WASHINGTON -- Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry filed a lawsuit in federal court to get his name on the Virginia primary ballot (WTOP)

And with that, the first of many salvoes, that will undoubtedly define the battle for the White House in 2012, has been fired.  Both Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich did not get enough signatures to qualify for the primary ballot in Virginia.  It turns out that Virginia has very stringent requirements for getting your name on the primary ballot.  To wit, 400 signatures from each congressional district (there are 11 in Virginia).  And, of course, the Virginia Attorney General has jumped into the mess by saying it is an "embarrassment" that Virginia has such stringent requirements (well, OK, in all honesty, he said it was an embarrassment that Newt, a resident of Northern Virginia, would not appear on the ballot.).  Most of the citizens of Virginia however do not seem to see it this way, but there you go.

If you live outside the United States, you probably look at the election process in the United States as a mess of people crawling up a pile of manure to come out on top as the cleanest of the combatants. If you live in the United States, you know that the winner is never the cleanest.

What I do not understand is this:  How can other countries conduct fair elections in less than 9 weeks while in the United States, it is almost a national pastime?  Studies have shown that the electorate is essentially burned out with the constant election process.  Yet we wonder why we keep getting these...well...less than stellar candidates running for public office, or worse, known crooks being re-elected!  It would be nice to think that come November, the political machines will be mothballed for a couple of weeks, but I am afraid that come November 7, the chaos will start up again, in both parties, for the elections in 2016.

Wake me when its over...