Maybe it's the Y chromosone, I dunno, but I just don't see myself in these speeches, in this battle, in all this money wasted on tv at a time when the economy is buckling.... all I see is two candidates that are fighting the same old battle to get elected. I'm not identifying with any of it.

I guess I'm on the wrong board.

Sorry you feel that way. I think the fact that we have a woman, a black guy, and an older white guy all running for president and doing just about equally well in most polls is pretty spiffy!

I'd much rather see candidates who were honest about how screwed up the country is, and had viable plans to fix it. I don't care if the candidate is a 20 year old transvestite Tibetan monk born in the Aleutian islands, if he/she(?) understood how to fix the money and run the foreign policy, I'd get excited.

Hey, hey..one step at a time..Pennsylvania isn't sure they're redy for the black guy..heck, Kentucky may not be ready for a democrat.

I'd love to see a completely honest and economically super genius presidential candidate too! But one step at a time baby.

There are no quick-fix gimmicks that will work magic.

We have spent a very long time getting into this mess. It will take a long period of fair and honest governance to repair the damage that has been done.

I have this sinking feeling that things are getting worse, not better.

I think that we will certainly go through a period where things appear to get worse before they get better.

But that is most likely because the American public has been lied to, and had our attention diverted from so much.

12,000 troops tried to kill themselves in one year. The pentagon has deliberately covered it up by severely under-reporting the number of suicide attempts as just over 700 per year.

Approximately 42,000 U.S. soldiers were sent to war or sent back into combat in direct contradiction to their medical records, they were medically unfit due to illness or injury to serve.

They are now ignoring prior courses of therapy in military placement programs. So, in theory, a soldiers life could be reliant upon his commander, who suffers from anything from PTSD up to delusions.

Quietly, when no one was looking, the Bush administration has shifted money out of foodstamp and food bank programs and into farm subsidies for people who are landowners and don't even farm it at all, merely because ANY state of emergency was declared in the county with the land. Regardless of whether the land was in any way affected.

Millions of dollars of tax payer money has been spent on the personal whims of a huge number of government employees who were issued credit cards to do with as they pleased. Needless to say, the people who authorized the issuing of the cards, and the people who were responsible for the oversight of the card usage...were also issued cards.

I seriously lack the imagination to think of all the other things we've been kept from knowing.

But I imagine the list will horrify and shock us. And I don't think the next president, whoever they may be, will have an easy road.

The presidency is not so much a prize to be sought, as a flaming bag of dog poop that will land on one candidates doorstep.

but, these days, the truth just sucks. I could write a long post countering with the like type crimes with the economy... but they have been in the headlines so much, you already know them. Everything we do know and will eventually find out about GWBush and his daddy and his grandpa is one long list of evil deeds; I hope I get to be there when he goes in front of Jesus judgment seat to explain why he told everyone that Jesus told him to invade Iraq... that's gonna be ugly.

I think a lot of people are going to be surprised by the long haired, peaceful, jewish...well, hippy they're going to have to explain themselves to.

Note: I'm not saying jesus smokes pot or anything either.

But face it, if you met a guy who wore his hair to his waist, robes and sandals, and ran around saying "Dude, can't we all just try being nice to each other!" Most people today would think he was a hippy.

the hippies got more respect than the homeless get. I agree, even most so-called christians have a strange impression of who they think God is; most by far are expecting some kind of religious personality, that will reward their good deeds; when, in fact, Jesus hated the religious leaders and they hated him, Jesus never told us to be good little children, that was the Law of Moses, Jesus told us to eat of the tree of life and stop feeding on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I'm not ready to cast judgment on the masses, except I will say this much with certainty; they don't know Jesus as well as they think they know him.

I tried to bring some of this up, about Jesus sometimes being really angry (the moneylenders in the temple) when they were so freaked outhe Rev. Wright was just so ANGRY...not that I agree with a lot of what the guy said..but a lot of serious religious leaders get ANGRY at governments all the time.

5000 years and counting; religion does not serve God, but it claims to do that. I remember discussing the attack on the moneylenders with a "good brother" in the ministry (we still use that phrase; Jesus hated it when they called him "good master") and I remember this brother couldn't bring himself to accept an image of Jesus actually using the whip on the moneylenders. The scriptures say he sat up the night before building a good strong whip and then drove the moneylenders out of the temple with the whip; but the religious mind won't accept the idea that jesus actually whipped those moneylenders.... that he used force against them... that it was an attack (isn't that against the Law?... yes)

...but they have no trouble with the same Jesus damning a soul to eternal hellfire; I guess an eternity of torture is no big deal, just so you don't leave any whip marks on moneylenders.

I think that stems from the "deification" process that people go through with religion.

Somebody (in this case Jesus) has a pretty good idea for how things need to change in order for people to not just DO better, but also BE better.

Later on the whole message gets flushed down the wherever, and the "glorification" of god etc. begins to be the primary focus of the religion.

Despite the fact that the entire focus of religion is supposed to be on mankind and their faulty actions and trying to fix those actions and faults.

God, or the Universe, or whatever you end up calling it is perfect and neither needs nor desires "glorification". God doesn't need religion..man does.

and I think Jesus was trying to break through that. It is ironic that they turned around and featured him in their religion. Kind of like the central bank featuring Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, the very thing they opposed the most pretends to absorb their image; as if they would agree with them. When Jesus returns, he will tear down these religions, and if Andrew Jackson comes with him, woe unto the central bankers.

I've done a little religious studying, and I agree.

I think most of the great prophets, Jesus, Buddha, Mohamed, Confucious etc all tried to say the same thing.

The world can get better, if YOU will take individual responsibility for your actions and try always to do the very best that you can to make it better.