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The following is a transcription of a conversation I had with two women from Zanesville, Ohio I met in line for the October 10, 2008 rally featuring Barack Obama in Columbus, Ohio. They wish to remain anonymous.

Jim Cook: I’m Jim Cook and I’m with Irregular Times and I’m here on October 10, 2008, and I am speaking to…

Anonymous: um… [shaking head]

Jim: to someone from Zanesville,

Anonymous: Left of Zanesville!

Jim: Left of Zanesville. OK. I’ve just let you know that I am an undecided voter. I am deciding basically between voting for Ralph Nader and Barack Obama. I told you that was because of some of the defections that Barack Obama had made in terms of policy. Your friend here to the left here just said, “Oh, she’s going to change your mind here! She’s going to convince you!” So what do you have to say to convince me, to change my mind, to get me to firmly voting for Obama?

Anonymous: Well, I think you have to understand that he’s running in a general election and, like all politicians, they have to come to the center and appeal to massive amounts of people, which I think he has done to some degree. I mean, he’s definitely not as progressive and maybe so far left as he started out with his original base, but that’s just campaigning. That’s just life on the campaign trail. When you look at the big picture, I mean a vote for Ralph Nader? Let’s be realistic. He’s not, obviously, going to be winning the election and we have a two-party system right now that we’re stuck with, and I think you have to look at the best of the two people.

Jim: Well, do you actually know how many parties there are on the Ohio ballot?

Anonymous: Um, no, not exactly.

Jim: OK, so we have the Green Party, we have the Constitution Party, we have the Socialist Party, we have two Independents, we have the Republicans, we have Democrats, and we have a couple of other parties so we have at least six parties and more people. So we have more than a two party system.

Anonymous: We have many choices, but the predominant parties that, let’s face it, rule are the Republican and the Democrat.

Jim: And so what’s the reason they’re predominant parties?

Anonymous: [silence]

Jim: Is it because people vote for them?

Anonymous: Um, well, yeah. A majority of people. I’m all for a third party!

Jim: OK. So then how do we make that happen?

Anonymous: OK, I get your point. But come on: Ralph Nader? I’d rather vote for the Green Party!

Jim: Are you familiar with the Oath of Office that a president takes?

Anonymous: Yes.

Jim: All right. The oath that they take is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Anonymous: Right. Are you saying that Barack Obama would not support the Constitution?

Jim: The 4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States states that the people shall be secure in their persons and their effects from unreasonable search and seizure. Well, are you familiar with the FISA Amendments Act?

Anonymous: Yes.

Jim: Do you know what the FISA Amendments Act does?

Anonymous: Uh, pretty much, yeah.

Jim: How would you summarize it?

Anonymous: Uh, I don’t know.

Jim: OK.

Anonymous: I know in general, and I was not supportive of him voting for it. I think he had to pretty much.

Jim: So are you aware that it’s now law and creates a 67-day period in which the president of the United States can without restraint not only engage in electronic surveillance of any person, but can also engage in physical search and seizure? That is not supporting the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, which states that there is to be no search or seizure except with a warrant, which is not provided for by the FISA Amendments Act. So you asked me the question…

Anonymous: I know, I know.

Jim: You were asking me if I think Barack Obama would not support the Constitution, and there’s an Act that he said in February he’d oppose and after the primaries are done he turns around and supports. I would have liked him to support the Constitution. Do you know Ralph Nader’s position on the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and the FISA Amendments Act?

Anonymous: No.

Jim: It is in opposition to it.

Anonymous: So are you voting on a single issue, or are there a lot of issues?

Jim: Well, one issue is the rule of law, and I consider that not just a single issue but a broader principle because if you don’t have support for the rule of law, and the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, then what…

Anonymous: Well, we do have a Congress and a Senate and a court system.

Jim: But they don’t play a part any more. The Congress just abdicated responsibility, and the judiciary has had its role curtailed. Checks and balances by the FISA Amendments act are curtailed.

Anonymous: Did you write your Congressman and your Senators?

Jim: Absolutely. So as a constitution voter and someone who believes we have to have support for the law of the land — because that’s what constrained George Bush until we let him run away with everything…

Anonymous: Do you know Obama’s reason for voting for it?

Jim: Yeah, he said he was voting for it because he wanted to support the Bill of Rights. So that led me to question him a little bit. But he’s also made some other changes: about offshore drilling, about missile defense, about the first amendment. So this is my honest question, and I am really, honestly an undecided voter on this: do I vote for Ralph Nader as a way of expressing my support for the Constitution and as a way of articulating my differentiation from Obama’s positions on these other things? Or do I vote for Obama as a way of saying, “I don’t want McCain, who is worse, to go into office?”

