Tis The Season To (not) Be Gifting!

Once again the bell-ringers are out polluting the store-fronts with their organized, deafness-inducing begging. The stores are playing repetitious, canned renditions of "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" so often, their employees are sounding like homicidal Ewoks and looking like Sméagol. The store's motif is red and green with some silver and gold all of which would look great in snow, but with less than 10% of the country having snow ("It's global warming!" "We call it Climate Change now!" "Whatever, it's because of that!" "No it isn't, we can't be sure, but maybe it almost certainly is!"), it just looks ridiculous.

I've done my "buy out the store then stay the fuck away from them" thing for the year so mostly I don't have to listen to it, but the one omnipresent, omni-oppressive, dominating thing about this time of year is the giving of the gifts.

Time recently ran an article about the "Worst. Gifts. Ever." one could get, which only highlighted the whole issue about organized gifting: It's a really BAD idea.

Let's face it, the anticipation of getting the gift is far and away better than the actual gift. The mystery. The suspense. That period of drooling at the packages and boxes that awaited the green flag of Christmas day to tear into like a pack of ravenous velociraptors, teeth bared in grins of gift-nivorous delight - only to experience soul-crushing disappointment when you discover that what you THOUGHT was the Mattel He-man action figure EZ-Fry oven with the kung fu grip turned out to be a cleverly wrapped package of socks and underwear.

To add insult to injury, you're SUPPOSED to be appreciative for this complete betrayal of a child's trust in Santa. It's the "thought" that counts, after all. Yeah, that kind of tripe works so well on a four year old who was expecting to be able to bake Skeletor Kookies and Battle-Cat Cakes later on that day. "What the hell," the child asks himself while modeling these bitterly disappointing gifts like some kind of financially-strapped super hero, "didn't Santa get the letter I mailed?"

So the season to be gifting is actually the season to be whining - a lot, based on the post holiday lines for the refund counters and the courthouse divorce windows.

So for one Scrooge (that's me, by the way), I've rebelled against the whole notion of organized gifting. It's such a sad practice, really. You are EXPECTED to get someone a gift for the holidays and their birthdays. And from that expectation crawls the gut-churning, nausea-inducing, "I'd rather crawl naked over broken glass and then swim through a mile long vat of boiling oil than get another shitty gift I need to smile about getting" moments we all cherish so much upon opening said gift.

I know other people think as I do. I think the fruitcake was intended to be a weapon one sent to their "frienimies" that would be broken up and eaten whereupon the recipients would choke to death. One has to beware of gift horses (or more to the point, they need to beware of the somewhat less than creamy filling of the gift horse). At the same time, you're not supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth. Unfortunately, looking at it any other way means you're very likely going to be looking at a horse's ass for giving the gift in the first place.

The whole concept of expecting a "gift" is such a contradiction of the motives for GIVING gifts in the first place. Gifts SHOULD be appreciated. They SHOULD be given because a person WANTS to, not for some contrived reason where it's expected.

Gifts are an albatross around the necks of both the giver and the receiver. The giver has to put forth the effort of REMEMBERING who to gift, thinking of what the recipient may want (assuming they bother to think of that), trying to fit the gift into the budget, go out and buy it, wrap it and then has to consider the likelihood that the receiver won't like it, will re-gift it, or in some other way won't appreciate the effort that went into the giving.

The gifter EXPECTS gratitude for their efforts, be them large or small. Show me ANYONE who gives a gift who isn't upset by the words, "Is this it?" or a patently insincere, "Thanks." and I'll show you a person who is dead inside or so delusional they can't otherwise operate in the world.

And the person receiving the gift... What a god-awful burden the giver has just dumped on THEM! Most folks would be happier to have a truck-load of horse shit dumped on them! They have to think, "Was MY gift to THEM as good?" or, worse, "Oh, shit, they gave me this and I got them NOTHING!" or even, "What the fuck IS this piece of shit?" and then they have to smile and be gracious and try not to feel like a putz, offended, embarrassed or some other stress-filled emotion as a result of having been handed something for "free" during a period of obligative gifting.

Being handed "Just that I always wanted!" and hearing, "I can't believe you got this for me, it's FANTASTIC!" upon giving the giver your gift back DOES happen, but they're kind of like Bigfoot sightings. You know it happens, but you're never sure if it's real or faked unless you see each other in the same item return lines or someone fucks up and re-gifts you with what you got them the year before.

The size of the can of worms opened up by the very notion of expected gift giving is only exceeded by the lengths to which we go to promote it. Valentine's Day, Father’s Day, Mother's Day, Birthdays, Christmas... Every month or so there's some obligatory, socially mandated demand to go out and buy gifts. It's much less of a "want to" thing than it is a "have to" thing. And on the other side of that gift is someone dreading the likelihood that it's just a cleverly wrapped package of underwear and socks.

I'm NOT for giving gifts with a proverbial gun to my head. A gift shouldn’t be given because it's EXPECTED. That's called "Extortion" in my book. Society will punish you if you don't get the Suzie Slimdoll dancing leotard Rainbow Bunny for your child's second birthday by calling you an unfit parent. Your family will sneer and point and stop inviting you to gatherings...

You know, with a family like that, it COULD be a blessing to not give gifts on expected days.

And one of the things about these days is that they don't always apply or are inappropriately applied. Mother's Day and Father's Day, for example, mean SO much to an orphan and are stroke inducing in families where you can, literally, have FIVE PEOPLE to gift. (The biological mother who donated the egg, the biological father who donated the sperm, the surrogate mother who carried you to term, the adoptive mother you ended up with when Family services took you away because she beat you like a step-child, and the adoptive father who you never saw because he was disgusted with the notion of adoption in the first place). Throw in real step parents and you have a nightmare bordering on the ninth circle of Hell every year.

I always thought that celebrating birthdays was a touch gruesome and somewhat narcissistic. Now, I like the idea of celebrating someone's life. But the thought of, "Hey, you survived another year! Drink up!" seems a bit disingenuous. The giving of the gifts only makes it worse while the receiving of the gifts makes it worser. I've made it a tradition to celebrate things on New Years - everyone celebrating life together, hopefully without too many drunk fights along the way.

No giving of gifts. No receiving of gifts. No crushed hopes. No broken dreams. No resentments. No hurt feelings.

Just a hangover.

Beats the hell out of crawling naked over broken glass and swimming through a mile long vat of boiling oil...

Requiescat In Psychosis, Thea Cohors

Much has been said about the recent elections, but one thing has been the most apparent: Extremism is NOT going to fly in OUR democracy.

In 2010, after two years of increasingly strident hatred and rhetoric, a number of GOP freshmen representatives arrived on Capitol Hill. They managed to keep all significant legislation to address the (at the time) bad economic conditions from happening. From the very start of the Obama administration the goal of the GOP was to make sure he was a one-term President.

They did this with over-the-top rhetoric: The Birther movement. Obama is a Muslim. Obama is a terrorist. Obama is a socialist (Considering no single thing the Obama administration has done has in any way privatized businesses or threatened private property ownership, not only is the charge that he's a socialist so far off the mark, it borders on libel). Obama is going to steal our guns!

They did this with obstructionist tactics that went so far as to have the credit agencies which determine default risks LOWER the credit rating of the United States for the first time in our history (From AAA to AA+, then to AA then to AA-). This was because these Congressional Freshmen came to Washington to "change things".

Well, they did. And it detrimentally impacted everyone needing or seeking credit, among other things. At no point did any legislation come out of Washington that actually helped the common people of the country, except to extend the tax cuts initiated almost a decade ago. (Cutting taxes and waging two multi-trillion dollar, unfunded wars... Way to plan a budget and be fiscally responsible GOP!)

