Prickly City by Scott Stantis for June 22, 2024

So easily swayed. I so wish we had a younger Democrat

For those who were wondering, Libertarian candidate, 38, openly gay, pro choice and pro gun, from Georgia.

And the Stantis both siderism continues.

Chase has my vote. The lesser of two evils is still evil. Here is Texas there is no reason to vote for Biden.

I would like to see an ounce of evidence that Biden has memory problems. The Republicans exaggerating every stutter or faking videos isn’t a memory problem.

Trump actually DOES forget who people are and babble gibberish.

The real key to 2024 is VOTE LOCAL! The conservative christian antiabortive womeninthekitchen migrantsintheyard wealthytaxcuts mentality steering our judges and lawmakers starts (or STOPS) in your community.

The real problem is that the US electoral system is a broken mess. On the one hand, it is astonishing that the powers that be, somehow decided that the only choices they would offer the voters would be an old Nazi and an old fool. On the other, the popular vote counts for little. If the popular vote actually determined who gets elected, by simple majority, I would not hesitate to vote for the cockroach in the garage, rather than either of those two walking relics. But sadly, unless the popular vote is overwhelmingly decisive, and that in the “right” states, the fact is that the Nazi will be handed an undeserved and disastrous victory.

a little bleak… Peter Coy in the Times reviews “Deliberate Ignorance: Choosing Not to Know.”

Sure, Knowledge Is Power, but Ignorance Is Underrated

I thought about deliberate ignorance when I read about a recent Harris Poll for The Guardian, which found that last month 49 percent of Americans believed the S&P 500 stock market index was down for the year (at the time it was up 9 percent since the start of the year), and the same percentage believed that the unemployment rate was at a 50-year high, when in fact unemployment was not far above a 50-year low.

This can’t be chalked up to simple error. Believing things that are so far away from the truth is evidence that many Americans have constructed their own realities and pushed away facts that don’t fit. For some, it may be a mental defense mechanism: I’m not happy, but we’re all in the same boat.

But rejecting plain reality can also be an offense mechanism, as we saw when supporters of Donald Trump invaded the Capitol in 2021 to stop the certification of the election. It didn’t help that Trump had repeatedly insisted that traditional sources of information could not be trusted: “Just remember,” he once said, “what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

In a game of chicken between negotiating parties, the player who doesn’t know how bad things might turn out will always win against the player who is fully aware. Ignorance looks a lot like courage. “Ignorance Is Strength” was one of Big Brother’s slogans in the dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four.”

Unless there are some changes, it’s going to be a tough choice for president.

We set the bar so low and still they keep tripping over it.

We’re setting the bar a bit low here, aren’t we?

Oops. I’m not part of that “we”.

Might a parliamentarian system work better? Votes for minority third, fourth, etc. parties wouldn’t be wasted or just a protest. A governing majority would still be needed. Sure, it’s not perfect. But given the existing alternative, well . . . . . that has failed.

A vote for a third party candidate is a vote for Trump. Or didn’t you see what happened in 2016?

I had (barely) heard his name. Then yesterday, I heard it again as one of the choices for president from a Quinnipiac pollster who called me. Caller ID said it was Quinnipiac calling so I answered hoping it was a pollster.

Not a criminal but he’s still a homophobic, transphobic bigot who wants to ban women from making their own healthcare choices.

Will there be equal space for Trump, Biden, Green, RFK, Jr. Constitution Party, the five Socialist Parties, ect, ect.?