The Voter Registration Test

I'm glad I went to eat Mexican food tonight. Otherwise, I might've gone to vote next Tuesday without some vital items of information. Here are a few things I learned from the diners speaking loudly at the table next to us:

-Barack Obama's campaign is predicated on a lie. While Obama started his campaign calling himself black, new information found on the Internet (that always-infallible source) reveals that he's actually half white, 4 percent black and 46 percent "Arabic." And according to Chelsea Lately, a late-night satirical talk show host, Barack really wasn't raised by his mother, stepfather and then white grandparents. His Kenyan dad was around all the time.

-John McCain is going to immediately overturn Roe v. Wade when he comes into office because he's "against a woman's right to choose."

-We're all going to get drafted into the army to fight unjust wars.

-Why are we giving millions of dollars in aid to countries that don't have food? Why don't we give that rice to the people living under the bridge? And what about me? I only got $11 in my pocket and I gotta spend $5 of it on food tonight.

This conversation embodies all that's wrong with our democracy, where people are flush with information but have no desire to actually find out the truth. In this environment, people can find "facts" to justify any point of view without considering their source. The mainstream media is bad enough, but at least it has to show some discernment. When people start seriously citing late-night shows and obscure conspiracy Web sites in political conversations, it's time to fear the fact that these same folks have just as much say in choosing our leaders as we do.

Take the above quotations. I'm not a big Barack Obama fan, but I think we can at least give him the courtesy of getting his ethnicity right. Yes, his middle name is Hussein and he did spend time in Indonesia. But there's no doubt that his dad was black, whether his dad was from North Africa or West Africa. And how do you become 46 percent of an ethnicity anyway?

As far as his dad goes, I'm pretty sure Barack only saw him once after returning to the U.S. from Indonesia.

The abortion quote illustrates how a tidbit of truth can sometimes be twisted. Yes, McCain says he is staunchly pro-life, but he doesn't have the power himself to single-handedly overturn Roe v. Wade. The president does not interpret the law. Hopefully our friends at the adjacent table were referring the fact that the president will probably appoint tons of judges to lower federal courts and possibly the Supreme Court over his first term. While Obama has said his appointees would have to feel empathy for the little man, McCain says he's going to appoint folks based on credentials, not ideology. See this article for more...

President Bush recently announced troop reductions in Iraq. Certainly this is a better time to start drafting people than when we made the troop surge last year.

Oh, and the last quote. Why do we give aid to other countries? I guess we should hand over millions to people who have not taken advantage of the opportunity our country - the most prosperous on earth - has given them. Maybe we should hoard our affluence, keeping it within our borders and leaving millions of innocent victims of natural disasters to fend for themselves. See cyclone in Myanmar and earthquake in China.

I encountered these folks a week after listening to this Howard Stern segment where Obama backers voice their support for policies that are actually John McCain's and even agree that Sarah Palin will make a good pick as Obama's VP.

All this combined makes me wonder whether or not we should have a voter registration test, a quick quiz on the basics of the candidates' positions before being allowed to cast a ballot. I mean, that's the assumption behind having a voting age, right? That once we're 18, we have the ability to discern.

That skill was not evident around the dinner table tonight.

Score One for Obama

I never thought I’d find myself working the phones in the Barack Obama headquarters, especially on a night the president was set to give an important address to the nation about the financial crisis. But there I was, and I had little other option.

I had gone running that night, and as I was listening to Chinese lessons on my mp3 player and pounding the pavement, I somehow lost my key. This was stupid on a variety of levels. For one, it was completely avoidable. I could have left the key under the mat at my house. I could have tucked it inside the little key pocket in my brand new running shorts. Instead, I chose to hold it in my right hand, along with my mp3 player, both of them swinging by the pendulum of my arm as I jogged.

That’s not to say this type of stupidity is completely uncharacteristic of me. I’ve been known to have a clumsy, idiotic streak. Once in China, I padlocked myself inside a house that had no indoor plumbing. As you can imagine, without getting into detail, the consequences were less than pleasant.

With no key, phone, or wallet, it was almost like being stranded in the wild and left for survival, only with concrete and cars all around. Katy wasn’t due home for two more hours, so I decided that I’d retrace the mile and see if by chance I could see the key gleaming in the streetlights. By now the sun had dipped behind the earth’s curve, and darkness was falling fast.

I figured I couldn’t lose in this situation. If I found the key, I performed a miracle. If I made the loop again with no luck, I had at least gotten another mile’s worth of exercise, which was the point of this whole thing in the first place.

I’ve always felt sympathy for the homeless, but I found a new empathy for them that night. I was scouring the pavement for the tool to give me entry into a nice apartment where Katy and I joke - and I emphasize joke - that we enjoy the luxury life. They often make a similar search for throwaway food scraps to simply keep them alive.

You feel a lot of new emotions when you’re powerless, but that’s a blog post for another day. I’m sure if you’ve read this blog before, you’ve noticed that God often strips me of pride to teach me humility, only to watch me later go after the same self-sufficiency again.

I walked by the railroad tracks and listened to the harsh, metal-on-metal squeal of the MARTA train’s brakes as it pulled into a station near my house. I watched the sun fade completely, and streetlights became beacons to get me home.

Then it occurred to me that Katy might worry about me if I didn’t answer her nightly call as she left work. This realization came to me at the same time I had walked into a parking lot to check out an old tire shop that has been redeveloped into loft space for businesses. In the window of one of the two occupied spaces, a huge blue O with red and white stripes taking up its bottom half was painted on the glass.

People were sitting in a circle in a room plastered with posters in red, white and blue. A Barack Obama quote was written in cursive on the wall. I had found the Illinois senator’s Decatur campaign headquarters.

These folks are doing a fantastic job for their candidate. If you could empirically predict margin of victory by yard signs, Obama would be leading by something like a 98 percent in Decatur. The reason I knew the sign of the O stood for Obama is because I pass a homemade one nailed to a tree on my route to work. On that same street, I was recently following a car with an Obama bumper sticker written in Hebrew.

Despite my political differences, I needed a phone. I tapped on the glass, and a lady opened the door. I explained my situation.

“Only if you vote for Barack Obama,” she said with a wry smile.

She probably thought that was a safe bet in Decatur.

“I can’t guarantee that, but I hope you’ll let an enemy into your camp for a moment,” I said.

I made the call, and Katy was relieved. As I walked home, I thought this was a bit ironic: I had no change, and I went to Barack Obama. He won’t get my vote, but he gets my gratitude.