Fear tactics abound in GOP

The last three ads I've seen for Barack Obama have had the presidential candidate touting his health care plan, his tax cuts for the middle class, and his desire for education reform direclty to the American public, speaking about his past, he experience, and his plans for the future. Conversely, the last few McCain ads I've seen have had voiceovers that rival the those used in slasher movie previews, asking questions like: "What will happen if the economy gets worse?" or "Who do you want in chrage if terrorists strike again?" and "Is Barack Obama really prepared to battle al-Quaida?" One even shows a choppy ocean getting increasingly worse as a storm approaches, and the dire-sounding woman says something like, "Barack Obama says the economy will get better, but what if it doesn't? Who do you want at the helm if things get worse?" All that's missing is the music from Jaws.

Everything coming out the GOP camp could have been scripted by the grim reaper -- or better yet, by George W. Bush's campaign managers from 2004. For a candidate who's trying to seperate himself from the current president, John McCain sure is using a lot of Bush's tactics in these final days before Nov. 4. While Obama is promising hope, change, optimism, and improved living conditions, the McCain camp is drawing a worse-case scenario that is seemingly trying to recreate the fear that was considered a pivotal element in Bush's victory in 2004. But the problem is, it's 2008, and the biggest threats we face today are from financial monsters on Wall Street that were created and fed by Republican policies. People are afraid of the imminent threats of losing their homes or their jobs or their retirement funds. They're angry about canceling that summer vacation because the price of gas would have eaten up half the budget, and they're frustrated that they can't afford improvements on the home they have to keep living in because they have no hope of selling it.

According to MSN, home prices fell for the the 25th straignt month while foreclosures were up 17 percent over last year. Locally, in the last month, more than 200 steelworkers at Wheatland Tube in western Pennsylvania were laid off, which is only one case of dozens like it. These are people's fears come true, and Obama is offering solutions and reassurance while McCain is giving voters little more than prophesies of unnamed, unseen, unknown disasters. Ominous and unfounded what-ifs abound in McCain's rhetoric as he tries to play on the same sense of insecrity and vulnerablity that convinced Americans (and soccer moms specifically) to stay with an inept, unpopular president four years ago.

But fear is now an old tactic, and voters aren't falling for it anymore. We're sick of being scared, and we want someone to tell us things are going to get better, not frighten us with dire speculations that things will get worse. Comparing the approaches taken by the two candidates, it becomes very clear that McCain knows his policies aren't popular among the majority of Americans, and his only hope is repeating the strageties that barely worked four years ago. Too bad for him that we learned from that mistake and won't be repeating it this time around. We're voting for change, not fear!

Thank you Colin Powell

Thank you to Colin Powell for stating what very few people with comparable authority have said so directly, logically, and eloquently.

As part of his endorsement of Barack Obama, Powell drew attention to an unnerving element of the Republican Party's attack against the democratic candidate: its habit of fueling the rumors that Obama is or was Muslim. And the only response from anyone to that unfounded accusation has been the constant assurance that Obama has always been Christian, which while true and certainly worth establishing, does not address the larger issue. Thankfully, Colin Powell was not afraid to take the next step by asking, "What if he is (Muslim)? Is there something wrong with being Muslim in this country? The answer is no, that's not America."

Unfortunately, for many people, there is something wrong with being not just being Muslim, but being of any non-Christian religion, and that is a segment of the population that we should be ashamed has the political and economic clout that it does. Furthermore, as Powell pointed out, the GOP -- which represents a full half of Americans -- is engaging in rhetoric and policy that is proudly narrowing the acceptable parameters of American citizenship. Powell stated without qualification that Obama is running a campaign of inclusiveness that speaks to Americans across racial, ethnic, generational, gender, geographic, and religious lines, while McCain and Palin (especially Palin) seem to imply with every statement they make that their "America" will be for the exclusive benefit of white, straight, wealthy, professional, Christian suburbanites. As I said before, Palin has yet to acknowledge the existence of women who aren't white, married, and toting a half-dozen kids to three dozen activities. The rest of us seem to be members of those pesky "special interest" groups, which ironically enough, now seem to comprise more people than the Republican-defined mainstream.

As Obama's lead in the polls reaches double digits, I think it's safe to say the American public is not buying the McCain-Palin pitch that only Hockey Moms and Joe Six-packs deserve to benefit from domestic policy. So thank you again Colin Powell for highlighting the reasons why even Republicans should be concerned about the exclusionary path the candidates for that party would steer the country down.

