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While I’m on political topics… I was disappointed with Trump’s answer in the recent debate when asked if he would support his opponent were she to be elected president.

His answer: “I would absolutely support her.”

And there was someone a few years back who caught flak for not supporting something President Obama was doing. I forget the topic, and I think it was someone local so it wasn’t in the national media coverage. The charge against the local person was that he was not patriotic because he didn’t support the president. But I remember thinking at that time that, politically speaking, my allegiance is to my country, not to the president. So if the president is doing something that I feel is bad for the country, I (and any other good citizen) should not support the president but rather oppose the president. Within the realms of the constitutional process, of course.

So the same thought went through my head when I heard Trump’s answer – “no, you shouldn’t automatically support her.” An answer I think would have been better: “I will acknowledge and respect her as president, but if she’s doing something that is bad for this country then I will not support that.”

I think some people confuse “support the president” with “agree with his decisions”. What if you disagree with all of the president’s decisions? How can one support the president while opposing his direction for the country?

I think the “support the president” question is a loaded one, or at least poorly worded. And I must question how someone could “absolutely support” one’s political opponent.

I’m in danger of falling below my quota of political topics, so I need to post something related to the election.

Please vote for president this November.

But do not vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. I’m voting for Gary Johnson.

Some people have expressed their plan to not vote (I split that infinitive on purpose) because they are unhappy with both candidates. But there are more than two candidates!

Not voting because you don’t like the candidates is the best way to ensure you will be unhappy. Because the only way someone other than those two can get in to the White House is if people vote for someone other than those two candidates.

I’m not a fan of Gary Johnson, and I’m voting for him with the hope that he will not win. More on that later.

I’ve noticed there are two schools of thought regarding how to prevent Hillary Clinton from being elected. My parents’ generation (if you’re the type who likes labels, you can put them in the Baby Boomer category) seems to be locked into the 2-party system and they are voting for Trump because he’s not Clinton. My generation (X) doesn’t follow that thought and is considering options outside the democrat/republican duopoly.

I can’t, in good conscience, vote for Trump. And I can’t, for the sake of humanity, vote for Clinton. The way I see it, we need a third-party candidate to take enough votes to cause nobody to win the election.

And that’s my point of this post – to get enough people to vote for Johnson. Not so that he will become president, but rather that he will win some electoral college votes and allow the congress to pick someone reasonable.

And, in the off chance that I and my compatriots are successful beyond expectation and Johnson somehow wins the presidency outright, then I still think that is less of a risk than either of the main two candidates winning it.

There’s my 2 cents.

Kids these days have it so easy.

That’s the spirit, Britain!

Before it was cool.

No, not for me. For the kids. Today is the end of school and therefore the start of summer. So I am celebrating by taking tomorrow off work.

We can all sleep in, be lazy all morning, play in the sprinkler in the afternoon, eat popsicles outside, then stay up late and catch fireflies.

Then they get to repeat that as often as they like during the summer. Or something like that.

I bought a car.

First, a description of the old car, a 2002 beige Buick Regal with 164,000 miles.

I wanted to keep driving it, but the transmission does not cooperate with me anymore. It will let me drive for about 30 seconds at a time. And then it waits until the car is shut off and restarted before it will work again. Since it would lengthen my commute time considerably to drive in that manner, I bought a replacement car while I decided whether to put more money into the Regal.
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