Look at this list of people who have no chance of winning the Republican nomination: Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckbee, John Kasich, George Pataki, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum … and that doesn’t count the other long-shots that may jump into the overcrowded clown car, such as Donald Trump. Some might put Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal and Rick Perry in that group as well…
So why do they do it? Why would they run when they must know they have no chance of winning?
A few reasons come to mind:
They love the attention. I recall someone criticizing candidate Obama once by saying he had a big ego, which made me respond, “No! Really? Someone who thinks he can be Leader of the Free World has a big ego? I am shocked!” Come on, big egos come with every politician. They love the attention or they wouldn’t be running.
Money. Candidates can raise a lot of money and live nice off it for a short period of time. If they lose the nomination and remain politicians, they now have made new connections and can use the money for their own PAC and their next political campaign — or they can give the excess to another candidate who will then owe them a favor.
Promotion. Running for President gets their name out there and keeps them in the news, which leads to book sales and speaking engagements which will make them richer.
Auditioning for another job. If they run a good campaign anyway and get good press and appeal to a certain segment of society, they might get considered for the Vice Presidency or a cabinet position.
Auditioning for Fox News. Based on past history, failed candidates have a great shot of getting a cushy well-paying job at Fox News as a commentator.
So do these guys really think they can win? Perhaps a few of the more deluded ones, but the majority probably have other motives in mind.
Look, the government knows who you are, through your social security number, driver’s license, post office mailing address, and probably a hundred other ways of confirming your identity.
Why then do we need an extra requirement for voting registration? Why should the most basic right of anyone in a democracy have such difficult stringent conditions?
Isn’t voting the basis of our system of government, the one we proudly hold up as an example to the rest of the world? Who wouldn’t want everyone to vote?
Well, the answer is simple: The rich and powerful. Since the founding of our country, the idea has been that the common rabble shouldn’t be deciding important matters that democracy’s elite nobility rightly should deal with.
We commoners have fought against this notion since then (when you had to be a white, male, property owner to vote). Little by little, with hard-fought battles, the barriers have fallen.
And the rich and powerful fought back, with poll taxes and literacy tests, and eventually those were eliminated as well.
Today, the rich and powerful are represented by the Republican party that knows perfectly well that the more people who vote, the worse the Republicans do — so they have tried over and over again to restrict voting and place as many barriers in the way of voters as they can. They scream about non-existent voter fraud but admit in private (when they don’t realize they are being recorded) that the whole point of it all is to keep us commoners from voting.
That’s why heads are exploding over Hillary Clinton’s proposal to make voting registration automatic. You turn 18, boom, you’re registered. Horrors!
As you can expect, the smarter people on the right are discussing this as if it will lead to massive fraud and elections being stolen* while the rubes who follow them are more blatant, posting comments that reveal that the racist idea behind poll taxes and literacy tests hasn’t ever died. (Note: Fox News has yet to remove all these racist comments from their web page. They know who their audience is.)
There’s more that can be done to encourage voting of course besides simply making registration easier — mail-in voting has been tremendously successful in the states that have tried it, increasing participation without a single incident of fraud. And “early voting,” which allows people a week or so to vote, also has proven to work.
But automatic registration? A good first step.
* yeah, I know — ironic, right?
Hey, remember when Rush Limbaugh said if Obamacare became the law of the land, he’d leave and move to Costa Rica? Yeah, that was over five years ago and dammit, he’s still here. Not that anyone ever expected that habitual liar to live up to his words…
Anyway, the funniest thing about his comment was his choice of Costa Rica, which has had a socialized health care system far more expansive than Obamacare for many years — just like every other major civilized industrial country on the planet. 
This is a constant threat that no one carries out. There were plenty of liberals who screamed if Bush became President, they’d move to Canada and they didn’t do that either.
Well, now there are conservatives who have threatened to leave if the Supreme Court rules that gay people are indeed people under the 14th Amendment and as such it is illegal to discriminate against them. They somehow think their threat to leave will elicit a response of “Oh no! The bigots are leaving! Quick, we must amend the Constitution to allow for discrimination or else our country may become hate-free in no time!”
“Liberty and equality for all” is a meaningless phrase to these people, isn’t it?
An acquaintance recently posted that people should not go around changing their sex, arguing “They will never have a normal life, and they will never be treated equally or normally.”
More likely, they will be happy that they can finally be the person they have always wanted to be, free from the constraints of society’s rules that force them into categories where they don’t fit. 
This seems to be a common argument that people actually believe — “Look, I will discriminate against people so therefore they shouldn’t do this. It’s for their own good, so that people like me won’t discriminate against them.”
Remember that judge (now forced to retire) who recently refused to marry an interracial couple for “their own good”? He claimed he was only thinking of the kids that could come from that marriage and how terrible it would be to have to grow up with discrimination. (After all, the poor interracial kid could grow up to be President of the United States or something.)
That kind of mindset has always been used by bigots to keep people they don’t like in their place. It’s been used against women who want to get into traditionally male professions, against blacks wanting to get into sports, and against gays and lesbians who want to marry. “We’re only trying to protect you against people like us who would treat you terribly.”
Not a very convincing argument.
I support people being happy.
I am against the shaming of people who are not just like me, and I will always fight against people who try to force everyone to be just like them and live by their own personal or religious rules.
So it bugs me when I see people criticizing Caitlyn Jenner. She’s happy, she wanted to do this — what business is it of yours?
Some people want to be happy in ways I cannot imagine — piercing every part of their body, engaging in sexual acts I find disgusting, enjoying entertainment I can’t stand — but so what? So long as they aren’t forcing everyone else to be just like them, why should I care? Why should I be against people being happy?
This is one of the strongest reasons I talk about marriage equality a lot. I like having people be happy when it does not hurt anyone else. I want to encourage more of it. Happy is good.
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