Let me open by repeating; I still don’t believe that there is ever going to be an Obama Presidency. The American people traditionally do not elect known liberals to the White House, they just don’t. Yes, we have had several liberal Democrats elected Presidents in the past fifty years, notably Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. But in both case, their leftward leanings were not well known prior to their election, and the voters thought they were getting a quite different package -- Democrat governors of Southern states, fiscally responsible and socially liberal.

Nevertheless, the idea of what an Obama Presidency would look like from street level is an interesting concept. To make the imaginary scenario really potent, let’s presume that the Democrats continue as the majority party in the Congress and willingly pass the President’s initiatives, and he signs on to theirs. It’s a foregone conclusion that he will immediately name a substantial number of leftist ideologues to the Judiciary early in his administration, from the Supreme Court on down. The Congress will approve them. Since these judges are appointed for life, Obama’s choices will be affecting our legal system for many, many years to come.

But what’s beyond that? Let’s pick up with Joe Biden’s own predictions of a pending international crisis. The Iranians have said that they will “weave our rugs and wait” until George Bush is gone. I doubt that the Muslims of the Middle East would expect someone they consider ‘one of their own’ to oppose them in whatever moves they decide to make. Muslims are, if nothing else, firm in their belief that they are right, that they are righteous, that they are totally holy in their positions. They don’t suffer from any of the self-doubts we wrestle with in our Western culture. They are NOT seeking to compromise or negotiate an alliance with the West. They have seen Obama’s middle name BEFORE it became something no one was willing to mention. Middle Eastern leaders have already assured their followers that here comes a sympathetic brother. Publicly, they have already proclaimed him, adding that no one should listen to anything he says during these closing days of a campaign, since he needs to say whatever he needs to say in order to win an election (a practice they called “Egyptian wholesale”).

So whether Obama is Christian or Muslim, or caught in the tectonic collision in between, is not the point. The international perception is that he is Muslim. George Bush has stood resolutely against the jihad, saving our country from future assaults, whether we appreciate it or not. And the rogues of the Middle East have feared and hated him. Obama has promised a very different approach -- and the rogues of the Middle East have heard him and are awaiting his inauguration with delighted anticipation.

Then, as Obama draws down the numbers of folks in the military per his campaign promise, the violence of the Middle East erupts anew. This will, at the very least, disrupt the flow of petroleum. Anyone who can remember the Presidency of Jimmy Carter will also remember the long lines at gas stations. Let’s plan on seeing those again. Pencil that into our Obama scenario.

While we are remembering the Jimmy Carter years, don't forget the new economic term, “Stagflation” that those years brought us. Marxists have a profoundly twisted view of economics to start with -- and between the promised wealth redistributioning and higher taxes (both of which will drive productivity down), and government stimulus payments to ‘kick-start’ the now-stagnating economy from the ‘bottom up’ (causing widespread inflation), we should be able to see a reprise of “stagflation” in an Obama Presidency. Interest rates will soar (which is good for savers and bad for borrowers) while, at the same time, inflation ravages existing capital (which is bad for savers and good for borrowers). So nobody wins, but at least the pain is shared -- just to make it fair. The capital markets will be left in shambles, and a full tank of gasoline in your car will be considered a luxury that the general population doesn't really deserve.

During this Obama Presidency, gay marriage will be legalized. It’s only marriages between two Republicans that will need to be dissolved. Children under the age of ten, born of these now-illegal Republican marriages, will need to be “aborted.” Perhaps Alec Baldwin can be appointed to head up this taskforce. Many families will probably object to this, clinging to their guns and religion and failing to understand the nuanced wisdom of this patriotic initiative. Some of these dissenters may even take their nasty guns to the streets. In response to this civil unrest, while recalling the incident at Kent State and claiming vengance, Obama will order them to be fired upon by the policemen’s union.

News reporting, governed under the Fairness Doctrine, will not be discussing the political unrest, at home or in the Middle East, nor the economic downturn. America doesn’t deserve to be the leading producer of most of the world’s food. That just isn’t fair. The soaring cost of gasoline will be blamed on somebody else beside President Obama the Magnificent, perhaps on the protestors in the streets. In the face of the volatile situation on the streets, and considering the extensive voter fraud that has increasingly plagued our electoral system, no further elections will be held until a new and improved process can be found. It wouldn’t be safe to have people out on the street while those violent protesters are out there. The first step in reforming our electoral system will have to be the abolishment of the secret ballot. In order to prove that all voters are valid and properly registered, voting will take place by oral acclamation, one voter at a time. After all, if you have political convictions, you should be willing to let them be known publicly -- that’s what our comrades in Communist China always say. It only makes sense, doesn’t it? Don’t you agree? Please answer plainly so the whole panel of Democrat vote-recorders can hear you.

