Which Witch?

There is a video, circulating on YouTube, of now Alaska governor and vice-presidential pick Sarah Palin, receiving an anti-witchcraft blessing from a Kenyan priest. Why is this news? Why has it shown up in the newspaper, and online? Who cares? Now, if Governor Palin herself were going around, claiming to ward people against witchcraft in the name of God, that might be newsworthy. But she was attending a church service, and, basically received a blessing from someone of another culture. And that culture happens to be one of those that still harbors a widespread belief in witchcraft. (Although, given the fact that there are people in the United States who sincerely believe that Harry Potter is an enemy of God, and that Dungeons and Dragons is a gateway to Satan worship, pointing out that a belief in witches in the Third World might be the pot calling the kettle black.)

When you think of all of the functions that politicians attend in a given year, let alone across their careers, it's a pretty safe bet that some strange (to the average American) things happen on a fairly regular basis. I understand that the McCain campaign has been keeping Governor Palin away from the press, and so reporters are scrounging for tidbits to feed to the public, but it seems that this particular non-event is really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Shoot the Message

I listened to President Bush talk about the current financial meltdown, and the need for immediate action, and immediately felt that he was engaging in scare tactics, attempting to convince me that if I didn't support his plan, that I risked my financial well-being. Surely, I thought, there is more than one way to skin this particular cat. I was also put off by his call for fixing the regulatory structure later, once the immediate crisis had passed. Yes, I know that I'm being rampantly cynical, but I think that I've been around the block enough times to understand that "we'll fix it later" is political speak for "we'll blow it off, and you'll forget about it." The President even spoke about single companies having such a huge influence on our collective financial health, without addressing the fact that no single company should ever have been encouraged to get that big in the first place.

But what I'm not sure of is why I had a negative reaction. Was the President really simply spouting rhetoric that I felt was infantilizing and designed to create support for a quick fix while dodging doing the hard (and painful) work of really fixing things? Or does the fact that I really don't think that President Bush was (is) very good at being President taking things that I'd have tolerated out of say, Harold Washington (the late Mayor of Chicago), and making them sound somehow sinister?

Do I have enough dislike of the messenger that it killed my tolerance of the message?

Are We There Yet?

I don't think that I've been this desperate for time to pass since I was a child. I can't wait for this election to be over, the winner to be inaugurated, and their first several months in office done. Just as long as it's over. I've had it up to here with both Presidential campaigns. The moronic sniping and countercharges, the bogus and manufactured outrage, the ever more blatant disregard for facts while pandering to the "greater truths" that partisan supporters hold up as reality (while pressing their fingers into their ears, and loudly singing off-key to avoid anything that might clash with that) - all of these things have left me completely disgusted with what passes for the Republic around here. It's gotten to the point where I find myself going out of my way to avoid political advertising (which is good, because it also allows me to dodge Washington State's rampantly annoying Governor's race).

It's becoming more and more difficult to resist the urge to simply not get involved. Spend the fourth of November playing Zoids Assault or shopping for new shoes or something. But, while I hate the conspiratorial tone this has, I do get the feeling that this is exactly what "they" want me to do. The primaries are done, and the campaign apparati* of Senators McCain and Obama are done looking for new votes. Now it's all about energizing/terrorizing core constituencies into turning out on election day, and introducing doubts about the other guy into those people who aren't blindly partisan one way or the other. And the purpose of those doubts, when it all comes down to it, is to keep people from voting. It's probably the single best method of voter suppression ever invented.

I don't want to reward the trend towards negativity by not voting, but I'm fed up enough with the major-party campaigns that I can't muster up any real enthusiasm or even desire to see either one of these fruitnobs elected President. On the Nth party front, there are a few candidates, but none that really capture the imagination.

But it's not yet October, so I have an entire month to see if I can find some sense of interest in the outcome of the election and revive it. I suspect that in the end, I'm going to wind up voting either for Senator Obama or Senator McCain - whomever my research shows has the least number of outright falsehoods to his name. I have a hunch as to who that will be, but we'll see if I'm right. I know this is an odd cause to be a single-issue voter around, but I guess I'm not buying that getting into the office is important enough for deception to be appropriate, but nothing that one does in office could be considered worth lying about. But then again, I know that politics is not a career that entirely honest people can ever really excel at.

* Yes, I know that apparati isn't the plural of "apparatus." But it should be.

Moral Foundations

This is an interesting website at which you can do a short quiz and find out which of five moral foundations are the most important to your own sense of right and wrong. (Thanks to Ben, for posting the TED talk that turned me on to this.) It turns out that political lefties see two of the foundations as pretty important, while people to the political right tend to see the other three as being the ones to follow. (But the response distribution is pretty skewed - a lot more political liberals than conservatives have taken the test.) Interestingly, of my top two moral foundations, one is stereotypically liberal, and the other stereotypically conservative. Which may explain why I don't naturally find myself in line with either of the major political parties.

Barack Star

This is absolutely hilarious. I wonder if the Senator really does classic rock. (Note that the pig [who does the strip in drag] is a longtime recurring character. Sometimes the punchlines write themselves.)