Bill Clinton: The Old Lion puts Dems on notice

Former President Clinton was off his game back there for a while. It happens to in-between folks, as he calls himself, especially those who have had quad bypass surgeries. But that doesn't mean people go completely dumb or become someone else. Maybe he just wasn't motivated what with being on the sideline and all. Things were looking grim.

Today in PA though he seems re-energized. He's out there as the ex-President of the United States, Bill Clinton, who is out to get his wife what he promised her--a shot at the presidency.

Show me the votes
Watch the super delegates begin to lean toward Clinton after Hillary's Pennsylvania win. I think it will be a big win. Regardless, she won't quit. Things will go south for Obama and he won't last past May, June at the latest.

What Bill Clinton is doing right now is what I've been hoping for. Clinton, the powerful lion, yawning and cleaning his refined paws, has waited for the young and stupid, clumsy, falling-apart and inexperienced cub with too big feet, surrounded by a pride of minor lions to make his fatal mistake. Sure enough, Obama has come close. Oh so close. The next time he'll be mortally injurted when he slips again say, this time into something like a Russian bear's den. The Old Lion has seen plenty of lairs and dens, drank vodka with the head bear himself. He's laughing at Barack now. So am I, frankly.

Now that Bill can show that Obama's not ready for prime time, the Party's scared as hell. Not willing to give up the Party for anyone, the old pols like Kennedy, Dodd, all the Eastern libs, are going to swing back to Hillary, but not too obviously too fast. They don't want to be called racists, after all. Remember, this is about what looks right.

Then, they're going to get rid of Howard Dean, that idiot.

Meanwhile, the first black president, Bill Clinton is owed much more than just a pat on the back by that turncoat bunch of black bosses and self appointed reverends without churches. I predict even many of those chips will fall toward Hill long before the convention in Denver where it gets hotter than Hades that time of year. Hot and high.

By golly, I have to agree with the president on this one. Just who do these ingrates think they are? Why, by just moving his office to Harlem Bill managed to single handedly up their local economy by some $471 million. Bill and Hillary Clinton aren't about to forget what the national black community owes them and they shouldn't. Not by a long shot. Why, it's just good manners, if nothing else, to pay back what someone owes you.

The Obama people should have listened when Bill told them Obama wasn't ready. Even Gerry and Hillary gave Obama an out. He could have been veep and a contender for president. Now? Probably not. Not of America. He and Michelle have pissed off too many white people, but you've already heard about that from me in a tongue-in-cheek way in other posts.

It's such a cruel hoax. On that very basic issue, the amateurs running his campaign have made a stink over the fact that people want to know more about the man who will be running the world.

Psst. Kids. That's not a sleazy attack. As usual, newbies take things way too personally, another sign of their arrogance and inability to handle power. That is the precise reason I think Obama's over and now no one wants to face it and/or doesn't know how to handle it. With so much emotional investment, how are they going to report this?

I should feel sorry for Obama but I don't. I think his lack of sincerity and his hostile treatment of his grandmother was so out of line that I would rather ignore him. The black community was duped by this guy and that is something I can't forgive.

Another Lion in Winter
What's stunning is to watch the raw professional political power of Bill Clinton. His appearance on the campaign trail today was a big lay down for Hillary's win in Pennsylvania tomorrow. He's showing up now for himself and for the honor of his wife. Hard as it is for many to believe there is profound human dignity, love and grace in this dance.

It's the dignity of trying to regain and retain his dignity, I suppose; it supports the idea that hope (there's that word again) really does spring forth eternally. Such theater or displays have accompanied our world's politics for millennia. It's fascinating to witness these forces of nature who are willing to become the actors and dancers in our prosaic lives. The good ones and bad ones--I have to wonder what goes on in their psyches and hearts as they become the fulfillers of our destiny.

In the meantime, the rest of us are privy to a deeply personal moment for Bill and Hillary Clinton, like them or detest them. He has stepped up to rescue her honor after showing shocking neglect and dereliction to his loyal lioness mate. Historically, there is much more to this period in than a spoiled young woman from a forgettable place in California in a blue dress and beret. Neither you nor I will be around to editorialize on the margins.

Watch this story as it unfolds. It is perfect and heartbreakingly beautiful if you love politics as much as I do. Or drama or Shakespeare or...

Thanks for the read.

Prince Barack of Indonesia and Hawaii speaks of Small Town, PA

Senator Barack Obama made these statements at a fundraiser in San Francisco when describing those pesky xenophobes in Pennsylvania.

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Town and towns between miles!
I was eighteen when I saw what was to me a phenomenon as I drove in the western part of that beautiful state. In other states, like eastern Kansas for instance where I grew up, a person could ride for fifteen, heck, probably even thirty miles before you got to another town. For a place to have a berg after every turn or hill in the road was just too strange. Pennsylvania, with its old towns and different sounding people and many cultures was a lovely new experience for me.

Though I didn't realize it then, I had Pennsylvania DNA all over me. Darn near all my American family began there many years ago. As I went through some genealogical research later in my life, I discovered many names of other families in census records who also had parents born in Pennsylvania. Lots and lots of them.

If individuals desired to get to Ohio and Indiana they had only a few "civilized" choices in 1812, such as they were: one had to go through Pennsylvania and many Indians to get to four or five traces (roads) if you lived in the Southern Atlantic area of the colonies, you could take the routes up through the Cumberland Gap out of North Carolina and across the Ohio River into Kentucky. Neither choice was exactly a super highway with a Motel 6 keepin' the light on for ya. The way through to the Northwest Territory from the Atlantic Coast was PA. There warn't no toher choice. If ya git ma drift.

Back to those cultural and elitist misspeaks from Obama, my American family's story is not very special or very unusual...by a long shot. I suppose that is why I'm so put off by this latest "missed" analysis by Obama.

There actually are American groups (black and white) who have kin who lived in PA for a century or so before they were able to come West. That, or they made it big and stayed; and others immigrated into PA for the reason of moving on. Amazing as it is, Pennsylvania has somehow handled it. These are data Senator Obama should know before he spews sociological opinions about the place, comparing them to the midwest.

It's a big old place and yes, somehow the state has survived, with guns and religion, from all the stress that strange and different looking people and cultures and immigrants have brought over and over and over again. It embarrasses me to see a presidential candidate make such a gigantic error in knowledge about a major force in our American history. It's astounding to me.