After two MORE years of this strident rhetoric, congressional stagnation and slow economic recovery (mostly because the middle class weren't saddled again with higher taxes), we arrived at the 2012 elections. Things are getting better (no thanks to Congress). And the GOP nominated a plastic, elitist prick who leaked his true nature when he thought he was among friends and who proved it in an AFTER the election sour grapes tirade when he had absolutely nothing to gain from it.

In the end, Grover Norquist's great "starve the beast" campaign to destroy the unity of the United States (while simultaneously accelerating the accumulation of wealth among the wealthy - which was the real agenda) failed because the majority of voters didn't like the attendant extremism of those who supported the idea. It's a flawed concept, of course, but because you could only sell that kind of infantile logic to the infantile minded who have no real clue about how the world works, and because the infantile-minded are the minority, the majority spoke and said, basically, "ENOUGH!"

Extremism shot down the tea party, and it will likely take the entire GOP with it. As I mentioned before, had the Red States, in 2010 when the census was done, not gerrymandered themselves a major majority (thanks computers!) in their states, the House of Representatives would have gained far more Democrats than they did. As it looks now, there will be 201 democrats and 234 Republicans (at last count the democrats had gained 9 and the Republicans had lost 7. There were 2 vacant seats, presumably won by Democrats.)

But to support the assertion that it was the tea party that caused this mass exodus of GOP support, I offer the following facts:

1. Millions of white, middle class voters (the core of the GOP) would rather not vote than vote in favor of the GOP's presidential candidate who embraced, shamelessly catered to and stood by tea party candidates.

2. Allen West, a Florida freshman tea party advocate running as a Republican, was narrowly defeated in a GOP gerrymandered district by .58% of the vote. He so repulsed the voters of his district that he couldn't get elected when his party had a supermajority (over 66%) of GOP voters in it. His over-the-top anti-liberal rants became the fodder for his Democrat challenger to unseat him. The margin of victory seems narrow, but when one considers the districts are gerrymandered to give a distinct advantage to the GOP, it says a lot about the rejection of this individual.

3. Both of the "rape" tea party candidates, Todd "legitimate rape" Akin and Richard "rape is God's will" Mourdock, were expected to win in their districts. Both districts lie in the heart of Red State territory. Both districts were gerrymandered to heavily favor GOP candidates. Both ran on the GOP ticket. Both lost.

Now, I'm not saying the tea party is GONE. Like a zombie, it remains in a half-life of political existence only because of the gerrymandering that went on and, as I mentioned, infantile-brained voters who tend to congregate in rural regions (gerrymandered, of course) from where most of these 2012 tea party winners came. But even if they have aspirations to actually be relevant, they have already shot themselves in the foot. The ideology is DEAD, even if many of the candidates who espoused that ideology were reelected. They are political pariahs in the United States on a national level. Their ideology may play well to the local yokels, but it won't fly in the halls of Congress anymore.

To prove this assertion, I offer Mr. Romney. He wasn't a bad choice for the GOP. He represented all of their ideals. He was wealthy, photogenic, had a record of moderation and a record of exploitation (which meant he could be spun to appeal to moderates and extremists). If this was 1980, he would have won against an Obama-like candidate. But as I mentioned, Romney catered too much to the tea party. Too many tea party advocates said too many hateful, ignorant things and the result was a complete rejection of the things they had said. Well, perhaps not COMPLETE, but in a democracy, you only need more than 50% to win and when winning means you have control, well, losing means you don't get to say what will happen unless the other side is willing to compromise.

Considering how the tea party acted in Congress from 2010 to 2012, I'm thinking they'd rather open a vein and bleed to death on the floors of the House and Senate than "compromise".

I'll be THRILLED to supply them with sterile, brand-new straight razors. Their kind of misanthropy should be encouraged to die off. And the majority of American voters agreed - if not literally then certainly figuratively. These radicals need to make an exit from the political stage. We live in a progressive society where regressive politics won't fly. And in a democracy, if you focus on purifying ranks of those who don't believe in your ideology, you eventually have no say in what or how things are done.

For the tea party, I say good riddance. The headline for this blog is Requiescat In Psychosis, Thea Cohors. If you haven't figured that out, it means "Rest in psychosis, tea party". Political marginalization couldn't happen to a meaner bunch of radicals. It remains to be seen if they spark another civil war because they can't handle democracy in the first place.

Cutting Off The Gerrymander's Tail

In the state-level elections for representatives, a troubling thing happened. The majority of votes for representatives mostly went to the Democrats. But the House of Representatives for the incoming 113th Congress will reflect a majority of Republicans. The split in votes for the United States was about the same in percentage as is reflected in the Senate (which only votes in a third of new members every two years instead of a 100% turnover). That is to say, about 53% of the voters voted for Democratic representatives on both a state and a national level. And yet, this majority isn't reflected in the House.

Why not?

Gerrymandering.

Originating early in our nation's history, states have the right to redistrict themselves based on population. They can draw representatives' districts howsoever they see fit. Many states require that this process to be done impartially - creating districts with as close to a plurality as is possible given the population and the disposition of the registered voters. But many other states, especially in recent times and with the advent of computer modeling, have taken this right to an unhealthy extreme - so much so that the will of the people can no longer be reflected in their state. If enough states do this, then the will of the nation isn't reflected in the political demographic of the House of Representatives.

Since states can't be told how to redraw their districts, because this is a constitutional right, we need a constitutional amendment to change how representatives are elected so that the will of the majority in the state is always reflected in the voting.

The most expedient way to do that is to abolish single-representative congressional elections and have "at large" representatives who represent from one to many districts. Congressional districts would then be assigned to the representatives once the general election voting was done. It's unconventional, yes, but it allows the will of the minority to have a voice and a sympathetic ear while at the same time demanding that the two sides work together to solve the problems facing their constituents.

Here's how it would work:

First, you need the number of districts the state has. As an example, California has 53 congressional districts. That means, by population, 53 out of 435 representatives are assigned to California. Let's say (for the sake of the example and not necessarily the actual numbers) that the California demographic by political ideology is 65% Democrat, 30% Republican and 5% "Independent". This would be obtained from the voter registration roles for the PREVIOUS year or election cycle. This prevents voter registration drives from doing anything tricky because those voters would have time to be confirmed as real and qualified.

So, you will assign the representatives based on the percentage of political ideologies. 65% of 53 is 34. 30% of 53 is 16 (that makes up for the extra over 34). The other 3 are assigned to the Independent slot. So California would be represented by 34 Democrats, 16 Republicans and 3 Independents.

Once they're elected, we assign them to districts.

There are 53 districts in total, so the Independents would be assigned about 18 each with one getting 17 - with the top two vote-getters getting the 18 (17.66). The Republicans would get each 3 for most of them, and 2 for the bottom vote getters (3.31) The 34 Democrats would split them 2 for the top vote getters and 1 for the lower vote getters, split pretty evenly.

The races would be simple enough. Everyone votes on every candidate. Primaries would select the final number of candidates. If you have 34 seats for your party and you don't field 34 candidates to fill them, well, we'll take the representatives from the other parties - top loser in the next most represented demographic in the state. But if you have 34 Democratic seats and 3000 Democratic candidates, well, the primaries will be fun since everyone in the STATE votes for their top 68 choices Democrat choices. This allows the voters to screen out the idiots.

Once you have your representatives selected, the campaigning starts for the general election. There would be - at MOST - two party representatives for every party seat available. The Democrats, with 34 seats would have up to 68 Democrat choices. The Republicans with 16 seats would have up to 32 and the Independents would have up to 6 to choose from.

