Things I don't get

Here's one thing I don't get: A lot of people seem to think the Republicans are being taken over by crazy right-wing extremists, but also think the Democrats are a bunch of liars who make promises about how they're going to change things but then support the status quo. So, uh... why is no one seeing "vote for a third-party candidate" as the obvious answer? I mean, here we have a fair bit of evidence the two-party system just is not working for us, and yet... somehow it doesn't occur to people to try to change that.

Here's another thing I don't get: Why is it so hard for people to accept the word "moderate" means "actually holds positions in between the 'left' and 'right' positions", and that people who demonstrably don't do that aren't really moderates? No one seems to have a problem calling people on labeling themselves "liberal" and yet expressing non-liberal positions, or people labeling themselves "conservative" and yet expressing non-conservative positions. But if you call yourself a "moderate" yet express non-moderate positions, people will apparenty use this as "evidence" that "moderate" means something other than, well, moderate.

Here's another thing I don't get: The context of the following quote is that the Texas Board of Education—that bastion of eliminating accuracy in the name of upholding their narrow views, but I guess that's another topic—has decided that there is a bias in textbooks promoting Islam and condemning Christianity.

In interviews, Mr. Rives has likened his concerns about Islam to those he and other Americans once had about communists infiltrating American society. [source]

Why would anyone think this was a good position to publically take? The Americans who once had "concerns about communist infiltration" included people who did things such as use blacklists to keep people from being hired based purely on accusation, rather than evidence, and those people are fairly widely regarded as having been extremists and witch-hunters who damaged American society and played fast and loose with the rule of law. Why would anyone want to associate themselves with that?