And the winner is . . .

Hooplah over awards programs, manufactured activities to declare someone a winner for some reason, is a sickening emotion.

Likewise too, the breastbeating political nutjobs that want me to know that they feel my pain and understand my circumstances as if they were their own.

Frankly, I do not understand them at all.

From $400 haircuts, to jetting around the nation in private planes, wining and dining with people who have enough money to drop it by the handfuls onto dubious political fundraising dinner plates as if making a penance offering for sins of the darkest stripe, there is NO WAY that the rich and famous feel my pain.

If they did truly understand, they would have seen why I cautiously shop for bargains at a circle route of 4 stores that can keep the money entrusted to me as safely spent as possible.

Not so with the political fray currently canvassing the nation.

Tossing caution and substantial fortune to the winds of political grumbling and nay-saying, the contest for who should grace the inauguration of January 2009 is a host of people who are vying for the job with every fiber of their being.

And I am not willing to believe that they all have pure motives of wanting to serve the greatest good to the nation as a whole. What I do believe is that they are serving their own interests and a hunger for power that is a mainline source. That may be a gross mischaracterization of the group of candidates as a whole, but it would explain why one candidate, in a field alone and apart from any other substantial contenders, had to fight for a win against the uncommitted who refused to vote for the 'big name' on the ballot simply because it was the only one there.

One wonders if this kind of victory is satisfying. I can't help but believe it would be a lot like a mouthwatering sawdust pie. It might look good, but there is no real reward. With states being punished right and left by the political machine for moving up primary voting dates, and as a result, thoses states are stripped of the delegates that represent the numbers needed to be granted a nomination for the highest office in our nation, all I can see is a kindergarten where all students are given a gold star for participation.

When you are five, that feels pretty good. But our nation and the process of democracy is much older than five and it is time that we started acting like it. We need to stand up and be counted and not simply declared a winner so that no one gets their feelings hurt.

Life isn't fair. Neither is politics. By the very nature of the beast, the winners in the political chess match are trying to outwit and out manuver their opponents placing themselves in the best light possible. That's the game.

But the outcome for those of us who are on the sidelines watching is most unsavory.

How can the political elite declare a themselves to be a winner when the people who are on the sidelines are most certainly going to be the losers, almost independent of who actually wins?

Just thinking . . .