Pick one from each.

Top vote earners win the seats. If you don't have enough candidates, well, that's on your party.

Those elected would then be the representatives for the districts they were assigned. Residency in a district would be waived as a requirement. You'd only need to be a resident of the state in order to run. Each district would have three assigned homes and offices for the at-large representatives, allowing them to go from district to district (if they have more than one) to conduct business for two years and to act as a central point for public contact for the members of their districts.

One COULD assign them to districts before the general election so you know who you're voting for. That actually makes more sense since it's not a matter of party but of assigning an open seat for each party in that district - and would make the selection and campaigning process a bit more sane. It's not a matter of electing a Republican OR Independent OR a Democrat, but in choosing which one of EACH who will represent the will of the people in that district. The only difference is that some of the candidates will appear on more than one district's ballot.

This will provide a sympathetic political ear in EVERY district, so that a "representative" isn't just looking out for their own and saying, "Fuck the rest of you, you didn't vote for me." It will also engage those who have little motivation to vote because they get to have a say in who their representatives will be for each party in their district. And since the turnover is once every two years, any loading the deck (by having a wolf in sheep's clothing vying for a party seat who isn't actually from or representative of that party) will correct itself pretty quickly.

Since the proportion of the seats each party will represent by the state will be based on confirmed voter registrations, swings in sentiment will be lessened. And it gives a representative for every party affiliation in every district. It creates a sense of having to work together to see to the needs of the people in a congressional district. Once they get to Congress, they work to represent the needs of their constituents as usual. The difference would be that their co-representatives would have some input on how the people in the state or district actually feel IN CONGRESS. Today, we don't have that unless your representative is from your party.

I know, I've tried to engage MY "representative" in rational discourse but get nothing but form letters back. He's not from my party. I have to go to a senator who isn't in the House where legislation is actually introduced to get anything resembling an individual response back. That's no way to run a democracy. Everyone should have a representative who will LISTEN TO THEM. Right now, we don't. In EVERY congressional district, there are people who have representatives who don't represent their views. In too many states, there are more representatives who represent the minority views than there are representing the majority views.

Granted, my system won't reflect CURRENT demographic trends (though if voter registration cut-offs can be done early enough to confirm their eligibility, apportion seats and assign districts, that could change), but it will at least give minority political party voters a person to talk to in their district who is at least somewhat sympathetic to their political views. As it is now, the minority have no voice in their districts. And with gerrymandering, the majority are losing theirs in their states.

We need to give a voice back to all of the people. They may not always win the votes needed to prevail. But they should be given the right to at least be heard in the halls of Congress. The only way to do this would be to ban gerrymandering and codify this idea into the Constitutional framework for electing representatives. This way, one party can't seize power from the people indefinitely.

Screw Black Friday, How About Great Deals Year Round?

It's started again... The holiday songs are out. The holiday decore is out. We have everything but the bell ringers in front of the grocery stores.

And people are complaining.

The "holiday shopping season" is when retailers make up to a third of their annual profits. I get that. I'm actually FINE with that. Profits are how a business stays in business. But jamming FOUR MONTHS OF SHOPPING into a month of time is a horrendous experience - both for retailers who have to cope with the mobs and the mobs coping with the mobs. The WORST time to be out doing any kind of shopping is when there are four (or more) times more people out there shopping at the same time.

I've mentioned that this whole thing sucks donkey dicks. And here we go again.

But here's the thing... Why do they have these "specials" for only a month when they make three times the amount of money they make? Yes, the density of the crowds, I get that. They make a third of their profits off four times as many people as normal. But if they actually spread it out, had these fire-engine specials more often - say once a month for a week or so - they'd probably get the same response. Granted, people aren't always buying for other people, but in today's USA, gifting isn't what it used to be. Self-gifting seems to be the trend. That means people are using these specials to buy things for THEMSELVES.

Combine this trend with the fact that on any given day, about a million people have a birthday in the U.S. and you have adequate reason to go out and take advantage of the monthly Black Sales. (Maybe we can call it Fire-Engine sales. Too many people in the South would be wondering why they can't buy a Black for their very own.) The crowds wouldn't be as large, of course, but that's the whole point. Gigantic crowds, traffic jams, nightmarish lines, stampeding mobs, death and destruction. Those are all hallmarks of the shopping season supposedly dedicated to "peace on earth and goodwill toward men".

Bah humbug.

The thing is that these experiences are god-awful. They detract from the "holiday" spirit to the point that people have to have FUNERALS at a supposed time of celebration. The "holiday shopping season" is one of the most dreaded times of the year for most people. (Stress.) The guilt of not finding the "perfect gift". (More stress.) Not getting the "best deal". (Still more stress.) Shortages of popular items. (Time for the seasonal stroke or heart attack.).

When I can afford it, I do my shopping for the rest of the year about a week before Thanksgiving and never go to the store again until the new year has arrived. I have LONG since stopped giving gifts for the "holidays" (partly because I'm not Christian and don't celebrate the solstice on the 25^th, but on the day it actually happens - whatever date that is in December). I don't need to sing the After-Holiday, Empty-Pocket, Struggling To Pay Off The Credit Card blues.

But some of the deals are attractive to a thrifty shopper. Why confine that to a limited time? Why not make those deals more conveniently available? Why not treat the customer like a person instead of a walking wallet you want to pick once a year?

I don't see the crowds forming all year long for this like they do once a year, but on average, you'll get more shoppers more consistently if you do those kinds of deals more often. The SCALE doesn't have to be as great, either. With great deals available more often, people will scale back the rush, but they'll still be there more frequently buying things. This is especially true if the stores start catering to birthdays and self-indulgence. It's a monday, have a monday blues pick-me-up sale! It's a Friday, have a TGIF sale! It's a weekend, have a weekend sale!

I've done Black Friday ONCE. I stood in line for a cheap shop-vac and realized, after an hour, that the savings wasn't worth my time. Between the stress, the parking nightmare, the traffic, the god-awful music, the rude sales people and the ruder customers, getting a shop-vac for fifteen bucks less than its normal price wasn't worth it.

I left it sitting to the side in the line.

The moral of THIS story is, the holiday shopping EXPERIENCE actually makes people NOT buy things. That means they don't go to the stores for the loss leaders, they don't buy other stuff, they don't deal with crowds, they don't eat out. And there are a lot of us who do this out there. Enough to make up the difference if one spreads these deals out over the year? Possibly.

The good news is that the trend toward earlier specials has already started. Not that it's exactly year-round, of course. But the idea is solid. Offer BETTER specials in a coordinated fashion far more often than just during the "holiday shopping season". It helps the shopper, it helps the business and it keeps the shopping rage and stress to a minimum because you're not out there fighting with so many others so much.

It would get people like ME to spend more money than we do. And when looking for profits, one needs to sometimes look not at the customers in the store, but why more customers aren't.

The Rise and Fall of the Republican Empire

The balloons have all fallen. The votes have been counted (for the most part). The decision is done. Instead of ads ripping the opponents a new one, the mattress and erectile dysfunction ads are back on TV. The fat lady even sang, though it was more of a public Rove Lament than a Wagner aria. To say that the GOP is stunned wouldn't entirely be hyperbole.

The night of November 6th, 2012 was won by the incumbant, Barack Obama.

But...

