By all rights I should be dead, and so should John McCain. Each of us has lived at least a decade longer than the actuarial tables projected for our sex, race, and years of birth as projected at our time of birth. He’s older than I, by some time, but those tables were there, for both of us. And both of us have lived fairly hard—his prison camp experience and bouts with cancer, and my multiple high-speed car crashes, motorcycle lay downs, bar fights, Marine Corps years, and just general ability and propensity to raise hell since I hit fourteen have taken a toll.
My point with all that is this: neither of us, McCain nor I, have any business investing in any long term projects requiring our continued presence and direct involvement. If we don’t die, at some point we’re going to have to take off our packs and blow a bit. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do think that healthy guys our ages (me more than him, since I'm younger) need to take on what we feel we can take on. But, by the same token, the reality is that our minds, and bodies, could go south on us a lot quicker than when we were fifty-something. And, again, neither of us are poster boys for good clean living. Oh yeah...the point! Right. In my case, life would go on, and with the exception of my absence, things would be as they were all along—not so with McCain, Palin would be handed the proverbial football.
That is the point, very specifically. Do we want Sarah Palin taking the 2:00 AM phone call with her hand on the switch? Not me. I really don't, and for good reason, which I'll come to shortly.
Please let’s just put aside the fact that she is a flippant, smartass, nitwit that reminds me of the lady who insists on checking my ID at the Quickee Mart (OK, I made that up). Really, she just reminds me of the lady that ran the school office in Junior High. Let’s put that aside—anyway, that woman got her payback when coach ran off with the librarian.
And let’s put aside the fact that she kited her expense reports. Hell, who hasn’t done that, at least to the extent of rounding up? Or maybe taken a pencil home, or some printing paper for a “work project”? And we can overlook her using the power of her office to sack some slob that wouldn’t get with the program in getting rid of her churlish brother-in-law. I mean after all, what good is power if you don’t flex out and use it from time-to-time?
And, really, we need to overlook her hard-shell, holy-roller approach to religion. Isn’t the ocean deep, and aren’t there many tributaries leading to it? If she thinks praying will “remove gayness”, that’s fine. It’s just stupidity on her part, and it’s not as though we never had stupidity in high office before. Some would tell you it is a prerequisite.
No, none of that, while sort of eye-raising, scares me about her having her hands on that proverbial football. What does give my heart a bit of a flutter, and causes my sphincter to tighten, are her utterances to the effect that the invasion and interminable occupation of Iraq is God’s work. And, even here, I’m putting aside the Christian view of what constitutes a “just war”. Again, ignorance accounts for her not knowing that. But, the notion, that any sane person would think that what has happened in Iraq is part of a “mission from God” really should be sufficient to give one considerable pause.
And, I'm not real confident we should put aside a consideration of how these words will affect our moderate Arab allies in the region who are already struggling to keep a lid on populations gathering in the streets shouting about our continued presence in the region.
Those issues can’t be put aside. That is a pretty significant signal that it just might not be the world’s best interest to hand-off the proverbial football to such a lunatic. And face it, that would be more likely to happen than not, if McCain were to be elected. I just don’t care to take the risk, the actuarial odds aren’t good on that one.
And having gotten this far, I'm really not expecting to cash in anytime soon. I just need to some time, in the next 5-years or so, to take off my pack, unsling my rifle and sit and blow a bit. So, I don't want some smartass, flippant, nitwit, expense-account abusing, power-mad idiot that reminds of my Junior High School office lady getting my butt blown up before that happens.
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