Third party protest votes are exactly why we got Regan, Bush Sr and Bush Jr. and Reagan. Good luck fools.

Then the system is empirically broken. If democratic elections are fundamentally incapable of regularly producing benevolent dutiful representation and leadership, then it's time to try something else.

If you are ever blown away in a war, or hit head-on in a car crash,

O hope you can go return to the accident scene and retrieve gold?

I mean:

Oh, ah, maybe if lucky, a gold tooth can be retrieved from a crash?

Quibble?

O maybe, all the people who lost everything from scandals will be gay?

I mean:

Happy!

After being so screwed... The dream becomes so true? A Happy Home...

A house with a backyard and a collie, and a pleasant white picket fence.

Grouchy.

I wasn't meaning to imply anything about your particular vote, though you seem to be one of the consistent ones in your beliefs, and that's said as a compliment.

On the topic of third party votes, it could also be argued that Clinton was also elected the first time due to drain off of Bush votes to Ross Perot.

Personally, I hope that Barr gets a ton of the Ron Paul supporters votes...and maybe that will shake up the Republican party a little bit from their authoritarian leanings. I can dream, can't I?

I'll welcome him. I just would not vote for him unless he moved heaven and earth to demonstrate a true commitment to the full panoply of civil liberties.

-- -Mona-

I'll welcome him only for the purpose of fooling the "rubes" and helping to alter the outcome in the election. If that means money and information put out by Strange Bedfellows, that's a good thing. But Bob Barr is a lying sack. Always has been and always will be. I don't know how Jane Hamsher stomached him for 35 minutes. I also don't know if he took her up on exposing himself to Firedoglake for a conversation with the posters, as she invited him to do so on the link that Glenn posted, or if Jane and Barr have made specific arrangements for him to do so.

I find it nearly impossible to believe that a person could lie as much as Bob Barr did about Clinton on TV and every where else and then suddenly become an honest person just a few years later. Especially since I've never heard him really account for himself. Jane put it to him at the end of the interview, but his answer was totally inadequate. He should have said and admitted that he had been one of the biggest assholes on the face of the earth for several years, and then begged Jane for forgiveness...over time.

Bob Barr still turns my stomach.

but I am very troubled by his constant flogging of the Salon column to raise money for a PAC and to sink so low as to tout an endorsement by Bob Barr. Glenn, you have been raising this money at least back to February and March and I have come to the conclusion that your primary goal is simply to raise a lot of money. I know because I gave you $50 and, really, I would like it back. If you go to Open Secrets, you will see that the Blue America PAC ( which is the operative PAC) keeps most of the money they raise, they are late with their reporting, they have already been fined by the FEC and they give so little money to candidates that it makes me weep. Really Glenn, I expected better from you. If you look around at the people jumping into this cesspool, you will see some very shady characters, Bob Barr being only the latest. This whole thing is starting to stink and remind me of the Abrahamoff, Norquist, Reid cabal. I already see the cross-flogging and the payments to each other. You are fast losing all credibility.

As a student of environmental science, a farmer, a builder, and a long-time follower of the curve of the oil supply, I have often doubted whether the government of the US can survive teh era after peak oil is reached (i.e. the era that is starting right now).

Oil is central to the power-grabbing and corruption that's going on at the highest levels of our government. Oil fuels the military machine; if it weren't for the fantastic efficiency of oil, "free trade," a la Friedman would not be possible or even thinkable.

In my visions of the future I see the federal government dissolved into a series of states, a loose confederacy of sovereign bioregional states, centered around major metropolitan areas, with a compatible framework of laws to allow trade and free movement.

This vision means the destruction of the bureaucratic edifice that calls itself my government. Once I realized that, the fact that most of the "policies" my supposed representatives advocate are indeed a form of warfare, part of a war declared on me and people like me, to preserve their hold on power at all costs.

Though many of my friends have concluded that the best thing to do is retreat to the hills and concentrate on getting off the grid, I see a need for an institutional framework to make sure the transition to the post-oil economy isn't violent. In order to put that framework in place, like-minded folks need to use existing governmental structure. Personally I think state and municipal governments are where we can have the biggest impact. However, it's also clear that with an authoritarian regime that does not hesitate to spy on and imprison its own citizens at will, these efforts will be greatly hindered.

Of course, if we can manage this transition without dissolving the federal government, that's fine... I'm just mad skeptical about the prospect. Mostly because I'm looking at things with an ecologist's eyes. This country is just too big.

Put on my editor hat too late...

I meant to say that the fact that the government's policies amount to war against me and mine no longer surprises me.