Starting my own

I get so tired of bloggers who say they welcome comments but delete your comments because you have a differing opinion that you can back up with facts. Are their opinions so ingrained that they refuse to change their minds no matter how much evidence supports the change? Are their beliefs so fragile and tenuous that they won't stand up to a little critical analysis? Rather than trying to refute your facts and looking ignorant, they just delete your comment and keep the ones that agree with them. So I'm starting my own.

It has been a trademark of the right, for at least the last 8 years (that's how long I've really been paying attention), to characterize changing one's mind as weakness. If you don't stay the course no matter what develops, or if you base decisions on evidence rather than on doctrine, you are somewhat less of a human being and you deserve contempt and ridicule. We have the Bush-Cheney-Rove political machine to thank for the divided atmosphere in which we now live, for the you're-either-with-us-or-against-us mentality, and John McCain is continuing that tradition.
I would like to make it clear that I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat. There are ideas from each side with which I agree, and ideas with which I do not. But in this election season, Barack Obama has consistently taken the high road. He talks about hope and inclusion and helping people. He talks about issues while his opponents attack character. But I'm not naive. Obama's a politician, which means he lies.
John McCain, on the other hand, has taken every opportunity to insinuate wrongdoing and suggest dangerous affiliations of Obama's while offering nothing in the way of proof. He suggests that Obama is hiding some record of his affiliations. If one cannot produce something that does not exist, does that mean he's hiding it? Meanwhile, McCain is first in line to block certain records from the Vietnam War from being released. It has been suggested that those records include the propaganda films he was forced to make by the North Vietnamese during his time as a POW. It has also been suggested by other Vietnam veterans that McCain was not tortured and that he was a willing participant in whatever his captors asked of him. I don't know, and without those records I take those suggestions with a grain of salt. Furthermore, whether he served willingly or not, he served; and for that he deserves the benefit of the doubt.

So I made my decision based on what records I can find and on what I've seen. The records I can find include, among others, the Keating Five scandal in which Senator McCain and Senator John Glenn narrowly escaped jail time (I believe because of their hero status), and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, which removed banking regulations that were implemented in the 1930s to prevent another Great Depression from happening. Even today, with an economic depression imminent, McCain still calls for more deregulation of the banking system. I see a man who swept into D. C. to fix the banking and lending crisis, vowing to stay until a resolution had been reached, and who then left before any resolution but not before clouding the proceedings with presidential election politics. I see a man with no real economic policy. I see a man, whose family was openly and viciously attacked by the Bush 2000 campaign, smiling and shaking hands with Bush soon after. I see a man who used to be a maverick but who has now aligned himself with the true conservatives in order to win. I see a man who changes whenever necessary in order to win.
I see a man whose first executive decision was to choose his running mate based on her ultra-conservative views in an effort to shore up the Republican base, and based on her sex in an effort to compete with Obama's history-making candidacy. He must have chosen Palin for political reasons, because she is so obviously unqualified (except that she can see Russia from her house) and out of her depth on the world stage. I was no fan of Hillary Clinton's campaign, but I at least consider her to be qualified for the office. Palin's lack of understanding of some of the basics like the First Amendment, as well as her affiliation with an Alaskan secessionist party, make the possibility of her assuming the highest office in the land extremely frightening.
-- Mr. Putin, shootin' (oh I made a little rhyme there dontcha know *wink*) ... shootin' missiles at us would just be wrong, you betcha!