good times, noodle salad

I like to consider myself a fairly informed American, and I do my best to research issues and candidates before I vote. I also listen to NPR several times a week and keep up on the news that way. When I feel strongly about an issue, I write to local and other politicians. But I feel no need or desire to keep up on the activities (more than happens from above mentioned sources) or speeches of our current President. I'm not a big fan, and I think tuning into him more than I do would just annoy me. Plus, it isn't like I have a lot of choices in the matter--we're stuck with him until 2008.d This spills over into my feelings about the war in Iraq. I don't support his justifications for going there in the first place (I feel it was a bit like an Onion article described it "Liberate Iraqi Oil Wells"), but since we are there and caused a big mess for the Iraqi people, I do kind of feel like it'd be wrong to just leave the country in shambles. But beyond that, my feelings about the whole situation are incomplete. I haven't wanted to put the effort and emotion into more fulling forming my views, because I don't know that it would make any difference, except to add more emotional stress to my life. I care about a lot of issues, but I don't care about every issue.