Is There Anyone Not Running For President?

In my last post I talked about listing the people running for President in 2012. Running for President is fairly easy: you just need to have been born in the United States (which includes our territories) and be 35 years old. There are, currently, two major parties: the Democrats and the Republicans. It’s a virtually certainty that the winner of the 2012 election will be from one of those two parties. Furthermore, I expect I join most Democrats in believing that President Obama will be the Democratic nominee. The Republican nominee is a wide open field.

Nevertheless, I’ve chosen to add other candidates to my list. Some are challengers to major party candidates; others are members of minor parties; finally, others are people who belong to no party and run as independents. I don’t expect any of them to move into the White House on January 20, 2013, but I’m including them to show that there is no reason they can’t.

Frankly, the job of looking at their web pages has been a painful job. I find most of them delusional and think our Founding Fathers would be holding their noses too. Most of them are running on a platform of “the past years/decades/centuries have shown that our forefathers would be horrified at seeing what the government is doing. I’ve arrived just in time to save us. Vote for me.” On the whole they believe that government is too intrusive and that we would do better if nobody told us what to do.

I’m American enough to not like to be told what to do but I also believe that most of us like what the government does when we need something. I like the idea that my local government will send someone to my house of I (or someone else in my family) have a heart attack or if my house catches on fire. I like having a public library system even if I don’t use it very often. I like the idea of having a good school system even if I don’t have children who attend (because, let’s face it, the students in those schools are the people I’m counting on to contribute to social security when we’re retired).

I’m not impressed by all the people who claim to “recapture” the values of the founders of our country and have no intention of voting for them, but I’m American enough to give them a voice. I’m encouraged by the belief that our next President is chosen not by those who chose to run, but by those who choose to vote.

Choose to vote.

Left Behind

OK, I’m writing this on May 21, 2011 at 6:17 PM. I have to admit a certain amount of disappointment as I was hoping to be raptured by now. According to Family Radio today was supposed to be the day that all those who were “with God” were supposed to be taken to Heaven. The rest, and I guess I am included here, are supposed to endure earthquakes, unreturned phone calls and other natural disasters. I’m kind of OK with that as long as I find someone who was raptured who left their car keys on the front seat.

Updating This Page

A great deal has happened in the past few weeks and I haven’t had time to write much about it. Every year around the first of May I travel with Nancy to the annual Pediatric Academic Society Convention and this year it was in Denver. I’ve gone to enough of these to have become friends with several of her colleagues and I think I look forward to seeing them as much as she does. Denver is a beautiful city but I have to confess it’s not a place I would go to without a reason. Anyway, next year’s meeting is Boston and I’m already looking forward to that.

While we were in Denver we got word that Osama bin Laden was killed in a shootout with a group of Navy Seals. I have to confess that while I normally prefer slow justice over shootouts, I applauded his death that night. The hunt for bin Laden took nearly 10 years and parts of two Presidential administrations (technically it was 13 years and three administrations; President Clinton began the hunt in 1998 after the bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania). President Obama was rightly concerned that if bin Laden was captured alive he would become a target for Americans being kidnapped and held as hostages. Any trial for bin Laden would have taken years and have given him a platform that the world doesn’t need. As for the Seals who (once again) got the job done: they don’t do press conferences or curtain calls. We likely will never know their names, but I pray they understand the depth of the phrase “a grateful nation.”

It’s also time to update this page. I’ve taken out the casualty counter on the left column. I was hesitant to do that because I didn’t want to give the impression that anyone is forgetting that we still have young men and women fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem is that I just can’t find a casualty counter for Afghanistan and that’s where our focus is now. If I can find one, I’ll put it in. In its place I’m putting in the beginnings of stuff for the Presidential race. I recognize that the election isn’t for 17 months, but the race has already begun. For now I’m going to list the candidates; when the major parties start their primary season I hope to keep a delegate count. This was a bit of a nightmare for me in 2008, but I’ll do what I can. My process for listing someone is twofold: I find his/her name using a Google search and the candidate has an active web page. I’m guessing not everyone is happy with this process, but it’s the best I can come up with. If you have a better system, email me.

Of course, according to Family Radio it won’t matter since Judgement Day is a short 3 days away.