A candidate is someone who gets money from the rich and votes from the poor to protect them from each other.

Seventy-nine nights from now we'll be sitting in front of TV screens as the results of our national election are reported. We can watch history or we can help make it. It really comes down to just how much more of a victim do you want to be?

I would never suggest to anyone how he/she should vote when it comes to The Most Powerful Person on the Planet, which is really what the President of the United States is (when you look at the founding of our country, it's a far cry from where we were to where we are). However, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice and if you devote the same amount of time to making up your mind for whom you cast a ballot as you did for what you chose for dinner last night, we may need to have a serious word about shared responsibilities in our democracy.

We should realize that we are all we have, which is perfect because, in truth, we are also all we'll ever need. There's no magic number for voter turnout or registration, but the bigger the better (turns out sometimes size does matter, who knew?) and it's a question of dynamics--if one of us isn't engaged, then all of us suffer. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Groucho's kid brother nailed a truth and a truism when he came up with that. It means the bar is pretty high and we all have work to do to clear it.

Look at American History and the Founding of the Republic....all the signaturories of the Declaration of Independence. How many of those (white) men were more than capable enough of being Chief Executive of this fledgling operation? And in comparison, how many were? Firesign Theatre had a wonderful routine about "Benjamin Franklin....the only President of the United States who was never President of the United States."

Despite what we may have read and heard about these being times to try a man's soul, I can also (aging disk jockey that I am) remember a warning to us all, born and unborn at the time, from Edward R. Murrow, "(A) nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves." Am I opening a can of worms on the order of 'do events create great leaders or do great leaders create events?' I hope not because I don't have a fishing license, but I keep coming back to the importance of making an informed choice. We say 'now more than ever' so often it loses its urgency and that's too bad because it's not less true just because it becomes hackneyed.

Depending on where you live, you will have choices to make on a range of people for offices and propositions and referendum items that will demand you choose both wisely and well. You're not in the voting booth by yourself--no pressure-but with all of us, and for all of us. We need to stand for something or we risk having lived for nothing. As John Adams (half of the only other father-son team elected President) said, "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." It's more than okay to continue to prove him wrong.
-bill kenny