Hopeless Geek

The end of this election ran like the end of a really good movie, only it was real. Think about it:

A black community organizer from Chicago decides to run for state office to make the changes he can’t on the ground. He wins and spends some time in office getting to know the system and making himself known. After some time, he runs for the Senate and wins. Again, he makes friends and makes himself known.

Then he gives one unlikely speech at the DNC and the world starts to really pay attention to him. The next election cycle, on a cold Chicago morning, he stands before a small crowd and announces his candidacy for president. He runs a tough race against all manner of qualified people, narrowing it down to the biggest name in the party as his opponent. Through persistence, an even tone, and the support of the people he manages to win the nomination, and eventually the support of that opponent.

On to the main race, the other side chose a man that riles up the crazy people, the religious people, the gun people, and the intolerant people. The opponent pulls out all the stops, stoops to all the lows in an attempt to undermine Our Hero’s support. He presses on, talking about hope and change, about the future.

The days before the election, the polls are close and there’s the looming threat of the old, crazy man winning. People showed up in epic numbers across America to vote early and the numbers look good. Then he gets a call: his grandmother is dying. He leaves the campaign in its final moments to travel to her and be at her side one last time. She dies the day before she could see the election, but she managed to get her vote in!

The day of the election. People are still showing up in numbers that amaze the media. Everyone is shocked that the turnout is this large, but the exit polls are wonky. Some show Obama, some have surprising McCain numbers. It’s iffy. Then the actual counts start to roll in, and Obama wins Ohio and Pennsylvania. He’s won.

I’ll get it out of the way early on: I’m pro-life. I’m not just “standard” pro-life, I’m the crazy kind that starts with the zygote and ends when worms have had their fill of your fleshy container. Yep, I’m That Guy™. Don’t bother trying to argue with me, either. I’ve made the decision long ago and I’m sticking with it. I’ve thought about it, I’ve pondered it long and hard, and I’m of the opinion that life is immeasurably valuable and it’s not something we can ethically take from another without an extremely good reason (ie. protecting my own life).

And yet, I voted for Barack Obama.

Why? Abortion and euthanasia are not an issue in this election at all. Consider, Bush is as overtly pro-life as they come and all he managed to legislate was a ban on a specific method of carrying out a partial-birth abortion. He didn’t and couldn’t get the actual act of a PBA outlawed, he could only get one method of it outlawed. Previously, Clinton had signed a ban on the act of PBAs but a federal court struck it down. Bush had no way of getting around that, so those involved chose to attack one of the procedures instead.

Eight years in office with both a Republican and Democratic Congress and that’s all the movement on the issue that happened. That’s it. Look at what we had to endure as a society to make that small move. Look at the lives we lost compared to those that could be saved by that measure. No one who is remotely pro-life can argue that it was in any way worth it.

The best statistics I can find show 17K PBAs a year in the US, but 190K lives lost (US, allies, and Iraqi) during the Iraq fiasco. As the Bush ban can’t stop PBAs completely, we can’t even say the number of PBAs will go down as a result of this one movement on the issue. Yet, people are still dying overseas in numbers that dwarf those from this issue.

Pro-life is all life. Adults count, too. This war is the price we’re paying for people voting solely on this issue.

Pay attention: McCain can still win it.

Why? The undecideds. Any time you have polling ratios for two major parties and there’s more than 6% missing from the sum of the percentages, the undecided votes are sleeping in the results and could easily screw things up.

As of today, that shows Obama at 51% and McCain at 43.4%, 1.7% to Barr, 2% to Nader with 4.5% undecided (rounding brings that over 100%). If that 4.5% undecided goes to McCain then we have McCain at 47.9%. If the Nader voters join in, he’s at 49.9%. (The Barr voters have likely solidified, being crazy Libertarians to begin with. )

We know from experience that a little voter caging and a small number of “problems” with voting machines (which always seem to vote Republican, curiously) can easily toss the vote by 2%. McCain would then have the popular vote.

However, what matters is the Electoral College, correct? So, what scenario gives McCain a victory?

I’ve noticed recently that when I hear Sarah Palin’s voice on the TV or radio that I get tense and angry and feel like breaking something. After some days of this, and avoiding any exposure, I wondered what it was that was making me react this way. So I sat through a “speech” of hers and thought about it (they’re never really speeches, they’re extended vocal wanderings through a forest of issues she has only a fleeting familiarity with).

I realized that I really just want to punch her. I want her to say something stupid and then I want to walk up and deck her in the face.

Why? She’s a bitch.

The problem with listening to Palin talk is that anyone with a reasonable mind is offended about every ten to twenty seconds by something either blatantly false, needlessly inciting, or just plain cocky.

Let’s take just one snippet from an October 6th rally in Clearwater, Florida (yes, the Scientology town) and examine it.

You know, in this campaign, in this election, I think the phoniest claim in a campaign that’s been full of them, is that Barack Obama is going to cut your taxes?

Phony claim? There’s a published plan that will cut the taxes of everyone making less than $250K a year. It’s out there. It’s agreed-upon.

I guess if the majority of your support comes from people making over $250K a year, this is a big issue for you. The rest of us, however, have some strong opinions about McCain’s “relief” plan that targets those making over $100K with more tax cuts than those making up the bulk of the payments.

I mean, think about it. He’s built his whole career on doling out tax money, first as a Chicago politician, and then raising taxes as a senator.

New taxes come in as old taxes are removed. Every senator has voted to raise taxes at one point or another. It’s how things are funded. John McCain has voted to raise taxes several times himself.

I don’t want to make anyone’s head explode. I honestly read most of comments above, and alot of what is being said is strange and surreal to me.

What is wrong with socialism?

I live in a socialist country and life here is safe, happy and free.

A comment on Careful, America

Preachin’ to the choir. Liberal thinking is progressive, it moves people into the now and the future. Socialist policies are just that: social, for the people. Done right, they’re great things.

However, in America there’s a huge number of idiots that have been brainwashed by the corporations that “liberalism” and “socialism” would destroy (drugs, healthcare, military-industrial complex, farming and food processing, etc.). They’ve been made to believe that “them liberals” want to take their money away when they’re already poor (which is curious, because they also say it’s a “welfare state” that’s giving money … to the poor — and they believe them). They tell the masses that “socialism” is the opposite of “capitalism” and it would destroy all that is great about American free enterprise. They harp on about how new ideas and progress will ruin this old land and its traditions and make everyone abort every first child because they can, or something equally silly and fatalistic.

Basically, the people that have the most to lose have convinced those with overactive imaginations and underfunded educations to believe that they’re the heroes protecting them from a greater evil, and a vote for them is a “vote for America”. The idiots buy it, hook and sinker and in droves. Then, realizing the stupidity of the masses, they “energize” them with any “immoral” scandal the other side has, showing them what “horrible people” they are, then they ask for “Christian forgiveness” when their own members do the same thing. Having successfully hooked them on their supposed moral foundation, they get into the churches and do the same thing: we’re moral, they’re not! They take on party platforms that are impossible to actually legislate and call them a matter of morality, again saying the other side has none.

It was really just too obvious.