I'm Voting For...

Trump and Clinton

Earlier in the summer, it was amusing to watch Trump hash it out among seventeen bewildered republican candidates. Trump interjected a certain level of uncertainty and unpredictability to guarantee a laugh now and then. As the election season wore on, my amusement began to wane.

It all started when Carly Fiorina put out a video about dogs that was meant to show her more gentle side. There's no doubt in this country that dogs are more popular than humans so a video of a stiff like Fiorina playfully interacting with canines should've helped her image. In the clip, Fiorina exclaimed,

Carly Fiorina

"A dog is sad when you're gone."

Unless Fiorina had a session with Sonya Fitzpatrick, the pet psychic, I'm not sure how she knew that a dog was sad when you leave. The video went from awkward to weird when Fiorina admitted to eating milk bones as a child. That explains a lot. She even bit into a milk bone on camera. I wasn't laughing anymore after I watched that video. I was scared. These people weren't just nuts, they were crazy.

Then we got down to the wire, and Ted Cruz was left to hash it out with the Donald. Cruz is a Christian, junior senator from Texas who looks a little like Elmer the Bull. He had once eagerly read Green Eggs and Ham on the senate floor as part of a filibuster over the Affordable Healthcare Act, even though a vote had already been scheduled. So technically his marathon 21 hour talk hadn't an actual purpose.



Ted Cruz

He refused to endorse Trump at the Republican convention, stating you should "vote your conscience" after he pledged in writing to do so. Recently, he reversed his stance "after many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience." It must have been the praying that was so time consuming because searching his conscience probably took just a few minutes.

So we forged ahead into the debates which admittedly I initially found amusing. The name calling and accusations brought me back to middle school. We didn't have all this anti bullying agenda we have today. Bullying was a way of life back then. We learned how to behave from shows like Happy Days, a sitcom set in the 1950's where the main characters were split between the cool kids, Richie and Fonzie, and the nerds, Ralph Malph and Potsie. We watched the various actors, all pushing thirty, play high school kids, who endlessly belittle each other, call each other names and accuse each other of maleficence. The debates were just like that, except there was no laugh track.

Just when it seemed things couldn't get weirder, Trump's incessant accusation of voter fraud prompted Russian officials to request to monitor the elections. Three states turned down scrutiny by Russian diplomats. Trump is really accusing the media of bias and not state officials of misconduct because the media keeps printing articles like the recent one in which porn star, Jessica Drake, claimed Trump inappropriately touched her.

Trump's behavior has been off the charts, but it's hard to believe a professed germaphobe, who hates shaking hands and went on the record, years ago, that he vetted woman for HIV and STDs before dating them, would pay a porn star $10,000 for sex. At a news conference, Drake claimed she and two friends met Trump in his room where "he grabbed each of us tightly in a hug and kissed each of us on the lips without asking for permission." She claimed Trump was in a bathrobe. I don't buy it.Trump wouldn't touch a porn star with a stick while wearing a full body condom.

Gary Johnson

So I came to the conclusion that I was going to throw away my vote on a third party candidate. You know, the dudes who don't get invited to the debates. I first checked out the Libertarian Party candidate, Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico.

The Libertarian Party believes the government is too big. We used to talk about the government being too big back in the 80's. For example, the Department of Commerce has about 45,000 employees. That's the size of a large company. As far as I can tell, the Department of Commerce performs two essential functions. They maintain the Department of Commerce webpage, and they calculate the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), an indicator of the economic performance of the country. The GDP should not be confused with the Gross National Product (GNP), also known as the Gross National Income (GNI). These metrics are used by our elected officials to convince people that the economy is doing fine even though we have a Gross National Debt (GND) of $20 trillion.

Anyway, this video of Johnson is just strange. At first, the reporter seems to think he's having a stroke, then when she rules that out, she appears to be concerned for her own safety. Johnson was trying to make the point that he could do anything, even stick his tongue out on national television and still dominate the debates. He couldn't have been more wrong.

Back in 2004, the one time governor of Vermont, Howard Dean, trying to summon some campaign

Howard Dean

momentum at the Iowa Democratic caucuses, let out an exuberant scream during a rally. His so called "I Have a Scream" speech tanked his bid for the presidency because he appeared odd and too unpresidential. Fast forward 12 years later to Gary Johnson's tongue out interview which comes off nothing short of downright insane. Pack it in Gary. That was crazy.

Then I moved to the Green Party candidate, physician Jill Stein. The Green Party is all about "eco socialism" and grassroots democracy. Stein is running on a policy that the government should bailout the $1.3 trillion in college debt through quantitative easing, a complicated monetary policy employed by our elected officials when they run out of money because they gave out too large a tax break to toy wooden arrow makers.

Jill Stein

I'm not sure what quantitative easing is, but Stein's interpretation is to print up $4 trillion of "free money" and hand it out to millennials who spent the last four years goofing off while earning degrees in anthropology, philosophy, fine arts, and other useless degrees. Hopefully, quantitative easing will also provide them with a job in the Department of Commerce helping with the GDP calculation because if you draw a circle around their education and another around jobs, they intersect at "bagging groceries."

Stein is also a member of the folk rock band, Somebodies Sister, playing the guitar and the conga and djembe drums. Not surprisingly, she's in favor of legalizing marijuana like most people that play percussions in a band. While I don't think Jill Stein is crazy, she's a little too much of a product of the 70's for me.

Chesley Sullenberger
and Tom Hanks

I've decided I'm voting for a write-in candidate because I can't find a third party candidate to waste my vote on. I've been encouraging people to write in Chesley Burnett "Sully" Sullenberger III. He was portrayed by Tom Hanks in the namesake movie, Sully. Hanks is my favorite actor, and Sully is my favorite person after my wife, of course. I'm going to write in Hanks as Vice President.

Come on, admit it. Given the chance, you'd vote for them too.


Editor's Note: Voting for a write-in candidate that has not filed Federal Election Commission Form 2 within fifteen days of becoming a candidate will result in your vote not being counted.