Renee Montagne, co-host of NPR’s Morning Edition at KWMU

Yes dear readers it is that time of the week. “Already?”, I hear you regular readers moan. Sorry, but it is true, it is time for my weekly political rant. Personally, I think that I have been extremely well-behaved this election cycle. I have purposely limited myself to just one political rant a week. [This limit in no way precludes any additional rants on life, the universe and everything else not political.] Dressing this rant, I have included a photo of Renee Montagne, co-host of NPR’s Morning Edition. We heard her speak in person, on Saturday morning. I thought her image lends an air of false objectivity to the following hopelessly partisan diatribe.

Poor Mittens has had a rough go the last few weeks. I’ll spare you the enumeration of his faults. Suffice to say that each of his campaign’s embarrassments is superseded only by the next one. Unfortunately, this rough patch is taking its toll in the polls. Every new poll reinforces its predecessors, Obama is in accent and Romney is in decline.

‘Lies, damn lies and statistics’ you say and you would be right. The lies and damn lies are the province of the politicians, while the statistics belong to their pollsters. Pollsters like politicians come in all stripes. The only real difference between the two is that pollsters have to show their work. This makes their lying more difficult. It can be checked. 

Barack was on David Letterman’s “Late Show”, Tuesday. I watched the show until there was one too many commercial breaks and then I bailed and went to bed, dragging sleepy Anne along with me. Maybe it was too much late night Obama, but I think that it was too much block party pot luck. Indigestion aside, when I slept, I dreamt of Obama.

Somehow I ended up with Barack Obama as my apartment roommate. He made the perfect roommate, because except at the beginning of the dream, he was always on the road campaigning. It was only a one bedroom apartment, so our two king-sized water-beds shared the same room. Yeah, I know, weird. I can’t explain my subconscious, maybe you can? Everything was copacetic until my nine-year-old son, Dave, appeared. He eschewed jumping on my water-bed and instead launched himself towards Barack’s. For some reason Barack’s bed was festooned with lit candles and plugged in lava lamps, disaster ensued. Dave was OK.

I then dream jumped to the next scene. I was in the shower, washing up, after cleaning up the mess. Unfortunately, the bathroom was in that 1982, Big Bike Trip, New Orleans hotel that we stayed in one night, just because it was near the rail station. After taking one look at the place, we moved all our luggage into a locker at the train station. I took a shower there, so it was part of my lexicon, but Anne would not go near it. This time around it was even groadier than I remember. Instead of placid groad, there were undulating filaments coating the shower’s walls.

I woke up at this point. I took an antacid and went back to a dreamless sleep. I got up in the morning, still feeling tired. I felt only about 47% today, which still felt better than 1%.