The American people are to blame, not the politicians.

Enough already with blaming everyone except the one group that no one has the guts to blame: American people, those U.S. citizens eligible to vote.

I exercised my personal frustration two days ago with the lousy options I had for candidates here in New York by voting for myself. Didn't help. Didn't hurt. Made me feel better, if not actually good. The new embarrassingly inept paper voting system New York state adopted as a result of the 2000 presidential travesty makes it much easier to write in the name of someone not on the ballot. It's amazing that no one has seized on that to promote one's self, Alaska not withstanding as a sitting U.S. Senator ran as a write in candidate and will probably win after a month of manual counting.

When will we U.S. citizens realize that we cannot continue to play pinball by repeatedly shifting from one major party to the other and expecting improved policy? It's like a kid opening and closing the refrigerator door looking for something that he/she has already determined is not there.

These politicians are not from Mars. They are from among us. If we think that we can do better, then do better. One problem is that we don't know what we want. When something is proposed we form an opinion or not. It's like a parent trying to feed a one year old.

American people, grow the heck up!

Democracy is not a spectator sport. Get involved or stop complaining. And get informed.

I don't know whether it's illegal to bribe voters to vote for a candidate but it might be less expensive. I've long wondered if it's illegal to bribe members of the theoretical electoral college, you know, the people who actually elect a president every four years and then dissolve back into the anonymity they so richly deserve (from the play "1776").

Only 270 electors are needed to elect a president. A rich person could offer $1,000,000 to the first 270 electors and become president for a known fixed amount.

States probably have laws against it but I'd consider taking $100 to vote for a candidate for the House. Maybe $150 for the U.S. Senate.

Candidates raise huge sums of money to get elected and become obliged to their big money contributors. This is generally considered to be a bad system and implicitly corrupt. But where is that money spent?

Most of the campaign money is spent on ads, mostly television commercials. Those annoying nasty little 30 second spots, which play us for fools or worse.

And we have the nerve to blame the politicians? We're too dumb and lazy to behave like responsible citizens and we blame the politicians?

Shame on us. Shame on the American people. The American people are to blame for whatever ails the United States of America.