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Good rant.

Sent my own in January (Indian guy, here on an L1 visa). Got a picture of the President and Laura and a fund raising letter back for my efforts.

I used to be a Democrat. I turned 18 in 1974 and nobody registered Republican that year. My worst electoral mistake was voting for Carter in 1976. I voted for Reagan in '80 but didn't change my registration until '84 as I kept thinking that the Democrats would come to their senses. Abortion and the nuclear freeze movement disabused me from that.

I'm fed up with Bush's seeming indifference to those of us who have been "impacted" and "displaced". It looks like the Herbert Hoover wing has taken over the GOP but I'm not planning on bolting the party for several reasons.

First, where to go? The Democrats are the party of the super rich and the dependent poor. The is really no place for working people there. The Democrats use the unions but don't really do anything for the membership. Kerry would do no better for working people than Bush.

Second, historically outsourcing has not been beneficial. The best example of this is the Roman Empire, where grain production was outsourced to the African provinces. When production or transportation was disrupted by rebellion or piracy Romans starved. Right now we are outsourcing our technical in industrial bases to India and China. Hopefully someone will recognize what a risk this is to our national security before we reach the point where we can't defend ourselves.

"Free Trade" is a different issue. international commerce is usually beneficial as long as a reasonable balance of imports and exports, on a cash equivalent basis, can be maintained. Which is to say as long as access between markets is mutual and trade is truly free. The problem today is that a lot of what is described as "free trade" isn't. They have access to our markets but we don't have equivalent access to theirs.

Third, Bush is only here for four more years (if we're lucky). Even though the party of Reagan is dead here in California and the "moderate Republicans" (RINOs) have taken over, conservatives remain in power in the red zone. This year's Republican convention could be interesting.

If the election where held today, I myself would just stay home. I could never vote for Kerry but Bush has done too much that is against my interest to permit me to cast a vote for him in good conscience. I keep hoping to wake up one day and hear that he has said "Illegal immigration is not in the best interest of American workers and it gives Mexico an excuse to never make anything any better in their country too, let's stop it now." Or maybe, "Countries that don't open their markets and their economies to our products or our capital have no right to expect that we be open to them." But I doubt it.

Best wishes and good luck in the job search. It's crowded out there. Keep swinging.

Thanks bud. I'd privately thanked a number of others that I hadn't addressed publicly for coming into this slugfest and proffering a good word to let me know there are some sane people in our party and some level of decency.

It doesn't seem to occur to my detractors that I didn't come here looking for a way to get a government handout, to beg for scraps, or to request special treatment. I came here to lodge a complaint about what i percieve clearly with other americans something that is an injustice. And the Polls show that others are feeling the same way in droves. When upwards of 70% of people in the US think something is wrong, that isn't a mandate to do it but to rather not do it or undo it.

As I noted earlier, you won't see companies hiring pigmies in africa or Aboriginals at 52 cents a day to do IT security because the outcry would be so huge from the people that 70% figure would become unanimous. So, as I said, The best campaign commercial for the Democrats this fall is Sally Struthers pitching IT jobs for pigmies - for the price of a cup of coffee a day. If you don't think that would have resounding impact...