Another Primary Day

Quote of the day:
“ The reason lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place is that the same place isn't there the second time.”
--Willie Tyler

Well, at long, long last, today is the Pennsylvania primary. Watching the news these last few weeks, it sometimes seems as if nothing else is going on nationally.

The voting patterns will be interesting to watch. It’s possible for Barack Obama to pretty much have the nomination sewed up. Most likely, though, we’ll continue to see continuing mini-dramas until election day in November. That’s 6 1/2 months from now. Oh, boy.

I really hope some entertaining things happen, because the issues are getting a little tiresome.

That sounds ridiculous, but I mean it. All three of the candidates have developed positions on just about everything meaningful. Sometimes their proposals are detailed and very insightful. And very necessary.

The tiresomeness comes from incessant repetition, and from efforts to be very certain and increasingly precise in forecasts and calculations. Any level of precision in knowing how much something will cost, or what the effects of any proposal might be, is impossible for any candidate.

Doing this is very difficult for those whose job it is to manage the government. Hearing someone running for President say emphatically that either tax cuts or any program is going to be paid for through cutting “waste” (or “pork-barrel spending”) or some other manipulation of the budget is a stretch at best.

Yet all three candidates are doing this, because it’s what they think we want to hear. Maybe some of us do.

What is very, very clear is that the Iraq war costs something like $200 million a day. And interest on the national debt costs us about $650 million a day. We are much deeper in debt than we were seven years ago.

I’ve heard just one of the candidates talk about this.

But is this trend going to change?