Choking on his words

Rush Limbaugh, who I call Rosebud, is bitching and moaning about an impending electoral landslide by Democrats, calling it a calamity for the country.

Funny how he changes his tune when people actually follow his advice.

You see, over the past eight years, he happily has been telling liberals they shouldn't resort to the courts to legislate change. If they don't like the way the country is going, they should vote out opposing representatives and elect new ones who will pass laws to their liking. Make the republic what it was meant to be, a representative democracy.

Well, be careful what you say, Rosebud. America is about to vote out another big batch of incumbent representatives and senators and replace them with more moderate, if not leftist, Democrats.

You'd think Rosebud would be ecstatic. But he isn't, of course. I don't think he ever believed we could pull this off. So now that we're about to, he has changed his tune. He's bitching and moaning that it will be an unchecked power grab by the Democratic Party.

Well, let him choke on the ballot box. What Rosebud doesn't want to admit is that this is exactly what checks and balances are all about. We had a Republican in the White House and a Republican-controlled Congress for several years (no bitching and moaning back then from Rosebud, was there?), and look what that got us: Unchecked pork barrel spending that made the GOP look like game-show trailer-park trash on a free shopping spree. (Or Sarah Palin with lipstick, take your pick.)

So now the pendulum has swung back in the other direction. Don't know how long it will last, but that doesn't matter. It's a check, and in the end, over time, on average, it creates balance.

We'll survive whatever comes our way. We always have.

We proudly endorse . . .

A friend of mine outside of Atlanta (who looks amazingly like the actor who played Tom Robinson in “To Kill a Mockingbird”) has been so excited about the candidacy of Barack Obama he is saving the text of every major speech Obama has given this year.

My soon-to-be 96-year-old great aunt in Connecticut is hoping to live long enough to see Barack sworn in as the 44th president, let alone cast her ballot for him.

Walking through a supermarket that caters to a lot of minorities, I find folks smiling, and I find myself smiling back. They know it's going to happen, and they feel good.

I hear it in their voices. I sense it in their body language. I see it in their eyes.

This is what it must have felt like in 1932, when a nation placed its faith and trust in a New York politician who told us the only thing we had to fear was fear itself.

This politician from Chicago has managed to steer clear of nasty, negative, low-road attacks on his opponents, and if he wins on Election Day, will be that much farther ahead of the game in uniting the country and making us feel good again.

This is the Hope candidate that our nation has been waiting for, longing for, since our previous attempt ran amok in scandal and impeachment.

This is going to be momentous. One of those watershed moments in the history of our republic. That the inauguration of Barack Obama will occur during the 150th anniversary year of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry and the bicentennial year of Abraham Lincoln's birth is no small coincidence.

So please, get to the polls and vote. Become a part of history. Be able to tell folks ages and ages hence, that you voted during the Great Election of ’08. That you were there when that “far-off distant dawn” finally arrived.

It will, indeed, make you feel good.

Palintology 101

She's a maverick

Right.

We know a little bit more about this so-called North Star of the Republican Party since John McCain pulled her out of obscurity and thrust her onto the world stage.

It isn't pretty.

She was supposed to be a maverick. A reformer. A foe of big government. A fellow straight-talker. A hockey mom and an average Josephine.

Reformer? She played petty politics in Alaska and fired a professional police officer because he refused to dismiss the cop who divorced her sister.

Foe of big government? Spending rose more than 30 percent while she's been at the helm of state government in Alaska.

Straight talker? She lies everytime the name Bill Ayers flows out of her mouth. Talk about red-baiting. Can you imagine if she were a Democrat taking similar potshots at ex-POW McCain? She'd probably accuse him of palling around with communists!

Hockey mom? At the first chance she got, she went on a spending spree through high-end clothing stores and within a matter of hours spent more money than Joe the Plumber makes in a whole year.

Average Josephine? Not with that $150,000 wardrobe.

When Barack Obama rolls up a landslide in the Electoral College (something GW Bush never did) and the Democrats are masters of both houses of Congress, the only scapegoat the GOP will have besides John McCain is his No. 2, Sarah Palin. They'll be putting her on a bus to nowhere so fast we can only hope Alaskans wise up when her term comes up for renewal and send her back to the boonies.

Bye, bye, maverick.

The Manchurian McCandidate

Now that the debates are over, I can't believe this guy wanted to do 10 of them! It only took three debates for McCain to have a complete meltdown. Sure, he did a better job of answering some of the questions and getting in a few good digs, but when it was all over, I got the feeling it was way past his bedtime.

Forget about calling him at 3 in the morning, Hillary. He won't hear the phone ring.

There should be some sort of mercy rule so this guy doesn't go off the deep end before it's over. End it now. Go out with some dignity. You're going to have nothing left if you keep going like this.

He lauds Joe Sixpack and Joe the Plumber, but he's no Joe Paterno. Seventy-three years is a lot of water under the bridge, and old man McCain can't tread water that long.

So play Taps, retire your colors, and live to fight another day in the United States Senate, where you used to be an honorable and sane man.

Say goodnight, John.