Changing the world

But, I'm up. Going to go shower and get some breakfast on the way to the polls. Have a book handy just in case the wait is really long. Then I'll hit Wal-Mart and after that, back to bed. I hope.

I think I figured out who and what I'm voting for, but I'll spare everyone my easy chair punditry. I will say I'm keeping my finger crossed that whoever does win doesn't fuck us over too badly.

To those of you who answered My Writer's Block today. Given it's just a normal post, people are mor than welcome to continue to comment.

To be honest, I was heartily surprised that everyone kept within bound of talking ONLY about their candidate, or at least avoiding smearing the other guy. Maybe it's just because the past few elections have left me living in a "Battleground" state, I get heartily annoyed with national politics. I know some of you criticize me for my views on occasion, but seriously, try living in Missouri or Ohio during a close presidential election and then tell me how wrong I am to be disillusioned with the process.

Seriously. While I will say the individual campaigns have more or less behaved (staying in the gutter rather than the sewer), that hasn't exactly stopped the flood of shit pouring forth from the parties backing the candidates, the independent special interest groups, etc. I can't log into my e-mail, turn on a TV, or even work without getting bombarded with this crap. I'm almost to a point where I want to move to Wyoming, since it gets a total of 3 Electoral votes and therefore gets ignored during campaign season.

I'll be honest. 8 years ago, I would have been torn between McCain and Gore. After seeing how he's run his campaign, plus his actions over the past 8 years, not so much. I just can't bring myself to someone who is either pandering or joining with the folks who want to change the US Constitution to follow the bible as they interpret it. I realize this meld happened under Rove, but I kind of miss the days wihen the Libertarians held sway over the Republicans. Now, it seems people like Palin are the new face of the party.

And as for Obama, I agree, he makes a great speech. He seems to have good ideas. The problem I keep coming back to is that he speaks like every politician I've ever heard. That is to say he can talk without actually saying anything. I took the time to read the stuff on his website, but it all is so vaguely worded as to be useless. Which I suppose vague promises easily ignored are a bit better than having the other guy spell out how he's going to screw you.

I know more than a few of my conservative friends have suggested the Dems take me for granted. This is true. Dems tend to promise us gay folks the world, then pass DOMA, and the failure to pass ENDA. However, it's hard to swallow voting for a candidate running on a conservative family values platform that's been spelled out to equate gay folks as less than citizens, worthy of if not death, then contempt. I tried explaining this to mom after her assertion that Bush didn't really mean anything when he condemned gay marriage as unholy, but...

And while we're discussing "family values", let me just state for the record why it pissed me off when it first came into play. For those who didn't know, my dad died when I was 7. That means I grew up in a single parent home for a majority of my childhood and adolescence. My brother and I both turned out of without a dad. I dare any of you to walk up to my mother and tell her she's a bad person for not finding a replacement for dad to help raise us. I dare you to walk up to her and tell her she should have quit her job to raise us. I know more than a few folks from two parent homes who turned out to be abused by one parent or another, people from two parent homes who turned out to be criminals, people who are scum of the earth. So the next time you want to start preaching about family values, kiss my ass.

And I realize this breaks my no politics vow, but I needed to vent somewhere.

And yes, Mrs. Palin's visit caused the bus to run an hour late, so I was 30 minutes late to work. She's not in office yet, and she's already negatively affecting my paycheck. I know culturalvacuum didn't agree with me on the whole "political rallies should be held in BFE", but I still think holding a rally at one of the busiest intersections in town is a stupid idea. I know they had to change the venue at the last minute, but fer crying out loud, there's a grandstand and a covered stage at the Fairgrounds. Large enough to fit the crowd, on a bus line, and NOT a major intersection.

In fact, it's one of the primary reasons I atrt to dislike just about any politician.

Her campaign rally today is about a block from my house (she's speaking at Bass Pro National HQ), making traffic a living nightmare, which in turn makes it rough for me to get the errands done I need to. Thankfully, I'm not due at work until 4, so hopefully things die down before 3 when I leave. Just as happy I don't work at either of the two stores likely to be inaccessible for the duration due to the lines of people trying to get into Bass Pro.

(And yes, I swore at Bill Clinton and W. about this issue numerous times in Ohio. I;ve come to the conclusion political rallies should be like Woodstock. Large and out in BFE.)

