Tag Archives: Politics

I Haven’t cared Less about Election Day Since I Started Voting

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I voted today, but never has it felt more like a waste of time, and I honestly don’t care who wins.  Yes, I said I don’t really care who wins.

I’ve completely lost my care because I’ve realized that it doesn’t matter.  Endless hours of cable news yapping has been spent on what’s going to happen tonight and how its going to impact the government.  Let me sum it up for you, one party is going to have more seats than the other and the only difference between one or the other is the pace at which Congress is going to accomplish nothing.

One party has a group of dithering fools for leadership and the other only cares about stopping the current administration from doing anything.

Bottom line, very, very little will be different tomorrow.  With my vote today I just bought myself another couple of years to complain about how much our politics is hurting our country.

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The Sad State of Our Country

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It’s things like this Slate article that have made me completely disenchanted and inclined to weep for the future of this country.  Love him or hate him, how can you still have a complete lack of understanding about some fundamental characteristics of the leader of your country?  And I’m not sure which is worse, the Republicans who don’t know that Obama isn’t a Muslim or the Democrats that haven’t figured it out.  Yeah, I’m going to go with Democrats.

HE’S THE LEADER OF YOUR PARTY AND YOU DON’T KNOW SOMETHING REALLY FUNDAMENTAL ABOUT HIM.  REALLY?

On top of that, the numbers are trending in the wrong direction.  Instead of people getting a more accurate understanding, a greater percentage of people are getting wrong as time goes on.

Sad.  Just sad.

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Words of Reason?

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I think I’ve noted several times over the last handful of months that I was spent on the landfill that our public political discourse has become.  The partisanship has gotten to a point where it sounds like grade school kids calling each other names on the playground, which we all know accomplishes absolutely nothing.

This article probably sums up what I’ve been thinking and feeling, but haven’t been articulate enough to express in a way that would make sense.  Usually, when I link to opinion pieces I try to give a little bit of a disclaimer on the author and their partisan leanings.  I did a quick look, but couldn’t figure out what John Avalon’s leanings are or what the deal with the Daily Beast is.  Read the article and see if it hits home.

I pulled two paragraphs from the article, which  are actually direct quotes from Obama’s speech that I think say it all very concisely.

“We can’t expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down. You can disagree with a certain policy without demonizing the person who espouses it. You can question somebody’s views and their judgment without questioning their motives or their patriotism. Throwing around phrases like ‘socialists’ and ‘Soviet-style takeover’ and ‘fascist’ and ‘right-wing nut’ — that may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government, our political opponents, to authoritarian, even murderous regimes.

“Now, we’ve seen this kind of politics in the past. It’s been practiced by both fringes of the ideological spectrum, by the left and the right, since our nation’s birth. But it’s starting to creep into the center of our discourse. … The problem is that this kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric closes the door to the possibility of compromise. It undermines democratic deliberation. … It makes it nearly impossible for people who have legitimate but bridgeable differences to sit down at the same table and hash things out. It robs us of a rational and serious debate, the one we need to have about the very real and very big challenges facing this nation. It coarsens our culture, and at its worst, it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response.”

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Cheney on CNN

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I’m sitting in the airport waiting to fly back to DC watching Dick Cheney being interviewed about Obama’s policies on CNN and I’m wondering why. Its not like what he is going to say is going to be a shock to anyone. You can sum up what he’ll say as simply as “Whatever that Obama guy wants to do is bad.”

Its as worthwhile as having Nancy Pelosi come on and ask her about Bush policies. Every one of her responses would essentially be, “He’s bad and so are his policies. I’m not really thinking about what the policies are, but if Bush wanted it, it has to be bad.”

Now I might be exaggerating a little, but does anyone really care what these uber-partisan people have to say about policies from the opposition. Maybe you do care and you’re game for that, but it seems like a huge waste of time to me. If you’re going to trot someone out on TV, at least give me three seconds of suspense where I don’t know what they’re going to say in response to a question before the question is finished being asked.

