hey, if it makes sense to solve the problem of uninsured americans that way, why not use it for other problems?

solve the unemployment problem by forcing the unemployed to get jobs or face fines.

save the auto sector by forcing americans to buy cars or face fines.

so much potential in this private mandate concept!

- september 6, 2009 -
- washington d.c. -

in an effort to streamline its operations, the democratic party announced today that it would appoint a committee of 3 democrats and 3 republicans to run the democratic party. senior democrats hailed the move as the ultimate way to "reach across the aisle."

a leading democratic senator said, "we needed to get away from everything being so partisan, especially after the last eight years. republicans were always claiming us of being partisan, and while it usually wasn't true, we couldn't really deny it since we were all democrats running the party. so our point of view was completely ignored."

"now, with a committee of 3 republicans and 3 democrats running the party, we're in a much better position to respond, especially if 2 of the 3 democrats are blue dogs. they'll always insist that everything we do is partisan, but now we can say, 'yes, sorry, you are probably right, let us abandon nearly all of our goals,' and then we have a shot of actually getting heard on the one or two goals we keep.' it's great leadership, just what america and the democratic party needs in the post-partisan era."

democratic leaders added that when it comes time to negotiate with republicans on critical legislation, they wouldn't need to compromise much because the republican view would already be built into the democratic proposal. With majorities in both houses and control of the white house, this strategy could lead to passing legislation that the entire republican party could get support, democratic leaders say, which they termed "real bipartisanship". "of course, we expect some of the liberal in our party to complain and maybe even not vote for that sort of thing, but we don't see that as a problem; there are more republicans than liberals."

when reached for comment, a liberal democrat could not produce a sound bite.

well, except for corporation laws, which enable me to set up a business as a legal entity without risking my private wealth, such as my house.

and except for contract laws, which enable me to hammer out deals with my suppliers and other companies.

and except for securities laws, which enable me to raise capital cheaply and effectively.

and except for regulatory disclosure laws, which give me investors some confidence that i am telling them all the relevant news.

and except for the police, which safeguards my inventory.

and except for building codes, which let me rent office space without needing to inspect every inch of wiring myself for safety.

and except for labor laws, which give my employees the comfort to come work for me without having to wonder too much how i'll treat them.

and except for tax law, which subsidizes virtually all my business expenses.

and except for bankruptcy laws, which give my creditors the comfort they need to lend to me, knowing there will be an orderly liquidation should my business fail.

and except for the public utilities and highways and infrastructure that help my operations and my logistics and my distribution.


so as you can see, if i succeed in my business, my profit and my wealth is MINE, ALL MINE and it should be shared with NO ONE, least of all the GOVERNMENT because they didn't help me in the slightest. no, sir! if i succeed in business, i'm a self-made man!

first, let me draw a distinction between "free markets" and "capitalism".

"capitalism" provides for basic freedom of economic transactions while maintaining a degree of (government) oversight to ensure that certain rules of fairness are followed.

"free markets" is economic anarchy, where people and corporations are permitted to engage in any kind of economic activity they can get away with.

obviously these definitions are both simplistic and extreme, but they serve to illustrate the problem. government regulation is a key aspect of capitalism and one consistently dismissed, dismantled, corrupted, and ignored by republicans and right-wingers.


one of the major problems with economic transactions is that for everything to work as nicely as your econ 102 professor said it should, all participants in economic transactions must participate willingly, fully informed, and pay or be paid appropriately for the advantages or disadvantages they incur from that transaction.

that is, if two people trade something and it affects absolutely no one else, then there's no problem. but as soon as you realize that there's a third party, or perhaps many third parties who benefit or are harmed by that trade, the whole deal's off. someone's getting ripped off and the results are never pretty.

let's say it costs me $9 to produce a widget that is worth $11 to you. we trade for $10 and we each have improved our lot by $1. wonderful. now let's say that produce and consuming that widget, including pollution and garbage and so on, costs nearby non-participants $3 of damage that they were never compensated for. now society as whole is net minus $1 rather than plus $2. this is the sort of economic activity that harms a community and should be discouraged, but unless there's a way to prevent that pollution or at least to make the economic participants pay for the clean up or compensate the non-participants who were harmed, such activity will continue, to the detriment of society.

