Alienating Political Opinions, BEWARE!

Politics annoy me. Of course, they're important. They determine who's going to wage our wars, or whether they will, who will decide our national course of action, how much everyone else hates the US, whether we care at all, etc.

But they also are basically mudslinging instead of the real point.

According to the Charlotte Observer, in the last debate Hillary and Obama dredged up every scandal they could before they even got to topics such as, oh, say, THE WAR.

I didn't watch the last debate. I watched the Colbert Report, and according to my dad, who did watch the debate, that was a wise decision.

I sort of wish I had watched it, though. If these people might lead my country, I need to watch them so that I can bemoan the state of affairs that has brought everything this low for the last 208 years.

1800- evil, nasty election. Far worse than this one.

To be honest, the early 1800s elections were pretty bad. You had one election where a president elect's wife died before she could become first lady, probably as a result of stress from the opposition's accusation that she'd married her current husband before divorcing her last one. Actually she had, but Andrew and Rachel Jackson had no way of knowing that- they'd been told by a friend coming over the mountains that the divorce was final.

You had another election where both candidates were accused of having illegitamate children. Grover Cleveland confessed and explained how he'd helped the boy. He didn't even want to spill the story on his opponent.

In 1844, James K. Polk was pretty much only elected by fraud and by a third party getting votes from his opponent.

And at the end of his second term, one ex-president commented that "he had only two regrets, never having shot Henry Clay or hanged John C. Calhoun."

I'm gonna go watch Hillary and Barack yell at each other now.

(Quote and most of the info from "To the Best of My Ability" edited by James M. McPherson. Other info source was "White House: Confidential" by Greg Stebben and Jim Morris)