There is officially less than two weeks left before election day in the United States and I honestly have no idea who I am voting for yet. Its not simply the fact that I don't like either of the candidates, it has become more of an issue of deciding who will do the least amount of harm to this country. It seems that whenever I lean a certain way in my decision, one of them says something that tips the scale in the other direction. Whether it is Romney or Obama, neither one completely overshadows the other in my mind. There are some policies of Romney's that I think would be better for this country and on the flip side, there are some policies of Obama's that I think would be better for this country. If only we could take the good from both and combine them together to create an ideal president, perhaps we could finally start moving forward in this country instead of backwards. I am not even going to get into what I like and dislike about both because it would take me forever to completely hash it out. Both of them can be completely arrogant asses and I don't think either one is fully capable of telling the whole truth. To digress a little, I read an article about presidential candidates in general and how they are unwilling to tell the truth about the problems we have in this country. It essentially said that no candidate will ever completely tell the hard honest truth to the people because we can't handle it. There is this notion in the United States that we are still number one across the board when the reality is that we are lagging in many areas. We may have the biggest and the strongest military, but when you look at the real issues that plague our country, no one wants to talk about them. To elaborate, I offer to you a few examples. Who in this country knows what the childhood poverty rate is? It is 23% give or take which places us 2nd after Romania that has a 25% childhood poverty rate. Funny thing is, I haven't heard either presidential candidate talk about that. Yet another example is education. Did you know that we rank 85th in terms of boys going to grade school? While 91% of boys in the country make it to grade school, that places us 85th in the world. There are a few countries tied for first that actually have 100% going to grade school. Candidates may talk about improving education, but none will provide you with the cold hard facts because frankly, people want to believe that we are still the best. (Stats pulled from here).
Another issue that bothers me with both candidates and confounds my ability to make a decision as of yet is the fact that neither of them can give a direct answer to a question. If you listen to their answers during a debate, they give a round about answer that in part slams their opponent for their plans. Whats even funnier is that if they can't answer the question either because they don't have an answer or they know that we won't like the answer, they re-direct it towards another topic. The two candidate's answers to one question during the second debate really ticked me off. The question was about oil prices, lowering the price at the pump, and what the candidates planned on doing about it. The question was focused more about lowering gas prices and neither candidate really laid out a plan on how to lower them. Both talk about drilling more, opening up more land for drilling, blah, blah, blah. First off, more drilling will not directly lower gas prices at the pump. Maybe I am living in a bubble, but I was under the impression that the reason gas prices fluctuate like they do is because of speculators and the market, not because of a specific action by a president such as "more drilling". Just because we are edging towards "energy independence" as they like to call it does not mean that gas prices will go down at the pump. Is it likely to help? Possibly, but nothing no one can say for sure if speculators will reflect that in their apparent pricing of oil. Its all hogwash. Even more annoying about the debates is the fact that neither candidate can fully act like a decent human being and respect their competitor. Both feel the need at times to talk over their opponent or the moderator and paint themselves as the person with all the answers. Neither one, however, has fully laid out a plan on what will happen should they get elected. They talk in vague terms of plans they have, but they never give you the details. Needless to say, I can not watch a single debate for more than 10 minutes without having the desire to pick up my TV and smash it against the wall.
I guess I still have a lot of thinking to do in the next couple of weeks as to who I will actually vote for. Trust me, I will be out there voting, I just don't know for who yet. Its tough to pick someone that you want to run for office when almost every politician is an outright liar. That's right, they are all liars and to find an ounce of truth in what they say takes too much effort. I think what I will have to do is disregard the debates and simply do some outside research to see exactly where these to morons stand in respect to this country. If I take into account the candidates as people, I wouldn't vote at all. Rather, it all comes down to the issues this time around and which candidate I feel will deal with them better. I just wish that there were at least some honesty emanating from them, but alas, I can't have everything I want. What I would like to see is a plan on how they are going to get our country out of the fiscal hole we are currently in. Neither of them can honestly address the big issues that stand in our way of becoming financially stable again. To me, the biggest issues are the military budget, social security, and medicare. They may talk about those issues, but neither wants to do anything about it. At least Obama wants to scale back the military which Romney has no interest in doing. Enough is enough, I am getting frustrated now just writing about the two of them and before I slip into expletives and vitriol, I will end my post for today. Another cup of coffee and my son will get me out of my current doldrums.
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