Things to be wary of

Over the next few months, we're going to be bombarded with lots of words and phrases from the presidential candidates and the media. Here are a few things to really pay attention to:

1 The Budget: Big Government/Fiscal Conservative*
Neither party (or candidate, really) is for a small budget anymore. Both want all that money in Washington.
What you need to pay attention to is what each candidate says he wants to do with the money. The idea that Democrats spend more money than the GOP hasn't been true since, oh, Eisenhower. Hence, what we should all do before the election in the fall is look at what the candidates and parties want to do with the money. The whole budget thing is really just used to throw us off our game. Tricky politicians!

2 Flip Flop
These two F-words are going to be thrown around like hot potatoes this election season.
Truthfully, both McCain and Obama have changed views on things.
Ignore the Flip Flop. Just totally ignore it.
Smart people look at the current situation we're in and look for the best way to deal with it. What we need to do is listen to what the candidates have to say, see if that is what we think will be best for our country, or city or state, and then vote.

3 Obama is the most liberal senator.
He's not. First, that's rather hard to gauge. Second, I'm sure that Bernie Sanders, the Senate's socialist senator, would be really ticked off about not getting that billing.

4 McCain will not be a third Bush term.
He does have his own agenda. We'll notice more similarities between Bush and McCain, but they're both Republicans.

5 Obama is an elitist.
Since when was it a bad thing to be in the upper echelon of intelligence when you have one of the hardest jobs in the world? What people are trying to do with "elitist" is derrogatorily say, "Not one of you."
I want my president to be better than me.

6 McCain is a maverick.
On a couple of issues he stands away from the GOP, but he's usually at about an 88% voting record with the Republican party line, and it gets closer during election season.
McCain is smart. He has gotten the media and lots of people to believe in his maverickness. It's not really true. Now for you hard-line Republicans, this is good news. For you independents and dems...I dunno...



*The last time we had a bona fide Republican fiscal conservative in office was Richard Nixon. Ronald Reagan wasn't a fiscal conservative, he spent, spent, spent. It was Nixon who was fiscally conservative in some ways, but he was very militarily active and he didn't change any Democratically driven social programs. George H.W. Bush continued Reagan policies and W. Bush has made Reagan's policies look so conservative. Clinton balanced the budget, yes, but he raised taxes on the more wealthy.