From the moment I got out of bed...

I knew that the decision to take a day of rest today was the right one.  My calf muscles were stiff, cramped and aching when I got out of bed.  So was that troubling hamstring.  I wanted to walk.  To get out of this room and into the cool morning air.  To see the stores I look at every morning.  I ended up sitting in my chair and meditating for a little while, taking that walk in my mind.

I waved to the baker as he worked behind the open door/closed security fence.  I waved to the early birds doing their cardio exercise in the small gym I walk by every morning.  I looked quizzically in the window of that adult store, pondering how a vibrator for couples works, why women wear shoes with heels that high when they clearly hinder walking, and really pondering why there is a candy dish with soft, chewy candies in that window.  I wondered why people go into work at the NFL network at 6:30 a.m. on days when football is not in season.

I read a brilliant idea on an internet message board last night.  Someone said they'd written an email to Mitt Romney suggesting that he release just the first couple of pages of his tax returns for 2000 through 2009, to prove he is telling the truth about the rate of income tax he paid during those years is above 13%.  Not releasing the details would prevent people from raising the issue of a deduction he took for his wife's horse.  Everyone knows that in 2010 he did claim a deduction of more than $70,000 for the expenses for that horse.  Few of you know that he only was able to use $50 worth of that deduction, and the rest was disallowed.  It might be usable in a future year, but probably won't be.

Is no one else bothered by the fact that the incumbent Vice-President apparently still lives in the 20th century, and can't count to four?

I'm bothered that neitiher candidate or VP candidate has advocated a serious proposal for resolving the simple problem of government spending.  Government spends more more money than it takes in.  If people or corporations do this, eventually they go broke.  But government has a printing press and can just keep printing money.  I remember the days when I was in the military and I was trained to give financial counseling to other military personnel.  One of my first "customers" was a young airman who told me "I can't be overdrawn, I still have checks left".  His system was to go to the ATM, check his balance, and then write that in the ledger and draw on that amount.  Not all that different from what the federal government does, except in D.C. they know they are spending money they don't have.

Perhaps the 21st century should be labelled the century of broken promises.  We were promised that the Bush era tax cuts would end after ten years.  They didn't.  We were promised that government would keep an eye on the banks, and the economy.  They didn't.  The minute Gramm-Leach-Bliley got the signature of Bill Clinton, I knew the days of ruin were coming, but no one listens to me.  Now we have banks that are "too big to fail", the lessons of the Savings and Loan debacle of the 1980s went unlearned, and yet people want to continue to deregulate the finance industry.  How many times do you have to thrust your hand into the open flame before you learn that doing so hurts, and will ultimately get you a very bad burn?

I watched a Youtube video just before writing this.  It's from the 2008 presidential debates.  In it, then Senator Barrack Obama was telling Tom Brokaw that his mother shouldn't have had to spend her last months in a hospital bed, fighting to get her insurer to pay for her treatment.  It's a touching anecdote.

It's also a baldfaced lie.  Mrs. Obama's health insurer paid all of her health insurance claims.  There was no question of denial of treatment due to pre-existing conditions as the candidate claimed.  The issue involved payment she was fighting for from a disability policy that had nothing to do with who would pay for her cancer treatments.

57 states is an understandable gaffe, in the heat of fatigue and completely forgiveable.  Claiming his uncle was there when Auschwitz was liberated is a gaffe, since it was the Russian Red Army that liberated that camp.  Obama's uncle may have been at Buchenwald when it was freed.  But the lie above is unforgiveable.  To lie about your mother's healthcare to score debate points?

Oh well.  Everytime I ramp myself up about the lies on one side or the other, and don't pretend for one instant that both sides aren't lying like hell; I remind myself of my one profound statement in this life.  The problem with our political system is we are left with the lesser of two evils, which becomes the evil of two lessers.

I think I'll write in Pat Paulsen.