i definitely see a resemblance

originally uploaded by beths96.

max!

max!, originally uploaded by pr9000.

Looks like he has a beard, doesn't it? Like he's a hippie in a pumpkin suit.

i ain't sayin' ... i'm just sayin' ...

originally uploaded by pr9000.

My good friend Tricia sent my Facebook account a "gift" -- a "McCain '08" button. "Based on your post," she said, referring to this one ... If I were to have accepted it, everyone who visits the page would see that I was a McCain supporter.

Thing is, though, I'm not.

***

It's a symptom of the binary thinking that most political people fall into -- and I'm not saying Tricia is guilty of this -- that, because one does not support candidate A, one must support candidate B.

And yet, in this case, I can't say that I'm a McCain supporter. I can say that I think he's more qualified ... I can say that, on the whole, I'm more sympathetic with the smaller government philosophy that used to guide the GOP ... I can say that I'd love to see every single vocal Obama supporter suffer through four more years of not having the White House ... but I cannot say that I'd put a McCain/Palin sign in my front yard, or a button on my Facebook page.

I have one, too -- I've got a big, ol' yard sign, sitting in my garage right now, for a non-political project I'm working on ... I wouldn't dream of putting it outside.

Yet, I might be voting for him. I might not. I vacillate, depending on the hour of the day. So ask me now, and I'm not voting for him. Ask me in an hour and I'm voting for Bob Barr. An hour later, I'm not voting for president at all.

***

The boomerang: I'm starting to learn how many anti-Bush folks felt over the past eight years, as I watch the press carry its chosen candidate to the finish line. I look around at the many gaffes of Joe Biden -- he's going to be a fun VP, I think -- and wish someone would call the Democrats on it. I see the smarm just oozing off Obama, and I wonder if I'm the only one, and if I'm not, I wonder why he's going to win anyway.

It's not easy when you see "the other side" as being not just wrong, but tragically so. It's a trap that I'm trying not to fall into, because it's dangerous and defeating. But I get it now. I understand it. Hopefully I'll learn from it.

Still to come: class warfare.

barn panorama

barn panorama, originally uploaded by pr9000.

I'd love it if the trees in and around my home in Franklin, Tennessee, would just hurry up and change colors already. Cripes, my old home in Minneapolis is expecting snow this weekend! You'd think we could at least have some color in the trees by the end of October, right?

Don't take me too seriously, though I am a bit perplexed by the everything's-still-green state of nature down in Middle Tennessee. Not that I'm complaining -- as I said above, it is supposed to snow in Minnesota in the next few days, whereas I had the top down on the convertible just yesterday afternoon in downtown Franklin. So I'm not carping. I'm just saying that some browns and oranges would be appreciated.

Click the image above to see a panorama I took of a gorgeous old barn directly behind our subdivision. I'm sure it will be torn down eventually, to make way for more houses or parks or sidewalks ... but for now, I'm going to enjoy it. I wish I could enjoy it with more color in the foliage.

***

So I'm trying to decide if I want to write up my one-time-only post on this election. I'm listening to former Minnesota governor (and maybe former Republican?) Arne Carlson explain his decision to endorse Obama over McCain. He says that the moronic comments by Rep. Michelle Bachmann drove him over the edge and made up his mind that Obama was the man for the job.

That's fine. I can understand that. Bachmann is an embarrassment, and unfortunately her comments reflect something in the Republican Party that's run unchecked for decades now: that somehow Democrats are un-American because they don't subscribe to Republican ideas on defense, the economy -- you name it. This idea is not only ridiculous; it's dangerous. Dangerous because it's just not true, and because it's an incredibly anti-intellectual argument. It says that disagreement is not healthy, but downright treasonous.

Sometime in the past 25 years, we've replaced "my country, right or wrong" with "my party, right or wrong," and the damage that has done to our country is just starting to be felt. I fear we have more down the road.

Democrats are just as pro-American as Republicans. But not as much as Libertarians, though. :)

***

Having said all that ... much of the anger that comes from Republican quarters isn't being channeled in the proper direction. It's an anger I share, and I know many, many people who share my point of view.

In a nutshell: the "mainstream media" outlets that have defined political coverage, and thus swayed political outcomes, are irredeemably, irrevocably biased in favor or the Democratic party.

The anger I have comes from knowing that, for all intents and purposes, the media has been in the tank for Obama since the primaries started. It's not even been hidden well in a few major outlets -- namely, MSNBC and the New York Times. I have no time or patience for MSNBC, but the Times hurts my feelings by insulting my intellect. I can't read the paper anymore. I can't buy it at the newsstand, and I can't pay for a subscription at home. It's just fundamentally dishonest in its coverage.

Examples? A front page story on the possibility that maybe McCain had an affair ... compared to its total avoidance of a real-life case of adultery -- with a child born out of wedlock, no less, from former Democratic candidate John Edwards. And that's the most egregious. There are a ton of other examples, the most recent of which made me laugh ... somehow, Sarah Palin's wardrobe deserves front page play, but news about the ACORN scandal didn't quite make it that far in the A section. Hmmm.

An honest press would be holding Obama to the same standards of investigation and analysis that it held Palin, or "Joe the Plumber" ... it disappoints me greatly that the press is doing such a disservice to the electorate, and that people still fall for it. If he is "The One" then dammit tell me more about him besides how awesome he is, how he inspires heretofore unknown homosexual desires (Chris Matthews only), how he'll feed the nation with a few loaves of bread and some fish.

