Red Room Where the Writers Are

Why did Giuliani drop out when he did? That's a question that's been bugging me. Sure he lost Florida, but he wasn't that far behind. And why did he back McCain? The first is at least partially answerable. I think someone ran the numbers and told him that even if he did win the nomination he'd likely lose the Presidency because GW's ruined the Republican image. That is one good reason for Giuliani to drop out.

Another thing that's bugging me is: Rove has been running this campaign horribly. He's using the same "winning" techniques he used before, but with a much greater randomness and unbelievable extremism. Its almost like he's stabbing in the dark trying to find something that will push McCain over the top rather than planning everything out like the 2004 election. I believe if Bush's second term campaign had been run this way he would have lost. Not even vote rigging would have helped (just like its not going to help this time around).

One other thing that's bugging me is: why in the world did the campaign leaders let McCain choose (or ask him to choose) Palin? Did they really fail that badly to do their homework? I can't believe they messed up that badly. I don't have anything against her personally, but its obvious there is no way she's qualified to be VP. How could they have failed to see how unprepared she is? All they had to do was ask her about international politics for an hour to know she would never survive an interview by any reasonably good reporter. The whole campaign became a huge circus a few weeks after she was picked.

I have this weird idea and its a bit of a stretch, but hear me out if for no other reason than to have fun with it.

At the beginning of the preliminaries, the Republican party saw that many Republicans were leaning toward McCain because of his outsider status (aka NOT BUSH!) and realized that he could win the nomination on his own. This worried them, so first they told Giuliani the odds of the Reps winning were painfully low and told him to stop running for his own good, then they sold Giuliani's electoral votes to McCain to get him to fall in line with the party.

They gave McCain the nomination so they could selectively sabotage it because they didn't actually want him to win. They would be better off running against a Democrat in four years than to have a centrist Maverick in the White House for eight years.

This would explain Giuliani's mysterious drop out and his passing of votes to McCain instead of one of the other more traditional Republicans. They are actually using the same "winning" campaign tactics as 2004, but this explains why they have been so erratic and why they've made so many "strange" mistakes which seems so unlike Rove and his people.

There's a funny bit about this. Imagine they chose Palin on purpose to sabotage McCain. Then all of the sudden she does well in her speech and the Republican image starts to rise. Its almost like the show, "The Producers," where they are trying to design things to look like they are working hard but desperately want things to fail and all of the sudden, their ridiculous ideas are starting to succeed. Think about the shock! Its hilarious! So to reverse things a bit, they carefully fed Palin these lies about Obama and got her to spread them around knowing that sooner or later it would backfire. It took a lot longer than they expected but finally it succeeded.

Sure all of that is a mental stretch, but it sure is fun to think about. 

Back to reality a bit. Lets talk about the tone of the Republican campaign. Just like 2004, they used fear to control the masses. But I think the Republicans failed to realize that their fear tactics only work with the people who don't have access to information other than the media that the Reps control. They thought their stranglehold over media would protect them, but the internet has changed the game and now people have factcheck.org and other sites to verify information.

Also, like Senator Hillary Clinton, they underestimated the power of Barack Obama's organization abilities. I think they knew about it: after all that was the first thing they made fun of at the RNC, but they failed to realize just how powerful grass roots growing on the internet could be.

I think this election will go down in history as the first election where the internet made a difference. Ron Paul proved it by collecting more donation money than he knew what to do with. However, the internet wasn't enough to get the word out about him and he isn't good enough at playing the game of politics to have been accepted to the table. If he had a party behind him, like the Republicans, he would have been a serious force.

Barack has the Democrats and the internet masses backing him. With the combined media hogging of the Dems and his own technology savvy crew he was able to raise money and get the word out like never before.

I believe future elections will be fought on the internet as much as and eventually more than in the major media. In fact major media is in decline as internet media takes over. Within twenty years (or so) media will all be Internet Protocol based and no one will be able to control it, unless the Government is allowed to destroy net neutrality. We mustn't let the government oversee any aspect of the internet. It must remain free. Otherwise we will be manipulated through it as we are currently through the major media companies. Sure media will own large sites and filter content, but there will always be mom and pop shops where people go for the outside the box ideas.

Back on topic: the only people who didn't have access to non-media controlled information (and to be honest only the people who listen to Faux News and don't have internet connections qualify because most of the media is on Barack's side) are the ones who can be controlled by fear. Basically its the older generation who are voting for McCain and those who are poor and live in rural, non-tech-based areas that the Rovian Team can manipulate with fear.

There is one other class who will vote McCain. People who honestly believe that the republicans are right(ous). Die hard fans I guess you could call them.

All this fear manipulation is enough to make it a somewhat tight race and it would have been much tighter if the Rovian forces had kept a semi-clean contest, but some of the shite they've been dumping on people has even gotten Faux News to condemn them. Can you see why I believe there might be some deliberate sabotage going on here? McCain used to be a centrist and honestly, until he was nominated, a large portion of the power center of the Republican party hated his guts.

I have one last thing to say: a bit of a balancing act. If Barack Obama wins on Tuesday, the Democrats win on Tuesday. That means that the money behind the Democratic Party will direct him. He made a list of very specific things he's going to do in the white house. If he doesn't have the blessing of his party, he will not be able to accomplish anything. I believe eventually the agenda of these rich and powerful Democrats will take precedence.

Remember folks: our government is not of the people, by the people, or for the people. It is governed by the rich and powerful people and their whims are what become law. They don't have our best interest at heart, they have their own interests at heart.

Chances are very good that in four years time we will be basically in the same place as we are now.

Believe it or not: this is politics as usual and "change" is a word for dreamers and manipulators. Nothing ever changes because change can only happen within us. The only change anyone can actually promise is within themselves. Anyone promising you change outside them is at best a dreamer, at worst a liar.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the dreamers: because they tell us what's possible, but lets be pragmatic and learn to bring peace to ourselves, then watch as the world evolves before our eyes without us needing to change anything about it.

That's where peace will come from, from within. Change will be automatic: we won't have to make it.