Election Day 2012.

It's been a very long day here in Philly. And, in the rest of Pistolvania, some poll workers were still asking folks for their ID, (they can ask, but you didn't have to show it to them) while voting machines are doing some shady things. From all indication this has not been a very smooth process. Heck they are tossing out votes in Florida for crying out loud.

But hey, this is our democracy.

Anyway, I just got back from voting with the Mrs. and the polling station was pretty crowded. That's always a good thing I guess. I even recognized some of the people from my neighborhood. I wonder who they are voting for.

I am not saying who I voted for, but I read this interesting article before I went out and hit the button for the candidate of my choice that I would like to share. 

"As I sit here on a flat, gray day, mere hours away from the direction of our nation being sealed, there is a knot of anxiety that will not go away. The 2012 election will decide who we are, where we're going and how many of us will get there.

There are two possible futures, and one of them scares me silly.

This fear isn't based in partisanship, it's not based in "my team" versus "your team." It's based in the reality that Mitt Romney is a chameleon, a changeling, a puff of smoke. We cannot know who he is. We cannot know what he plans to do. He obfuscates and reinvents who he was; there's no way to gauge who he'll be.

People have taken a version of Romney, the version they like, whether it's Conservative Romney or Moderate Romney, Warmonger Romney or Peacetime Romney, Pro-Choice Romney or Constitutional Amendment Romney, Self-Deport Romney or Immigration Romney. Regardless of what he said before or what he says after, Romney supporters have to pick something that appealed to them, and stick with it.

Even if Romney, himself, doesn't.

When I look at Mitt Romney, I see the man who demanded tax returns from his potential running mates yet refused to show us, the voters, his. I see a man who dismissed nearly half of the country in a secretly-recorded video and then said it was "wrong" in a very publicly-recorded "apology." I see a man who claimed he was cancelling political events in the wake Hurricane Sandy, who simply renamed his rally and sprung for $5,000 worth of goods at Walmart.

He gave the appearance of a solution to a problem doesn't actually solve a problem. Usually, it does nothing but make that problem worse, as problems compound themselves when they are not addressed.

Mitt Romney is the embodiment of "giving the appearance." One moment he is one thing, and the next he is another, each with equal certainty and equal confidence. That's one thing during an election, but what does that mean if that person obtains real power?

It's like the prologue of a novel by Aldous Huxley, the lead-up to the takeover that is complete and irreversible. There is always a time before it happens, a time when things can be different.

Now is that time.

And that's why I sit with this knot, the fear of a Romney America very present and very real. I don't know if the real Romney revealed himself in that secret video. I don't know if the real Romney revealed himself in the first presidential debate. I don't know if he revealed himself in the second debate, in that momentary flash of anger when he was fact-checked by moderator Candy Crowley.

I don't know if the real Romney has ever revealed himself, as I don't know if there is a real Mitt Romney. How can we give such enormous power to a man you can never quite see no matter how you look?

Promise me, my fellow citizens, we won't give him real power, as we don't want to find out what happens if we do." [Source]

Oh my! All these strong words trying to influence my vote. Thankfully, I am my own person....

May the best man man with the most money win.