BAR wrote:
Boater wrote:
D.Duck wrote:
"Boater" wrote in message
. ..
...commentary from conservative pundit George Will:

WASHINGTON -- Time was, the Baltimore Orioles manager was Earl
Weaver, a short, irascible, Napoleonic figure who, when cranky, as
he frequently was, would shout at an umpire, "Are you going to get
any better or is this it?" With, mercifully, only one debate to go,
that is the question about John McCain's campaign.

In the closing days of his 10-year quest for the presidency, McCain
finds it galling that Barack Obama is winning the first serious
campaign he has ever run against a Republican. Before Tuesday
night's uneventful event, gall was fueling what might be the
McCain-Palin campaign's closing argument. It is less that Obama has
bad ideas than that Obama is a bad person.

This, McCain and ++his female Sancho Panza** say, is demonstrated by
bad associations Obama had in Chicago, such as with William Ayers,
the unrepentant terrorist. But the McCain-Palin charges have come
just as the Obama campaign is benefiting from a mass mailing it is
not paying for. Many millions of American households are gingerly
opening envelopes containing reports of the third-quarter losses in
their 401(k) and other retirement accounts -- telling each household
its portion of the nearly $2 trillion that Americans' accounts have
recently shed. In this context, the McCain-Palin campaign's attempt
to get Americans to focus on Obama's Chicago associations seem
surreal -- or, as a British politician once said about criticism he
was receiving, "like being savaged by a dead sheep."

Recently Obama noted -- perhaps to torment and provoke conservatives
-- that McCain's rhetoric about Wall Street's "greed" and "casino
culture" amounted to "talking like Jesse Jackson." What fun: one
African-American Chicago politician distancing himself from another
African-American Chicago politician by associating McCain with him.

After their enjoyable 2006 congressional elections, Democrats
eagerly anticipated that 2008 would provide a second election in
which a chaotic Iraq would be at the center of voters' minds. Today
they are glad that has not happened. The success of the surge in
Iraq, for which McCain justly claims much credit, is one reason why
foreign policy has receded to the margins of the electorate's mind,
thereby diminishing the subject with which McCain is most
comfortable and which is Obama's largest vulnerability.

Tuesday night, McCain, seeking traction in inhospitable economic
terrain, said that the $700 billion -- perhaps it is $800 billion,
or more; one loses track of this fast-moving target -- bailout plan
is too small. He proposes several hundred billions more for his
American Homeownership Resurgence -- you cannot have too many surges
-- Plan. Under it, the government would buy mortgages that
homeowners cannot -- or perhaps would just rather not -- pay, and
replace them with cheaper ones. When he proposed this, conservatives
participating in MSNBC's "dial group" wrenched their dials in a
wrist-spraining spasm of disapproval.

Still, it may be politically prudent for McCain to throw caution,
and billions, to the wind. Obama is competitive in so many states
that President Bush carried in 2004 -- including Florida, North
Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Colorado and New Mexico --
it is not eccentric to think he could win at least 350 of the 538
electoral votes.

If that seems startling, that is only because the 2000 and 2004
elections were won with 271 and 286, respectively. In the 25
elections 1900-1996, the winners averaged 402.6. This, even though
the 1900 and 1904 elections -- before Arizona, New Mexico and
Oklahoma attained statehood, and before the size of the House was
fixed at 435 members in 1911 -- allocated only 447 and 476
electoral votes, respectively. The 12 elections from 1912 through
1956, before Hawaiian and Alaskan statehood, allocated only 531.

In the 25 twentieth-century elections, only three candidates won
with fewer than 300 -- McKinley with 292 in 1900, Wilson with 277 in
1916 and Carter with 297 in 1976. President Harry Truman won 303 in
1948 even though Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrat candidacy won 39 that
otherwise would have gone to Truman. After John Kennedy won in 1960
with just 303, the average winning total in the next nine elections,
up to the 2000 cliffhanger, was 421.4.

In 1987, on the eve of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's third
victory, the head of her Conservative Party told a visiting
columnist: "Someday, Labour will win an election. Our job is to hold
on until they are sane." Republicans, winners of seven of the last
10 presidential elections, had better hope they have held on long
enough.




++Sarah Palin is Sancho Panza...priceless.

Sancho was the illiterate sidekick of Don Quixote.

What's you opinion of ACORN?



ACORN has nothing to do with George Will's column or his absolutely
priceless comparison of Sarah Palin to the illiterate Sancho Panza,
who accompanied the insane Don Quixote.

ACORN is a rather controversial organization, but it has done a lot of
good in pointing out and helping eliminate predatory lending
practices, in easing voter registration regulations, and in pushing
for living wages, all of which I support. I'm aware of some of its
problems, obviously, but whatever it has done wrong pales in
comparison to the horrors perpetrated on this country by Big Oil,
Halliburton, ENRON and Bush-Cheney.

Sarah Palin *is* Sancho Panza...I love it.

ACORN should go the way of Aurthur Anderson. ACORN is a corrupt
organization.


So are any number of corporations...and it was Arthur Andersen, dummy.
You should have stayed in high school a bit longer. You misspelled both
company names. Been hanging out with Justwaitaloogy?