"I identify as socially liberal but fiscally conservative because weed is cool but i think those poor kids are too grabby with that not wanting to starve to death thing"

I'm independent and it pisses my friends off. I tell them why follow one parties political standpoints and be all single minded when you can actually decide stuff yourself by the weighing the options.

I love in Southern-ish Indiana, so everyone is the stereotypical redneck republican.

i have opinions but i don't vote. it seems like a waste of time to me. to be perfectly honest i don't care enough whether the democrats or the republicans win the election.. they are too close in ideology for me to expend any serious amount of effort lobbying for one over the other.

as for my opinions i am a leftist on most issues, though there are some issues the left adopts that i either don't care about or disagree with them about. but basically i support somewhat socialist economic policies along with socially liberal policies in most cases. the two exceptions i can think of off the top of my head are guns and war. i think guns are fine and war is sometimes either necessary or useful.

Same here. There are plenty of legitimate issues to be argued, but to me the most important one, or at least the one that needs to be dealt with before you can realistically go about the rest of them, is that the government is unable to function anymore with the current political climate. The public can't even talk to each other about politics anymore, and all of the moderates are too turned off by the process to even try talking sense into the squeaky wheels. And the politicians are only too happy to take advantage of this, resulting in government paralysis. With the country so evenly divided it's impossible for one side to ever truly beat the other, so every few years one party comes to power, gets to shove through whatever policy they can with whatever underhanded way they can with little to no cooperation from the other side while repealing or undermining the previous policies of their rivals, and then inevitably lose favor to be voted out themselves. And so the process repeats like an ineffective pendulum.

Until this issue is addressed then all of the other battles are temporary victories in a losing war that is being ignored because the populace can't see the forest for the trees. And without their acknowledgement of this any vote cast is pointless at best and at worst as much a part of the problem as any action by a corrupt politician, so what's the point until the narrative changes?

yea, and what's worse is the policies aren't even what matters to them. republicans supported something similar to obamacare as an alternative to universal healthcare in the 90's, but once a democrat proposes it it's socialism and the death of the country. democrats decried bush for his corrosion of the bill of rights with illegal surveillance and his imperial foreign policy, yet stay silent when obama continues those very same policies and in some cases even ramps them up a notch. it is all a cynical game where the two sides maneuver for power and influence. to be perfectly honest i don't have much faith in democracy in general, especially when coupled with capitalism. it just creates the incentive for rich and powerful groups to lobby for political influence and fund propaganda campaigns to control the political debate among the populace.

I'll never understand how people can know that the politicians are full of ****, know that politics is a hoax, know that their votes are becoming more and more meaningless, and yet when election day comes along they're stumping for so and so and railing against his opponent. How anyone ever bought into "Yes we can!" beats the **** outta me. I know a cheap slogan when I hear one and I knew Obama was a shyster no different from any of the other scumbags as soon as I saw him. I only voted for the dude cause I was hoping he'd be less of a warmonger than McCain. No John, I am not a Georgian. I am someone who has no desire to start WWIII with Russia.

How do you think the narrative will ever change?

Well nothing happens in a vacuum. People aren't just going to "wake up" without some new stimuli being introduced. The biggest depression since the Great one hasn't really lit a fire under our collective asses, several pointless wars haven't made anybody do anything besides bitch at a TV screen, people still complain about attack ads while using them to decide who to vote for, congress grandstanding until our credit rating took a hit didn't wake anybody up, etc, etc, etc. If a wake up call is going to have to be even worse than all of those then... ****, can you blame me for a lack of enthusiasm? All the making up flyers, and writing letters to my congressman, and voting for the lesser of two evils in the world aren't going to be able to convince a population that is committed to indifference and I don't have the faith or the drive to be the guy who's willing to bang his head against a wall to change it. You have to have a certain level of deluded optimism to be able to believe in such radical change when all of the facts to the contrary are staring you in the face, and irrational or not, those are the kind of people who accomplish things. I am not one of those people. Never have been, never will be, so I'm just not the man for the job.

I feel like the narrative is slowly starting to change and people are realizing that we have to attempt to get money out of politics.

Occupy Wall Street had the right idea but no real direction. The only thing it ended up accomplishing was bringing to light an issue that has been going on for far too long with lobbyists. The ridiculous amounts of money that gets thrown at both parties is out of control. When they campaign they spend 80% of their time just fundraising alone.

