Honestly, I am not sure what to do anymore. My savings have been depleted and I don't know what to do. I don't feel like anyone in a position to actually help people like me cares anymore. I don't feel like I am even on their radar. I feel invisible. Does anyone in government care? Do they? I mean, really? Because it sure as hell doesn't feel like it from where I am sitting.

Some quick background on me: I am an IT professional with a variety of certifications and certificates. I have a college degree. My fiancee also has a college degree and also works in IT. I was laid off the first time in August 2009. She was laid off in September 2010. I managed to find another job in March 2011, only to be laid off again after three months. Neither of us currently has any real prospects, and only a couple of minor part-time jobs and unemployment insurance as income. I cashed out my 401(k) last year, and that helped us stay afloat a while, but now that money is gone. Our savings has gone from five figures to (barely) three. We don't own a home, we rent. We have no children, only dogs and cats (whom we consider our kids, honestly). We do not live extravagantly.

Both of us are concerned about what is going to happen in the next few months. We are now paying COBRA for both of us, which is almost the same as paying two rents, honestly. It might as well be. The cost of health care would be hard even if both of us were still working, but it is truly ironic that being unemployed is actually increasing our expenses in such a dramatic way. We are now in the process of figuring out what possessions we can sell to try to raise some more money.

We have both been applying to all sorts of jobs. We each typically apply to between 5 and 10 jobs a week, including custom cover letters and resumes that we try to tailor to the job. She at least has gotten some interviews. I have not had any since the ones last fall that led to my last job. They took 5 months to hire me for a job that lasted 3 months. My boss decided after my 90 day probationary period to let me go, and I am not sure why, only that he never seemed to warm to me. The general consensus seems to be that it was some sort of personality clash. Whatever the reason, I was quickly disposed of, with less than two hours passing from the time I was notified that I was being let go to the point where I had all of my stuff in boxes in my car and was driving home, stunned. I had no idea. That was a month ago.

I am exhausted. It is hard enough keeping my chin up, when my future wife has literally cried herself to sleep on several occasions. Our wedding is this fall, in November. At this point we have already wiped out all the money we had set aside for a honeymoon, and so we have put off any plans for anything at all after the wedding. Now we are wondering if the wedding itself will be affected, since we may have to borrow money from our parents that would have been used for the wedding. The upcoming wedding seems to be one of the few things that has sustained us, especially her. If we end up scaling that back too, I know she will probably be affected more than me, probably heartbroken to put it mildly.

And it is made worse by the attitudes of so many people, even some people who know us, who seem to think that all of this is some sort of reflection on our character. They think we are unemployed because we have no ambition and "just haven't tried hard enough" or something. It's one thing to hear this from Republicans and the like on TV or talk radio. It's quite another to hear it from actual people all around you, in grocery stores, meetings, career centers (!?!) and even in our church (thankfully not from our Pastor at least). This is after I borrowed even more money in student loans to get "retrained" and make myself more employable. We have applied for literally hundreds of jobs - each. We have tried all sorts of websites, career centers, and employment agencies. We have tried personal networking, professional networking, and cold calls to places with large IT departments. All to no avail. There are times I applied for a job and got a rejection e-mail the same day. I am 40 years old, and she is in her early 30's. We are supposed to have some of the best years of our lives ahead of us, especially together after the wedding. We are not supposed to feel like we are plummeting off a cliff and things are only going to continue to get worse.

Please tell me we are not alone. Please tell me that things will get better, and that someone out there with power and influence actually cares about helping people like us. I desperately want to believe it. But honestly, I have not seen a whole hell of a lot being done for people like us lately. The government seems intent on giving the wealthy whatever they want to their little hearts' desire, and the rest of us are just out of luck. Even the President, whom we both voted for, seems to have bought into the idea that there isn't really that much the government can do for those of us who are scraping the bottom of the barrel. At least that is what it feels like.

