Political Steam

I fell the need to throw up on the few who read my random musings. As a citizen of this country which is unique in all of history, I have never been so completely dumbfounded at my fellow countrymen/women as I am right at this moment in time. I thought the last few election cycles were circuses, but this one blows even Barnum & Baily's out of the water. There is a real chance that our next president will be a man who has never run a small business, let alone an entire state. Most of his time in the senate has been spent running for president. We have been totally duped! The sound-bite media has made this guy into an infallible messiah-like figure and we have bought it! I have listened to countless people begin stammering when asked what qualifies this man to be president or what he has accomplished. Aside from one obscure piece of legislation I've heard a few people cite, there is nothing these people can cite except for "he is not Bush", or "he is for "change." " One man told Sean Hannity that Mr. Obama will do more to solve the oil crisis and save the environment than Mr. Mc Cain will with his legislation that will raise the CAFE standards to somewhere near 45mpg. Is he kidding? Since when has the government passed legislation and then like magic the problem is solved. Gun control, anyone? How about social security? The War on Drugs? Do we really believe that the auto industry is going to be able to meet that standard just because the government said they had to? Congress had better repeal the laws of physics. Let me add that Mc Cain's plans don't excite me either. And for those who believe more drilling domestically is not the answer because it will take too long, where is your alternative energy source that we can begin using tomorrow? Or even ten years from now?

What bothers me most about the democratic candidate is not just that we don't know much about him and his rather thin resume, but that his answers to every problem involve government intervention and more spending. Laws and money. The republican candidate is guilty of this too. This troubles me on two levels. First, the constitution of the United States specifically limits the powers of the federal government. Nowhere do I see the the authorization to limit so-called "greenhouse gases" (yes, Mr. McCain, I'm talking to you too), take over one tenth of our nation's economy (health care), or provide for pre-school and college education for all, among other things. We began going down this road a long time ago, I know, but I hate to see us continue to trade our freedoms in for perceived security, which brings me to my second point. To call this nation a free country now is almost a stretch, if either of these candidates actually accomplish what they promise to do, we will be more like a socialist nation in Europe than the USA my grandparents grew up in. Or even the one my parents grew up in. Our populace had better begin thinking beyond ten second sound-bites and try to determine just what "change" means.

I'm afraid that our nation will continue to go down the road toward socialism. Most of us do not know much about our history beyond the American Indians and slavery. We are not aware of what the world was like before we declared our independence. We do not understand our founding documents that guarantee our freedoms on the premise that they come from God, not government. We have bought the line that our constitution is a "living" document and it's interpretation is open to the whims of the supreme court. In fact, our supreme court is consulting foreign law in deciding cases. In short, for all this education we have in our society, and for as high a value we place on a degree, we sure are ignorant about our own nation's history and they way our government was set up. Couple this with our inability to think beyond a ten second sound-bite and it is no wonder to me that our choices for president are what they are.