It would behoove Mr. Obama to pick up a few Pennsylvania history books plus 49 or so others, and actually read them. I have a few here in my own library, if he'd like to borrow them. Or he could ask his younger researchers to do it, if they could disconnect themselves from a rap song long enough.

The Keystone State
Back to my trip my first exposure to the bucolic part of beautiful PA was when I met and fell in love with my Aunt Jane's and Uncle William's beautiful four-story stone home built in the 1700s outside of Centerville. I had vowed to myself that I was to be married in that house someday. I'll never forget that lovely place and the feeling of "being at home." It sat on a working farm, above a lea with small lake, a spring house as I recall and among rolling hills. Washington, Pennsylvania, the home of a pretty fierce labor guy isn't far away.

And in the lowest depths of that same lovely home are hidden the secrets of the most compassionate, remarkable courage of some Pennsylvanians who carried out the Godly tasks of righting a few of the wrongs in our nation: a stop on the famed Underground Railroad--doubtlessly fortified with guns and religion. I don't even know their names. I think their clinging to guns and religions might have been a good thing.

It's on the other side of Pennsylvania that my Quaker grandfather was born on the Delaware River in 1670 in Chester, now Philadelphia, the birthplace of our Constitution. The Society of Friends members were abolitionists, and some even died for those unpopular beliefs. I guess that would be the "religion" Obama refers to so flippantly as part in his little offhanded remarks he made to elicit money from his supporters while they drank bad wine (and didn't know it).

I have to mention, if only to demonstrate the breadth of Pennsylvania's people and culture in their small towns, the Irish Protestants in my family who came to this country after losing their own ancestral homes to the British. They probably didn't have guns to cling to so they escaped with their lives and came to America to get away from the British.

They settled in the Parsippany area where many of my kin still live. One, my great grandfather many generations ago, lost a leg at the Battle of Yorktown. I can't imagine people like them being caught up in the bitterness this Mr. Obama speaks about. They've been through these downturns quite frequently in the past few hundred years.

I'm pretty sure sons and daughters of the Revolutionary war don't get bitter. They just go on with their lives and figure out other ways to get through. Cling to guns? I don't know about that. Maybe on a cold morning and if the deer haven't shown up yet.

Cling to religion? Yes, for sure. Admittedly, faith does mean quite a bit to families there or they probably would've quickly converted to keep the ole Irish barn.

There are millions of Americans like me whose roots are in Pennsylvania and like me, are spread across this country, a fact that is not lost on Mrs. Clinton. Nor on Senator McCain.

Guns and religion
Someone needs to tell Senator Obama that the steel industry's closings and rearranging of the state's economy probably has little to do with whether Pennsylvanians continue hang a gun over their doorways or go to church. When deer and other wild game become extinct and when God really is dead, we'll talk.

These new Democrats clamor they want someone who's been around, who's been somewhere. Well, Barack's been somewhere. He's grew up on an island that is predominantly Muslim for four years with his Mom and then went to be a Dude when he was ten in private schools in surfin' Hawaii on Waikiki. That's being somewhere. Then he was airlifted into Chicago to learn how to be black. That's being somewhere.

But he hasn't been to the places I've mentioned evidently for any quality time or anywhere else that does not have a vast ocean around it. In other words put this man on a Greyhound with a ticket across America and he's lost. He looks at a group and sees a labor union or a voting block or calls Reverend Wright or one of the over-the-hill NAACP pals in his fave fives in Atlanta and yells for help.

Back at the center of the universe in San Francisco
I could see him in my mind's eye as he's holding a nice Cuban cigar in one hand, highball in the other (he's learned from the con artists in Atlanta to expect good bourbon straight from a Waterford glass to get respect from the white man), speaking to a ring of sycophants; explaining these Pennsylvanian "natives," that he and Michelle actually lived among some quite like them in a place called Chicago, observed their mating habits, gathered and kept their "scat."

Mr. Obama's friends and he don't realize that others are listening while they ridicule the real people who have built this country, the very ones who have made them extremely rich.

"Damned xenophobes. Guess we'll just have to eliminate their guns and religion when we get our power. Good grief, what's next? Rain dancing? How charming. I'll have to tell my wife when she returns from freeing the Tibetans."

They (princes) talk like that, you know--the kind we Americans ran away from centuries ago.

Of course, what Mr. Obama hasn't got the experience or brains to know yet is this: big money goes away as fast as it seems to come in when you have these kinds of slips. I don't think he has another one in him. I heard Mrs. Clinton just gave the go ahead on that order of pastel pantsuits from the biggest department store in Pittsburgh.

Thanks for the read.

Jack Mack is back in a big way on The View

If you've got the time and stomach, click below to watch Whoopie, Joy and Baba interview Senator John McCain.

I sure wish everyone had listened to us moderates when it counted back in 2000 when Bush and McCain were running against each other for president. But then, the party had to do its anointing thing to Sir Bush...so sickening.

Gee. We'd have a whole different world, wouldn't we?

http://abc.go.com/daytime/theview/index

The leadership gap between Obama and John McCain will be painfully clear by the time the American people vote on November 5th. That is, if Democrats still have their big turn out.

By then the young senator from Illinois might look like an amateur and real Dems will either vote for Senator McCain or get real drunk.

Or both. Just like they did with Reagan.

Thanks for the read.

McCain-Obama Ticket

I had an MLK-style dream, America.

There they were: Ebony, Ivory posed with Chief Justice Roberts--or was that Thurgood Marshall--behind the great dais at the swearing in at the inauguration.

Michelle insisted upon holding the Bible for John McCain--not a good start, but a start. I remember feeling impressed at Michelle's raw power for as she grasped tightly that Bible with one hand, she was very casually holding Cindy McCain in a half-Nelson with her free arm. Admittedly this is not a dignified change, but it is change nonetheless.

I didn't see Barack. But I know he was there somewhere. Wait, on second thought, that might have been Barack in Michelle's deadly hold, not the new First Lady as I had first thought. By now she had switched to a amazingly tougher grip which utilized her jaw muscles. That way she could discipline her children with just a look and make sure the car got washed. Don't ask me how this wonderwoman does it. Oprah's wondered that too.

Wait a minute. Neither Mrs. McCain nor Barack wear pantsuits and I distinctly remember a gold pantsuit! Could that be Mrs. Clinton in the grip of the new Second Lady?

Well, you can't believe what happened next. I'll just take you along with me on this ultra American democratic magic carpet ride.

An orange-blond floozy-looking kind of woman in a blue dress with a half empty quart of Jim Beam dangling from her plastic alligator carryall that had horseshoes on it and a hoary eyed, red nosed Bill Clinton with long flying hair looking ironically like John Brown tore down the stairs waving a long pointy finger in the air.