So convince me I am wrong. Please. Or better yet, convince the President and Congress that there are a lot of people like us out there, we are getting desperate, and we need help. The President has certainly shown the ability to be eloquent and persuasive on occasion. Is he on our side? I want to believe that he is. But I need deeds, not words, to convince me. Words are not going to pay my COBRA costs, or put gas in my car to take me to the next interview or job fair.

Anyway, I have no idea how many of you will read this, or whether or not any of it will make a difference in the end. But for those of you who do, thanks for listening, and thanks for caring even a little bit.

Sincerely,

9thkvius

I am very, very lucky to have finally been hired for a full-time job with benefits, after struggling for a long time to find work. But the past 19 months have opened my eyes to much I might never have otherwise seen. And I have to tell you, it makes me really, really angry. Before I used to think that the rich were screwing us all for their benefit and that government is in their pocket. Now? Now I feel like I KNOW that to be true. So indulge me as I tell you a bit about what these past 19 months have been like for me.

When I first got laid off from my defense contractor job in August 2009, I was stunned. Not counting time in the military, I spent the better part of a decade working for one defense contractor or another. The industry was often frustrating for me, and sometimes it got to be a lot to bear. Obviously, a lot of people who work in that industry are quite conservative, and often I could walk down a hallway in my old building and hear conservative talk radio every third office or so. I could not avoid hearing the various right-wing arguments no matter what I did or where I went, unless I went in my office and shut the door, and even that did not always work because sometimes even then they would arrive in my inbox - the tirades about liberals and how they were ruining the country, etc. My status as a little blue dot in a sea of red made me feel pretty isolated at times, although I did have the comfort of knowing there were at least a few people in the building who sat on the same end of the political spectrum as myself. They were overwhelmingly women and/or minorities. But particularly at my last employer, I felt quite isolated because I knew so few people. I had relocated to Massachusetts (returned, in a manner of speaking, since it is where my family was originally from) in the hopes of being closer to my fiancee and my elderly relatives. But I only knew the people in my immediate department, and they were overwhelmingly the typical angry white males who watch Fox News and read the Herald. One of my bosses would sit down to out lunch table every day and inject illegal immigrants into every conversation, no matter the topic. I have no idea why he hated them so much, but I knew that in the small well-to-do wealthy white town he lived in, they would hardly seem to even be present, much less present a problem. It was then I realized that although I was afraid at the prospect of being unemployed, I was also a bit relieved, because I realized that I had been pretty miserable in my line of work.

So after a while of not having anything to do besides look for work, I began to realize that perhaps this was an opportunity. Maybe I should take my layoff as a sign that I should seriously consider leaving the defense industry and going to work in the civilian world. So I started applying for civilian jobs. For six months, I furiously applied and got almost no interviews. I must have sent out something like 200 resumes and applications. Finally, in despair, I thought that maybe I could do something different to enhance my employability and go back to school. Plus I could continue to collect unemployment, as this was considered retraining. So I enrolled in a local tech school that would help me get some IT certifications. Despite some initial reservations, I soon discovered that it presented new opportunities for me on several levels, and as a result I am glad I did it. It was an excellent experience all around. A lot of the people in my classes were struggling also, as many of them were also collecting unemployment under the Section 30 rules as I was. Almost no one (besides myself) had a college degree. Many had also been laid off and were struggling to find work. I eventually gained several important IT certifications, such as A+ and Network+, and these helped me to land my current job as an IT Security Analyst at a prominent local university.