It wasn't what one would call an overwhelming endorsement of leftist policies. After all, according to analysts, there were eight million white voters (like me) who, also like me, stayed home. White, middle class voters. The core of the GOP. The election was relatively close when once considers the overall count. About a hundred million voted (give or take). About 2% more went for Obama than Romney (give or take). The difference was about three million votes. The electoral college vote, however, wasn't even close. Obama won 332 electoral college votes to Romney's 206. As it happened, neither Ohio or Florida (which both went to Obama, with Florida by a slim margin, though much greater than what Bush had over Gore when the ballot counting was forced to stop in 2000) played any actual part of the decision. Romney could have won both, and still lost the presidency.

The decision of who won was actually settled about three hours after the polls closed on the Pacific coast. To be honest, that rather surprised me. I had somewhat expected Obama to win. I didn’t expect the decision to be quite so clear nor so quicky arrived at. In some ways, I'm rather pleased it was. It makes inciting a revolution against the government much harder to pull off. Eight million disenchanted voters NOT voting for their man tells me they didn't want right-wing control of the government, which is what would have happened if right-wingers were in favor of it in the first place. I don't see anyone putting their lives on the line to install a government they could have simply voted in without all the fuss and bother.

But the overall results of the election changed nothing between Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats gained seats in both the House and the Senate, but not enough to change the control of either chamber. However, given the gerrymandering that went on during the two years between 2010, when Republicans had the good fortune to gain control over many state legislatures at a time when the poll was done, it may be that their House majority was achieved more through consolidation (or abuse, if you will) of political power than by heeding the will of the majority.

What this election highlighted was that I was really hoping to see: the need for a moderate party. Instead of it being a ringing endorsement of a President widely viewed as being vulnerable by the GOP, it was a firm rejection of GOP policies. When one considers the gerrymandering that went on, it was likely a bigger rejection than it appears.  Most especially it was a rejection of the policies of the extremists in the Tea Party who saw high-profile candidates - Akin and Mourdock, about whom I've mentioned - defeated. Even Bachmann, the virus-brained bimbo from the GOP primaries who apparently is the Chief of the Tea Party (that was a pun - think about it), was almost defeated, squeaking by with less than one percent of the vote. (3000 out of 350,000 votes).

The GOP ran a campaign basing its campaign promises (assuming one could nail them down) on the same bullshit they talked about 30 years ago. It's obviously escaped their attention that things have changed. I talked about how the right-wing was going to implode - twice - and why. And it's happening right now. They marginalized all their moderates to the point that 8 MILLION of them said, "Fuck it, I ain't gonna vote for either one of them."

That cost them the election in a campaign where defeating a weak president during economic hardship should have been a slam dunk.

There were some key things that went against them. Most of them due to the changing religious demographic in the U.S.

For example, the subject of banning abortions rose constantly in the election. The GOP kept saying they wanted to ban them (Romney would be a "pro-life" president, even though he would allow abortion in cases of rape, incest or a health danger to the mother, but was rather inconsistent in that stand). And yet, polls have CONSISTENTLY shown that only about one in five Americans favor banning all abortions - at MOST. As I mentioned in my earlier post, the GOP is appealing to and catering to a smaller and smaller demographic. That's not how one wins in a democracy.

Organized religions are almost all seeing an overall decline in U.S. membership. Methodists, Presbyterian, Catholics, Episcopals, Baptists - the traditional GOP tactic of pandering to the religious is falling on fewer and fewer ears. Nondenominational memberships which are not tracked may be rising, but may not. The point is the traditional "values" upon which the GOP rests its entire social agenda are falling to the wayside as hot-button issues to the majority of voters.

Gay marriage was approved by the voters in Maine and Maryland. In Washington state and Colorado, marijuana was legalized by the voters. The war against gays and the war against drugs both took gigantic hits in that respect. Especially if one considers the money that went into backing GOP ideals and candidates

The GOP promoted what it called "smaller government" in its call to arms. They wanted to cut entitlement programs. It SOUNDED good but a look at the realities of the world today proved that it would have been the equivalent of political suicide (unless the purpose behind doing that was to drive the poor, retired, disabled and handicapped from their states). When it comes to taxes for entitlement programs, there are far more red states taking more from the government than they pay into it. To maintain that revenue, they would have to do what they consistently refuse to do: Raise taxes. In this case, the taxes of the individual states who would see a gigantic shortfall of budget revenue. In the face of this reality, it's really hard to believe they'd be serious about doing that.

No one really wants to see a bloated government with massive pork and irresponsible spending. Most Americans agree that "smaller government" is a good idea if it gets rid of costly and unnecessary programs. Deciding what constitutes costly and unnecessary is a matter of compromise, of course. However, Grover Norquist's ideology is anathema to most Americans. Reverting to a confederation of independent states - which is basically the essence of his ideology - would destroy the United in "United States of America" as most of us know it today. So when you talk about something being hated by most people in a democracy, it isn't going to get ANY traction outside of a bunch of isolated, rural communities.

The bottom line is that the Republican party ran a campaign that would win in 1980 but could NOT win today. The country has changed a lot since 1980. The Republican party has NOT.

One wouldn’t THINK that the country would change so much in two years, that what was embraced all across America (or so goes the GOP mindset) just two years ago would be firmly rejected in the next election.

The simple fact is, the GOP fucked up. The country didn't really change THAT MUCH in two years. But what it did get was two years of ultra-rightist-caused congressional deadlock, an ultra-rightist-caused drop in the country's credit (for the first time in our history) and FOUR years of over-the-top ultra-rightist rhetorical bullshit that only got louder and more extreme.

The country took a chance on ultra-rightist radicals in 2010 and while some places certainly still embrace them, many others that used to, no longer do. That these folks made no GAINS AT ALL says to me that their ideology is seen as bullshit by the majority of Americans, both left and right. Right-wingers who think (Center-right) didn't want to embrace Obama, but they sure as hell didn't want the loons from the Tea Party controlling the country, either. Faced with no choices, they stayed home.

I know how they feel.

I mentioned before that the Republicans treated the center like it treats their ardent followers - as if they can't think. Well, that's exactly true and the thinkers in the Republican party raised eight million middle fingers to the GOP to let them know of their displeasure in how they were treated. I've been doing that since the 1990's.

But it took two years of the the over the top bullshit from the Tea Party to make America go "Whoa, those fuckers are nuts." The GOP had the VERY BAD judgement to align themselves with those wackos and even TRY to embrace them. Had the GOP moved to the center and characterized all of the radical lefties and the radical righties as nut jobs, presented a candidate with a solid background grounded in moderation - a fiscal conservative and social progressive - willing to work with others to arrive at a negotiated agreement on how to run the country, it almost certainly would have carried the vote. I'm relatively certain there are at least 8 million people who would have voted for him. And a hell of a lot of people I talked with were unhappy with both candidates, looking for someone in the middle.

Now, the fact is, the GOP CAN'T go to the middle and expect to stay there. Dropping the social agenda would be like calling in a zephyr on a foggy day. Those social agendas distract their followers from the things the right-wing does that actually screws their followers over. As George Carlin says, these followers get corn-holed by the right-wing by the fiscal policies they promote. I'm not saying the left doesn't do it, too, but at least the left is more up-front about what they're doing. The right-wing uses these social agenda issues as a smokescreen to distract their followers. Without them, their policies would be laid bare.

Now, I'm all for laying them bare, but in order to maintain the GOP status quo (stealing from the poor and giving to the rich - after all, the wealthy wouldn't have invested a BILLION dollars in the campaigns if they didn't expect a return on that investment), the GOP would have to better explain their policies without being able to distract their followers should the discussion not go according to GOP plans.

What can the GOP do to regain political power with enough appeal to actually gain control again?