As he rushed past the seated dignitaries, including ancients like Bob Dole, George McGoven, all the Bushes, all the Kennedys, even Billy Graham and Jeremiah Wright he ranted "I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky." I remember thinking in my dream that I wished I had a camera. It was almost ethereal. But then it was a dream.

When he and the floozy in blue reached the podium, Bill removed his cashmere jacket and handed it to the bewildered, fluttery floozy (she thought it was vicuna), rolled up his sleeves and acted as if he was about to do something he'd regret. Again.

He leaned back, aimed, then took a swipe at Michelle, missed. Then he swung at Thurgood Marshall--or was is John Roberts--missed. Michelle dropped Hillary, never one to pass up a good fight with someone her own size, and took her best Queensberry stance. Make my day, she seemed to say.

Why fight when you can run, Bill grabbed Hillary by her gold Cruilla collar, then took the floozy over his shoulder and carried them both up the stairs into oblivion. I do remember Mrs. Clinton yelling and screaming expletives and something like,"This was supposed to be my day, Bill, you idiot. Let me go! You want a see my blue dress? Who the hell are you? I'll show you a blue dress, Bill, you SOB! "

I love my dreams. Sometimes my dreams are the best entertainment I'll have all week.

This is what we're talkin' about!
It's so crazy it might just work. The McCain Obama ticket, I mean. I think Obama could grow into the job if he could be shown how real life works by a President McCain. He's not stupid, after all, and every man eventually reaches that point of no return no matter what his political affiliation.

Now if we could just pull him off that silly leftist agenda of his (or his supporters'). And that pesky preacher of his (or his supporters')...then there's that wife of his. You don't think they'd have Raul Castro or Hugo Chavez stay over in the Lincoln bedroom...or Jane Fonda!

Now, that's a nightmare.

Then I reread my own March 30Th entry about how Obama disgraced and betrayed his own grandmother to make his pals like him and I got over the "dream."

Nevermind.

(sigh)

Thanks for the read anyway.

Barack and Michelle get my Bronx cheer for propaganda video to the little people

http://my.barackobama.com/page/invite/yestheycan

Doesn't this insult anyone besides me? I am tired of civil rights sacrifices being thrown back in my face. Maybe I'll tell why some day; maybe I won't. I don't think I should have to.

Dumb is as dumb does: our public schools on display
If only the kids in Michelle's video could actually read, and uh...maybe spell, and uh, you know, like, uh write. I'm joking, as usual. Perhaps they can, but the chances are good they cannot.

But. Why are they in such distress? What is their problem exactly? They certainly don't look very hungry or frighteningly destitute. Who are they fighting and why? What oppressive government are they warring against? BTW, I didn't have a cool arts school to attend when I was in high school. Wow. Wish I had. Maybe my envy, God forbid, is the root of my frustration.

However, I still don't understand. What is it that we have done in this terrible, third world country of ours that requires that they suddenly give this blind and mournful allegiance to a socialist called Barack Obama, a little man who appears out of the Pacific Islands like a Bird of Paradise, who promises what? What does he promise that they do not already have access to? I do not get it. I guess I'm tired of "getting" it, after getting it for so long and for so many billions of dollars.

Back to the video, I expected these children to genuflect at any moment, which is typical of Democrats young and old (except the wrinkly, wizened pols who realized their salvation was lost years ago and now only cross themselves at cocktail hour every day, saving a little aged Kentucky bourbon to dob behind their ears). Their servile, deferential, sweet workers mentality is sickeningly ripe for exploitation. Michelle Obama should get the Leni Riefenstahl Award for best BS in a campaign.

The last line on this stupid pile of progaganda sounded like girl saying, "...and just think, I could possibly be a ambassador or something like that too."

What imbecilic teachers she must have had for not one of them to have told her that America has had many people of color in our diplomatic corps, and the top diplomat is not only a real, live African-American from Mississsippi, but a woman. Put that in your Uncle Tom pipe and smoke it. Condi Rice, regardless of what people think of her politics, is at least, authentic. Inconvenient, but authentic.

It's all show biz for the folks who want power. Style and show biz.

"This will get them," one remarks.

"You're right. The hope in their faces says it all," says another.

"Send it out under my name. I think it's safe to come back." Michelle instructs. She's feelin' it, especially since she's got the Heinz money with her.

Where are my aspirin?

Thanks for the read.

Limbaugh: I wish we could kick him out of the GOP. Anyone?

(See also my piece dated February 8, 2008 in which I state my case against Limbaugh in more serious language.)

I think it's time for Rush Limbaugh to stop his assault on Senator McCain. Also, Limbaugh showed huge disrespect for our American system of government by asking Texas Republicans to basically cheat by voting in the primary for Hillary Clinton, which he shouldn't have done.

Get him out
Who does this guy really think he is?

The Republican leadership needs to shun him and his pals. Do we really want his influence, his humor, his ideas, his money? The GOP owes absolutely nothing to Limbaugh, contrary to what he says. They say our party is the Party of the Big Tent. Well, there ain't no tent big enough to hold Limbaugh, what with the head and the rest of it.

It's always an interesting part of human nature that pride follows the exact same route of delivery before you bust your butt on it.

One would think, wouldn't one, that Limbaugh's friends would at least see that he's gone a little too far this time and say, "Hey, Rush, dude...slow down. You're hittin hard on the Hillary thing in Texas. That's not right."

"Ah, screw 'em if they can't take a joke..." he replies as he has another grape peeled by a staff member.

No, instead, they're talking to each other, wondering how they're going to get back at the moderates like me for ignoring their excesses once again: "Hey, Annie, Laura. It's Rush. Yeah. Didya see Texas tonight? Yeah. I did it. Yeah. I. Did. It. Me. Yeah. I changed history. I'm puttin that Hillary broad in the White House. Me. Little ole Rusty from Cape Girardeau, MOE. The fat kid who couldn't get into Mizzou. Yeah, Thanks. I gotta admit it was fun. Aw, but McCain. What a downer. I really wanted to kill him...or somethin"

Guess Rush didn't really figure on how to play with a ex-POW guy. They're usually pretty tough opponents.

Meanwhile, I suppose when you get to certain levels of participation in the game of power, you'll switch sides just for the gamesmanship, especially if you consider yourself a loser at life.

