October 29th, 2008 
Seth I’ve been RELATIVELY quiet about the election process, not wanting to alienate any of my readers, but no matter where you stand politically, it’d be pretty hard to deny that Obama’s campaign is buying like crazy. Hell, I just learned that his infomercial this week will pre-empt the World Series pre-game show.
If you’re the opposition, I’d think now would be the time to play up the ‘rock star’ angle like never before.
The amount of money he’s spent bombarding my mailbox with high-quality, full-color, glossy trashcan lining ALONE has to be in the millions. Regardless of how you feel about his ability, or lack thereof, to lead this country, I’m already nervous about his spending practices.
This, of course, is the same money he stated he wasn’t going to take. Again, I’m not going to get into a he-said/he-said about lies and stuff. Just the one specifically relevant to my point. Therefore, if your point is to deflect with some attack on the opposition, it won’t matter. For all this post cares, he could be out slapping babies and punching senior citizens in the stomach. I’m talking about Obama. Here he is, explaining why he wasn’t going to take public financing (spoiler: it’s because he USED to think it was corrupt and broken)
This is the kind of stuff that scares the hell out of me. Not because a politician lied. All politicians flip-flop, sometimes justifiably. If their constituency doesn’t like their position, I feel they MUST change their position.
This isn’t that. This is a political chess-move decision that didn’t work out for him, so he 180’ed. The exact same practices that he’s personally calling out John McCain’s campaign of doing, he’s now doing.
If you vote for him because you understand and like his presidential agenda, then perfect. That’s what the election, a democracy, is all about.
However, if you’re voting for him because you watched his paid-for TV shows, high-gloss print ads, video game advertising, because he’s a smooth talker, because Ron Howard likes him, because ABC, NBC, CNN, like him, etc., then buckle up, nation… we could be in for a very bumpy ride.
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Don’t forget Lindsay Lohan. She totally rocks the Obama vote.
Just wanted to share a comment I sent to my sister’s site but may not get published. It may not make your site either, and that doesn’t bother me, but at least you have a chance to see it, and I can share my feelings and thoughts this morning with you:
This comment may be buried way down on your blog now, but I wanted to say thank you to Indiana and Vanderburgh county for going blue yesterday. I’m so proud of my home state and home town for it’s vote of decency over personal attack, of peace over war, of intelligence over a belief that Adam and Eve rode around on dinosaurs just 6,000 years ago.
What will it be like to have a smart president? Science, banished for eight years, will return. Imagine supporting our country’s greatest minds as they seek to cure illness, discover new forms of energy, and work to save the planet. We may, just possibly, also see a time of refreshing openness, enlightenment and creativity.
Thank you Evansville, thank you Indiana, and thank you America for making anything possible. Anything is possible! We can wrestle our economy out of the hands of the reckless rich and return it to the people. Anything is possible! Every citizen can be guaranteed health care. Anything is possible! We can stop melting the polar ice caps. Anything is possible! Those who have committed war crimes will be brought to justice. Anything is possible.
Thank you for seconding my point.
Let me back up. One of the many perks of running your own website is that you are not obligated to publish and host propaganda for anyone you don’t support or believe in.
That being said, this one is especially illustrative to me. The indoctrination this campaign has spread amongst its followers is record-setting.
You literally chanted catch-phrases in a WRITTEN post. “Anything is possible”? Seriously? I guess it’s better than “Yes, we can”.
Anyway, I left this up, so it could be in the public record, and in four years, I can send it back to you. Then we can discuss the points you weaved into your conditioned responses.
Get back to me in 2012, and let me know about the status of:
-curing illness
-new forms of energy
-planet-saving
-socialist economics
-socialist healthcare
-polar ice caps
-war crime punishment
Don’t get me wrong. Some of this stuff I’d like to see, too (Not the socialist stuff, obviously. I enjoy freedom & choice). I just don’t see your guy actually doing it.
That’s not to say that I think McCain could do it, either. I think some of them are pie-in-the-sky type ideals. Perhaps I’m a bit more realistic to think that the magical promises of a guy who’s presidential knowledge matches my surgical abilities JUST MIGHT not come true.
Going back to the point of my post, this election has been MASTERFULLY crafted to give people the illusion that this guy can do the things his campaign is saying, via Twitter, YouTube (as exampled above, in what’s hopefully not a PATTERN of lying, and instead a one-time “convenience lie”)
I’d be happy to be proven wrong on this in a few years… trust me. But with this bizarre of a start, and he’s not even in office yet, I’m not holding my breath.
The “Anything is Possible” refrain comes from Michael Moore’s message today, not mine.
But I do have faith in “this guy”. By the way are you afraid to say his name? He’s not Voldemort. You referred to him 4 times as: “your guy”, “a guy”, “this guy”, and “he”. Sounds alot like McCain’s “that one”.
Speaking of catch phrases, how about “Country First”? Well no shit, country comes first. It comes first for all of us responsible enough to wait in line for hours to cast our ballot. Just because McCain puts it on banners and posters doesn’t mean he’s the candidate who own the platform of considering his country first. We all do.
