Chardonnay or Beer?

That seems to be what the Presidential race has come down to in this country full of “bubbas”. I do feel better about the race as the convention winds down and I do think there has been more positive than negative, but again the “bubba” mentality doesn’t seem to have evaporated as it should have. I know, I know, I’ve been told by more than one not to “should” on anything, but there are times when it is called for and this is definitely one of them!

A major part of this country is desperate and cries for reform and change and yet when someone who has managed to pull himself up, educate himself and pay for it the same way most of us have to do, he’s called an elitist! He has a mixed heritage? So what? Most of us do. He started with so little and has achieved so much, as has Joe Biden, but if we all had the same dream and the same determination perhaps we could have done the same things. Are we so small minded and bigoted that we’re automatically suspicious when anyone, in spite of a background so like our own, climbs up the hill and urges us to come see what we can achieve with him? If this is the case – and I hope it isn’t – then we’re in deep trouble. If this is the case, what are we saying to our children and grandchildren?

Forty-five years ago today, Martin Luther King “had a dream”, we all have dreams, but how many of us prefer to sit on our butts and whine rather than work to make that dream a reality? How many of us fret and worry about a “funny name”, the color of skin, rather than see the dream and be willing to work for the chance to make it a reality for all of us?

These are the questions that I’m still asking. And they are the questions that I still don’t have answers for. The next few months will say a lot about this country, about each one of us. I hope when November arrives we’ll see this country wake up and push past the stupid questions, but right now McBushCain has narrowed Obama’s lead. Our country is deep into economic depression, deeper into two wars and weary of Republican fear-mongering.

So, what will it be in November? It’s up to each of us. What do you want for yourself and your family? It’s up to each of us. Tired of the same old politics? Then put up or shut up because this may be the last chance you get to bring about real change. Stop worrying about the fact someone says “isn’t right” instead of “ain’t right”. Take a sip of Chardonnay, it may taste funny, but it can give you the same glow as a sip of beer.

Questions for Our Country

Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, both with the New York Times, had serious and valid questions for the people of this country today. We would do well to listen and we’d better start searching for answers before November if we want to take this country in a different direction.

I’ll start with Dowd: “While McCain’s experience was heroic, did it create a worldview incapable of anticipating the limits to U.S. military power in Iraq? Did he fail to absorb the lessons of Vietnam, so that he is doomed to always want to refight it? Did his captivity inform a search-and-destroy, shoot-first-ask-questions-later, “We are all Georgians,” mentality?”

Rich asks this: “Is a man who is just discovering the Internet qualified to lead a restoration of America’s economic and educational infrastructures? Is the leader of a virtually all-white political party America’s best salesman and moral avatar in the age of globalization? Does a bellicose Vietnam veteran who rushed to hitch his star to the self-immolating overreaches of Ahmad Chalabi, Pervez Musharraf and Mikheil Saakashvili have the judgment to keep America safe?"

Maybe Rich is right, maybe it’s time to bury “Change We Can Believe In”, because zero hour is indeed here and as this presidential race finally gains the country’s full attention, the strategy that vanquished Hillary Clinton must be rebooted to take out John McCain.

The press has not been Obama’s friend, not with 28 percent positive and 72 percent negative and that in spite of McCain’s blatant confusions, memory lapses and outright lies that still barely cause a ripple, lies that include falsifying crucial details of his marital history in his memoirs, as The LA Times uncovered in court records last month.

What does it take for this country to wake up? Change? Yes, we desperately need change. The fierce urgency of the 21st century demands not just “Change We Can Believe In”, but “Change Before It’s Too Late”.

What does it take for us to get past the pouting and sulking of Hillary’s followers? No one is disputing McCain’s courage during the Vietnam War, but people, that was forty years ago! Just how long is McCain going to ride that horse? And what does it have to do with the world we live in now? Other than plant the seeds of fear that causes us to see enemies everywhere? If we don’t take care of our own country now, it truly is going to be too late for “change” of any kind.