W.W.J.V.F.

election time tends to get me a little tense because while i feel a civic responsibility to vote, i can't seem to figure out which is bad and which is worse. it appears that politicians are primarily concerned with their own paychecks as opposed to public service, which explains why it makes sense to them to spend campaign donations on smear campaigns against their opponents instead of communicating what they're for. this makes the political structure looks like the world's largest jenga game, with each piece teeters on the brink of disaster, doing everything it can to hold on to it's place.

this year i had decided to vote based on 2 primary issues - the environment and taxation. my reasons for choosing these issues are now obsolete because i've devised another primer. i'm going to vote for whichever candidates run ads telling me about who they are rather than what a jerk their opponent is. i figure, regardless of what they support, if a person will pay a lot of money to write produce and run a campaign bad-mouthing somebody else, i don't trust what they say they support anyway. i mean, i make a concerted effort not to talk poorly of people, even people who i think deserve it. i wouldn't allow my daughter to talk about people that way, and if one of my close friends did so, i'd have some serious questions for them, trying to understand why they felt such talk was appropriate.

so there you have it. if you're spending campaign money to talk smack on somebody, you lose my vote. i don't care if you're running on a platform of giving me $1 million, because i know that if you'll talk about somebody else that way, you'd probably do the same to me.

if you tell me what you support without bad-mouthing others, even if i don't agree, you'll get my vote because ultimately i'd rather have a leader with some character who i disagree with, than a leader who'll do anything to make me think they agree with me whether they do or not.

oh, it stands for "who would jesus vote for" in case you were wondering.