Faith's leap of logic

I recently read another article about the increasingly-popular Creation Museum, located just on the other side of the Kentucky border. In scale and appearance, the place looks impressive, and by all accounts gives a very thorough and detailed explanation of Biblical history, particularly the Book of Genesis. But there are a few points that really seem to require more willing suspension of disbelief that your average Looney Tunes cartoon -- and not only by atheists and agnostics, but also by millions of people who consider themselves at least somewhat religious, myself included.

However, there is a growing population of people who are ardent believers in Creationism to the point of completely ignoring and dismissing scientific fact. With that belief comes the contention that the Earth is a mere 6,000 years old, as opposed to the 4.5 billion years old unanimously accepted by those who have actually studied the planet. Now, that difference is not exactly what you'd call splitting hairs -- more like splitting mountain ranges. I can't even do the math on what percent 6,000 is of 4.5 billion, and my calculator doesn't have enough places past the decimal. So I guess my first question is how do you completely negate 4.5 billion years of history and blankly state it just didn't happen?

Imagine if a given religion was successful in convincing its followers that the past 500 years never happened and that North and South America had never been discovered. And to those of us who said, "But we've been living in North America for 500 years!" members of this religion simply replied, "No, we're not, it doesn't exist, and we know we're right because our bible does not mention any place called America." End of story, no arguments please.

How is that any different than Christians today baldly dismissing the existence of anything on this planet earlier than 4,000 B.C. and simply stating, with no qualification, that science is lying when it carbon dates pottery, bones, fossils, artwork, human remains, and so much else to centuries and millennia before 4,000 B.C. Talk about relativism!

Even more astounding than the belief that the Greeks, Babylonians, and Sumerians weren't palling around with Adam and Eve is the belief that dinosaurs and humans co-existed. The "theory" would be laughable if so many people didn't seriously believe it. That makes it dangerous. And this belief exists despite the complete absence of dinosaurs from the Bible. Now, one would think that had dinosaurs been here 6,000 years ago, there would be SOMETHING in the Bible about giant reptiles tromping all over the place! A psalm, a letter from Paul warning the Corinthians, a destroyed village, something, anything. But of course there isn't because they had been extinct for a few hundred million years and Biblical humans had no concept of the Earth's history, which is why they created a story that fit their limited understanding of life to answer their questions about its origins.

I think the worst part about this movement to make Creationism work in a time and place in which science has just about proven it impossible, is that it leaves out so many wonderful possibilities for people to blend "what was" with "what is." For all those who insist on recreating modern reality to fit the world-view of people who had neither the technology or experience know better, there are millions more who know that science and religion need not be mutually exclusive. Carelessly inventing facts on the modern side of the issue ignores the possibility that the creation story was meant to be interpreted and perhaps even revised through the centuries to account for humans' progress and intelligence. In what reality is it easier to believe dinosaurs existed 6,000 years ago than the possibility that Genesis was written for the limited world-view of Biblical humans, and perhaps even intended to be broadened to accommodate civilization's advancements?

The longer we allow this proud and unapologetic disregard for empirical fact to go unchallenged -- and therefore gain credibility -- the closer we get to establishing a relative theocracy whereby anyone can claim anything so long as they believe it and can convince others that it is Biblically based. I am far from being opposed to religion; however, it is critical that what we believe is adapted to accommodate that which we know -- not the other way around. Anything less places us in a position to disregard all fact in the name of belief with no accountability.

Societies that operated under a belief in their divine right to rule according to God's law have been among the most violent, restrictive, and corrupt societies in history. While the United States is not ruled by Christian dogma, the number of people who are so eagerly willing to cast aside fact for faith is a dangerous indication of how far they would be willing to go in the name of religion. I shudder to think of where such an unchecked crusade could take us.

Talking points on financial crisis

• Is it just me or does this $700 billion bailout plan sound a little too much like a bribe? It seems as if Washington is saying to this elusive mass of nameless, faceless investors, "Hey, we'll make you a deal: We'll put up the money, and you won't sell your stocks, okay?" Case in point: The Dow rebounded more than 900 points today, the greatest single-day gain in the history of the stock market. And the only reason given was the promise that all of wonderfully generous taxpayer money would be heading their way soon.