Anonymous: I think there’s too much at stake in this election, and I totally respect your point of view, and I believe that being a man of conviction is totally right on, and I do agree with you on the FISA Amendments Act. I was very disappointed. As a matter of fact, I wrote letters in to the campaign expressing my viewpoint at that time. But I think that this is a dangerously, nail-biter close election. I mean, you can see this country is really divided, and there’s just too much at stake. I think the vote for Obama is where you have to put it because of what’s at stake in this election. To get McCain in there is going to be the worst thing for our country. I mean, it’s dangerous. It’s scary.

Jim: So what’s the difference between an Obama administration and a McCain administration, what for you is scary and at stake?

Anonymous: I think in this instance you have to weigh, you have to do like a “Pros” list and a “Cons” list and McCain’s cons are way up here, and Obama might not be the perfect candidate for you, but his cons are, like, down here. He’s also, I believe, an unconventional candidate in a lot of regards, so look at the broader picture. Look at some of his other stances and the way he’s run his campaign, the things that he’s done to go against his own party. It’s kind of like the balance, you know? There are a lot of people we meet that are just like you, who are undecided, who aren’t even as articulate about why they’re undecided because they’re not crazy about either of these candidates. At least you know the issues a little bit more than most, but I just think losing your vote, not that you would be responsible for McCain… but what if your vote was the very last vote that tipped the balance?

Jim: How many presidential elections have had a difference of one vote, though?

Anonymous: Oh, I’m totally being cheeky, but what I’m saying is especially in Ohio we’re fighting for every single vote for Senator Obama. McCain doesn’t have to do anything in Ohio, really.

Anonymous’ Anonymous Friend: We are just working a lot, she works about 15 hours a day…

Anonymous: I’m in there every day making phone calls and as you must know this is Columbus, I don’t know where you live but you know, Southeast Ohio is pretty much Republican all the way. It’s a stronghold, and like I said McCain doesn’t even have to put a bumper sticker in any of these counties. So I think for this particular election that’s the difference for me, because I totally get what you’re saying. I really do understand it and appreciate it. But man, this one’s too close. It’s just too close to end up with another four years of Palin and McCain.

Jim: So here’s something I’m struggling with — honestly, not rhetorically, struggling with. What is a vote for? If one vote is all I have, not like ACORN… you know they say “One vote can make a difference.” But that’s a rhetorical flourish. Even in Florida in 2000, my one vote wouldn’t have made a difference. It wouldn’t have made the difference.

Friend: But can we all say that?

Jim: Well, here’s my struggle. On the one hand, my vote does not make a difference. On the other hand, if I abide by some converse of the Golden Rule and expect others to behave as I behave, and I recommend that other people, say, vote for Ralph Nader as a kind of communicative act which is what one vote can be, then that could make the difference. So I’m stuck here. On the one hand, I want to do something useful. On the other hand I want to responsibly communicate. If enough people communicate their position by voting Nader, we’ll have President McCain. I don’t know honestly how to resolve that, and I need a bit of advice.

Friend: First of all, we have Palin to deal with. That’s scary. That’s very scary.

Jim: What scares you about Palin?

Friend: She, she… her name? She’s not qualified to become President! That’s the scary part. That’s what the debate is, I think. When I talk to people, I say, “Do you really want Palin to be our president? Do you want to think about that?” It’s frightening, very frightening. I don’t know, I think we’re going to buy a plot in Canada!

Anonymous: It seems like with this particular Republican, you’re not voting for the man anymore. You’re voting for a group, a group mentality that seems to be taking over the Republican Party. I know after George Bush and Dick Cheney they were a pretty different administration with the whole NeoCon agenda thrown in there, but honestly it does seem like there is a group thing going on there with McCain and Palin. Someone else made the decision to choose her, not him. It’s all, like, strategy. He’s sold his soul to his campaign handlers. He’s not the man who ran against George Bush in 2000. That is for sure. There’s insiders in Washington, Republicans, who go, “Wow, we don’t even know who this guy is anymore.” I think there’s just too much at stake in this particular election. But you’ve got to vote your conscience, because you’ve got to be true to yourself.

Friend: So if that’s how you feel. But reality…

Anonymous: In this country, in our part, down where we are in Ohio, people can’t take any more. I mean they can’t take any more. They can’t take any more of the economy…

Friend: I talk to people every day. Yesterday, my heart, I was sobbing. I talked to the lady, it was a little town south of Zanesville, Duncan Falls. I talked to this lady, they had just gotten their envelope from… they lost $30,000. They’re 71 years old. She said her husband was so despondent she’s afraid to leave him. I mean, this is like back in the Twenties. You know, jumping out of their windows. And then, another person lost $60,000 of their savings. You can’t do this to the little people. You can’t do it to us. There’s no jobs. They go to McDonald’s and sweep the floors. There’s nothing there. Nothing there.

