Yay! Another person who is heavily influenced by Michael Moore.

I agree with Tim!!!!! Wow did I say that...

The subject is the presidential election. In the past I have often struggled with justifying the time and effort I invest in educating myself on the candidates and then going to the polls but this election has got to be the hands down, all time winner. I'm so disgusted with the lack of qualified candidates that I really believe that the best thing that could happen would be for everyone in this country to refuse to go to the polls in Nov in order to send a message. There is no qualifier for my last statement. That is what I believe regardless of the fact that it will not happen, regardless of the system in place, and regardless of the impracticality. I have been around long enough to know that things normally have to get worse before they get better. That's just the way of it. A perfect example is where we are with the gas prices. I know we haven't seen the worst of it yet but due to the fact that it is so high on everyone list of things that need changing it is worth mentioning here. I could write a mini-series on that subject alone but it's just another way to get us off topic so I'll let it go at a mention. Getting back to the presidential election, I just want to say that I don't see how things could get any worse where our list of candidates is concerned. I truly am thoroughly disgusted and I am tired of justifying my republican vote with "the least of all evils". In the past, the one thing that has always got me off the sofa and out to the polls was the fact that so many people have sacrificed so much to insure my right to do so regardless of all the rest of this garbage. At the end of the day, if indeed I have cast my vote, once again you can rest assured that that fact alone is what got me there. Still I can't help but think what a waste it all is. What are we fighting for? A system in which people die to protect the very people we put into office to sell out this country to the highest bidder? Proud to be an American? I'm not so sure anymore. Sometimes it just seems like another of those "least of all evils" things. Not something to take pride in, just something to be grateful for. Growing up in school I was taught that being an American was something to take pride in. Boy, how things have changed! We were the best at so many things and lots of people still put God first in their lives. First we let the liberal communist bastards take God out of our schools and now out of our country. I'm surprised we still have "In God we trust" on our currency. Maybe we should pull our troops out of the middle east and send them to Washington for clean-up detail. At what point do you draw the line in the sand? Draw it too soon and you're a radical. Draw it too late and there's nothing left worth fighting for. The difference between complaining and constructive criticism is that the later offers an alternative or possible solution to the problem. The problem with attempting to offer constructive criticism in this arena is that it is such a complex issue that any mention of it is always taken as a complaint. The only way to solve such problems is to start at the beginning and tackle one problem at a time. We need to get back to basics in this country and turn things around before it is too late. The time for pointing fingers is over, it's time now for us to act. It's time to fix what is broken. Income taxes and social security were never meant to be permanent fixtures but because so many of our government officials rely on these systems to line their pockets they have not been abolished. Deadbeat politicians and lobbyists, big oil companies, insurance companies, our current health care system, and lawyers are all ruining this country for the good of their bank accounts. High fructose corn syrup is in everything you buy to eat. Our dinner is no longer grown on mom and pops' farm but in a laboratory, uneatable until processed. The few large slabs of land used to grow the corn are already all but useless because we have put our faith in science rather than in God. There's a good reason why the saying "all your eggs in one basket" uses food as the metaphor. We have already seen the price for this mistake literally in the price of practically everything going up due to the devastation the drought has had on the supply of corn this year and that was just one of many totally avoidable unnatural disasters. Another 60K people fired in the last 3 months due to economic pressures, droughts, famine, fires, and floods, not to mention the national deficit, all adding up to disaster for this country. With so many people unemployed and both floods and droughts at the same time, why can't we take some of those people and build canals to route the flood waters from some of the flood plains to some of the drought areas? Hello? Is anyone listening? No, of course not! That's right, that's what got us here in the first place! Reforming our public school system is the only chance we have to correct so many things that have gone so wrong for so long. Even then, I fear it is already too late to save many of the things which have made this country so great for so long. I fear we have compromised our principals for far too long to come out of this without a great deal of scare tissue. Our very way of life hangs in the balance. We must get prayer back into the classrooms and keep the presence of God in our our schools. We must teach our children that science will only take us so far and that the resources of our planet are being consumed at far too great a rate. None of the presidential candidates have offered any real solutions to these problems. Health care reform? Are you kidding me? How long will the American public keep buying into this garbage? The republicans continue to offer false hope and spend dollar after dollar with no results while the democrats continue to feed on peoples' basest fears. What has senator Clinton and her staff accomplished with health care since she started working on it 15 years ago? Obviously, I could go on but I should have made my point by now. America is still the greatest country there is but we need to act on these issues because ignoring them will only make it worse but at some point the frustration sets in and you start asking yourself "whats the use?". So my question to you is, why was I supposed to go to the polls again?

The truth hurts my friend..

Perhaps you should stay in the Republican Party, and reform it.

Then, maybe true conservatives will take over the party and spend the country's money more wisely and not waste it on foreign wars.

Then maybe 'being a conservative' (as in fiscal conservative) it might actually mean something someday.

well..lets see, it was Kruschev (sp?) and what he actually said was we will be at your funeral when you fall.......

thanks for the laugh...I needed one today...