externalities can work the other way as well. if my neighbor fixes up his eyesore of a house, that increases my own property value. i've leached off my neighbor if i profit and don't pay him for it. that's not ideal, either. because an individual homeowner bears all the cost even though the benefits are shared, at least somewhat, among the entire neighborhood, that means that some home improvements that should be getting done aren't, because there's no practical way to get the neighbors to chip in. thus the neighborhood fails to profit when it should.


government regulation and oversight is necessary to at least try to internalize such externalities. government can ban pollution or permit civil suits for affected people to recover damages. you know, all the stuff republicans hate. red tape and tort suits.

is this just an academic thought exercise? hardly. the reality is that we're all intertwined as a community and there are VIRTUALLY NO economic transactions that don't have SOME externality to them.

one of the biggies in the news these last few years is offshoring. similar to the pollution problem, a corporation might cut costs a bit, and the foreign workers might get better jobs than they're used to. but these small gains are dwarfed by the economic harm done to the workers who lost their jobs, their families, and all the ancillary businesses that were built around supporting the mothballed plant like the lunch suppliers and the parking garages and the utilities and the construction workers and so on. similarly, people in the foreign country profit even if they're not direct participants because the increase and jobs and wealth there has many benefits, this time going to the ancillary businesses who support the new foreign plant.

republicans can cry "protectionism" is they like, as if any suggestion that the government do its job was a bad thing. heaven forbid we try actual capitalism for a change instead of this free market anarchy where big corporate bullies are treated as geniuses because they're able to crush competitors, not by having a better product, but simply by being more effective bullies.

it's time we stopped lauding "free markets" as if the mere fact that something happened means it's necessarily a good thing. just because a transaction was entered into freely by two parties does NOT make it an overall society good, it does NOT make it an efficient allocation of resources, and it does NOT make it right.

there are many reasons NOT to investigate shrub and the gang for wrongdoings in office.

none of them are good.


one reason is that it sets a precedent for investigating the previous presidency, which obama would not especially care to invite. i'm sure he believes that his administration will have nothing to hide, but no one like to invite an investigation, at best their a huge waste of time and money.

another reason is that it (partially) takes the media spotlight away from obama and his new ideas for the present and the future. so it's an unproductive political distraction. well, surely there's enough media bombardment to cover more than one story at a time. besides, the investigation will be slow-paced and leave plenty of gaps for other stories. moreover, constant terrible news about the republicans is quite likely to work in obama's favor in terms of getting things done. especially because there's no political cost in the sense that you don't need to directly say something negative about the current batch of republican congresscritters whose support you might need. having the media bash the republicans constantly on other matters puts the current republicans in a spot where they really can't oppose obama and the democrats easily.

then of course, there's the possibility that any prosecution will go nowhere because not enough people will talk. they are a loyal, tight-knit bunch, after all. i think that's wrong, they only seem tight-knit because no pressure has yet been applied. some have already talked just for money. others will surely talk at the risk of prison time.


obama might not like it, but the country needs it. we CAN NOT PERMIT the next republican administration to play by the same "rules" shrub and the gang have played by. if nothing else, failure to prosecute means that obama's great works to come will endure only until the next republican administration.

despite all the premature verdicts, the jury has yet to even convene on obama's tenure as president. is he a republican or dlc suck-up? or is he really progressive?

perhaps the real answer depends more on US than we care to admit.

fdr found a very effective political strategy in that he did NOT come in with a screaming liberal agenda. he promise action, he promised a "new deal", but he did not specify what it meant. in fact, he probably did not know himself what it was going to mean other than that it would not look like hoover's old deal.

clinton came in an quickly did a few things to appeal to liberals, most obviously try to integrate gays in the military. he met resistance and wound up backpedalling, leaving us with the ridiculous "don't ask, don't tell" policy, and such was his burn that he was careful never to overtly appeal to the left again. mostly what we got was a slowing of the move to the right for 8 years.

obama, by contrast, is minimizing the criticism on the right by appealing to common interests, talking about the fact and problems and non-political themes we largely all agree on. this frees him up to do what he wants, to the extent that he doesn't get overwhelming flak from the right.

should we be quiet, he will continue to solidify his power and broad appeal by doing things in a centrist way.
should we be vocal, he will be compelled to do some things to appeal to us. BUT, he will be able to do it in a politically acceptable way, i.e., he will be able to go back to the center and the right and say, hey, you saw all those demonstrations, i HAD to do that liberal thing, even if i didn't want to.