But it was a hell of a journey. First, we discovered that it was going to be a battle getting me health insurance. At the time my fiancee worked for a "progressive" non-profit that we fully expected to help us out. Its founder was a well-known progressive and pseudo-celebrity in the Cambridge area and quite well-known in the IT world. So when we signed up for a family plan, based on the fact that we were registered domestic partners here in Cambridge, we did not expect our application to be problematic. Instead I learned that the reason the place had become unionized in the first place was because the founder was essentially a petty dictator and micro-manager who made his employees lives miserable. The shop had unionized after the entire staff had quit not once but TWICE because of his poor treatment of them. I had known who he was before she started working there, and sot of looked up to him, but now I came to loathe him as a sexist and a hypocrite. Although he railed against Coca-Cola for having busted unions and killed Union organizers in Columbia some 20 or 30 years ago (and in fact throws a huge tantrum every time their products appear anywhere in the office), he has no problem undermining his own employees at every turn. So he and his lackey, the executive director, refused to allow me onto my fiancee's health plan despite the fact that under the union contract we were clearly allowed to do so. We had to get the union involved and threaten legal action before they finally caved in. But seeds had been planted, and now they saw my fiancee (as well as another female employee who had a tendency to call out the rampant sexism in the office and in the IT community in general) as problems that would need to be solved. The board of directors apparently would not ever challenge the founder, and in fact it had been purged of the only people who had ever stood up to him. So as mismanagement and micro-management ate away at the foundation's budget, they began to look for ways to solve their problems. Eventually they found a solution - fire ALL of the administrative staff. They rationalized this because they would save payroll costs (even though all of these people were on the lowest salary level in the union) and could use volunteers and interns instead. As an unfortunate "coincidence", all of these people being laid off were women. In fact, it consisted of EVERY SINGLE WOMAN who worked at the foundation. The only man at that pay grade? He was kept. The union tried to get concessions and was able to negotiate a few, but the executive director and the founder continued to bypass them as much as they could. And still the founder and his lackeys on the board threaten to fire everyone and start over every time the union tries to negotiate things that seem fairly reasonable, like having a weather policy so that if the entire city shuts down due to a winter storm people can work from home instead of coming in.

We were stunned. People who claimed to be liberal and progressive were doing this to my future wife and to every woman I knew on that staff. And they were doing it without even blinking an eye. No one called them on this. No one in management and no one on the board of directors. Not a soul among those with any real influence in the organization seemed to notice or care that all of the women in the organization were being laid off. And the women were among the most dedicated and hard-working people in the office. Believe me, I spent a good amount of time there and saw how people worked. So our anger rose, and we began to wonder whether or not we might have to sue in order to stop this. Someone leaked the story to a (supposedly) progressive reporter at the Boston Globe, but after talking with the Executive Director on the phone the reporter essentially stopped digging. And of course the ED was now furious because he knew that someone had talked about the impending layoff to a reporter. So he continued to plan for the layoff, but eventually came up with a slight CYA exercise that allowed him to keep one woman on the staff while still eliminating the rest of them, including the two that were giving him and the founder the most "grief" by caring about things like diversity, discrimination and equal opportunity and NOT caring about things that were not in their job description, like fetching the founder's lunch or running his personal errands for him. The union managed to negotiate continued health insurance coverage for those that were being laid off, so we were able to continue having health insurance for a little while longer. But then once that expired we had to pay COBRA. To keep both of us insured was quite expensive, the equivalent of paying two rents a month. So we watched our savings vanish – in the space of a few months it went from well into 5 figures to 3. Money we had intended to use for our honeymoon. Money we kept for vet emergencies. Gone. But we had no choice and no other options.

