One thing I have observed during this Presidential election and by blogging in general is that there are people who are simply too crazy to debate.  Now, I do not care if you are religious or not, if you are Conservative or Liberal, or if you believe global warming is man made or part of a natural cycle.  What I like to see is someone who can articulate why they believe what they believe and will not get angry if you challenge them.  I would rather have a fierce debate with someone I disagree with who is rational then talk with someone who agrees with me but is irrational.

No matter what your views are, it is possible that you or someone you know is simply too crazy to debate.  Now, I do not expect that everyone should be an expert on all things that they believe; there are some things that I know to be true that I can not prove.  I also feel like people can become overwhelmed with facts and statistics that it blinds them to the obvious.  As Winston Churchill famously said, there are three kinds of lies:  lies, damn lies and statistics.

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I read a compelling statement in Lisa's article on an independent's perspective on voting. In that article, Barb convinced me to seriously consider voting for my favorite choice regardless of whether he/she is the Republican or Democrat nominee.

We've all heard the arguments against wasting the vote before. It's a typical ends justifies the means type argument. "If you don't vote for either the Republican or Democrat candidate, you will have no say in the outcome of the election. One of those two candidates WILL be elected, and your vote will have been wasted." Granted. But let's discuss reasons why we SHOULD waste our vote.

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Popularity: 7% [?]

Iowa and New Hampshire have come and gone, and we have had two completely different results.  Mike Huckabee and Barak Obama won the first round; John McCain and Hillary Clinton won the second. What do these results mean to? To me? Voting is a privilege that far too many Americans do not take advantage of, partly because they do not see how it affects their daily lives, and to some degree they are right.

It is highly doubtful that I will vote for Senator Clinton. If she becomes President, my life and, quite honestly, most people’s lives, are not going to change that much.  Had Al Gore been elected in 2000, we probably would still be in some type of war in Iraq and terrorists would have still attacked us on September 11th.  The mortgage crisis would still be happening and the stock market would still be going down.

It would seem that I am making an argument against voting, which I am not.  While your daily life will probably not change overnight regardless of who becomes President, the long-term affects of a President are extremely important.  Ronald Reagan believed that the Soviet Union was the Evil Empire; it was not an empire that we could co-exist with or something that we should  just accept as a reality; it had to be defeated.  Looking back at history, it is obvious that Reagan was right, yet at the time, not everyone believed this to be true.  Many people believed that containing the Soviet Union was the best we could hope for. Reagan believed we could eliminate it and that is what we did.

Ideas are important. The President is important. If you are in an early primary state, make sure you vote in that primary.  When you vote, vote for someone that you believe in. They do not have to agree with you on every issue. Pick the issues most important to you and go with those. The last thing I want to see is someone vote for a candidate because of a negative commercial, misleading story or because of media-based momentum.  Pick what is important to you and stay with it. Like the Bible says, while beauty and charm are misleading and do not last long, character on the other hand lasts a lifetime.

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