THAT's the way a popular president needs to operate, and that's how fdr worked his magic. to the center and the moderate right, he was one of them, just doing extraordinary things in extraordinary circumstances, he wasn't a socialist by nature, he was just doing what he needed to do because of the nature of the economic situation and because of all the clamoring for government help from the left.

to the far right, of course, he was an evil commie, but of course you can't be all things to all people.

personally, i'd rather have obama have the image of a centrist, pragmatist, who we can bend to our causes while being acceptable to the rest of the country, than have obama overly identified with the left and rendered less popular and less effective as a result.



now, in an ideal world, a self-identified leftist would be immensely popular across the board, but that's not the reality we live in, at least not yet. in the meanwhile, our best bet is to MAKE OBAMA DO what we want him to do.

create the circumstances in which obama has no choice but to give us what we want.

some republican criminal (but i repeat myself) stole our obama yard sign, so we got FIVE new signs.
the 4 in front are for jim himes, democratic challenger to chris shays, the LAST new england congressional republican. that's gonna be a close race here in connecticut, hence the prominence.

closest to our front door is the new obama/biden sign, a good distance from the street.

note that we also posted a ferocious basset houuuuund to further guard the signs.

HAH! and to think they thought mccain would have a lock on connecticut were it not for our ONE obama sign!

i found an article by allan lichtman, who developed the 13 keys to the presidency. the idea is that whoever wins a majority of these 13 factors will win the presidency. there's obviously an element of data-mining in this, but the formula has proven correct in every election except 2000 (assuming you believe shrub actually won).

here's the article from one year ago, predicting an obama win: http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2007/10/th... /

and here is his list of the keys:

The following Keys currently count against the incumbent party.

The party’s losses in the 2006 midterm elections topple Mandate Key 1.
The battle to replace George W. Bush costs the party Contest Key 2.
Bush’s inability to run again in 2008 dooms Incumbency Key 3.
The lack of a second-term policy revolution forfeits Policy Change Key 7.
The disaster in Iraq costs the administration both Foreign/Military Success Key 9 and Failure Key 10.
No GOP candidate equals the charisma of Ronald Reagan or the heroic stature of Dwight Eisenhower, toppling Charisma/National Hero Key 12.
The following three Keys currently favor the incumbent Republican Party.

The absence of social upheavals comparable to the 1960’s, avoids the loss of Social Unrest Key 8.
The failure of scandals to impact the president directly keeps Scandal Key 9 from falling against the GOP.
The Democratic challenger is unlikely to match the charisma of Franklin D. Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy, keeping the Challenger Charisma/Hero Key 13 in line for the incumbents.
The following Keys are uncertain:

Third Party Key 4 depends on whether New York City mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who switched from Republican to independent, chooses to run an insurgent campaign for president.
Short-Term Economy Key 5 and Long-Term Economy Key 6 depend upon uncertain economic forecasts for the upcoming year.


since then, here's my list of changes:

scandal key 9 -- this is heavily tied up in the iraq war failure, but i believe shrub's administration qualifies for scandal, between the lying to congress to get us in to the iraq war, and the torture issue. other things, such as domestic spying, by rights ought to qualify, but there hasn't been the widespread public outrage that's necessary. all in all, though, i think we have to give this one to obama.

challenger charisma key 13 -- with all the talk of late about obama being the next jfk, i think his charisma is apparent. obama gets this key.

third party key 4 -- barr is noise. mclame wins this key.

short-term economy key 5 -- the public consensus is that we are in a recession, or might as well be. we do not (yet) qualify under the "two consecutive terms of declining real gdp" definition, but i strongly believe that nber, the quasi-official arbiter of recession dating, will backdate this contraction to february, or at least to sometime in the third quarter of this year. we are clearly in a contraction. obama wins this one.
long-term economy key 6 -- this is demonstrably true, see http://www.bea.gov/national/xls/gdpchg.xls obama wins this one.




so my final tally:

KEY 1 (Party Mandate): After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than it did after the previous midterm elections. (FALSE)

KEY 2 (Contest): There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination. (FALSE)

KEY 3 (Incumbency): The incumbent-party candidate is the sitting president. (FALSE)

KEY 4 (Third party): There is no significant third-party or independent campaign. (TRUE)

KEY 5 (Short-term economy): The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. (FALSE)

KEY 6 (Long-term economy): Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. (FALSE)

KEY 7 (Policy change): The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy. (FALSE)

KEY 8 (Social unrest): There is no sustained social unrest during the term. (TRUE)

