Tag: 2008 Election

Of Course They Let Bigots Vote

Politico carried an interesting analysis of an AP-Yahoo news poll which is one of the examples of why I’m so ambivalent about voting,

More than a third of all white Democrats and independents — voters Obama can’t win the White House without — agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for [Barack] Obama than those who don’t have such views.

Ah yes . . . even bigots get to vote. Of course that’s hardly the only irrational views held by those who will determine the next leader of the free world. Depending on the poll, 40 to 50 percent of Americans believe God created the world in just 6 days — and presumably, those people also go to the polls to vote.

Which is not to say that I have any particular sympathy for Obama (or McCain for that matter) knowing that people who hold irrational views hold the futures of the candidate in their hand. After all, both of the candidates not only hold irrational views but go further and espouse views they clearly do not personally believe in but nonetheless feel they have to make public displays of fealty in order to curry favor with this or that cross-section of voters.

I see ads about the importance of voting, civic duty, the ideals of democracy, blah blah blah, but our presidential elections have always struck me as more like episodes of mass delusion and hysteria that rock the country every four years. Modern political campaigns are simply social versions of ergot poisoning that induce hallucination and madness in true believers.

Praying for Oil

I was going to write a gratuitous slam on Pray At The Pump’s efforts to pray for lower gasoline prices in the United States. Then I realized that Pray at the Pump’s understanding of how oil markets work is no less irrational than either John McCain or Barack Obama’s apparent understanding of oil markets, so what’s the point?

It’s really sad — but so typical — to see the US election boil down to a battle of The Moron vs. The Messiah.

Sigh.

Why I Won’t Vote in November

I was trying to explain to someone the other day why I don’t vote. But this picture pretty much sums up the uselessness of doing so.

Rick Warren believes that the Bible is inerrant; that evolution is wrong (Genesis is all you need); that homosexuality is a sin and gay marriage is “non-negotiable” for Christians; that abortion, stem cell research and cloning should all be crimes. He also spends a lot of time and money on projects in the Third World that look nice on paper, but otherwise don’t accomplish anything.

He’s a fundie Bono.

And both national parties decided to elevate this walking ignoramus to a national an arbiter of opinion in the election for the leader of the free world. Oy.

Cokie Roberts — Still An Idiot

Media Matters has a transcript of the August 10 edition of ABC’s This Week in which Cokie Roberts continues to establish her credentials as one of the dumbest talking heads,

ROBERTS: Yeah, that he has certainly come nowhere near closing the deal. As we’ve talked about before, in this year that should be such a Democratic year given all the other indices, he [Barack Obama] is tied in the polls and stage-sided in the polls and going off this week to a vacation in Hawaii —

VICTORIA CLARKE (former Pentagon spokeswoman): Right.

ROBERTS: — does not make any sense whatsoever. I know his grandmother lives in Hawaii and I know Hawaii is a state, but it has the look of him going off to some sort of foreign, exotic place. He should be in Myrtle Beach, and, you know, if he’s going to take a vacation at this time.

Yeah, Hawaii…that exotic foreign place. It’s like Obama is from Mars or something to go to Hawaii for a vacation.

At least Barack Obama actually went to Hawaii. In 1994, Cokie Roberts broadcast from outside Capitol Hill on a very cold, windy day. Except she wasn’t actually there — instead, she wore a heavy coat and pretended to be outside while standing in front of a green screen which editors then inserted an image of the capitol on.

She should have been fired for that, but this is the mainstream media where truth and accuracy is at best second or third on the priority list.