It's the character, Stupid
Rush Limbaugh, the son of lawyers and judges is a spoiled brat who otherwise probably would have turned into a drunken, toothless, corpulent, petty criminal except by his accidental birth on the right side of the Missouri Pacific tracks.

It's time to cut Rusty loose from the GOP. Why? Because he's unrepentant. He won't stop. He just keeps doing it. Kinda like Bill Clinton.

The First Republican (my grandfather) will roll over in his grave if we don't.

Thanks for the read.

Texas Democrats will not allow an Obama win, IMHO

When I was a student at Texas Christian University I learned a little about Texas Democrat politics, and if I wanted to live, Texas football. Not a lot, but enough to know more than the media numbskulls who've never been there longer than two weeks.

Box 13, Jim Wells and Duval Counties, Texas
Easterners think they're so freakin' smart what with their Ivy League schools and their clubs and their ridiculous secret societies. Well, the rest of the country can be twits just like them, especially in Texas.

Power players like Jim Wright, former Democratic Speaker of the House, whose permanent office is located in the library at Texas Christian University, lavishly displays Texas individuality and influence on the rest of ya'll.

TCU,in Ft. Worth, Texas, is my brother's and my alma mater. This kid from Kansas City was considered a Yankee so I wasn't accepted very quickly. After a few lonely, bewidering days I was fortunate to have made some really close, quality Texas girlfriends, the ones whose mamas weren't sitting outside the soroity houses during Rush Week in their Cadillacs waiting for their Niemann-marcus card-carrying Honey Sues to pledge their fave soroities. But that's another article for my "Lucy" blog.

One girl, whose political leanings I won't mention, was another politics junkie like me. We had our own intellectual sorority. We clicked because we liked to believe we thought strategically, rather than with emotion. Of course, we were just kids and were probably just idiots. Don't get me wrong; we were also crazy about guys and getting away from our parents at all costs.

She was my new best friend (I was to be her maid-of-honor at her wedding) whose father was a well-known, major Texas pol from a huge south Texas city who gave me the skinny on dirty in-state politics. Maybe it was just girl talk; though later I read respectable historical pieces that substantiated her underground tales about "Landslide Lyndon" Johnson's rise in the senate, the dark side of the big bosses like George Parr, the political corruption of Jim Wells and Duval Counties, on and on. Of course, her information came from sitting around the Sunday dinner table.

This and other Lone Star State's political lore isn't new or hidden, but it does bear repeating: Texas Democrats have seen (and counted) dead people's votes in some southern Texas counties for decades now, a political fallback Senator Clinton may owe her gods for years to come.

Don't Mess with Texas
You read it as you enter, travel through and leave the state. It's probably important for outsiders to remember. Especially if you're new--and young--in politics.

Thanks for the read.

Temptation in the Garden of Barack Obama

(This is long. You may want to bring a book.)

I don't know what to think about Barack Obama. I want to like him. I do kind of like him in a respectful sort of way, except for his too-serious nature. I prefer my leaders to be spontaneous and given to fun: he is somber and dour. He has rather an economical sense of humor for my taste. I don't need zany, mind you, but a little Churchill would be nice or JFK or Reagan? Teddy and FDR are out of the question, I suppose.

Last night he seemed less bored, less bothered that he had to actually appear at the debate rather than phone it in.

He looks typical though of today's coming of age ruling class, 30 to 50 year olds, a blend of middle aged baby boomer power seekers and very, very rich gen x technocrats. All of them of course are auditioning for jobs in one power arena or another. They all think they're in charge. The me-first kids.

The more serious ones carry a hallmark: they are almost all short on manners--something I see when their mothers and wives are not around, mostly their mothers--and facts; when asked to support an outrageous statement, they typically change the subject and say something like, "but what's more important is..."

God bless them, they're like brand new religious converts, very zealous in their self-conscious, kiss-my-behind way, as-if-they-invented-it opinions and empty Armani styles. Some are shallow and intolerant of people they do not like. Actually, none of this is new, at least in politics. What is new is there's a woman in the room.

But to be fair, I'd like to look farther into this, to see where these whippersnapper Obama people might take us. Could they be right? They're the ones I'm talking about--those who have figured out the values issues (money, status issues, gone beyond the shallow stuff and Armani, ). Where are they in all this? Are they guilt ridden whites, angry, black reactionaries, what? And what is Barack Obama really about? I'm still not sure because all I'm hearing is something very repetitive and meaningless in the long term.

Boomer Box Barack
It is not necessary for Senator Obama to use his outdoor James Earl Jones voice in the preacher tone to get through to my little white pea brain. In fact, it insults the crap out of me, especially coming from a politician. After all, Barack (Barry) Obama is half white, a fact that no one has mentioned anywhere but--ahem--here. Well, he might get some white votes that way. By preaching, I mean.

Okay. We're family. I have to admit. I have fantasies. I've actually thought about voting for Obama.

Maybe, I thought, just maybe he could put the brakes on this black versus white undercurrent we have going on in this country, and the sky would open up, and a celestial choir would sing, and then I wondered...

Who is this Obama guy, anyway?
Senator Obama didn't exactly come up from the hood. He grew up in Hawaii, the only black kid in his class in an expensive Hawaiian prep school and was raised by liberal white grandparents. He did his undergraduate work at University of Hawaii and Occidental College, an expensive church school, got his JDs at the Ivies, then hit the streets as an activist, i.e., organizer, (will someone tell me what that is and who pays for it?). Then he ran for office, lost; ran again and he won; ran for the U.S. Senate and won.

Senator Obama, Michelle and the kids live in a monstrosity in Chicago some obviously grateful Chicaaaagoan gave him between hambiggers and da Bears games. *

Senator Obama says his dad is from Kenya and was the son of a poor goat herder. Actually, his dad was from a family of goat herders; they have thousands of acres of land and thousand of goats and homes worth many, many goat hides. Goat herding has been very good to them. His dad, an economist who worked for the Kenyan government, abandoned him and his mother when Senator Obama was 2. Unfortunately, Obama, Sr. committed suicide later in Senator Obama's childhood. The senator bonded with his Kenyan kin in 2000.

There's not much out there about the white side of Senator Obama's family except his mother came from Kansas and met his father while at the University of Hawaii. It's interesting her background is so muted. As a politico, I have to assume there are problems with the black vote and it's being done to keep attention from his mulattoness. Too bad. As someone who is very liberal in the civil rights area, it's almost as disappointing to me as Michelle's revealing statements--kind of like a slap, a pitcher of cold water in my face as if none of America's white activists sacrificed enough or were good enough for her or him or had done enough to help the civil rights movement.