Now that it is becoming fairly clear that we will never know the full truth about the Joe Wilson, his lovely wife Valerie Phlame (did I spell that right? That just goes to show how much of a permanent impression she didn’t make on me.) and that whole attempt to undermine George Bush and his administration, now I will say it out loud -- I think Colin Powell’s fingerprints were ALL OVER that! I think he would sell a Republican, any Republican down the river for a sack of cheese doodles. He waited until the last few weeks before the election to say what he has known all along … but he wanted to appear reflective, contemplative, deep. OK, so having waited until the last few weeks of the Presidential campaign, to look very thoughtful, now he figures he can get the maximum bang for his buck. Now Colin Powell wants to come out and support Obama -- and criticize McCain! That's not thoughtful, that's conniving, and vindictive. See earlier observations about no loyalty. I’m supposed to be swayed in some way by this? It's one thing to endorse a political candidate. Did Colin Powell know he could do this without slapping the other candidate or party? Colin Powell said, in his own book, that he is the product of affirmative action. This suggests to me that he believes his career took him beyond his level of competence. Am I supposed to care that he has finally said what I would have predicted he would say?

Step Two: This latest thing I saw on line, “Pro-Military / Pro-Obama” is a bunch of racist hooey as well. Obama has been more than plain that he disdains the military. He has made it clear that we can expect him to surrender in Iraq, and to cut the armed forces at least as much as (if not more than) Bill Clinton did in his first year in office. He campaigned on it. Obama will not be the first President that has expressed animosity towards the military. Yet I know that Senator Obama enjoys significant support from the same military forces he bad-mouths. Don’t you think that is odd? If anyone were allowed to look at the faces of these supporters, the racial quality of that support would be obvious. But we aren’t supposed to do that. These are people who are more interested in supporting a fellow minority than in their own self-interest. The only thing that matters in their decision is the color of his skin. They are so eager to support “one of my people” that they are voting against their own jobs.

Racism is still alive and well in the military, but mostly visible among the blacks. I was sent to a conference on EEO last spring in Fort Knox. The instructors, all blacks, were bemoaning that the EEO complaints of the last several years had been solely against blacks. In fact, one of the instructors used that expression, “one of my people” to explain why she had made EEO her career. But when a white male in the class used the same expression back to her in the open discussion less than ten minutes later, the class came to a screeching halt and the instructional staff had to have an ad hoc conference in the hall.

The question they needed to discuss in the hall was whether or not politically correct speech applied to everyone, or just a muzzle on the whites, or just on the white males, or who exactly needed to follow these guidelines. To their credit, they returned to the classroom with the right answer, almost. The black female instructor never actually apologized for nor backed away from her original comment, but no sanctions were going to be imposed upon him for repeating her own expression about “one of my own people,” now a racist comment when spoken by a white male about whites instead of a black female about blacks. The decision was that we would ALL speak with more circumspection going forward.

In the 1960’s, there was a play called “Putney Swope.” The setting for the story was a board of directors of a large corporation. One member of the board was a black man, named Putney Swope, ostensibly a product of affirmative action, well past his level of competence and everyone knew it. Upon the death of the chairman of the board, the board members were tasked with electing a new chairman from their ranks. Each member wanted the position. Each member knew that all the others wanted the position. Each member knew that there would be many ballots and much arm twisting, negotiating and back room deals before a new chairman would emerge. So each member cast his ballot for the “token Negro,” Putney Swope, so that he would not feel slighted when the ‘real’ negotiations and balloting got under way. Of course, this was a farce about discrimination and reverse discrimination, and the black board member was elected unanimously on the first ballot -- to the stunned disbelief of all. Is there a lesson in this somewhere?

Even with all the support of young people and the endorsements of many civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, these coalitions weren’t enough to get him elected -- until a substantial number of dead people showed up to vote in Chicago during the general election. The Chicago dead-people’s vote was just enough to put him over the top, and this young man was able to pull past his opponent by a slim margin to win the electoral votes of Illinois. By the end of the evening, this young man had won his election to be President by only three electoral votes.

