Rick's World

Around election time, there are often many people, such as myself, that consider the candidates running and don't like either of them. This time it's a bigger, more important election than usual - the election of the next President of the United States. Some people support Barack Obama, and some people support John McCain. Me? I don't particularly care for either of them. I will not vote for Barack Obama due to his frequently stated intention to raise taxes. I am not comfortable voting for John McCain either. I just think he is way too old to be president. I've watched him in several debates and he does not look very healthy and clearly is not as alert at Obama. I imagine that being the President is an incredibly stressful job. This kind of stress can do bad things to your health. I don't think John McCain could handle the job physically.

So I don't like either Barak Obama or John McCain. This puts me in a bit of a quandry. If I tell this problem to others, they will likely tell you, "Well, you have to vote for one of the two. Just vote for whom you think is the lesser of the two evils". This implies that there are only two people running for president. As such, I have to vote for one of them.

This is not true.

There are in fact thirteen different people/political parties running for president this year, at least based on the information in the sample ballot that I received. What? You mean you thought there were only two political parties in the United States - the Demo crats and the Republicans? Surprise! Not that I'm particularly suprised that most people think there are only two parties in this country. If the American media is any indication, this is a fact. How many parties were represented in any televised presidental debates? Two. How many parties with candidates running for president are ever mentioned on the nightly news or in the daily newspaper? Two. So that means there must be only two parties right? WRONG. The American media is incredibly biased, and I believe intentionally so, towards these two parties. If the American media were truly impartial, as they claim to be, the presidential debates would be considerably more complicated and a lot more interesting. Can you imagine thirteen different presidential candidates up on stage at the same time? That would certainly make for some interesting debates. Can you imagine all thirteen of these candidates getting equal time in the news? That would certainly lead to some interesting discussion of the issues at hand, rather than the typical mudslinging that the two main parties lob at each other.

In the interests of educating my fellow Americans to the reality of the election, rather than the narrow image portrayed by our media, I thought I'd list all the presidental candidates and provide links to their web sites for your education.

Um... I'm going to have to pause here a minute and collect my bearings. I just spend the last half hour compiling the above list of Presidental candidates, and I have to say that I am disturbed. There are no less then three Socialist parties running (if you don't count the Socialist tendencies of some of the Republican and Democratic policies). And there's even a party called the 'Boston Tea Party'. Um, what? I'm beginning to understand why I've never heard of some of these parties before. These guys are complete nutjobs! One party sounds like a joke, and several parties want to turn this country into a Socialist country (i.e. RUSSIA). While, I'm sure some of these parties are reasonable people with a valid plan for the country, some are just crazy.

Ok, I just did the first real research I've ever done into who I'm going to vote for President and I have to say that I am at a loss for words. It's clear I have a LOT of research to do about these people. Some are clearly nutjobs and can be easily removed from my personal list of candidates, but some are still possible. I'm just stunned by how many incredibly bad people have managed to get themselves onto the ballot. And to make matters worse, the ballot doesn't even list the name of their political parties! All it has is three letter abbreviations for their party name. Until a few moments ago, I had no idea that the "SWP" party on my ballot was the Socialist Workers Party. I guarantee some of these wackos will get votes because people will just vote for whomever because they don't like McCain or Obama. This is truly disturbing.

This blog really went 'off the rails' from where it started. That list of candidates really bothers me. Is this the best we can come up with? Either the same old, same old in the Republican and Democrat parties, or a bunch of nutjobs? I worry about the future of this country.