We're back on politics for a minute, but not like that, really.
I won't be the least bit offended if you just go and read this old speech instead of this entry. If you've got the time, listen to the audio. The delivery is even better than the text. Go ahead.
Yesterday, I was supposed to do some canvassing. I managed to find the meeting place without getting lost, and I only had to turn around once! (You have no idea how much of my time I spend wandering lost in the desert here.)
But it had been moved. To campus. The girl looked at me like I'd just asked which way to look to find the sky when I told her I had no idea where that building was. She gave me directions, even told me where to park.
I don't think I parked where she'd suggested, but I did find visitor parking. I eventually found the building. I tried every single door, but they were all locked, and there were no directions posted on the building. (I sort-of expected someone to have thrown a note of some sort up on the door explaining where I needed to go... but Arizonans are not considerate in my experience)
By the time I gave up and went home, I'd spent almost an hour wandering around campus trying to find the building and an unlocked enterance. I don't know why nothing is ever easy for me...
So, that's the sad story of why I was not out knocking on doors yesterday.
I've spent an inordinate amount of time this evening (I woke up from a nap around ten fifteen tonight. I've never been able to take a proper nap... that one was five hours long, which I do understand is longer than many people sleep at night...) looking at sites about "the buldge".
The best two central information gathering places (they're blogs, but didn't that make them sound so much more legitimate than the word "blog" does?) I've found are:
There are no answers yet. I'll get back to how I feel about that in a minute...
When I was twelve years old, I memorized Ann Richards's keynote address to the 1988 Democratic National Convention. It was for a speech contest. I won. Anyway, I loved that speech when she gave it when I was eight (they start us early in my family), and it makes me teary to read it now.
Go read it. Listen to the audio if you can. It's way better than anything I have to say here. You don't even have to come back if you don't want. Just go read it. Even if you did hear it the first time. Even if you went to high school with me and listened to me recite it incessantly in our oration classes. I memorized it and I just went and reread it.
Reading all that stuff about "the bulge" and the lack of answers, I remembered this quote:
And we know he doesn’t wanna answer. But we have a lot of questions. And when we get our questions asked, or there is a leak, or an investigation the only answer we get is, "I don't know," or "I forgot."
But you wouldn't accept that answer from your children. I wouldn't. Don't tell me "you don't know" or "you forgot." We're not going to have the America that we want until we elect leaders who are gonna tell the truth; not most days but every day; leaders who don't forget what they don't want to remember.
She's right, you know. You wouldn't accept the answers we're getting from your child...
The whole thing is terribly maddening. For my part, I'd really, really like to know what it is, but mostly just because I am a child of the internet and I don't like it when I can't get all the information I want about something almost instantly. Really, I'm just a Wonder Killer. I NEED answers.
I started reading about it because I am a total reading slut. I'll read about anything. I'm really not the least bit picky. I came at it from a tinfoil hat perspective, but I kept reading, because these people don't really have conclusions and I have a compulsive neurotic absolutely unhealthy inability to leave things that don't have conclusions.
This is why I had to stop reading French novels. They just end. There's rarely a proper ending. Not that if you left one in my line of sight I wouldn't pick it up and not move until I had finished it, because I can't just NOT read something... but I try to avoid French novels because I NEED conclusions. I can't let anything go until I feel I completely understand it.
And if I feel you have the answers and you are not giving them to me, you are making me crazy and I will do my best to make you crazy right back. I can't help it. (This happens remarkably often and is generally what causes people to stop speaking to me, I just can't let anything go until I have a complete understanding of the situaiton.)
Anyway, back the "what's that thing on his back?" issue... I got a little sidetracked there having Internet Therapy Time. (Me Me ME! It's all about ME! What? It's an online journal that you're reading here. It's supposed to be all about me.)
I want to know what it is. I want answers. I don't really have an original thought on the topic, but I can now tell you loads about it. The two dominate, most plausible theories seem to be that he was receiving "help" from in the wings or that he has some sort of medical condition that he's not talking about.
Something is clearly there. I really want to know what it is. For my part, I'm already not voting for him regardless. And I really hope for the sake of the country that he's got some difribulator or insulin pump or something back there. Not that I hate him so much that I wish him a chronic, life threatening condition that requires that kind of constant vigilance...
But because if it comes out that he's been wired...
Do you know how much that's going to alienate all those people who don't vote? We'll lose even more people from the polls forever. Plain and simple. If that level of lying and cheating is exposed, it will only add to the long term problem we're got where people just don't vote.
And that's the last thing that needs to happen in the long-term, fewer people voting because they feel the candidates are all so corrupt. It's already a plenty big enough problem. (In the short-term, the last thing that needs to happen is Bush getting re-elected.)
One more quote. She was talking about his father, but it's just so damned funny even sixteen years later that I have to laugh and laugh...
"Poor George. He can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."
