After casting her ballot for Barack Obama, Amanda Jones said simply, "I feel good about voting for him." Ms. Jones, of Cedar Creek, Texas (a town just south of Austin), is African-American, and what gives her vote some historic punch is that she's 109 years old. Her father was a slave. Her mother was born right after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. She's been through it all--Jim Crow segregation, women's suffrage, the Great Depression, the poll tax, FDR, the civil-rights movement, desegregation, 13 years of George W (five as guv, eight as prez), and now: Barack Obama. This last change fills her with joy, she says.
October's Lowdown
October 2008, Volume 10, Number 10 |
Edited by Jim Hightower and Phillip Frazer |
Whoever wins, we need Kevin, Heather, A.J., Monisha, Stan, Debbie, and Peter
Political outsiders are the only change we can count on
At a time when We The People have been vociferously and unequivocally demanding that our political aspirants offer Big Ideas on America's Big Issues (good jobs, health care for all, the wars, Wall Street greed, our collapsing infrastructure, big-money corruption of government, etcetera), the presidential campaign has taken a dive into the politics of lipstick and other smears.
Barack Obama's campaign has been oddly tepid, as if on cruise control. It has not been hammering its best ideas, such as his call for a massive, long-term, multibillion-dollar program to restore America's economy and world leadership through a Green Deal that would create millions of middle-class jobs and achieve true energy independence from Big Oil. Far worse, the once-proud "straight-talk express" of John McCain has dissolved into a pool of Karl Rovian sleaze.
The McCainites shrieked in September that Obama had called the sainted Sarah Palin a lipstick-wearing pig. Which, of course, he had not. Wait, they shrieked even more shrilly in a campaign ad, Obama supported a bill to require "comprehensive sex ed" for kindergarteners, forcing children to learn about sex "before learning to read." Which, of course, he had not. Then came last month's Wall Street banking collapse, and McCain immediately popped out an ad huffing that Obama was getting his advice on financial policy from a former CEO of one of the failed banks. Which, of course, he was not. McCain's henchmen have also spread rumors that Obama is a Muslim, that he is not even an American citizen, and that he won't put his hand over his heart to pledge allegiance to our flag. Which, of course, he is not, he is, and he does. And have you heard? Obama has fathered black children!
Such stuff would be a knee-slapping hoot if it was a skit on "Saturday Night Live," but this is a campaign to choose the president of the United States. Every day that McCain and crew can set the media yackety-yackers buzzing over nonsense and force Obama to respond to lipstick is a day that there is no national discussion of what matters.
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