Last summer, before she was laid off, we had a bit of a scare when the unemployment expired and was not renewed by the Federal government. Of course, our own Scott Brown was one of the people who had voted against it, and I was furious. So since I had all sorts of time on my hands, I went down to the Federal building to see what he was going to do, and to show him the face of at least one person whose life was being affected by his poor choices. I had to get through security, and apparently the security at that building considered two things I was carrying to be weapons - my Leatherman (understandable) and my titanium spork (NOT so understandable). They told me to take my "weapons" over to the nearby Boston Police Department building, where they would gladly keep them for me while I visited the Federal building. So off I went, and naturally the BPD sergeant behind the counter there had no fucking idea what the hell I was talking about and said that they do NOT hold "weapons" for people. When I showed him what they considered to be a weapon, he had a good laugh. So I had to walk to my fiancee's downtown office and leave my stuff there, and then go back. Needless to say, once I finally got there, I was already in a bad mood. So I waited for someone to talk to me. And I waited. I looked around and the various people bustling around the office. All white, of course, at least as far as I could see. Finally some guy in a suit who looked to be in his twenties came out to talk to me. I explained my problem and asked why the senator was not voting for the extension. The guy deflected a bit and then asked me if I had tried some local organizations that were designed to help veterans or if I had tried any religious organizations. I began to get a bit irritated again, because I felt like he was not hearing me and in fact was acting like he could hardly wait for me to get out the door. So I started talking about how I had been looking for work for a long time, and I was doing my best to find employment, and all I needed was unemployment to keep paying my bills and whatnot. I was not sitting at home watching TV. I acknowledged that a lot of Republicans believe unemployed people are just not looking hard enough, and that they also think that they are unemployed due to their own personal failings or whatever. I said “that kind of talk makes me want to throw furniture”, and I could see he was getting more uncomfortable. So I thanked him for his time, although I am sure that my frustration and even disgust was starting to show through a bit.
My next stop was my local Congressman’s office. Wow, was it a completely different experience. I don’t know if the difference was just that between a Senator and a Congressman or what, but it was a remarkable difference in the way I was treated and the way they acted. Mike Capuano’s office was easily accessible and I walked in and talked to the receptionist, an extremely friendly young woman who said someone would be with me shortly. And she wasn’t kidding. Soon I met with one of the Congressman’s aides, and after I talked to him a while and explained what was going on, you know what he did? He took notes. He started making phone calls. Lots of them. He started giving me all sorts of contact information and naming specific groups. He even asked me for a copy of my resume so their office could help me get the internship I needed to complete my tech school program. I was stunned. Wow, a politician who actually acts like he is a servant of the ordinary people like me, people who really need help and not just of the people who already have everything going for them like fucking David Koch.

So having been out of work for all of last year, I am going to have a hell of a tax bill this year. I did not have taxes taken out of my unemployment because I could not afford to lose even more money and still pay my bills. So I am going to end up owing a good bit, probably a few thousand dollars. You know what is totally fucked? The fact that I have to pay income taxes on my unemployment and the fact that so many corporations and rich people in this country find ways to NOT pay income taxes at all. My bank, for example, was one of those who got bailed out, and who was responsible for all sorts of shenanigans. The same bank who consistently gave me shitty customer service when I had to deal with a case of identity theft last year. So they got tens of billions in bailout money, despite the fact that they did some things that were of questionable morality, of not legality. And apparently they paid no income tax for 2009.

So all of this has happened, and now I see more Republicans, millionaires, and billionaires bitch and moan about how teachers like my sister and my aunt make too much money and now have to make more sacrifices by taking cuts in pay and cuts in benefits, while all the while with a straight face they insist that it is wrong to cut the pay of anyone on Wall Street. The very people who are responsible for all of the shenanigans that caused our economy to implode should NOT have to give up their ridiculously high compensation. Hell, they insist that it isn’t their fault – again, it is the fault of those dumb poor people. The ones who couldn’t afford to pay their mortgages. Unions, the only organization who stood up for my future wife and her fellow women in her office, are painted as greedy and selfish. And unemployed people like myself and all of my classmates at the tech school are lazy, shiftless leeches who just need to get off their lazy asses and get a job.

This is where we are as a country? Really? Regulation is the problem? Really? Corporations can regulate themselves? Really? What’s good for GE (who also did not pay any taxes in 2009) is good for the country? Really?

I can totally understand why people in Wisconsin are furious and are fighting back. What I don’t get is why so many other people aren’t fighting back.

I’ve babbled long enough. Good luck to all of those who are still looking. I will do what I can to help. I wish it was more.

First, I want to apologize for my inept HTML skills, as I could not for the life of me make the embedding thing work properly, and so you are going to have to follow the links to see it.

