Chaos Reigns Over Our Broken Democracy

So John McCain doesn’t know how many houses he owns. Let me be the first liberal to offer this response: Who gives a donkey’s monkey?

You heard right, folks. I wouldn’t vote for McCain at gunpoint, but his response to this question does not bother me.

If you and your spouse took in almost $6 million a year, how long do you think it would take before you didn’t know how many houses you owned?

It’s called investing in real estate, people. And it’s a smart move, especially right now, and it’s even smarter if you pay someone else to handle your investments. No wonder McCain doesn’t know how many houses he owns.

It would be like asking me how many dinner plates are in the kitchen cabinet. My wife cares about that stuff; I just wash them.

Obama, who previously cast himself as a transcendent figure who would not lower himself to the filthy, immature squabbling of superficial “politics as usual,” lost my respect by jumping all over McCain for being “out of touch with ordinary Americans.”

I don’t know how many times I have to say it. As a certified Ordinary American, I don’t want the President of the United States to be like me.

I want the President to be brilliant, like a five-time Jeopardy champion, but also to have absurd amounts of courage, like an amateur kick boxer with engorged testicles.

And he should also have an advanced soul, like Ghandi; the type of person who is not attached to material possessions, and therefore doesn’t bother to count his money, his houses, or his menservants, because he is too busy correcting injustices and stuff like that.

In short, the less like me, the better.

Just when I was getting over this foolishness, I found out that conservative saboteurs have been all over Fox News and the Internet claiming that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is fake, and he wasn’t actually born a U.S. Citizen, which would make him ineligible to become President.

Yet another example of how modern journalism has become less concerned with facts than with raising a ruckus.

The Annenberg Foundation, a non-partisan media watchdog, got their hands on the actual birth certificate from the State of Hawaii (via some cloak-and-dagger nighttime raid?) and declared that it has all of the features required by the U.S. State Department to prove citizenship, including a raised seal, verifiable signature, and giant white-out stain.

The Annenberg people took close-up photos of the birth certificate and posted the on their website, www.factcheck.org, along with a borrowed image of a birth announcement from the Honolulu Advertiser from August of 1961, and video from a time travel expedition to Mrs. Obama’s hospital room for a live interview during the birth.

It still may not be enough to quell the conspiracy theorists.

At this point I’m just disgusted with the whole process. So my vote is going to the only candidate who suggested after Hurricane Katrina that federal officials should be arrested for negligent homicide, and who berated the Pentagon for pouring money into companies that support human trafficking and sex slavery.

That would be Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party.

I don’t expect her to win, of course, but we need strong third parties around to remind us that there are… you know… issues.

Feminism, Frogs, and Fungal Evil

A person in favor of equal rights for women used to be called a “feminist.” Now, for many people, the term “feminist” connotes militant, man-hating, spiky-haired butch lesbians who will spit on you if you hold the door for them.

It's a shameful myth, really. In truth, most feminists will spit on you anyway, whether you hold the door or not.

NO! I'm only kidding! Here's hoping you feminists out there have a sense of humor.

(Not likely.)

Ha! Okay, that's enough, really! I'm just having a little fun with this malicious, unfair stereotype.

Honestly, I consider myself a “feminist” because it bothers me that lots and lots of girls and women continue to get abused, exploited, and raped, and it's never discussed as some sort of global crisis.

With that backdrop, the fact that we've marginalized “feminism” into some extremist movement is really sad.

The same thing has happened to environmentalism. If I tell someone I'm an “environmentalist,” they stare at me wide-eyed and disturbed, as if anticipating that my next movement will be to hurl a Molotov cocktail at a logging truck.

But I consider myself an environmentalist primarily out of self interest. I'd like to make sure the things that keep me alive -- air, water, food, and iTunes -- remain (or become) pure and safe.

Seems like a no-brainer, doesn't it?

The most likely reason people are confused is because environmentalists spend a lot of time worrying about other species that apparently have nothing to do with us.

