This should be a good starter to get things going.

I'm a libertarian. And I detest that pragmatism is seen as a four letter word in the Libertarian Party. It sounds bizarre, but for the libertarians to make progress they must first accept small gains as the currency of politics for decades. This means deliberately acting against your own principles in the short term for long term gain. And libertarians find that awfully difficult to do. Democrats, OTOH, are outstanding at it. They advance big government typically not by big leaps and bounds preferring instead to build it up with 1,000 little bureaucratic increases.

I think of myself as a pragmatic libertarian, so I agree 100% with GTS.

A lot of people on here think of me as a right-winger, therefore republican. I would offer pretty much the same criticism of republicans. The problem with the religious right is that they are unwilling to make any compromises, and compromises are how things get done in a democracy. Roy Moore to me is what's wrong with republicans, taken to the extreme. And taking it to the extreme makes us vulnerable to the collectivist/redistributionist far left. I think too many republicans really don't understand what they are doing. They just see somebody like GWB who wore a cowboy hat and talked about Jesus a lot, and don't really care that he wasn't much of a conservative otherwise. When republicans are okay with a huge budget deficit, they lose me. I still think when republicans regained the house in 2011 they should immediately have passed Bismarck health care to replace Obama care, a guaranteed basic income, and either Bowles-Simpson or Domenici-Rivlin, or some combination of the best of both. That would have established them immediately as caring about the poor and also wanting to balance the budget and grow the economy. But they didn't. And they pretty much lost me when they didn't.

The GOP makes promises like repealing Obamacare but lacks the guts to actually go through with it.

I'm a conservatarian, aka a Tea Partier. My own side is full of crap in this way: We don't have enough backbone to do what's right when needed. We all squawk about wanting term limits for members of Congress, but when it comes down to it, we end up voting for the same idiots (or kind of idiots, in some cases) who won't do anything about it. We continuously vote for those who care more about the status of being a member of Congress than actually doing the work of the people they were chosen to represent. Therefore, we can be duped pretty easily as long as someone says the right words at the right time with no intention of following through on said words.

Basically, what you said, GTS.

I don't think of myself as being on a specific side, though my views align well with a conservative/libertarian POV. That said, it seems that the biggest BS I see is hypocrisy. For example, the national debt. It does not seem to matter which party controls the white house, senate or house - the national debt continues to climb. We see a ton of deficit hawks...when they are members of the party holding the minority position in both chambers and/or white house. Once power is gained, it seems that they conveniently "forget" their "come to Jesus" moment.

I'm conservative fiscally and lean left socially. Unsure what side that puts me on, but I think a good amount feel the way I do. Sadly, we don't make enough noise for either side that serves to want to align with us.

Many republicans and conservatives couldnt handle the identity politics war thrown at them. They would get nervous, cave, apologize, etc.

Tell an illegal they would have to leave the country and re-enter legally? Oh the horror, we would lose the hispanic vote!

The Constitution refers to “the people.” It is not referring to a collective right held and administered by federal, state or local authorities. It is referring to a right held directly by individuals.

Because of this I can't for the life of me understand conservatives that want to use the force of the State to negatively impact other Americans.

As a few examples: Gay marriage? Not a State issue, let them marry. And let a church/bakery/florist etc say no to hosting a gay wedding. Abortion? Not a State issue. Abortion should be safe, legal are rare between a women and her doctor. Morally abhorrent to me, but not to be enforced pro or con at the threat of an armed government agent.

On the flip side, I don't want to take away your Bible, Koran or Torah. Religious people should have the right to say "no" or non-violently protest gay marriage and abortion without fear of the State.

Preference is a matter of one’s own conscience, and is covered by the First Amendment, along with Catholics who believe Jesuit rule in the White House would be peachy, Democrats who advocate a Parliament, Sanders supporters who want to abolish the Electoral College, and anarcho-libertarians who’d like to close down the entire government.

Are the above nutso? Maybe. Maybe even probably. But these are not concerns of the government unless they become violent.

Small government means small government. Not big Armed Republican government.

At its core, my beef is how political leaders tend to value first principles in politics and culture.

First principles are the things we assume that stand alone--they are unproven and unprovable, because they inform our understanding of what can be proved, what the idea of "proof" itself means, etc.