As a former infantryman myself (11Mike) I watched this video and cried.

Here is the shorter, edited video

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/...

And here is the longer, unedited video.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/...

After composing myself, I read the story that accompanied the video. It's both saddening and infuriating.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/...

because I cannot fucking BELIEVE that he did not make his Vice Presidential pick under the influence of something. Quick, before all traces are gone from his system, somebody make him pee in a cup so we as a country will know for sure that this decision was made while chemically enhanced and NOT just on some sort of "oh, shit, that deadline is approaching, I better make a decision" sort of a whim, or in some sort of bizarre fit of political "cleverness" where some asshole consultant says "oh yeah, every mom in the country will switch their vote to you once you put a mom on the ticket". And it's not like it's just me thinking this is a horrible pick. The fact that many die-hard Republicans like Ben Stein and Peggy Noonan also think that this is an awful choice should be a big red flag to anyone and everyone. especially those who for whatever reason still might vote Republican. The Republican establishment has gone way past the point of putting lipstick on pigs, even for them. This is more like the situation Lewis Black described as taking a shit in front of everyone and then proudly standing back and beaming at your creation.* This decision is so awful that I can hardly fathom it. And to think that the Republicans are now screaming "sexism!" at the top of their lungs makes me think that I myself have somehow accidentally dropped some sort of pharmaceutical enhancement into my morning coffee, because my brain just can't process that reality. The same people who unabashedly called Senator Clinton a "bitch" or a "Nutcracker" on National Goddamn TV are now trying to say that legitimate questions about Palin's qualifications are just beyond the pale. No, they most certainly are not, you Kool-Aid drinking Bizarro fucktards. Even without getting into her seriously warped politics and her ethically-challenged actions while in office, a few points have to be made.

First, they are trying to tell us that she is prepared to be Veep because of all the "executive experience" that comes with being a mayor of a small town. Oh really? I can't say that it would necessarily be easy to be a mayor of a small town, but compared to being Vice President or potentially President? COME ON!!!! Her 3 AM phone calls, if she ever had any, were probably something along the lines of "uh, there's a Moose in the Wavaho parking lot and Elmer can't get out of his car to open the store." It is not even REMOTELY comparable to running the country. For a business analogy, it's like the board of Wal-Mart took the manager of the pet department at Wal-Mart No. 14,582 and suddenly made them the Chief Operating Officer of the entire Wal-Mart corporation. I imagine that sort of choice would probably have the shareholders and rank-and-file employees going "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!?!?" And then the board members try to rationalize their decision by saying "but she has FIVE KIDS!!!" as if that suddenly will make everyone say "oh, well, thank God! We were worried that she was unqualified! Whew!" Not to denigrate anyone who is a mother or raises children, but so the hell what? My mom had six kids! Does that mean McCain should have picked her instead?!? For that matter, my great-grandmother had SEVENTEEN kids. My God, can you think of ANYONE more qualified to be Vice President that THAT?!? Fuck, Woodrow Wilson should have put HER on the ticket!

Second, having been a member of the Army National Guard, I can safely say that the amount of influence the Governor of your particular state has over anything having to do with the Guard outside of the state (or for that matter WITHIN the state, except for natural disasters and occasionally civil unrest), is pretty much zero. Nada. It does not prepare her for any sort of major National Security crisis or give her any sort of foreign policy experience. There is never any sort of situation in which a field commander of a National Guard unit calls up the governor and says "Governor, we are ready to go out there and grab Osama Bin Laden, we just need you to give us the green light." Now, it might give her some sort of disaster management crisis, but I am unaware of anything that has happened in Alaska during her administration that would qualify as a major natural disaster (unless you count global warming, which she apparently does not really believe in anyway).