Occupy Wall Street was for the most part a bunch of college kids. College kids with signs do not change public policy, no matter how much the sixties generation would like you to think so. A significant enough voting bloc does. And right now the people with common sense who might agree with me are too busy tuning out because the squeaky wheels, such as the Evangelicals, are making the debate so unbelievably unpleasant to be a part of. We just get lost in the incendiary rhetoric that moves the extreme ends of the political spectrum, who, as the Tea Party has shown, are willing to go somewhere else for their political pandering, while the rest of us are still willing to vote for their choices because at least they're better than the alternative, right?

And sure, there's a very real chance that the Republican Party may well splinter into two halves that end up losing much of their influence, but in the mean time the public discourse is becoming ever more polarized because of it. And even if the Evangelicals marginalize themselves by breaking with the more moderate side of the party, you still have a younger generation of socially liberal conservatives who hate Obamacare just as much as the racist, homophobic, Bible thumpers who seem to be multiplying at an ever increasing pace who may very well pick up the torch of anti-Communist fear mongering.

Not to mention the corporations who continue amassing ever more, not less, influence. Until sensible people's voices can compete with the shear amount of money that big business throws at Washington, especially now with Citizen's United making buying politicians now de facto legal, then we are again drowned out.

The Great Recession and dissatisfaction with the government may have inspired Occupy Wall Street, but there has also been no escalation. Some people hung out in tents for a few weeks and then it was over, move on to the next Kardashian sister who's pregnant. The fact that there was such a large protest movement in the first place is cause for some kind of optimism sure, but until it builds into something greater and more politically influential, something that truly reflects mainstream America and not just the more radical elements of it, it's nothing more than an isolated brush fire. And for that, we need greater negative stimuli to hit: an even worse recession, intervention into a war with casualties in the tens of thousands rather than just the thousands, Congress so deadlocked that they legitimately cause this even worse recession, or for all I know it might even take legitimate economic collapse. Something that people can't just ignore and grumble about cause at least they can still afford Cable and don't have to worry about a draft. Might it change sometime in the future? Sure. Will it happen any time soon? As in the next decade, or couple of decades? I'm dubious. And whenever that change occurs will it be caused by or possibly even cause something that destroys whatever optimism this change might otherwise have given me? I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. Remember, it was complete economic collapse that led to the fall of the Czar's tyranny in Russia, and it resulted in rise of the Soviet Union. Be careful what you wish for.

So are my folks, but they've voted Republican is every single election so they might as well register as such. My Dad thought about listening to Obama's campaign in 2008, but I'm glad he didn't. It would have been one of the worst mistakes he ever made. I believe one has to be well educated and clear minded to vote, and not allow scare tactics and smokescreens to get the better half of them.

My mom is from Indiana and she graduated from medical school.

Unless you are educated in politics your education doesn't mean much. Politics and economics in this country have been made so incredibly complicated that the average intelligent person still has no ****ing clue what's going on.

I love hearing people at work, random strangers, college kids, etc discussing these things like they have all the answers to improve society. It's just not that simple. The average person bitching about inflation and how prices need to change probably has no ****ing clue how it will affect everything else that it is connected to. The same goes for policy change.

I'm pretty sure it's intentional to keep the people with the real power in charge and keeping the masses feeling like they have an opinion. One thing will change this country, a revolution, and when it's over and all the ****ing scumbags have lost their power we will have dug ourselves into a deeper hole with even less direction and no one to blame but ourselves.

Either accept this ****hole for what it is or find somewhere to live that sucks a little less because you don't have the power to make it better. The best thing about this country is you can ****ing hate it while still enjoying it's benefits free of persecution.

I do not stand for the national anthem, I will not say the pledge of allegiance, and I will die before I ever go to war for America. But I sure as hell ain't leaving, and I have no intention of ever pushing my personal opinions on anyone else. I just do me.

i feel similarly though i don't think a revolution is really necessary for change. i think changes are actually inevitable and happen over time but mostly they happen when you have rich and powerful groups backing them, not just random citizens. also i think a revolution is very unlikely to happen here. at least a successful one. at the end of the day i don't care that much cause this is all in all a pretty decent place to live.

I don't feel confident in any party in NZ. Basically the party running the show is fucking up the country so bad that unemployment has gone up, wages gone down, huge increase of people on benefits, reduced job opportunities for college graduates and the country's debt has increased (we were told we'd be in surplus by now, ha!). Oh and they stop supporting loads of family charities, sold NZ's assets, are letting China by our land that we will never get back, increased GST, increased petrol tax, told the health system to make cuts, reduced wages and resources for the police...it goes on.

Basically I'm going to send a big fuck you on voting day.

