Who??

I hear this stuff a lot:

“Eh, I don’t get into politics”,

or “I don’t really care what they do cuz it doesn’t affect me”,

or “I don’t have time to think about it - I have to work double shifts to pay off my bills”,

or my favorite line yet, “It all just upsets me so I don’t think about it anymore.”

And then these same people turn around to complain about everything that’s going wrong with this country or in their paychecks. Guess what? The reality is that we are all connected regardless of whether or not you are “into” politics. It directly affects your everyday life.

For those of you who care enough to ask me who I’ll be voting for and then follows with, “Who’s that?”… here you go (No, I didn’t make this video.):

I encourage all of you to get to know a little bit about your elected officials and all the Presidential candidates. Most of them don’t seem to know who you are or what you need and yet you allow them to send your kid off to war, spend your money faster than your teenage daughter and pick away at your livelihood one law at a time.

I’m just saying, it doesn’t hurt to learn something new and take a little stand for yourself every once in a while by casting an informed ballot. Don’t outsource your patriotic duty & privileges, okay? Okay.

Thanks!

+ann

P.S. To help make your research a little easier… http://www.vote-smart.org/election_president.php

P.P.S.

This is from my MySpace blog where I put this same post. My friend further explains why our system of checks and balances is so important (anyone remember Government class in high school?). After all, our current state of affairs did not happen overnight or by accident…
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I think its bigger than any one candidate. Our government is designed to work when it is transparent (everyone can check out what’s going on.) It doesn’t work when the ‘open’ government is just a stage to put on the decisions that are made in private.

Unfortunately, a one party government becomes just that. When you choose your ‘presidential candidate, I think it’s much more important to consider who will control the other ‘houses’ before you vote… In order to keep some level of balance in our government, you can’t have the same political party holding power in both houses of Congress and also the presidency. That is what broke in 2002. There is nothing inherently wrong or evil about ‘republican’ or ‘democrat’, but when you have a group of <10>

Posted by Mike_Y on Monday, January 07, 2008 at 11:54 PM
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And here is my reply:
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I agree. Some tend to think that once they stick someone they like up top then they can forget about the hundreds of other elected officials. Checks and balances have been eroding for many years now and it’s only become really painfully clear to the general public with this latest administration (I’m including all three branches of our government here). For generations, those groups of “<10>

I love the line from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the movie version) that says, “The President of the Galaxy doesn’t have any real power. His job is to draw attention away from the ones in charge.”

Of course, our President does have actual power and can even get away with abusing it it seems. Which brings it all back to your original point. I just hope that people will take advantage of this upcoming Presidential election to at least start informing themselves of what is going on in our government. Then who knows, some of them might dig a little deeper and get to know all those other pesky politicians. And then maybe some of them will start to wonder why our supposed fair and unbiased media would mysteriously exclude certain relevant news stories and qualified Presidential candidates from their airwaves and debates… *_*

Ultimately, it’s not important whether or not we all agree with each other’s political views - what is important is to give enough of a damn about our country to at least have an interest in what is going on and not just “leaving it to the other guy” to decide your opinion for you. Or worse, to think that your opinion won’t matter. All these opinions and lack of opinions add up to result in the world we have today. Connected, yo! ^_~

Thanks, Mike!