Sigh

Good ol' archer plugs his 70,000 candlepower spotlight into the cigarette lighter and illuminates the ugly fact of some anti-Obama rhetoric having a bit of an "uppity Negro" tone to it. I can see that. Methinks some pundits complain overmuch. It's true he's nothing special: He's a politician. As such he should get at least as much of a pass on his relentless if sweet-smelling bullshit as any other politician. I don't buy the idea that spurious claims of his rock-star panache mean he should be more closely scrutinized.

That said, I still can't take him seriously. Just now he's reversed his position on the strategic oil reserve: Says, as Democrats are occasionally wont to do (e.g. Gore in '00, I think it was), that the reserve should be tapped to address the crisis of high gas prices. No: It's a strategic reserve. It's in place so that in a national emergency coupled with a drop in fuel availability, strategic resources (e.g. National Guard) can still fuel their vehicles. Also, I imagine, to prevent sudden economic disruption due to some fuel-delivery emergency. Neither of those is going on today. Fuel is getting more expensive from a combo of increasing demand in Asia, long-held restrictions (driven by whose party?) on domestic production, and bizarre twists and turns in the global oil-as-commodity market. Dipping into the reserve is nothing but a political pandering to those whining Americans (didn't someone accuse us of that recently?) who need their gov'ment to Do Something (!) about the latest inconvenience.

Yeah, inconvenience. If you think losing your job and the ability to provide three meals a day to your family is really any worse than an inconvenience, you've been protected by the American Dream way too long.

What else? Iraq. I respect his willingness to turn away from the Mad Left and admit troops need not be pulled out immediately. Funny thing is, he can still talk about withdrawal schedules because things are going relatively well (for now). Why are they going well? Because for one brief summer, America acted as if it took Iraq seriously and sent in a surge of troops to force some stabilization and give the Iraqis a chance to get in the game. This surge Obama opposed. But will there ever be any acknowledgment that he was wrong? Hell no. Just move on.

And let's not even begin talking about foundering the economy on increased taxation.

He is right though that we should keep our tires inflated to save gas. Any criticism of that point is pure dumb-ass politics.

So I need to complain about McCain to balance it out. Well, it hurts to listen to him talk. Not nearly as much as listening to his buddy George. I don't care what GWB is saying -- he could announce a ten million dollar endowment to the development of What Ain't Hip Don as a freeload-artist and I wouldn't be able to listen to him. I literally turn off the radio or TV when he comes on -- just can't stand him, his accent, his inflections, his mangling of what used to be a perfectly good language. McCain's an improvement but not much of one. But this is pretty shallow. I don't like his standing with social conservatives on those issues I disagree with them on (duh). His complaint that Obama played the race card with his fear-mongering riff that the other side will start a fear-mongering riff about him not looking like the dollar-bill presidents was rather unnecessary -- I mean, why stir the obvious? Makes you look dumb. Bringing Paris Hilton into it, especially after her mom contributed to your campaign, makes you look even dumber. That was a low blow, I don't care what Lieberman says. And I haven't followed it, but any position that allows someone to accuse you of wanting tax breaks for oil companies has got to be a bad idea. Shoot, does my industry get tax breaks? (Actually, it might, I don't know.)

Right, well, this was sort of random. Back to work. Say, Obama is two days less than three years younger than me. Fuck me but that's a first. It was bad enough when there were ballplayers younger than me. Now they're ALL younger than me. But Presidents? Augh.