...I never thought I'd get HERE.

So, I'm watching conventions and looking forward to the VICE PRESIDENTIAL debate. Seriously something is wrong with me.

I'd like to be a "Hands Across America" type, where we just all join forces and work towards the common good. However, I find that most of those types just want the hand holding and the community, but not the work.

I love/hate Oprah. There are some things I like about her (nothing political or spiritual, just her Favorite Things and Nate Burkus), but other things perplex me. I DVR her and everything else because I don't have time for the commercials. In the same week of viewing, I don't know when they aired, she was up in arms about the education problems in America. Not only the infrastructures of some schools, but the whole system hadn't changed in decades. Saying is essence that socialized education doesn't work well for most and not at all for others.

Then fast forward Oprah a few days....she has sicko, I mean Michael Moore on promoting his new documentary Sicko, and everyone is sitting around crying about healthcare. We need more health care and the government to help us. We have socialized fire, socialized police, socialized schools, what's wrong with socialized medicine? Well, let's look back a week and think, hmmmmmm? Oh yeah, socialized education isn't working, but we'll do better with health care, we promise.

As for fire and police, I have no experience with the fire department, other than them making sure my fire detectors are in the right place every other year. They never are, even though they are exactly where the fire department told us to put them the last time. And the police? Last year our boys, 8 and 14, were told to walk around the block because they kept fighting and needed to get some energy expended. The 14 year old came back without the 8 year old. We walked around the block, no 8 year old. We walked around the next block, and the next and the next. No 8 year old. We walked to his bus stop, and we searched the neighborhood by car, no 8 year old.

We called 911. I waited, hubby looked. I waited, hubby looked. I waited, hubby talked to every neighbor. No police. In this day and age a missing 8 year old is not a priority. 45 minutes after calling 911 and an eternity after we first noticed him missing, who should show up with our kid? Not the police. A stranger. 8 year old decided to walk to his bus stop and back. Problem was he never walked to the bus stop, only from. He'd gotten disoriented and panicked. He ended up almost two miles from home before a lady working in her yard noticed a panicked 8 year old freaking out.

He didn't remember his phone number, but remembered what street he lived on. She drove him home. Points to boy for not going into her house, lecture later on getting in cars with strangers. He's since been educated, but still no police. We didn't remember to cancel the 911 for another 45 minutes or so, but still no police. I am assuming that the call went out on the radio, luckily there were no pervs in the area listening to police dispatch.

I'll be all in for the government stepping in and helping everyone out, but not until we understand the government. It is a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Looks like if you want the government to help, you'll have to do something, because YOU are the government.