I for one have been forced to rethink my position on a number of issues that I both took for granted and was totally misinformed about. I also now write my congressman and senators quite often. I guess it depends what media like this inspires you to do, its like a jumping point. I’ve also refined what I consider to be the important issues I care about.

On that point, I would like to see more posts concerning the environment and energy policies, as well as economics and lobbying reporting. We do seem to be in a continual loop on Iraq, Bush bashing, and gay GOP officials, which to be honest I think we all know about as much as we can at this point.

What do we get for our time and trouble of monitoring and opining on just about everything that is even tangentially related to politics and society? So we’re better informed, so what? Our individual votes don’t matter, nor do our opinions. For example, and not to single him out, but Shaun goes on and on about Bush, yet Bush is still in office and we’re still in Iraq. All we get is the opportunity to bore our friends at parties with our words of wisdom and have our wifes/husbands/significant others roll their eyes every time they see us typing away. I think we’d be better off with a different hobby… perhaps, dare I say, like those uninformed voters who, if they bother to vote at all, do so on the basis of thinking that drives you all up the wall (like which candidate is taller, who had the nicer tie, who has the prettier wife and so on).