And the whole "Russia is so close to Alaska she MUST be an expert!" argument? Right. That's a truesome. I have some doubts she could find Russia on a map, at least one of Europe. There has never been a situation where Vladimir Putin has said "Yes, this is a great crisis. So I will talk with Governor Palin, because she understands me so very well. Her Russian is so natural I mistook her for a native speaker." Not in the most extreme Marvel Comics alternative universe has that happened. She has no background in foreign policy or international relations or world politics whatsoever, unless she had a class or two in college. And something tells me that Governor Palin is not exactly a heavy reader either, so I don't see her trying to learn it on the fly in any sort of Obama-ish way. Tell you what, GOPers, we will take you at your word that she knows all about Russia. Why doesn't someone hand Governor Palin a pencil and a pad of paper and ask her to write a goddamn essay on everything she knows about Russia? I would be willing to bet cash that the resulting essay would rival the most spectacularly bad fifth grade doing-my-homework-the-period-before-it-is-due sort of writing imaginable. "Russia is a country. It is very large. It is close to Alaska, which is where I live. They used to be Commies but they aren't anymore." It makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

So without even getting into any of the silly Springer-esque family drama surrounding Palin, it should be pretty clear that her choice as the VP nominee is a choice so spectacularly bad that rather than cheering her on, the Christian fundamentalist base should be checking their Bibles to make sure that it isn't a sign of the Apocalypse.

I'm going to work. I can't take it anymore.

*I would like to point out that I am calling the decision to make her the VP nominee a turd, and NOT Governor Palin. I don't know her well enough to call her a turd. Yet.

I found this on the Alabama Live website today.

http://blog.al.com/breaking/2008/06/prosec...

Federal prosecutors are no longer seeking stiffer prison sentences for former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy.

Prosecutors filed a motion this week with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals asking that their appeals of the sentences be dropped. Their appeal had called for a longer prison term than Siegelman's more than seven-year sentence and Scrushy's almost seven-year sentence.

The latest filing does not say why prosecutors want to drop their appeal.

Prosecutors originally asked that Siegelman be sentenced to 30 years in federal prison and Scrushy to 25 years.

Siegelman and Scrushy were convicted in 2006 of bribery and other charges in a government corruption case.

First off, I am a former grunt with a potty mouth, so if you don't like profanity, better head elsewhere because I am really mad and need to vent. You were warned.

A friend of mine with whom I often discuss politics told me the other day that if his candidate didn't win the Democratic nomination, he would vote for John McCain. My response was something along the lines of

ARE YOU FUCKING RETARDED?!?!?!?

I proceeded to tear him a new one (verbally, anyway). Despite all of the conflicts going on between the Senator Clinton camp and the Senator Obama camp, there is no fucking way in hell I am going to stand for some bullshit like that. I thought the era of Democratic "Barnburners" was over with the end of slavery. Anyone who votes for Senator McCain out of spite because their candidate doesn't get the nomination has completely lost all perspective. Senator McCain has already made it pretty clear what he is going to do if elected: essentially, continue all of the utterly fucked-up policies of George Bush. Stay in Iraq for another 100 years? Sure! Put more asshole conservatives on the Supreme Court? Absolutely! Reverse Roe vs. Wade? Damn skippy! And we'll make a fortune by buying up stock in the coat-hanger companies beforehand to boot! Yay! And we'll sure as hell make sure that any insider trading never ever gets investigated! Woo-hoo! "Return" to a mythical time when for straight white males it was an idyllic Leave it to Beaver happy universe but everyone else is pretty much fucked? Oh hell yes! Maybe even make people like Joe "We Can't Bomb Iran Fast Enough for Me" Lieberman Secretary of State, or maybe Secretary of Defense? Awesomeness!

