BAR wrote:
Boater wrote:
BAR wrote:
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D.Duck wrote:
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. ..
...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?

You didn't have any problem understanding what I was saying. I guess you
are at my level.


It's not hard to get down to your intellectual level. I simply induce a
semi-coma.

I'm looking forward to the release of the Alaska Troopergate report
tomorrow, and hope it is really bad for Sancho Panza, er, Sarah Palin. I
hope you enjoy it, too.