...and want to "drown it in a bathtub", this is what you get. It's like choosing to board your dog with the guy running the puppy mill, or choosing a pyromaniac to manage your apartment building. Stupid.

that has been represented by Robert Walker and Joe Pitts (and now Jim Gerlach, due to re-districting). Walker was stupid beyond belief, Pitts (still in office but a different district) is worse, and Gerlach is a cypher.

I think stupidity is a serious problem in congress, but of course it's intimately connected with "Christian" fundamentalism and generalized venality.

The venality of the people elected reflect the voters. Some think there is no payoff to them for this state of affairs. I disagree and Democrats need to learn this hard fact.

but finally left when I realized there was nobody in office or in the electorate who even understood the concept of "conflict of interest." Not that they didn't think it applied to them, it's that they didn't even know what it is. They actually did not understand that there is supposed to be some limit on how officials behave because of some ethics of the general good.

Neither the elected officials nor the electorate understand this. I've seen it with my own eyes.

The payoff is huge for politicians who understand this.

should know that even if you don't win now, you have still had the chance to network with decent people so your time and effort were well spent:

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.

If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand Utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

~ Howard Zinn

I was from the south, and despite a long-standing state of despair, there were some victories this year. Take good care of your heart and spirt, redstatebluegirl.