Jim: OK. But it may be hard to hear from the debate, which was pretty high this week in generality and pretty low in specificity, but let’s get specific about this. Let’s get specific about the situation with people losing their savings right now because of the stock market crash and because of the inability to get loans and things like that. What is the difference between an Obama administration and a McCain administration in how they actually handle this and how they right this situation?

Anonymous: Well, one general difference is that if Barack does get elected, I mean, he has the support of the same party Congress and Senate, which we haven’t had for quite a few years. There’s always been this sort of, you know, butting heads. And I think some things could actually get done. I think that Barack, you must concede that he has some good policies as far as, maybe, health care, or…

Friend: The health care prescription drug program? OK, my mother, for instance. She’s 86, she’s in the Medicare drug prescription program that puts her in the “donut hole,” you’ve heard of that. Her money has run out. She takes quite a few pills. The one med that she has to take for her diabetes, which is not a generic, is $208 a month. She brings in $800. That’s just one med. Excuse me? Obama’s going to close that donut hole. He’s going to take care of us. He’s for us. McCain? OK, he has seven homes. He doesn’t know what it’s like. He doesn’t know what we are, who we are in the middle class. He has no clue.

Jim: But returning again to the economic issue of the stock market, what is the distinction between what McCain is going to do and what Obama is going to do, as you see it, to rectify the current financial crisis?

Anonymous: I don’t think either of them…

Friend: I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s too new. Nobody knows how to do it.

Anonymous: I think in general Obama has more regulatory measures that he wants to put in place which, you know, people are really conflicted about, but McCain is so the opposite as far as deregulation is concerned. I mean, come on, if we had privatized Social Security, can you imagine what would have happened with this stock market crash if we had privatized Social Security? People would have lost everything. So I think that’s a huge difference. And it’s another generality, but the Republican Party in general seems to side with the pro-business, the big business, the corporate moneymakers of society. I don’t hear him talking about the middle class. I don’t even hear him talking about the poor.

Friend: Prisoners? Remember?

Anonymous: Yeah, “Fellow Prisoners?” What was that?

Jim: We’re all feeling like that lately.

Anonymous: I think, Obama’s mantra of hope, you know, I guess we’ll see in four years whether he can actually come through on some of his promises. Then, you know what? We’ll go from there.

Friend: He’s fresh. He’s new. He has ideas. He’s for the people! He was brought up in poverty and he worked his way to Harvard and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. You know? There is no difference? The only way to go is to Obama! I have not been excited about a campaign ever since Bobby Kennedy when I was 14, you know, because he was cute. OK? We all were in love with him. Well, that’s the way it was.

Anonymous: Have we changed your mind?

Jim: Well, I’m always thinking, and I have some thinking left to do.

You get the last word. Go ahead, leave a comment with your thoughts on this subject. I look forward to reading it.

But no, in John McCain’s mission here, in taking the high road, as you’re going to see too with a lot of unfair shots he has taken in this campaign with some of his opponents’ supporters, McCain and I taking the high road, being positive.

– Sarah Palin, October 11 2008

In an earlier post this afternoon, I linked to an article about an anti-Palin protest. That article was published by Raw Story - a progressive web site that I’ve appreciated over the years.

I appreciated the story about the Palin protest too, but as I looked it over again, I realized how difficult it had been to read the article itself, with so many blinking, popping advertisements. There are two full columns of commercials, one on either side of the article.

Some of the ads seem appropriately political, and liberally so, but others seem very out of place - even counter to the supposed progressive identity of Raw Story - including commercials for the big oil company Chevron and for automobile manufacturer Ford. These aren’t corporations with progressive histories. In fact, they’ve been downright anti-progressive most of the time, using their influence to lobby to defeat progressive legislation and promote a right wing agenda.

I don’t know enough about Raw Story’s internal editorial decisions to come up with an declaration about how they really work, but with commercials like these plastering the web site, I’m left asking, Is Raw Story really raw?

It looks pretty cooked to me.

Well, bless their hearts, Americans look like they don’t want Sarah Palin as their Vice President, gosh darn it! Protests against Sarah Palin are popping up wherever she goes.

These demonstrations include a protest against Palin’s appearance in Burlingame, California; protests in Pennsylvania; even anti-Palin protests in Juneau, Alaska, and on and on.

