How silly have Obama, Romney, and United States politics become with the 2012 election?

Unbelievable.  With all this Big Bird talk and mudslinging United States politics have become downright silly.  We seem to have a fascination with headlines and soundbites, and we're letting them do the thinking for us.  And we seem to be forgetting basic high school civics lessons.

It is so easy to take headlines, soundbites, and one-liners and run with them.  To focus on them, to ignore the bigger picture.  Take the PBS funding comment which has provided for a rather large amount of comic relief since the first presidential debate.  This has distracted from the bigger issue at hand: what should really be cut when balancing the federal budget?  I'd like to think that I summed it up nicely with this picture..

This piece from the International Business Times seems to sum things up pretty nicely as well.

"What some may overlook about Romney vs. Big Bird is that the $445 million the government would save is peanuts when it comes to the national debt. The $445 million is a start, but it’s less than 1/100th of a percent of the $3.5 trillion federal budget. PBS funding pales in comparison to the $1 trillion-plus deficit, according to Business Insider."

Remember what I started to say about high school civics?  Here's what I mean.  It is so annoying to constantly hear people blame any given President for budget woes, economic failure, bad policy, status quo, you name it.  Yes, the President of the United States is probably the most powerful person in the world, but even this individual has limits.  There's this thing called Congress which consists of over 500 individuals and -- wait for it folks -- tax laws, budgets, government spending all goes through this body.  Congressional elections are far more important than Presidential elections, but not as glamorous, and mathematically speaking in order to create change you really need to so something about the runamok Congress.

So the next time that you hear "we need to cut programs such as PBS from the federal budget," "how's that hope and change working for you," and silly one-liners from all sides think about it folks.  Really, really, think about it.