The amount of rhetoric being reported daily by the media is disturbing. Americans are agonizing over how to pay their bills, while the media makes a travesty of what is an historic election. Every argument seems contrived, and all the major talking points for both parties flow like a stream.

From the very beginning, Sen. Barack Obama has painted himself as a Washington outsider and labeled Sen. John McCain as part of the Washington establishment. Keep in mind that this is coming from someone who relied on former Fannie Mae CEO James Johnson to vet vice-presidential prospects.

The Democrats had a golden opportunity to unify the party while shattering the ultimate glass ceiling. This is an election unlike anything we have ever witnessed — a chess match, of sorts. Why have the Democrats refused to put a woman on the ticket, thereby allowing the Republicans to make that historic statement?

Meanwhile, Obama proclaims himself to be the vehicle for the change that America so desperately needs, yet his record indicates a politics-as-usual methodology.

He is affiliated with ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. He was recruited upon graduating from Harvard Law School.

ACORN is under investigation for trying to jerry-rig voter applications in Michigan and other battleground states in previous elections. Several municipal clerks discovered fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications. The Obama campaign was forced to amend a report to reflect more than $800,000 of previously unreported ACORN donations to his campaign. Jim Terry, spokesman for the Libertarian-leaning Consumers Rights League in Washington, D.C., has said, "It looks as if ACORN is continuing to use its ‘convoluted Enron-style accounting’ for Obama’s political gain."

For months, the media has vilified McCain as the embodiment of the Bush administration and goes so far as to call him "Bush 44."

The media has done this to detract from Obama’s questionable associations and lack of experience. I don’t think of experience as voting "present" 143 times on important issues.

We need a president whose record is indicative of the leader he will be. Obama’s campaign shouts change and hope, yet it acts as more of the same, just duplicitously presented.

Americans don’t have time for bloviated discourse and bureaucratic proliferation. I am an advocate for the relentless prodding of candidates; however, it should be applied to each candidate with the same level of force. It seems as though anyone who dares to question Obama’s record or associations are immediately labeled as racist — preposterous to say the least, especially since there are many legitimate concerns.

The Roe vs. Wade issue also has become a fixation, with the possibility of the nomination of conservative Supreme Court justices. A woman’s right to choose is in the Constitution, it is protected, and it won’t be going anywhere.

Whoever you vote for, know why. Base your decision on facts, not gender or race. Vote for the individual best suited for the position, which may not necessarily fall in line with your party affiliation.

The truth is out there, and it is every American’s responsibility to research these candidates with elevated scrutiny.

Political corruption in both parties must be abolished, and when that happens and America becomes the true priority, we will all see a change!

• Katrina-Kasey Wheeler is a 2000 Tracy High School graduate. Upon graduating from the Jesuit University of San Francisco in 2004, she has worked as a freelance journalist for several online publications and lives in Tracy.