Such ambivalence, frankly, causes me to wonder if Senator Obama knows himself as much as he claims to. I don't want Obama as president if he can't give credit where credit is due.

Senator Obama's policy stands
Of course, in the debate last night, no one corrected the candidate as he cavalierly cited some phantom, made up stats and notions on the war or on anything for else that matter (NAFTA) so I was left screaming, "Will someone please challenge him?!"

I disagree completely with Senator Obama's stance on Iraq and for that reason alone I could not and would not vote for him. Besides, he's grinding the truth so much even my teeth hurt.

Mrs. Clinton, of course, is also lying through her own teeth and will stay in Iraq for as long as we need. I trust her take the Iraq War to its conclusion. She knows the stakes. I'm telling you, this woman is tough. Too bad she's not a Republican. She'd be a good moderate.

As far as the Senator's hindsight, it is laughable. He has actually minimized the middle east situation into a game of R isk (Tom Hayden is one of his advisers? I heard Dick Gregory's looking for a gig--he'll provide his own case of Ensure.) He speaks in terms of whether the world "likes" us, using it in the same sentence with the strategy word. I don't feel he has a sense of understanding threats to the country, from Muslim terrorist states and terrorists themselves.

Here's the thing. Can Senator Obama, who believes in Israel's right to exist, as he declared last evening with such ferocity, as well as plainly shunning Louis Farrakhan's endorsement, be so naive as to place Israel at risk as we abandon Iraq? Worse, is he that horribly stupid or is he actually lying?

In which case, what? We elect a face? A leader? An orator? A shill? A henpecked man? Take a chance?

Maybe the only differences among all three candidates are the domestic ones, in which case, what are the real differences? There is a national election in which there will be two distinct choices.

The temptation has passed.


Thanks for the read.

*Personally I am very proud that race relations in this country have reached the point where a black woman, Michelle Robinson Obama, was literally given funds and scholarships for entrance into Ivy League schools, while my kids schlepped through state schools, a fabulous house in Chicago and a bitchin' career in a big city--all during my adult lifetime. On top of it all, she may even get to be first lady, all by accident of birth, almost like an white European princess. Wow. What a country!

Hillary. Fly to Reno and divorce Bill. Tonight.

You could still win the primary next week!

Seriously.

Feminists are reaping what they sowed. They turned the other way while their gal got under a powerful man to get to the top--not a particularly feminist way of, well, making it.

Sure 'nuf. Here she is, almost at the busting-through place, and now she can't! Why? She has to play nicey-nice because all the little 30 and 40 year-old spoiled media boys and girls don't like older women who yell; and then call her names and comment on her looks. (Yeah, I did too. I was wrong.) Besides, they have much more fun with people their own age--like that nice Obama boy down the street. Too bad most of them can't read. Hillary should have come out mean and got meaner. She had nothing to lose.

The problem is she's not authentic and everyone knows it. That's why women run from her when the real thing came along. Too bad. They'd have stayed probably, but with Bill, that selfish SOB, who sidelined Hillary, and couldn't even let her have this, no way, especially when he embarrassed her so badly in the campaign. Bill has literally ruined her life. What a particularly bitter experience for this woman.

Jeez. What a crock. They're each other's trophies. Sad.

Regardless, I don't like how the press has treated Senator Clinton, even if she has deserved some of it. Some. After so much toughness this far in the campaign, she deserves much, much more respect. After all, she is an individual running for president, not a woman running for president and that's what's pissing me off.

Yeah, Hillary. If you divorce Bill, I'll vote for ya. And get every woman I know to do it too. This is the only way to avoid humiliation and come out on top by yourself.

More on Prince Barack tomorrow.

Thanks for the read.

Polishing my opinion of Barack Obama...

This will be ongoing with discoveries and my reactions as the campaign rolls along. I've a few already. I suspect there will be many, many more. Let's look at the candidate together for a change.


A Che Guevera poster hangs in his campaign offices.

He refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance early in his campaign for president.

He says he was not raised in a Muslim madrassa; there are indications that he was. Would this make the president of the US more Jihadist target?

This could or could not be a problem, depending upon your point of view. After all, as president he's a target anyway and might well be safer! That may be moot.

Those are three issues which need verification and debate. Frankly, until they hit the major news outlets, I'm not going to think about them yet. They do bother me a lot though if they are true.

America has been very good to you, Michelle
How disappointing to hear Michelle Obama, Barack's accomplished wife, confess this is the first time in her adult life she is really proud of her country.

Really, Michelle? That same country that sent you to an Ivy League school? The same one who just freed 78 million people in Iraq, 28 million in Afghanistan, millions more in the twentieth century? Really, Michelle?

You mean the country that admits the horrors of what it has done to some of your ancestors and has actually ameliorated itself to the point of finding ways for you, the great granddaughter of wronged people, to become a first lady of that country that you're just now proud of? Wow.

Just wow.

Thanks for the read.

Time for much needed R & R

But I'll be back in a few weeks or so, rough and ready with reasons why no one should vote for the Democrat come November.

Thanks for the read.

Limbaugh: "I don't wanna feel it" or "There ain't no Oxycontin at the Hanoi Hilton."

I've always held regular, good Dems to the task of taking on their own extremists. The most respectable Dem of all, Senator Joseph Lieberman, and others took their crazy left on. Not many others had the cajones; as I recall, their presidential candidates jumped through hoops at the Moveon.Org’s “convention.” Isn’t it interesting how the extremes on either side end up looking like one another?

I wanna be the leader! No, I wanna be the leader!
The embittered, power-hungry, wannabe neo-establishment of the Republican Party came out of their clubhouse this week, e.g., Dobson, who finally gets his excuse to vote for a fellow preacher, which what he's wanted all the time...not that's there's anything wrong with that. I wish he could be less abrasive about announcing his choice. Dobson's still a Republican, isn't he

And Limbaugh? Well, it's clear what little Rushie does when he gets mad. He lashes out. Then when one of the greater generation, Bob Dole, asks him respectfully to knock it off, he disses the Senator as if he has nothing more to say.

It’s show time!
This is about power, mostly. These small-souled boys and girls (Ingraham, Coulter) from Hodunk, Wherever, have hit the mother lode and if they make more noise, they achieve more of a sense of power and control. It probably feels good to have millions of people think you're the smartest person in the room, if you're totally out of touch with reality and you haven't landed emotionally. None of these people seemed to have done so, except for Dobson, perhaps. Maybe. Otherwise, why the meaness?

