I grew up in a heavy Republican area (Orange County, CA) and even though my parents were Democrats, I felt I was a Republican.  At 18 I registered Republican and spent the next 8ish years listening to the radio shows and laughing at the Clinton era gaffs.  I believed that giving the free market freedom to grow itself is the best policy; less government regulation meant a prospering economy.  I believed that "giving tax breaks to the rich" was fine because it meant a small government.  After the war in Iraq started and after President Bush's continued failed policies, I registered a democrat.  I was so excited about this election, I sincerely felt that I would change back my party affliation.  That the "Social Republican" would sway back to the "Pro-business Republican".  I like McCain and thought he could actually move the party away from pushing their religious ideals on the country.  Make "less government" mean "less government" and not "more government in our personal lives". 

Even with my views against the current regime in power of the Republican party, I still believed in less regulation of business and more tax breaks.  In the last few years, I've slowly changed my mind.  We have companies like Enron and Worldcom that were blinded by greed and didn't care about anyone or anything except making themselves more money.  They moved energy out of California to create shortages to then resell it at an astronomical price.  Oil companies are posting record quaterly profits, the largest in the history of the world, at the expense of everyone.  Unskilled people were selling exotic mortgages to anyone they could cold call and they didn't care if the person could afford the mortgage because they didn't fund the loan, after making their profit someone else bought the loan from them.  At least the Enron, Worldcom, Arthur Anderson egregious stealing lead to laws that required CEOs to swear their numbers reported to the streets are true ala Sarbanes Oxley (SOX).  All of this shows that we need more government oversight in businesses.  Too many people are being hurt by greedy business practices.  This is the first really free market in written history and maybe all of this is proving that the free market is easily corruptable.

No one wants to admit the catch 22 between Republicans and Democrats:  Do you give tax breaks to the people to give them money to spend so that businesses grow or do you give tax breaks to the businesses to give them more money to be able to hire people.  What came first, the employee or the employeer?  I don't have the answer and that's exactly why a normal, "hockey dad" like me should never run for the highest office in the United States (or the second highest).

This election has become a huge disappointment for me.  I've come to realize that I'm more of a Democrat than I thought but I'm not happy about who's running.  I'm afraid of McCain's hunger for war when I feel we need to hunker down and bring our economy back.  I'm afraid of being taxed more for my healthcare and then companies dropping healthcare completely; how will I get a good rate on a HMO or PPO without a group rate?  I'm afraid of taxing people that make $250,000+ a year because that just opens us up to lowering that threshold until it personally affects me.  I'm afraid of McCain's health and the possibility that Palin will become President with her lack of experience, failure to admit the problem of global warming in order to fix it, and her social views that she wants to push on everyone (ala President Bush).

It's time that we stop the bickering, stop the blame game, and stop making everything political.  Does global warming really have to be a party based issue?  How come Republicans don't want to admit that people are causing an alarming increase in the temperature of the Earth?  Is it because 98% of them want to protect the 2% that are raping them in the costs of oil?  How can we create a solution to the problem if we don't want to believe the real cause of the problem?  If we force the polluters to cut emissions and go green, we will be creating jobs for people on figuring out how to do it.

Party politics need to stop.  Let's start concentrating on the greater good!