100,000

I missed the 1988 presidential election by one month, my 18th birthday falling in December. Had I voted, I would have voted for the first President Bush. You know, the smart one.

As it turned out, for better or for worse, he still won regardless of my support.

I was juvenile. I was flush with testosterone-fueled arrogance. I was a Republican.

Old Republicans vote to protect their stock portfolios from the grasping hands of the socialist hordes.

Young Republicans vote as a form of rebellion. Most being white, and even more being male, they resent the blame and burden placed on them by the aforementioned socialist masses. They resent being straddled with guilt and self-loathing that popular PC feminism and multi-cultural ism imposes on them. They vote with anger and they vote with defiance.

It is a team mentality. It is a game to be won.

That is who I once was. That is who many of you once were too.

It has become ever apparent to me, perhaps as I grow older, or perhaps as I take a more dispassionate world view, that juvenile rebellion and macho gamesmanship are not necessarily the best way to direct national policy.

I have lost my taste for hate. I no longer find that guns and bombs are suitable replacements for diplomacy. American arrogance and violence has turned the entire world against us. The lying blowhards on cable news pound their chests and declare that the terrorists hate us for our freedom. When in fact, they hate us because we take their resources, leaving them in abject poverty and we corrupt their political systems to seal our control.

When people are starving, and they have no way to fight, they will turn inward to their families and their religion. And once that happens, there will be those who are willing to die to fight the beast.

If you want to end the violence in the middle east, then stop visiting violence and poverty upon those places.

If you want to end unwanted immigration into the US, then stop draining wealth from the countries from which the people come.

I am disgusted by hypocrisy. I am disgusted by the narrow mindedness of the Right. Who would Jesus bomb? Who would Jesus deport back to poverty and hunger?

I am tired of the dirty tricks. I am sick to death of that hack-filled sensationalistic sold-out mouth-piece of the Cheney regime, Fox News. Those lying sacks of shit who call themselves journalists spew little more than hate and bigotry wrapped up as "news."

And then, there were the 100,000. In Texas, it was reported, where Hilary "Won" the primary vote, though only gaining a net of 4 delegates, and where Obama will likely take a significant lead after the caucus count, there were approximately 100,000 Republicans who switched their voter registration to Democrat in the mere weeks before the primary.

That, of course, is the same margin by which Hilary won. And here I thought my fellow Republicans were stupid... That sort of mass political maneuvering takes advanced abstract strategies and considerable organization... I have wonder what percentage of Clinton's coffers have been filled by Republican donors.

And really, with all of this a swirl in my head, I discover that Fox, on order from the RNC, have focused their sights and sharpened their cleavers in a 24-hour slash and burn attack on the one presidential candidate who truly frightens them.

Never before in American politics has any candidate taken so much heat for what their pastor has said. And in this case, the pastor's words have been chopped, changed, taken out of context and looped to achieve a hateful media design.

And in a political climate where genuine expression is considered a liability, when One candidate stood up to speak from his heart on the thorniest topic of our time, and courageously say all of the things that have needed to be said, the Republican hate machine went into overdrive, in an never-ending bombardment of slanderous lies and half truths.

The speech flipped the switch for Governor Richardson's super delegate endorsement last week, and it flipped a switch for me.

I reject the hypocritical war-making neo-con big-government blasphemy of the GOP. I renounce my party membership, and I pledge myself to their humiliating defeat.

Even more so, do I oppose the tired bag of dirty tricks employed by the Clintons. We should have left that disgusting trail of international humiliation behind us 8 years ago. We should have severed the open and obvious political cock sucking with China. We should have investigated the trail of nearly 80 murders that surrounded the Clintons. But here we are with Grendel's mother asking for our allegiance

I oppose Hilary Clinton, her lying, and her fear-mongering. How loathsome does a candidate have to be to scare people into voting for her?

On Easter, I am going to change parties, and for the first time in my life, with some admitted reservation, I'm going to become a Democrat. Sure, I could just be an independent, but then, I couldn't vote in the upcoming Oregon Primary, which, also for the first time, will actually have some consequence.

In the Oregon Primary I'm going to vote for Barrack Obama and help him defeat the Clinton's campaign of negativity and fear. I will also vote for him in the general election, and I will likely contribute money to his campaign along the way.

I reject fear and hate and war and slander and ignorance and greed. I've made my decision. I'm voting for Obama.