Politics

Okay, well… not so much “Yay!”

I’ve been on the fence about who to vote for in this election. I want out of Iraq, which McCain won’t do and Obama says he will. I don’t want an overtly religious president, which Obama definately is and McCain is not. Obama seems all about fluff talk while McCain seems to give more spin talk. McCain seems like an old-school, tow-the-line, Washington insider politician and Obama seems like a smiling used car salesman who’s going to take your money and send you off in a run down beater with ripped vinyl seats.

So I heard that McCain picked Palin for his running mate and did some reading about her… anything from mainstream news site articles to Wikipedia. She seems pretty straightforward (other than some ethics investigation or somesuch, but what politician isn’t guilty of some kind of ethics impropriety?)… classic Republican fit-the-mold type.

Then I read that she had advocated teaching creationism along with evolution in high school, which immediately disqualified her from my ever considering supporting her role as a government official. However, that isn’t really the whole story. She’s not, evidently, some sort of hard-core creationist pushing it down the throats of school boards. She followed up her creationism support statement a day later by saying that it doesn’t have to be part of the curriculum, but if debate about it comes up, it shouldn’t be disallowed

As Charles of Little Green Footballs said, “Looks like Palin made an off-the-cuff statement during a debate on a hot topic, didn’t really expect the criticism she’d get, and then softened her position considerably in a follow-up interview.”

So now I’m wavering again.  Perhaps she is supportive of creationism, but just wanted to avoid the uproar or perhaps she did simply make an off-the-cuff and uninformed statement. Either thing is pretty bad in my book, but I’ll have to dig into her biographical information a little more before I disavow her completely.

So a lot of people are speculating about whether Hillary will end up being Obama’s Vice-Presidential running mate and they’re calling it the “Dream Ticket.” I was somewhat ambivalent about it until today when I heard that John Edwards threw his support behind Obama. Then I started thinking that what I’d really like to see is a ticket with Barack Obama and John Edwards. I think that would be a ticket that would easily defeat McCain and would toss a whole lot of “change” into the system… at least philosophically and rhetorically. Whether anything would actually change is another matter, but those two gentlemen would be able to pull in votes from pretty much every demographic that exists (other than right-wing Bush minion/acolytes).

I’m not sure if I really like their proposed policies, but I’m thinking that they’d take the country in a direction almost a polar opposite from where it’s been going and that would definately be a good thing… at least for awhile… until we reach some sort of ideological center point again.

Today is was announced that Fidel Castro was stepping down and would not seek another term as Cuba’s leader. His brother Raoul will most likely be his successor since he’s held provisional power for a year and a half now. I heard a brief interview with one of his ex-cabinet members (I assume it was ex, but I can’t find the story at the moment) who described Castro in the following way (this is paraphrased): “When he had a project in mind, it didn’t matter what the arguments were against it or what the evidence was against it, he held to his convictions about that project.”

I immediately thought they were talking about George W. Bush and did a double-take. I suppose these two guys have similar philosophies.

Now some would say that not “holding to your convictions” is “flip-flopping” and is a bad thing. In some cases, this is no doubt true. However, those same people usually will call a position change “flip-flopping” even if the change is a result of new contradictory information becoming available. In a situation where new information is considered, a change of position is called “being rational.” Anyone who does not take new information or new evidence or new ideas into consideration is a very dangerous individual to have in charge of a country and anyone who relies on the non-rational concepts of “faith” or (more scarily) “dogma” in their decision-making process is unfit for any type of leadership position (dogma-based organizations excluded).

A “rational” president is definitely something that this country desperately needs… especially now. Eight years without rationality is long enough. Just ask Cubans.

I’m a registered independant voter so I don’t get to vote in the primaries. I only get to pick between the candidates pre-chosen by the Democratic and Republican parties. That doesn’t bother me much since I usually don’t care for either one and have to simply pick the lesser of two evils.

So for the 2008 election, it looks like I’ll get to pick between a right-wing religious conservative candidate or a left-wing tax-and-spend liberal candidate. There really don’t seem to be many (if any) candidates who are moderate.

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With his October 3rd veto of the bipartisan SCHIP bill, President Bush has sent a pretty clear message that lower-income families should really fend for themselves when it comes to insuring their children. He’ll say otherwise, but since his speeches on the subject seem to indicate a lack of understanding about the program’s operation, he’s either ignorant (or stupid, but we won’t go there at the moment), or lying and actually does hate poor kids.

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In reference to the Republican support for the president’s Iraq strategy not holding out all that much longer, Representative Thomas M. Davis III (Republican – Va.) said the following…

The key for everybody is to try to find a way to declare victory and get out of there.

So in essence, what he’s saying is that, in order to get out of Iraq, we need to find a way to save face and claim that it’s a victory. We don’t need to actually have a victory… just be able to spin it that way.

I think that’s possibly the pinnacle of self-centered absurdity. It seems the Bush administration (and its supporters) are willing to continue to sacrifice lives in order to “save face” and not harm Bush’s evidently fragile ego. Based on Davis’s comment, they’re not staying there to help Iraq or to bring stability to the region (since it’s obvious that the opposite has happened), but they’re staying there so that they don’t have to say “Oops.”

Link to the MSNBC article here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18586983/