Why I'm a Republican

I am a registered republican. There's two reasons for this. First, Karl Rove is hot in leather and second because when I vote I do it to protect my interests and promote the government that I want. I can do that best as a republican. The politicians that have positions most contrary to my interests tend to be republicans. The loudest voices opposing immigration, civil rights, and accountability of the government tend to be republicans. The candidates that tend to oppose education and science tend to be republicans. The candidates with the closest ties to corporations also seem to be republicans.
I have a choice, as a registered democrat I can spend the primary promoting a candidate I most want and then vote for the dem in the final elections. Hoperfully he wins. If he didn't hopefully republicans picked someone reasonable.
As a republican I can rely on the dem primary winner to be at least acceptable while working to stop the worst republican candidates before they make the general election. In the primary the voting pool is much smaller and participation is much lower. My vote has a much bigger impact here. If I can eliminate the scariest republicans then the general election becomes a choice between some democrat and a hopefully moderate republican. I can vote for the dem, unless he's really sleazy, and even if the dem loses the republican won't be that bad of a choice.
Oregon didn't have a republican presidential primary in the last election but I did get to vote against anti immigrant, anti conservation, anti labor candidates for Senate and House. If the president had been on the ballot it would have been my 3rd opportunity to vote against Bush for President, and after the general election it would have been a total of 4 times. How many dems can say that?

I read two things today on Fark that drove me up the wall. First, this judge is giving people the opportunity to avoid a jail sentence by going to church. I think this pretty clearly violates the establishment clause. People who go to church and engage in religious worship receive a benefit that is unavailable to non worshippers. That means that every decision this judge has made, where this offer was extended, can probably be overturned. This is going to cost the people of Kentucky a lot of money in court costs for all the appeals, and possibly in providing public defenders for the appeals. That doesn't even bring into account that there is no reason that this would have any effect on the defendant's drug use, there's definitely no evidence that that would be the case. I didn't look but I'll bet you dollars to donuts that this judge was elected. One more reason, Texas by the way is the biggest reason, not to elect judges.
The second thing I saw was the list of the Ten Most Harmful Books. Hopefully everyone has read at least a couple of them. I don't think anyone has honestly read Das Kapital, but whatever. I liked the tagline on Beyond Good and Evil, "The Nazis loved Nietzsche." The Nazis also loved the Bible, Heidegger, lagers, and the Bavarian country side. They also got the graffiti wrong. It goes "'God is dead' Nietzsche, 'Nietzsche's dead' God, 'Some men are born posthumously' Nietzsche". The other really funny entry is Dewey's Democracy and Education. It's condemned for advocating "thinking skills". Lord, what next? If people start thinking they'll want study science (Darwin got two honorable mentions) and treating women like people (The Feminine Mystique and Second Sex made the list.)