Thoughts on Politics from a year ago:

Politics has pretty much consumed, in one form or another, most of my post-military life.

I became actively involved in it around '88, when I moved up here from my last duty station at Oakland Army Base (as opposed to going back to Seattle) and volunteered for Bob Williams when he ran for Congress, I volunteered for Linda Smith's campaigns and who, around then, can possibly forget the Red Wave of 1994?

I worked my way up in the GOP from volunteer, to PCO, to LD17 Chair, to Senior Legislative Assistant in the state House to Executive Director of the Washington State GOP in 2000. I became what most political, non-elected Republicans become: a consultant. I refused to work for anyone that I did not believe at the time was a conservative. Ultimately, I learned, to my dismay, how wrong I was on a few occasions and how we've all suffered for it as a result. For that, I apologize,

While I have a degree in Government/PoliSci, that was mostly theory.

Nothing could really prepare anyone for the savagery and brutality of the real political world. I had to experience it firsthand to believe it, because I simply could not fathom it until I saw it with my own eyes.

The main byproduct of that was cynicism. I discovered early on during my stretch in the Tukwila Zoo (aka party HQ) that no one was really there out of altruism and support of the tenets of the Republican Party.

I was caught in the state-level version of the local fist fight, except in this case it was between the Executive Board and the Chair, who happened to be Sen. Don Benton.

The things I experienced changed me forever politically, as I discovered that most involved at the state level were not there to further Republicanism at any level, state or national.

No... They were there for what they could get out of it.

What appointment. What job. The social ladder. We've all heard of the so-called limousine liberal, but what's only occasionally mentioned is what I refer to as the "corporate Republican."

For far too many, the title "Republican" is one of mere convenience. We see it here most recently for the past several years as PCO's have been attacked publicly and legally because they exhibit the temerity to stand in the way of the "get along to go along" attitude of the fake Republicans infesting us. Allegedly Republican mercenaries fund raising for fringe-left candidates come immediately to mind. Fake Republicans like our erstwhile soon-to-be former congresswoman throws a shadow over it as well.

I warned you. But you did not listen. And I got hammered many times for speaking the truth.

Others claimed to be one thing but wound up flipping once they had been ensconced, or flattered, or bought, or blackmailed into becoming something they pledged never to become.

In short, they sold us out for personal gain.

Politicians generally appear to be quite easy to buy. Locally, we are going to get hammered with permanent tolls, permanent tax and fee increases and voracious government that they were, ideally, supposed to protect us from.

But why do that when you can get six-figure government jobs for selling out/ignoring your constituents? Or get hired by democrat political firms as a way to bypass bribery laws?

I get why they do it: mainly, because far too many voters either don't know or care that corruption is the order of the day on both aisles.

And at the national level, we now have a $1.7 trillion dollar spending bill that has been loaded up like a Christmas tree with earmarks of our tax dollars to go to special projects that rarely benefit anyone but the chosen few. Look up the ubiquitous "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska for a prime example. Locally, it's the Portland light rail project masquerading as a bridge replacement project that the PEOPLE don't want, don't need and can't afford.

This democrat rip-off just hit the ground today. It is 4000 pages long. NO ONE has read it. NO hearings held.

Instead of doing the right thing and filibustering this garbage until January, Mitch McConnell and his band of fiscal liberals are going to bend us over and ram it in where the sun don't shine.

Well, here's the reality: as a country, as a government, the current unpaid debt is $94,268 for each and every one of us; 333,340,667 people. A debt that has required $475 BILLION (with a "B") in interest payments this year alone. A national debt that's gone up $20 million or so in the time it took me to write this.

$31,445,965,XXX,XXX = national debt at 7:08 PM Pacific time today.

We don't have $1.7 trillion. We will NEVER have it. Passage of all these debt-adding bills simply causes inflation to explode as the US Government makes money magically appear on computer screens without anything to back it except "good faith."

But instead of fiscal discipline and blocking this insanity in the Senate, they're going along with it as much as any of the democrats who wrote this garbage.

Particularly in the realm of the fiscal, how is it that the GOP is any different from the leftists we claim to despise?

Trillions have been added to the deficit this year as these same fake fiscal hawks bend us over every hour on the hour, playing ball with the neocommunists instead of doing what we sent them there to do.

Which is standing up for us.

All of which begs the issue: Why bother? What's the point?

For me, it's becoming increasingly difficult to see one. Good luck if you can.