Exercising your rights

First off, I want to apologize because it's been so long, and the three of you who read this are probably wondering if I've abandoned the blog altogether. Well, no, but time has not been on my side lately to write in it. That, and some heavy personal things have been going on that have kept me from it. Well, I hope to write in it some more from now on.

I wanted to say a little something about all of the candidates in the voting race. To those of you who have focused on the issues instead of your opponents: thank you. You are unfortunately few.

To those of you who don't really have a platform except to tell us all the bad things your opponent did: shame on you. You're not telling us anything we didn't already know, or weren't able to find out. When intelligent people vote, we vote because we think that the candidate we choose will accurately represent our interests in public office. I know I didn't vote for one candidate for state senate in particular because I think he's a schmuck. Our house received two or three calls a week with a recorded message saying, "Hi. I'm calling with information about [name deleted, the other candidate]." Yeah, right. This candidate also spent most of his campaign money slandering his opponent, instead of really telling us what he was going to do. If you've got nothing better to get you into office than duping people into voting against the other guy, you're definitely not for me. I have yet to see a campaign where there wasn't at least one candidate who doesn't seem to have a position, except to bash the other guy. I think because we're non-affiliated, independent voters at our house (read free thinkers; wow!) we were inundated with political flyers. I guess in a way, it was a relief not to see as many bills, but it kind of sucks when most of your mail goes in the trash because it's all political flyers.

That's another thing: don't think a flashy flyer and campaign is going to win over intelligent voters. Some of us actually pay attention to the news, and listen to you when you make speeches. Still, some people think that getting their grandkid on the radio to talk about them will win via the cuteness factor, or that they can appear on a flyer with a nice suit and somebody will vote for them based on that. The sad thing is it really does work for average America. So figure out what you want in the tough issues. Watch the news. Listen to the radio and go to speeches. Think. Then vote.