Where do you get your phytochemicals?: October 2008

It’s nice to be so loved every 4 years. We Ohioans are never able to forget, even if we wanted to, just how important our state is, and always has been, in a presidential election. As we are told numerous times a day (no pressure...) no Republican presidential candidate has ever won the White House without winning Ohio. But I’ve lived in this state for 36 years, and I can’t ever remember a time when we were graced with the presence of presidential candidates like we have been in this election.

Since January 2007 John McCain has been here 33 times, Barack Obama 47. I don’t even know what the tally is for the past month, but one or the other or their running mates has been here every day. And my town in particular seems to be high on their agendas.

On Tuesday, John McCain held a rally at the indoor sports arena at my daughter’s high school. According to her – and verified by the video footage I saw – half the people in attendance were kids seizing the opportunity to skip class. Not to be outdone, Joe Biden will hold a rally there tomorrow. But he will miss out on the added advantage of wayward teens filling the bleachers... the school has a pre-scheduled early dismissal tomorrow, an hour before rally time. In Bowling Green yesterday, thousands of kids from across that county were BUSSED to Sarah Palin's rally in order to fill the bleachers. Hey, guys? I give you credit for wanting to reach out to the youth of our great state. But when you have to start kidnapping them to boost your attendance numbers, it might be time to call it a wrap.

After McCain’s high school pep rally Tuesday, his friend Joe the Plumber made an appearance at The Dublin Pub, a popular bar two blocks from my office, where he told the world that an Obama presidency will be the end of Israel. Well now. I had no idea plumbers were so versed on foreign policy matters. Perhaps McCain should make him Secretary of State.

I really have no problem with Joe. He asked Obama a legitimate question. Obama gave him a legitimate answer. That should have been the end of it. But the guy is holding press conferences on his front lawn every morning, on all manners of subjects not involving clogged pipes, and now I hear that he has a record deal. Go, Joe!

By the way, did you hear the rumor that Joe wasn’t a registered voter? Well he is. But according to those pesky rolls that have brought our state even more unwanted attention, he’s not. That’s because of a clerical error that shows him in the system as Samuel J. Worzelbacher instead of Wurzelbacher. If the GOP had gotten their wish, Joe and 200,000 other Ohio voters would have had a hard time voting next Tuesday. But thankfully, we have a tough as nails Secretary of State who took the matter all the way to the Supreme Court.

The Ohio GOP filed a court case against our Sec. of State, Jennifer Brunner, which would have required her to create a computer software system flagging 200,000 voters whose names or Social Security numbers differed from their drivers’ licenses, including Joe (and my local congressman), to be linked to every single voting precinct in all of Ohio’s 88 counties, within 48 HOURS. Brunner said that put undo stress on her office and took it to the U.S. Supreme Court. Who told the GOP: You don’t have a leg to stand on and you’re wasting our time. Go away. Brunner is now receiving death threats.

Which brings me to ACORN. First off, let me say that the (attempted) voter registration drive I did last month was through our local Obama campaign office, not ACORN. But if I had known that ACORN was actually paying people for their time, I would have signed on with them!! Yes, it’s true: Some of the people hired by ACORN to register voters decided it would be more fun to just sit around making up fake names rather than hitting the streets. Those matters should be taken seriously. It is not true, however, that those people were somehow trying to rig the election for their buddy Obama. They were just trying to make an easy buck.

What is true is that the Greene County Sheriff, Kevin DeWine, cousin of former representative Mike DeWine and head of McCain’s Ohio campaign, demanded to see the thousands of new voter registrations in that county (right next to mine) because he had “evidence” of fraudulence. The Democratic party then filed an injunction demanding DeWine produce that evidence and DeWine said “um, well, never mind.” Now the folks in Greene County aren't very happy with him, seeing as how it is home to 4 colleges, 2 of which are African American and 1 of which is known as Ohio's Berkley.

Need I remind you that this is precisely the BS that brought about the mass Attorneys General firings two years ago, for which President Bush is still under federal investigation? The Republican Party has a major credibility problem. If they could fix that, they might actually win this Independent, Female, College Educated, Middle Class Ohioan's vote they seem to want so desperately.

I tell ya, living in this all important Battleground State is never boring.

Well, actually, it usually IS boring. Except every 4 years.