We can vote by mail here in Seattle and I want my vote to be one of the first cast for Obama. I can hardly believe how exciting it is to think that Obama and Biden may be our leaders soon. Powell finally endorsed Obama this morning, and in a later press conference pointed out how dangerous Obama's opponents are making it for American's to be seen around the world as pointing at anti-American behavior as Congressman Bachman did a few days ago.
Last night Palin sat nervously through her pro forma appearance on SNL, trying to rock with actors through the hip hop moments. Somehow her face was more a grimace than the look of someone having fun. Everyone keeps saying how McCain used to be such a standup guy before he began this election. I keep wondering how American's can consider him at all for the leader of the free world if he allows others to run his life the way all the reports suggest. Like Palin, he seems more of a hostage or a sore loser than someone who can help our country face real challenges. McCain-Palin's lies and smears have become so overwhelming, so omnipresent I cannot help wonder if their willingness to cheat their way into the White House isn't having some terrible effect on the soul of our country. Even if they believe their own made up stories about Obama, do they really think that this kind of campaign could produce a positive outcome?
Since Alaska isn't far from our shores in the Northwest, we have been lucky to hear authentic Alaskan perspective's and this a.m. I found this wonderful antidote, That Sarah Palin is one unreal Alaskan, to the stupid and redundant appearances of Joe the plumber on our tv screens.
I'm sitting on my bearskin chair beside the woodstove, in Kotzebue, Alaska, 50 miles above the Arctic Circle, while outside the ocean begins to freeze over. Inside I have about 49 things piling up to say to you, America.
Seth Kantner is a fisherman and a Westerner. Obviously a writer. Maybe McCain and Palin wouldn't consider him a real American I guess because he is articulate and deeply respectful of his neighbors and the diversity of his part of the country. He points out that in some funny anecdotes that it's pretty easy for almost anyone to get elected in the backcountry.
For example, in the village closest to the wilderness homestead where I was raised, I remember standing in my friend's cabin when his dad got a call on the CB radio: "People are writing you in for mayor."
"Nope!" my friend's dad transmitted. "Tell 'em no, I ain't doing that." He spit in a can, peered out the door at his Honda generator -- idling rough -- an extension cord running up the hill and under his door, to power the rerun of "Dukes of Hazzard" he was watching.
If he'd lived in Wasilla 25 years later, he could have responded, "Call Sarah, she'll want it."
So my vote is cast and I will start putting in more hours to gotv for Obama, clearing my schedule for Nov. 4 and wait for the results. But there is one more thing I hope for the future. I hope our country never has sit through a pile of lies and filth like we have seen stacked up against Obama's candidacy. It's not just a way to campaign, to try and win. McCain and Palin have worked hard to forge a lot of ugly behavior and I wish there was a way to hold them accountable for it. If they somehow succeeded, America would be the biggest loser of all.