I just picked up an Alaska quarter for the first time - one of these 25-cent pieces with a state design on the back. Alaska’s design features a big bear standing underneath a waterfall with a salmon in its mouth, along with the state motto: The Great Land.

Given what we’ve all learned about Sarah Palin, Alaska’s Governor, over the last few weeks, how would you redesign the Alaska quarter, and revise the state motto?

While the American news media remains focused on the winks of Sarah Palin and the nods of Ben Bernanke, the British media reports on two disturbing scientific findings. An international team scientists aboard a research vessel traveling Russia’s north coast has encountered plumes of methane emerging from the Arctic ocean at 100 times the typical rate, enough to cause the sea to foam. The scientists interpret this as a sign that permafrost underneath the ocean, previously known to be trapping methane gas, has been melting.

In the very same week last month, British scientists working off the west of the Norwegian island of Svalbard reported an independent find of hundreds of such methane plumes.

Despite the potential threat of methane gas (a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide) to our the world’s agricultural, economic and coastal security, not one mainstream news outlet in the United States has picked up on this story. Will the news have to bubble up from below?

Someone ought to tell Sarah Palin, so that she stops embarrassing herself: Her dishonesty is showing, and people are noticing.

On Friday, a bipartisan commission in Alaska concluded that evidence shows that Sarah Palin violated the law and unethically abused her power as Governor of Alaska. So, what has Sarah Palin’s reaction been? She claims that she has been “cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of unethical activity.”

Does Sarah Palin think that we don’t notice the difference? Apparently, but she’s in for a load of trouble if she believes that she can continue lying to voters without any consequences.

Even in the heart of Republican territory, people are seeing the clear gap between Sarah Palin’s statements and the facts. The Kansas City Star says that Palin’s “silly” claims are “just not true, and Palin knows it.”

Don’t that turn a red state blue?

You may ask how African pastor Thomas Muthee ended up in Wasilla, Alaska to lay hands on Sarah Palin’s head and pray for Palin to be elected Governor as part of a new plan for American theocracy. The answer lies in a video and in testimonials extolling Muthee’s supernatural power as a witch-hunter. In the video, Muthee himself claims to have figured out that a woman in his town of Kiambu, Kenya named “Mama Jane” was a witch because of traffic accidents near her home. He claims to have run Mama Jane out of town after issuing death threats for her to convert to Christianity or die, and what’s more to have dispelled her witchy power by having her magical witch’s python shot by police. Finally, he claims that — miracle! — since she was chased out of town, there have been no traffic accidents.

Zoe Alsop of WeNews personally traveled to Kiambu, Kenya. What Alsop found was something different than what Muthee claimed:

1. “Mama Jane” Njengu would not have to convert to Christianity, since she is pastor of a competitor Christian church, the African Mission of Holy Ghost Church, which lies down the street from Thomas Muthee’s compound. In the edited scholarly volume The Bible in Africa, Nahashon W. Ndung’u of the University of Nairobi explains the Biblically-centered five-hour-long worship Sabbath-day services of the AMHGC.
2. Njengu is still pastor in Kiambu, not having been run out of town at all.
3. Traffic accidents in Kiambu are down despite “Mama Jane” Njengu not actually being run out of town. The main road has been paved and speed bumps have been installed during that time (presumably not by the power of witchcraft).
4. Njengu doesn’t own and says she has never owned a python.
5. Njengu confirms, however, that Thomas Muthee issued death threats against her, broadcasting demands over a loudspeaker that townspeople pray for her death.

Thanks to the work of Zoe Alsop, Thomas Muthee’s tale of supernatural witch-hunting prowess has been debunked. In its place appears a more mundane tale of intramural competition between two Christian churches involving death threats by Muthee. And “Mama Jane” is still there. Thomas Muthee, who declared in a sermon that “the Violent take it by force,” turns out to be a rather flaccid flim-flam artist.

This morning, I’m reading that John McCain is promising to heal the economy by having more tax cuts. I’m trying to remember the name of another politician who has made the same promise, saying that cutting taxes will give us a vibrant, booming economy… ooh, it’s on the tip of my tongue… who was it now?

Oh, yes, that’s right. It was George W. Bush.

George W. Bush gave us huge debts, gathering interest, by pushing tax cuts through Congress. He said that government revenues would increase, and businesses would pay workers more money, and that we would all be thanking him for his wise economic leadership.

That didn’t work out so well, did it? Is your life a whole lot better now, thanks to those tax cuts? Chances are that you aren’t better off.

Now John McCain says he wants to do more of the same. McCain wants to use the George W. Bush plan to give us a strong economy.

I don’t get it. Taxes aren’t the cause of the economic crisis, so how is cutting taxes going to solve the problem and get the country back on solid economic footing?