True to his campaign rhetoric, he went to meet with the greatest enemy of his country 'without preconditions.' He sat down with Khruschev, the Communist leader of the Soviet Union, to reason out our ideological differences. This young man put his faith in international negotiations, and in his intellect, to talk out our misunderstandings and pave the way to a new and lasting peace.

As has been true throughout history, his idealistic move was seen as naïve and weak by the very folks he was reaching out to. The Soviets came out of that meeting with a new resolve -- not the vision of world peace that had been expressed to them, kum-baya, but a chance to get American missiles out of Turkey, missiles that had been pointed at the USSR by President Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower’s years in the military had brought him to a different policy of dealing with the Soviets, one of negotiating from a position of military strength. Khruschev wanted those US missiles out of Turkey, and he saw in this new President an opportunity to make it happen.

How Khruschev made it happen is known in this country today as the “Cuban Missile Crisis.” Our bright young President and his intellectually-gifted advisors are credited with narrowly averting a military confrontation with the Soviet Union, possibly even WW3, through skillful brinksmanship and steely resolve. Arguably, things could have gone out of control, but it’s hard to say that our President was the hero of the day -- since he was the one that caused the so-called crisis in the first place, by meeting with his enemy without precondition and seeking to negotiate peace on any terms. And he brilliantly resolved the crisis when he gave Khruschev what he wanted, the removal of the US missiles from Turkey, in exchange for the removal of missiles from Cuba -- missiles that were never in Cuba before the ill-conceived ‘no-preconditions’ meeting. It looks more like a tale of the Soviets manipulating our young President as an inexperienced young idealist to further their own ends than a saga of skillful international negotiations brilliant resolved by a masterful intellect.

There are several lessons we can draw from this history class today, so take notes as there may be a quiz on this later. First, that there is a time-honored tradition of  Chicago dead-people’s voting bloc putting Democrat candidates over the top. That banner has been taken up by ACORN and expanded to include many more segments of the population than just dead people -- we now have homeless drunks and drug addicts, many of whom are only mostly dead, not all dead. We have a young man as the Democrat candidate and heir-apparent to the dead-people’s voting bloc.

Let’s see -- First, of course, Christopher Dodd’s name was tossed out as the single biggest recipient of political donations from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So here comes the “fix” for this situation -- and behold, it’s from the very man who has cashed the most checks. He has his name across the top of the page where he is going to lead the effort to correct the problem? That affects me in much the same way as fingernails across the blackboard. Or to use a seasonal image, it seems like we are putting Dracula in charge of restructuring the blood bank! The only thing I know for certain is that I am not getting any hard news reporting on any substance of what has happened in this scandal and is continuing to happen. But no matter how they try to spin it, I think this quick-fix mentality is probably wrong, wrong, wrong!

Then, the second biggest recipient of money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is some fellow named Barack Obama. Oh yea, we have heard that name elsewhere, haven’t we? He’s the guy that has raised nearly a half a Billion dollars (with a B, folks!) from outside the country in donations to his Presidential campaign. His campaign staff has not disclosed exactly where that money has been coming in from, since they know perfectly well that there isn’t time for the Federal Election Commission to investigate before the election.

But the depressing part is that it all really doesn’t matter. No one cares if the law has been trampled. No one cares if I think these folks need to be tossed in jail. Sure, we tossed the executives from Enron and WorldCom in the slammer, and sure, these scandals are even bigger than those were. But I don’t see anyone calling for investigations - just a quick-fix, a bail-out, so we can pull the tablecloth down over the whole pile of rubbish and get back to business as usual. You may recall that we have a severe shortage of Republican prosecutors, thanks in large part to George Bush’s attempt to make-nice with these Stalinists. They haven’t said a polite word about him as a result of his “New Tone.” They haven’t stopped talking horrible about him. They haven’t stopped calling for his impeachment, or pushing to prosecute him and his administration once they leave the White House.  If the hate speech towards George Bush has moderated in any slight degree as a result of his overtures towards the Democrats, it doesn’t show anywhere where I can see it. But we are without a Federal prosecutor with any inclination to investigate or pursue the scandals of Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac or the obscene amount of money that appears to be illegally flowing into the Obama Presidential campaign.

