Whatcha' Gonna' Do?

[GH2001]

I hadn't seen it until just now.

Cliche'ed ad-hominems about him "looking goofy". I addressed the Allepo and "not being able to name a world leader he admires" things.

The tongue thing, I've made fun of. I don't know WTF that was. I mean, I do, he was making a point that he could bite his tongue for the whole election, not saying a word, and would still be considered the "winner" of the debates if they let him on the stage. But it was a super weird way of expressing that. I understand that most people aren't going to give him the benefit of the doubt in even trying to understand the point you're making when you do something weird like that.

Never saw the clip of him saying of Mount Everest that he "lifted her skirt" and he "got in there and got a peek". Yup, that also was weird. All I can say to those two things is I don't really care. I understand he's kooky. But not worse than things Trump has said on on hot mics or at rallies, and not weirder than Hillary convulsing or getting startled by balloons.

He opposes having a minimum wage? I believe in the free market. If people pay shitty wages, they won't have employees. Employers will pay what the job's worth. If a retarded 17 year old middle school dropout can do the work, and will take the job for less pay than you, then you should either accept what they offer you or look for a job that requires more skill. Given that, I don't see much use for a minimum wage. I sure as hell don't want to see it raised to $15 an hour as Bernie proposed, and Hillary got on board with as well.

He would do away with the departments of education, commerce, and housing and urban development? Good. They have all been bureaucratic wasteful bloats.
Education:
Commerce:
Wasteful. Fuels crony capitalism. More here:
http://reason.com/archives/2014/04/16/department-of-cronyism

HUD:
Romney wanted to abolish it as well. Here are reasons why.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbarro/2012/04/16/romney-is-right-abolish-hud/

Then he goes on to criticize him for saying he would keep parts of them if he deemed them necessary and valuable. Seems like he's having his cake and eating it too. Bottom line he wants to drastically cut the fat. This is a good thing, IMO.

He rips into his consumption tax proposal that he would do if he could "wave a magic wand". This is the one part of his argument that I grant him making some valid points, but it seems to me that when Gary says he would do that if he could "wave a magic wand", it's not something he's very seriously proposing, but is instead going theoretical. If that's the one thing that's too ideological to be practical, I'm fine with the realization that congress would never let any proposal like that pass in a million years, so I'm not particularly worried about it.

He grossly mischarecterized Johnson's stance on climate change. He said basically exactly what I said in this thread, as well as others. It's real, it's happening, and we should "take the long-term view" in taking it seriously. Certainly better (to Oliver and his audience) than the standard GOP stance that it's all made up bullshit and we should ignore it entirely. I don't understand what's wrong with the position of "We should address it gradually and in a measured reasonable way and not fear monger and set our hair on fire."

Here's his full quote:

Sometimes a lot of sense is made with posts here. This is one of them ^^ not a huge fan of Johnson but stance wise you're spot on with yours and why they're right (aside from the climate change where we differ a bit, but not a big deal really).

Although it is apparent that trump and Johnson may be strange bed fellows here. The common thread is that the media shills for Hillary regardless of who the enemy of the day is. Right now it's actually Johnson since they figured out he was hurting Hillary more than helping her. It's strange but it's true.

[The Prowler]

[/b]


Our military could learn a thing or two about killing folks from her.

Lol...did Americans kill them? Nope, most of them died of painful natural causes or two shot suicides.

[Kaos]

I didn't clarify them. I provided the full context that he provided that Oliver didn't afford him. Intentionally.

Because that NEVER happens to Trump. 

Same thing.

[AUChizad]

Just read this this morning.

http://reason.com/blog/2016/10/17/progress-john-oliver-mocks-third-party-c

Progress! John Oliver Mocks Third-Party Candidates Because They Are as Awful as Trump and Clinton
As Election Day nears, even the alt-MSM starts slagging choices beyond Dem/Rep duopoly.
Nick Gillespie|Oct. 17, 2016 11:00 am

On Last Week Tonight, HBO's John Oliver laid into third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, mocking them for being basically as silly and stupid as...well, not Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, but Joe Exotic, who runs a big-cat park and is given to statements such as "current politicians...rape you of your rights."

