Is this poll's results really all that surprising?

Poll: Party platforms a mystery to many by Jennifer Agiesta for the Associated Press

Perhaps the confusion that so many Americans have about which political party stands for which cause is the fact that in action, as opposed to word, members of both parties act the same in office.  I am not referring to the times when members of government from opposing sides have found common ground, like the Safe Haven law.  I mean the tendency of politicians to say what the constituents want to hear, and then get into office and do whatever is best for themselves.

"Platforms" are more what the parties wish the public to believe-- platforms are just words.  This has been true of American politics for quite some time.  If one is to judge the politicians off what they actually do, the lines between the parties are so blurred as to be indistinguishable.

Blagojevich surprises me

Rod Blagojevich will be spending 14 years in prison.  I have to confess to some surprise-- I wasn't expecting them to be so hard on him.  For that matter, I was surprised when charges were brought against him.  It had seemed to me, at least, like what he was accused of were things politicians did all the time, and never got into trouble.  As I have said before, I am very cynical about politicians.

Maybe in Blagojevich's case, they had enough evidence this time around.  Or maybe everyone was just so tired of corruption that they had had enough.

It is not as though politicians have never gotten prosecuted before... it just happens so infrequently, like CEOs getting prosecuted.  Many of them haven't done anything illegal, but some of them have and get away with it routinely.  Didn't the banks only get yelled at for giving the bail out money (money that was supposed to help bail out their customers) to their CEOs as bonuses?

So, as I said, I'm a bit surprised.  I feel a bit bad that the state taxpayers will be supporting his existence, but something tells me they are not going to mind paying for him staying in jail.  I think that something is that if it were in my state, I wouldn't mind.