To summarize...

We now have video of Bush I pitching his educational policy to school kids in a broadcast speech, and a transcript of Saint Reagan The Infallible telling kids criminals from San Quentin would come and murder them if California passed a gun ban. So obviously, in that context, President Obama going on the air to tell children to stay in school, do their homework, listen to their teachers and try hard will be the downfall of western civilization and indoctrinate our kids in the godless ways of Islamic communism. You know, because Hitler did the exact same thing.

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Stay Classy Texas: Election Edition

Just as you thought it was safe to come out on election day without having to carry an umbrella to avoid streams of bilious spew coming from some wingnut or other, up steps Texas State Board of Education member Cynthia Dunbar to fill the void with her insightful and well-reasoned thoughts on Barak Obama:

AUSTIN — State Board of Education member Cynthia Dunbar isn't backing down from her claim that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is plotting with terrorists to attack the U.S.

The Texas Freedom Network, a watchdog group that monitors the board, released a public statement on Monday asking Dunbar to retract the statement.

"I don't have anything in there that would be retractable," said Dunbar, R-Richmond. "Those are my personal opinions and I don't think the language is questionable."

For those of you slow on the uptake, my previous reference to "insightful and well-reasoned thoughts" was sarcasm seasoned with a heavy dose of cynicism. Dunbar, you might know, is a member of Governor Rick Perry's posse. As a member of the powerful State Board of Education, she wants to teach Texas school children that the dinosaurs all drowned when they couldn't fit on Noah's Ark. With folks like her filling this state's high offices, how can Texas not blaze a glorious trail into the 19th century?

I suppose it's too much to hope that Dunbar and Michele Bachmann eventually end up as unemployed drinking buddies, huh?

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Remember, there's a reason why Aggie jokes exist

Remember George Deutsch, that dumbass Texas A&M dropout who got caught up in scandal when he took it upon himself to edit NASA research to make it conform to Bush administration policy? Sadly, I do. That kind of stupidity is hard to live down when you're an A&M grad. Well, George now has company, of an even more infamous kind:

PITTSBURGH - A John McCain volunteer in Pittsburgh who said she was robbed and sexually assaulted because of her political views has admitted to fabricating the story, police sources told a TV station.

KDKA TV added that one source said Ashley Todd would face charges.

Police have not formally announced the fabrication, acknowledging only that detectives in the case were meeting with the force's public information officers.

Todd, of College Station, Texas, earlier agreed to take a polygraph test due to inconsistencies.

Among other things, police said photos and bank card information from an automated teller machine where the college student claimed she was robbed do not show her using the machine at the time, police said.

Okay, so she doesn't actually attend Texas A&M. She goes to Blinndergarten, which pretty much makes her a wanna-be. Not that it matters, since any "college student" from College Station will now and forevermore be identified as an Aggie. I suppose I can take solace in the fact that this mini-scandal can only help Obama, but really, if that's not a hollow victory, what is?

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VOTE!

Early voting started in Texas yesterday, and will run through Oct. 31. I went and voted at 8 a.m. this morning. There were already 25-plus people lined up ahead of me, but fortunately things went quite smoothly and I was out of there within 15 minutes.

Seriously, this country owes a HUGE debt of gratitude to all those dedicated volunteers who work hard to ensure our democracy functions properly. They certainly have mine.

In case you folks are curious, I did indeed vote for Barak Obama for president and Rick Noriega for senator. And, lest you dismiss me as a mere straight-ticket voter, I'll have you know I went down the ballot and examined every race and ballot initiative. I did not vote for a Democrat in the District 21 representative race. Sadly, there wasn't one running against Lamar Smith, who--during a telephone town hall I listened in on last year--let one crazy lady rant on about putting alligators in the Rio Grande to eat any Mexicans that tried to swim across. Instead, I ticked the box for Libertarian challenger James Arthur Strohm. I don't agree with the whole Libertarian concept of "no government whatsoever," but after eight years of Bush and the Republicans bloating the Federal bureaucracy and blowing the budget all to hell, sending a bunch of Libertarians to Washington couldn't hurt.

