In this column I pose questions and raise issues. I don't always agree with the conclusion, implied or stated. The purpose is to put a slightly different spin on each item and to promote discussion.

---

• In the office where I work, the diversity celebrated is skin-deep: anything deeper is punished. So in place of opinions many have antidepressants.
• Corporate liberals on the right and liberal-progressivists on the left fear Sarah Palin. That's why anonymous McCain staffers are slandering her. She represents the mild conservative mainstream. Her popularity threatens their power.
• In 2004 I voted for W. Yes, this is true. In 2008 I voted for McCain and in 2012 I hope to vote for Palin. But I said nothing bad about Obama (yet) and hope, as every American should, that his presidency is a good one.
• Today corporate welfare is everywhere in plain sight, but it never left us: protection for Drug Manufacturers is corporate welfare.
• The American economy doesn't need a bail out, but an industrial strength enema.
• Debate is for people who enjoy mental masturbation; argumentation, for people keen to discover what is authentic, genuine and true. Debater-masturbators may win fights, but most leech off of truth seekers for insights they later peddle as their own.
• The American auto industry is strong; it's Detroit and Michigan's business laws that are failing.
• When the housing bubble was inflating pundits and politicians said nothing about mitigating the impact of irrational prices on fixed income homeowners and rational buyers who stayed out of the market. Now that the bubble is trying to deflate, as it should, the pundits and politicians are racing to rescue everybody who profited from the bubble. In the process they penalize the frugal, prudent and patient people.
• The "liberal" label has been so maligned that many would rather be known as "progressive." But progressivism is a variant of socialism.
• Leftists intentionally confuse "immigration" and "illegal immigration." Conservatives support the legal kind.
• The "Bush Policies" responsible for the current financial crisis started in 1976 with the Carter Administration. Every administration and congress since then has built upon them. But it is politically expedient to blame it all on George W. Bush.
• Harvard Professor, Community Organizer, Senator, Celebrity, President; what's next for President-Elect Obama, entrepreneur?
• Leftists who accuse all Christians of being "holier than thou" do so not because all Christians have that attitude, but because Christians generally believe that nobody, including leftists, is "holier than thou."
• November 4th will go down in history as the night that network television rose up and with one voice proclaimed, "Tonight's shows are all cancelled because we can cheap out and bring you nothing but election coverage."
• Starting with the Reagan Administration I noticed that squawking heads on the left always accuse the Republican president of being a Nazi who will refuse to leave office but take over as dictator. Now, squawking heads on the right are accusing Obama of being a communist who will take over as dictator. Such hyperbole helps only the hate-mongers who wish to divide and conquer us.
• Some leftists are pre-accusing Republicans of assassinating President Obama. First to sow hatred, second because they hope he will be assassinated. They want him dead so they can blame Republicans for it and accuse all of us of being racist. How sad.
• Where Vice President Joe Biden is another Dick Cheney, Governor Sarah Palin was to be an understudy. In some respects that makes President Obama more of a "Bush 3" than Senator McCain would have been.
• If marriage licenses prohibited gay men from marrying a woman and prohibited lesbians from marrying a man, that would be discrimination. But they do not: when it comes to marriage, gays and lesbians have precisely the same rights as anybody else. There is no discrimination.
• Pundits point to the low approval ratings of President Bush as a factor in this election. They ignore that the same was true of Clinton during the 2000 election.
• Western Washington State is dominated by leftists, and the hippies turned yuppies turned self-entitled old progressivists are always easy to spot on the freeways: they're the ones driving gas guzzling luxury SUVs and Hummers in the left (speed) lane going under the speed limit.