Taking on journalism lessons

During the past few weeks it has become clear, I think, that I'm really excited about this election year. The average American or someone from any other country in the world may take this for granted. I don't.

I've said it before: it's the first time in my entire life that I will vote, freely, in a democratic election --gossips and dirty politicians moves aside. Therefore, for me, it is a big deal.

I can't not afford the luxury of not exercising a right inherent to me as individual, a right that I was robbed from, in the most disgusting manner, during a huge part of my adult life.

I do know (from seeing, reading and reporting other elections and political issues) that at the end of the game, this is just a bet; some sort of gamble where you just try to make your best informed decision.

It's dirty business, but as I see it, it is our business and we, as citizens with a voice through our vote, have the civil duty to deal with it. Whether we are right or wrong, only time will tell.

It doesn't hurt to do your homework, though.

Thanks to my fellow Cuban blogger (and former reporter) from Bilingual in the Boonies, last night I found myself checking the site PolitiFact; actually, way tooo late at night. Haven't check it completely, but apparently looks like a starting point.

OnTheIssues.org is another one often mentioned everywhere.

However, in this last one, just in a couple of minutes, I found some disturbing assertions, in the segment Sarah Palin on the issues:

Palin's on abortion: - Opposes stem cell research. (Aug 2008)

Coincidentally, I was reading a column today in American Thinker (that I linked to my previous posts) that analyzed and looked back in original sources and interviews every single thing posted, said and threw at our faces by bloggers and the media after Palin's news of being chosen for VP.

According to the Patrick Casey, the column's author, she said "she opposes the expansion of only one small segment of stem cell research - embryonic stem cell research, which happens to be the overwhelming research favorite of abortionists and liberals." [Which is, BTW, my own position on the issue]

So, what do we have left, especially after the unethical and unprofessional methods used by my fellow journalists, reporters and bloggers in the past few days?

I say barely nothing.

If the fact checkers need to be fact-checked, the only thing we have left is our gut instinct, and our luck in the gamble.

Till now, my gut instinct takes me to Palin and "The sisterhood of the hockey Moms".

(I know, I know, maybe my whole thing with politics and elections is just a pretty bad side effect of the environment where I was born and raised and because of the un-mentionable... so, please, spare me the trauma, would you?)