BOTH PARTIES have told us of the "clear choice" we face on Nov. 6. After watching parts of each of their conventions, and considering the events of the past four years, I don't really see how there is any choice at all.

I checked in with the Republicans on "Paul Ryan Night," and got a pretty good summary of what the GOP is all about. Rep. Ryan, the vice presidential candidate, was hurling his tired platitudes about how we're spending money we don't have. Then the camera panned the crowd, and I swear I saw not one person of color.

I'm thinking too many of the delegates believe they know better how to run your life than you do. They may be a representative cross section of the Republican Party, but not of America.

The next night I listened to as much of presidential nominee Mitt Romney as I could stomach. He expressed himself well, came across as a decent human being, and proved himself a cure for insomnia. He referred to the United States as the richest nation in the world, and I wondered, well, which is it, spending money we don't have, or the richest nation in the world?

There we have the GOP conundrum. It's the party that's big on establishing an economic climate that benefits the wealthy while setting up a tax structure that ensures their wealth will be protected. The party then stands in the way of programs that benefit the poor and middle class with the excuse that we have no money to pay for them. Our debt grows because we choose not to pay on it.

One need look no further than the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It bottomed out at 6,626.94 on March 6, 2009, a month and a half after President Obama took office, and has taken a bumpy road to recovery ever since. As I write this the Dow stands at 13,352.73, just 800 points shy of its all-time high of 14,164.53 on Oct. 9, 2007.

In October 2007, unemployment stood at 4.7 percent. The August 2012 figure was 8.1 percent.