As few of you know, I have recently become a huge a huge Colin Cowherd fan. His show, "The Herd" is aired on ESPN Sports Radio everyday from 6am-10am. He's an Oregon native and as some of you may remember he used to be the sports anchor on KATU. The appeal of listening to "the Herd" is that Colin is able to transcend the realm of sports by very insightfully relating events that happen on, off, or around the field to real life. He usually begins his rants with "often in life..." and then goes on like a proud father teaching his sons a lesson with a pipe in his mouth and the evening newspaper in his lap. His show is classy, he doesn't tolerate nonsense, and he dispels common myths, misnomers, and mob mentality as a matter of course and principle--and he does it with style. Lighthearted, humorous, self-deprecating, "the Herd" is something I look forward to every tired morning before and on my way to work. Until today that is...until today.

Thursday, Colin began on a rant that he often trots out and that I don't really agree with--the old siding with the muckety-muck argument. Cowherd really enjoys sucking up to big business, executives, and CEO's, and though I disagree, I generally just ignore it and let it pass--there's no way I'm going to agree with everything someone in talk radio says (after all, it is a cult of personality), and in any case the rants are usually short lived anyway.

But today the rant took a turn for the worse. It also took a turn for the ignorant and the anti-intellectual. Cowherd said, and I'm paraphrasing here so bear with me, he said that, "it's easy for the 40 year-old Starbucks guy with a ponytail and an exotic snake at home to vote for Obama, but when you own a business and Obama's going to raise taxes to 39%, it's not so easy."

Obviously, there are a number of things wrong with Colin's statement. First off, I'd argue that $12 an hour, 40 year old Starbucks guy has a lot more to lose in this election than business owning, vacation house, trophy wife, dockers wearing CEO guy, considering that John McCain has no plan to address our health care problem, our energy or economic issues, and plans to privatize social security. It also makes democrats look as if we're a bunch of wierdos who are out of the mainstream, and while we certainly have our share of the wierdos, at least they're generally peaceful and well educated, unlike the gun owning crazies and fundamentalist Christians on the right. Moreover, considering that the economy is failing and that we're in a recession, trade deficit, and budget deficit due to nearly three decades of conservative economic policies (I include Clinton in this), it would seem to me that business owning CEO guy has a lot to lose as well if McCain is elected.

But all of that doesn't bother me as much as one simple fact: the President has no power to levy taxes. It is right in the Constitution, article 1 section 7. Presidents are credited with tax cuts because they often propose them and sign them into law. Bush, for instance is hated by liberals for his tax cuts, but they were in fact passed by a Republican congress, not Bush himself.

Ultimately, the point is that even people that seem to be smart, well spoken, and informed have fallen into this trap of believing dumb idioms that feed directly into right wing talking points...and this cannot continue to go unchallenged. When you receive those dumb emails, or hear friends say dumb things like what Colin said on Thursday, you have to set them straight--you have to let the truth be known. That is our advantage in this election--the truth is on our side--but the right wing is going to stir up a bunch of distractionary talking points and try to give people any reason they can to be afraid of electing Barack Obama, because they know if we talk about real issues, about what's best for our country, about the Republican record on governing, they know that if the truth is out there they lose, and they lose badly. And I want nothing more than for the Republicans to just get absolutely embarrassed on election day--its what they deserve, and I'll give you a little history lesson my baby blue birds: political parties die sometimes. It's happened several times during our nation's history when a party becomes dysfunctional, and it can happen quickly. The Whig party, for instance, held the presidential office until 1852, when the party failed to renominate then president Millard Fillmore. They nominated General Winfield Scott who just got absolutely anihilated in that election and the party basically faded into history from that point on. Now it may be unlikely that this will happen to the Republicans, considering that they have the backing of so many corporate giants, but at the same time, their actual politics are way outside of the mainstream. Here's to hoping!