I’m guessing it’s because she didn’t wink at them.

OK, so he didn’t call God a “slut.” But the Reverend Arnold Conrad came that close in a Saturday rally in Davenport Iowa for John McCain. Delivering the official Christian invocation at the presidential campaign event, Conrad declared:

I would also add, Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god - whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah - that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons.

And Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you would step forward and honor your own name in all that happens between now and Election Day.

Oh, Lord, we just commit this time to you.

You hear that, God? Don’t fuck it up! Don’t let the Hindus and the Buddhists and the Muslims win. McCain for Yahweh!

Oh, yes he did:

“After I whip his you know what in this debate we’re going to be going out…”

The remainder of John McCain’s sentence was drowned out by the roaring applause of the audience in this Southern state.

To the right you can see my absentee ballot for the state of Ohio. I’ve requested it so that I can vote by mail to keep the lines short for everyone else on Election Day; four years ago in my precinct the lines stretched for hours.

As you can see, at least in the state of Ohio we do not have a “two-party system.” There are 8 presidential tickets on the ballot for 6 political parties and two sets of independents.

After much consideration, I have narrowed down my choices to the Obama-Biden ticket and the Nader-Gonzalez ticket. Here’s my invitation to you: would you like to help swing Ohio one way or the other? Post your arguments in the comments section explaining which of these two tickets is most deserving of my vote.

Here’s why I have already eliminated the following tickets from my consideration:

Barr-Root: They ought to rename it the Libertarianish Party after the nomination of Bob Barr, who voted for the Patriot Act, who doesn’t extend religious freedom to non-believers, who thinks free speech is overrated, and who wants to take away the citizenship of American babies. Wayne Allyn Root is just an over-the-top blowhard.

McCain-Palin: anti-liberty, anti-peace, anti-choice, lobbyist-bought tools.

Duncan-Johnson: Richard Duncan is an Ohioan who gets on the ballot regularly but who hasn’t taken the time to post a website or write up anything more than the vaguest paragraph describing his intentions. I have no earthly idea who Ricky Johnson is. Not ready for prime time. Not even ready for public access cable.

McKinney-Clemente: I like the Green Party in the abstract. But Cynthia McKinney? Nope, sorry, nope. I just can’t vote for someone for President who punches police officers, who seriously thinks that George W. Bush was in on the 9/11 attacks, who praises the dictatorial Hugo Chavez, and who asserts that the U.S. government has been shooting thousands of prisoners in the head and dumping them in a swamp, telling us that she could give us the names of people who told her so, but she just doesn’t want to. I back away slowly.

Baldwin-Castle: Because no party that embraces Christian theocracy, opposes free speech and stands against a woman’s right to self-determination should refer to itself as the “Constitution Party.” Baldwin and Castle stand firmly within the “Constitution Party”.

That leaves the Nader-Gonzalez ticket, the Moore-Alexander ticket and the Obama-Biden ticket. I have both deep misgivings and some tepid support for each of these tickets. I would really appreciate your thoughts on these three tickets as I consider where to throw my support.

Sarah Palin says that she is against wasteful government spending, but the truth is that she just got caught in some very wasteful use of government money in Alaska. No, I’m not talking about the way that she allowed her husband, Todd Palin, to use the office of the Governor of Alaska in order to persecute her former brother-in-law, though that fits the bill too.

I’m talking about how Sarah Palin made the government of Alaska pay her to go to church.

No kidding. A new report shows that Sarah Palin has sent bills to the state government of Alaska, asking that she be paid more than $13,000 over the last two years to attend religious events and meet with religious leaders. The Alaskan Lieutenant Governor made some of the same religious trips, but refused to ask for payment because he regarded those payments as unethical.

Here’s the kicker: Sarah Palin’s office says that it was okay for her to make taxpayers give her money in order to go to church because she was going to church on official government business.

Think about that - what kind of official government business does the Governor have going to church on Sunday?

Here in the USA, we have a little thing called the separation of church and state. It’s established in the very first line of the very first amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

Sarah Palin apparently has a poor opinion of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, however. One Sarah Palin’s government-paid trips to go to church was a visit to her own home church, the Wasilla Assembly of God. During that visit, she took to the stage and told the members of the church that she would strike a deal with them - to use her power as Governor to enact the will of God.

If Sarah Palin was willing to charge taxpayers for her to go to church on Sunday morning, and conspire with church leaders to use the Alaskan state government to establish her religion, what do you think Palin would do with the power of President of the United States upon the death of a President McCain?

If Sarah Palin is willing to spend government money to go to church, what other extravagant spending would she engage in as President?