First, yes, there was a debate and Sarah Palin said words like “doggone” and “you betcha.” I want my VP to be smarter than I am. Biden kept his cool even when Palin repeatedly said nothing. Good for him. Palin was less stupid than she usually is. Good for her. Still, Bush is very “dadgum” and “yeehaw” so I think I want to go with a little smarter ticket this time. Check my Shared Items over on the right and I will show you some good post-debate blog posts, if that’s what your interested in.

Anyway, Michigan, are you pissed that McCain just frickin’ abandoned you? I’m inexplicably upset about this. Michigan has no rich people or something so he’s not wasting his time there?

As in national polling, it appears to be Obama’s edge on handling the economy that has propelled him to the top of the polls in Michigan. In the Free Press poll, Obama held a 15-point lead over McCain on fixing problems with the national economy, and he had an even bigger, 20-point edge on the question of which candidate is “more likely to fight
for the concerns most important to you and your family.”

I’ve never agreed with a statement more. I think this is what it comes down to for me with Obama: he takes my concerns seriously. My concerns about paying for gas and groceries and college and a house and speech therapy. I just think Obama knows that we’re struggling here in the middle class, while McCain really has no idea. Does McCain even know anybody in the middle class? Does he know anybody who has had to choose between saving for retirement or going to college or paying for speech therapy or buying a house? Oh my God, I just started crying when I typed that sentence. I think I’ve found my true feelings about this election. I’m not really an economics type of girl; I tend to want to talk about race and gender and civil rights issues, but man, this economy bullshit is kind of a big deal. We’re working really hard. My husband has a bachelor’s degree in accounting and a job with a major financial institution. I sometimes get paid to write stuff. We don’t have credit card debt. We don’t have a mortgage that we can’t afford. We don’t have a car payment. We budget a small amount each week for “spending money” and we go to the dollar theater and Subway for fun.  And still we have to choose between several extremely important, quality-of-life things: speech therapy for our daughter, retirement, higher education, and a home. We’re paying for Maya’s speech therapy out of our ever-shrinking 401(k). I dropped out of school because we can’t afford to pay for it without student loans, and my post-college liberal arts job wouldn’t pay me enough to make it possible for me to pay off my loans. Maya’s speech has come a long way, but when we first got her evaluated last year, it was noted that she had a “moderate to severe” speech delay with motor planning issues involved. That sounds worthy of treatment, no? Our $12,000/year health insurance did not agree that it was worthy of treatment. I don’t know, I think basic communication skills are kind of helpful in life, but apparently because she’s able to chew and swallow her food, she does not qualify for health care coverage in this case. Do you want to know how much it costs? I’ll tell you: $58/week for a half-hour each week. Impossible. We have no debt, and still it’s impossible. Why is that? Gas and groceries maybe. The extra-curriculars that we pay for for our homeschooled kids are bargain-basement low-income rec. center prices. Some of them cost $5, none cost more than $25. We are not living high on the hog. We do everything on the cheap. I think the only “luxury” we have is cable and we were even going to get rid of that last year to save some money, but we decided that our homeschool needs make high-speed internet a basic necessity and it’s cheaper to get the internet/cable bundle. For “vacation” we visit our family and stay with them. We live on a budget. Every penny is budgeted. And Obama knows it. That’s exactly why he’s winning Michigan and that’s exactly why he should win this election. It makes me so upset that McCain won’t fight for Michigan because I think that means McCain knows he can’t help Michigan and we should all take that as a sign that he will not be able to help all of the people across the nation who are in the same boat as Michigan.

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