My epistemology is post-positivist and my religion is Christian. So, I (try to) start my political calculations with the assumption that there are best actions, worst actions (both of which are unlikely to be practical), and a range of possible actions in between the extremes. Politics being the art of the possible, I am generally happy with any action that moves the needle in the better direction...provided we do not sell out our first principles to do so. In this way, the first principles of moral behavior and disciplined thought shape my understanding of politics.

There are far too many politicians on my side of the aisle who see first principles as variables to be exploited for pragmatic gain, rather than an unassailable foundation that must not be ignored. They espouse similar ends to mine and declare allegiance to those first principles I revere but--when the crisis comes--cast aside the latter in pursuit of the former. They miss the forest for the trees, for the ends do not justify the means.

As a small-L libertarian, I feel the same as Owl#s and GTS. It's ok to have a belief system, but if you ever want to get anything done you have to take some small victories. Most of the time it's going to be a choice between what you don't like and what you definitely don't like. Continuously choosing not to participate in the debate between those two things pushes us further and further down the credibility pile.

Given the choice between something that's better than nothing, or something that they completely detest, too many of the religious right say, "My way of the highway, if I don't get everything I want, I'm not going to support it." That may be okay from a theoretical point of view, but it is a recipe for disaster in practice. In theory, theory works well in practice; in practice, it doesn't.

The issue is not why our own party is full of it. The issue is why all parties are full of it.
In 1981 a former governor of Alabama told me that there were no longer two parties that dominated the political sphere, but one. It has been that way since lobby money and campaign financing were permitted to come from the largest businesses in this country.

The analogy the governor used was a two horse Kentucky derby in which both horses were owned by the same stable.

It does not serve the corporate agenda for Guantanamo to be closed, or for the withdrawal from Afghanistan or Iraq to be accomplished. So if you are a democrat that is why Obama was unable to fulfill his campaign promises for the 8 years he occupied the White House.

It is why until this tax plan Trump has not accomplished a single core item of his campaign.

Illegals supply cheap labor.

According to a Civil Rights worker that once was under my supervision the businesses that employ illegals pay a ratio of social security for their illegals. For every three they pay the employers part of SSI on they keep 6 more off the books. Paying for some prevents investigation. The Civil Rights worker was involved because the illegals paid Coyotes $1000 to get across. In other words these people want to come here so badly that they give literally all they can scrape together to get here to work for minimum wage (or less) without any hopes of participating in SSI. Therefore having children here becomes a means through which they can apply for benefits and citizenship.

So it doesn't profit businesses that profit from this abuse to build a wall.

It does profit big business to give a middle class tax cut. Why? The middle class has been so eroded by the loss of small business which they owned and operated that it has been a substantial drag on their purchasing power. Small business evaporated when large chains were granted 50% reductions in property taxes to locate in counties for the purpose of adding jobs, given the right to keep their portion of the state's sales tax base until the overhead of their building was recovered, and given the right to retain that break when the building is paid for by building another location. The net result is that without even counting volume purchasing power and cheap overseas suppliers these businesses open with a 13 point (on average) tax advantage over small businesses. The result of nearly 3 decade of this practice has eviscerated small business in this country, eroded the middle class, and destroyed tax bases in most municipalities large enough to support the chains. An after effect of this has been the pressure to continue to raise property taxes and sales taxes on the individual citizens so that police departments, schools, and emergency personnel can be maintained. The corporations pay precious little and glean more power for political lobby as a result.

I am a libertarian as well, but that is a philosophy, and certainly not a political force. But then elections today sell the public a fairy tale with little intention of slaying the ogre or wicked witch who works for them. Greed keeps politicians in power and the very term vetting might as well be "made man" because unless the machine has enough on you to put you away they will not trust you with their agenda. Play along and they will support you and enrich you until you no longer have cachet. Don't and they go after you, your family, and your former business associates until you cry uncle.

I seldom post in the Spin Room, and probably won't post here often. Those who have been on the inside know. Those who haven't label and attack the attributed but bogus positions of each others party feeling like they have accomplished something and struck a blow for the truth. There is only one truth. Our country is controlled by corporate conglomerates and because of it we don't even put forward what is best for our country at all times, but rather what is good for trade and for those who contribute more cash than the citizens of this nation could afford to give even if they were united.

There is only one solution for this and it hasn't been practiced in this country for well over 150 years, free elections. In the early days of the nation the press gave the space to carry the individual views of the candidates. Candidates spent as much on their elections as they needed to for travel, but the press carried their promises and views because it sold papers so they didn't have to purchase "air time".

