That's why we need to float Social Security and Medicare. Or at least do what Cleveland does.

EDIT: I wonder how many of us are liberal/conservative.

Deep Thought: Usually programmers and tech savvy people sway more left, but we have quite a few right leaners also. Pretty balanced.

We are talking about the federal budget, Cleveland does the same thing the rest of the country does.

Why not cut out all three, and shave government spending by over 60%? Then everyone wins! I can't see any possible downsides to that.

Why not just get rid of the government? No taxes, no worries

Yeah! Somalia is great this time of year!

We have surprisingly many right-leaning members, I've found; I expected the majority to be much more leftist.

Depends on where you draw your center. Nowadays, in order to run for office as a Republican you need to essentially want to abolish almost everything and send government back to the 1890s. I don't think anyone here is that crazy.

I voted Ron Paul as a write-in for the 2008 election. So yes, some of us are

Also, I think we tend to be more on the progressive/libertarian spectrum rather than the traditional democrat/republican spectrum.

In other words, you threw your vote away like a month-old chicken-cheese sandwich.

I don't see very many "The type of people who want to be in office generally aren't the type of people who should be in office, so let's just elect the guy who will do the least harm" people around here either. Yes, I'm still optimistic that eventually the parties will realize that politicians are paid to be uninformed policy makers who don't qualify as experts in the vast majority of the fields that they regulate. This would hopefully lead them to nominate people who know absolutely nothing, rather than people with just enough ideological misinformation to be dangerous.

I disagree only because, like George Carlin, I am a fan of social entropy...

I'm generally a right-leaner myself. I voted against just because my dad doesn't have a job anymore. I'm all for anywhere else though!

Something to do with calculators?

What do you mean? That having calculators is a prerequisite for leaning left, that left-leaners are more likely to have calculators or be more educated, or something else?

That calculators somehow pushed us right? The Internet in general seems to be mostly either leftist or libertarian.

I think it could perhaps be that use of calculators is a general trait of students nation-wide, whereas the statement of opinions on the internet is generally separate from a true passion for technology. I could be totally off-base, though.

Across the country as a whole, the liberal/conservative split is usually pretty even, but Democrats are (with few exceptions) concentrated in urban areas where access to technology is also going to be greater. TI calculators have pretty good market penetration even in areas that do not have widespread access to computers and Internet technology.

Indeed, that's more or less what I was bumbling around trying to get at, and I definitely agree.

Against trimming the fat when it's your fat being trimmed, but for it when it only affects others livelihood, interesting political policy there. I sure hope you can't vote yet...