KEY 9 (Scandal): The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. (FALSE)

KEY 10 (Foreign/military failure): The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. (FALSE)

KEY 11 (Foreign/military success): The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. (FALSE)

KEY 12 (Incumbent charisma): The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. (FALSE)

KEY 13 (Challenger charisma): The challenging-party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. (FALSE)

Results: TRUE: 2 KEYS; FALSE: 11 KEYS; UNCERTAIN: 0 KEYS
Prediction: INCUMBENT REPUBLICANS LOSE POPULAR VOTE


so there you have it. obama wins 11 out of 13 keys. mclame is toast.

obama: if we can take bin laden out, and pakistan won't help, we should take him out anyway.

mclame: obama just announced that he's going to send tanks into pakistan the day he takes office! he's horribly naive and a traitor for giving away military movements! me, i would coddle any terrorist that can find a willing country to harbor them! bin laden will be perfectly safe in islamabad as long as i'm president! oh, and i have a secret plan for ending bin laden's life.



obama: if you make less than $250,000 a year, you'll get a tax cut.

mclame: obama's got like six tax proposals, i can't keep them straight. first it's a cut from anyone under $250,000. then it's a hike for anyone over $250,000. then it's a cut for 95% of the people. then it's a hike for 5% of the people. then it's only the poor and the middle class who get the tax cut. then it's only the rich who get a tax hike. see, he keeps changing his position, just like jell-o, and we all know how evil jell-o is. but i'll make it simple for you. obama's tax cut plan was copied word for word from herbert hoover's tax hike plan! he'll single-handedly cause a repeat of the great depression! obama will hike taxes on all employers, who will then fire YOU! tax increases only work when *i* propose them, as in my health care plan. taxing employers on their health care benefits will cause the economy to boom; taxing employers on their profits will cause another great depression.



brokaw: as moderator, i have to inform you that you that i am powerless to stop you from going over the time limits.



obama: we're going to have to prioritize.

mclame: i'll solve all our problems before naptime on inauguration day. one of us up here is really lazy. hint: that one.




obama: i'd like to address the social security problem in my first term.

mclame: solving social security is easy-peasy! i just takes some bipartisanship, and i'm the bipartisanest guy there is! nobody gets bipartisaner then me! i'm so bipartisan i actually SAW ronald reagan and tip o'neill talk to each other! it doesn't get more bipartisan than that! and all that bipartisanality means that social security is solved if i'm president! because you don't need an actual PLAN to solve problems, you just need an agreement between the two parties. the mere act of agreement actually makes the social security fund solvent through eternity!



obama: george bush shouldn't have called on america to go shopping after 9/11.

mclame: america needs to sacrifice earmarks. i'm a reformer. my party hates me. the other party hates me, too. independents hate me. everybody hates me. you should like me because i am universally hated. i once killed a big boondoggle of an earmark for the sole purpose of replacing it with an even bigger earmark. now that's reform. there's a lot of waste in defense spending, so i'm going to freeze all spending except for defense. and senate perks, can't freeze that. wait, if i'm president, i won't get senate perks anymore. can i take that back?




brokaw: thank you, both. now kindly move so i can see my teleprompter and awkwardly avoid shaking hands. good night.

for most swing voters, this is really the key question, underneath it all.

they can't, or at least don't, sort through all the facts and issues. at least, if they did, they wouldn't be undecided at this stage.

the biggest impact on their lives, as far as they can tell, that the president has, is that they're on tv a lot. they'll be talking on tv and they'll be talked about on tv quite a lot over the next 4 or 8 years.

people ask themselves, what kind of stories and central characters do they want to see repeatedly on tv? the campaign is the pilot episode.

this is why negative campaigning works. it makes people think the next 4 years are going to be about complaining and scandals and muckraking and divisiveness. it doesn't matter that the other side is responsible for going dirty, they just don't want to see it on their tv.

we can't merely complain that the mclame/falin freak show will be bad for america. bad might be entertaining to watch. we have to make sure people understand that another republican presidency would be unpleasant to watch on tv. not entertaining.

the worst thing about democrats is that they aim for being responsible leaders. to these key voters, responsible means BORING tv for the next 4 years. boring is a killer in the entertainment biz. obama's biggest strength is that he makes responsible look captivating.

let's hope america agrees.

