Playing in the background: The soporific sounds of the dryer
Meters swum today: None. Did 1800 yesterday tho.
Sarah Palin wants to start World War Three. That's why she wants to be Vice President. Her church pastor thinks it's the End of Days and she 's convinced God told her to poison McCain as soon as she gets to the White House and then launch nuclear attacks against just basically everybody. Then as the fires burn, God and Satan will come down here and duke it out for the remaining souls. Says so in the Bible. She thinks its her destiny. So just remember, voting for McCain is voting for a religious psychotic with her finger on the trigger. If you want humankind to survive the next four years, vote for Obama. Paid for by Democrats for the Hell of It.
Not that this is true, of course. I made it up. Well, it could be, but that would be an amazing coincidence, even for me. And are Democrats for the Hell of It paying for this ad? Again, that would be an amazing coincidence. I made them up too. I guess I could make up a check from them, but it would bounce. Imaginarily speaking, I mean.
This whole election campaign people have been making stuff up about the candidates. Stuff with no basis in fact. Most of 'em have been about Obama, so I used Sarah Palin as my bad example. Here's some more: Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen. (Well, actually he is; he was born in Hawaii.) Sarah Palin wants Alaska to secede from the United States. (She spoke at a couple of meetings of some group called Alaska First!, from which I guess you can extrapolate the rest.) Barack Obama is a terrorist and a closet Muslim who will institute immediate Sharia in the United States. (I'm not sure where they came up with that one, but let's think about it for a second - women the property of their male relatives, birth control and abortion illegal, homosexuals taken out and shot, public religiosity compelled by law - why would that be so bad? Isn't that what the Radical Right has been demanding for years now? Oh, wait, wrong God. Silly me.)
The problem with all this stuff, as amusing as it is for someone who can't believe a word of it, is that there are people out there who will believe it and will vote accordingly. The other problem is, the more nonfacts get thrown around in a campaign, the more real, troubling facts get ignored. Here's some real, troubling facts, with links to the major news organizations who carried the stories with video where possible:
Sarah Palin's kids have frequently traveled on Alaska's dime. This may not be illegal according to the state of Alaska but it does raise ethical questions. Barack Obama's former pastor has made some public statements that many people (including me) find disturbing. A guy doesn't have to agree with everything his pastor says (my last Lutheran pastor frequently refered to certain city officials as "assholes", which, however true, is a bit disrespectful) but enough of this stuff and folks start to wonder why he didn't break with that church sooner. Joe Biden has made many idiotic statements in public - examples abound but I think my favorite is "You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.... I'm not joking." And John McCain, who claims to be a "maverick" and has repeatedly stated "I am not Bush", voted in favor of Bush's policies 90-95% of the time.
Not everyone will agree with me on this point, but at the end of the day, I think we have four qualified people running for high office. John McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are all U.S. Senators and honorable men. Sarah Palin is the governor of the largest U.S. state, which also may have more oil reserves than Texas and North Dakota combined. You may not agree with their politics, but none of them are fools. We could do (and have done) a lot worse.
So what I'm sayin' here is, don't not-vote for Sarah Palin because the State of Alaska flew her kids around. Don't vote for her because you don't like her policies, her face, her view of library books, her vision of an all-white, all-rich America or the fact that she shot Bullwinkle (okay, it wasn't really Bullwinkle). Don't vote for her because you've thought about it for five seconds, not because some AM radio host tells you not to vote for her. I'm sayin' if you hear something like, "Sarah Palin wants to start World War Three," you might wanna check it out before you check the ballot box. And you might wanna also not-vote for her because she's not running for president; John McCain is. In case you didn't know that.
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2 comments:
I noted that a poll the other day discovered that 23% of Texans think Obama is a Muslim.
Of course, probably 20-30% of Texans think Obama is some kind of sandwich, so I don't worry too much about it.
I spoke at a conference on Latin American Energy in Dallas back in the 1980s. The same hotel was simultaneously sponsoring a conference for Supercuts female hairdressers (are there any male SUpercuts hairdressers?). So, we're talking 1) Texas, 2) Hairdressers, and 3) the 1980s. You have never seen such Big Hair. My theory is that many of these people still wear their hair that way, and they can't get a phine close enough to their ears to hear correctly what a pollster is asking.
Hi David!
You might be right about that, actually. I remember a recent poll that found some ridiculously high percentage of Texans believe that men and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time (about 6,000 years ago, when gas was only $1.49 a gallon) and that creation explains diversity of species better than evolution. Maybe they thought they were being asked, "Have you ever seen an episode of 'The Flintstones'?" and "What's better for breakfast, grits or biscuits and gravy?" I also think it's interesting that in all those polls on what religion people are, you never see any Buddhists. Is this because there are no Buddhists, or because Buddhists do not answer surveys?
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