What else is off limits? Casting pearls before swine? Paying lip service? Come and put a lip lock on my love pork chop?
Apparently Sarah Palin now owns lipstick references, just like Rudy Giuliani owns 911. How about we just pay her a royalty every time we reference pigs or lips? I think I owe her about a quarter so far, but maybe I’ll send her a couple bucks just so I got some credit in the piggy bank.
Unbelievably they call lipstick references sexist. Telling women they are baby incubators isn’t sexist, but lipstick on a pig… String him up! (But not in a racist, lynching fashion.)
This is an election that should be about ideas. Obama and McCain have as dynamically opposite views on the future of America as LBJ and Barry Goldwater.
Forget the reform crap. Hiring politicians to change the system will never work. They are successful politicians thanks to the system. They are as likely to bite the political hand that feeds them as our own President Gonzales is going to move into a cubicle after spending a quarter of a mil on remodeling his digs.
We’ll get something like McCain-Feingold, full of enough loop holes the politicians will have no trouble backing up the armored truck through them.
We got real problems in America. We are on our way to Banana Republic status, and the Bushies have been busy speeding up the process for eight years.
We are borrowing money at shylock rates like a Las Vegas high-roller told he only has six months to live. Our politicians don’t care. They’ll have cush jobs on Fox or MSNBNC when the bills come due.
Our energy policy was to ask the oil companies what we should do. Surprise, surprise, they can’t think of any reason to change our policy of filling up their pockets.
McCain says ignore all that stuff. We owe him the presidency for his honorable behavior after being captured and tortured by the North Vietnamese.
Yes people behaved honorably in the dishonorable war in Vietnam. We should not blame the men and women fighting for their country for leaders sending them were they have no business going. But still when discussing McCain’s service, lets not forget what he was doing in Southeast Asia.
This wasn’t Francis Gary Powers taking photos. This was McCain flying bombing missions in his A-4 Skyhawk. We can make the argument American sorties tried to reduce civilian casualties, but reducing isn’t the same as eliminating. Folks died.
When innocent civilians were killed on September 11, 2001, Americans were ready for revenge. There were calls for bombing just about every country that began with an A or an I. If we had the technology to kill every person in a country, many Americans would have gladly pushed the button.
Does it really matter to the Afghani or Vietnamese farmer who gave the order to kill his wife and children? Is he perhaps missing the fine point of an order coming from an Islamic fanatic hiding in a cave, a Commie despot in his palace, or a Democratically-elected Christian fanatic from his well-guarded mansion in Washington D.C.?
Yet we are shocked when told Vietnamese civilians beat up McCain when he crashed during his 23rd bombing mission. What would you do when face to face with someone who dropped bombs on your neighborhoods, schools, and homes?
John McCain wants us to remember his sacrifice for us in North Vietnam. Yet John McCain has forgotten. At one time McCain opposed Americans torturing their enemies. He cited his experiences in the Hanoi Hilton as why he opposed torture. McCain has forgotten his experience in that box and now supports torture.
We have always tortured. But now, instead of the Colonel who allowed the torture being prosecuted when he was found out, he is now patted on the back and told, “Heck of a job, Brownie.”
The torture McCain went through and his service in our name can and should be honored. But since he has clearly put it behind him then it is time we did also.
We need a leader who believes in prudence and empathy, virtues that have fallen out of favor in the U.S.
Use either word in a Bushie meeting and you have to go stand in the corner. If we have any desire to slow America’s slide into third-rate power, these are virtues we will need to embrace. I have doubts about Obama’s ability to make either a national policy, but I know both virtues would be just as repugnant to McCain as to the Bushies.
Democratic or Republican politicians – they are just two sides of the same coin. Neither will do much beyond advancing their own base and repaying their campaign contributors. Voting for either party was always throwing your vote away. That last thing either party needs is yet another vote, especially in California where it is obvious long before election day which party will win. It has always been better to give your vote to a third party who could actually make use of every vote they receive.
However, this year, we need to hold our noses and vote for Barrack Obama. Regardless of how we believe he might do as a president, it is time we make amends for the disaster of the last eight years. We need to send a clear message to the rest of the world that the Bushie era is over.
1 comment:
A good rant that makes many good points, while maintaining full-blown 'rant' status.
The column, between punches at the incumbent executive administration, makes some solid points about the need for a recasting of the U.S. image.
And the column does something particularly well in talking about John McCain's experiences as POW.
When you read what the column writer says, putting in context that McCain had dropped bombs on Vietnamese targets 23 times, well, it makes understanding the Viet position a lot easier.
Look at what we are doing to prisoners in Guantanamo right now?
Any column that gives the reader some new information - or makes the reader think about things differently - is a good one.
More rants, please.
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