Today the media is owned by the corporate conglomerates. They give oodles to make the candidates beholden and then charge oodles to the campaigns for use of their media and take most of the money back. The individual donors are thereby rendered ineffective.

So party red or party blue wins the White House on promises to accomplish xyz that appealed to the voters who elected them and immediately they set out to appease the conglomerates that put them in power and forget about xyz. If an agenda gets close to being passed by the momentum from the election then someone like McCain or another venerated leader will step in to prevent it. If it does pass the Supreme Court takes over.

The process as it is now configured essentially bypasses the public for the corporate interest.

Our problem politically is not that we have conservatives and liberals and libertarians, it's that they are so busy attacking each other that they don't first turn their collective attention to the fact that even their own parties don't represent them.

We have no dialogue because the media is intentional about keeping us riled up and divided. If we actually talked with one another we might focus our attention on the Corporate thugs that push agendas daily that deprive us all.

You are required to have health insurance so it goes up. You are restricted from having more than $5,000 cash on you or you may be deemed to be a potential enemy of the state (Patriot Act and something everyone needs to read very carefully). Since 2001 if you have rented a safe deposit box you have forfeited the right of the government to inspect it. You have given up your rights to not be surveilled. You are mandated to keep your money in banks by some of these laws and yet the corporate crooks over the banking administration have permitted ever more fees from which these entities can sap your accounts. If you have trusts the fees have gone up. Your retirement portfolios are now subject to becoming annuitized which means your heirs may never inherit your principal. Recently one of my IRA's matured. Magically the holding company withdrew $100 just because it matured and they had to send me my money.

But meanwhile my countrymen ridicule each other and attack over nonsensical issues like who gets to go in what bathroom rather than uniting to stop this collective thievery and preserve their rights. I can't personally believe that we are this stupid!
I don't care if someone is gay, straight, or something else. I do care that my phone rings everyday with scamsters and that elderly parents are subjected to this. The FCC's oversight once involved the pursuit and prosecution of phone fraud. Now the tele companies all make oodles off of these projects since they purchase rooms filled with phones and pay their bills so the phone company no longer even wants to help the individual citizen, let alone the government entity entrusted with that very responsibility.

Three times Congress has acted to increase the number of years after the death of a loved one that nursing homes can go back and lay claims against the inheritance of the heirs for "late billing". This is particularly true for alzheimer's patients. So today they can go back to claim property given away by the patient up to 7 years prior to their death.

Every citizen regardless of political leanings or religious beliefs is getting sold down the river to corporations whose power dwarfs that of the old mafia. So everyday they are finding new ways to soak you for your cash.

In the meantime if I head to the Spin Room or anywhere else to try to refocus the attention of the board on what the true threats to our freedoms really are, I'm either not conservative enough or liberal enough because I won't get riled about that trash. And insulting each other to get rep from your buddies is more important than engaging your brains to find out who the real enemy is.

Right now we still have the ability from a grassroots movement to change our election laws.

Under H.W.Bush the two big parties were grandfathered into the ballot in every state. Since then every independent has to spend the money to get placed on the ballot in "each" of the 50 states. Let that sink in. Constitutional requirements established for nationwide elections were replaced in a manner designed to prevent the citizens from getting the requisite number of registered voters to gain access to all states in a national election. In other words if you aren't on team red or blue you're hosed. And there was no public uproar over this because we were too busy arguing over the issues du jour for the ignorant masses.

So I don't know if I'll post again here, but I figured what the heck, I'll give it one more shot to see if anyone really wants to discuss our issues. But I promise you one thing. Your enemy is not another citizen be they liberal, conservative, or other. Your enemy is the behemoth that inserts itself into your finances, your health care, your homes, and your children's lives, and does so daily for the purposes of enriching itself at your expense.

Take care, JR

As a formerly reliable Republican voter.

States rights. Sorry fellas but that little dust-up that resulted in some bloodshed in the 1860's was capped by constitutional amendments that now require the states to not screw with individual rights.

Scorn of secularism. I'm a church goer. But I believer heartily in a secular government. Drive around town making note of church signs and proximity to each other. We Christians can't agree on how to live the Bible. You impose a government scheme of regulation that is Bible based on you will trample on the beliefs of some Christians.

Gay marriage? I changed my mind on the issue when I realized I couldn't defend the status quo without citing scripture or "that's how we've always done it". Those aren't valid arguments. The government gives married people special rights (inheritance and property ownership most notably) has to have a compelling reason to deny those rights and privileges to others. Can't be about reproduction. My 74 year old father-in-law and his 72 year old girlfriend got married and they ain't producing any children.

