[Mr 5 0]

Ah, the Libertarian point of view has arrivived. Nice to see you, Kell.

Unit 5302's take on the Federal Reserve Bank and the government as controllers of the U.S. economy are broad enough to be fairly accurate and I won't dispute them. His view of the Republican and Democrat parties basically being two sides of the same coin, I will dispute because it is a very narrow view that ignores some realities.

How many Democrats voted for the 2002 Bush tax rate cuts? Few. The usual Democrat position on economic issues is always more taxes and more government regulation seconded by lame attempts to micro-manage the economy, which almost always fail.

How many Democrats would have responded to 9/11 the way President Bush - a Republican - did? We can debate the wisdom and necessity of the Iraq invasion all day, but the invasion of Afghanistan was needed and necessarily swift, unlike what I can only guess would have been a tepid, 'lets-form-a committee' response by a 'President Gore'.

How many Democrats are against same-sex marriage and abortion-on-demand? Few. Meanwhile, these same hot-button social issues have served to galvanize the right and helped re-elect George W. Bush - a Republican - against the most concerted and furious attacks on one man I have ever seen in an election campaign, and I have seen more than a few. Yet, Bush still won by a margin that may not have been huge but was enought to thwart expected DNC attempts to call the election or Bush's victory 'Illegal' or unconvincing. It was neither - and the Democrats know it as they lost more seats in congress in the last election, and not by accident.

The point should be clear that while both political parties may love to dish out the 'pork' and expand government, as the Republicans have been doing, as well as being friendly to big business, which usually makes sense and is done by both parties, they are miles apart on significent issues such as economics, social policy and national defense. You may nort agree with either side in these debates but to dismiss the two major political parties in America as 'the same' is simply wrong, although many do just in order to appear politically sophisticated, so Unit 5302 is not alone in his misconceptions.

I also believe Unit 5302 overstates the alleged 'failure' of NAFTA and other free trade laws and ignores the fact that Mexico's corrupt government is a large part of the economic problem that drives poor Mexicans into the U.S. for a better living. The millions of U.S. dollars illegal Mexican immigrants send back to Mexico every year helps that nations economy while sucking dollars out of ours and that needs to be curtailed. Unfortunately, both major political parties refuse to address the porous Mexican border situation, to their shame. The lack of seriousness on the border issue is one of conservatives pet peeves with President Bush, for good reason. I believe it's a national security issue as well as an economic one that will bite us in our collective, national butt if allowed to fester much longer.

While I am no fan of some corporate mergers, I disagree that stockholders of major corporations, which includes almost half of all Americans these days, are hardly 'suffering' from them, as Unit 5302 indicated. I do not see the big negative effect on consumers, either. In fact, household income in the U.S. (adjusted for inflation, which is also minimal and a significent economic factor) has gone up noticably over the past few years as unemployment has gone down steadily and millions of new jobs have been created, which makes the old argument that 'all the good paying jobs are going to foreign countries' a bit hard to justify, at best. Not that it stops anyone from trying. The reality is that only about 2% of all 'U.S. jobs' have 'gone overseas'. Incidentally, home ownership is also at an all-time high (70%) - and you don't buy a home on Burger King or Wal-Mart pay, as any homeowner can tell you. I will agree with Unit 5302 that the recent Energy Bill was a disaster and the subsidies given to oil companies was simply unconscionable. Chalk up yet another conservative disagreement with President Bush.

The canard that political conservatives want to 'force' their 'religion' on America is - I'm sorry - just BS. Really. Liberal politicians managed to remove voluntary prayer in schools over 40 years ago. The leftist advocacy groups who are 'offended' at anything have made any 'religious' utterance in a public venue, especially a school, almost a crime and the left has made the inclusion of the words 'Under God' in the Pledge of Alligence, which stood for 50 years with no one being 'offended' a huge legal battle. Meanwhile, a liberal Supreme Court calls abortion and homosexual behavior constitutional 'rights' and generally run over the actual constitutional rights of citizens to determine these things for themselves, state by state. Yet folks like Unit 5302 claim the 'right' is 'forcing' their 'religion' and opinions on others? Hardly.

That the Ten Commandment monuments were vehemently objected to by some leftist/atheist groups after standing in place for years, is not because the 'conservatives forced them' on anyone, but because the left decided to make what had bothered no one a big issue based on the non-existent 'separation of church and state' concept that appears nowhere in the actual constitution of the United States of America. The insane idea from the left that if the government in any way simply recognizes the majority religion of the people with a few symbols of Christian thought, such as the Ten Commandments, it is somehow mandating a specific religion be foisted on helpless Americans who are unwilling to accept it, is simply ridiculous. These monuments stood for years with no problem until the leftist groups made an issue of them. When conservative groups fight back against this anti-religious bullying, they are accused of 'foisting their religion on the public'. What a crock! That kind of intellectual dishonesty frys me and I am sick of dealing with it, yet it never seems to abate. The Supreme Court delievered yet another muddled decision on that one, too. I am rooting for John Roberts, big-time, now.