I feel that at the bottom of this unfortunate internicine war being waged against Senator McCain, our presumptive candidate, their fellow Republican, POW, and war hero is human jealousy. Why else would you put the country, the party and the McCains through this if not for your respective inconoclastic, selfish, prurient reasons, Mr. Limbaugh, Dr. Dobson. Mss. Coulter, Ingraham? Has he not won fair and square so far? Has he run a corrupt campaign? Why this outrage?

It's my party, too
Moreover, for the right's information, Senator McCain has taken on many of the questionable items on the right's agenda in order to represent me, some the rest of us, another Republican, who hardly ever is allowed so much as a "Uh, gee, maybe we need to rethink some of this." McCain knew Rumsfeld was a problem; he said so. McCain knew our troop levels were inadequate; he said so. The examples go on.

What the right wing doesn't want to accept is that they have not won the Republican Party's heart and soul. They're sore losers and bad sports, which is interesting considering they loved their greatest generation mythology (the greatness of their own people, their ancestors) so much they're standing in sand trying not to be real. They're on another planet now.

Yeah, we liked Reagan too. He wasn't, however, St. Ronald. As you recall, he had some differences within the party that looked suspiciously like betrayal to the right. He also had two families, like John McCain.

Yeah, we moderates understand what the principles of conservatism are and mostly agree. My favorite insult, by the way, from Rush Limbaugh is I have no values if I'm a moderate. Do you love it? It is precisely my values of compromise, fair play and common ground shared by most Republicans, which save us from the inflexibility, the intolerance of other's ideas, the egos, the hubris, the reationary mistakes made that comes with too much power on either side. I hired myself for the job as a moderate Republican to keep my eye on people like Limbaugh to make sure he's not speaking for me.

I bought this microphone, Mr. Limbaugh
These silly, ridiculous talking heads couldn't even endure one day of the torture and abuse from primary elections, let alone what John McCain took for years; after all, Oxycontin wasn't usually approved for pain at the Hanoi Hilton.

Thanks for the read

Call to Mr. Blackwell: Talk to Hillary about those awful suits, please!

Someone at Menopause Central needs to slip a call to Mr. Blackwell. Maybe then Hillary would get the hint. Good grief. You're a woman; dress like one. She has lovely hair, skin, jewelry and her coloring is beautiful so there's no reason for her to look like her staff, the Huns, just hijacked a Salvation Army truck.

Gold is definitely not her color
She must associate gold with royalty. I noticed she's worn it three times in one week: one was a wide lapelled, ugly, ugly pantsuit (does this woman have legs or do we have to wait for her own memorial to find out?). She wore that one twice. Then the second one, a more understated number, plain as Jane, but gold. The only difference in most of her get-ups is the color, usually dark.

Then there was another attempt--the gray and black Nehru suit top--which she's thrown on three or four times. Of course, that power jacket got its share of laughs.

She has worn her wardrobe out, I'd say. If she's going to president of the United States, I would appreciate her trying to become more fashionable. She ought to look at Andrea Mitchell, for instance. She has fabulous taste and knows what looks good on camera. You'll have to forgive my insensitivity to the old gal, but really, she's trying to tell young women they gotta look ugly too to become president? No wonder older white men do not like her. The fact that she refuses to act the part bothers me.

Just find something more refined, Mrs. Clinton. Clothes don't only make the man, they also make the woman regardless of size.

Thanks for the read.

Californians to Mitt Romney: Yeah, but can you type?

I'm of the generation who actually remembers his late dad, George Romney's, try for the White House. He was a good man as I recall, but then America would never have elected an LDS member as president. He gave the party establishment a run for their money, but it was always a long shot for George Romney. So it is for his son, Mitt.

In this all-war-is-bad atmosphere, even if the war is in self-defense, the idea of another businessman, like George Bush, taking over the country scares the beakers out of me. How many Mulligans do we get with this Pentagon/CIA/FBI thing, especially if the Dems get the White House?

During my corporate career I worked for high-level executives (two CEOs of international corporations, a major ad agency owner, and some other very interesting people up and down the line) as a secretary/legal assistant to corporate counsel/technical and copywriter. Almost every one of my successful bosses had this is common: they knew how to choose the right person to get the job done. Sometimes, they failed, but not often. Ninety-five percent of them probably got where they were because they broke the code early in their careers, knew how to beat out problems, found the secret to success: find and pay the right people, get existing deadwood out of the system, present and explain the project with passion, get buy in, then delegate. How simple is that? Why, it is pure MBA syllabus material.

Speaking of MBAs, George Bush, the manager, stayed with Donald Rumsfeld because, frankly, Dubya, a businessman, didn't have the experience to run this or any other war. That's another managerial trait I observed: if don't know what you're doing, fake it, then find someone to do it for you...just buy your way out of trouble. The second one is delaying the inevitable action because your fellow managers are also your dad's personal friends.

As a Republican, I hate that precious political capital was wasted by this president because of this hands-off attitude. This tendency to misplace loyalty, by the way, has been a wall over which mavericks, independents and outsiders to the party know they'll never scale. Republicans tend to give the nomination to those who "deserve" it. Like George Bush, because, aw shucks, his dad was such a good guy and good Republican. It's just how it is. Republicans have done this forever and I hate it. Every time I bring it up, inevitably, a young, buttoned-down kid tries to placate me in the most condescending, patronizing languge one would ever hear if he were below the age of 40. It's is what it is. Nothing is new under the sun, thank God.

Meanwhile, Romney got his money from his pop and is a businessman who performed well when he ran the Olympics. He became governor of Massachusetts. As far as I know, he may be just another zillionaire running for president who hasn't been any closer to "knowing" about war--in the biblical sense--or what war really is. He thinks he does.

Am I saying a president should have a nodding acquaintance with things military? Right now, at this time in our history?

Probably. Maybe just a little bit?

Romney's empty suitedness bothers me more than anything. Besides, Governor Romney has broken my cardinal rule: never trust a man whose fingernails and hair look better than your your own (if you're a girl).

Nice manicure, Mitt.

Thanks for the read.

It's time for Conservatives to forgive Senator John McCain

Good heavens. It's like the right wing of the Republican party is finally getting their wish: achieving martydom by pretending they're on the cross for Christ rather than support anyone but their own inflexible, polarizing--did I say unelectable-- phonies like Huckabee of the swift tongue and Romney of the $40 million dollar open checkbook.