With Romney's 47% remark revealing the true heart of the GOP - that it only cares about people who make enough money to be taxed and since it was done in front of wealthy, powerful donors, it's willing to do and say ANYTHING to help those wealthy and powerful donors as long as it helps the GOP get into power - the last thing the GOP can do is embrace the wealthy as closely as is has in the past. It has to become the champion of the majority of VOTERS, not the majority of the money.

The 2012 campaign proved that one could raise money from regular people. The amount spent by "outside sources" for Romney ALONE was three times more than Obama, but Obama out-raised far more in direct campaign denotations by nearly two to one. Unlike Romney, who raised most of his cash through the wealthy, half of what Obama raised was from non-wealthy donors. Although the Romney side spent over a billion dollars to get him elected (and that's only as of October 27^th, 2012 - final totals aren't in yet), Obama spent less - and won.

That's a critical factor here. Money is no longer buying elections when the message being promoted doesn't sell to the majority of Americans. Before you could baffle them with bullshit. Today, not so much.

So to wrap it up, the GOP is screwed. They can't do their usual crap anymore. What worked for 30 years no longer works. They have to come up with a new game plan and they have to do it within two years to keep the Democrats from gaining full control.

What was happening before - a slow recovery, but a recovery - will likely continue regardless of what Congress does. There was talk of compromise, but there used to be some as well in 2008 until about two seconds after Obama was sworn in. Boehner, the speaker of the house, was characterized about being willing to discuss things. Now he seems to be back-peddling (he wants to find "common ground" rather than compromise - which doesn't seem to be any different - but I wrote way back when about how they have no more common ground left.). If the GOP can't get it together and tanks the government's budget with another situation that puts us over the fiscal cliff through obstructionist tactics like those used when they caused the credit rating of the U.S. to drop in 2011, it will spell the end of the GOP. They could only do that ONCE, because the backlash against them was severe.

After all, if the people liked what the obstructionists were doing, they would have voted MORE in. And they didn't.

So the recovery will continue. That can only help the Democrats - especially if the rightists go back to their stalling tactics. So going over the cliff won't help them. Stalling won't help them. The BEST they can do is hope they can introduce some good legislation that actually helps the regular people. I don't see them doing that. And they're NOT going to get elected based on the over-the-top crap they've been pushing for 30 years. I DO see them trying THAT.

So in the end, they're not going to have much of a chance to recover. If the Democrats are given their heads and do what they want to do all the time, it may screw the country enough to swing things back to a more rightist point of view, but that isn't going to happen either. Republicans need to engage in talks that include the word compromise. They need to make themselves part of the solution. But they can't do that and still serve their employers (masters is such a loaded, but appropriate, word).

They're screwed, blued and tattooed. What replaces them will likely be more moderate, more accommodating of the will of the voters, less accommodating of the will of our wealthy overlords, less fiscally absolutist than the GOP, more socially progressive than the GOP and far more palatable to the American people than the leftists.

But for the next ten years, at least, the GOP will not likely be a viable alternative for most voters, and if it can't get back in the game before then, it strutted its stuff on the American political stage for the last time in 2010.

What I predicted before is beginning to come to past. It remains to be seen how right I am about the rest.

The Short And The Long Of It

Barack Obama has won a second term as President of the United States. That's the short of it.

Onward to the long of it.

It happened about three hours ago as I start to write this. Mitt Romney, the rightist or moderate chameleon whose positions on things changed depending on the political ideology of the crowd to which he wanted to appeal, has conceded the election. Not all of the numbers are in, but Mr. Obama has garnered over two million votes (and counting) more than Mr. Romney and has secured 303 of the 270 electoral college votes needed to clinch the presidency.

To say that I'm relieved would be an overstatement. I rather expected this outcome in the face of Mr. Silver's prediction, but the fact is, I was rather hoping it wouldn't happen. Yes, a Romney victory would have put the United States on a collision course with fiscal disaster. Top down economics don't work, as has been AMPLY demonstrated over the last two years. But despite the economic turmoil that I, and more than 300 million of my fellow Americans, would have had to endure for at least the four years that the disaster of a Romney administration would have been, we are now faced with the prospect of civil war.

I've talked about this before, obviously, but as of this writing, it remains to be seen if my crystal ball has any kind of accuracy or has the vision of an individual with macular degeneration. I'm rather hoping the latter. But I'm still expecting the former,

That said, I have a certain amount of hope that a "civil war" may be far more limited than I was previously predicting The two most conservative fucktards, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, the former saying that women were protected from pregnancy in a "legitimate rape" and the latter who said that pregnancies resulting from rape were "god's will" were both defeated. While Akin's opponent was an incumbant (and a woman), Mourdock beat the Republican (although mostly moderate) incumbant Dick Lugar in the Primaries, making Mourdock the person to beat. The GOP thought the Indiana seat was a "slam dunk".

Until he shot himself in the mouth with his "God's Will" statement and turned the slam-dunk into an air-ball.

As a result of this, the right-wing actually LOST ground in the Senate (Dem's gained 3, Republicans lost 3). The House remains in the hands of the right, but it may be with a bit less of a majority than they had (232 now versus 241 before the election with some races still to be called). That number may change, but the GOP will retain control either way.

Now, the fact is Obama won both the popular vote and the electoral college. That's a clear majority. The margin of victory was over two million voters (at least as of last count) more for Obama. Democracy at it's finest. Yes, the country is divided, little will change in Congress, the right-wing will, at the very least, continue to stand in the way of anything being done and call it "defending the United States". But at least the status quo didn't get WORSE.

And yet, there's still the possibility that it will. The GOP is mostly white and stupid. And the pundits on the right have not lost their zealotry over defending what they think is the "American way".

But what way is that?

Bill O'Reilly said it best when he allowed that Obama had won the election (this from the "fair and balanced" news station!):

“The white establishment is now the minority,” O'Reilly said. “And the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama's way. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?”

So it appears that the Right-wing is all about white power, the belief that women and minorities all "want things" and are against democracy. The world changes. Shit happens. You don't whine about the "white establishment" becoming the "minority". At the VERY least you say, "Things change, shit happens and now we deal with it like an adult."

So because of statements like O'Reilly, the reactions of the pundits on the "fair and balanced" station to the news that Romney had lost and the prevalence of white supremacist groups in the United States (who have the unmitigated GALL to call themselves "Christians"!!), I still think there will be violence. The right-wing doesn't believe in democracy. And when I say the right-wing, I mean the extremists in the Tea Party and others who talk about "taking back the U.S." in defiance of democracy and the will of the majority.

But I MAY be wrong about the civil war. At least the scope of it.

This is because of the speed of the election decision. There seems to be no question that Obama won. There was a complete lack of controversy over the voting process (although there were some reports of fraud, but it was reportedly biased toward Romney and NOT Obama), despite the fact there was a lot of potential for election-day disaster. There was no prolonged "hanging chad" decision to make (even if Florida still has yet to figure out who the fuck won - in THIS election, it makes no damn difference).

That clarity of decision, the decisiveness of the voting and even the two million MORE who voted in favor of Obama makes justifying an insurrection EXTREMELY hard. Not impossible, of course. The delusional who hate non-whites won't let little things like democracy or the will of the majority stand in their way. But they'll find it hard to convince the rank and file extremists - the ones who are "armchair haters" who wouldn't DARE say what they spew on the Internet to ANY stranger's face - who MIGHT join in if it appeared to be well planned, well thought out and well coordinated to actually get off their asses and start shooting people they don't like.

I don't see that kind of thing happening on a large scale.