the goal of campaign strategy is to use your limited resources (time, money, chits, etc.) over the course of the campaign so as to win the most electoral votes on election day. it's all about positioning the candidate for that day.

sometimes you need to convert your resources from one form to another. for example, you might have to invest time and money to earn chits (political favors) that you can cash in at a more opportune time (e.g., obama spent time and probably money earning the clintons' support and fundraising)

ONE of many measures of how well a campaign is doing is daily polling. however, these don't show who's in a better position to win in november, they just take a snapshot at a point in time. anyone (well, not me -- it's just an expression) can lead a marathon by pissing away all their energy early, but this is not a winning strategy. and temporarily losing the lead is not cause for panic. time to focus on executing a winning strategy, sure, but this should always be the focus. any early lead can be ephemeral, yours or the opponent's.


just as an example, mclain could piss away a ton of money on advertising, leaving him in the lead but broke. this would leave him ill-prepared to respond to a well-timed barrage of ads from obama right before the election.

in this case, obama got a convention bounce in the polls, now they get their bounce. no big surprise here. the obama campaign has not been out there expending a ton of resources trying to fight mclame in the daily polls during a time when the media is naturally going to focus on him and his veep choice. it's wise to husband your resources at this point. he quietly raised $10 million the day after falin's speech. i'm sure he's also been planning upcoming events and tactics, earning more chits, raising more funds, etc. laying the groundwork for the later stage.


a campaign is a narrative. a story. you can't presume to know the end of the story even if things seem good for the bad guy somewhere in the middle of the story. in fact, sometimes the closeness is an important ingredient in the winning strategy. a close race, or at least the perception of closeness, helps to motivate supporters to donate, work, call, and actually show up to vote.

in fact, always having a lead is NOT a good long-term strategy. the media LOVES to tear that one down. it only works if you've REALLY got a lock on things. you have to crush threats before they become credible, otherwise the media will pump it up. obama's not in that position. so he needs the story to be that of a strong and steady thoroughbred. he may not have the lead at every moment of the race, but he keeps moving. strong and steady. all race long. always looking for the finish. eyes on the prize.

obama's building a great story. mclame's got flash-in-the-pan written all over his mishmash of disoganized story themes. whatever giddiness there is over the media's first date with falin' is quickly fading. his aces in the hole, such as the pow crap, are in tatters. overused to get him to this point, too early in the race.

take a moment to fret if you must, but use that energy for good. quit your bellyaching and do the work obama needs you to do. make that call.


me? i'm wearing my obama t-shirt, got my obama sticker on my car bumper, and the yard sign's on backorder.


and you?

ford pardoned nixon. this "spared" the nation of the spectacle of having a former president face actual justice. this did little to heal any particular wounds the nation had, it only healed the wounds the REPUBLICAN PARTY had. besides, the nation wasn't really all that divided about nixon by that point. he had terrible approval numbers, which is ultimately, duh, why he resigned.

but the nation WAS deeply divided about vietnam, and remained so as those who avoided the draft remained in the news, avoiding return to the u.s., or facing prosecution. carter's unconditional pardon for draft dodgers did FAR more toward helping the nation move past that bitterly divided era.

the basic distinction between the two parties' ways of thinking and debating and arguing is that democrats argue on an intellectual, rational level and banana republicans argue on a visceral, emotional level.

this is not to say that there aren't thinking, calculating banana republicans at think tanks and behind closed doors -- of course there are. and certainly, there are very pationate democrats as well. but that's not how the arguments go in the media, in popular discourse.

democrats have long won every single intellectual argument over the invasion of iraq. the banana republicans have been factually and logically wrong with every single excuse they've trotted out. but the bottom line is that we invaded iraq BECAUSE WE HATE IRAQ, and in particular, because we hated saddam. that's all the banana republicans needed. as far as they are concerned, an intellectual justification would have been a nice fig leaf to cover their naked hate, but it was hardly necessary. again, the oil companies had their intellectual agenda, as did some of the key neo-cons, etc., but for the banana republican masses, all that mattered was that we hated saddam and that was good enough reason to go to war.

this meme plays out throughout all banana republican policies.

abortion? they hate the mother who would even consider ending her pregnancy, so they want abortion outlawed. logic does not apply. at every opportunity to discuss the matter, banana republicans lay more hate onto the mother, because that's how they support their position.

