Speaking of guns, I noticed earlier you confessed to chasing an occasional backstrap dinner. Do you still? That’s pretty rare around here.

I stumbled across that site before. But I’m in the camp that holds that all bets are “sucker’s bets”. I’m a born-n-bred Mn Vikings fan. LOL. I KNOW better than to EVER bet a “sure thing”.

But, if a gun were put to my head, I’d still bet on Obama.

Optimism is a great thing, I too am cautious after being burned twice in 8 years. After the first 4 years of Boy George, I didn’t think there was a chance of another. I underestimated the fear and religion factors.

There’s a website (in the UK I believe)where you can bet real money on the outcome of the election. Right now, the odds are 70% Obama and 30% McCaint. I like that better than a poll, it’s one thing to say what you will do, it’s another to put real cash on it.

I can provide a link if you’ld like.

I try to remain optimistic as well. Logically, the Dems could run the Devil himself and win. But I won’t sleep easy till I see KO announce the landslide.

When I feel pessimistic I look at polls for contested House/Senate races. Even if McSpin steals the election, he will have to deal with a “veto proof” majority. With any luck that will keep the neocons from doing too much more damage.

We have to remind ourselves that there are strengths in our system designed to keep greedy fools from destroying the country. Unfortunately, people were not paying attention and we ended up with a tyrant in office. That surprising fact has still not reached 20%-30% of the country.

But most of us are no longer surprised. It appears that everyone is trying to hold their breath till the election, aside from the occasional venting on blogs and such. But I think that the rest of the campaign, and the results, will tell us what needs to be done. Then it’s a matter of doing it.

My gut feeling is that we are up for the challenge. It’s just a question of how loud we have to be, to remind our elected officials that they can only act with the consent of the governed. I don’t think it would take much for us to remember how loud we can get.

“Our chief weapon is the surge… no, our two chief weapons are the surge, and the pre-surge surge. Our three chief weapons…. Oh, I’ll come in again.”

I have heard a variation of that theme more than once. McAlzheimer will “find” a reason, a medical condition, something that would prevent him running and the Repugs will choose a new candidate. Maybe a Romney.

Especially if Obama’s lead in the polls widens to 15 – 20% before convention time.

Not that it matters. The Repugs could have Jesus as their candidate and Gandhi as the VP and they would get their asses handed to them. That’s the real legacy of Bush.

Not that either of those guys would associate themselves with Repugs in any way.

“Note to Pols: Don’t make statement in the BALONEY AISLE of the grocery store.”

ATTENTION SHOPPERS!
ATTENTION SHOPPERS!
We have a Piggly Wiggly special on McCain Baloney in Aisle 9! Buy one, get one free!

What’s your opinion on McCain’s mental competency? Is being coherent just a “bonus” quality when it comes to Presidential hopefuls?

WaltTheMan Says:

I am surprised that no-one has mentioned the administration claim in the summer of 2007 that the surge had not started yet because not all the forces were in place.

You know, I was thinking about that. Their excuse for not seeing any direct reduction of violence for the first 6 – 8 months after January 2007 was that “well, the whole surge force isn’t in place yet, so we have nothing to report.”

but also — and I think this is on-topic, though a long short — has it occurred to anyone that it is *insane* for any party to be running a guy for president who makes 3 – 4 major geographical, historical, political and other gaffes per day? Everyone knows the right doesn’t like McThuseleh (my vote for best name so far, TOH to BadMoodMan), so why are they even going through the motions of running him? My long shot: the Repugnicans will pick a cheney/rumsfeld-type VP (or, better yet, a GWB-like VP who won’t think once — much less twice — about whatever they want him to do), who will deliver to the president pro tempore of the senate a letter signed by the VEEP and a majority of McCain’s shill cabinet saying that McCain is unable to discharge the duties of the presidency, citing his gaffes as evidence of McCain’s dementia, and become the “acting president” until McCain dies or another president is elected at the end of McCain’s term. That’s my pick for why the Repugs are even trying; in the unlikely event that McCain wins, it won’t matter that he flip-flopped on every issue he’s had an opportunity to come to two opinions about, it won’t matter that he’s a war monger, and it won’t matter that he can’t keep countries, “surges”, or anything else straight. The Repugs will have the White House, and have whoever they want in there. Romney perhaps?

July 24th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
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I was thinking the same thing. Obama’s giving speeches on hilltops in Palestine and McCain’s giving speeches in aisle 14 of the Piggly Wiggly.

He now has two positions
1) John McCain advocated a surge before the surge and deserved credit for the results of the surge, while Barack Obama opposed the surge.

2) “the surge” doesn’t mean what everyone else means when they say “the surge” it means “the surge and the shift to following the counterinsurgency field manual when trying to counter an insurgency plus making a deal with the people we were fighting in which they get money without accepting the Iraqi central government and well just everything that changed within a year of the improvement in the security situation.”

Claim 2 alone is enough to show he is dishonest and grasping at straws, but the debate point winning response is to note the equivocation.

Only if “the surge” means the increase in troop levels is it true that McCain advocted it and Obama opposed it. Obama never argued against the counterinsurgency field manual. I don’t think McCain proposed offering a super sweet deal to most of our adversaries in Iraq. If the surge is everything that the US tried since Sept 2006, then Obama did *not* oppose all of the surge and McCain did not advocate it. The point of disagreement between the two was US troop levels. If that is not key to “the surge” then McCain’s whole campaign is based on a bait and switch equivocation.

In fact, McCain has shown an extraordinary unwillingness to accept or understand the US choices which helped awaken the Iraqi Sunnis. Hell then and now he was pretending that we were and are fighting mostly al Qaeda in Iraq (to the point of claiming 3 times in 2 days the third in response to a challenge to the second that Iran is providing training to AQI terrorists). The key strategic insight behind the Sunni awakening is that we could separate the Iraqi controlled Sunni insurgents from the foreigner commanded (mostly Iraqi born) AQI fighters. Now this was not a new idea, the US had been negotiating with the Sunni insurgents for years, but it is one that McCain still can’t grasp and refuses to recognise.