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Where's the beef?
 In roughly three weeks voters nationwide will head to the polls for the Nov. 2 mid-term elections, presumably to pass judgment on President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress.
If recent polling conducted by reputable polling firms are accurate, the mid-terms will result in Republicans taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives and quite possibly picking up enough seats in the U.S. Senate for control of it as well. Luckily for Obama, he won't stand for re-election for another two years, but his administration, by and large, will be judged on Nov. 2.
Democrats are not fairing well in the 2010 election cycle for a number of reasons. The economy is performing poorly, the unemployment rate remains stubbornly stuck at 9.6 percent and the Bush-era tax cuts that all Americans enjoy will expire at the end of the year. Higher income taxes are on the horizon for all wage earners.
In a perfect world, the mid-term elections would offer voters an opportunity to be exposed to a healthy debate of the issues and concerns that our nation faces in the foreseeable future. At least that's what the purists among us would like to see.
Rest easy. You won't be required to do much thinking if you're one of the registered voters who plans on exercising your constitutional right to vote in the not-too-distant future.
That's obviously the case in light of the rhetoric candidates representing both major political parties have peddled on the campaign trail in this election season. It's been void of substance, and it largely has evolved into a shouting match in which candidates have tried in vain to paint the opposition as the worst forms of human existence since the dawn of time.
Simply hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils.
Even President Obama has crawled in the gutter, evidenced by his pointed remarks recently at a campaign rally in Maryland. Instead of talking about the merits of the signature issues advocated by Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership, the president devoted much of his speech to accusing the nation's largest pro-business organization of using foreign money to finance campaigns against Democratic congressional candidates. Talk about ducking a record, or running from it.
According to Obama, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce accepted money from foreign sources and used it to help finance media campaigns against Democrats. We don't know that to be true or not because the U.S. Chamber of Commerce refuses to disclose the identity of the contributors to the chamber.
It's very similar to the scenario that existed when some $400 million was spent by outside sources—much of it anonymous—to help elect Obama in 2008. Democrats didn't complain one iota about anonymous contributions then.
Two wrongs don't make a right, though.
Obama's supporters should disclose the identity of any individual and organization that contributed to his cause two years ago, and the U.S. chamber should come clean on the identity of its contributors, too.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Besides, Americans need to know who's funding campaigns on the home front.
That brings us back to the rhetoric we've been hearing on the campaign trail for weeks.
Modern-day politics in the U.S. serve as a disservice to the American people, for it's painfully clear that the easiest route to elective office rides on which candidate succeeds in convincing enough voters that his or her opponent is, simply put, a horrible individual.
We've heard no discussion about taking appropriate steps to ensure the solvency of Social Security and Medicare, and the only comments we've heard about the nation's ballooning debt is it's out of control.
To put it bluntly, where's the beef?
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