• According to research I've been doing online, only about 48 percent of the U.S. population owns stock, and that includes those with only marginal investments such as 401Ks and mutual funds. Additionally, only about 35 percent of the population has more than $5,000 invested, and a mere 20 percent of investors own 90 percent of stock. Just like wealth, that's a lot of economic power concentrated in the hands of relatively few investors, thus negating the perceived "freedom" of the market. Example: Twenty percent of the population just influenced the United States Congress to launch an unprecedented rescue mission with speed that the residents of New Orleans were told in 2005 was impossible. Something tells me that if residents of New Orleans owned 90 percent of the stock on Wall Street, Congress, FEMA, and President Bush himself would have swum the Gulf of Mexico to stop Katrina in its path.

• Most investors would probably say to me and the millions of other Americans who are skeptical and scornful of this bailout that we're not savvy enough in the ways of the market to appreciate how perilously close we came to economic disaster. I say to them, we live in a culture that criticizes women for being emotional, unstable, fickle, and volatile, yet we place our faith and financial security in an establishment that fluctuates regularly and wildly based on rumor, conjecture, prediction, and speculation. PMS is a walk in a park compared to the tension and anxiety on Wall Street every time a quarterly report or investor analysis is released. And now that a government bailout precedent has been set, what incentive do investors have to act wisely in the future? If anything, I think we can expect the behavior of the market to be even more erratic.

• For years, welfare has been criticized as the cause of everything from laziness to teen pregnancy. A program that accounts for less than 2 percent of the national budget comes under constant fire for being too generous and fostering feelings of entitlement and sloth. Yet in one fell swoop, we're handing over TWICE the welfare budget to people and companies whose net worth used to exceed some countries' GDP, and are hardly being given the time or opportunity to think or respond. It's the height of hypocrisy. People who can't afford their own home, health care, childcare, education, or even food and gas are made to feel almost inhuman for their reliance on the government for basic sustenance. Yet, Wall Street execs are not only accepting this federal money, they're telling the rest of us it's for our own good.

• Furthermore, AIG had the gall to continue with a $440,000 executive retreat after accepting an $85 million government loan to stay afloat. More than $23,000 was spent on spa treatments alone. I haven't heard of any heads rolling for that. Yet a bank will charge me a $36 NSF fee if I splurge on dinner at The Outback after depositing my paycheck because they decided to hold said check until the next business day.
  

The state of Denmark doesn't have anything on all that's rotten in the United States.

Just like who?

Ellen Goodman said it first -- and better -- but allow me the liberty of repeating it for those who might have missed her column a few weeks back: "Palin may yet be the fulfillment of an old feminist prophecy that Texan Sissy Farenthold once described with her tongue firmly planted in her cheek. We will have achieved equality the day mediocre women take their place beside mediocre men. Check that one off the to-do list."

Unfortunately, we seemed to have skipped over some more important matters on the agenda to get to that one. A few that come to mind include, oh I don't know, equal pay for equal work, better representation in Congress and on the Supreme Court, paid maternity leave, and a dozen other issues that offer concrete proof that we need women in power to understand that equality does not mean being treated like one of the boys. We need women who understand that their individual ability to have their children at work does not translate into every woman's ability to juggle work and family. We need women who value their children's right to quality education as much as their right to own a gun. We need women who recognize there are other kinds of mothers than the soccer/hockey variety, and that the problems and challenges these women face are not limited to domestic matters.

Sarah Palin does none of this. In her haste to relate to women, she never stopped to consider the variety of women out there. She has turned us all into modern-day Harriet Nelsons, juggling cell phones and practice schedules rather than vacuum cleaners and oven mitts. For the purpose of reconciling the Republican Party's "family values" platform with a society that is finally recognizing the power women have and are gaining, she has consistently equated "woman" with "mother," thereby further undermining the pitiful attempt the party has made to appear part of the 21st century. Her tactics are only slightly less outdated than the corset. Not once has she spoken to or of single women, single mothers, executive women, elderly women, college women, lesbians, Hispanic woman, urban women, Black women, widows, women in the military, or even how such categories overlap and intersect. Her tunnel vision is frightening. If she can't recognize the diversity of women in her own country, how will she ever handle international differences?

