In scanning the news today, one article caught my eye. Perhaps it caught yours too…it was featured on the front page of most major dailies, the NYT, LA Times, Chicago Tribune and Financial Times…to name a few. And, as morning on the East Coast turned to afternoon the question became, did Iran really launch four missiles???

There’s a issue that divides Americans. The nature of the discussion has made it nearly impossible for anyone to have a nuanced stance on the issue. People want a simple, straight-forward, black and white answer. Of course, it’s never that simple, really.

Obama has elevated politics to the height of fandom, and is now staging marketing gimmicks, typically reserved for celebrity-laden movie premieres and concert tours, to drive donations. I await the announcement about how these “special” guests will be selected…

Sometimes you just expect a movie director to jump out in front of Obama and yell “cut” or “more lights!”. The stage presence of this man is truly breath taking sometimes, but any good actor can have that effect on an audience.

Barack Obama is just another same ol’ politician. He tells different people different things. He says he’s not going to run negative ads and yet he runs a mudslinging ad on TV against John McCain. He’s polished when the prompter is on but if you shut it off and have him speak off the cuff, Obama stutters and stammers and fumbles, just like George W. Bush.

…does anyone else find it absolutely amazing that the conservative powers that be are fighting the federal funding of comprehensive sex education and access to affordable contraception at the same time they’re flashing pictures of aborted fetuses to children. There seems to be some imbalance in the world.

If you really want to understand American politics without a slant on it, you would do well to avoid the following list of folks.

Instead of showing off his seventysomething self, John McCain is glittering the screens of YouTube with images of his twentysomething self. By running political advertisements with photos of him in uniform to accentuate his service record and gain recognition for being a POW makes sense. But it also appears a bit superficial…

Today Mccain and Barack Obama both touted their plans for fixing the economy. Obama plans to raise taxes on the top 3 percent of the country and cut taxes for the middle class. Mccain plans to cut taxes for everyone across the board and cry wretched, gruesome, bloody murder when anyone so much as mentions the word tax increase.

If the government actually values children and youth, why isn’t it doing more to protect them? Why doesn’t the government invest in their continued well-being? Why is there political opposition to the creation of a safety net?