Happy Fall?

     We are approaching mid October and it appears we are actually having a fall this year. There may actually be an upside to this pandemic. Halloween hasn't been officially cancelled or significantly messed with, as far as I can tell. I'm expecting a lot of things to be cancelled, like school functions and company parties. This is a bummer to some degree but I'm also hopeful that it will give us a little more time to relax and enjoy. That remains to be seen but so far so good. 

   Predictably, we are experiencing a "second wave" of germs so I'm not expecting things to open up anytime soon. We are also experiencing an intensifying wave of political ads. The ads are making football look good, which, for me, is a new low. What's not new are the choices. In most of my adult life I don't remember ever actualy voting for someone so much as against the other guy, whoever it was. Another election is another turn at holding my nose in the voting booth and picking who stinks less. 

   I have noticed that President Obama at least had the decency to project an image of someone who believed he was doing the right thing. I get the same impression from the current year's Democratic candidate although I'm not thriled with him either. I watched two debates so far. That's about four hours of my life I'll never get back. We are all biased to some degree.  The Presidential debate was an absolute s**tshow but left me with a clear impression that the incumbent lost. The VP debate was more of what you want to see when two "alleged" grown ups present their views.

   I was again left a clear impression of a winner here. The incumbent VP behaved a bit too much like his boss. What gave me a lot of satisfaction was the way his opponent handled herself. This woman refused to be interrupted and demanded equal time to speak when her blabbermouth companion ran over. If you hated her guts you still had to admire that, in my opinion. Outside of her being an attorney and a senator, I can't say I know much about her.

    It's not easy or fun to deal with piles of political bologna every time you turn on the television. I never was a fan of Hillary Clinton but you could say I've been a not that Orange Creature since 2016. When you've made up your mind early, the debates just become confirmation of what you believe, don't they? The ads and social media are just flies buzzing around the piles. I understand why college kids love cartoons and you tube so much. I just want to vote for Bugs Bunny. 

My soup brain

    Welcome to another beautiful day in the neighborhood. I'm sitting here racking my brain again to come up with a good topic for this post. I'm striking out so far. I try to avoid politics in my writing like the plague. I have a lot of friends on the opposite end of the opinion poll from me. I prefer not to alienate those people. Friends come in handy, after all. The problem is though, I'm currently undercaffeinated and bereft of ideas so here goes. 

    Last night, as of this writing, we watched a Presidential debate. It wasn't really a debate so much as a televised train wreck. My daughter, spouse and I watched 2 alleged grown ups interrupt each other and argue for an hour and a half. My daughter's Social Studies teacher asked the kids to watch at least some of the debate. I thoght this was a great idea for a handy civics lesson. When I asked my daughter about her class the next day, the biggest thing the kids seemed to have gotten out of the whole thing was that 'Trump looked orange!'. Sigh.

   I tried to explain to her, later, what a debate was supposed to look like. She asked me 'Why doesn't Obama run again? He was good.' I had to smile at that one. We were never huge fans but we did think he was tolerable. I told her he was wiped out from doing the job and probably didn't want it again. She was also quite young when he was elected.

   I can't help but find it embarrassing when grown ups, and especially ones in leadership positions, act like obnoxious middle schoolers. It's no wonder the kids didn't get much out of the "debate", they must have felt like they were watching two classmates. I'm also between a rock and a hard place here because we are in the minority, of our circle of friends, in our dislike of Trump. I suppose, in a way, this is a good opportunity for me to show our girl that you can agree to disagree with people and remain friends. We've been doing that for quite a while, actually.