Jim Lad, there were always be frothy little divisive issues that are waved around to get people worked up, such as the abortion and gay marriage issues you alluded to. They are just the sprinkling on the cake and they are intended to snag the votes of certain special interest groups and manipulate people's emotions to vote for this or that candidate. They absorb the same kind of minds, I think, which can't wait for the next issue of People Magazine to come out.

The cake itself, however, is mainstream conservative policy backed by the military-industrial complex and BOTH the Democrats and Republicans are tied into it all the way. It's about BIG matters of great importance, like invading other countries, pandering to the pharmaceutical industry, pandering to the military industries, not providing your public with a universal health care system such as exists in most other modern western nations, determining national trade policy and energy policy, those sorts of things.

It's about dollars and cents and guns and butter, not your petty disagreements with other people about what constitutes "good morality" or "God's will" and what doesn't.