Locally, my biggest disappointment was that loony Ken Valentine, who made such an ass of himself in recent years with his antics to try and close the Guadalupe and Comal rivers so he and his cronies could have a private waterfront that he got himself recalled off the New Braunfels City Council... well Ken's running for a spot on the Edwards Aquifer management board. Sadly, I'm not in his district so I couldn't vote against him. But I would if I could. Knowing his track record, he'll try and use his position to ban tubers from the rivers again. The jerk.

So, if you're an eligible voter in Texas, or anywhere else they have early voting for that matter, get out there and vote!

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Swimming upstream

For those voters out there who are still in the "undecided" category with regards to the upcoming presidential election, cartoonist Stuart Carlson has really spelled out the choice in clear terms for you:



Even so, what looks to be a no-brainer is no guarantee Barak Obama will win this horse race on Nov. 4. Yes, there are some die-hard Republicans who'd vote for teh embalmed corpse of Richard Milhouse Nixon were he on the ballot this year, but other folks who aren't so die-hard are still waffling on Obama despite every indication this should be a runaway election for the Democrat. Lots of reasons/excuses are offered, but personally I believe it comes down to closet racism. That's the elephant in the room nobody really wants to acknowledge in 21st century America, but it's there all the same.

A case in point that hits close to home: My own 90-year-old grandmother (who I love dearly), who will curse Reagan and Bushes 1 & 2 at the merest hint of political discourse and has never, ever voted Republican in her life... well, she's talking about voting for McCain. Seriously. This woman despises Republicans with a passion, is a great fan of Jimmy Carter and will defend Bill Clinton's honor with surprising passion. But if the subject of Obama comes up, her immediate reaction is a derisive, "Oh him!"

Why doesn't she like Obama? He is, of course a close ally of the Kennedys and as close to the second coming of JFK as there's ever going to be (JFK being a demigod to my family somewhere between the pope and Jesus Christ in terms of reverence). Joe Biden, his running mate, is Catholic, which normally be all the reason anyone in my family would need to vote for that ticket. Her answer: "If he gets in, them blacks are going to be everywhere!"

My family's ancestry isn't one of affluent stock. Descended from poor Polish and German immigrants, my maternal grandparents never had much money even in the best of times and struggled through the Great Depression, picking cotton for many, many years in fields shoulder to shoulder with black and Mexican workers under the blistering Texas sun. As individuals, they got along, but as a group... well, one time tested way of boosting tattered self-esteem is to diminish others around you. Remember, this is way back before Jim Crow even went by that name, so it's not surprising that racial epithets became part of the fiber of their language, not to mention world view. One charismatic politician isn't going to overcome 90 years of ingrained thinking, even if she might come to like Obama as an individual were she ever to sit down and have a conversation with him. She's had a number of minorities as friends over the years that she speaks highly of, but these people are always exceptions, you see, somehow different or superior to the undesirable group from which they came.

I'm convinced there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of voters like my grandmother out there. People who may be ambivalent to, like or even love everything about Obama except for his skin color. That when the time comes in the voting booth, they simply cannot vote for a black candidate. The so-called Bradley Effect writ large. I don't know if these people will vote for McCain or simply stay home. I don't know if their votes will impact the election in any meaningful way. I've long assumed that my cynical generation--Generation X--along with the Millennials behind us and the Boomers who'd raised us had moved beyond the point where simple skin color could hold such sway over far more pressing issues. I hope that optimism plays out, but the cynic in me believes otherwise.

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Oh McCain, what were you thinking?

John McCain must truly be a desperate man. How else can you explain such a laughable campaign ad that attempts to equate Barak Obama with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, but mostly serves to make McCain look like a pathetic, grouchy old geezer? I post it here only so we can all mock it in unison:



That's got to be the worst campaign ad since Sen. Bob Krueger donned sunglasses and asked Texans "Wasn't it Shakespeare who said 'Hasta la visata, baby?'" Of course, if McCain wants to draw parallels with Britney Spears, he should be award of the potential ramifications of such actions. Glass houses and all that:



Ain't YouTube grand?

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