Obama, Biden, Palin, McCain... AHHHHHHH!!!

I am officially sick of politics.

In my humble and uninformed opinion this election has gotten completely out of control. During the primaries I found that people who never talked about politics, and were usually more concerned with how curly their hair was, were suddenly interested in who was going to be a candidate for the presidency. During one heated debate about the pros and cons of Obama and Clinton I asked, "So what do you think about McCain?" I was met with blank stares. They didn't even know who he was.

While I'm usually completely apathetic about politics and I think that at the end of the day it all devolves into irrational shouting this election has gotten so supersaturation that it's beginning to get as annoying as seeing Hannah Montana's face on just about everything on the planet. My neighbors have put up McCain/Palin signs in their front yards, I saw a woman wearing a "Once you go Barack, you never go back" t-shirt complimenting another woman who was wearing the same shirt, I even when to a local fair and had to avoid the button wearing, pamphlet toting, lackeys that were desperate to change my political standpoint when I was just trying to get a cheeseburger.

So I finally decided that I need to look into this. I'm going to vote, of course, so I might as well read up on what's going on. Right?

I have never been more confused in my life. Palin charged women for their own rape kits while she was mayor? McCain want to screw up health care? Obama is trying to stifle first ammend rights? Biden is... er, doing something. Everyone seems so focused on Palin that there seems to be no room left for him. By the way, does anybody actually like Sarah Palin? Even republicans are trash talking her.

But what bothers me most is the news. The news is biased. It always is and always will be. It's impossible to completely be objective, because we're all human and subjectivity is part of our DNA. Sometimes it's not even what you report but what you don't report.

But what I blame most for the new interest in politics, no matter how uninformed and bias it is, is The Daily Show on Comedy Central. The Daily Show is something that I would be more likely to watch than C-SPAN. It's funny, it breaks down the news, and who doesn't love Jon Steward? But at the same time it's an entertainment show and not a news show. They don't market themselves as anything other than entertainment. Why is it on Comedy Central? Yet people, such as the ones mentioned above, use it as a source of serious information.

Because of this, I don't watch The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. When I first hear something with a bias and don't actually look it up myself, which quite frankly, I don't, all I know is the bias version. This leaves me informed to one point of view. And between the war raging on between liberals and conservatives I can only wonder if anyone really knows what's going on.

Sometimes is just seems like high school with rumors flying back and forth. Especially the Sarah Palin rape kit controversy. I heard that during her term women were charged for their own rape kits. I looked it up and found articles that said that she wasn't charging women for rape kits, insurance companies were charged and there is no record of a woman actually being charged herself. Then I found more articles that "debunked" that. The back and forth turned into:

Yes, she did!
No, she didn't!
Yes, she did!
NO, SHE DIDN'T!

See, we're back to irrational shouting.

I'm going to look up some the candidates political stances and attempt to educate myself. At least I'll try not to do what I did on one of the local elections. In that one I voted for a guy because I liked his last name. Come on, his last name was Lucky! How cool is that?

Anyway, during the last presidential election a lot of people told me that you had to choose the lesser of two evils. But does it really come down to that? Voting for someone who is slightly less evil than someone else? Is giving someone a bias version really better than no version at all?

Note: If you're a hardcore politico and want to attempt to sway my political opinion either way, please don't bother. It will just seem like more irrational shouting. Also, don't feel the need to lecture me on how I should know what's going on in the country because I think most people only pretend to care out of sheer guilt and just don't want to admit it. I have no idea what's going on and I'll leave it to that. At least I know who McCain is