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I am convinced that the mainstream media and the associated pundits are complete idiots and I am not so sure about the general population at this point either.  The latest endless coverage of candidate flip-flopping is utterly mundane, yet it’s all I hear about when the politics comes up in conversation.  What’s worse is that most people parrot the literal words of whatever radio talk show or new program they prefer.  It seems that even college educated folks have the tendency to parrot what they last heard and they end up convincing themselves that their very unoriginal ideas are truth and some new idea that came to them. Folks, use your own ability to reason.

While I am not shy about my support for Barrack Obama, but in all fairness, both candidates have the right to change their minds about policy and what they think is best based ever changing circumstances in which they had no way to predict.  That is not flip-flopping, that is reality—now changing base platform stances are serious, but changing how to solve problems is something I hope a president can see the need for.  I seldom ever do things exactly as plan, for I am not clairvoyant and the future never turns out as I predict. 

Here are position changes that need to concern us on either side:

1)      Obama’s vote on the FISA bill should be called in to question.  He may have a very good reason to change his position, but that needs to be unemotionally probed.

2)      McCain’s position on torture as a means to gain intelligence.  He made a major shift in this area and it’s a legal/ethics/moral issue that needs to be explored.

All this other “flip-flop” claims are not fundamental to McCain or Obama’s platform.  They are simply changes in how to deal with the changing situation in the country.

Now, pandering should be admonished and called out—but pandering is self-evident when a thinking person comes in contact with it. 

My point is that we, the US voting population needs to use our reason and our intellect when we slice, aggregate and digest mounds of information coming to us from all angles.  Make up your own mind on what you believe—you don’t want Bill O’Reilly, Lou Dobbs, Anderson Cooper or Keith Olbermann doing your thinking for you.  Their reality is not yours and every single person on the planet has an agenda and bias.  Decide what your own is agenda and bias: vote accordingly.

~Dean