Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Well, It's Over!

I am so glad all the rhetoric and smoking gun politics is over. The one thing that none of the political campaigns planned on this year was the media fact checkers. Everytime one of the candidates or their running mate made a statement, some reporter was there to tell you where they researched the information and whether or not it was true or false. I am sick of even hearing about Miss Sarah and the small town values. Let's take a look at that statement, shall we? Someone who will remain nameless mentioned how small town people seem to have better values and traditions and were more of what America admires. When America was nothing but a collection of small towns we didn't seem to have much of what we call real values now, so I don't think that really means anything nowadays. For instance, in the 1950's most small town folks thought beating their children was good for them and now if they do it, they get arrested for child abuse. It never made any sense. All it taught anyone was that someone bigger can control you if they can hit you openly. Yes, hitting was considered good parenting. I have met people as close as a couple years ago who insisted that is still a good idea. You can go down to the county jail and visit them through glass window in the visiting room and talk to them over a telephone if you want to see what believing that gets one. Why? I have a theory. Let's look at the past.

From small towns we got:

Religious crazies who made up their own version of what their own spiritual book meant then tried to make up moral and philosophical principles and rules for the rest of society that they themselves couldn't live up to;

Lynching started in small towns;

Racial Segregation was big in small towns and still is today in some places;

The KKK was big in many small towns in the South;

Another thing I see in a lot of small towns is "Pride in Being Ignorant", a.k.a. the idea of one not needing an education or being able to understand things outside of what one has to do at "the plant", "the mine", "the pier", etc. Yeah, if you want to plan on living on a farm, in a coal mine, at a factory, in a manufacturing plant, or a mill, and also perhaps on a fishing boat, then, you don't need to learn anything new. I have been places where I got "the speech" about outsiders and even had one moron tell me, "They are gonna run you guys outa town!" as if he were speaking for a group called Them, whoever "They" are. He obviously wanted to start a myth that all the local workers would form a lynch mob in order to run anyone he didn't like out of town, however they would go about doing that. He might as well have said, "We got a nice stupid dirty rotten little town here and we aim to keep it that way, Pilgrim!";

And last but not least - blatent disregard for anything the rest of the world has already figured out to be what is the status quo or a good idea.

I had a grandfather who would let his kids starve rather than ask for help. One of my uncles told me he remembered one night coming home from school and all they had for dinner that night was tomatoes that had been grown in their garden. He once found out his daughter who had eloped, had been left in a hospital by her new husband. The new husband who had driven the two of them to another state, found out she was sick and dumped her at a hospital and drove away. Her father found out, drove to that town, found out what her hospital bill was, found a diner where he could wash dishes, and worked around the clock until he had the money to pay her bill, put her in his car, and had the marriage annulled. He drove home without saying a word. He showed his family how much he cared for his children and it wasn't until years after my aunt had passed away that anyone of her brothers or sisters shared that story with her children or anyone else. First of all, they were guilty of having 11 children. They had seven, then twins, then two more. People asked my grandfather whether he was Catholic or Mormon, to which he would reply, "Neither, we are just careless Methodists."
He came from a small town, too. They were Texas dirt farmers who share cropped, raised their own food, etc. They didn't start buying chicken at the store until they were later on in years. I have seen many pictures of my grandmother coming around the side of the house with a dead chicken in each hand. "She could do two of them at once. She inverted her hands like this, reached out and grabbed 'em by the neck and (sound like bones snapping) pluck 'um and dinner." Until he died my grandfather ate only vegetables he grew in his own garden. After my grandmother died, he soon followed. His heart broken, he got up everyday and worked in his garden until one day he fell over. His heart stopped for real that time. So, even though I grew up in a city, I know all about small town values. Being from a small town doesn't give anyone a corner on the market of humility and hard work. Most of his sons either went into one of two noble professions. Residential construction or education. One of my uncles, the one who spoke of eating nothing but sliced tomatoes for dinner at times, became the vice principle of one of our town's main high schools. Another worked building custom homes until he got drug off to the hospital with intestinal cancer.
I don't really know if the small town people who were adults really made a mark on the world, it seemed to me it was their children who really made a difference. Any of you who don't know how stupid this kind of rhetorick is and what the dangers of campaigning to the least intelligent of our society is, here, look at some of their young supporters. I bet these guys voted McCain/Palin.

Friday, November 21, 2008

You Can't Fake It On T.V.

Sarah Palin muffed several interviews and now all the conservatives are trying to turn history revision into an art. She blew the interview, OK???? She stated that John McCain is one to always vote for more regulation, and that is the opposite of the truth, so, you tell me, did she lie or was she just too stupid to realize that John McCain isn't Mr. Regulation? He admitted himself that he ALMOST ALWAYS votes for less regulation, which he calls big government. This is as opposed to big special interests. So if you vote to let them run amok, you get an economy like we have right now. It is not rocket science, it's simple math.
And if you are going to state something about your running mate, you better be sure you have studied the guy's record. She is being defended for her interview in which she made a stupid question about the Bush Doctrine. I can tell you, I read the whole damn thing and it still doesn't make sense to me. So, when she had a deer in the headlights look like she got doing it again (talking out her a** about a subject she didn't know about) when she asked, "In what regard?" She might as well have said, "What doctrine?"
NOW, quit trying to blame the interviewer. I am so sick of hearing the term, "Gotcha questions", since anything you don't know is a lack of information and comes from NOT studying your job, not the fault of the person who asked the question. After the first interviews, the McCain camp should have sat down with her and taught her anything she might get questioned about and she should have studied it and taken notes. Could you be the running mate of someone whose policies you didn't agree with? HELL NO! So, you better find out what someone who asks you to be his running mate believes in before you start counting your electee paycheck. She was trying to resonate, "Maverick", and "Change" even though her running mate never stated anything he was going to change (other than his address).

Is Sarah Palin Stupid? Let me say that she is running with a candidate that far outreaches her intelligence and experience and here he is: