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Dear NPR,

Thanks for another episode of "guess who has more money!" I have been troubling myself with the pesky questions of who has a viable strategy to get us out of Iraq and start mending all the fences we've burned, who will take universal healthcare seriously, who will hold corporate polluters accountable, who will restore our civil liberties, release the "enemy combatants" (or at least give them a trial), give our teachers back the ability to teach evolution and sex-ed... I have been worrying over all these choices, choices, choices and voila! It seems they've been narrowed down.

I was concerned that I still had 384 days to choose between Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Stephen Colbert, Christopher Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Don J. Grundmann, Bryan Malatesta, Diane Beall Templin, Alan Keyes, Jim Gilchrist, Jerome Cors, Jared Ball, Elaine Brown, Jesse Johnson, Jerry Kann, Kent Mesplay, Kat Swift, Daniel Imperato, Bob Jackson, Mike Jingozian, Steve Kubby, Alden Link, George Phillies, Wayne Allyn Root, Christine Smith, Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, Alan Keyes, John McCain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Tom Tancredo, and Fred Thompson.

And wow, that's a lot of choices! When it comes to soy milk, I'm happy to have 39 options, but 39 presidential candidates? That's just crazy. Apparently all we need to know is who has more money. I've never actually given to a campaign myself, and I don't know anybody else who does either, but somewhere somebody is coughing up cash for their favorite and that's good enough for me.

I'm glad NPR doesn't bother with an analysis of where the money comes from -- corporations vs. individuals, drug companies and oil executives, tree-huggers and the ACLU. It's just too hard to try to stay informed, and I'd rather my news source do the hard thinking for me. Whew. Thanks, NPR!