He's George's kid, after all
They (the ancients in the GOP) did it before in the 2000 presidential primary and they're doing it again (they never learn). George W. Bush had no business becoming president and most of us knew it, especially those of us who were so bitterly disappointed in the SC campaign. It was George W. Bush and the establishment machine who destroyed John McCain's chances then, not a very proud moment for my party because of some misplaced values.

I was always a McCain fan even before he ran for the senate and quite by accident. For years, in the late sixties, I wore an ugly gray metal POW bracelet on which was brazenly stamped his name and date of capture. Naturally, I was delighted to work for Senator McCain's presidential campaign later in my life. So, I'll admit that it took me a while to forgive such treatment by my party of a true American hero.

That's politicians and politics for you; you can't take it personally. Maybe so, but the SC shenanigans against Senator McCain were personal and obscene and it was the establishment that allowed the Bush people to get away with it. But, as my grandfather, the original Republican, said about entrenched party politicians, "Once you buy these guys, they're yours for life."

He was right. I'm reminded that power trumps money sometimes.

So the right wing kids are taking their balls and going home?
Limbaugh, et al. won't support John McCain. Pity.

I guess that's just about 17 million more registered Independents and disaffected Dems we regular Republican folks need to win over to Senator McCain's side (Limbaugh's alleged number of chronic listeners).

The popular spokespeople for the religious Right and the religious Left have shown they're simple, intractable and stunningly willing to expose their own life ignorance--which they must consider the antithesis of pride and ego--doing all that good and all, standing up for what is "right" (don't we all, BTW?).

By answering the call from their "gods," they view themselves as actually putting themselves on the line in taking the "risk" for their cause (and ego), on and on, whatever keeps them in the limelight. Most of these well-knowns are natural iconoclasts who became entertainers by uttering interesting, usually rehashed concepts in a new way. Political cartoonists have been doing it for years. So have satirical cartoon/graphic novels and periodicals.

I wanted to hear what Limbaugh would say about McCain, so I tuned in. Some woman with a cobra for a tongue stated how she hated John McCain and how he hates we (sic) Conservatives. She sounded to be around 35 or so, who knows? But her viciousness toward Senator McCain was telling as to her lack of grace; her delivery was hostileand she was practically screaming at her host in the most self-righteous language. Then, when her diatribe was finally done, the following (paraphrase) was Limbaugh's response;

Rush Limbaugh: (after great sighing, pausing) Now you see, Ladies and Gentlemen, how real people out there feel about John McCain. They see him as a traitor to the Repubican Party and to Conservatives causes. I just don't see how we can possibly ignore his liberal tendencies, he will turn against us again and again, he'll raise taxes, his best friends are Democrats, blah, blah, blah.

Wait a minute, Rush. You certainly went a long way when you ignored George Bush Sr's and Jr's liberal tendencies. Have you forgotten New World Order, Read My Lips, and my personal favorite, "It's not really amnesty." among others? Oh, I forgot. Rush is pretty star struck and got an invite to the Lincoln bedroom from the Bush Srs. That changed everything in his very, very small world.

It's the heroics, Stupid
Who'd have thought the Republican Party would get a do-over? Other men would have walked away, but McCain stuck out his gimpy leg and limped forward anyway. We are watching a great man rising to greater glory. What a time to be alive.

John McCain is a national hero and deserves every American's respect. That is a challenge I will issue to anyone who comes back at me about McCain's so-called disloyalty to the party. God help us all if we can't listen to our mavericks and the ones who make us recall what could happen, what might happen and what should happen. The ones who are right are seen as statesmen, charismatic leaders and heroes.These great men and women overcome odds just by becoming forces of nature.

Our country needs great men again. Our boys need them.

John McCain has walked it, he's talked it. He's earned it and he deserves it. Now, it's time for Conservatives to get over it.


Thanks for the read.

Obama's missed opportunity

In reviewing the South Carolina primary game films, I hope someone in the Obama camp points out the missed opportunity during the last Dem debates.

He thrust with his remark about Hillary's service on the board of directors at WalMart. Most people in the audience didn't connect the dots or know to do so. Here's how he might have successfully and in a gentlemanly way dissed Big Girl.

Immediately, Barack should have parried, then outshouted her with, "Mrs. Clinton, WalMart alone is responsible for the closings of thousands of mom and pop general merchandise, grocery and drug store all over America. How did they beat these home town businessmen? How do you think, Senator Clinton? The cost of their goods was so low because those goods which flow into the stores in whose name you sit on a board of directors are made by Chinese labor that is cheap and easy, sometimes even enslaved Christians. Because WalMart ordered huge numbers of goods, they could make and ship them at a fraction of the costs for other merchandisers."



That would have opened up the Chinagate issue and she would have been doubly offended. Good attack, great results. It's easy but you gotta know everything there is to know about the world ala Clinton. Here is the psychology of man versus woman that has yet to pay out. Just a step forward would have taken away any advantage he had because of cultural bias and fear. Just a step back would have indicated he was talkin with the massa's wife and invite what he got.

Instead, his lack of experience let her pull the slumlord counterattack. She never should have got that far. He would've taken her out in the second sentence if someone on his staff had had more sense. He now needs major players, mainstream, black, white, Asian, polka dot people to help the campaign. May be he can remember to connect the populist dot next time.

In the meantime, tonight Obama has won the SC primary by a humongous margin. Watch for a new Bill Clinton charm campaign sprinkled with a little nugget of fear here and there about Obama's background. We'll see how long they wait. Go for it, Barack. Just get smart, will ya?

Thanks for the read.

How Obama can get the old ladies' vote--not that there's anything wrong with them

I've got to admit to some possible ageist thinking in the last few months as the media announced the new phenom, Barack Obama. I thought he was a cute kid, but I was waiting for him to grow into that rich baritone that doesn't yet fit inside his boyish, lanky frame.

I was underwhelmed when the queens of daytime TV anointed him as their man. They hate women like me; why in the world would I care what they anoint?

As the primary season has lurched forward, I'm still polishing my opinion of him.

Obama is my favorite kind of liberal
He's epitomizes the beauty of true liberal thought based on sincerity, goodness and mainline American protestantism. I know and love people just like Obama. Occasionally, we'd have a wunderkind like Barack in my church's pulpit whose exhortation that "you are your brother's keeper" pounded the congregation with compelling, heart-to-head, emotional phraseology. I relate to Obama's Christian language inthe same way and I honestly believe he is what he says he is. He had a hard upbringing with absent parents. However, his people on both sides of the house were educated, interesting, liberal people. He's a natural Democrat, old school.

