Mail Exchange Reminder and an itchy tag....

Quick reminder to everyone (and a huge thanks to Wendy for reminding me!)....tomorrow is when we're all supposed to have our mail exchange gifts in the mail to all of the kiddos!  Don't forget to put in a picture of your child!  I can't wait to hear what all the kids think of their gifts and how much fun they have with it!

You know what it's like when you have an itchy tag in your clothing?  It irritates and rubs and drives you nearly insane until you can finally cut it out?  Well, this is me, "cutting out the itchy tag".  You see, I have a problem.  I adore Fall!  Autumn is my favorite season.  It's very nearly perfect.  Brightly colored leaves in reds and oranges and yellows.  Apples falling from the trees.  The return of the coveted Honey Crisps (best apple ever!).  The crisp, clean, cool feeling of the air.  The fantastical booming, banging, flashing thunderstorms.  Seriously, I love fall!  There's just one major problem.  And really, it's quite a doozy of a problem.  Fall means a plethora of political ads.  I know, I know...discussing politics makes people nervous.  But honestly, this isn't about my political beliefs.  Or your political beliefs.  Or anyone's political beliefs.  It's about basic common courtesy and a lack of respect for the American people.  You see, political ads are not about politics.  Nope.  They are about who the lesser of two evils is.  Constant bickering back and forth.  Don't vote for the other guy because he's more evil than I am.  Vote for me because I'm not nearly as bad as the other choice.  That's all it is anymore!  Do the politicians just think we're not intelligent enough to hear what they plan to do and make a decision based on who has the better plan?  Give us all some credit, please! We all have brains in our heads.  We can think for ourselves and make informed, intelligent decisions.  Right? Really though...here's the conclusion that I have come to:  Politics is just a game of tug-of-war.  We have the Republicans on one side, Democrats on the other.  They're just continually pulling on the rope, seeing who can get the most power over what happens in our country.  The majority of them get into politics just for the power alone.  Don't get me wrong, I do think there may be a few who actually care and want to make changes, but once they've been in office for a couple of years, they discover that no one else cares about making a difference.  It's just about power.  Who has it, who wants it, how each party can win it back.  They're so busy trying to win that power that they lie, cheat, steal, and degrade themselves and the American people without thought or care.  They twist the truth in so many different ways, it ends up looking like a pretzel and no one can figure out where the beginning and end are anymore.  Want a good example of the lies and twisted truth?  Our current governor wants to make a bid for President of the United States of America.  So he's running around, talking about how he's balanced the Minnesota state budget.  The reality?  The state is "borrowing" money from the public school system in order to pay it's bills.  Borrowing, without interest, from our children.  The schools are then left unable to pay their own bills because all of their reserve money is tied up in the state's bills and won't be paid back until the end of the school year.  Kind of like smashing your child's piggy bank in order to pay your mortgage, isn't it?  Doesn't mean you balanced your budget though.  It just means you shifted money around enough that all the administrators and big shots can keep their perks while our children and schools suffer.  Excellent job, Governor Pawlenty!  While he's busy doing all of that, the Republican and Democratic nominees for his job are having a b*tch-slap fight over DUI convictions from several decades ago and are busy calling each other names.  It's enough to make someone want to vomit!

I wish there was an easy answer to all of this.  Politics in the U.S. just seems to have gotten so petty and wrong.  It no longer matters if there is one person who genuinely believes in making a difference.  The views of the individual candidates don't matter at all.  It's all about where the party-lines are drawn and wrestling power back and forth.  One party wants to accomplish something.  The other one will stop it in any way they can.  Not because it's not a good thing that the first party was doing, but because they don't want that party to think they might have even a little bit of the power.  I, for one, am so very tired of it!  I want to order them all to their separate corners for an extended time-out.  They're all mostly a bunch of idiots, creeps, and crooks, if you ask me.  I have no solutions.  But I just might be voting Independent from now on!  Maybe they're becoming the lesser of three evils....