The gov wrote a letter to the local paper today. While I still think Matt's an idiot and remain ecstatic he's not running again and I think he's just as corrupt as anyone else in government etc...

I did have to laugh at one of the comments on the newspaper site in response to Matt claiming the St Louis paper is judging him unfairly. (Which they probably are. But he's in the same problem every other politician gets into where the crime doesn't hurt thm near as bad as the cover up.)

"Yes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch hates you. If one of their reporters saw you walking on the water at Table Rock Lake, the headline would read 'Governor Matt Blunt can't swim.'"

Edit: I should learn better than to type rants at 3AM. Edited this damn thing so many times now I may cry.

Problem is I've been up all night pondering how I should vote Tuesday. I'm sure most of you longtime readers are aware of where my sympathies lie politically (I really am a moderate, I swear. Problem being gay rights issues tend to make everyone think I'm out there with Ted Kennedy.)

So, just for fun, I'm going to put everything behind a cut and see if my trolling catches anything.

( Politics and current issues in general. )
( Hillary Clinton )
( Barack Obama )
( Mike Huckabee )
( Mitt Romney )
( John McCain )
( Trolling for Republicans )

And I'll finish this off with 2 serious things.

1) I really hate both major parties at the moment and wish to G-d there was a worthwhile candidate in the running. (And yes, I'm including Ron Paul in that statement. No that's not an endorsement of Ron Paul. Ron Paul scares the piss out of me, but thankfully, he's like Howard Dean in 2004 or Snakes on a Plane in 2006.)

2) As a corollary, I wish to G-d, Cazic, and Cthulhu the states could all do primaries/caucuses the same fucking day. The current system sucks ass. Candidates that might actually be worth voting for get eliminated before a majority of the country gets to vote for them. So fuck the system.

Something not for dittoheads

And yes I realize they lower themselves to his level, but I can't help but giggle.

Time to bite the bullet...Just signed up to help with Dr. Howard Dean's campaign.

gothic_oreo and I are gonna have some some now....(Aka, Rich is rooting for Kucinich. I think lotussilverfire leans that direction, but I could be wrong. Whereas mummie dearest watches Fox News and doesn't notice a bias.)

Visited with mom last night. Will post more on this later when I'm more awake.

While you wait, here is more proof that Politics make strange bedfellows.

[edit]
Just cause I'm tired this is freakin' amusing...

Ok, I have been sick as hell for the past few days. Been sent home early from work a few times because of it. Evidently puking phlegm on pizza isn't a good thing.

So, other than that, not much really going on. I spend most of my time in bed reading, which is good since I finally read Coraline, as well as a nifty book covering 101 topics in GLBT history. I'm still really amused by the entire section of the Lesbian Sex Wars. I imagine it wasn't all that amusing at the time, but now it seems like a really silly arguement. As explained by the book, the topic (argued mainly during the late 70's) was something along the lines of whether or not true lesbians could watch porn, talk dirty, or use any penetration.

Anyway, in case you didn't know, tomorrow is election day. As all of my teachers have pointed out at various times, if you don't vote, you lose your right to bitch about the government. And since most of the people I'm voting for are probably going to lose...I'd better go vote so I have a right to tell Governer Taft what a liar he is. Particularly when his current administration is trying to wiggle out of a judgement about school funding and he's claiming to be the education governer.

Ok, time to go to work. Everyone go vote.

This really falls under gothic_oreo's purview, but...

According to today's paper, Dubya is trying to block access to info regarding Presidential Pardons. Um, why am I suddenly having uncomfortable flashbacks to life with J. Edgar Hoover?

And also, I really need to type up a set of adenda to last night's posts, since there was a hell of a lot of conversation that I'm still processing, particularly between taocub and me, as well as a really odd conversation between gothic_oreo and me.

And since someone did ask me today IRL, The reason I'm not comfortable with the idea of forcibly getting rid of Saddam is the precident it sets. It's kind of like saying, "Hey! If you don't like another country's leader, you can go get rid of him!" I mean, would we as a country be all that appreciative if someone decided that they didn't like our president, so they thought it would be great idea to liberate us by coming in and killing him forcibly removing him from power? And I already hear the snarky comments. But you get the idea.