I will be SO glad when November the 8th gets here. No more ads flooding TV with messages that never mention issues, no more radio commercials where I get to hear Bob Corker keep going on and on about his construction business or Harold Ford wasting my time saying he will be patriotic every day (even though the very troops he voted to send into battle he now admits he shouldn't have), and no more coming home to have 10 new messages on my answering machine where someone is telling me who I should vote for, with no real talk about issues. I'm tired of hearing on all the talk radio shows how Ford said the GOP doesn't love God as much as Democrats, or how Corker is a racist for a TV ad that played last week. I'm tired of it, and I know a lot of you are too. Sadly this is the face of the two-party system. We have a Senate race here in Tennessee that some are estimating will see over $40 million in spending for a job that pays $160,000 a year. You really have to wonder why someone would spend MILLIONS for a job that pays what it does. I honestly think if you have the right message, if you take a real stand on important issues, and if you are blunt and honest, then the message will stick with voters. Someone told me not too long ago that if I had one-tenth the money that the "real" candidates had spent, I would be so far ahead in the polls it wouldn't be funny. Now I would love to think so, but who knows. I do know that I've only spent several hundred dollars of my own money so far, and I'm the only independent to place in a major poll. The reason is because all I'm doing is echoing how so many of us think and feel, and people have spread the word.

I'll be very interested to see if the winner of this election will follow a sad pattern. Go to the website www.opensecrets.org and take a look at the campaign spending. In every example I looked at, whoever spent the most money won. And this happened in the Republican primary here - Corker spent the most money and he won.

We have one week left. I have been asked several times in radio interviews if I honestly expect to win this race. If true conservatives would vote on principle instead of party, then yes I could win. If true conservatives had jumped on board and not become lemmings to the Republican party after Corker won the primary, then yes I would win. Now I know there are going to be a lot of conservatives voting next week who haven't even heard of me, so they don't know a real conservative is running. We have one week. I am trying to line up a couple of radio interviews over the next few days, and I know a lot of people have been taking time out of their own lives to help spread the word...and I can't express enough how much I appreciate this. If we can convince everyone we know who calls themselves a conservative to vote for me, then we can make a difference. We can at least send a message to the GOP that they abandoned us, and we don't have a party that reflects us anymore.

Voters of Tennessee deserve to be treated better than the trash we are being bombarded with in these ads. We deserve to hear ideas on real issues and to know HOW these ideas can be accomplished. I have done my best in my limited knowledge of the federal government to try and explain what I want to see done and how I would go about doing it. If we want true change, then we HAVE to break out from under the thumb of the two parties, and to send a message that money doesn't buy votes...the message does.

Will we see or hear ads this next week addressing exactly what to do about illegal immigrants? How about the NAIS? What about the SPP? How about a real stand on North Korea and Iran? I've spoken out about these issues many times. It's a shame that both party candidates stay silent.