Got Shattered Glass in Your Eyes Yet?

McCain's Guilty Conscience

Red or Blue? Maybe Purple? Which Are YOU?

If you don't do anything else I request of you on this blog (warning - I reserve the right to rescind this caveat), please go to this site and complete the questionnaire. It's a product of the Pew Research Center, so it's not some waste-of-time pseudo-psych quiz from a teen magazine. This will take you "Beyond Red vs. Blue" and beyond the classic categories of liberal vs. conservative -- although they're included -- to more nuanced leanings such as Enterprisers, Upbeats, Disaffecteds, Bystanders, and more.

http://typology.people-press.org

You just might be surprised to find which ideological tag your answers will earn -- I know I was. Despite what my family has been telling me (and the names they've been calling me) for the last few years, I suppose I've been living in denial. Well, now it's official.... I'm a freakin' liberal!

Hey, do you hear that loud whirring sound? It's sorta like a giant electric mixer.... maybe a very small helicopter. Oh, never mind -- it's just my parents spinning in their graves.

Voting Booth Linebacker

KUDOS to Lincoln Purvis, et. al., on this amusing video about a serious topic -- the right and responsibility to register and VOTE!

No Matter How You Slice It, The Cake Tastes The Same

What you call a lie doesn't make it any less a lie. You may nice it down by referring to it as a falsehood, fib, tall tale, misstatement, fabrication, or any of a myriad of euphemisms, but a lie is still a lie.

You may attempt to camoflage it, as Jay Ambrose did in his Viewpoints piece that appeared in the September 12th edition of The Baltimore Examiner. Regarding Sarah Palin's deceptiveness about her handing of the so-called 'bridge to nowhere' Ambrose came to the defense of her honor by categorizing the public's criticism as one of the "slaps at Palin [that] are too many to enumerate." He sarcastically termed widespread public opinion as a "supposedly shocking revelation that she favored the 'bridge to nowhere' before rejecting it, as if public officials never change their view as they learn more."

I don't presume to speak for everyone who has been critical of Palin's claims regarding the bridge, but as for this voter, I don't care one way or the other how many times she may "change her view" about the bridge or any other issue. What I do care deeply about is that she lied about it. She portrayed herself as a noble defender of the taxpayers' interest by bragging about how she told Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks" and insinuated that she had taken some brave stance against Congressional waste and porkbarrel spending. She repeated this pretense many times after the original version was dispersed in her GOP convention speech -- pretty much every chance she got to speak into a microphone.

The truth is that she dropped the idea only after it was already dead and only after Congress had already removed the earmark. Her "change of view" came about only when her view became a political liability. Judging the facts of the case, I believe that was the sole reason for her "change of view" -- that it was simply borne of political self-preservation, and not from a single iota of noble cause.

To have political candidates attempting to spoonfeed lies to the voters is hard enough to swallow (yes, pun intended) but to have journalists try to convince us that the candidates' motives aren't what they are is enough to make one puke.

Beyond the Rhetoric

In 1968 Roger Ailes, a TV producer and campaign consultant for Richard Nixon, said, "Television is no gimmick, and nobody will ever be elected to major office again without presenting themselves well on it."

And my, how they try. We are bombarded with television and other media hype from the candidates seeking to present themselves well and to present their opponents as the complete opposite.

To aid you in separating the wheat from the chaff, we reccommend the following purveyors of fine truth:

http://www.factcheck.org/ and http://www.politifact.com/

The Living Room Candidates

Since the 1950s political candidates have been showing up in our living rooms to try to persuade us to vote a certain way. Check out http://www.livingroomcandidate.com/ to take a look back in history at the methods they've employed in their attempts to sway the masses.

Poor, injured Sarah... what, she can dish it out, but she can't take it?

(click here to view)

Victor Harville Stephens Media Group Sep 11, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

So, it's okay for Sarah Palin to insult every community organizer in the country in an underhanded swipe at Obama, but when he uses a very common, very old euphemism for... oh, I suppose I'd call it pretense -- you know, making something look better than it really is.... then he's name-calling?? Please.

Integrity Trumps Pretense 2.0: Sarah Says...

Okay, folks, here's a lovely example of an Integrity vs. Pretense situation. Sarah Palin has repeatedly claimed to have rejected Congress's offer to fund the "bridge to nowhere" in her homestate by telling them, "Thanks, but no, thanks. If Alaska wants to build a bridge, we'll build it ourselves." That, I submit, is pretense and it is my position that pretense and integrity cannot co-exist on an issue -- they are mutually exclusive. Click on this post's title to read the related article.

Integrity Trumps Pretense

Is it just me, or are there other like-minded political junkies out there who are just about fed up to the gills with candidates' pretending to be perfect? I'm not sure how many more times I can stand to hear them refute their own words by claiming to have been misquoted or misinterpreted before I... well, I'm not sure what I'll do, but I have a feeling it won't be pretty.
Maybe the fault lies with us bloggers, or with other forms of media. Have we so completely cowed them that they are just scared to death to say what they mean and mean what they say? If that's the case, then why does political "mud-slinging" continue? That's one I'd like to scare them out of.
There's a lot of stuff percolating in my mind on this topic, but at the moment, I have to cut it short to get to class. Stay tuned.