Friday, January 11, 2008

Who are you going to vote for?

Today as I sit here relaxing before we go over to a co-worker of Jerry's for a bonfire/get together/meet the new guy/akkkk what have we gotten ourselves into, I was out blog hopping, as I have a tendency to do. Over on New England Mama's there were actually two articles that I was really interested in. The one on the American Dream, by Ruth I will either take up tomorrow, or later tonight when we get home.
The one titled I know where I stand, but who do I stand behind by Jane hits on a post that I did a couple of weeks ago (December 28th).
What is interesting to me is that I went back to vajoe today and got a different result. I don't think that my answers to the questions changed all that much. And then I went to a couple of the sites that people had left in the comments section of New England Mama's blog, and got different results each time there too.
For example I went to the Minnesota Public Radio's questionnaire and got yet a different answer.
There are all sorts of these things out there, and they all give you different answers to basically the same questions.
I mean how are these things supposed to help you decide anything if they are going to give you a different answer. I know that I for one answered them each with the exact same type of answer. But then again I also know that the people it picked for me today at least I had heard of before, where as two weeks ago the person it said I had never even heard of.
I wonder how many people out there are doing these questionnaires and then basing their vote on what the questionnaire tells them? What if that person is only doing one questionnaire? How can they know for sure that the questionnaire was not biased in some way, or paid for by one campaign or lobby group? Is the future of our country going to based on what these questionnaires tell people what they should think? I would hope that people are looking at the morals of the people that they are considering voting for, but if you have no "stake" in this election who are you listening to? I realize that every voting American has a "stake" in this election, but how many people realize what stake the have?
I guess I have realized with this election cycle how much more I have at stake, this time around. My husband's career, my career are both dependent on who we put into the Presidents office.
Our lives hang in the balance on that one person's decisions that they make over the next 5 years (5 if you count things that they have in their head now). If the American public chooses poorly and puts some one that is not going to protect and think about the military men and women and how the war affects them and their families, my family is at risk, my husband is at risk. Add in the fact that in 3 years Kelsey could decide that the best way for her to get an education paid for without having to go into major debt is to join the military, and that adds in more hard decisions for me.
Or if the American public chooses someone that does not believe that the American education system needs to be properly funded, or that high stakes testing and punishing teachers for things out of their control (poverty, single parents, grandparents raising the student)is the way to go, then my job and career get that much harder.
I don't know who I am going to vote for in November. I have my ideas now, but November is 10 months away and a lot of things can be done, and be said between now and then, by every candidate.

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