Invictus - More to the point, a bunch of blithering idiots, fueled by mindlessness, demand a third party while sitting on theis asses and bitching about it, instead of FINDING A CANDIDATE AND WORKING FOR THEM.

Fuck you third party...unless you are going to get off your ass and do something about it.

So goes it with Gun laws

So goes it with your feelings about every other issue so many of you bitch and moan about every time your media masters instruct you to bitch about it....and yet never, ever contribute to eh cause, or contact your Representative, or even stick out a yard sing.

<Invi - not targetted at you, by the way...>

@krellin - I ask if you are referring to I when you say "little punk ass douchebag to decide how he is going to throw his vote 2 1/2 years out form an election." If you read any of my subsequent posts you would see that I have already stated I A) agree with your above statement about investigating the candidate as evidenced when i said in reference to Bo's assertion that he will vote for a third party regardless "in theory isn't that just as bad as blindly voting for Dems or Reps? rather shouldn't we push for more independent research into politicians, regardless of party?"
B) I have done serious research into the candidates that as of now are suspected of running. I believe so heavily in the research and investigation that I am starting now. I have spent hours looking into Rubio, Christie, Cruz, Clinton, Biden, and several others; as of now this very moment in my research I find Clinton to be my top selection. I requested other peoples opinions to add to my information and possibly give me more things to research.
Now sir, I do find you to be a very smart individual on this forum and have read and respected your views for some time. I do however think you should seriously look at the full picture before targeting posts.

Commander - I'm not referring to anyone specifically...and specifically I was not addressing you.

Specifically I am addressing that which I addressed - people that say they will / will not vote for a member of a party WHOMEVER it is...just because. Would rather vote for the Magical Third Party because like a good moronic sheeple he has fully bought into the lie that Third PArties are Magical and will Solve All Problems.

Find me a political system ANYWHERE in ANY time in history that had a perfect party.

It's childish thinking.

The problem with our political system isn't the Parties. The problem is the FUCKING VOTERS that rank Congress with, what? a 13% approval rating? And then come back and vote that same fucking assholes back in during the primaries, and on through the general election.

So before a bunch of little mindless pussbags tell us how to fix the system (Vote for the Magical Third Party) -- how about they show some fucking respect for the system and actually EDUCATE themselves about the candidates they vote for, starting BEFORE the primaries.

@Invictus .. I'm going to Lake Forest. Sorry. I still and always will have a sort of affinity for U of I since my old football buddy is going to be your new QB but I wouldn't go to school in the boring part of the state, ya know?

And educating yourself involved not just reading a pamphlet, it means actually having an understanding of HISTORY....so when some moron comes and tells you about some clever new tax scheme....you can refer to history and predict the consequence. So when some jackass arrogant pos candidate tells you he is going to lead from behind, or sit down at the table and talk nicey-nice with the local bullies, you can look back and history and tell him *exactly* how well policies of appeasement have worked in the past.

The problem isn't the politicians...is uneducated voters unwilling to do THEIR job.

Not that I have an opinion on the matter...

@Krellin - agreed. I am sorry I jumped to conclusions on that one. I think a major problem (one i witnessed first hand only 1 month ago leaving high school) is that many teachers who teach civics, teach with an obvious bias and encourage the use of common media as true political fact and stable opinion. I personally look for the government documents and raw data on a topic before making my decision (may be why I got a 4 on my AP gov exam , while everyone else got a 2 or lower.) If i find myself in a pure opinion situation (like this one regarding presidential elections 3 years from now) I tend to look for key historical proof of competence.

"I wouldn't go to school in the boring part of the state, ya know?"

I grew up VERY close to Lake Forest, and if you're going there for excitement you made a mistake.

Lol, I'm there for Chicago. I take the train in.

I know. I've done it plenty of times myself. It just seems like a pain in the ass to do it every weekend. But to each their own.

I've never actually lived in a city, so it's just to keep in somewhat familiar territory. Then again, I've never lived amongst lakeside mansions either.

For what it's worth, I'm from an area west of there.

How far west, like Vernon Hills or all the way to Rockford or what?

Commander - perfect example: Going into the election with McCain / Palin, I would guess that the majority of idiots inthe this country....and that would be the Libtards...literally thought that Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her front porch because of a skit on Saturday Night Live. THAT is an example of the complete absence of intelligent thought pervading our pathetic voter's minds.

Now, you may think Palin was a bad candidate, and it is OK to say you voted againt the ticket for rational reasons. But the problem is, most of the voters were so woefully, disgustingly ill-informed...choosing to use Comedy Central and 10-second sound-bites to educate themselves. It's sad, truly.

Would I have said I lived very close to Lake Forest if I were from Rockford? Iowa is closer.

Lol, all right, fair enough.

Third parties in a presidential democracy with a division of powers, if they succeed, would be a disaster. Think we have gridlock now? Just fragment the party system even further, and nothing will ever get done. Third parties still need majorities to pass legislation, not to mention a compliant president. If you're just into electing third party people for the sake of it, fine, but don't pretend it does anything for anybody.

That said, I despise Hillary Clinton and if she runs against Rand Paul, I'd strongly consider voting for the latter. She'd be a much more interventionist version of Obama, and was on the interventionist side of every internal debate within the administration.

