Finding common ground with the current electorate is becoming a challenge for me. The ones that are going to elect the next "leader of the free world", and possibly make it safe for my grandchildren. It is clear from talking to many of them you cannot be  "for" something, you must be "against" someone.  The nastier the better.

Obama stands for change and a new way of politics, McCain is an honored war hero. Joe Biden is a no nonsense hard working senator, and Sarah Palin is a human being who was thrown on the National scene without proper vetting.  Is she incompetent?  No, she is horribly under qualified and she comes from a state where people take pride in marching to their own drummer.  Do any of these candidates deserve to be hung drawn and quartered for your amusement?   What will satisfy the crowd now? More SNL and You Tube videos? Does anyone see any resemblance to the Lions and the Christians thingy?  What if she implodes and we see her disintegrate, will that do it for you?  What exactly does this electorate want?  Destroying another human being whether physically or mentally to support your candidate is wrong folks.  Find a new form of entertainment, I have a couple of suggestions but they are unseemly for a lady to suggest. 

Meanwhile, back in the real world;

Senator Stevens trial is going to be postponed and probably dropped because the prosecution found following the rules difficult, and the Judge had no choice. If anyone from Alaska deserved to be skewered it would be Senator Stevens. 

51% of the people in the house that voted for the rescue plan had gotten money from the banking industry.  

The Senator who promised change actually pushed hard for the Senate bill that just passed.  The Senator that claims to be a maverick pushed for this bill to be passed, with earmarks he swore he would not agree to.  The bill passed with an amazing 74-25 support.  Senator Ted Kennedy was the missing vote, he is at home trying to recover from a brain tumor. 

ATT is in trouble

It is believe that as many as 300 people died in the Texas hurricane but they cannot find the bodies, amid the alligators and dead cows.  Those people lost everything, including their lives. 

And the beat goes on,

We are in a period of enormous change and instability, we NEED each other.  We need to support each other and care what happens to the other guy.  We will not survive unless we learn to do that.  We need to lighten up on Sarah Palin, she had very little to do with what has happened to this country.  We need to act like grownups because the children need us to act like grownups.

Try to remember something and try to think about practicing it.

When you open your mouth ask yourself is true? Is it necessary? Will it improve on the silence?

Breathe in

Breathe Out

Namaste`

What I am thinking is that this whole election has been and continues to be a surreal demonstration of how a pseudo-democracy works.

Voters are pawns in an electoral system that is largely controlled by wealthy individuals, large corporate campaign contributors and propagandists of all political stripes who will tell any lie and commit any illegal or underhanded act to defeat their political enemies and elect their candidates to office.

Yes, Obama pulled in a huge number of contributions from small donors, but he basically launched his campaign with the money he raked in from fat cats in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. He has curried favor with these fat cats throughout the campaign by making bland policy pronouncements that never put their vital interests at risk.

He has used all sorts of well-known grassroots organizing techniques, gimmicks and platitudes to build a winning base of supporters without ever actually letting his supporters play any major role in formulating his platform. We still don't know what policies he will actually implement if elected. Same can be said for McCain.

So how democratic is an election if voters have no real input into the candidates' platforms and never get the chance to pin the candidates down on any policy specifics in any authentic debate forum?

The most frightening thing is that if it had not been for the chronologically fortuitous financial meltdown occurring just before the election, McCain and Palin might well be headed for the White House (which they still might be if there is an "October Surprise" of a military nature).

That's because the GOP has perfected the art of converting the electoral process into a propaganda exercise where the biggest lies are the most effective strategies for getting votes from low-information undiscerning voters who might well be numerous enough to swing the election.

Trying to link Obama to bin Laden and Muslim terrorists because of Obama's middle name and to Ayers because both served on a board and live in the same neighborhood are outrageous examples of using lies to undermine the democratic electoral processes.

When a video of unknown allegedly foreign origin on the subject of terrorism is sent to 30,000,000 Americans just before the election, we have plumbed new depths of turning democratic processes into propaganda exercises.

When upwards of 1,000,000 voters are purged from voter lists in states across the country, a number sufficient to change the outcome of the election, we can no longer claim that our system of government is a fully functioning democracy.

Yeah, voters can choose between two candidates running on platforms over which they have virtually no control, who have spent 18 months avoiding getting down to brass tacks on the major policy issues and crises that are dismantling the economy and destroying the quality of life in America.

But that's nothing more than being pawns in an election in a pseudo-democracy.