Now assuming a civil war doesn’t start and there is no violence, I'll hide behind the excuse that my prediction was based on the likelihood that things would be ugly during the election. I was surprised that it went as well as it did and also very surprised at the margin and decisiveness of the Obama victory. There was a lot that could have gone wrong that didn't. If that keeps violence at bay, I'll be more than pleased. Even if we have four more years of the same (Which we won't. I expect as things get slowly better, the people will see the Tea Party retards for the repressive assholes they are and vote them out of office during the mid-term elections.), I'll be happy with that as long as we don't have Americans killing Americans wholesale because traitors can't handle democracy when it doesn't go their way.

If one can take anything away from this it's that (gerrymandering aside) the American voters aren't ALL extremists. There appears to be a sufficient number of voters who know that balance is best. As dysfunctional as the extremists on the right make our congress, we all know that moderation is best. A rubber-stamping congress is never a good thing for the country. I'm satisfied that the situation won't get THAT MUCH worse, at least not on Capitol Hill.

As for Shit-Kicker Hills, Texas, well, let's just say I expect they're not retreating. As Palin urged, I suspect some folks there are reloading. Time will tell if I'm right about that.

Why I Don't Vote

Least people go, "What the fuck?" at the title of this post, allow me to explain some things. I first voted at the tender age of 18 and participated in every vote until 2008. Since then I stopped voting and even went one step further by deregistering myself from the voter roles. So it's not like I haven't participated in the right to vote in the past. But around that time, I had been focusing on politics for years and came to the painfully obvious realization that my vote doesn't matter to anyone at all. And I'm not entirely alone in my not voting.

I'm an independent. That is to say, I have moderate points of view when all my points of view are averaged out. Some are blatantly rightist. Some are definitely leftist. (See my "Where I Stand" post for an overview of them.) But there are no moderate candidates. There are rightist candidates and leftist candidates but no moderate candidates. My choices are the devel on the right and the deep blue sea on the left.

I don't particularly want to vote for either of them.

Until 1998, I realized that I wasn't really that politically "aware". Politics wasn't my thing. Since then I've educated myself on the process and with that education came the realization that democracy is a fucked up concept. Not in and of itself, but how it's practiced in the Untied States of America. We're NOT a democracy. We're a democratic republic of independent states play-acting at cooperation. We don't even elect our national leaders by majority vote. And we're the only country on earth that makes six to ten states ALONE the deciders of the Presidential elections every four years.

But to top it off, we let ANYONE vote - or at least anyone White. Any citizen of color who can produce papers in triplicate that have been lost, found, buried in peat for three years, recovered, cleaned off, scrutinized by a panel of three rightists then ignored until after the current election can vote, too. But race aside, we have no other criteria for allowing people unfettered access to depositing their little turds in the ballot box. They can vote for any reason they want: the color of a persons' skin, their stand on a single issue, the way you feel when you look into their eyes or even on their overall positions and policies. Sadly, that last is usually the LAST reason people vote for a candidate because it's not about positions or policies. It's about who zinged the other guy the most. Whoever spends the most money spreading lies, rumors, innuendo and just plain mud almost ALWAYS wins.

Why do you think this campaign year quadrupled in cost for the presidential race over the 2000 presidential race? That's right, folks, the race to the top went to almost two billion dollars, up from the 500 million spent on the Bush/Gore fight of 2000. This includes vast sums of money from anonymous super PACS who don't have to disclose (or go to great lengths to conceal) who they really are. If you don't believe the stuff in my book, all you need to do is look to see who's financing the run to the top (either directly by direct donations and/or anonymously through super PACS) to know that our country's rulers aren't picked by the people, but by the elite. And the elite make sure their choices do their bidding. Both sides do this, but the majority of donations to the left come from average people while there are a few gigantic spenders on the right-wing side who invest vast sums of their wealth on their hand-picked choices of candidate to ensure they get wealthier.

This is how it's always been, but at least publics' perception of the involvement of the wealthy in politics before had the courtesy to stay in smoke-filled rooms rather than blaring in people's faces when the same SuperPAC TV ad runs at every commercial break time between 5 and 8 PM.

If you toss in the ongoing Electronic Voting Machine issues today, where one hacker can CHANGE millions of votes and the ongoing right-wing assault on keeping minorities from voting (because they usually vote left wing), you realize that there is almost no chance that your vote will actually help anyone.

Finally, WHERE you live makes all the difference whether or not you have the motivation to vote. There are about 10 states (or one fifth of the country) who will determine who gets to be President. All the other states either always swing left or, more often, swing right. And when one starts parsing it down even further, one can look at the most populous counties in those states and focus on those individuals to get their vote. So in THOSE states, your vote is likely to count - assuming anyone lets you vote, actually counts your vote and doesn't CHANGE your vote anywhere along the way.

Do you begin to grasp the futility of it all? It's not as if your, or my, lowly little vote is going to count for ANYTHING because there's a good chance that you live in a state where it won't matter (there are too many people voting against you - or with you - to make one vote matter), or you live in a state with a high degree of voter manipulation in the FIRST place and where your balloting process can't be trusted. For a country like the United States, this state of affairs is reprehensible. But while a lot of people are bitching about it, no one is doing shit to change it. Why not?

The elite don't want it changed. God forbid people actually THINKING about their vote.

And let's not mention the tedium, time and difficulty in actually getting your vote in. Granted, there are ways to mitigate that, but for those who don't or can't do them, standing in line to vote on a fucking WEEKDAY between 8 AM and 8 PM is all that's left. Maybe you didn't get fired for voting on office hours because you couldn't otherwise make it to the polls before they closed back in 1790, but you sure as hell can today.

So for a lack of selection among candidates who are guaranteed to represent NO MORE THAN HALF of MY views (and always considerably less than that), not living in a swing (AKA "Battleground") state, being consistently lied to by all the candidates and all of the proponents and all of the opponents of ballot measures while the wealthy piss money on top of our upstretched, mouth-breathing faces where there are three fucking retards voting based on one single issue for every genius voting for their well considered and reasoned choice, why the FUCK would ANYONE want to vote?

So I don't. At least I can honestly say, "I didn't vote for that guy" when it all goes down the shitter. And we all know it will sooner or later.

Where I Stand

It may not always be apparent where I stand on all issues. Certainly where I stand on religion is one people know. Where I stand on the right-wing, and to a lesser extent the left wing, is another. Gun control is obviously one that everyone should know my position.

But a lot of the specific other issues that are part of the day's discussions aren't always part of MY discussions. So I thought I'd address that - in abbreviated form, of course.

Getting into exactly what the issues are, though, isn't as cut and dried as one may seem. Some people have a big hard-on for things I don't give two cents about one way or another. I believe you can safely assume that if it isn't listed here, I have no particular point of view in favor of or against it (Or I just plain forgot it).

Abortion - Against it personally, but in favor of a woman's right to choose. It ain't my body and if I wanted a baby, I would make sure she did, too. Otherwise, I'd keep it in my pants and not hers.

Affirmative Action - Against it. We have enough laws in place to take care of cases of discrimination. We don't need favoritism for anything over competence in schools or jobs. The way a person is born shouldn't give them special treatment when it comes to jobs or school.

Agriculture - I am against subsidies that allow a profit. I am against subsidies that encourage planting food to be used for fuel. In times of economic or natural disaster, I believe in aid so that farmers don't go out of business, but they have to prove they suffered losses to get it.

Animal Rights - We need to treat animals humanely. We don't need to always give them every consideration. I don't buy into the "tipping point" about how all animals are critical to the food chain. If they were, and they're endangered, the food chain is going to collapse anyhow. I think a macro approach - looking at how species interact with other species on a large scale - is more important than preserving the habitat of a fish no one ever heard of until it was discovered it five minutes ago. The way I see it, if it was that important, we'd have noticed it before then.

