For the next two months, you are picking a side, whether you like it or not

“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
Rush (the band, not the asshole)

265713_4012This is where the rubber meets the road, people. Like it or not, this country has a two-party system. You may not like Obama or Romney, but come November, one of these two is going be elected president.

If you are going to sit the election out because you just don’t care, you are of no use to anyone. If you are going to sit the election out as some sort of protest against the two-party system, no one can tell the difference between you and the person who can’t be bothered to vote. Protest is only effective if someone other than you knows you are protesting. If you live in a predominately red state but support the Democrat, or if you live in a blue state and support the Republican, shut up and vote anyway.

If you feel like you don’t know enough about the candidates to make an informed decision,  and yet you are reading this sentence, get someone to teach you how to use Google and educate yourself.

If you seriously think a third party is the answer, I will make an exception for you. Please crawl back into whatever cave you live in and wait until November 7. Then, come back out, learn to type without using caps lock, and try the third party again when you might actually be able to make a difference. Also, where the hell were you in, say, December 2008 or some other time when there wasn’t an election staring us in the face? (Oh yeah, you were on message boards telling the sheeple to WAKE UP and OPEN YOUR EYES. How’s that rhetorical technique working for you?)

From now until November 6, you are on one side or the other. Deal with it. If you are going to criticize one candidate, you had better have some plausible explanation for why the other guy would be better. If you are unhappy with something Obama has done, explain what Mitt Romney will do better. If you can come up with a broad, coherent vision of how a Romney presidency would benefit most Americans, demand that the RNC hire you.

If you just want to rip on one candidate or the other, go away, because you’re not helping anything but your own sense of self-importance.

Photo credit: ‘Confusion’ by mvanrens on stock.xchng.

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No, he means the *other* founding documents… (UPDATED)

Paul Ryan is unhappy with the Democratic Party. In other news, water is wet and I like donuts.

Specifically, Paul Ryan is unhappy that the Democratic party’s platform doesn’t mention the capital-G man even once. (Because if Democrats should be taking pointers on their platform from anyone, it should be the other party’s Vice Presidential nominee.)

The Democratic Party’s platform makes no reference to God, drawing criticism from Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan.

Ryan tells Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” the change is not in keeping with the country’s founding documents and principles and suggests the Obama administration is behind the decision. The Republican platform mentions God 12 times.

The 2008 Democratic Party platform made a single reference to God, referring to the “God-given potential” of working people.

“Founding documents and principles,” he says. Does he mean the Declaration of Independence? I’ll throw him a bone there, since it does mention “God” one time.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Well, it says “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.” Is that different from Paul Ryan’s God? Probably. Thomas Jefferson is credited with writing the Declaration of Independence, and he generally does not seem like a man who wasted words. Historians can argue over the precise meaning of “Nature’s God,” but the important thing to note is that, between this and the U.S. Constitution, i.e. the two “founding documents” that matter, this is the only time anyone uses the word “God.” He uses the word “Creator” elsewhere in the Declaration of Independence, but that’s even more ambiguous than “Nature’s God.” Continue reading

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