Looking at my sample ballot, I noticed a "NSA Whistleblower" candidate for NJ Senate. So I decided to check out his website and wiki:

http://www.bossforsenate.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Boss

" I am on the ballot for U.S.Senate from NJ on November 4, 2014. I witnessed the NSA arrange the 911 attacks."
"I even have Al Gore on DVD confirming the NSA did the 911 attacks using a NSA secret code."

Will wager that one of his hobbies is synthesizing LSD in his spare time.

Yeah, he ran for governor or Senate last go around as well.

My favorite thing with someone like that is his ability to believe the NSA is a murderous, all powerful, evil organization that somehow has no problem with him running for public office telling everyone about how murderous and evil they are.

i bet he's a plant!

yes, one with palmately compound/digitate, serrate leaflets.

i voted. only three races to vote for.

not that it matters.

drsmooth wrote:yes, one with palmately compound/digitate, serrate leaflets.

I seriously thought about not voting, but I think I will. Basically so I can vote for Cuomo on the Working Families Party line, which will piss him off much more than a vote for the Republican troglodyte who's ostensibly opposing him.

dajafi wrote:I seriously thought about not voting, but I think I will. Basically so I can vote for Cuomo on the Working Families Party line, which will piss him off much more than a vote for the Republican troglodyte who's ostensibly opposing him.

gotta get to the 50k threshold

We need better candidates.

jerseyhoya wrote:Yeah, he ran for governor or Senate last go around as well.

My favorite thing with someone like that is his ability to believe the NSA is a murderous, all powerful, evil organization that somehow has no problem with him running for public office telling everyone about how murderous and evil they are.

There was a South Park episode a while back where the government was behind all of the 9/11 conspiracies because they wanted people to think they were powerful/competent enough to do something like that.

TenuredVulture wrote:We need better candidates.

Agreed. The problem is that the "better candidates" have neither the money to run nor the desire to jump into bed with the political machinery that could get them elected. Such a jump would likely usurp their "better" status, at least if they wanted to be re-elected.

Probably like most of us here, I have the occasional daydream of running for something (or "against someone"). Then I think about what it would take in terms of effort and resources, think about my low tolerance for nonsense and occasional lapses into full-on misanthropy, laugh my ass off and go back to whatever I'm doing.

But I also suspect that most people who start off actually are "better people," and there's something about the process itself that degrades and devolves them. The Founders' brilliant premise was that individual ambition and self interest would abet collective quality public service, but I'm not sure it works anymore. It would be tough to argue that the link between electoral success and performance in office hasn't been cut, or that objective evaluation hasn't been replaced by something more like partisan tribalism. I'm certainly not immune to this myself.

@ChuckGrassley
Windsor Heights Dairy Queen is good place for u kno what

no, what

chuck is a gentleman

A blizzard.

td11 wrote:@ChuckGrassley
Windsor Heights Dairy Queen is good place for u kno what

I've eaten at the Windsor Heights DQ and it's nothing special. Oh, and the street it's on is a speed trap which is why I seldom go there.

seeing some tweets that turnout might not be as bad as predicted.

hehe

CalvinBall wrote:seeing some tweets that turnout might not be as bad as predicted.

Early voting in AR was higher than it had been in 2010. And, word is that the polling place was busy. It is the case that the Dems have been working hard on increasing turnout. Certainly, the word was their field operation and deployment of technology in 2012 far outclassed the Republican, whose efforts will filled with technical glitches and other snafus. There's no reason I'm aware of to suspect any of this has changed. I'm not sure it will be enough to hold the Senate though.