And once again, Putin and I care completely at odds...

I LOATHE Rand Paul with every fiber of my political being. I cannot honestly say I support one damn policy he's advocated, from non-intervention to strict Constitutionalism (same problem as I had with his father) to his religious-Right ties to his stance on gun control, healthcare, EVERYTHING.

I'd take Hillary in a heartbeat over him, Marco Rubio, Michelle Bachmann (if she were fool enough to run again), Jeb Bush, and just about any other contender out there. For the briefest while a few months ago I thought *maybe* Chris Christie could, over time, emerge as a fair moderate Republican with a chance to appeal to the centrist element in me without alienating the liberal side...but no...and he's bogged down by scandal.

So, by hook our by crook, it's Hillary for me right now. Of course, it's 2014 and 1016, so for all I know Hillary could turn out to have killed Jimmy Hoffa somehow and Christie could've discovered a way out of world poverty, so who the fuck knows two years out.

You're a neo-con, this doesn't surprise anybody.

What's funny is you said you'd vote for Bachmann over Paul, while complaining about Paul's positions on healthcare and ties to the religious right.

Which only means one thing, that the only issue that matters to you is how many wars a candidate is going to start. Candidates who are unwilling to destroy, maraud, and annihilate countries are beyond the pale. Only candidates who set up barbecues and drink beer as the bombs fly are acceptable.

@Putin - I personally feel as though Hillary's Foreign policy is more moderate than other candidates, as well as the fact that she actually has experience in that area. Her time as SecState and First Lady are huge notches of experience on her belt. I mean no she doesn't come without her own issues; but to say that the person responsible for our foreign policy should be a person who has no foreign policy experience is like having a plumber do brain surgery (I suggest this is why Obama's foreign policy has failed so obviously). I think many people have to remember that her foreign policy was not given a chance to shine through while she was under the COMMAND of Obama; if you look up any of her independent interviews she shows the demeanor that I personally am looking for; someone who can fathom the use of Economic, Political, and Military tools in diplomacy. She was the first to compare Putin to Hitler; and even suggested moderate military assistance to Kiev. That sort of realism in the white house in respect to foreign policy is what america needs. We don't need a war monger to bog us down in another war that I will end up fighting in. I clarify that as an Army Cadet i am ready to fight for our nation but not ready to die because some over zealous politician decided a spec of land in a dessert was worth my life. I want someone who is going to leave all the options on the table expending the other options before expending me. I do not agree with Obama's foreign policy he isn't ready to use the military but he is on one side of a spectrum and I don't want the other side either.

Actually the creation of a third party, a viable party, would be a good thing, a centrist party. More that 48% of the two current parties are close to the middle. There are enough people who want to be moderate, but can't get their political base to come closer to the middle...if we could aggregate all those into a central party, we might actually get things done on a whole.

I can see the idea of a third party working well if in a fantasy world we restructured everything. Not only would the other two parties find common ground for once and work to destroy the new party, but there are other easier options. If people didn't vote for the candidate purely because he is red or blue; but actually looked into policy they would find many moderate options available. The problem is people don't vote for people we vote for the party. many people will vote all democrat because their father voted all democrat who's father voted all democrat who was a converted republican who had voted republican is whole life because his father voted republican. We need to teach youth that it's important to know about the person you are voting. If people actually cared about what they were voted I suggest Obama would never have been elected: his lack of experience, lack of resolve, and lack of connections were obvious. I suggest that had people voted for the candidate and not the shiny thing the party pushed forward Hillary would have been elected in 2008.

"I LOATHE Rand Paul with every fiber of my political being. I cannot honestly say I support one damn policy he's advocated..."

You don't loathe Rand Paul. You loathe the caricature of Rand Paul you've created in your mind of him. The fact that you could somehow, as a liberal, support Bachman over him means your views have no grounding in reality.

You say you don't support a single policy of his. This either means: A) you don't know he and Cory Booker are spearheading reform of the federal sentencing guidelines, or B) you like the current system. I think it's A, because you're not a complete idiot. If you don't know Rand Paul is doing that then you really, really don't have any idea of what the man is about beyond the thought-terminating cliche you've grafted into your mind. Go ahead and oppose him, but oppose him for what he really is rather than what you've imagined him to be.

And where's the vice in strict observance of the Constitution?

"Actually the creation of a third party, a viable party, would be a good thing, a centrist party. More that 48% of the two current parties are close to the middle. There are enough people who want to be moderate, but can't get their political base to come closer to the middle...if we could aggregate all those into a central party, we might actually get things done on a whole."

That is not how things work in first-part-the-post voting systems.
Please just watch this video, people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

Commander, you are fooling your self, most of the political base from either party, don't want moderates to come to the forefront. It goes against the philosophy.
I agree that teaching youth to vote for their beliefs is important, but just getting them to vote needs to be the start. As I said before, voting is our only inalienable right, and only 35-48%of the population turns up to vote for any given election. That's the bigger problem.

That's just not true. Turnout in 2012 was 58%.

It's only dipped below 50% once since WWII. You're just making things up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections