Now What??!??!

Okay--so after my glowing endorsement, Fred Thompson drops out of the race. I'm hoping very much that he'll get a VP slot from our candidate, and praying that candidate is not McCain or Huckabee. I guess my greatest concern is that there are way too many folks out there who have the attention span of a gnat and are actually using the mainstream media to make decisions and opinions. Yikes!

I am petrified that most people spend more time watching American Idol, than learning about how government works. I heard on the radio the other day, the host's college-student child had a test that asked who was the "top lawmaker" in our country and the father/host answered that it must be the VP, who is the tie-breaker in house votes, or it could possibly be said that it is the Speaker of the House. So they look it up on the internet and the answer was the President!! Which is completely incorrect and inaccurate--but that was the "correct" answer for this test. The President doesn't make laws! He's not even in the legislative branch. He can't provide healthcare; he can't change your property taxes and he can't provide more jobs.

Please people, pay attention--there's a lot at stake here, but don't watch CNN and think you're getting the whole picture. Don't read the factoids at MSNBC and believe you're "informed".

With regard to Iraq--here's my take: We have our finger in a wasp nest. We're getting stung, and it's painful. But if we pull our finger out--what d'you think is going to happen?? I honestly don't know if it is possible for a Muslim country to have a democratic government. That worries me. But I also know that it took almost a decade for our federal government to be up and running with effectiveness and immediately after it was started, our country was in the worst economic depression ever in our history, for about seven years.

Governments don't just pop open for business. Yeah, Iraq is slow. But no one over there has ever experienced democratic government before. No one--in generations! The mindset of freedom is all new to them. And yeah, we've lost soldiers and that's painful. So is war on your own land. Often I think about what it must have been like to be in England and have enemy bombers flying over, at night, dropping terror and destruction and death. We've never had to experience that. And I hope our efforts in the middle east right now, will continue to keep our future free from such fearful possibilities.

Our choices in this election are critical, but I guess that has been true for any presidential election. We're not hiring a pastor here--we need a strong leader who doesn't make choices based on popular opinion--because remember, most of that populous wants to watch tv and be taken care of. Look around you at this store this week. Those people have votes that count just as much as yours. Do your part. Be informed--pay attention.