Budget and Economy - I've already written much about this.

Campaign Finance - My personal opinion is that no one should be able to campaign until thirty days before the election. They may not raise funds until 60 days before the election. They may only be able to raise a certain amount (limits) and prove they can handle a budget before we vote for them. I'm against PAC and special interest money, but since it can't be stopped, I would ban all monies from outside the affected vote area. For local elections, money would have to come from local sources ONLY and those sources would have to obtain their funding only from local sources.

I'm in favor of full disclosure and by that I mean even PAC's and SuperPAC's should disclose who gave what to whom. They say doing that will stifle free speech. I say bullshit. Free speech should be spoken by people who have the balls to stand up and say it. If you feel you have to hide behind your money to say things, you should shut the fuck up and move out of the country.

Censorship and the Internet - Leave the Internet alone. Don't touch it. Don't regulate it. Don't even THINK about it.

Child Support - I'm only in favor of it if the support is shared equally. Now that women are making as much as or more than men (Don't talk to me about equal pay for equal work. Women who DO equal work do get equal pay.) then more women should be paying child support and more men should be getting custody. Many recent studies indicate that although women are SEEN as the nurturers, it's MEN who want kids more than women do.

Church State - I've written a lot about this but it's summarized by the statement, religion should stay the FUCK out of government and government should get the fuck out of religion.

Civil Rights - I've also written much on this. The bottom line is that if the government gives privileges and rights to one person, all people should get it.

Climate Change / Global Warming - It's real. It's man-caused. We'd better get used to it. We'll never grow the hell up and do anything about it before it's too late.

Crime - I've written much about this. Basically, a taste of pain is often necessary to learn a lesson, so I favor public floggings (caning, something, anything to inflict pain). I am, however, against the death penalty. I prefer to make people face a life in prison than get an early exit.

Death Penalty - See above.

Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell - Overturned and no effect at all on military readiness or mission accomplishment. About fucking time.

Drugs - I'm against the "war on drugs" as being another pointless kind of prohibition. I say legalize EVERYTHING, regulate it as we do alcohol, tax the sales heavily (though considerably less than the current street price) and use the proceeds to fund rehabilitation centers. We do it for alcohol. Why not for drugs, too? We'd get hundreds of billions in savings by not enforcing the laws we have now and kicking out non-violent drug offenders from prison, plus billions more in taxes.

Education - this should be a national priority. I've written a lot about how to fix the educational system, but never addressed costs. I don't think it should be "free", but I do believe that anyone who wants to get one should be able to pursue that goal.

Energy & Oil - We need to get off the oil train. We need alternative forms (that means MANY, people, not just ONE) of energy that are less polluting and more sustainable.

Enviroment - We need a logical approach to the environment. We can do business without poisoning people or killing people or killing animals. On the other hand, we don't necessarily have to stop necessary or vital projects because of some flower that only grows in a particular place. Life adapts or it dies. We don't have to help it along in the dying part if we can avoid it and we can always transplant things to new places.

Firearms - I've written a lot about this, too. Repeal the second Amendment. Make gun ownership a privilege so it can be regulated.

Flat Tax - The stupidest fucking idea to ever come out of the right-wing.

Foreign Policy - Really? Earth is a neighborhood. Don't piss off your neighbors on purpose. Don't let your neighbors bully you. How hard is that?

Free Trade - A terrible idea because it's impractical and doesn't work. It's unsustainable in the first place (the planet doesn't have enough resources to trade across the board) and too many places - notably Africa - have no hope of joining in until their tribal/secular/religious differences are settled, assuming anyone survives.

Gay Rights - Same thing as civil rights. No special rights for being the way you were born, but you must treat all people equally before the law regardless of how they were born.

Gun Control - See Firearms.

Health Care - This is where I'm the most liberal, but keep in mind that I was a Corpsman and our first priority was and always will be the welfare of the patient. Not the depth of their pocket book.

Health care should be made non-profit with salary caps. People should pay for what they get, but they should be able to enjoy their lives instead of being an indentured slave to the health care system by repaying it for treatment. There's a balance in there somewhere. We need to find it.

Homeland Security - All I seem to see is a bunch of wannabe terrorists tricked by the FBI into proving they're complete fucking morons. I have yet to see any credible threat to the security of the United States that didn't come from the right-wing. I like the idea of centralized security, though. The trouble is, the other agencies, with their overhead, still exist. Streamline it, put it all under one agency, dissolve the NSA, the CIA and the FBI and absorb them into the DHS. It will save time, money and lives.

Illegal Immigrants - Another of those things I've written a lot about. In short, give temporary amnesty to everyone in the country on a certain date (preferably the first of the current year), give them five year ID cards. Any immigrant without an ID card after the amnesty period gets deported immediately. At the end of five years, test them for the ability to speak, read and write English to a sixth grade level. If they pass, give them legal papers. If they fail, deport them.

Make English the official language of the United States.

Immigration - Hire American citizens first. Hire immigrants second. 'Nough said.

Infrastructure & Technology - No opinion. I like technology. Infrastructure should be maintained. Some context in this would help, but this is all I have now.

Language - English should be the official language of the United States. All government business should be exclusively in English. After all, all the roadsigns are. Businesses who want MY business won't offer "Press 2 for Spanish". If you need a translator to get around, hire one.

Medical Marijuana - See Drugs.

Medicare & Medicaid - These are entitlements that aren't used right, IMHO. I'd privatize it, making it non-profit (of course) and fix prices based on affordability for the individual instead of flat rates. I don't know a lot about it, to be honest, so that's about as far as I'm willing to say. Funny thing is that I should be qualifying for it in the relatively near future...

NAFTA - See Free Trade.

Nuclear Energy & Weapons - These are two different subjects. Nuclear energy is prohibitively expensive in the long run because no one ever reckons on storage costs of spent fuel. While a plant is operating, it's relatively cheap, but there's building the plant, tearing it down and storage costs that are amazingly expensive. Also, when there's an accident, it renders hundreds of square miles uninhabitable pretty much forever. It's not a viable energy source. When I say viable, that implies "survival of the human species" viable, at least on an earthly commercial basis.

Nuclear weapons should be banned, but since we can't stuff that genii back into the knowledge bottle, its spread should be deterred. Nuclear weapons should be used as a deterrent and never as a first option. Starve any countries that make nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Testing - They're already banned. Violators should be hung by the gonads. On the bright side, we know which countries are violating the ban and know where to drop our bombs.

Patient Rights - Patients have the right to refuse treatment. That means life-saving treatment as well. Everyone should have advanced directives done, but the doctors have to remember that while their oath says first do no harm, it's up to the patient to decide what harm actually means.

Political Corruption - Lifetime bans from political office seems like a good idea. Do to them what we do to criminals who are convicted of crimes - don't let them profit from their crime by taking away book deal money and other income that relate to the crime. I'd also make them repay all of the campaign donations and monies they received for running for office from the time the crime was committed onward.

Privacy on the Internet - One of those contradictory freedom of speech things. I earlier said that people who spend money on influencing campaigns should be known to everyone. But a voice in the dark who has no funds or other influence SHOULD be allowed to be anonymous.  It's one thing to talk.  It's another to put your money where your mouth is.

Invading the privacy of people is not my thing. The United States is big enough and strong enough to let people plot and plan and act to do very bad things. It's the price of our freedom and one I'm willing to pay to let us say anything we want provided it doesn't intentionally encourage others to do violence. There is a line to that freedom. But invading privacy to find that line isn't the way to do it. We have something called due process. If law enforcement has reasonable suspicion that a crime is being planned and can present that evidence to a judge and get a warrant, fine. Due process had been observed. I'm good with that.

