Fear the boring in Las Vegas

I only watched half of the Democratic
debates in Nevada, I must confess. And
it was on YouTube.com with sections of
the broadcast missing because of technological
errors. I feel that this honesty
is important in our relationship between
reader and writer (and if I missed anything
important we all know why). I’m
sure I didn’t miss anything important.
If Tim Russert had been assassinated
on live television I’m sure I would have
heard something about it.

The debates were incredibly boring.
Where is Ron Paul to say crazy crap
when you need him? I spent most of the
time staring into Brian Williams’ eyes
and realizing how dreamy he really is.
In Las Vegas, the only city in America
with morals comparable to those found in
Washington D.C., Barack Obama, Hillary
Clinton and John Edwards debated with
one another. Tuesday Night Tim Russert
and Brian Williams acted as tag-team
moderators.

The dynamic was mainly focused on
leading candidates Clinton and Obama.
Clinton was prone to going off on rants.
Obama tried very hard to seem stoic and
responsible. Edwards, suffering from a
serious case of the third wheel, gave the
best little boy smirks you’ve ever seen.
Obama might lack in experience, but
he appears older than Tom Waits when
compared with Edwards’ baby face.

The debates would have been a lot
more interesting if they had just been
between Clinton and Edwards. About
3:30 into the second (of 11) videos of
the debate on YouTube, Tim Russert
asked Sen. Clinton if she felt the other
candidates were prepared for the presidency.
“That’s for the voters to decide,”
she responded, prompting an all out
smirk-fest from Edwards.

I mention YouTube because that’s the
way the majority of us follow current
events (if we follow them at all). The only
interesting event of the night was a heckler
shouting that one of the queries from the
moderators was a “f#@!ing race-based
question from YouTube.” There was a brief
pause, and then the debate continued.

The candidates’ positions all seem to
ape one another. They all talk about socializing
health care (or making it more easily
available), solving the home foreclosure
crisis and creating better jobs. Edwards
and Clinton both spoke about creating
jobs by making America self-sufficient in
energy and, in Clinton’s words, creating
“green-collar jobs.”

In an effort to seem less stiff, Obama
very forcedly said, “folks got a lot of
sun here,” of Nevada and solar energy.
Clinton said she had a plan to support
most of her proposals for change,
whereas Obama said many times that he
hates bureaucracy and Edwards thinks
that the entire system in Washington is
broken and doesn’t work.

Edwards brought up many different
concepts. It always seems to be the
candidates who know they aren’t going
to win that bring the most interesting
ideas to the table. He spoke about his
hatred of lobbyists, about raising the
minimum wage to $9.50 and about
making college more affordable. He
even said he wanted to have college
tuition and books fully covered if a
student agrees to work 10 hours a
week. Candidates rarely fulfill their
campaign promises anyway, so it was
nice to hear these fresh ideas. Where
exactly Edwards would get the money
to accomplish all of these things was
not explained, but they were fun to
think about.

When asked what her strengths were,
Clinton went into a (seriously) twoand-
a-half-minute rant about making
lives better for children, change and
then finished with some ever-favorite
Bush-bashing. Whatever “fight” there
is between Clinton and Obama, they
didn’t seem to want to get into it at the
debate. They just blamed their staff for
the bickering that had happened previously
in their campaigns.

After Obama awkwardly asserted
that he was a Christian, not a Muslim,
I stopped watching. The way it came off
was: “Whoa, I’m already black. I don’t
need two things against me while I’m
running for president.”

I’ve always tried to wait awhile before
I get involved in presidential elections.
Otherwise, I get fed up with everyone
before I even vote. Then I have to live
with the choice
for the next four
to eight years.

There has to be a
better way to decide
this. Let’s be honest,
the founding fathers
lived a hell of a long
time ago – before space
flight, the Internet, or 2
Girls 1 Cup. Had they
any idea of what the
America of the future was
going to look like they
probably would have just
let us stay under British
rule.

To solve this dilemma, I
propose a reality TV show.
Originally it was to be a
sitcom called “Asses,” where three
Democratic hopefuls share a gigantic
(and unrealistic) apartment in
Manhattan where they awkwardly
hook up with each other. But we are
in the writer’s strike. Let’s put them all
an island with a weapon and let them
duel to the death a la “Battle Royale.”
One island for Democrats and one for
Republicans.

For the Dems, Clinton would win
after throwing her weapons down and
eating Edwards’ and Obama’s souls like
she did Bill’s. The more exciting show
would be about the Republicans. The
showdown would be between Ron Paul,
Mike Huckabee and John McCain. Paul’s
craziness would lose out to McCain’s
prisoner-of-war stamina, and then it
would just be him and Huckabee.

Huckabee would call in his ace in the
hole, Chuck Norris, and in the craziest
moment in TV history, John McCain
would kill Chuck Norris with his bare
hands. This would be the equivalent to
killing god himself, and would lead to
the beginning of Armageddon.

Since Armageddon takes awhile, there
would still be time for people to vote for
their candidate via text message in a page
stolen from “American Idol”. The results
would be close, but McCain would win
this, as well, for his previously unknown
Five For Fighting-like falsetto. McCain
would become president, the clouds
would part and the world would end.