Who to Hire?

(Barack Obama, my new store manager)

I was reading someone's blog yesterday, the author, like me, is from a "Deep South" state. He wrote a long, very long treatise on why all the polls are wrong and why McCain will still win the Presidency. Maybe so. Anything can happen. But to spend all one's energy wishin' and a-hopin' for a McCain victory is to miss the much larger, and much more important point. McCain is a Republican, and the Republicans don't deserve to win the White House.

I'm sure the blog author and I were raised in a similar environment: small town values that taught us that if you work hard, and play by the rules, the rewards will come. But on the other hand, if you mess up very badly on a job, you'll probably be fired. No great shame; you just slink away, learn your lesson, and come back a better, stronger person. Pretty simple stuff, right? Kind of like "My Pet Goat". Then can someone please explain to me why so many millions of people, especially in the South, are so ready to keep John McCain and his Republicans on the job?

I really don't get it. Whatever happened to that old-fashioned, small town notion that the incompetent are fired, not re-hired? In my world, McCain and the Republicans don't deserve to win this election, they messed up pretty badly on the job for the past eight years. Are the people who plan to vote Republican living in a different world?

If you think McCain and his Republicans deserve to win this election, your thinking must fall into one of three categories: 1. You don't think the Republicans have screwed up the past eight years, or 2. You somehow think that McCain's people won't be the same Republicans who caused all the problems of the past eight years, or 3. You're a mental deficient.

If you believe #1., wow. A disastrous foreign policy, a wrecked economy and an incompetent grasp of social issues is not messing up? What would be "messing up" to you then? No, don't tell me, let's just say that people a whole lot smarter than you, you know, those people that were home reading books while you were out a-huntin' moose, i.e. historians, scientiests, sociologists, economists, etc., are all telling us that George W. Bush will go down in history as one of the worst presidents ever. Ever. Worse than Buchanan, Fillmore, Pierce, oh never mind, you were asleep during history class. Let's just say it's a safe bet that in my hometown, George Bush would have been fired a long time ago.

Or if you believe #2. What, do you think McCain's going to create a mystical, magical "Third Party" of people from which to populate his staff and the Congress who will have no relation to the current Republican Party? Keep dreaming. McCain was a die hard member of the Grand Old Party for the past eight years, and his people will be their people. Maverick? Right. A maverick who voted 92% of the time with George Bush. Hell, he hired some of the same people who slimed him in South Carolina in 2000 to run his campaign in '08. McCain has always been part of the same Republican Party who gave us Iraq, deregulation, Terri Schiavo, etc., and he always will be.

Or if you're #3, I'm sorry, but you shouldn't be voting.

So when I vote this year, I'm going back to those same, small town values with which I was raised to guide me. If the Democrat and the Republican are both working at my grocery store in my hometown, and I need to promote one of them to manager, which do I choose? The Democrat has done well, he's been smart, steady, reliable; while the Republican can't count change, has gotten drunk, stole from my cash register and tried to run off with my wife. Hmm, which do I choose? It's such a tough decision.

Blood, Flopsweat and Tears

They say it's not over til the Fat Lady sings... well, as of today, she's just offstage, all warmed up and ready to make her entrance. In just a few weeks, we'll have a new president, and his name won't be John McCain. We don't think the election is even going to be close.

Barack has his largest lead in the daily Gallup poll, and his leads in all the key battleground states is widening with each passing day. And the Republicans know it.

The only thing more scary than the prospect of another Republican-held White House is the extent to which McCain, Palin and their surrogates will grow ever more desperate to hang on to it. First there was McCain's referral to Obama as "that one" in the last debate, (bizarre!), then the campaign's regurgitating of the Obama/William Ayers relationship, and now Cindy McCain's charge that Obama voted against "funding the troops". Laughable.

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People. Don't be fooled. McCain and his beloved Republican Party is an anachronistic and quickly dying party. They know nothing about the economy, how to conduct foreign policy, much less a foreign war, and they're so out of touch on social issues it makes one wonder if they only recently evolved out of living in caves. So it makes sense that since no one agrees with their "ideas", and we use that term loosely, they have no other choice than to try to present Barack Obama as someone so scary that you'll vote for McCain out of default. Please don't be as dumb as what the Republicans are hoping you'll be.

The Strange Lives of John McCain

(Obama tries to show no fear as the crazy attack dog nears)

Strange, Isn't It?

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Isn't it funny that after almost two years of non-stop campaigning, and all the endless hours of blathering, the achilles heel of John McCain's campaign will be the very thing that was first identified as his potential weakness many months ago?

Remember the early jokes about McCain being the "grumpy old man" whose temper might do him in? That prediction was quickly forgotten as the campaign began in earnest. But after last night's debate, it became clear that those jokes were mentioned for a reason, because they're true.

In last night's debate, both candidates got their fair share of shots in, neither man really scored the "knock-out" punch, however, almost everyone today was discussing how angry and contemptious McCain looked. He came across like one, seriously pissed-off old man. And the fact that he could never look Obama in the eye was just... weird!

One wonders from where this bitterness originates in McCain's personality. Is it a stereotypical scenario in which the older generation resents the younger? Can it be that McCain is feeling the heat because the political party to which he has devoted his entire career turns out to be one completely bankrupt in its philosophy and has created some of the worst foreign and domestic disasters in the history of our nation?

I've never thought McCain would defeat Obama for the presidency, but at least now, when the t.v. pundits are debating where McCain's campaign took its fatal step, all they have to do is pull up a tape of last night's debate. It will go down in history as the 1960 Kennedy/Nixon debate all over again.