Straight Talk Exposed

John McCain is now spending all of his money on negative attack ads, pandering to the lowest common denominator of his right-wing base, the uneducated, uninformed voters that evidently don't get headlines and market reports where they live. Attacking Barack Obama by using his middle name and consistently asking "Who is the real Barack Obama," is nothing more than desperation and avoidance of the issues that with any luck will lose this election for John McCain. Cindy McCain even had the audacity to suggest that Obama doesn't support the troops and her son because he didn't vote for their funding, knowing full well that he did so only because the bill included no timeline for withdrawal, knowing full well that her own husband voted against funding the troops because the bill attached a timeline for withdrawal, something the American people desperately want.

Of course, Senator McCain probably doesn't like having his own words used against him, but remember this: "Sooner or later, people are going to figure out that if all you're running is negative attack ads, you don't have much of a vision for the future, or you're not ready to articulate it." Yep. You guessed it. John McCain said those exact words in an on-air interview. Well, I guess Senator McCain is out of ideas and has no vision for our future. Surely, if he did, he'd be ready to articulate it. It's getting a little late in the game, don't you think?

I'm sure that there really are a number of uninformed voters out there who are susceptible to the manipulative fear-mongering that the Republicans have relied on when they can't form a coherent sentence about the issues or the direction that this country needs to take. Just look at health care. Time and again, the Republicans have systematically prevented our country from ensuring that each and every American has access to adequate health care by erroneously throwing words like socialism around, raising unfounded fears that people will be forced to give up their doctors and will be left out in the cold.

This underhanded, deliberate attempt at deceit is low, it is wrong, and it is not going to work for the majority of us. We have access to a little thing we like to call the Internet, so we know when you're trying to cover the stinking pile you call a campaign with even more stink. If you want to live up to your "Straight Talk" motto, then be a man. Tell the American people that although eight years of George Bush's policies, which you supported, have landed us in the mess we're in now, you believe that four more years will surely be the cure. Go on. Say it. That would be some real straight talk.

John McCain

John McCain,

After watching last night's debate, I feel the need to clear up a misconception you seem to have about me.

I AM NOT YOUR FRIEND.

I am not an executive of a big oil company, a health insurance company, or a financial firm. I am not a member of the Keating Five. I am not a Republican or one of your good ol' boy cronies. I am not George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, or any others in your inner circle.

I am the mother of three children who want to grow up to breathe clean air, who want to go to college and realize their dreams, who want to believe that they are citizens of the greatest country in the world, a country that recognizes the value of the individual human life over the almighty dollar.

I am the wife of a man who spends over three hours commuting every day to feed his family, who continues his education at night in the hope that it will secure his job in a corporation that is sending countless jobs overseas without reaping any consequences of their anti-American actions.

I am the daughter of a woman who has never asked for anything from this country or this world, who drove over three hours every day to go to work in extraordinary pain from a hip in desperate need of replacement, a woman who is still working full time at the age of 55 in a thankless job, a woman who has a growing, painful mass on her back but will not go to the doctor because she doesn't have health insurance and doesn't want to run up a bill she can't pay.

I am a teacher of young adults, struggling to meet unrealistic NCLB standards that left the public school systems high and dry in terms of support, both financial and otherwise, who is struggling to balance the pressures of a demanding career, the only real compensation of which is the desire to help young people succeed, with the pressures of raising a family and figuring out where the next mortgage payment will come from.

I am a woman who hopes she will never have to face the choice of abortion, who doesn't need you and your political agenda hanging over her shoulder in the doctor's office telling her what to do at the most difficult moment in her life, who doesn't need you telling her what options she does or doesn't have to plan her family because your right-wing Christian fanatic base can't wrap their minds around the fact that it's the 21st century.

I am a citizen of this country and this world who wants to believe that Americans will always stand up for the rights of those suffering around the world, who wants to believe that Americans will feed our hungry children before we feed corporate greed, who wants to believe that when we go to war, it will be only out of necessity, not for oil or pride or political gain.

John McCain, I am not your friend, and you are certainly not mine, although you referred directly to me as such twenty-two times in last night's debate. You might want to get your facts straight before you address me or anyone else by this undeserved and unearned title in the future.