Tomorrow it will be OVER

Whatever we have in store for us for four years, the best thing I can say at the moment is that tomorrow, it will at long last be done with.

That all being said...

Anyone saying that Barack Obama hasn't released his "real" birth certificate? I get to kick you right in the face, because not only is it the stupidest lie I've ever heard in my entire life, it is the dumbest possible knock on a candidate I can think of. Argue platform or qualifications, but when you have to degenerate to trying to allege that he isn't a natural-born citizen when he has provided the same documents that all of the other candidates have, you really can just kiss my ass.

Though I am about as far from a Sarah Palin fan as you can possibly get, the same goes for people who are out there yelling that they think her most recent baby was actually her daughter's. It just doesn't matter. It's a smokescreen. An obfuscation, just like so much of the utter sewage that has been flashing across our televisions and thrown out from the speakers at political rallies.

Elections should be about the platforms and capabilities. If you want to try to paint someone as a remorseless liar to try to knock their character, do it with something IMPORTANT. Something that matters. Something that can be proven, not just a nasty allegation that you can throw up like last night's rum and coke and hope that enough other people believe you that you can use it to engineer the outcome you want. It's just ugly smearing, and honestly, it does little else other than make you, personally, look like a complete moron.

I really just can't figure out why people aren't pointing those laser-sharp capabilities to decide if someone is lying or not at their campaign promises or at the allegations they throw at the other candidate. I guess that would be thinking, and darn it, thinking is hard work. Why not just pick something easy and start screaming, without any evidence at all, that it means that person is a dirty liar that we can't trust?

Don't you people who indulge in this ugly business see that this turns the electorate at large into the equivalent of the average Jerry Springer audience? Talking points get lobbed out into the fray and no one seems to spend any time thinking about them, if they make sense, and if they are accurate portrayals of whatever the candidate is talking about. People are too busy repeating the easiest lies they've heard, the ones that let them stop thinking about rather tough issues and go back to watching reality television.

Every four years, I get physically ill at what has happened to democracy in America. Why is it this way, when there is a better way? When did we let go of the curiosity and thirst for figuring it all out that we had when we were toddlers? If your random voter had to prove that they've given as much thought to their decision to vote as my daughter does to telling me which lower case letter we're showing her on her flash cards before they could cast that vote, I think a lot of people would have to go home from the polls and do a little reading and thought before they were allowed back.

Someone wake me up on Wednesday morning, please, and tell me that this every-four-years bad dream is finally done.