I obviously have not written anything in quite some time – namely because I haven’t had much, if anything, to add to the widespread political discourse. Frankly, I do not want to write about Sarah Palin, as that campaign is desperate to draw attention away from their lethargic, uninspiring, lackluster presidential candidate, John McCain. To be sure, Palin is a very cruel joke being perpetrated upon the American people by the same folks that brought us this gem of a current presidency, and while it may seem cute and funny at first, I hope people will wake up and realize this is no laughing matter. This woman is a minor league ballplayer being called up to pitch the seventh game of the World Series. She has demonstrably little-to-no knowledge of current events outside her great state of Alaska. She is a Christian fundamentalist who at best blurs the line between separation of church and state, has supported a party in Alaska that wishes to secede from the union, is currently under investigation in her great state for abuse of power, and she didn’t even support John McCain in the primaries to boot (she hearted Huckabee, I believe). I’m sorry – I said I didn’t want to talk about her, but look what happens at the mere mention of her name! The diatribe doth floweth like a mighty Alaskan river.

Up until the most recent, shocking developments in the financial world, John McCain had been riding a wave of scurrilous and deliberate lies, deceptions, misstatements, mischaracterizations and lies (I’m aware I said that twice) that was bound to carry him right into the Oval Office. This still remains a distinct possibility, but the press has been surprisingly calling the campaign, both McCain and Palin alike, on their numerous mistruths; perhaps most hilarious – their lying about the attendance at candidates’ speeches. Oh, another humdinger is the one Palin keeps spouting about how her teleprompter malfunctioned at the RNC. We won’t mention the bridge to nowhere (apparently there were actually TWO of ‘em!), or the fact that Alaska receives more government pork per capita than any other state in the union, which she wishes to secede from. That being the case, it would seem foolish for a candidate to run on a platform of reform and anti-pork barrel spending (“thanks but no thanks, etc., etc…”). I guess I can now understand why Palin has gotten so much attention – there’s just sooo much gold out there to be dug up! It is also my understanding that much like Bush (in both Texas and the Union), Palin has taken budget surpluses in Alaska and turned them into rather staggering deficits. I also loved how sure of herself she was when answering Charlie Gibson’s questions, even when she is so clueless and wrong it seemed like Gibson was about rap her hands with a ruler. It has also been reported that while she continually touts being the mother of a ‘special needs’ child (her son has Down’s syndrome) on the campaign trail, she eliminated $275,000.00 from her state’s budget that was supposed to support the… you guessed it: Special Olympics. I’m sure I have only scratched the surface, and this is only Palin! McCain is a walking, talking gasbag of contradictions, flip flops and I’ll say it yet again, lies. His position on the economy has been steadfast over the past twenty-six years: deregulate, deregulate, deregulate – Keating Five, Savings & Loan debacle anyone?! But now the maverick is all of a sudden all about supposedly regulating the very same financial companies so many of his own campaign worker/lobbyists are working for! So we can believe McCain just about as much that he’ll reform Wall St. that he’ll be fair and impartial when handling matters in the Caucasus (his chief foreign advisor is a lobbyist for Georgia). Wasn’t he supposed to have kicked out all those pesky lobbyists from his campaign staff many moons ago when it was determined to be more than slightly politically inopportune?

Regardless of what goes down on the campaign trail over the next fifty or so days, it has continually been overlooked that in many states (and Districts of Columbia) there are still electronic voting machines that continually fudge the results, not to mention a new push by Michigan Republicans (among other state parties, no doubt) to cage voters, only this time by exploiting the mounting foreclosures in that particular state – challenging votes due to the registration address no longer being the actual residence (á la Karl Rove protégé Tim Griffin and co.). Stay classy, GOP, stay classy.