The Democrats certainly haven’t been willing to follow George Bush into this war. The Democrats have been willing, even eager to abandon the fight in Iraq and surrender the flag.  I think the only thing the matter with this war is that a Republican started it. No one objected when Bill Clinton led us into Bosnia. There, we were on the wrong side of the hostilities. Then, the mission has been pushed off onto NATO, so we don’t actually have to follow through on that war. But that was OK. There was a Democrat in the White House.

Then there is the lovely and charming Gwen Ifill. She never bothered to tell the committee that she was writing a book about Senator Obama -- in which she calls him a savior some fourteen times, and still counting. I can only suppose she didn’t mention it because they might have chosen someone else for this position. Then she wouldn’t be there to make sure the debate comes out the way she wants it to. She wouldn’t be able to do a hatchet job on Sarah or make excuses and apologies for Joe Biden. As Greta observed, if this were a court of law, Gwen would be expected to recuse herself and step aside. But there is no shame. There is no way to demand that basic rules of fair play should be observed, especially not if Ms. Ifill is going to be adamant about her position. The latest television news coverage I heard about this point suggested that we should all “wait and see” whether or not Ms. Ifill will be professional about this. Huh? If she intended to be professional about this, she wouldn’t be going forward with her plan to moderate this so-called debate.

So it just goes on. The Republicans will resign at the first sign of scandal or criminal charges, while the Democrats keep right on rolling. Both claim that they are doing it “for the good of the country.” When impeachment proceedings were brought, Richard Nixon resigned "for the good of the country." But when impeachment proceedings were brought against Bill Clinton, he decided to tough it out "for the good of the country." This is the underlying difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. It appears that it is only good for the country if Republicans, like Tom DeLay, quit their positions to answer charges (which were later dropped). On the other side of the aisle, it is good for the country for Democrats, like William Jefferson, to keep his position despite questions about wads of money wrapped up in his freezer.

And all the while, the news people keep twisting and spinning and lying to me. I am yearning for someone who can yell “STOP” to all this. But then, like Sarah, they would instantly be attacked by the entire wolf pack. I believe in the innate goodness of Americans, but someone is doing the work of these Stalinists. Someone is voting to elect, and keep electing these crooks. Someone is looking the other way as there is one outrage after another. There is no end -- and no remedy -- in sight.

Then, just when the authorities predicted a hurricane was going to hit the coast of Texas, what do you suppose happened? A hurricane hits the coast of Texas! Isn’t that amazing? Not really, the satellite pictures were on the Internet and the television. Big chunks of Houston collapsed before the fierce power of Hurricane Ike.

And as Ike headed on inland, the rescue teams went into the area they had asked to evacuate before the storm and fished out the thousands of people that were going to tough it out and “stare down” the hurricane. If you have been following the news, you already know all this. Entire buildings are completely missing from their foundations now. Anyone and anything that may have been in those buildings would be gone, too. We have seen the newsreels before. So where am I going with this sequence of events?

These people who chose to stay totally and completely underestimated the awesome power and force of this hurricane. It’s easy to understand how that could be. The Global Warming gang has told us that we (and our SUVs) are collectively big enough and strong enough to affect changes in the climate of our entire planet. So confronting a little severe weather ought to be much less daunting than changing the overall climate. In truth, there ought to be a couple of thousand new converts to the idea that Mankind is not strong enough to contribute to any permanent change of our planet. Every day, the oceans churn thousands of gallons of natural “oil spills” back into the brine. Thousands of acres of forests burn without permanently altering the atmosphere or the climate. Volcanoes and hurricanes, and other natural phenomenon, ignore us and our puny little ideas about the planet as they play out their natural forces. And always, after each encounter, the planet cleans itself up. We can not stop these forces, and we can not help the planet clean itself up afterwards. We are passengers, and nothing more.

All that said, I don’t believe that we are at liberty to foul our surroundings. But that has much more to do with rudeness to each other, not because the planet is so delicate or sensitive. I saw something recently, the Farmer’s Almanac I believe, that said we were about to enter a cycle of global cooling, based on ocean currents and something or other, yadda yadda. I would say that we could reverse this trend by going out and turning on our SUVs and letting them run an extra hour or two every day. But with gas prices at these levels, who could afford that? However, I would simply be being sarcastic anyway. And someone might think that I was laughing at them. I've learned about that. It gets ugly.