Are you tired of hearing the same old, tired promises from candidates, along with proposals you know just will NOT work, no matter what they say? Tired of politicians pandering to special interest groups, telling us what they think we want to hear? Tired of choosing between the lesser of two weasels come November. Me too. I’m not a candidate, but if I were, I think I’d throw caution to the wind and try honesty for a change. Instead of making a bunch of empty promises I couldn’t keep if I wanted to, I’d tell people the truth, as painful as that might be. This is not a short post, in fact, printed out, it runs to ten pages. I hope you’ll agree it’s worth the time it takes to read it.
My address would go something like this…
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My fellow Americans:
We face some huge challenges in America. We are the greatest nation on the face of the Earth, but that does not mean we are without problems, nor are we always right in the way that we deal with them. We’ve made some mistakes – not because (as some say) that America is “evil” or “misguided,” but because everybody makes mistakes now and then. One of the great things about America, however, is that we have a history of admitting where we’ve gone wrong, and then fixing it. Your next President needs to deal with our problems in an intelligent, forthright manner. In that light, here’s what I plan to do if you elect me as your next President… [Read more…] about What I WISH they’d tell us.
Well, the VP debate is over. Whew! I can breathe again. From where I sit, Palin came, she saw, and she conquered. Flat out, she rocked. Biden was able to avoid putting his foot in his mouth verbally, but he did set a record for smirking, and another for forced smiles. Advantage: Palin. 
…ladies and gentlemen, I give you the moderator of Thursday night’s Vice Presidential debates: Gwen Ifill. 
Giving young actors a budget of a couple of million dollars and telling them to go make a movie is a lot like giving a four-year-old a pair of scissors and telling them to practice those naiscent running skills…the results are not gonna be pretty. Allowing some actors a budget to make the political equivalent of potty jokes (in one case, quite litterally) is just completely irresponsible.
I’ve always loved to read. It’s relaxing. I read a lot – mostly tech books, but I try to read some recreationally, both to relax and to expand my horizons. I was watching Glenn Beck on Headline News a couple of weeks ago, and he had author Andrew Klavan on, pitching his latest, Empire of Lies. Sounded interesting, so I filed it away to a slot on my list of “books I want to read.” This past week, I thought about the book, but had a hard time remembering the name or the author. It finally dawned on me that I could use Amazon’s “if you like this book you might also like” feature to find it. Sure enough, I was able to remember the general look of the cover. I’m not always into instant gratification, but for some reason, I really wanted to read this, and I had some time on my hands, so…