The Presidential Elections

Unlike previous election years, when there was never any real question of who was getting the job as President of the United States, this is a bunch of possibilities grouped together in a very diverse collection.That does not make them any less of a bunch of assholes, but what the hell, nothing ever does!

Actually, that’s not fair. I think Obama (and am I the only one who thinks he would be pretty cool if he just had a single name, like Bono or Cher? Obama…….who the hell else is going to have that name? Drop the Barack, and be the first single name candidate!) has some real decent ideals and hopes for this country, made even more engaging and charming by his youth and lack of tenure in DC. That doesn’t make me dread him being elected any less, though. We’ll come back to that in a bit.

The Democratic Party has three viable candidates. Well, two and a half, I guess. John Edwards just doesn’t count, but I think he will make someone a fine running mate. Putting him aside, we have a black man and a woman who want to make history. Well, history in this country, at least. Because America is still under the old-boy network, isn’t it?

And all of the old-boys are WASPs.WASP, for those who do not know, stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Catholics are out, mackerel-snapping bastards that we are. Why, you ask? Pretty simple rational, really. It’s the big reason the Klan has such good fun torching crosses: because Roman Catholicism has its roots and leadership in Italy (well, the Vatican, to be exact, but you know what I mean), and not America. I am unsure where Orthodox Catholics have their leadership. If anyone knows, do please tell. Add to that the fact that the Catholic Church, in this country, is a church of minorities. Think about that for just a second. Where do you see a lot of Catholics? Boston, New York, Chicago, southern Texas, and Los Angeles. And who is there? The Irish, Italian, Latin and Polish. Not a whole lot of good old-boys named Duffy, Rondinelli, Silva, or Wojika. Generally speaking, if your name ends in a vowel, you are out of the old boy’s club.

Even so, We have Hillary and we have Obama. Let’s begin with Hillary.I want to make it very clear, right up front, that I think it is high time we had a woman in the White House, sitting in the center seat. We are way behind the rest of the world in this. Think about something for just a second: Pakistan had a wonderful woman as Prime Minister, and we still haven’t. Anyone see something amiss here?That being said, while I would like to see a woman, I would not like to see this woman. I don’t like Hillary. Never did. The whole business she had with secret files on Republicans which she refused to hand over during her husband’s term bothers me. A lot. Something else that sticks with me too: when George W. made his first State of the Union address after 9/11, I recall sitting with a friend of mine watching it, and as W. spoke his piece, the camera flashed to Hillary, and showed her saying something nasty to the person next to her, like "Listen to this asshole". I found that disrespectful not only to the speaker, but to the country as a whole. Stuff like that is hard to shake, you know.
Also, with Hillary, if she were to be elected, she would be forever under the shadow of her husband’s presidency, whether good or bad. I will be the first person in the world to say that a lot of things that take place within a four year period are beyond the President’s control. The economy, for example. It is a living, breathing thing, with movements much like a pendulum. We swing good, and we swing bad, and it will do whatever it will do. Big business and outside influence has more effect on the economy than a President does.

Example: The auto industry. Oil is going at a sinful price right now, and who takes a beating? You and I, that’s who. But it is not just you and I. The auto industry gets killed. Domestic manufacturers long ago lost the sedan business. Toyota and Honda own those segments now. A Taurus or an Impala will never compete to a Camry or Accord. No getting away from the fact. So they refocused on the truck and SUV market. Dodge still owns the minivans, likely always will, but Ford and Chevy are no longer players. But they build trucks. However, as gas gets more expensive, demand for these brutes dwindles. What happens from there? It is a domino effect, and here is how it goes:
Ford will start closing plants, because they just don’t need so damn many F150’s sitting at the freight yards, because the dealers have stopped ordering them. But what happens when you close a plant? All of those workers are out of a job. Let’s use a number like 1000 workers. Now, remember this: the majority of the parts put into those vehicles come from outside vendors, and now they will start laying off workers. See where this is going? And all of those workers stop going to the malls and other such retail areas to spend money, and it spreads even further. So when you read about GM laying off 13,000 workers, take that number, and multiply it by at least five. That’s how many are losing jobs.

The point to all of this? If the economy goes all to shit under Hillary, it will set a woman’s chance back by decades, because she will be viewed as having only gotten the job through her husband’s name, and it is her fault it all went bad. If a woman is to be President, then let her come up through the ranks on her own, of her own unquestionable merit, and do the job to the best of her ability.

Now to Obama. I like him, let me be clear on this. I think he has some dandy ideas and ideals, and I think he is young enough to want to make some real change in this country. But here is what scares the shit out of me regarding Obama: We don’t need the Taliban or Al Qaida to provide us with murderous nuts. We can make plenty of our own high quality, full blown fucking whack-jobs right here, thank you very much. And anyone in the Secret Service will tell you that anyone can kill anyone if they want to badly enough and do not care about the consequences to themselves. I am deeply frightened by the very real potential of some idiot with a white sheet in his trunk putting a bullet to Obama, and setting this country back 100 years.

That is Hillary and Obama personally, but take a moment to look at them professionally. Neither has been a governor, and I firmly believe that should be a job requirement, way beyond this bullshit about a candidate must be born in this country to run for president. A governor is doing the President’s job, albeit on a much smaller scale, but it should be a requirement. I will make an exception in the case of Rudy Guilliani, since he was mayor of NYC, a city bigger than some states, but otherwise, you should pass this test before moving on to the White House.

Let’s move on to the Republicans. You have Rudy, Mitt, Mike, and John. Fred isn’t going anywhere, and I think even he knows it. If we take John out of the mix, which I think is fair to say anyway at this point. That leaves us with Rudy, Mitt, and Mike.

I like Rudy. I’ve said this before. He did big things in NYC. Go down 42nd Street, you know, The Deuce, and it is amazingly cleaned up. Like a lot of the rest of the city. But most of all, we have seen Rudy in a bad situation, and seen how handled himself. And his city. Yes, of course, the proper thing for the President that day was to be up in the air with a squad of F-16s protecting him. I would never question that fact, but Rudy, as opposed to George Pitacki, the governor of New York at the time, was right down there in the thick of it al, at risk to his own self, trying to hold his city together. I happen to be of the idea that this should count for something.

So on to Mitt and Mike. I think Mitt Romney is an elitist, stuck up prick of a human being, and much worse than that, he is a piss poor representative leader. A governor should represent the interests of his constituency, right? Well, think of this: Massachusetts has the highest per capita gay and lesbian population of any state in the Union (it was Time or Newsweek I read that in), yet Mitt Romney did everything he could to prevent gay marriage from becoming a reality. Sorry Mitt, but you have to stuff your own agenda up your ass and go with the people who elected you to represent them.

And this leaves us with Mike. Mike Huckabee. Governor and ordained minister.Mike is the most terrifying motherfucker I have ever seen run for president. Why? Because he want to "Take this nation back for Christ." That statement alone should have disqualified him from running, because he more or less told the American people that the whole idea, you know, that little notion of separating Church and State, is going to get pissed right out the window. And that, my good friends and neighbors, is the beginning of a theocracy. And what happens in a theocracy? If you ain’t one of the in-crowd, then you are in some trouble. Here is what makes it even more scary. The man is an Evangelical Born Again minister. Never mind the religious aspect of it all, but you know the son of a bitch can work a crowd, and make himself not only likeable, but eventually sensible in his ideas.