Then again, I’m probably asking too much since there aren’t enough of those people to go around.

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Rep. Tim Mahoney is an Idiot

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Things like this are the reason that I don’t expect to be any happier with my government when the next election comes around.  We expect our politicians to be pretty much full of crap, but when you have one that takes it to the next level of audacity, you have to stand up and take notice.

The article that I linked to is a little old now and more information has surfaced that doesn’t help Mahoney’s cause, but the gist of it is there.  Basically, Rep. Mahoney had an affair with a woman on his staff and then paid her $121,000 to keep her quiet after he fired her.  That alone is bad enough, but

“Mahoney himself was elected in 2006 after a sex scandal involving inappropriate communications between underage congressional pages and former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.). Mahoney ran on a campaign to restore moral dignity to the office.”

Seriously?  You’re going to bring moral dignity back to the office by having, what you admit to be, multiple affairs.  Anyone that has ever discussed fidelity with me knows without a doubt that cheating is something I can’t stand.  Even when I watch movies or TV shows, I actually get angry and agitated.  So the cheating is bad enough, but then you’re going to be a colossal, hypocritical ass and claim that you have some kind of moral authority to bring respect back to an office.  That’s just insulting.

Then there’s this great quote from Politico via CBS:

“I would have come forward earlier but making sure my family is ok is far more important than any political career,” Mahoney said. ”I have not violated my oath of office, nor have I violated any laws, and I consider this to be a private matter.”

First, he wouldn’t have come forward at all if he could have gotten away with it.  Then, I’m insulted again that he claims that his family is priority number one.  If it really was, he wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.  He lied about his family values before to gain political advantage, why should anyone believe him now?  Then on top of that, he almost qualifies his guilt by arguing that he didn’t violate his oath of office or any laws so its really not that big a deal or of public concern.  Again, if he hadn’t made his moral compass a central plank of his platform, it wouldn’t be as much of a public issue, but he did and so it is.

The silver lining of this whole thing is that he was found out for what he really is and that he won’t be adding his shovel of dirt to politics on any significant scale any more.  In the mixed feelings category, I’m truly sorry for his wife and what she’s having to endure by having the breaking of her marriage play out in front of the country, but I’m glad that a political wife that got cheated on isn’t hesitating to get a divorce.  I just hope that she can get through this quickly and move on with her life.

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A Couple Quick Thoughts on the Debate

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You can go to any number of news websites for super, in-depth analysis so I’m just going to give a few quick impressions I had from the debate.

I’m not sure why everyone keeps saying that McCain is so good in townhall style forums.  He seemed as awkward as he always looks to me.  I thought Obama was completely equal to him in the townhall setting.

If I was playing a drinking game where you had to take a drink every time McCain said “my friend” I would have been hammered by the end of the debate.

McCain is missing something from his funny.  I didn’t follow his attempts at cracking jokes and it was sort of awkward when he laughed after he made them and no one else was really laughing.  Some of his zinger attempts also made him look a little petulant.

I thought Obama was more articulate in explaining his viewpoint and laying out what plans he had.  Problem with that was when he dodged a simple direct question, which he number a number of times, there was absolutely no mistaking that he was completely dodging the question.  I’m not sure it could have been more obvious.  He might as well have said, “that’s a great question, but I’m not going to answer it b/c its too hard or it puts me in a situation that I don’t want to be in.”

Lastly, I don’t understand how McCain’s plan to have the government buy up all the bad mortgages would work.  How is that going to get paid for, and how will they get paid off?

Bottom line, I think they were relatively equal on substance, but Obama was better on style.  Though substance should matter more, style plays a huge part in presidential politics.

Update:  So I asked the McCain housing plan question too soon.  Listening to NPR on the way home from work, apparently the outline of the plan is to take some of the bailout money that was just passed to pay for the plan.  I don’t remember all of the details, but it didn’t seem near as far fetched when it was explained a little more thoroughly.

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