February 24, 2008 - What a busy Sunday. I made egg and cheese biscuits for breakfast, then Ellie and I went shopping at Sams Club and Publix. I did a ton of dishes, then Mike came over and we played a round of disc golf. I went over to my parents for dinner, and then it was back at home to close out the day. There has been a lot of political dust rising around the news media for the past few months, and luckily so far it hasn't created a big enough cloud in my social circles to start dominating my conversations. But I have been thinking a lot more about the presidential race this year than any previous election cycle. Maybe it's because I'm older, or maybe because I don't have other things like school on my mind, or maybe it is because the advances in information distribution through the internet has made it easier to learn about the candidates. Or maybe it's just because there was a writers strike for the past several months so nothing good was on TV, so the presidential race got a nice boost from the lack of contrasting material being written. But I am quite surprised at what I'm learning. Here we are, still almost 9 months before the election, and the people have decided that they are ok with there only being 2 candidates to choose from for the election. Sure, there are over 100 million people that meet the qualifications to be president, but we only want to pick between 2. It's like going into the ice cream parlor and seeing two flavors. Vanilla, and French vanilla. Ok, so the democrats haven't picked who their flavor is going to be, but does it really matter? When we get to the ballot in November we'll be picking between two flavors that are essentially the same. We're going to eat too much of it, and get sick of it, complain about how we would have rather had something else, and then (4 years from now, when this process repeats) go back and pick the same flavor next time. I feel like we need to start asking some really basic questions like "what do we want in a president?", "what is important to our country?", and "who will best lead us from where we are now to where we want to be in 4 years?". If you follow the news media around, you'll quickly see that the questions they think America wants to have answered are "who has the most money to spend on their campaign?", "who has the most skeletons in their closet?", and "who can say the nastiest thing about their competitor?". It's kind of like watching the reality TV show Survivor. Everyone competing is faking their way to the top. If you can convince other people to form an 'alliance' with you, then you stand a better chance of winning (i.e. political parties). You spend a lot of time convincing people that you relate to them, but at the end of the day you go back to your 5 star hotel eating escargot and drinking some bubbly. No one really lives in the woods any more eating nuts and berries. These people are all fake, and have very little in common with 'the working class' that they are pandering to for votes. I am completely disenchanted by the whole experience. And yet, it is like a train wreck. I can't help but watch and see how it unfolds.