STATE OF THE SO-CALLED "UNION" part 6 in an ongoing rant

Scribe's presidential candiate endorsement.

I know you've all been waiting for this, so here goes:

I must confess I’m rather nervous right now. Nervous about how the presidential election will turn out. Nervous about the state of my nation. Nervous about the nation’s future.

I’m also disgusted. Disgusted that John McCain has a chance at actually becoming president of the United States. Disgusted that there is such a thing as a “Bradley Effect.” Disgusted that there are still undecided voters out there.

The last time I felt like this was 2004. It was also he first time I ever felt like this. In 2000, I assumed the election was a given in Al Gore’s favor. How could he lose? He was coming off eight years of unprecedented economic prosperity and had served under a president whose approval rating was huge. His opponent was a poorly spoken idiot whose major accomplishments involved an ability to get out of trouble after creating it for others. He was a smirking, stammering, chimp of a man and in no way reflective of America at large.

Then reality bitch slapped me a couple dozen times and I woke up to a whole new nation. The morons had risen up and overthrown the thinkers in a bloodless coup d’etat. Working in concert with activist judges and comic book level villainy in the form of Karl Rove (Never trust a guy named Karl when his name is spelled with a “K”) they took the Whitehouse and changed all the drapes.

Gore didn’t help, Of course. His performance in the first debate was deplorable. He came off as arrogant, impatient and immature. When you make George W Bush look good, you have officially lost it. In addition, he deemphasized his connection to Bill Clinton, wrongly assuming the Lewinski scandal was a deciding factor amongst most voters. Why he would distance himself from a popular and successful president under who he served directly is anybody’s guess.

These days Al Gore does speaking engagements on global warming, thereby opening himself up to merciless lampooning on South Park.

In 2004 the Democrats ran John Kerry, a rather weak candidate but still light-years ahead of W and his Halliburton cronies. The margin of loss was narrow and due mainly to Kerry’s unwillingness or inability to defend himself in an assertive manner. The Swiftboat lies were easily disproved and disputed, yet he did and said next to nothing. He never even mentioned W’s draft dodging record or that none of his administration had served in the military.

Also, Kerry’s demeanor tuned off what Sara Palin so giddily refers to as “Joe Six-pack.” Un-used to reserved intellectuals, the average American finds guys like Kerry threatening and elitist.

Thanks to a complete lack of sophistication in large sections of my country, W got back in and continued to wage his war on a noun and drive us further into debt with the Chinese.

W is now a lame duck and all the insults and one-liners that brings to mind. He and his Cheney-inspired hooligans are on their way to lucrative private sector consultant jobs and speaking engagements. The void being left by them is the most vital one to be filled in a long, long time.

I do not believe John McCain is the man to fill that void. I had my reservations about Barrack Obama in the beginning but he has shown himself to have the correct demeanor and outlook for the job. By contrast, McCain has shown himself to be an increasingly weird, out of touch old man who is more in love with his self-perception as a maverick than his country.

As If McCain’s smarmy, erratic behavior weren’t enough, his obviously impaired judgment is even worse. How else do we explain him allowing his handlers to choose Sara Palin as his running mate? An embarrassment to intelligent, worldly women everywhere, Palin’s moronic utterances proved the so-called “stereotype” that the average conservative prefers women who are pleasant to look while being almost completely devoid of any inner substance: Attractive and agreeable baby-machines that can be unleashed on those filthy liberals like poorly trained attack dogs.

Obama’s choice of Joe Biden cemented others’ and mine opinion that he was the choice this time around. These two together have a chance of reclaiming some of this country’s credibility and influence with other nations. I know neo-cons love to act like they don’t care what other countries think while spending trillions to influence their opinions but we are hated for a reason. Actually, we are hated for several reasons. We are arrogant, provincial control freaks sorely in need of a wakeup call. Being a super-power in massive debt isn’t a stable situation as anyone with a background in middle school civics can attest.

We don’t need another old world cold warrior presiding over our government. We don’t need someone who doesn’t understand the enemy lobbing bombs at them. We need people who can practice empathy with toughness. Someone who understands the world situation and the way other people think, not someone whose main ambition is to get payback for his time spent in a prisoner of war camp.

Oddly enough, it as perfectly acceptable to attack John Kerry’s wartime record despite proof that people who never served with him fabricated the claims. But when it’s a Republican, somehow their record is sacred? Sorry, John McCain wasn’t a very good pilot (5 crashed planes don’t lie) and he doesn’t deserve the presidency because he had the bad luck of being captured and tortured. Traumatic experiences like that scar people for life and sometimes leave them with an undying thirst for revenge.

That’s what disgusts and makes me most nervous, the idea of yet another emotionally damaged human being in the Oval Office. I’ll do my part to make sure it doesn’t happen, but I’m just one drop dead gorgeous guy. You must do the same.

Worst-case scenario: If McPalin does win, I will comfort myself with the following quote from a Crowded House song:

“Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire/Couldn’t conquer the blue sky.”

Let’s hope that’s still true today~