DINER REVIEW ELECTION PREVIEW 2008

Sooooo... it is election eves, eve. The talking heads say Obama is lock but Mc Cain has momentum so it is not over. I do not know how those things gibe. The say Mc Cain has to run the table but figuring they have called some of the races wrong I will say if Mc Cain loses Ohio, Pennsylvania or Florida.... he is toast.

He was hilarious on SNL last night. He can make fun of himself and he does have timing. Somehow he let the campaign run him as a grumpy old man (and that is perhaps who he is) but that seems unfair. I like John Mc Cain. I like that he fights for what he believes in. I like that he got his reputation of speaking truth to power but i am voting for Obama because:

1. Mc Cain sold out his “crossing the aisle” I am a consensus maker and builder reputation when he chose a V.P. to pander towards a base which had no where else to go and he adopted the extension of the Bush tax cuts which he had made a career of opposing.

2. The choice of Palin also was just a poor choice for this election and the way she was handled is embarrassing. I am confident that she is smart, ambitious and has the best interests of the government at heart but... the way she was rolled out and pandered to the base was a mistake for a candidate who clearly has a lot going foe her.... even if I think i hate her.

3. He did not surround himself with people who could help him make good decisions in difficult time. Surrounding yourself with people who do not have good instincts is...Bushlike. Obama clearly ran a better, smarter campaign. Perhaps running a campaign is whole lot easier then running a government but if you cannot do one...

So I will show up at 6 in Webster and cast my vote. I have predictions.

1. Voter turnout will be huge but even with a massive increase in young voters (18-25) they will not show up and make the effort to vote.
2. Obama wins in landslide with 58% of popular vote, without the youth vote.
3. He has huge electoral college win leading idiot Democrats to do the same thing Karl Rove did and predict a fundamental turn in the electorate and a permanent democratic majority. This is...idiotic. Our country is deeply polarized and politics is cyclical. It is the Dems year and it is only because Obama is a charismatic leader. With anyone else at the top of the ticket (even Hillary) this is a nail biter and they do not win all those states.
4. The Dems have 59 in the Senate.
5. Obama is one term President.
6. Obama is so wrapped up in recession/depression problems that there is no timing or funding for health care reform or almost anything else.

The Republicans could still win this election. They need to promo Sarah Palin at a 50,000 person rally in Branson to get the whole crowd chanting “Obama, Pelosi and Reed...OH MY!” to the tune of “Lions and Tigers and Bears”. That is a scary thought. That could turn the whole thing around with a few prime time TV buys and huge You Tube press. Seriously, that could do it. Instead they will try and scare people in stupid and unscary ways like Bill Ayers and “socialism”...yawn. they deserve to lose. They have no imagination and that is the unkindest thing I can say.

****

MY DREAM
I have a dream that Obama gets elected and immediately does the following:
1. Offers Secretary of Defense job to John Mc Cain
2. Makes Petraus head of joint Chiefs of Staff
3. Offers Secretary of Treasury or Fed job to Warren Buffet and urges him to take it as a matter of public service.
4. Announces Hillary will fill next Supreme Court opening.
5. Shuts down our stock market for a week to retool the rules regarding program trading, hedge funds and over night trading and perhaps selling “futures” of things that are not actual commodities.
6. Consider closing the banks for a brief period to review them and open them again so that people have confidence in them.
7. Set aside 700 billion plan and start over. Do not allow the banks to have any money for mergers unless they are mergers directed by the FDIC. Use the money in a way that actually gets banks to lend.
8. Give the first great speech of this Millenium. remind the country that we are the greatest country in the world but help the country to redefine that greatness.

****

I don’t ask for much.
God’s Blessings. Go vote.

STEPFORD VEEP?

Sooooo... I have been pretty good about this Sarah Palin thing. Between work, family, a little school and...oh the apparent collapse of our monetary system I have had plenty going on. Too much to add much needed comment on this dire, dire threat to...well to be fair to everything.

Sarah Palin is, I have decided, the Stepford Veep. She at any point might be capable of talking about cookie recipes and how much she loves the “first dude” her husband, “the world champion snow machine racer”. We have not seen her family since the beginning which is fine but they have kept a tight, tight lid on her and for good reason. She is a VERY limited talent and very limited intellect.

She would rock a school board and clearly rocked a small town and then amidst the moral collapse of Alaska rocked “The Largest State In The Union” (population about 670,000. She has appeared with Mc Cain supposedly because he “likes the crowds she draws” but really because she cannot hack it alone. her two solo appearances with fairly kind hosts have been embarrassing between her not knowing answers on one hand and not answering questions on the other. They have tried to school her but it is a lot to be brought up to date about your lifetime of American history and politics in a week or two.
She does not play that well among anyone but the solid, Christian Democratic base that Mc Cain used to so enjoy fighting and made people like me like him. This sidling up to them has “energized” that base but seriously, where would they go. And she will alienate almost everyone else. She cannot do anything else. I saw her on Fox and she just kept babbling that she and Mc Cain as a team would be ready to serve and ready and they were ready and would be ready and I thought she was going to short circuit and her head was going to explode. Which frankly was as good as she got.

She looks ill prepared. She seems preachy, judgmental and mean. She looks like she will be a massive divider of our country which is already massively divided by the Bush administration. All in all, she seems like my perfect nightmare. the good news is that unless America cannot elect a black man, she is the death nell of the Mc Cain ticket. Imagine a 72 year old president with her being a heartbeat, his cancerous old heartbeat, away from ultimate power.

The problem she has among others is that the way she has carried herself and carried the attack and stuck to her guns despite of the facts (Bridge to nowhere) and promised to cooperate with an investigation she is now stonewalling (troopergate) it is too easy to see her as an angry, vengeful, hateful chief executive. Who DO we want answering the phone at 3:00 A.M. when there is an emergency? Not her. She would nuke them in a heartbeat and have no understanding what it even meant. And her husband. Who is he anyway? The first dude? I get the feeling he will not be going to the Alaska Oil fields for 6 months and i also guess he will not be the primary care giver for Trig and the girls. Where is he?

So ask yourself, why won’t they let her out of the box? they say it is because the media, the liberal media, the mainstream media, the devils tool media will not treat her with the correct deference and respect. Every person needs respect but we expect the media to tell us about this person and to show her to us. That is what the media does. And do you think they are going to deferential like Putin might be. They should show us what she has got if she is “ready to lead”.

While the economy thrashes and they try and make this personal, the American public is going to start truly suffering. And the republicans are on their way out, unless all those nice liberal white folks cannot really vote for a black man. In that case I will be truly, truly scared and i will say a prayer for John Mc Cain’s health every night. because if they are keeping this tight a lid on her, she must be much worse then even I imagine.

Our old friends at the Onion had this.

http://www.theonion.com/content/infograph/rumors_swirl_around_palin

I do believe she will be the butt of every joke. If they love her so much in Alaska, then help me. Send her back.