MADER'S 'BRANTS Polls, Voters and Political Ads July 1, 2004 - It’s the beginning of July, and I am already sooooooooo sick of political ads. I am tired of people telling me how I should or shouldn’t feel. I have had a belly full of different little groups that make more noise than anyone their size should be able to - saying they are speaking on my behalf. Ya know what? Bite me. My sense of values and priorities follow this path. 1. My first concern is for my lover or spouse and our children if we have any 2. My extended family. Mom and Pop, siblings, nieces, nephews, or at least the parts of it I still talk to 3. My friends 4. My neighbors and coworkers 5. My community 6. My city 7. Sports teams 8. State 9. Country 10. Continent 11. And last but not least the rest of the brotherhood of man, i.e. people in foreign lands, unborn fetuses, small fury animals, etc. My actions are dictated by the health and welfare of those people and things that I value and their position on the list. How expendable you are is directly related to where you fall between 1 and 11, baby. So for example if my spouse, lover or child is starving I would have no qualm killing some endangered beastie so I could put food on their plate. Ya see, like it or not, we all operate on a pretty similar level. We are self-centered narcissistic creatures. Charity, morality, ethics and other high falutin words are luxuries. Some putz can tell me how stem cell research is just terrible and morally wrong. This lump of cells that are going to be thrown out anyway might, under the right conditions, someday, develop into a person so we can’t do research on them. That’s his or her right to tell me that. Fine. However, when I, or someone I care about (living, breathing, walking, talking people, mind you) is dying and their lives could be saved by research done on those cells - screw morality and the horse it rode in on! Simple fact. To know that you might be able to save lives by doing this research and then choosing not to, and as a result denying people access to what could be their only chance for survival, is murder as sure as if you put a gun to that persons head. You are saying that that lump of cells has more rights than my child or my spouse or my fiends etc. That’s genocide! Are you insane? You freak, you! Those examples are extreme, but you get my point. I don’t care about Kerry’s dreams or Bush’s morals. I don’t give a squat about some fanatical special interest group that is convinced whatever trivial thing they are worried about is the end of the world. I care about putting food on the table, a roof over my head and being reasonably sure no one is going to try to blow me or mine up in the near future. Ya wanna win the election? Answer those issues. Clinton may have been the spawn of Satan, but at least he knew one simple truth. “It’s about the economy stupid!” Later, Mader