Election Day

- I have mixed feelings about Election Day being so lose to Breeders Cup day. It's hard keeping up with both due to the sheer enormity, in relative terms, of each. The Breeders Cup is eight championships in one day. This Election Day feels like about 50 Breeders Cup races in one night.

On the other hand, it's saved me a lot of aggravation. As a Democrat, I've been feeling like I do when my horse is eight lengths up in the stretch, with the competition trying to run him down. The difference is that in a horse race, the competition isn't using lies and dirty tricks in order to catch the leader. (Maybe just a shot of illegal meds.)

I haven't heard a single Republican Party official say that they're going to win because the voters will see that they are the party that is correct on the issues. Rather, it's always, 'we'll win because we have more money than them.' Money to spend on TV advertising, most of it negative, much of it based on distortions and lies.

Both parties are guilty of that, and it makes me sick. Personally, I think that all TV campaign advertising should be banned during the final weeks leading up to an election as it is in the UK. Elections should be decided on issues, not on sound bites. But of course, the most egregious examples of slimy ads seem to have come from the Republican side; some of the biggest critics of those ads that I've heard actually come from the GOP candidates that they're made on behalf of!

Now comes word that the National Republican Campaign Committee is behind "robocalls" that are targeted to harrass Democratic voters; they start off by promising information on the Democratic candidate. If the recipient hangs up at that point, it calls back again and again until the message of slime is delivered. People who hang up are led to believe that they are being harrassed by the Democrat. The idea is to suppress the vote that they cannot otherwise due to their failed policies and the tragic and unnecessary war that is on their hands. Is this the GOP's idea of the democracy we're supposed to be fighting to defend? More on robocalls here and here.

I don't need to tell you who I think you should vote for, but I will tell you that you should vote. If you believe that the Republicans are the party that has the right plan for this country, and that they have conducted themselves with honesty and integrity, then by all means I think you should vote for them; in fact, I urge you to. But please don't vote for any candidate from any party based on 30 second sound bites, or cleverly produced attacks. And for heaven's sake, don't vote for the Republicans because you're scared. The GOP even shamelessly rolled out Osama bin Laden in a TV ad to try and frighten people into voting their way. While we need to be alert for sure, the idea that we in the most powerful nation on earth should be cowering in fear from a relative handful of fucking lunatics hiding in caves in Afghanistan is nothing but another despicable dirty trick. Don't believe the hype.