Thursday - October 09, 2008

obama mama 

With the election less than a month away, everyone's talking about it - Who are you voting for?  

Maybe Ralph... I'm undecided.

However, I have definitely decided against McCain.  His increasing instability and geezerness frighten me, and his running mate scares me even more.  There, said it.  I'm totally outed now and I feel so much better.

I usually end up voting independent because I can never find enough common ground with any mainstream candidate.   They always seem barely distinguishable, and I don't mean that in a good way.

This campaign has shaped up so surprisingly different, I'm mesmerized!  And yet, I've been trying to maintain my stubborn independence with an objective approach.

Over coffee I'll skim the Asbury Park Press, the Drudge headlines, and maybe Google news to take the campaign's pulse each morning.

Later, I'll leave the car radio on the Imus station (which DH switches on the occasional morning he uses my car).  That means I get to hear lots of radical right ranting like the Rush guy.  

Then, in the evening, I'll watch the Daily Show and Colbert Report from the previous night.  Well, you know that covers both the left and right.  (Remember - I teach facing the class, so my right can be your left if necessary, much like Steven Colbert, hehe.)  

Finally, DH has taken to postponing his cigar and spending an extra half hour or more on the couch playing Presto Change-O Reality.  (Which explains why I don't make it over here as often lately!)  

What is "Presto Change-O Reality"?  Easy game - all you need is a T.V. with pause and switch buttons on the remote.  Set one channel to MSNBC and the other one to Fox news.  It's great fun, if you've got the stomach for it.  Alternate realities are not for sissies.

I'm already disgusted how the 24 hour news cycle has diffused our focus with so much hype and hogwash - less talk, more facts please!  Now I'm shocked by the bias in the election coverage.  Everyone seems to just find people who support their views and interview them to prove their own point.  

Fox is the absolute worst (best?) at this, so bad that the Daily Show did a juxtapostion of Sean Hannity's "interview" of Sarah Palin with an infomercial and you could barely tell the difference!  It wasn't an intelligent conversation, it was a well scripted sales pitch.  Ironically, the video clip of this parody is no longer available.... hmmm.

I'm not going to go on about Sarah... she's totally not worth the effort.  But I really feel bad for McCain.  I used to like him, really I did.  He seems to have sold his soul for his dream, and now other people are pulling the strings for him.   

Matt Taibbi asserts that the puppeteer is bad guy Karl Rove.  What's worse, is Matt's conclusion as to what it all means:

The reason Rove continues to survive is the same reason that Johnnie Cochran was called a genius for keeping a double-murderer on the golf course — because this generation of Americans has become so steeped in greed and social Darwinism that it can no longer distinguish between cheating and achieving, between enterprise and crime, and can't bring itself to criticize winners any more than it knows how to be nice to losers. He survives because an increasing number of Americans secretly agree with Rove's vision of rules, laws and "the truth" as quaint, faintly embarrassing rituals that only a sucker would let hold him back.

First witness, AIG.

When we are being preached to about our moral void in Rolling Stone magazine, well, I think it's seriously time for a change.  And I believe that the change has to come from someone with a calm, commanding demeanor, a keen, inquiring intellect and a proven passion for truth and justice.  

So, you might say, as Michelle put it, "I'm an Obama Mama."