Barack is as pretty as a new penny, I'll admit. And I'm beginning to like how he has avoided offensively utilizing a race-tinged attack so far. He seems to be an engaging, charismatic, reasonable person and could be a good, mainstream, centrist Democrat president...maybe some day when he learns to take a stand on issues instead of merely voting "present," for instance. I predict he will graduate to junior statesman following this real life battle with the Clintons. If he moderates his politics as a result of experience and pain, he could. Some day. Not today. He's way too young. His inability to see the Islamist threat is a problem.

I feel sorry for Senator Obama. I wish the black political establishment would thumb their noses at the Clintons. Some of the braver ones have stepped forward...to which Bill responds, "oh, sure...like I'm so afraid of John Kerry."

The rest might have two reasons they can't abandon the Clinton ship: one, they are politically and personally beholden to them, thus frightened of them; and two, the establishment is not willing to step out on a limb because of Obama's youth and naivete. I doubt he'll even be given the key to the REAL men's room until after the convention. Remember who Obama's supporters are: black voters, black women. The pols aren't going to risk their comfortable positions to support a kid like Obama, unless they have something on the Clintons that all of us can't wait to hear. What a knock out punch that'd be, huh? I can always dream, can't I?

Hey, such is politics. Now the devil's due has come. The black elders must be sweating it out, soul-wise. They've got their dream candidate (Heck. Even I might vote for the guy some day, when he grows up). They've got this political generation's great black hope. They should be throwing rose petals in his path. Instead of rallying behind Senator Obama, encouraging their voters to maintain a civil tongue, working through their intraparty racial, money and generational issues-- Charlie Wrangel and others choose to squander this opportunity to to put the first black man in the White House who isn't asked for another drink.

Instead of fulfilling their own long-forgotten dreams, instead of sharing their righteous front line experience and lessons learned to assist this young man to levels higher than even they can imagine...instead of having a pseudoblack president like Willie, they can have the real thing. But instead, they are obligated to their royal highnesses' destiny.

As Bill Bendix ("Life of Riley" ca. 1950s) would say, "What a revoltin' development this is."

Thanks for the read.

Bill's White House

Well? Isn't that what's really going on here? How many of you honestly believe this won't be a co-presidency?

Vote for Monica Lewinsky's ex-boyfriend's wife for president
Great bumper sticker. Wish I could take credit, but it came off The Front Page Magazine's message board. LOL! I HOWLed.

Meanwhile, the ex-boyfriend in his inimitable, baby boomer, break-the-rules, lose-his-temper and point-his-finger-while-his-face-gets red, acts like he's the one on the ballot.

Actually, he is--running, that is. He's also running the campaign, the strategy, the tone and the racial provocations. He is ready to make history. After all, he could become the first male first lady, the first ex-president to be the first male first lady and most importantly, the only human being in American history who will in essence serve (as a shadow co-president) for eight more years.

Why doesn't someone besides me make an issue of this? Is the cult of personality so profoundly embedded in our culture that this constant shifting of the rules (laws) a little here, little bit there, that we can't even recognize it as a problem? Can't we debate this issue? I think it warrants a quick talk though at least.

Once again, Bill's confrontational behavior in this week's scenes of our dynamic political drama likely is nothing more than the implementation of a long-held plan to get the White House back. I can see Bill and Hillary sitting around in their jammies talking about what if we do this or do that...then what will you say? No, Bill, you can't say that. No, Hillary, you gotta do this.

Yet, Bill's public display (act?) of his lack of impulse control these days has to have angered Mrs. Clinton. Again, I can just hear them. Hide the heavy ashtrays and vases because the brains of this outfit knows well Bill's bigger than life body language brings back bad memories for everyone.

We'll see if Bill can control himself. Knowing his ego and his constitutional inability to accept criticism, I predict the benefits to the Mrs.' campaign are minimal.

Don't you talk to my man that way
Back at Menopause Central, Senator Clinton might have a big problem with black women. I know my black girlfriends will correct me if I'm wrong, which I welcome.

The visual of an older white woman pointing her finger at Barack Obama and raising unpleasant issues about his character must be quite offensive to black women.

We women boost our mates because it's in our best interest to support them, bolster their egos and self image. But, black women over time have seen their men dehumanized, abused and treated in unspeakable ways. As a result, there has been almost an overreaction to any criticism. I can't see any black woman worth her salt who would stand by and watch her husband get humiliated by an older white woman.

Once again, Mrs. Clinton shows her inability to "get it." She's absolutely tone deaf, politically. Nor does she seem to understand the black experience as much as she has claimed, e.g., equating the "older white woman" with the lady of the plantation doesn't cross her mind. Either that, or the black establishment is so indebted to the Clintons, she/he can say anything and get away with it. After all, they all owe Bill big time. What a dilmema for a traditional black Dem.

I don't know if Obama can resist taking this issue to the limit by using the "it's because I'm black" response. I hope he doesn't, but with the Clintons, you gotta get out the big guns.

Thanks for the read.

Rudy's out. Mac is back.

I wrote the following email this morning in response to Rudy Giuliani campaign's email request that I man the volunteer phones this week.


Dear Giuliani Campaign,

I sent the campaign $200 three months ago.

I don't know what happened and why the mayor thought he could do a hare-style sprint to the finish line, but he's so far down now, I doubt he can regain his momentum. I still am wondering how the front runner became a single-digit also-ran.

That's not leadership

Something seems to be very, very wrong in the Giuliani campaign and I'm not sure what. However, I'm not all that interested anymore because, frankly, Rudy doesn't seem to be particularly interested either. He should have participated in Iowa, New Hampshire. Now I read his people aren't being paid (kinda wish I could reroute my donation to John's campaign).

Whatever stopped Rudy from moving forward and becoming more active in his own campaign has hurt him. If it's his personal life, I'm not thrilled about having to fight a hideous, Clinton-style, dirty linen battle in the name of Rudy.

I just want a leader who can keep his nose clean, not cheat on his wife and do the job. Bernard Kerik's mess and Rudy's affair has hurt. You can be assured that the Clinton or Obama machines will decimate him. The "dubious character" perception now is almost impossible to turn around.

No, that's not what the party--or our country--needs.

Meanwhile, as I hinted above, I've gone home to McCain for whom I worked last time.

Respectfully and with regret,


Gee, I hated writing that.

I really don't want to seem fickle, but sometimes a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

Thanks for the read