It’s one thing when Obama tries to cover up mistakes he’s
made in private, or when he feebly tries to cover up or misdirect
us, by saying that he never heard Wright’s anti-American sermons
over a 20 year period … but, when Obama tells us that the
Palin lipstick/pig remark wasn’t an insult directed towards
Governor Palin, then Obama is adding insult to injury towards
the American people. This creep is not Presidential material.
P.S. The biased main stream liberal press which is attempting damage control for Obama, also must think the American people are stupid

His mind must be wandering…

I lean toward Mr. Obama because he SEEMS to be more independent of the puppet strings of money-power-corruption that have plagued Mr. Bush…and which I fear also hamstring Mr. McCain to an extent.

I don’t see Our Best & Finest…Our Sons & Daughters…pulling out of the bloody 7-year (2001-?) counterinsurgency in SW Asia (Afghanistan, Iraq) if Mr. McCain wins in November.

On the other hand…as a retired Soldier and Veteran of the long and bloody counterinsurgency in SE Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos - 1963-73), I’m dismayed to hear Mr. Obama saying things that are variations on the late Richard Nixon’s (and Henry Kissinger’s) 40-years-ago failed wordsmithery of “peace with honor” and “the light at the end of the tunnel”.

Unfortunately, Mr. Obama is too young to personally remember much of the preceding. Of course, he is an educated man and should be up on his history…even if his “he-she rocks” generation may be too lazy to read a history book.

My late Oklahoma Dad used to tell me that “two wrongs don’t make a right”. Well, the not pulling out of an unwinnable counterinsurgency isn’t going to make the getting into an unwinnable counterinsurgency any more palatable, that’s for sure! So Mr. Obama’s wordsmithery of being as careful at getting out (of SW Asia) as Mr. Bush, General Franks, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Wolfowitz, Mr. Rumsfeld, Ms. Rice, General Powell, Mr. Rove et al were reckless at getting in, is obliquely saying the same thing that Mr. McCain is directly saying.

That is, Our Sons & Daughters won’t be home any time soon…even though Mr. Obama keeps repeating “2 brigades a month” and “16 months” during his careful-at-getting-out oratory.

The republican politicians that I just mentioned are all amateurs…including an amateur commander in chief (Bush), an amateur army general (Franks) and an amateur secretary of state (Powell). By this I mean that while they all may have been professionals at one time or another in their careers, they resorted to amateurism when it came to getting Our Best & Finest into the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq…and into the bloody quicksand of the resulting unwinnable counterinsurgency.

I must say though, that Messrs. Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rove et al were just the opposite of reckless when it came to carefully and personally avoiding active duty service in the uniform of America’s armed forces of the 1960’s and 1970’s during wartime in SE Asia.

The preceding “draft dodging” is just the opposite again of the honorable U.S. Marine service of Senator Jim Webb of Virginia in SE Asia, and of his U.S. Marine son in SW Asia. Mr. Webb, however occasionally irreverent he might be, would make a perfectly imperfect vice president to Senator Obama’s imperfect president in my view. Mr. Webb escaped the surly bonds of the republican party with an independent streak that took him in the direction that I like. He strikes me as a complex thinker, yet one who knows how to boil cowardly politicians of his and my generation down to their base elements in a flash, e.g., Mr. Bush. I believe that I could trust a Vice President Webb to check and balance a President Obama, i.e., to provide Mr. Obama with reality checks whenever Mr. Obama strays from the honorable path. A Vice President Clinton would be unable to do that, I’m afraid.

Getting back to my premise of TRUST in a presidential candidate, Mr. & Mrs. Reader…well…a lot of what trust boils down to is FAITH. Frankly though, I don’t have much faith in Mr. OBAMA, and even less in Mr. MCCAIN. So, as fictional British naval captain Jack Aubrey once said in a Hollywood script aboard Hollywood’s HMS Surprise (Rose)…America’s middle and working classes will simply have to trust in the “lesser of the TWO WEEVILS”, I guess.

Said another way, it is a “dammed if you do, damned if you don’t” situation…this business of faith in the intentions and follow-through of Mr. Obama v. Mr. McCain during the first 100 days beginning on January 20th.

Or as the legendary Kingston Trio once expressed it during a performance at San Francisco’s hungry i nightclub, “clean mind, clean body…take your pick”.

OK Jack