When I watched the second Presidential debate last week, I fell asleep in the middle of it. We are at a critical juncture in our history and yet the present Presidential campaign has failed to clearly define
the issues at stake or even mention many of them.
It’s next to impossible to conclude just what an individual will do once he steps into the Oval Office.
Franklin Roosevelt promised to balance the budget in his 1932 and 1936 campaigns, and he drove the country deeper into the Depression when he attempted to do so. In 1940, he said to a group of supporters, “Your boys will never fight in a foreign war.”
Richard Nixon promised to bring the country together. Lyndon Johnson called Barry Goldwater a warmonger, then squandered billions of dollars and thousands of American lives on the Vietnam War. Ronald Reagan promised to cut taxes. Then he gave the American middle class its largest tax increase in a generation.
With so much at stake for this country, it would be interesting to know on Wednesday night’s final debate where the two candidates stand on key issues. I don’t want to hear that Obama is in favor of change. I want him to clearly define the change he is talking about. I don’t care to hear about his past associations. Everybody I know has some unsavory characters in their distant past.
I want John McCain to say more than “I’m a maverick.” I spent 11 summers working on a cattle ranch in the Senator's home state where
ranchers shot mavericks because nobody could work with them and served them up as dog food.
Question No. 1 on Wednesday for both candidates:
George W. Bush is the most unpopular president since Jimmy Carter; Sen. Obama's polling numbers should be at 80 percent. Members of Bush’s own party have said they turn the television off whenever he starts to speak, and they call him a blithering idiot. Sen. McCain has been called a cranky old man who would continue the Bush policies. Neither candidate has risen higher than 49 percent in the polls. Why is this?
Question No. 2 for both candidates:
In a recent ad in the Los Angeles Times, a group calling itself “America’s Leadership for Long-Range Population-Immigration Resource Planning,” claims that while we have 300 million people
in this country today, we will have 400 million in 30 years and 600 million people by the year 2100. Most, if not all, of us will be dead by that time. But what are we handing our children and grandchildren?
Whole sections of Los Angeles make “Blade Runner” look like a high rent district. There are an estimated 45,000 gangbangers in Los Angeles, most well-armed and many of them here illegally. Geronimo only had about 200 followers when he was making war in Arizona and Mexico.
Are there any suggestions on how to deal with this problem other than funding Midnight Basketball?
Question No. 3 for both candidates:
Mexico is in a state of chaos, with corruption in government, the drug wars and poverty throughout the country. Is there another way we can help our neighbor stabilize itself other than building a wall or inviting all of the country’s poor to come over here to pick lettuce?
Question No. 4 for both candidates:
We are financing our war effort by borrowing money from China, and we are buying oil from Saudi Arabia. We are transferring billions of dollars from this country. What are the consequences
of this policy, and what will happen if the Chinese stop lending us money?
Question No. 5 for both candidates:
Why don't we start building nuclear power plants to cut our energy costs?
Question No. 6 for both candidates:
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy proposed that we put men on the moon, which we did in 1969. The space program was put into mothballs until recently. Now there is talk of shutting
it down again. The Chinese are talking about putting a colony on the moon. Couldn’t we learn from having a colony on the moon about space travel and tour our own earth’s atmosphere.
Queen Elizabeth I saw the value of building a British Fleet which allowed England to sink the Spanish Armada and rule the seas for more than 200 years. What are your plans for the space program?
Question No. 7 for both candidates:
Sen. Obama says that he’s going to raise taxes on individuals and businesses earning more than $250,000. What will be the real cost of Sen. Obama’s proposed tax increases? Is the American dream only for people and businesses making less than $250,000.
Question No. 8 for both candidates:
This has been one of the longest, dullest, dumbest Presidential campaigns in recent American history. Everybody I know wants to see an end to it. Can we change the way we do this? The next election
cycle will start right after the next President is sworn in.
Why not have a common six-year campaign cycle whereby every six years we elect a President, the House and Senate. House members
could do something better than take bribes and hustle for money every two years, and we could replace the Sunday talk shows with cartoons.