Abortion. I'm against it but I can never support a system where a doctor is afraid to save a mother because he might be second guessed or worse, a system where someone needs to find a judge at 3am on Saturday to get an emergency order signed. Focus on reducing the pressures that prompt people to choose abortion.

Capitalism in the US. Screwed all to hell. Capitalism only survives if there are consumers. Rich people are not job creators. Job creation is a byproduct of certain investments. If the public at-large isn't buying house and building new ones, an investment in refrigerators won't pay well and you aren't going to hire people to make refrigerators unless you think you can sell them. Cutting the Walton Family's taxes isn't going to prompt them to hire anyone, open new stores, or give anyone raises. Leave their taxes alone, cut the lower income people because they will spend that money and a big piece of it will go to Walmart. Our regulatory scheme is a complete mess. Large corporations often lobby to make regulations dense and complicated to serve as a barrier to entry for their competitors. Only thing propping up our small business numbers is the Earned Income Tax Credit. Claim you have a business, claim you made some money, file a tax return get the EIC money. Toss the numbers out for those scam businesses and the US is a small business wasteland vs our peers.

Health coverage. We had a plan. Several conservative think tanks endorsed the plan. Nixon proposed a similar plan (Dems killed it under Ted Kennedy's urging, expecting to be able to go single payer in 1976). Newt dusted it off when Hillary was working on health coverage. Romney supports a variant. Then Obama signs on and oh hell no it's socialist. The socialist plan was Bush's Medicare Part D which got amended to bar Medicare from negotiating drug prices and has required diversion of tax dollars above the payroll tax to prop up. Let's adopt the Singapore plan. Everyone is required to save to a personal account a set percentage of earnings and that account covers routine medical, then we can have a national catastrophic plan that kicks in after say $20,000 of out-of-pocket. We've got to do something. Hospitals and clinics spend too much getting paid. Workers Comp, Home, Auto, and other liability coverage insurance could be cheaper if they only had to cover the first $20,000 in medical bills.

(12-20-2017 01:23 PM)GeminiCoog Wrote:  I'm a conservatarian, aka a Tea Partier. My own side is full of crap in this way: We don't have enough backbone to do what's right when needed. We all squawk about wanting term limits for members of Congress, but when it comes down to it, we end up voting for the same idiots (or kind of idiots, in some cases) who won't do anything about it. We continuously vote for those who care more about the status of being a member of Congress than actually doing the work of the people they were chosen to represent. Therefore, we can be duped pretty easily as long as someone says the right words at the right time with no intention of following through on said words.

Basically, what you said, GTS.

This kind of fits my thoughts. I'm a conservative Republican (although a lot of Republicans would call me a moderate-no Democrats would).
When Republicans had the presidency, house and senate, they ratcheted up earmarks to the highest number ever and fought two wars while still increasing domestic spending and cutting taxes. They were spending like drunken sailors and generally acting like Democrats. Now that they have it again after campaigning on repealing Obamacare and repealing it in hundreds of symbolic votes, many vote to keep it. They have completely forgotten about term limits now that they realize they have good chances to control the house and the senate. It was very popular when Democrats controlled the senate 52 years out of 62 and controlled the house for 40 straight years and 58 out of 62.

I most definitely lean toward the conservative side so I'll spend this time bashing the Republicans.

They all talk and campaign on the government spending less, about shrinking government, but when we vote them in and they start drinking from the trough of lobbyists, etc., all of a sudden they lack the gonads or inclination to ever follow through with fiscal conservatism.

Almost all of them, both sides, instead of actually doing the people's business, spend far more effort and energy figuring out how to stay in a job that only pays in the $200K range (yet they all end up millionaires). I firmly believe they would all rather never take a side or vote on anything because taking a side opens them up for campaign criticism if it doesn't work or is unpopular. They would rather hide in a corner until election time when they come back out and say "vote for me!"

In the end, I really don't trust them to do what's best for my country.......they just do what's best for them.....

(12-20-2017 02:41 PM)JRsec Wrote:  There is only one solution for this and it hasn't been practiced in this country for well over 150 years, free elections. In the early days of the nation the press gave the space to carry the individual views of the candidates. Candidates spent as much on their elections as they needed to for travel, but the press carried their promises and views because it sold papers so they didn't have to purchase "air time".