Here, here. Hence why I am usually indifferent rather than angry. I don't have to worry about any secret police and french fries are still affordable. Life's good for now. And please god no revolution. I'm perfectly happy not living through the French Revolution thank you very much.

i do meet people with pretty scary opinions. i have a neighbor who is ex-military and all that who was asking me what will i do if the state sets martial law and says i can't go out at night, would i live on my knees or die on my feet? in all honesty i'd probably just modify my schedule. but there are certainly plenty of militia-men out there with revolutionary fantasies. let's just hope they are forever content with playing dress up in the woods.

If Mao and Robespierre are any indication then all of those "patriots" who talk about revolution and stockpiling guns are far, far worse than the corrupt douchebags they want to replace. At least politicians are predictable when they've been bought. **** revolutionaries. Why anybody ever thinks revolution is a good idea I will also never know.

well... i would say in some instances it is in essence a necessary idea. but i don't think that is where we are at in america.

It has to be pretty ****ing awful for revolution to be the lesser of two evils, and more often than the country seems to end up even worse than it started. I don't really count the American Revolution as a revolution in the general sense, and I can't really think of any others that ended well.

Just to clarify: I don't want a revo, I don't think it's that bad. I'd probably react the same way as JWB and just act accordingly like a good little sheep. I don't care all that much as long as I can still do what I enjoy.

if we didn't continue to **** them over so much i would say cuba had a pretty decent revolution

Unfortunately I don't have enough posts built up to post a video but has anyone else heard about how while rep Tom Marino had the floor talking about a Republican authored bill in securing the border as well as how Dems have been making immigration out to be a political issue and Nancy Pelosi ran across the floor and started, wagged her finger and began accusing him of being a liar as well as not being important.

And Marino came down on her with a dead ringer saying, "No, I have done my research and have my facts straight. Maybe you should try it." Democratic intolerance at its finest lol. Definitely made my day.

There needs to be an option on the poll that says, "Prefers to play Mass Effect during political debates because at least then you get to shoot the evil space robots."

the local politics here work different i think we have 3 political parties

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...5/PNP.logo.png
PNP

This party wants Puerto Rico to become a full fledged American state

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...%28logo%29.png
PPD
This party wants Puerto Rico to remain an allied state to the U.S but we want to keep some independence as well.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...4/PIP.logo.gif

PIP

This party wants full independence.

These are your political choices here but the thing is no matter how you vote our status quo doesn't change we remain an allied state, even if a PNP candidate remains in office for 2 turns we never become a state..

Only the PPD or PNP win and the PIP who always have the most qualified candidates never win!! every puertorican knows they got the best candidates but we are afraid of becoming independent so they never get a shot.

^ Hunh? (Just ****in witcha)

This party must never put this logo on American television.

@Roxy

lol i know it doesn't make alot of sense i brought those up but i don't live in the U.S so i can't really comment on your politics..

How is a Jibaro offensive? he is the most iconic representation of the roots of our culture.

is it cause they used machetes?

No, I doubt anybody in America knows what a "Jibaro" is. But with the hat that pic looks like a total Latino racial stereotype.

He's right BF, it would just open the door for serious racial slurrs or jokes.

And that's just me. You don't want to know what some people would say.

I have no idea what these people are talking about Black Francis. I'm not aware of any latino stereotypes that are red silhouettes wearing hats.

Umm Janszy its a sombrero. ..

It's kinda like Chief Whahoo being Clevlands mascot...No buneno.

Edit: These ppl ....:soapbox: ;)

I kinda got the image of a hick farmer tbh. All it needs is a straw of wheat hanging from his mouth.

I was thinking more along the lines of this. You don't want Americans thinking of this.


http://a.abcnews.com/images/Technolo..._070621_ms.jpg

http://www.arteyvidachicago.com/wp-c...-the-Field.jpg

It's not a sombrero though.

lol ahh i see it's cause you guys have to be totally PC, huh?

That is getting kinda ridiculous, i mean i know we have to respect other ppl's culture but some times stereotypes like that are fair representation of the roots of their culture..

if i for example saw that logo on american tv i wouldn't be offended unless they are using it in a derogatory context but if they are just showing it to discuss our political parties it wouldn't bother me none..

Who are these f*cking ppl looking to be offended by everything? it is gonna get to a point where if you say a black kid is good at basketball they'll call you racist..

....Im still on the fence there..

Honestly, I don't think it's something people would be offended about.

But that's the thing you never know how sensitive ppl can be about these subjects so what is a harmless statement to you could be offensive to someone else..

Offended no, not the general populous. But I can see where it might open the door to some unwanted remarks. To the untrained eye it does provoke racial sterotypes.

It's like if I ran for office and this was my campaign picture.
http://ionehellobeautiful.files.word...face.jpg?w=420

Okay maybe not that dramatic, but still..