To his credit, Oliver openly grants that he is only talking about Stein and Johnson because between them they are pulling close to 10 percent in national polls, more than enough to cover the spread in an election where the winner is likely to get less than 50 percent of the popular vote. Unlike, say, Carl Hiaasen, he also grants that folks voting for someone other than a Democrat or Republican might actually be doing something more than making a childish protest by voting third party. Oliver says that you might be actively embracing an alternative set of politics.

But of course, the main point is to delegitimize third-party candidates by showing them to be fundamentally unserious. Stein is written off as an anti-vaxxer and, if not quite a 9/11 truther, then close enough to disqualify her for government work. She also, Oliver demonstrates, doesn't seem to understand that the Federal Reserve does quantitative easing, not the Treasury Department.

Johnson gets slapped around for getting angry when, in a scene from the excellent documentary Rigged (watch online here), he goes off on a Bloomberg reporter who asks whether he's just a spoiler. The Great Aleppo Gaffe and (truly disturbing) The NBC Tongue-Biting Debacle make appearances, of course, as they should.

Then Oliver gets more serious. When it comes to policy, Oliver admits that "there's a lot to like there. He supports marijuana legalization and opposes the death penalty, civil forfeiture, and police militarization. But scratch beneath the surface and there are some positions you may be less comfortable with. For instance, he opposes having a minimum wage and when he says he's for smaller government, he's not kidding around." Oliver plays a clip of Johnson calling for the abolition of the federal Departments of Education, Commerce, and Housing and Urban Development and then stumbling over a follow-up question about whether these departments do anything that should be continued after their dissolution. More substantively, Oliver says that Johnson's proposed consumption tax is "overly simplified" and would hurt poor people by levying up to a 28 percent bite on everything we purchase. Citing a 2005 report, Oliver says that for Johnson's plan "to work, [the report concluded] the sales tax would have to be way more than 28 percent...and to avoid all that there might have to be savage government cuts. But rather than honestly admit that, Johnson tries to wriggle out of the problem."

Well, no. While you can argue that he's way off or that it's difficult to hit such a target, Johnson has geared his plan to be revenue neutral with current receipts of about $3.2 trillion a year. More important, at every mention of government spending, the former two-term governor of New Mexico recites that his top order of business would be to submit a balanced budget to Congress within 100 days of taking office and that the balancing would be accomplished via spending cuts (such as eliminating whole departments of the federal government). Johnson is totally up front about his desire (and, he would argue, the mathematical need) to cut government spending year over year. There's no need to "scratch beneath the surface" about that at all.

And if the litmus test is whether a candidate is serious about spending and taxes, Johnson comes out looking less delusional than either Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, both of whom increase spending while walling off entitlement programs from any sort of reform needed to keep ever-rising and job-killing national debt in check.

But such attacks on third-party candidates sometimes work out in funny ways, often throwing publicity rather than shade in the direction of non-traditional candidates. In fact, several times during the writing of this post, I tried to call up Joe Exotic's official website, but the site apparently can't handle the traffic coming its way courtesy of Oliver's treatment from last night. In a similar way, the more that the media (and the major parties) must engage third parties (if only to dismiss them), they often achieve a very different end than the one they intend.

Here's the segment.

[WiregrassTiger]

I didn't clarify them. I provided the full context that he provided that Oliver didn't afford him. Intentionally.

I am only attempting to provide the full context of your level of gayness but I'm incapable.

[The Six]

If your religion tells you to kill people for its sake, then your religion is messed up and you deserved to be vaporized into whatever hereafter you think is waiting on you. That may make me a Jethro but so be it.

[dallaswareagle]

If your religion tells you to kill people for its sake, then your religion is messed up and you deserved to be vaporized into whatever hereafter you think is waiting on you. That may make me a Jethro but so be it.

[The Prowler]

One quick comment about one of Trump's statements, it's not that big of a correction...unless it is.

Everyone remembers this...
Trump: "We're gonna build a huge wall and Mexico will pay for it, believe me, believe me, I guarantee it, believe me."
Mexico: "We aren't paying for it, fucking moron."
Trump: "It's going to be 100 feet higher."
Mexico: "Don't care, still not paying for it."

Now Trump says this today...
Trump: "The Illegal Immigration Act will fund the wall across the border and Mexico will reimburse the United States fully, believe me."

Yup, the tax payers will be paying for it, just not that much from the upper class, their taxes will be cut to begin with, because Trump believes that the trickle down effect works great...smh.