My problem with your "solution" is that I think it will be turned into the same problem we have today. The R's and D's will get free air time and nobody else will. It's pretty easy to set a threshold level of perceived support to qualify for the free time, and to set that level high enough to create a barrier to entry. How do you implement it to keep that from happening?

arkstfan,

My concept has always been individual rights > states' rights > federal rights. I think that's what the 10th Amendment says. Lots of issues actually go away if we quit trying to make everything a federal case.

Secularism, gay marriage, and abortion are three issues where the religious right has hijacked the republican party, and their unwillingness to adopt any approach other than "my way or the highway" makes it impossible to work with them. So everything defaults to the extreme. As for religion and government, what the 1st Amendment says is that congress may nor favor the establishment of a particular religion, nor prohibit the free exercise of religion. I think we lose sight of that second part all to frequently in our zeal to prevent anything that looks even remotely like "establishment." Gay marriage should be allowed, but forcing churches or others to support such marriages in violation of their legitimately held religious beliefs strikes me a major violation of that "separation of church and state" which the left seems to embrace so fondly. As for abortion, life starts at conception, and the unborn have rights from that point, but so does the mother, that doesn't mean that the rights of the unborn automatically trump those of the mother from the moment of conception. At some point they should, absent a showing such as rape or incest or health of mother or child, and that point has historically been somewhere around the end of the first trimester or 20 weeks. That makes sense to me.

As for capitalism, no system in history has done more to lift the well-being of the poorest members of society. But it takes both a healthy demand and a healthy supply side to work properly. We have focused almost entirely on stimulating demand since the days of the New Deal, without ever catching up the supply side. Keynes understood this, you stimulate demand in hard times, and you catch up supply in good times. We keep neglecting to do the latter. Keynes said that would eventually produce a situation where supply and demand are so far out of balance that demand stimulus no longer works. Look at where we are. Americans consume more and save less than citizens of any other advanced economy. We are the world's largest debtor, both individuals and government. We are the world's largest importer. And the Obama "stimulus" has produced multipliers, not in the 7-9 range predicted by Keynes, but rather in the 1-1.5 range. That all sounds pretty much like the problem Keynes predicted.

As far as health care, no, Obamacare is not the republican plan. The republican plan was based loosely on German Bismarck (I think Bismarck is the way to go, but I prefer the French, Dutch, or Swiss versions to the German). Obamacare keeps some of the same words, but not the same ideas. For example, the exchanges in the German and republican plans were created to provide a mechanism for out-of-state health insurance purposes. Under Obamacare, there are no out-of-state health insurance purchases, so the exchanges cannot possibly be the same. Same for the mandate. The republican plan had a mandate, but anyone purchasing insurance got a refundable tax credit that basically paid the cost. You need to have something to prevent the "free rider" effect if you require coverage of pre-exisitng conditions. But structuring it as a tax credit instead of a penalty has significantly different implications. The other main, and probably bigger difference, is that those other plans didn't have nearly the size of centralized federal health bureaucracy, and nothing like the IPAB, that are part and parcel of Obamacare. Get rid of the IPAB and the other bureaucratic overhead, and turn the mandate into a tax credit, and Obamacare would start to look something like the original Heritage plan. But without those changes, it doesn't.

(12-20-2017 05:27 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(12-20-2017 02:41 PM)JRsec Wrote:  There is only one solution for this and it hasn't been practiced in this country for well over 150 years, free elections. In the early days of the nation the press gave the space to carry the individual views of the candidates. Candidates spent as much on their elections as they needed to for travel, but the press carried their promises and views because it sold papers so they didn't have to purchase "air time".

My problem with your "solution" is that I think it will be turned into the same problem we have today. The R's and D's will get free air time and nobody else will. It's pretty easy to set a threshold level of perceived support to qualify for the free time, and to set that level high enough to create a barrier to entry. How do you implement it to keep that from happening?

All candidates got the space to present their visions. What I didn't mention was that they couldn't use the free time to criticize one another so much as to lay out their agenda. Stump speeches were the time for muckraking. As for the entry point it's been on the books until H.W. Bush. Get the requisite number of signatures to get your name placed on the ballot. The total was once a national one for national elections. H.W. made sure it was per state and grandfathered in the Republicans and Democrats. Strike his legislation and return to the original. Then limit the space and appearances to a certain amount or limit of time and restrict the presentations to what you will do, and how you will accomplish it. That frees the election process up to new ideas and new approaches. Then the people choose. Those who've taken over the country don't like ideas that they don't approve of so we get two parties of candidates who they already own. Everyone else is dismissed, or even if they qualify aren't invited to the debates (corporate TV policy), and usually can't afford commercial time on television.

