Elections

This being my first post since the election, I suppose it would be appropriate that I comment on how badly the Democrats got beat. I won't profess to know why it happened, but I do believe it had a lot to do with a lot of people being impatient. I also believe it had a lot to do with the success of the right wing media to get people to believe crazy things, at least to enough of a degree to affect votes.

Take the untrue $200 million-per-day Obama trip to Asia, for example. Although the story came out too late to affect the election, it's testamentary to how people are willing and capable of believing some crazy stuff. Then, after presented with the evidence, they'll still either believe it because they want to, or, almost as bad, believe something along the lines of, "Well, it may not be that bad, but there's still a lot of truth to it."

And when you get a lot of folks in the media from the same camp repeating the story as true because "they heard it in the media," even though they are only hearing it from each other, the uninformed fall for it, and in large numbers.

While this does happen with all political "sides," the Right Wing pretty clearly had the lion's share of successful indoctrination of misinformation this go-round.

Why I'll be Voting Democratic This Year

I don't touch much on my politics here, but occasionally I feel compelled to. In my adult years, I haven't liked the idea of one party controlling the House, Senate, and Presidency. But this year is different.

Unlike past years, I don't plan on voting for a single Republican on Tuesday. Now, I'm not that far left politically. Certainly not on fiscal matters, anyway. Social issues? Definitely to the left. Like gay marriage, which I think is my generation's civil rights. Twenty years from now, if my children ask me how I felt about gay marriage and the right to serve, I'm glad to know that I won't have to lie to tell them I was on the "correct" side of the issue...today's "liberal" side.

I could point to countless things that contribute to my decision, such as the above, but all I really need comes from some of the simplest, yet most misleading lies from the campaign season. Things like calling Obama and Dayton's tax positions, "Job-killing tax hikes." Say all you want about it not technically being a lie, but my Webster allows for it to absolutely be called a lie. They know they are intentionally being deceiving; ergo, they are lying.

"But what about the Dems this and the liberals that, and they do it too, and blah blah blah?"

Yeah, I know. Please spare me the tu quoques. One side has disgusted me far more than the other this year, and it is the party of Lincoln.

But if you insist that, as you should, this is not enough, here's another good example of why I don't want another mid-term like '94, from Dana Milbank at the Washington Post.

Here's a good reason why we don't need a return to the mythified Reagan years.

Still think raising the top income earners' marginal rate by a whopping three percentage points (which they are supposed to do when Bush's failed policy expires) will be "job-killing?" Think again.

I'm totally a "throw the bums out" kind of guy. But not this year.

Topics (Mostly) Off Limits

There are two topics I generally avoid on this blog and on Facebook. They are religion and politics. You know the old adage, and I follow it fairly closely in cyberspace, be it in my original posts and musings, or in response to others'.

I don't really have one main reason; rather, it's a combination of many. I'm going to list several contributing factors, but please understand that none of these account for more than 33% of my reasoning, and some may contribute less than 1%:

1- I might lose friends, who of course aren't real friends if they can't accept me for blah blah blah...
2- A decision-maker holding my career fate may find it, and worse, may not like it.
3- Simply put, I'm non-confrontational.
4- Some people are so clueless, that it's not worth the bother to do it even for the sake of interesting conversation (I almost said "stimulating intercourse," but that could have been taken wrongly).
5- The cyber world is so public and permanent. That just makes me a little uncomfortable. Oh sure, writing about my passion for watching televised bowling, including 30-year-old archived footage of the PBA tour on YouTube, does not. Go figure.
6- I have a few "closeted" beliefs that might shock people close to me, and their hearts might be weak.
7- Things in writing are far more likely to be taken out of context later, and become far from the true spirit of what I've said. It's better to talk such things through, so you can clear up any possible misconceptions right then and there.
8- My friends have diverse ideas, and I try to respect them all.
9- It invites trolls.
10- It invites non-trolls, but ones who think they are making a sound argument, yet have little idea as to where critical thinking and logic begin.

There's probably more, but they start to overlap. (See nos. 10 and 4 above, for example.)

I will offer this glimpse into my political leanings: As a social liberal and fiscal conservative, I'm no "Capital L" Libertarian either. I tend to be more socially liberal than fiscally conservative. I don't mind paying a little too much tax to help welfare recipients, even if some are "working" the system, because I know that some truly need the safety net. (I don't buy the argument that charity would be enough.)

Put another way, I get less upset about a welfare mom having another kid than I do a philandering politician trying to keep gays from marrying because of some "sanctity of marriage" nonsense.

But don't think that it's not a close contest between the two in vying for my contempt.