Please sir, can I have some more!

This debate was particularly frustrating for me....It was my fault for choosing CNN as my network of choice to watch the debate. CNN carried the debate without interruption as all the other networks did with one exception, along the bottom of the screen they had a graph with immediate reactions of independent voters streaming in real time. There were 2 lines, one yellow that represented women, and the other green for men. So as the debate went along viewers could see the positive and negative reactions that these two demographics were having to the things being said by the candidates.
I imagined these people in a little room in comfy chairs with buttons to push indicating a positive or negative feeling about what they were hearing. I found myself mesmerized by those little lines. I don't know how much of the debate I "saw" as I was drawn to this little graph like it was my lifeline to understanding. This is where the frustration began.
Literally every time that Barak Obama (or John McCain for that matter) spoke of a policy based on giving Americans more stuff, meaning programs and entitlements the lines went into the positive to the extreme. When Barak pronounced that health care was a "right" the lines almost jumped out of the screen and spilled yellow and green ink all over my living room floor. When Senator McCain called it a responsibility our little line folks were so low they almost needed Prozac. Women were especially taken by these pronouncements of gifts from the government and I was fuming mad every time it happened. The men were just as bad just not quite so slap happy about it. Then each time the candidates stood and talked of less government or government getting out of the way, the lines dropped like flies and people weren't so happy (or so the little lines said).

Almost every time that I was pushing the positive button in my mind the lines on the TV were going the opposite way. This tells you one of two things. One, I am very out of touch and need to leave politics alone, or this world is changing very fast right before my eyes. I assume that I have lived too long in prosperous times where people were ready to take responsibility for their lives and take hold of their future. We know from past history that when times get bad people are much more ready to have government give them a hand-up.

Now I don't want to act like a scrooge. I in no way believe that government shouldn't be part of our lives or that we don't have legitimate health care problems. I am not a Libertarian yet, I just see that role as being much more limited than the current political climate is pushing toward. When people are hungry they will too easily turn over their power in hopes of relief. The problem is, that power never comes back to the people and we inch slowly and painfully toward socialism.

I trust Sarah (this blog administrator and my co contributor) will post and give great analysis of the debate last night as she always does, as for me I am still washing off the yellow and green ink that spilled out of my TV while viewers held up their little proverbial wooden bowls and asked "Please sir can I have some more!"