In case I haven't been clear on the issue, Sarah Palin scares the living daylights out of me. In addition to her exclusive focus on those of us with white husbands and children, how in the world does a woman who can't name one newspaper she reads, can't name one Supreme Court case besides Roe v. Wade, and has less formal education than I do make it onto a presidential ticket? Furthermore, in what reality does a vice-presidential candidate with negligible understanding of national issues and little concrete experience feel it's an asset to trade an image of professionalism and competence for one of parochial simplicity? With a wink and a smile, no less!

Have we really reached a point where we don't want the leaders of our country to be a little more prepared than the average hockey mom or dad? While formal education shouldn't be the only mark of a person's ability, do we really scorn education and intelligence so much that we can't even address the fact that it took her five years and four colleges to get a degree in journalism? And most importantly, haven't we learned over the past eight years exactly how dangerous it is to have someone in (or near) the White House who is not prepared to be there? We can't afford to make that mistake again.

Presidential Debate

I'd like to preface this entry by saying this page is still somewhat under construction. Those of you who know me know that I can agonize for hours over something as simple as a font selection. So when it comes to the design of a web page that will be the signature representation of my personality, politics, and priorities, just understand that it may very well be years before I consider it acceptable. In the meantime, I hope you can appreciate the truth of my blog's title as it applies to my perfectionism!



Well, what better current event to serve as a launch pad than the presidential debate? Tonight was the second installment. In the first 45 minutes or so, I was plagued by an unprecedented need to discard all of my early journalism training and simply hear yes and no questions get asked. The open-ended questions from the audience, which are typically any inquisitor's best tool, were pointless and vague to the point of practically inviting the candidates to set their own course. For example, one person asked, "I want to know what you would do within the first two years to make sure that Congress moves fast as far as environmental issues, like climate change and green jobs?" Despite the "two-year" time element that was seemingly intended to pin the candidates down on an immediate answer, this question was nothing more than a prompt for them to discuss their positions on the environment.

Finally, the first concrete question I heard came from a woman who asked, "Selling health care coverage in America as a marketable commodity has become a very profitable industry. Do you believe health care should be treated as a commodity?" In other words, should health insurance be something sold on the open market by companies out to increase profits and which people are responsible for buying for themselves. That was a great question, which Tom Brokaw followed up brilliantly by asking very directly, "Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?" Unfortunately, neither candidate really stated whether they think it even is a commodity, let alone whether it should be one. At least Obama stated that health care is a right that presumably all people are entitled to, rather than the responsibility that McCain seems to think people must provide for themselves.

Of course, McCain covers his true motives with the veil of "choice." He says Americans deserve and are entitled to the "choice" of what health care to provide for themselves. However, this method requires that people be able to wade through what will inevitably be a dense and complex maze of plans and policies. For example, he said, "Of course it's OK to go across state lines (to find health care) because in Arizona they may offer a better plan that suits you best than it does here in Tennessee."

What I glean from that is not only am I going to have to know what's available in my own state but in 49 other states as well -- and then review and evaluate all those plans to find the one that best suits my needs. Gee, let me pencil in some time during my son's nap to hunt and peck for a health care plan that someone with a medical degree probably couldn't decipher. And while I'm at it, I'll make sound and informed "choices" about where to invest my retirement, learn mortgage and real estate law so that I can "choose" the best loan for my house, earn a B.S. in nutritional science so that I can make educated "choices" about the food that companies put on store shelves, and visit the 50 schools in Mahoning County to determine the one that will best serve my families unique and individual needs. Oh, and don't forget to go to work, make dinner and do the laundry.

I'm not suggesting people not be responsible for choices in their own lives, but ideally, organizations and government programs such as the FDA, FHA, Social Security, and dozens of others like them were designed to help people make decisions about subjects that require levels of expertise that the average person cannot be expected to possess about every life choice. Just think about the amount of time you spent evaluating what cell phone plan to go with, and then think about what it would take to make equally informed decisions about something as vital as health care, the stock market, energy, and yes, even nutrition. At some point, you have to be able to trust someone who knows more than you about that subject.

Amid the demands of everyday life, McCain's focus on individual "choice" is an expectation that is too high. Granted, it is classic Republican philosophy: rugged individualism and virtually nonexistent government. But that system only works for those who are experts in the given areas. We need a system that works in the best interest of those who don't have the time, education, or resources, to do it all. Gee, isn't that what a government "for the people" is supposed to do!