Gratuitous life update #1 - politics

"So," you say, "six blog posts since April started. What the fuck, man? I mean, what the fucking fuck?"

It's a number of things, most of which I'll lay out in due course, but thank you for your concern.

Ever since I turned 30 - which this year can be measured in old-style Olympic years and not just human years - there's been a steady undercurrent of "What the fuck am I doing with my life?" that's made itself apparent in everything I do. That feeling has only become more prevalent in recent months.

I ran into a very dear friend at the dollar store the other day. She said that she still checks out BT to see if I've said anything about the election or anything else.

(That, my friends, is probably a 21st century definition of a friend - someone who still checks your blog even though you haven't posted anything worth reading in a month of Sundays.

(Which is, incidentally, a very 20th century expression.)

Anyway, my thoughts about the election, since A asked:

1. Senator Ted Kennedy has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. I'll set politics aside for a moment and ask that you send up a prayer for him and his family.

2. I took great pleasure in not voting for He Ain't My Man Mitch in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Unfortunately, he ran unopposed, so he still won the party's nod quite handily....

I had figured that the fact that the only positive things I had heard about Daniels came from his advertising meant that there would be a whole slate of Republicans to at least split the vote and send Daniels a message. Everyone I know has a laundry list of complaints about Daniels' list of accomplishments - I raise hell about him every night when it's 9 o'clock and I can't get my son to go to bed because it's still solidly daylight outside. So of course there would have been a handful of disenchanted Republican folks on the ballot, right?

No such luck. So now he has a mandate from the party. Bully for him.

3. I'll grant that the GOP primaries have been, for all intents and purposes, done for several months, and John McCain came out on top. OK, fine. He's our guy. Count me less than impressed - for that matter, count me less than impressed with the whole field of Republicans that ran.

It's saddening, as much as sites on my side of the aisle like RedState, et al., like to pump him up as our best shot against the Democrats in the fall, that McCain is currently the GOP standard bearer. He was the best we could put forth? Really? We're the Republican Fucking Party, and we put a RINO on the general election ballot? What, Lincoln Chafee and Chuck Hagel weren't available?

(In my primary, I voted for Romney. I held my nose, too.)

Still ...

4. Just because I'm not voting for McCain doesn't mean I've had a full-on Obasm. Sorry, I can't take part in the Barack worship. Which, to hear some of his supporters tell it, makes me a racist.

I'm not a racist, I just vehemently disagree with everything he says.

It's scary to me as an American when a man who could be the face of the nation for the next 8 years says things along the lines of, "You can't drive your SUVs, eat what you want, and heat your homes to 72 degrees and expect other countries to just say OK."

In other words, a President Obama is going to get the OK from other nations to determine how much I can eat, what I can drive and what temperature I can set my thermostat to. "Change We Can Believe In," indeed.

(Perhaps I'm just bitter.)

Hillary's not off the hook with me, by the way - but she does get a pass for dragging out the Democratic nomination process, hopefully all the way to the convention.

One other thought on #3 above: Who is the leader of the conservative movement now? I think the GOP is so rudderless right now because we don't have any strong leadership from someone with solid conservative credentials.

Just my $.02.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T