welfare? they hate anyone who doesn't EARN their money. to level more hate on, they make sure to imply that the welfare recipient is able-bodied but lazy, female, with kids out of wedlock, and best of all, black. they hate blacks, so they try to toss that in wherever they can get away with it. in some areas, hispanic might play better. all hate is local, or something like that...

estate tax? why, what's there to hate about paris hilton? sure, she did nothing to earn the money, and what calamity would it be if she was worth $30 million instead of $50 million, but why deprive her of the extra month when there's nothing to really hate here? besides, banana republican men are convinced, somewhere in the back of their minds, that one day, paris hilton will meet come to their door and fall in love with them and take them away from their miserable lives and in THAT case, that extra $20 million will come in handy. no hate for paris hilton, therefore no tax.

tort reform? well, we all hate lawyers, so let's cap the fee they can get from those massive class action suits. note that much of their argument is around hatred of the LAWYERS. true, some of it is about hatred of the consumers who spilled hot coffee on themselves and sued, but at least they did get injured. but the lawyers, everybody loves to hate lawyers, and arguing a case hardly seems worth getting 33% of a multi-million dollar settlement, so they want a cap on that. and when they talk about the corporations who caused the problem in the first place, they always point out how wonderful they are to provide goods and services and jobs day in and day out. it's all about deflecting hate from the corporation and on to the lawyers and the victims.


the point is, intellectual arguments are worthless if the other side isn't fighting on the same playing field. it takes two to have a proper debate. worse, they control the microphone. so they get to dismiss all our intellectual arguments and logic as ivory-tower, condescening, elitist, northeast, liberal, ivy league, jewish, whatever serves them to level hate onto our side.

one day we will be able to ensure that the media covers policy debates on an intellectual level. but that day is not today. today we must figure out how to fight on an emotional level. to deflect the hate from us. to deflect the hate from our constituents.

to make people hate the haters.

and child molesters.

just as long as you're not gay. any level of crime or sin is fine, just don't be gay and they'll stand by your right to get hitched.

their so-called "gay marriage ban" is actually their sneaky way of getting a guarantee for rapists marriage and murderer marriage and child molester marriage into the constitution.

why are they so interested in defending special rights for rapists to marry?


discuss.

it's about whether you believe in the ideal of democracy, or just in the word.
it's about whether you believe in the ideal of capitalism, or just in the word.
it's about whether you believe in the ideal of liberty or just in the word.

try as they might to cast the next several elections as the same old battle between liberals and conservatives, or between left and right, the bush administration and today's banana republican party have moved this country in a direction that is no longer properly categorized along the left-right spectrum.

it is neither liberal nor conservative to refuse to help victims of one of the worse natural disasters to ever hit this country.
it is neither liberal nor conservative to pass off partisan propaganda as news stories.
it is neither liberal nor conservative to rack up staggering deficits for limited societal benefit.
it is neither liberal nor conservative to value loyalty over competence in appointees.
it is neither liberal nor conservative to claim executive powers cleary not belonging to the executive branch.
it is neither liberal nor conservative to offend long-standing allies.
it is neither liberal nor conservative to steer public funds away from states that voted for the other guy.
it is neither liberal nor conservative to hide behind a false "need" for secrecy
it is neither liberal nor conservative to treat campaign contributions as payment for government action.
it is neither liberal nor conservative to speak nearly exclusively to partisan audiences.
it is neither liberal nor conservative to rig elections
it is neither liberal nor conservative to name legislation counter to its intent
it is neither liberal nor conservative to refuse to honor fallen soldiers with public ceremony.
it is neither liberal nor conservative to deprive soldiers of sufficient armor.
it is neither liberal nor conservative to invade a sovereign country on a false pretense.
it is neither liberal nor conservative to use a bogus, overseas war as an excuse for all manner of nefarious activities.
it is neither liberal nor conservative to fudge economic statistics.
it is neither liberal nor conservative to pass off an irresponsible frat-boy alcoholic and failed businessman as a capable leader.

it is not for me to label what their party has become, because in the end, the label is not important. what is important is that we the people choose to either continue down the path that a few ultra-rich people who don't believe in democracy have secretly decided is profitable for them, or to return to the kind of government that brought this country from its infancy to its height as the greatest country on earth.

if you like secrecy in government, vote for the banana republicans.
if you like incompetence in key government positions, vote for the banana republicans.
if you like seeeing your tax dollars vanish into the pockets of ultra-rich cronies, vote for the banana republicans.

me, i've had enough.

i'm voting for the democrats.