Pants on Fire

I have been reminded why I don't like politics.  It's a game that involves coercion, deception, money, and lies.  I do not endorse such games.  This and seemingly all presidential races just turn into two men and their respective cohorts scheming up ways to bend and twist the truth and often to outright lie in order to make a point.  The worst part is that it works.  More people hear these lies and take them as fact than do the people who actually see the statements for the lies that they are.  This only works to perpetuate the strategy.  It's part of the political game and both sides play by those rules because if they don't then they don't stand a chance.  It's a cruel and vile game of which I want to have no part.  Unfortunately, I don't have too much of a choice.  In reality, there are 6 presidential candidates according to my trusty Wikipedia research but realistically, it only comes down to two men.  One has been running the country for the past 4 years and as far as I've heard he hasn't lived up to a lot of promises he made.  The other is making a lot of promises that many people don't seem to understand or think will work for lack of details.  Both are dropping lies about the other and the other's position so who the heck am I to believe anymore???

Obama already has 47% of the vote absolutely no matter what he does.  My impression is that Obama supporters are like many Mac users.  Once they get one, they suddenly think that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread and no matter how many times they have to go to the Apple store to get it fixed, they still insist that nothing on Earth competes with it.  Obama supporters are convinced that he can do no wrong and any word against him is a fallacy.  Romney has a more difficult role: the other 40-some percent of the country is convinced that Obama has mortally wounded this nation and another 4 years of him would surely be the end of the world as we know it.  No matter what either one of them says, they're still guaranteed that percentage and both of them are well aware of it.  The last little sliver of the voting population, like me, are the ones who are really going to decide the fate of this election.  Again, the candidates are well aware of this.  So what do they both do to reach us?  They prey on our apathy and ignorance by deceiving us.  They tell us about how the other candidate is a horrible monster who doesn't deserve to run this country.  They tell us about how the US will crumble if the other is elected.  They target our lack of familiarity with the facts and feed us lies to get us to believe what they want us to believe.

I'm sick of it.

I don't know who I'll vote for but being an undecided voter in the biggest swing state in the country, I know my voice is pretty significant and I will vote but good grief is this hard.

Is voting really meant to be this stressful?

Politics Round 3

I heard about but did not see a Romney billboard that was talking about how if you want a world with gay marriage, then vote for Obama.
The advertisement was flawed from the start because that's exactly what half the country wants.  Maybe I'm biased because I have friends and family that are homosexual and I think they are wonderful.  I think that yes, marriage is between a man and a woman but does it need to be exclusively so?  I honestly think not.  I really do think that it's fine for men to love men and women to love women.  I don't believe that it's my place to tell someone that he or she is not allowed to love someone else.  How can anyone control who someone else loves?  Just because I am not gay doesn't mean that no one else is allowed to be and I'm not sure why some people think that that's exactly what it means.

I think this is going to be a tough decision for the election.  It would be nice to be able to pick and choose what to take from each candidate because they both have good ideas of their own and I think that if we took the best of both worlds that this country would flourish.

On a side note, I found out today that middle schoolers don't play real football anymore because we as a country have deemed it unsafe.  They instead play flag football without helmets, without kicking/punting, and only 8 downs to reach the endzone.  The way the game is set up is not very similar to the sport it is trying to mimic.  No I don't like or appreciate football and would not choose to play it but I am saddened that we would step in and bastardize the sport.  If you don't want your kids playing a contact sport, sign them up for cross country, tennis, swimming, track, or even basketball or soccer which do have contact but not in the same way.  If your child wants to play a contact sport and that is his dream, then work with him to play it safely.  Don't go changing the entire sport.  These are the same people that call it bullying when a coach has players run laps and have outlawed it.  I don't know what the goal is here in adolescent athletics, but I'm not a fan of the changes.  I wish George Carlin was still alive with his biting repartee to come up with an edgy, witty stand-up routine about it all.

Politics Round 2

I don't know why I'm watching this because this is completely unlike me but here it is:

Notes on the Presidential Debate:

National Debt:
Romney: Cut spending on everything that he doesn't want to have to borrow money from China from.  Keep taxes low in order to have more people being put to work because they can afford the taxes.
Obama: Making excuses for the debt he came into.  Talked about the deficit cuts he made but he doubled the national debt after 4 years when he promised to instead cut it in half.

Then Christina called and talked to me for a while...

Education:
Romney: Local and state are most involved but Federal has the ability to get involved.  Let the parents and children decide what schools to go to.  He's not going to cut education funding.
Obama: Students need federal support.  Forgive student loans.

Romney claims he'll collaborate with the government and work together with everyone meeting with everyone on a regular basis.
Obama says he'll listen to take ideas from Repub or Dem as long as it benefits the middle class. 

Closing:
Obama: talking about how nice things have been the past 4 years and wants to continue doing the same thing for the good of the country.  Everyone gets a "fair shot" and "fair share" and "everyone's playing by the rules."  He says he's kept the promise to the middle class.
Romney: Concerned about the future of the country saying how big of an election it is.  Promises to get income up again.  Says he'll help create 12 million new jobs.  Many will lose health insurance, but will cut the cost of healthcare.  He will help medicare.  He will "not cut our commitment to our military."


In terms of the deficit, I think Obama will not fix it.  It's getting worse and it will continue to get worse.  As for that and everything else Romney said, he has a lot of big plans but if he's elected he's going to have to make them get through Congress and House if he wants them to be put in place.  If they don't agree with him, then all his plans are lost.  He can promise all he wants but his plans are going to need to be passed in order for any of his promises are going to be upheld.  Romney was much more prepared and on point than Obama but perhaps that was just a matter of Obama having an off-night.  Romney's plans seemed to make more sense but part of that could have been a product of his better presence on the podium.  Overall from this debate, I'd say Romney 1, Obama 0.

This was just one debate and I was distracted for some of it and missed a good portion of the beginning.  I certainly can't base a decision on that alone.  Well, there's still time to figure it out.

On a side note, the moderator was kind of entertaining because he couldn't hardly get a word in.

Politics

Politics.  I hate it.  I have never understood, appreciated, or been interested in politics at any level.  However, the election is coming up soon and I feel that it is my responsibility to exercise my right to vote.  I have never affiliated with a political party before which at this stage is beneficial because I'm not swayed one way or another based on blind loyalty to one party or another.

One issue that I see recurring on news and campaigns is taxation.  One side claims that I should pay more taxes while the other side is telling me that rich people should give me a break and pay some of my share for me.  Both candidates are saying that their system of taxation is fair so who am I supposed to believe?

Taxation was created in the US on a percentage system.  Everyone is required to pay back a certain percentage of whatever he or she makes.  The rich pay hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars more than I pay in taxes to the government while the poor pay much less than I do.  The percentage system was put in place to account for the rich making more money than the middle and lower classes.  They already pay tons more than we pay.  If I work my butt off my whole life and earn a fortune, I don't want to be responsible for paying more than my slice of the pie.  With that system, we're going to turn into the European Union where everyone calls on Germany to bail them out.  How can we expect to keep calling upon the upper class to bail everyone else out?  If we keep taking their money, sooner or later there won't be an upper class left and who will save us then?  Whose money will we take once we exhaust all of their savings?

What I think is fair is everyone stepping up and pitching in their portion, even if this means the majority of our country (myself included) pay a little bit more.  Where that money is spent is a whole other issue.

In other news, I'm going to California on Sunday!  It is for the American Academy of Underwater Sciences and I'm quite excited about it.  It will be interesting to see how other programs are run.  Plus it will be nice to go to Monterrey for my first time.