The sides you take rarely make any sense and don't match any other person I've met that claims the ideals you do.

Consequences

Being against war, accept legal abortion, pro-birth control, anti-church and atheistic doesn't mean I can't be anti-tax, anti-undocumented worker, anti-socialized medicine, etcetera.

Sure my platform would differ by at least 50% from the typical GOP platform, but the 50% that I'm most worried about is quasi-addressed by the GOP.

I've watched the US economy grow ever less robust. I've watched the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. However, I'm not gullible enough to think a boost in the minimum wage is going to fix what has happened.

If you work for a company that has 500 positions and suddenly 150 of those positions get outsourced and hire cheap foreigners the company still makes money. In fact, it saves money. However, if the company is reliant upon local patronage, as most are, those 150 lost jobs are going to create a chain reaction of lower sales/patronage and the company will have actually HURT its business by looking at one bottom line and failing to take in the impact on sales and local wealth. That's what's happened at FORD and all these other companies. The chain reaction of saving a buck on expenses by outsourcing factories has now impacted the demand, and they're hurting.

Taxing that business isn't going to do diddly squat for those 150 and the others who lost their jobs. Regulations and the idiotic global warming crowd already helped make the companies decision to use foreign factories and workers for them. As time goes by the illegal immigration is making the poor poorer and siphoning money from the middle class only to enrich the top 1/2 of 1%.

Illegal immigration is like opening up a new MONOPOLY game and taking out 15% of the money and throwing it away. When our money goes to Mexico, very little comes back. All the players suffer, especially the little guy who relies on low end jobs, blue collar stuff. Govt regulations and enviro-hype helps take another 10% of the money off the board and out of players pockets. The double whammy eventually destroys the middle class as it existed and has necessitated the two-worker family with 70hr work weeks!

If the conservatives don't act on illegal immigration and the liberals give it the stamp of endorsement out of utter stupidity masked as "enlightenment" then it will be time to vote for someone who understands the equation and why the nation is struggling.

Enlightenment, true enlightenement comes when you realize you don't give out fish, you give out fishing rods. You don't steal fish from the guy at the end of the pier whose got a big pile, but you ask him what his trick is and follow any good advice. You don't create an angry mob of unsuccessful fishermen and club the good fisherman and pass out his fish. That meal wont last long and when it's over, it's over. You also don't overload the pier and send everyone crashing to Davy Jone's locker.

That's why I vote conservative. Not because Bush says some idiotic thing about intelligent design or has a bunch of pasty faced religious types around him Every Sunday and Easter feeding him pure BS.

As for the war, and the troop presence, I feel they will eventually sew seeds that will blossom from the dunghill that is the Middle East. I also feel that it has helped the US counter the exploitation the EU had going there, just as they do in Africa now. I do not believe it has in any way increased our terror threat, and simply having a more proactive approach to terror keeps the threat lower by regularly extracting the weeds that catch our eyes.

It's a messy, negative and unfortunate situation, but the alternative to our presence in Iraq is to let the corrupt EU back in and turn a blind eye to terror, actively aid WMD programs and basically make life tougher for the US.

Gore, Kerry and whomever the Dems run will feel obliged to pull the troops and hand over Iraq to insurgents and the EU. And while no one ever talks about it - the EU has a vested interest in seeing the insurgency succeed. European & Russian weapons, money and advice make a deadly combo for Iraqis and coalition forces. Their are many companies (big companies) just waiting for the US to pull out so they can come back in and feed on Iraq.

No, like all folks, my views are unique. I choose the lesser of two evils, but the bottom line is they are both rife with 'evils'.

;-)

PS In AZ, Napolitano will win because the right here picked another pasty faced religious type that will turn off the moderates, completely alienate the left instead of Goldwater. So you don't have too much to be upset about statewide.