Take frogs, for example. Around the globe, frogs are dying off at alarming rates, and nobody is sure why. Some say it's climate change, others say there's epidemic of skin fungus. There are also those (myself included) who blame Doc Hopper, arch nemesis of Kermit the Frog in The Muppet Movie.

Personally, I have no desire to see frogs thrive. I find them slimy. They give me the willies. I remember dissecting a frog in high school, and feeling a shiver of pleasure as I plunged the scalpel into its vile, green belly.

Even Kermit, whose performance I admired in The Muppet Movie, almost lost all my sympathies after Muppet Treasure Island.

But I have to set my personal feelings aside, because I know that if stuff is going wrong with the frogs, it's a signal that there's stuff going wrong with the ecosystem. We humans like to think we don't need the ecosystem for anything, but I'm not convinced.

So I wasn't particularly impressed to read in Science Daily about a research team at James Madison University that thinks they've discovered a naturally occurring bacteria that can help frogs defend themselves against the above-mentioned fungal evil.

Yay. But it doesn't do anything about whatever ecosystem imbalance caused the problem in the first place.

A typical politician will hire extra cops so he can say he did something about crime. Meanwhile, the root causes of crime (social injustice, addiction, the fact that cable TV shows COPS reruns only 12 hours a day) rampage unchecked.

You can't rid the world of rape with more cops, and you can't save the frogs with more skin bacteria.

The two major political parties don't understand this. That is why I always vote for Kermit.

Sad, But Not Sad Enough

If I were to insinuate that women can get what they want by crying, people would consider me a shallow, sexist piece of bacteria who is just trying to be controversial to help sell newspapers.

And yet, here we have Hillary Clinton, who got misty eyed in public right before the New Hampshire primary. The media went nuts, and she somehow came from behind in the polls to eek out a win over Barack Obama.

But Mitt Romney has been noticeably teary-eyed for weeks now. He chokes up during stump speeches, interviews, even Toyotathon commercials. The newspapers have barely paid any attention, and he still trails in the polls behind McCain, Huckabee, Guiliani, and Chewbacca the Wookie.

What kind of lesson is this for our young people? Clearly, if a man cries, it's no big deal.

The average man bawls regularly. It's usually a function of some hormonal imbalance connected with the cycle of his favorite team's inexplicably awful draft choice.

But if a woman sheds her chilled composure for just a few seconds, it's some big deal. Suddenly, her tough, stoic persona develops depth and compassion, proving she can show just enough vulnerability to seem human.

These tiresome gender stereotypes are irritating, but what bothers me more is the fact that this is what passes for drama in our political landscape.

No wonder people aren't interested.

We need to start paying attention to third party candidates. We know how entertaining they are because we've watched them try to articulate their views in 45-second yelling matches often featured on cable “news” shows.

You don't have to limit yourself to the “major” parties. Here's a quick guide to the three alternative parties who have managed to prop up some Presidential candidates:

Green Independent Party: Traditionally identified with environmentalism, the Green Party also stands for social justice, fair trade, peace, fair access to health care, and a variety of other Anti-American ideals.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader has been the most viable third option in recent elections, but he is no longer an official candidate, possibly because he has died.

The Greens are now looking to hip-hop artist and freelance journalist Jared Ball, former Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKenney, and a team of zombie research scientists desperately attempting to resurrect Nader.

Libertarian Party: Ardent advocates of “small government,” each of the dozen Libertarian candidates for President are less than three feet tall.

The official party platform calls for the capitol building to be torn down and re-built out of a used coffee can. With legislators and bureaucrats reduced to near microscopic size, any of their excessive intrusions on our personal freedom can be conquered with a simple course of antibiotics.

Constitution Party: If you favor a common-sense, literal interpretation of the Constitution that dates from 1823, and if you are a Christian who thinks everyone else should be a Christian, too, then this particular group of nut-jobs may be for you.

The letters in “Constitution Party” can be rearranged to spell “Pointy Trout Antics.”

Check out the official web sites of these alternative parties

Each of these three parties claims to be the third-largest political party in America. The only other thing they have in common is that they insist the two-party system isn't truly democratic because voters don't actually have much of a choice.

But until they start crying about it, nobody will care.