Anyway, I hope McCain’s campaign and Obama’s victory haven’t been too devisive. I’m certain that with either “guy” we would be better off than we have been with GWB. With Obama though we have a chance for real change, as Mr. Moore said, “It’s been an inexcusable 44 years since a Democrat running for president has received even just 51% of the vote. That’s because most Americans haven’t really liked the Democrats. They see them as rarely having the guts to get the job done or stand up for the working people they say they support. Well, here’s their chance. It has been handed to them, via the voting public, in the form of a man who is not a party hack, not a set-for-life Beltway bureaucrat. Will he now become one of them, or will he force them to be more like him? We pray for the latter.”
Well, that makes it better… It’s from a left-wing, opportunistic, attention-whore MOCKUMENTARY MAKER…
As for your choice of how I chose to refer to him, that’s a clever smoke & mirrors misdirection as to the points I was making. However: my site, my pronouns.
Obama, I can take. He’s just a par-for-the-course politician. Michael Moore, however, I’m loathe to leave up on my own personal, bought & paid for site. However, his last point sort of paraphrases my sentiment in my initial response, which was, “I’d be happy to be proven wrong” with my own addendum of “not bloody likely”.
You’re still taking pot-shots at McCain and his camp, after the election is over, AND though I’ve not ever really made a point to back him. Cute distraction, but not really relevant.
Look, we know you’ve won, now’s your chance to put his ACTION where his money and mouth have been throughout this campaign. 48% of Americans can’t wait to see it.
What I hope for is less of these crutches.. the rhetoric, the Bush-slamming, the catch-phrases, (Obama’s or tag-alongs), and actually do something.
(My personal favorite prediction, BTW, is the war criminals being brought to justice.. because as we all know, when you’re looking for strong military leadership, you go to the Democrats.)
I don’t think you realize who the war criminals are. The war criminals are Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the Bush cabinet and Pentagon execs who lied to get us into the war, and have held and tortured prisoners in Guantanamo (and who knows what other secret prisons) without ever charging them with a crime or giving them due process to a trial.
And there is no “I won, you lost” here. Again that’s more of the devisiveness that was too prevelent during this campaign. These are trying economic times for all of us. And we all (no matter who you voted for) need to support each other, and work together to get through it. If 48% of the people are going to act like spoiled little kids on a playground and just sit on the side and watch to see if the policies of Obama are going to work, they are doomed to fail, just like a military platoon would if it went to battle in Falujah with 1/2 it’s soldiers lacking the will to fight. The “you won, I lost” attitude is completely contrary to the “Country First” theme.
By the way thanks for the discussion Seth, we could take it out of the public domain. I hope no ill will is being stirred here, this isn’t an argument that either of us should be trying to win. I began simply by expressing my pride in my home state that frankly I didn’t think had it in them to vote for the black guy.
War criminals? Seriously? And you’re using that AND your anti-devisiveness spiel in the same breath?
You’re saying you’d be rallying behind McCain right now if the tables were turned? I find that a bit hard to believe. Your “rallying behind” mentality sure isn’t there for the curent administration, nor was it there for McCain’s campaign. I think it’s a bit unrealistic to expect that EITHER side just drop its flags and sing a song. Yes, we’re one country, and need to be behind our president to a degree, I just feel we shouldn’t pick and choose which presidents we should back up, and which ones we should label “war criminals”.
Your hesitancy to back Bush, military leaders, a majority of your own party, and a majority of the country back before the war started is sort of rivaled by my hesitancy to trust these fantastical promises being made by the Democrats now.
ANYWAY, I agree that it’s not a ‘winning’ type of discussion. When has a political conversation like this ever changed someone’s mind? I just started with a venting of my frustration for Obama’s campaign. There’s definitely no ill will here. Hell, I’m always happy to find someone willing to have a passionate conversation and be able to have a beer with them afterwards. I’m not a sensitive kind of guy.
No I don’t think anyone is obligated to be behind their president, Obama, McCain, Bush, whoever. One man shouldn’t be expected to solve all these problems. Obama is not the Messiah (the only people who have mentioned Obama and Messiah in tha same sentence are the conservative talking heads). But everyone should feel obligated to doing their fair share and cooperating with whatever plan is decided upon to solve the problems. Loyalty to country, not to a man or political party.
So no, I might not be rallying behind McCain the man, but I would be supporting whatever plan makes the most sense to solve the problem, even if it was a McCain plan. If you had asked me about a year ago who I most favored in the election, it was McCain.
And I wasn’t always “hesitant to back Bush” and didn’t start out labelling him a war criminal. Unwavering loyalty to that guy though makes no sense. Bush lied to all of us, and has left us a country with virtually no allies, or at least supporters. More harm has come to our nation’s economy, environment, security, and reputation, as well as our civil rights during his tenure than during any other. For that reason my willingness, as well as a majority of the country, to support his policies has run out (his approval rating is somewhere south of 27%). It’s time for a change, but we also need to give that change a chance to take hold. Obama’s not even president yet, and people are blaming him for the 800 point DOW drop the last 2 days.
But I don’t want to waste my time on Bush. I only feel I need to explain myself better when you use “my hesitancy to back Bush” as an argument against me. I’d put the last 8 years behind me, you, all of us, and look forward to a better future for me, you, my kids, and all of us. But we’ll all need to embrace some change to get there.
Wow. I’m sorry I missed this one.