Make the elections free as far as message goes and we will finally get reforms and a new vision. It's the ideas we need to be voting for first, then the individual and the party last. Part of our stratification is that we blindly follow that we affiliate with, rather than support that which we understand and with which we agree. We select candidates now on 30 second impressions and frequently as the result of negative accusations. The electorate's laziness and ignorance is as much to blame for our issues as the willful machinations of the power brokers. One cannot exist without the complicity of the other.

(12-20-2017 09:12 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(12-20-2017 05:27 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(12-20-2017 02:41 PM)JRsec Wrote:  There is only one solution for this and it hasn't been practiced in this country for well over 150 years, free elections. In the early days of the nation the press gave the space to carry the individual views of the candidates. Candidates spent as much on their elections as they needed to for travel, but the press carried their promises and views because it sold papers so they didn't have to purchase "air time".

My problem with your "solution" is that I think it will be turned into the same problem we have today. The R's and D's will get free air time and nobody else will. It's pretty easy to set a threshold level of perceived support to qualify for the free time, and to set that level high enough to create a barrier to entry. How do you implement it to keep that from happening?

Then you obviously didn't read the post. All candidates got space to present their visions. What I didn't mention was that they couldn't use the free time to criticize one another so much as to lay out their agenda. Stump speeches were the time for muckraking. As for the entry point it's been on the books until H.W. Bush. Get the requisite number of signatures to get your name placed on the ballot. The total was once a national one for national elections. H.W. made sure it was per state and grandfathered in the Republicans and Democrats. Strike his legislation and return to the original. Then limit the space and appearances to a certain amount or limit of time and restrict the presentations to what you will do, and how you will accomplish it. That frees the election process up to new ideas and new approaches. Then the people choose. Those who've taken over the country don't like ideas that they don't approve of so we get two parties of candidates who they already own. Everyone else is dismissed, or even if they qualify aren't invited to the debates (corporate TV policy), and usually can't afford commercial time on television.
Make the elections free as far as message goes and we will finally get reforms and a new vision.

But who decides who is a candidate and who isn't? Do the Greens get this? Do the Libertarians? Do the Communists? Does the Constitution Party? Where do you draw the line?

And what constitutes the forbidden criticizing each other? If republicans had self imposed that rule and followed it, Donald Trump would not have been their nominee.

(12-20-2017 03:53 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(12-20-2017 01:23 PM)GeminiCoog Wrote:  I'm a conservatarian, aka a Tea Partier. My own side is full of crap in this way: We don't have enough backbone to do what's right when needed. We all squawk about wanting term limits for members of Congress, but when it comes down to it, we end up voting for the same idiots (or kind of idiots, in some cases) who won't do anything about it. We continuously vote for those who care more about the status of being a member of Congress than actually doing the work of the people they were chosen to represent. Therefore, we can be duped pretty easily as long as someone says the right words at the right time with no intention of following through on said words.

Basically, what you said, GTS.

This kind of fits my thoughts. I'm a conservative Republican (although a lot of Republicans would call me a moderate-no Democrats would).
When Republicans had the presidency, house and senate, they ratcheted up earmarks to the highest number ever and fought two wars while still increasing domestic spending and cutting taxes. They were spending like drunken sailors and generally acting like Democrats. Now that they have it again after campaigning on repealing Obamacare and repealing it in hundreds of symbolic votes, many vote to keep it. They have completely forgotten about term limits now that they realize they have good chances to control the house and the senate. It was very popular when Democrats controlled the senate 52 years out of 62 and controlled the house for 40 straight years and 58 out of 62.

Exactly! It seems like once they get some semblance of power, they forget all about their campaign promises until the next election. It really bothers me how we get duped into voting for people who have no intentions of keeping their campaign promises. Repealing Obamacare? Nope. A Reaganesque tax cut that still requires every single citizen to pay taxes regardless of income level? (It's the only truly fair way to collect income tax revenue other than the Flax Tax, after all.) Nope. Reeling in spending? So far, nope. It makes me want to just quit voting altogether. (Of course, I'll never do that, but I certainly want to sometimes.)