I'm not good with skipping due process. If that means what was heard can't be used in a court of law, so be it. Use it for probable cause and get a warrant.

Race Relations - Okay, I don't believe in race relations. Races cluster. It's the way people are. They look for a group. We'll never become the homogenous mixing pot that was supposed to be our destiny. We celebrate "diversity" - how we're all different. We don't celebrate our similarities enough. As long as we emphasize our differences, we'll never have peaceful relations between races or ever end racism.

School Prayer - As long as there are tests in school, there will be prayer in school. I don't care if an individual wants to practice their religion. They can do it anywhere as far as I'm concerned. After all, I like to know who to avoid. But it's one thing to practice their religion and another to advertise it. They should never advertise it on government property.

Wearing "Jesus saves" t-shirts and handing out fliers or making God-promoting banners isn't practicing one's religion. It's advertising. I don't give a rat's ass if their religion tells them to do this or not. The constitution says you may not do that if it's on publicly owned grounds.

Schools, though, are an even more special case. Someone can walk away from a holy-roller in public, but in a school, students don't have that freedom. The same goes for sporting events. People are there to see the game. They're not supposed to be a captive audience being preached to. Freedom of religion also means freedom FROM religion for those who don't share the same religion. The intolerance isn't from those who tell these asshats to take their religion elsewhere or keep it to themselves. It's from these self-righteous asshats who assume that the faith of others is somehow less strong than, or is invalid compared to, theirs.

Social Security The biggest problem with social security isn't that people have it. It's keeping it financed. My solution is to remove the maximum taxable income cap. Problem solved.

State of the Union - It sucks and is not getting much better. I expect it will get worse. I've already pointed out how.

Stem Cells - If one keeps religion out of politics, then this answer should be a no-brainer. I think it's better to use fertilized eggs for medical research than flush them down the drain. (Which is what happens now.)

Tax Reform - Kind of goes with the economy. I'd shift the tax burden away from the poor and more onto the wealthy. If done right, it will stimulate the economy very nicely.

Terrorism - I think it's less of a threat than it's being made out to be. Keeping people frightened is a good way of controlling them because they'll agree to a lot that they otherwise would never have agreed to. I've already mentioned that the only credible terrorist threat I see comes from radical right-wing "patriots" and the "lone gunmen". In other words, nothing different than when Clinton was President.

Tobacco - Ban it. Unlike Marijuana, it has no socially redeeming value (like medical value) and only keeps an industry going that kills people. No one in the history of the world has ever died from nicotine withdrawals.

Unemployment - The only way to solve unemployment is to stimulate demand for business's goods and services. The only way to do that is through bottom-up spending by people on the goods and services businesses provide. My solution is to shift the tax burden to the wealthy to put more money into the pockets of working Americans. Hand-outs aren't going to do it. It has to be a positive, permanent step for people, or they'll just pay down debt and won't spend where it will do the most good.

In a booming economy, everyone profits - even the more heavily taxed wealthy.

Universal Health Care - While I think it's a good idea, I don't see any practical way to do it. You have to pay for things and taxing people for it won't do the job very well. Assisting those who need the help and can't pay for it is a good idea (kind of like what I think Medicare/Medicaid should do), but beyond what I said about health care earlier, I don't have much of an opinion about this.

Veterans - I'm an Vet. I trust other vets more than I trust civilians. Vets who serve their country should be taken care of as much as they need and merit. Again, it's the price of freedom and America big enough shoulders to assume the burden of that price.

War & Peace - War is good for the economy, but other than that, it is awful for everything else. Peace is hard on the economy, but it lets people live. I say don't start any wars. But end them quickly and decisively.

War on Terror - Another contrived war. Terrorism is an economic problem. If you want to end terrorism, fix the economies of the countries where it rises and slash the throats of anyone who wants to use religion as a justification for murder. I'd start with Pat Robertson to make a point (He who advocated that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez should be assassinated).

Weapons of Mass Destruction - see nuclear weapons.

Welfare and Poverty - I believe in a hand-up, not hand-outs. Teach people a trade and help get them a job. Government should be ALL OVER THIS, and most welfare programs do have a work requirement. But even then you're going to have poverty and people who won't work for themselves. For them, if they refuse, take their kids away and let them deal with their choice on their own. Otherwise help them out as much as they need (even if it's not always as much as they want). No one should live a life in a safety net. They need to get on their feet as much as possible and few people can do nothing.

There are probably other issues out there that are of importance to people. Military spending (Spend wisely for things we actually need today and in the future instead of things we could have used 20 years ago like we're doing) is one I have remarked about elsewhere but perhaps not here and wasn't on the list of issues I pulled up to help remind me what's on people's mind besides the topics I want to talk about.

So when I rag about rightist policies, they're the ones that violate my core beliefs of freedom for everyone as much as is possible in a modern society. Right-wingers want to turn back the clock to a time when freedom meant something much less than the liberties we have today. The 1950's and the McCarthy era come to mind.

On the infrequent occasions I get on the leftist rant bandwagon, it's because they don't do enough to support small business, tax the wrong people and end up giving money to people who haven't really earned it. Their "feel good" approach to government isn't sustainable when the deficit is so high. (Although in economic downturns, you're going to run deficits simply because the revenue you USED to make isn't coming in. For me, it's not surprising that we're running deficits during a recession. It's not entirely the fault of the government, but a lot more could be done to mitigate them. For me, it's inexcusable to run deficits when we're NOT in a recession. That's what happened under Bush.) You have to have a way to get people on their feet - whether they want to be that way or not. Like I said, you can't live a life in a safety net.

The whole idea of my position is to provide maximum opportunity for people - to be healthy, to be educated, to find fulfilling work, to have unhindered opportunities needed to pursue a good life - WITHOUT bankrupting the country or turning it into a police state. The left wing doesn't seem terribly business-friendly and wants too much to provide hand-outs to the people. The right-wing is too friendly to the wealthy and provides THEM with bonuses and perks that do the rest of the country no good at all.

So this is why I'm a moderate. I have extremist views in some cases - like shifting the tax burden mostly on the wealthy. After all, they control 93% of the wealth, but only pay 75% of the taxes. The rest of us who only have 7% of the wealth still pay 25% of the taxes. But that viewpoint is more economic than political in my opinion. Money needs to flow back to those who spend it - the poorest 80%. That's the most expedient way I can think of. It may not be the only one and in that respect I'm open to suggestions.

As for the rest, it's pretty clear that I have both rightist and leftist views and that they're not extreme if one considers what's needed versus what we have to work with. I don't believe in hand-outs. I believe in paying one's way. I also believe that one should be able to achieve any reasonable goal they set their minds and talents to. I don't believe we live in a country that facilitates reaching that goal anymore. We used to. I'd like to see us go back to that.

I call myself a militant moderate because I'm outspoken in my views. I make no allusions to any other bias and support no current political ideology in its entirety. My views encompass both rightist and leftist views, with a touch of extremism tossed in to make me militant. I consider it moderate because I'm open to suggestion. Find a better way and I'm all for it.

No one has so far.

So until a better way comes along, these are my views. If it's demonstrably better, I will support it. If not, I will deride it. It's that simple.

So for better or worse, here are my (unexplained) views on how I see the issues of the day. Like them or hate them, it's my right as an American to hold them. Convince me otherwise with reason and logic and I'm good. If your logic doesn't hold up or your reasons are self serving, I'll let you know - usually in kind with the tone of your argument.

That's just the way I roll...