The Office of JCL

[TJ in Oregon]

What is your opinion of the War on Drugs in general? Do you support legalized marijuana?

[TJ in Oregon]

One of the problems with this game is that as conservatives, we don't have the option of voting across party lines for our friends and still be able to be competitive because we have such a severe structural disadvantage. It's a shame sometimes, but unilateral disarmament doesn't work here any better than in real life.

One of the lessons the right needs to learn from today is that if we had kept the votes for the former RPPers together, Clarence would have been elected president. A few things happened today I don't really understand. We'll see what happens moving forward, but honestly this was the most dysfunctional showing of the Atlas right since I've joined the forum, and I don't want to blame Clarence. At least to me, he appears more a victim of the mess that is the right than the cause.

[TJ in Oregon]

Oh, fine then, as I stupidly tried to modify my post where I gave an endorsement to JCL and accidentally deleted it, let me clarify my statement:

I am endorsing JCL for Mideast Assembly because he is a consistently pro-life voice and has actual positions he stands by, which are easily observable instead of going around the forum pretending to be both a conservative and liberal simultaneously and issuing a constant stream of blatant panders to various constituents to manipulate their view of him. He is the same before and after elections. I don't mean to attack pragmatism. Pragmatism is the only way anything gets done in a world where the two party system is constructed such that people have to actually live with the resutls (unlike on here where positions are determined externally and brought here). But pragmatism is applied in order to achieve some vision, some underlying core set of principles.

I don't always agree with JCL; in fact there are a number of issues where we have very different opinions, like how a tax system should be structured, or the role of a centralized banking system, etc. We have quite substantial disagreements about how a government should be run. Heck, in real life he probably wouldn't even vote for me. But I think he has been steadfast enough in his advocacy in areas we do agree that he merits my support.

[TJ in Oregon]

Are you a Cubs fan?

[TJ in Oregon]

Congratulations JCL!

[TJ in Oregon]

JCL, Franzl is right and so is Badger. The argument that we should count all votes for an undeclared candidate as invalid votes is a substantial departure from the way we have previously counted PR-STV and one not required explicitly by law. Let the ruling be. The election may not have turned out the way we wanted, but sometimes it's more important to get the rule of law right than it is to have the outcome we want in the election. It was a close election no doubt; few Mideast Assembly elections if any have had a closer count in the final round than with Franzl and Inks. Indeed, if Inks had even gotten one more Federalist transfer we would have one. But it's important to conduct fair elections, and to follow the same set of rules applying to people on both sides of the political aisle.

JCL, let it go. I know we've had worse lawsuits (anyone remember BK's saying non-Mideast residents could vote in the Mideast??) but this one is not a winner and to drag it out any longer is simply sore losership.