***

As for what I think ...

I just can't get past the fact that Barack Hussein Obama is not as qualified to be president of the United States as John Hussein McCain. He's been a Senator for all of four years, was part of the Daley Machine in Chicago before that, and ... well, that's about it. He was a "community organizer," which does not quite lead me to believe he's qualified to sit in the White House. Oh, he was the editor of the Harvard Law Review too. So we know the Attorney General's briefs will be well reasoned, which I guess is nice.

He might be a "a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament," as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes surmised FDR after their first meeting. I hope to God that he is, because it looks like he's going to win the election. As a registered Republican, I'm not afraid to say that he'll be my president after he wins. Doesn't mean I'll punch the ballot (or press the touchscreen or fill in the oval) for him, though. But it won't worry me if most of my fellow Americans do.

Later: the class warfare boomerang, and the coming deluge of "1-20-2017" bumper stickers

five dollar ... five dollar ... five dollar foot long

it's c-c-catchin' on ..., originally uploaded by pr9000.

hailey

, originally uploaded by beths96.

first time i've seen her hair that straight ...

question:

Which is more important: $150,000 worth of clothes for Palin's family, or millions of fraudulent donations to the Obama campaign? Or the ACORN folks registering tons of non-people across the country? Note: answer this as though you're not an editor at the New York Times.

darlene perez loves ELVIS

, originally uploaded by pr9000.

... and who doesn't, really?

Amina and I were in Memphis earlier this week, my first visit since I was in my early teens. We made the pilgrimage to Graceland, but not to do the tour -- there is no way I'm spending (at least) $30 to walk through the mansion. I was hoping to get one of those iconic shots of the gates closed (note: Elvis not included), but we were there about an hour too early, and I wasn't about to hang around outside the many gift shops sponsored by the Presley estate ... so I did my best to get some shots of the wall, and then we hightailed it downtown to Rendesvous for the best dry ribs I've ever had.

So Memphis was nice -- at least the parts I saw were nice. We stayed in Germantown and only made excursions to tourist-approved areas, so it was pleasant enough. I've heard horror stories about the "other" Memphis, and oddly enough I was reading The Blind Side, which is more a story about an excruciatingly poor African American teen boy than it is about football. It's so good I've convinced Amina to read it, and she's enjoying it as much as I did.

And now it's a week later, and I'm sitting on my front porch, freezing my toes off. Fall is wonderful here in Tennessee; I'll take the chilly mornings over the bluster that is October in Minnesota, though the leaves here haven't really started changing yet. Oh, the sacrifices I make to live in a warmer clime ... :)

punch me

punch me, originally uploaded by pr9000.

It has been raining for 24 hours, and Lord knows we needed it ... Everything is brown; walking barefoot in the back yard is like acupuncture on your soles; the leaves on the trees are threatening to fall off en masse with nary a red, gold or brown hue.

But now it is raining, and it's glorious. I'm sitting on the back porch, with Trotter at my feet and a strong cup of coffee at my side. The moss on the tree bark is a seafoam green, and everything else is muted and monochrome. I actually created a photo effect called "new black" that tries to capture this; to see an example, click here and scroll over to the third photo. But even that doesn't quite capture what I see (and smell) outside this morning.

October rain is the best kind of rain.

crema coffee

crema coffee, originally uploaded by pr9000.

I took Trotter out for a bike ride this morning -- we try to do one every morning, but sometimes we're not awake enough for it -- and the first thing that hit me: the smell of fall. Fall has a smell, of course -- drying leaves, lazy grass, and the rainclouds coming in from the west added to the aroma. It was intoxicating.

And, not more than 10 words into the first sentence of this post, it started to rain.

Fall is my favorite time of the year. Our last four autumns were spent in Minnesota, where the "mild" seasons (fall and spring) lasted about a month each. Here in Nashville, though, I've been promised those two seasons will be glorious, but each time I've been greeted with the scents of fall, the habitual Minnesota thoughts creep in my brain: "Enjoy this, 'cause there won't be too many more like it."

***

Mom and dad came down last weekend, and we had a surprise for them: tickets to see Willie Nelson and his band, at a fund raiser for Hepatitis C research. It was a great show, though the temperatures did drop down into the low teens by showtime. (Not really, but it did feel awfully cold.) The show was held at The Preston Farm in Leiper's Fork, which is a deceptively small town not too far from our house. The concert truly was in the middle of the farm -- a huge pasture with tractor ruts and a few dried, stray cow patties and a picturesque barn full of hay and, most likely, snakes.

I didn't venture too close to the barn.

Our bus got there a few hours early, which seemed ridiculous at the time but ensured that we weren't more than 50 feet from the stage. Of course, when you're at a concert on a farm with one entrance to the two-lane road that feeds all traffic ... first in, last out. And we were on a bus that was three quarters empty, and one quarter filled with drunken neighbors who we hadn't yet met -- at least, we hadn't met them when they were sober. We met them while they were drunk, and if it's true that you don't get a second chance to make a first impression ... well, I'm not sure how to finish that. Luckily I didn't recognize any of them from church. :)

To see a few photos of the red-headed stranger, click here.