An Important Public Service Announcement

I'll say this: Republicans are an odious group, at least as far as elected officials go. Calm down, before you go claiming I'm a Democrat.

Democrats are an odious group when they get elected to office, too. I'm a libertarian. I don't want the government to do much, but what it must do I'd like it to do with a modicum of sense and civility, two things which got off the bus a long time ago. I've said (and meant it) that I might vote for Hillary because I see Trump as an existential threat. In a way I never saw Romney, McCain (or even Sarah Palin), W. etc.

Palin is the closest thing to Trump of the recent years nominees. Utterly out of her depth, charming in her way, but as soon as she spoke she showed you what you get when you hire 'em for their looks. And she'd been a mayor and governor, she wasn't a complete newcomer to politics. Besides his explosive temperament, Donald Trump is essentially walking into the Heavy Constructors union hall and saying, 'Yeah, I can run that enormous crane. It's yuge, I got this. I have the best crane operating ideas.' Which is fine until you consider there's people in buildings around that construction site and driving down the street who don't deserve to have an enormous I-Beam dropped on them.

Hillary is bad news. The enemy of your enemy isn't necessarily your friend. But I'll give her this: she actually knows what the job entails, and she'll only be as shitty as what we've had for the past 30 years or so. She's the center-right candidate representing the status quo. She'll make appalling Supreme Court nominations (though she won't nominate Paula Abdul or Judge Judy, and I wouldn't put those past Trump). She's got a lot of big government policy wonk in her makeup and I think that sucks. But compared to a guy who doesn't understand why you can't just launch nukes, who thinks its okay to disrespect veterans, women, Muslims, Mexicans and anyone not ignorant enough to vote for him? I want to vote for Gary Johnson, but I'm in a state that goes reliably red and Trump isn't just another Republican. We don't jail our political opposition in America, that's for South American banana republics a half century ago.

And no tears from me for the GOP. When Paul Ryan had the choice between staying in charge of the convention and telling Trump to go back to Hell from whence he came, he made a Faustian bargain with a TV reality star who had no business even being in the debates, let alone at the convention. The fact that Ted Cruz was the best you could come up with shows that maybe we don't even need your party anymore.

I'm not thrilled at the prospect of all the state houses and governorships and Congress all shifting blue this year the way they did in 2010 to the red side in reaction to Obamacare. But if you're going to let a bag of mummified foreskins and cotton candy who hates everything except his own reflection be your flag bearer, you get what you get.