost constantly (outside of Fox anyway...), as opposed to vanguarding for Hillary and every liberal candidate before her.

I have complicated feelings towards the alt-right. When they're right, they're right, but when they're wrong...they are oh so wrong. I guess mostly I kinda pity them: In a way, they're a generation of left-wing dominance come home to roost. They're people, young men mostly, who have built their entire personalities and private lives around contradicting the cultural force that the social-justice movement has become. Like I said, I'm all for sticking it to the SJWs, but I fear what comes with it. We're headed for fascism of one kind of another no matter who wins.

The way I see it, SJWs and the alt-right clashing are pretty much a less violent (generally) and 'updated' version of the RFB and Brownshirts meeting in the streets. Whoever wins, the rest of us lose, unless they have the grace to destroy each other. (then again, one could flip that on its head to argue that whoever loses, the rest of us win )

A usurper and a hack! A HACK I tell you!

#BringBackTheMerovingians
#ClovisTheMannis
#ChildericOneTrueKing
#HolyBloodHolyGrail

"Sticking it to the SJWs" isn't a valid thing; Trump and the Trumpeters just want to be able to be racist & condescending and treat it as factual/mask it as "free speech." Sure, political correctness is annoying, but the answer to it isn't being an asshat. He's just feeding into white baby boomer nostalgia for a time when saying racial slurs was socially acceptable.

That whole SJW/political correctness thing has always felt like something the right just strawmans onto the Left because of some Tumblrites.
Whenever I try to argue my leftist views on something, often the comeback from someone is "oh god, here come the SJWs, political correctness," trying to throw everything I said out the window as if it's all suddenly invalid.

Right wing populism using the blow-own-out-of-proportion "issue" of "Politicial Correctness"

To add to what Dan said, we had our own example of an actual SJW in IH not too long ago. Remember our argument with him about whether one can be racist to white people and if modern whites are responsible for their ancestors' sins? I also don't think political correctness & far too many on the Left acting like lunatics are overblown factors, whether here in America (the mess at Mizzou & the smaller controversy at Yale, safe spaces being abused, and so on) or abroad (the cover-ups of the Rotherham sex trafficking ring and the Cologne NYE assaults come to mind).

Also like Dan, I don't think you're an SJW, you're much too levelheaded and anti-authoritarian for that

[Pericles of Athens]

I'm as far left as left comes and I believe in personal freedoms almost to a dangerous level, but even I think SJWs have gone uber super duper off the deep end. I'm sure Dan and Barry remember the time I got accused of being a neo-nazi while debating in this here thread, because I said "white (as in all the various ethnic groups there in) people should take pride in their heritage". While the entire argument was a little moronic because it basically boiled down to minorities not being able to be racist even when they make up the majority of a nation and commit atrocities. I was even told it was wrong of the Spainish to push the Muslims out of their country in the reconquista.

@Dan Our day will come! And it seems that day is close at hand now.

[Dirty Chai]

I tried looking for this one comic by SMBC, it had two shapes on either side representing left and right; then they cut two tiny shards out of both, and those two shards yelled at the opposing side (so a small shard of one side was yelling at the entire other side). So that it looks like two whole polygons are yelling at each other, but really its two little shards of polygons yelling at each other.

@Perry, yeah that's a bit off the rocker isn't it

[Adamat]

Did someone say Clovis? Did you know he was Dutch?

[Dan the Man]

Only in the same very-vague way that all of the Franks were.

[Adamat]

Sshhh I'm trying to trigger BF

[Dirty Chai]

Yeah there was an .. er ... argument... some time back, regarding the semantics of "Clovis was Dutch"

[Barry Goldwater]

Clovis a Dutchman, really? I thought he was Belgian.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Dirty Chai]

Yeah, to be fair, most of the Salian territory was in what is now modern Belgium before they moved into Gaul proper

[Dan the Man]

The price I pay for trying to be a know-it-all.

[Barry Goldwater]

Well Dan & Aggy, it seems us ardent anti-Trumpeters on the right have found our man: Evan McMullin of Utah, a ten-year veteran of the CIA, adviser on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and chief policy director of the House Republican Conference from 2015 until he announced his candidacy a week ago. Never heard of this guy before, but I've given his platform a look and found a much better match for myself than pretty much everyone else on the ballot. It also helps that unlike Trump, he's shown no indication of being a generally Godawful person, he doesn't appear to be completely insane, and considering his background he isn't likely to be a pawn of Putin's. Unfortunately it's too late for him to get on the ballot here in Virginia, but that won't stop me from donating & writing his name in.

['Gunny]

Boo. Spoopy ghosts.