Saturday, August 23, 2008

Things to Consider Before The Voting Booth

Here is a list of things to consider before you pull the lever or electronically record your vote when you go to the polls this November:

1. It will no longer do any good for the Dems to claim that Barack Obama will get us out of Iraq and John McCain will not. Now that the White House has done a 180 and sent Condi to formalize a withdrawal with deadlines, the next president, Obama or McCain, will be stuck with a formal agreement between the U.S. and the Maliki government. These things are not entirely set in stone, especially since the current president wants to sidestep Congress and reach an agreement with Iraq, and the once and future king may decide to shred the document on such grounds. (Treaties have to be ratified. Duh!) This might be unwise, as it could alienate Iraqis eager to see us go, prompting public demonstrations protesting the continuing presence of an imperialist invader.

2. Swiftboating will know no bounds, and most of it will come from GOP operatives. It may be that the party that airs the cleverest TV commercials during the other party's convention, will get a bump. Nobody, not even Jim Carville, can outdo Karl & Co. when it comes to dirty defamations, but rumor has it they're arranging to lure Larry Craig into the Minneapolis Airport, have him arrested in a toilet stall, and held till the convention is over.

3. Although John McShame touts his party's reputation as standing firm against governmental intrusion into our lives, the administration of George W. Bush, a Republican, invaded our privacy in unknown, unknowable, sinister ways that would make Joe McCarthy blush. Now that habeas corpus has been abolished, you can be charged in secret of being a terrorist, arrested, and kept incommunicado without resort to bail, a preliminary hearing, or anything determinative of probable cause. Perhaps Obama will fix that.

(To be continued as the contest rolls on....)

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