David McElroy

In another six days, the 2012 election will be over, but that day can’t come soon enough for 4-year-old Abigael Evans.

Abby’s mom posted this video to YouTube Tuesday to show her daughter’s displeasure. The little girl is crying and says it’s because she’s tired of “Bronco Bamma” and Mitt Romney.

Abby, we’re all sick of the election, too, but most of us are old enough to understand that the curse returns every four years. In fact, the 2016 race should be started before you can even dry your tears.

You’re right, Abby. It’s scary.

It’s not that unusual to see bicycles along U.S. 11 in the suburb where I live, but something caught my eye about this one. It was around noon Monday. Lunch traffic was heavy, so I passed him slowly enough to get a good look.

It was an old man on a beat-up bicycle. On the back, there was a hand-lettered sign that said, “Hungry — please help.”

I’ve seen desperate people and panhandlers many times, but something about him — or maybe just the mood I was in — made me wonder about him. How did he come to be an old man who’s desperate enough to ride around and beg?

It’s easy to look at such people and assume they’ve made bad choices. I mean, we’re not in their position, so we’ve obviously made the right choices and they haven’t. Right? Was it alcohol? Was he lazy? Did he have something unexpected happen to him? What was his story?

I didn’t know the answers to any of those questions, but I felt a tremendous sense of empathy for him. I wondered how life could have taken the turns that led to where he is today.

So I decided to find out.

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Did you see this picture last week? I saw it posted by a number of Democrats on Facebook in order to make fun of those stupid Tea Party types who hate Barack Obama. Here’s an example of one of the many sites that posted the picture after it went viral. Here’s what the caption told us about the picture:

Student’s sign mocking Obama provides compelling argument for education reform. Well, at least a dorm room at the University of Alabama has found its constipated-looking, grammatically challenged sorority girl. This passionately misspelled indictment of the commander-in-chief, which appears to have been scrawled on a discarded pizza box (the official protest medium of college students) makes a pretty effective case for Mitt Romney, but an even better case against Romney’s plan to slash the education budget. Come on, America. This girl is one more cut language arts program away from having the linguistic skills of a Chick-Fil-A cow.

There’s only one problem. None of this was true. A reporter for The Birmingham News saw the graphic and wanted to track down this alleged University of Alabama student. She’s not an Alabama conservative for Mitt Romney. She’s a Massachusetts liberal for Obama. Her name is Kim Stafford, and she grew up in Boston. She goes to a liberal arts college in Massachusetts, not to my alma mater.

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