I might have been more impressed with your argument had you not limited your list of “spendthrifts” to 3 Democrats who don’t control the country’s treasury but instead mentioned some of the Republicans of the last 8 years who wasted billions and billions of dollars on a needless war, on no-bid contracts with corporate friends, and just disappearing millions of dollars on a pallet somewhere in the Iraqi desert. That’s why I know to never take conservatives seriously on fiscal issues – they only care when they aren’t in charge of wasting it.

If, by “conservative,” you mean “Republican” in its current definition, then no, i’m not a conservative.

If, on the other hand, you’re by chance alluding to the classic conservative principles (which the modern Republican party long ago abandoned) of limited government and limited spending, then yeah, count me among that number.

And you wanna know why, Scott? It’s an interesting question–over the years, I’ve been accused by my liberal friends of being cheap, stingy and non-progressive, but the truth is much simpler than that.

Bottom line: I’m a conservative because I fucking hate WASTE–because, see, I know that, for every dollar pumped into the federal government, at least 75 cents of said hard-earned dollar is wasted before it ever gets to its intended target.

And why is this, you might ask? Well, i’ll tell you why (actually, i’ll tell your readers why, because, smart boy that you are, Scott, i know you already know): because when it’s not your money–when you don’t have a dog in the fight–you don’t give a rat’s ass how efficiently the money’s spent, because you know that when Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, or [insert name of federal sinkhole here] goes down the tubes, it won’t bite you in the ass–the dumbass public won’t connect the dots, and you’ll still be re-elected and go on to fuck up another day.

It’s shit like this that drives me crazy, Scott–because unlike Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and Nancy Pelosi–among many others of both parties who should’ve been de-elected for their egregious sins, and most unjustly were not–I work damned hard for my money.

AND I HATE TO SEE IT WASTED.

That’s why i–among many tens (maybe even hundreds) of millions of other hard-working americans–you know, the ones you so love to condescendingly sneer at–am a conservative. You get that, Scott?

And by the way, fuck your kind offer of amnesty; while i may have demonstrated any number of drunken character flaws in my previous comments to this fine blog, fear of the big bad wolf was never chief among them–feel free to do your worst.

B– Underestimating enemies is dangerous — if they got that shithead Bush elected, some of them MUST be smart, and the ones who were stupid were the Democrats who let them come close enough to pull the Florida thing.

I can’t exactly admire the stupid ones who are closer to our side:
the PETA people who put on their website that fish sticks are made from tortured Sea Kittens
the liberals in Santa Monica who complained that a dishwasher with 11 children deserved a high wage from his employer (rather than telling him to train for a better job if he wanted lots of kids)

“The purpose of this paper was to examine the evidence
relevant to the hypothesis that low cognitive ability is asso-
ciated with high conservatism. This hypothesis can be derived
from the theory that sees political conservatism as motivated
cognition (Jost et al., 2003) and from Wilson’s (1973) dynamic
theory of conservatism. Our evidence supports this hypothesis.
Conservatism correlates negatively with measures of cognitive
ability and educational achievement at both individual- and
country levels of analysis. We cannot make any statements
about the causality, however.”

He finds a correlation between fear of change (a definition of why someone is conservative) and low cognitive ability. No causality is claimed (low cognition causes conservatism, or the reverse).

This paper is published by the National Institute of Education in Singapore.

BTW, the assumption that people get more conservative as they get older is also false. Data shows people make up their mind around 28-30 yr old, and then stay that way unless something massive happens (like, say, a really crazy President takes them into 2 unwinnable wars and trashes the constitution, or they’re black and a black guy runs for office, etc).

The Commander In Chief has all the power to, with one executive order, relegate DADT to the dustbin of history. THAT would be change we could believe in. Instead, there’s been very little reform of the banking industry, no movement on healthy care, no indication that he plans to do much of anything different from his predecessors. Arianna Huffington hit the nail on the head with regards to the president’s grade for his first 100 days in office. F. And until the LGBT Community starts to make it clear that our votes are not to be taken for granted, I suspect we can still slouch to the back of the bus, careful along the way there to avoid eye-contact with our righteous straight brethren, sit our gay asses down, and expect the same old shit. And shame on any gay person who quietly prays and hopes that things will be different if we only wait for a president who will champion our cause.

That is all.