Just to be clear, you have asked people that you know not to tag you in photos that they post and they do so anyway?

Yeah. And I've given people pictures that I took and asked them not to put them on Facebook and they do it anyway. Or they take photos and put it up without really letting you know. It's creepy.

But even if they don't, they allow Facebook to scrape their phone of all the contact numbers, so Facebook knows who my friends are because, well, the same 10 people who are friends with one another all have my phone number.

Why wouldn't people in the PR or DC be able to vote? I mean, they don't have senators or reps. Okay, the PR gov. get's elected at the same time as the US President, but the DC voters just got to cast a ballot for the mayor.

Your case seems hard to believe. A passport is pretty much the sine non qua of official IDs (and includes your address) - I'd be interested in any state that forbid their use; federal law protects the voting rights of both people who are homeless and people who are spending a decade abroad'; Your daughter was eligible to vote at her parent's (your) address while going to college... attending college doesn't change your residency unless you actively do it. If so, she would have been eligble to vote wherever her college was. And while travelling could have maintained that residency for voting purposes.

It sounds like you know two Americans who couldn't be bothered registering to vote.

I wish more people who couldn't be bothered to learn about the candidates also couldn't be bothered to learn how to vote.

It seems like this kind of runoff voting will benefit third parties. After all, there may be 3 or 4 major party candidates splitting the vote for that party, whereas a minor party will likely only field one candidate in the general primary. Also, the number of "straight ticket" style voters devoted to one of the two major parties is less likely to turn out on primaries, which have far lower turnout and is mroe driven by getting people to the polls.

Therefore, it seems more likely that the final vote will have a minor party candidate end up in the top two this way, than if there were three candidates R,D,other.

Seriously? First, read what he was in response to. Some fairly minor critique about libertarianism. He starts his post with:

Some key illuminating points to look into:

He is not being sarcastic, ironic or presenting the end result of a slippery slope. He is actively defending all those things. The reason his entire second point is about the gold standard is the parent said how libertarians stupidly support the gold standard, and he was acting like that was an idea worth defending.

You:

This is why I think you didn't comprehend him. He is clearly not advocating that a line-item veto on tax forms should exist, so showing that that would be a stupid idea does not refute him at all. If he is really an anarchist as you suspect, he wouldn't be advocating that tax forms exist at all. But he's not directly advocating for anarchism or the abolition of all taxes there,

Him

The reason I pay taxes is I don't want to have someone steal my shit, throw me in jail, and/or shoot me. Not because I think it's right or I support what's being done with my money. I think most people, if they had a real view of most of what's being done with their tax dollars, wouldn't support it either.

The guy is a libertarian. His ideas are stupid. A line-item taxpayer veto, which he advocates while recognizing that it will end government, is stupid.

And at this point you're either willfully ignorant of what he said, or are trolling. Or, I'll made this allowance, I'm willing to believe I misread him. But you're going to have to do something besides mere assertion.

Now, you seem to be at least sympathetic to the libertarian side yourself (drawn from the connotation of your "predictable responses" to "what if I don't want to pay taxes", as well as the fact that you take the non-aggression principle seriously). If you want to discuss that on it's merits, I'm more than happy to. But let's not pretend that there is some deeper issue.

He's not arguing that anyone should take that position, but that it's the logical consequence of really taking the non-aggression principle to heart.

He most certainly is saying that the Libertarian position is being misrepresented, and that it really is X, and that he thinks it's important enough to go on and on about. Furthermore, there are no attempts to distance himself from the points. I feel safe asserting that he actually believes these points.

Second, he does mention, in all the mass of words, a line-item veto for taxpayers:

So I do the math on the percentage of the federal tax intake that will be spent on this program, I reduce my 2015 taxes paid by this percentage, and include a note saying that I choose not to fund that program, and to please use the rest as they see fit but not to use my dollars for that purposes.

That is the point I choose to address, because while I find many of his ideas incorrect, I find this one particularly easy to refute, yet attractive sounding before any analysis is performed. As opposed to the non-aggression principle (which takes longer to refute) or the gold standard (which is so obviously dumb as to not be worth refuting).

es he really bent hard to get all ZERO Republican votes.

Yeah, he did. They kept saying "well if you loosen this, well if you modify that." So he did. And then they said "not enough".

Now, someone negotiates in bad faith like that with me, I (a) don't go 15 rounds with them and (b) pull back from my compromise position. Obama did neither. So he ended up with compromising with a hypothetical Republican supporter, gut the things he could do, and got nothing for it.

Man is a shitty negotiator.

Yeah... or at least skimmed it. I'm not going to respond with a comprehensive rebuttal of libertarianism There are many bad ideas. I choose one to highlight.

a political website that educates people on bills their politicians voted for against what they care for and simply get alerts

The issue is that voting for a candidate is voting for a bundle of issues. And you and a bunch of other people are in fact negotiating over what that bundle will be. You/re unlikely, even with 100% perfect knowledge, to be represented accurately 60% of the time.

Every two years, we vote for our entire lower house of legislature (House of Representatives) and 1/3 of our upper house (Senate) so that each member there gets a six year term. The half of elections without a Presidental election are considered "mid-terms", because they are in the middle of the presidents term.

Each state also elects a governor, as well as a legislative body. The county (sub state divisions) and city level also have various elections. The states all vary when the elections occur, so that sometimes they line up other elections, sometimes not.

Some states also have judicial elections, which is as stupid an idea as it sounds like.

But, sad truth, due to the way that the lines for various districts are drawn, there are only like 4 elections in the country for the House that are actually close. And given how Senate seats are winner-take-all for the state, there are only a few that are really in play there as well.

So I do the math on the percentage of the federal tax intake that will be spent on this program, I reduce my 2015 taxes paid by this percentage, and include a note saying that I choose not to fund that program, and to please use the rest as they see fit but not to use my dollars for that purposes.

And when your money just pays for a higher share of, I dunno, the military instead. And a pacificst pays more for your share of this program you don't like?

Taxpayers don't get a lineitem veto. It wouldn't work pragmatically if everyone was honest (because you'd have to divide programs up among just their supporters, which wouldn't happen until post collecting a ton of detailed, non-anonymous voting data and solving an unwieldy math probelm.) or in reality, because I would pay no taxes and claim I supported nohign, while getting free rider benefits from it.

I find it amazing that anyone would object to universal health care for chronic diseases. If you want universal health care for anything, and you don't want chronic diseases to be either untreated of brankrupting, there doesn't seem to be a viable alternative.

And Obama bended because he wanted cross party appeal, and he modified it so Nebraska's D senator would vote for it as opposed to weilding any clout to get what he wanted.

. The current White House occupant is the antithesis of my beliefs.

The current President doesn't have the cajoles to be the antithesis of anyone's beliefs.

The U.S. is not Europe and we should be thankful, not embarrassed, for that fact.

How specifically? Do you not like their universal healthcare? Are you one of those fox news Republicans who are "scared of those Muslims"?

Europe has a lot of those "scared of those Muslims" politicians.

Also, why would Disney want to limit who got to use their algorithm? Sorry, I would prevent people from finding pirated movies, but there's a patent on that...