Where have I been?

Due to my wife's illness and the vacation that I have been on I have been busy. I have not looked at any political articles. I have only heard a few things here or there. If Obama was willing to concede to be Edwards VP they would probably win the ticket. It would need to be done soon though. This is my feeling. I don't think Clinton would be willing to be a VP. On the Republican side I can see both Huckabee and Romney losing support. They have been attacked so much and people really don't know who they are.

My wife made it to Christmas. She was not supposed to make it to Halloween. This made the holiday very special for my family. She wasn't able to do shopping, so for the first time ever I did the shopping for my kids. That was not a fun experience. I really don't know what to do when it comes to that. I think I need to learn. My kids will need to get used to getting more needs than wants for gifts. My daughter doesn't like to have others shop for her, so she will probably get gift cards.

I'm going to the Falcons vs Seahawks game. Seahawks have always been my favorite team, but I've never seen them play. Even though they will probably play a bunch of backups I am excited for the opportunity to see my favorite team play.

Fuel Standards

Congress is doing a huge bill to deal with energy standards. This is a strange bill. It will require states like Georgia to use wind and solar as an energy source. Solar power is expensive. Much more than coal or gas. Wind won't work. Wind has to be over 10 mph to start a windmill. These types of winds are not common in the South. So congress is passing a bill that will not help many people. It also has fuel mileage standards that I always thought were good to force Detroit to improve engines not horsepower. I was reading about football and got a very interesting explanation on this energy bill from an outside source. See for yourself. The part on fuel economy is halfway down the article.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/071204

A while back I noted that the taxation by specific parties is claimed but not practiced. The Democrats state they tax the rich and not the middle class. Republicans say they keep taxes low on everyone. I have said that both parties tax the middle class. Neither tax the rich or poor. Well here is a link to an article that studied where the representatives come from. Based on the wealth of their constituents.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312628,00.html?sPage=fnc.politics/house

I also found it ironic that Romney had to give a religious speech to try to keep his campaign for President going. Is the Republican party that biased? I did see someone on a message board complain that since he is atheist he is not American because freedom of faith is American. I would argue that atheism is a religion and that the freedom is theirs too. The issue is that they don't want anything to do with religion and so they actually view anything with faith as bad. These 10% of Americans actually are what fight separation of church and state. Our founding fathers were very religious. They realized that people would be of different faiths and wanted to make sure a church wasn't running the country. That was a big issue in Europe at the time. They also didn't want the country running a church. So why did Romney have to give a speech and say he will follow the US Constitution.

Iraq

While I know that many Americans put Iraq as the most important aspect of picking the next President I do not understand this. First of all it will take quite some time to get the equipment out of Iraq. Then they will probably still be in Afghanistan. This is something that the media makes out to be horrific. To this point about the same amount of Americans died in 9/11 as have so far in this war. To compare it to Vietnam is not a good comparison. Some 40,000 to 50,000 Americans died over there. While I was not in complete favor of going to Iraq I was not against it and to this day still remain neutral on the subject. I do believe that this is our war. Another big difference with Vietnam is that it wasn't our war. We were there to help the French and when they pulled out we should have too. We went into Iraq.

Why did we enter Iraq? This is where Americans love of polls comes in. Some 80% of the people polled wanted us to go to Iraq. Hmm, where are these people now. We forced the war because it was a very popular approach at the time. Now we see our mistake. I do know there were no WMD's found, but at the same time if they didn't have any why were they not allowing the inspectors to go in and look freely. They made it look like they had them to the Germans, Americans, British, and even Spaniards.

As Americans we need to be cautious how we listen to the media. They put their own spin on everything. Some make it more liberal while others are extra conservative. To base our opinions on what we hear on the news and read from media outlets can cause some major problems. They allow a large majority to see things one way and then when polled for public opinion people just spout out what they hear and what they think everyone else feels. It is kinda like political endorsements. Why should I care what some Iowan state senator thinks about who should be the next President. The big thing is the Politicians feel that people only want to back a winner. So these endorsements are big news. Not to me. I want to think for myself.