Here's a NewsFlash: all political movements try to have their 'opinions' codified. All of them. That is what elections are about. We judge each candidate by his stated views on whatever matters to us: economics, cultural issues (like abortion), national security, etc and we vote for the candidate (and his political party) that we feel represents our views the best, understanding that no politician will ever mirror our personal views 100%. None. However, we all want our views - whatever they are - to predominate so we vote for politicians who we feel will help them do so in congress and of course, the White House. Pretending that one votes for anything less than that is simply disingenuous or else you're voting for a candidate that may perfectly match your stated political principles but has as much chance of actually winning an election as Michael Jackson has of being hired as your kid's babysitter. That gets no one anywhere. It also is a hallmark of the Libertarian Party, which sneers at both major political party's but can't get any of it's candidates elected dogcatcher. Well, maybe dogcatcher - but not governors, congressional representatives, senators or presidents. It's mostly a lot of posturing, finger-pointing and attempting a pretense of being more principled than thou. It is also futile and serves to massage Libertarian's egos - but not much else. But I digress.

As for the position Unit 5302 took on U.S. relations with Cuba: that reflects either a woeful lack of historical and political understanding or simple ignorance. I trust it is the former. I really do.

Cuba is a tropical gulag run by a brutal dictator with hundreds if not thousands of 'political prisoners' in it's jails, some for decades. Those are the ones Castro hasn't had killed. Cuba is a police state and has been the source of much of the unrest in Latin America over the decades. Most Americans are aware that as a U.S.S.R. client state in 1962, Cuba was used by the Soviets to house missiles aimed directly at the United States, only 90 miles away. That was an outrageous act of aggression by both the Soviet Union and Cuba. It also precipitated the Kennedy/Kruschev 'Cuban Missle Crisis' of October, 1962. Watch the movie for the shorthand version of that historical event. Long story short: we were actually on the brink of war for a short time, thanks to Castro and Krushchev and their underestimation of then-Preisent Kennedy - and American's resolve.

Cuba's communist dictator, Fidel Castro, almost 78 years old now and still fully in charge, has avowed his hatred of the United States many times and has always been friendly to any group or nation that is an enemy of ours. That has not changed in 45 years. Today, he continues to foment upheavals in other Latin American nations and is rumored to have allowed Cuba to be a way-station for terrorists, which is not hard to imagine. That we retain an embargo on Cuba and Unit 5302 believes we do so only because Fidel Castro 'made some rich people mad' 50 years ago is absurd and not verified by history. Not that the embargo has much effect on Cuba, anyway - every other country trades with Cuba so it's mostly symbolic at this point - but to attribute it to some class-envy libertarian nonsense about making 'rich people mad' is just ridiculous. Cuba is a totaltarian police state...Castro has attempted to use his pipsqueak nation as a launching pad to attack the United States and has never wavered in his intent to harm this nation in any way, big or small, that he can. With that reality in mind, our isolation of the U.S. from Castro's Cuban gulag is quite understandable.

Iraq and Afghanistan were hardly 'helpless' targets of American military power, Iraq, particularly, was in violation of it's own cease-fire agreement brokered by the U.N. to end the Gulf War in 1991. Saddam Hussein could have stopped the planned invasion cold had he surrendered his biological and chemical weapons immediately. He choose not to do so. I think they were spirited out of Iraq pre-war, probably to Syria. In any case, Saddam gambled and lost and the people of Iraq, won. While the security of Iraq is coming at a price in American blood, the cause is just. Iraq and the middle east will be a better place in time because of the overthrow of Saddam and his regime. While I expect Iraq to be a dangerous place for some time to come and it will no doubt have an Islamic-heavy government, Iraq will also be an ally of the U.S., not an enemy. I'll take it.

As for Kell's conclusion that 'Americans are stupid'...I disagree. Sometimes mislead by the liberal media, often apathetic and occasionally inattentive...after all, they have work to do, kids to raise and lives to lead aside from politics...Americans are some of the best educated, most generous people on the planet but with a diverse nation of almost 300 million people, it's difficult to please everyone. I advise most people who show a nascent interest in politics, as 'bmxmon' has here, to - as Unit 5302 recommended - educate yourself. Not by the TV news shows, which tell you what they want you to hear, or a biased website but by doing the hard work of reading recent American history, deciding what parties and politicians stand for and what you would like this nation to be in 20 years, then voting for the politician and/or party that comes anywhere close to that goal. That's democracy manifested by an informed electorate. Be one of the informed.

It will drive you crazy sometimes as you see Washington at work, wasting your money or ignoring big problems while grandstanding on petty ones and you'll be at odds with political and social points of view that will differ from your own, as you see in this thread - but at least you'll have a fairly informed opinion and more than a TV news soundbite or a politicians slick campaign ad to make a judgement on.

Best of all, like Kell and me...you'll know where you stand, and why.