One Side, Not Two

I was having a discussion with someone the other day about Vizio TV’s. I love Vizio, because their corporate office and call center are in Irvine, California. The guy asked me if they manufactured the TV’s here and I said “No, we don’t manufacture ANYTHING here anymore.” Not strictly true, but so close to true as makes no odds compared to how we did in the past. He commented on what a shame that was, and how he’d like to see it changed. In an attempt to remain neutral, I said “Well, I have hope. One of the presidential candidates has promised to close the tax loophole for corporations who outsource American jobs.” He said “Oh? Which one?” Well, since he asked… “Obama.” “Ah.” He said. “I’m on the other side.”

Other side?

Are there really two sides for Americans to be on when it comes to our jobs and our economy? I mean don’t we all want America to return to it’s place of stability as far as our economy goes? He certainly seemed to. But I guess that he’s afraid that, being a republican, his party will spank him if anyone finds out that he said anything about Obama other than “He’s obviously a Muslim. And black.”

Look, guys… how about this? Pretend that there WERE no political parties and just look at the two candidates, damn it. Look at what they say. Look at how what they say compares to what they’ve done in the past. RESEARCH. So that when McCain say’s he’ll “cut taxes” and his opponent will “raise taxes”, realize that 85% of McCain’s tax cuts impact the wealthiest 5% of Americans, and 100% of Obama’s tax increases impact the exact same 5%.

Now here I’m going to say something that will get me lynched by my liberal brothers and sisters. Trust me, conservatives, when it comes to ostracizing people who don’t agree with you, you guys are PIKERS compared to liberals. Once a conservative, always a conservative, but liberals will boot you for life for putting the wrong brand of organic tofu on your kale salad. Having said that…

I think that an America with McCain as president and a strong enough democratic majority in the house and senate to override his vetoes would be a pretty damned good America. We haven’t had a true balance of power in this country for eight years, and for four years before that we had a very narrow ideology running the house and senate with one hope: to ruin Bill Clinton in any way possible. And president Clinton, unfortunately, seemed hell-bent on the same thing.

Honestly, the dems took control of the house and senate in 2006, and I don’t see how they could possibly screw up increasing their majority in both chambers in 2008. Of course, they’ve surprised me before.

Now, the other major fly in that ointment, aside from the democrats messing up a big enough majority to override presidential vetoes, would be the death of John McCain. If Sarah Palin rose to the Oval Office because of McCain’s death, I can’t imagine a good outcome for America. Again, if you just disregard parties and just look at the woman and listen to what she says, I can’t imagine how anyone would want her a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Guys, last time I looked, we did not have two sides in America… we had one: AMERICAN. I know gay republicans and republicans who support a woman’s right to choose a safe and clean abortion. I know fundamentalist Christian democrats and democrats to this day who will argue for the necessity of invading Iraq. None of them can tell me what winning in Iraq looks like, sadly, just like the republicans who still support it.

When we vote in a presidential election, the LAST thing on our minds should be which “side” we’re on, and instead should be voting for the candidate that seems most to be on America’s side.

Oh, one more quick note on a tangential topic. I’ve heard a lot over the last weekend and first couple of days of this week about how much Barack Obama said “Senator McCain is right” in the debate. Everything from snide jokes about what he apparently REALLY doesn’t understand is the meaning of the word “debate” to cracks about what a great campaigner for McCain he is.

Let me be clear about this. First off… I realize that this is a concept foreign to many modern Americans, but it’s called COURTESY. When someone’s right about something… no matter how hard it is for you to admit it… you DO admit it. Personally, I make it a point when someone is right about something that I’m not, to go to them and say “You’re right and I’m wrong.” This is not difficult at all for me to say, as it seems to be for a lot of Americans. I wonder how many more delegates, for instance, Hillary Clinton could have achieved by simply coming to us who opposed the unprovoked invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq and said “Hey, on that whole Iraq war thing? You were right, and I was wrong” instead of whining that she was misled. Secondly, take a mental trip back to eighth grade debate, if you didn’t sleep through the class. This is a debating tactic. I can’t remember if my debate teacher, Mr. Boyer, gave it a name or not, but it is simply a matter of admitting that your opponent is right about something, and then offering a laundry list of how they’re wrong about other things. And in every case, as far as I can remember, Obama did exactly that. So can we just admit that Senator Obama is right about this and any of you who didn’t understand what he was doing were wrong? Thanks.

Peace.

Randal