There is a very interesting website that will help you find which presidential candidate that closely matches your beliefs. Now of course you can take this with a grain of salt but I like how the site assist you with the issues it is asking answers for in which you do not understand. After taking the quiz, here are my results:

1. Mike Gravel
2. Barack Obama
3. Hillary Clinton

Another nice feature are quotes and how each candidate voted on issues reflected on the quiz. So Mike Gravel huh? Not my first choice but I do like my second and third.

I never really put much thought into the differences between a caucus and a primary. I figured they were the same. You know, go in to your voting precinct and vote for who you want to run for your party in the general election later that year. Little did I know caucuses are not run that way. It is more of a community event. I did not even know where the word caucus came from. Thanks to Wikipedia and Barack Obama’s amusing video, I have a better understanding of the term’s Native American heritage and how it functions in Iowa.

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There is an interesting post at CNN that the Iran’s supreme leader hopes that the US would be tried in an international court for it’s actions within the country of Iraq. Of course this is coming from a leader that is not in good standing with the United States but I think he has a point. If one wishes to lead the cause of protecting the innocent by hunting down those who has brought injustices to others, then an audit of one’s self must be performed to ensure the line of injustice was not crossed. Do we have a clear objective in Iraq anymore? As an informed American, or try with honest effort, I do not think so. As a nation, we too are not above the law. We should not turn a blind eye to the consequences of our actions. I know our leadership of our nation has lost their way with regards to the ideals that grounded this nation, I just hope our citizens do not subscribe to this wayward path.

I was reading “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu, written in the 6th century BC, that contains lessons that should be embraced by all leaders of the free world…especially by one who leads a nation with the most potent weapons. Yes, Bushy seemed to either avoid reading the wisdom of Sun Tzu (which is not all that surprising) or found it to conflict with his logic of shoot first, then shoot again.

The way we managed the conflict in Iraq and the resulting languish of our soldiers and citizens was predicted by Tzu in his second chapter on Waging War:

2) When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.

3) Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain

6) There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare

10) Poverty of the State exchequer causes an army to be maintained by contributions from a distance. Contributing to maintain an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished.

We watch as prices escalate for fuel, social programs like assisted education losing funding and the general purpose of the populous lost in a state of confusion with escalating fear for our future. Are they all related to the the war? Maybe not, but with all attention driven toward the conflict, very little creative thought is given to domestic affairs. We are strained as a nation trying to understand the reasoning for conflict. I am a soldier’s son and believe in my military. I know those who have honor, lacking in many of our citizens including myself, will prevail. But a victory in a war not define berates those who lay their lives for this nation. I hold our troops with high regard, even higher than the politics that leads them.

The sad thing is I can go forever literally quoting the entire work but I think my point is made. Tzu’s lessons still holds true. It is very sad to see our leader not capable of perceiving such realities from any perspective, even one written well before the founding of this great nation.

I was re-reading the classic 1984 by George Orwell and I had a moment of pause. No need to review what 1984 is about, take a look here to get a quick summary, but take a moment and look at some obvious similarities. There is this “Big Brother” and the three slogans from the Ministry of Truth were:

• War is peace
• Freedom is slavery
• Ignorance is strength

Hmm…sounds familiar:

• War on terrorism
• The Patriot Act
• Lack of Intelligence gathering by our agencies (where are those darn Weapons of Mass Destruction)

I really do not have the time to go into this but it was an interesting revelation none the less.