COME ON YOU FUCKING BLINDER-WEARING JERKOFFs!!!!! How can you really say THAT is an acceptable alternative to your candidate losing the nomination?!? I know it's almost become a cliche, but seriously, a McCain presidency will essentially be Bush's third term. On many of the major issues, I don't see any real difference between McCain and Bush, especially since on the few issues where there was a difference McCain appears to have changed his stance to match Bush's in order to appeal more to the base of the Republican party, i.e. the moronic, mouth-breathing, homophobic, xenophobic, "Adam and Eve rode a dinosaur to church" types. Christ, are we really that fucking stupid? Would we really rather see McCain win? Are we that goddamn short-sighted? Is the country going to be better off that way, because we took our fucking toys and went home, so to speak? Waah waah waah, if I can't have it my way I am going to just fuck it up for everyone? Jumpin' Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick.

Everyone take a deep breath and say it with me: "Democratic candidate (whomever I like) is not a Savior, and Democratic candidate (whomever I hate) is not the Antichrist. There is no reason - NO FUCKING REASON - that we can't pull our shit together, win this goddamn election, and turn this country around regardless of which Democrat gets the nomination."

I am going to vote Democrat in this election regardless of who gets the nomination, OK? Yeah, I have my preferences, and right now I prefer Senator Obama - so the fuck what? I'll still vote for Senator Clinton if she wins the nomination. At least in this Presidential election, I can't imagine the circumstances that would force me to NOT vote for any Democratic candidate. That is not because I am a "yellow dog" Democrat, it is merely because the Democratic party's stances on the issues follow my own a hell of a lot more closely than the Republican party's stances on the issues, and either candidate is bound to be a better fucking President than Senator McCain, not to mention the White House's current occupant. And despite all the Democratic candidates and the Democratic party's flaws (and there are definitely quite a few) I would rather see the Democrats come out on top than vote for a third-party candidate just to make a point, because I think that it is still more likely to succeed by pushing for change within the Democratic ranks (at least in the short term). As the country collectively gets in worse and worse situations on all fronts, I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't see that. Yeah, there are differences between Senator Clinton and Senator Obama. And there were things that President Clinton did that I did not agree with. Still, I would rather have President Hillary Clinton than President John Fucking McCain. And yeah, I don't think that we should sacrifice our idealism, but I think we have to realize that some things just aren't going to fucking happen anytime soon without ensuring that we have the opportunity and the time to accomplish them. Yeah, I would like to see our political system get cleaned up and adapted to accept more political parties, but in order to do that, we have to ensure that WE STILL HAVE A WORKING FUCKING POLITICAL SYSTEM. And whatever allows the Republicans to keep taking us down the path that we've been on for the last seven nightmarish years is a fucking bad thing. They DON'T CARE about the system, they are going to milk it for all its worth to empower and enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. THEY are the ones that think the ends justifies whatever means - a unitary executive, torture, gentrification, pollution, exploitation, you name it. I am most definitely not for the ends justifies the means, and I would love to see a viable third party that is more progressive, but for fuck's sake, can you not see that that particular means (throwing away your vote on a third party candidate, or worse, voting for the other side out of spite) helps put a goddamn Bush clone in the White House for four more fucking years!?!?! How much is that going to help? How is that going to stop the corporations from virtually sodomizing the public for money? How is that going to help worker's rights, or gay rights, or fix the broken goddamn health care system? It's like standing on the deck of a sinking ship and saying "goddammit, if only we had paid more attention to the charts, and if only we hadn't turned off the radar, and if only we had taken a different ship, and yadda yadda yadda we wouldn't be in this mess - so let's sit and argue about it some more because YOU KNOW I'M RIGHT!" Yes, you are indeed right, but that doesn't change the fact that in the meantime while we are arguing WE ARE GOING TO FUCKING DROWN. How about we get in a goddamn lifeboat and we can argue about it once we are out of danger? Would that be OK with you?" It's insane. Period. It's like that scene in this movie (Strange Brew - love that film) where the guy realizes that his brakes are gone, so he just shrugs and says "well, no point in steering now" while his brother freaks out and grabs the wheel. Seriously, it is about that dumb.

Christ I am so pissed off right now. I literally turned red. Sorry if this contains a lot of profanity, but obviously this is something I feel quite passionately about.

Perspective, people. Get some.