Rainy Days

Tonight, tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday. So it's not entirely true, what they say: that the definition of two rainy days followed by sunshine is: a weekend. Sometimes, it's more.

I've been spending a fair amount of time on the Twitter service, reading what others have to say about the candidates, and occasionally replying. I've actually got 'followers', and though I know it means very little, I'm still surprised by it. In fact, one person contacted me this evening to say that they liked what I wrote, which startled me. What I put there is very brief, for obvious reasons, and though I try (not always successfully) to keep from simply making snarky comments, or saying 'yeah, me too', what I write is hardly deep thinking. I'm not a deep thinker, for one thing. It hurts my head to have to focus, and, as Spock would say, my logic is faulty. Assuming you can call my calcified prejudices and snap judgements 'logic'.

I had a bit of a surprise this evening, listening to Obama talk about the debates (which at the moment are still theoretical) and the bailout. He said a couple of things that were interesting -- I like listening to a bright person speak -- and then he casually segued into a description of the sort of things that he thought a Treasury Secretary ought to be sensitive to, chief among which were awareness of the impact on lower and middle class people of financial instability and general economic uncertainties. I didn't agree -- it doesn't hurt for the TS to be not someone with their 'head in the clouds', as he put it, but the job of that position is to ensure the integrity of the financial system, not to administer social justice. Its reasonable for the TS to care more about how a bank is doing than how I'm doing because if I go bankrupt, I'm not likely to affect the system, whereas if a bank does, it very well might. So, in thinking this, I became abruptly aware that in that casual segue, Obama had moved from straightforward statements of planning and of response and gone into campaign mode. I realize that you don't miss an opportunity: when the lights are on and the cameras are there, you push your position. I don't think he was doing anything wrong. But just a little, I wished that he had not done it.

Then I look at the poll numbers (at least, the couple that I look at), and I remember why.