Marathon Pundit: Raise your hand if you think these candidates are nuts

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Raise your hand if you think these candidates are nuts

While watching this evening's Democratic presidential debate on CNN, Little Marathon Pundit asked me, "Daddy, why do you even want to watch this?"

"Because I'm the Marathon Pundit," I replied.

Of course the sensible thing, in regards to my sanity, would've been to reach for the off switch work on a cicada posting.

After two hours of pain, the debate is over. It was as Siggy phrases it, "Living inside a Salvador Dali painting" during that time.

Let's start with the first "Raise your hand moment." Moderator Wolf Blitzer asked the eight Democratic candidates to "Raise your hand if you think English should be nation's official language." Only former Senator Mike Gravel did.

Of course the great majority of Americans think English should be the official language of the United States.

Can someone sense a disconnect between the Democrats and "the people" the Democrats are purportedly are champions of? Well, I certainly do.

My senator, Barack Obama, said that it was "the kind of question that was designed precisely to divide us." Well, it didn't. Gravel, who was otherwise one of the nuttier candidates, disrupted a unanimity of Lefty-ness on a fairly simple proposition.

Obama of course before moving up to Washington was a state senator in Illinois, where guess what, English is the official language.

Hillary, or Hilladrawly, let her new found drawl break out a few times. On the official-language question, she used some fear-mongering, stating, most-likely incorrectly, that if English became our official language, ballots in foreign languages would be unavailable.

Well, of course people who don't speak it already can learn English. Besides, when I was an election judge in Skokie in 2002 in a high-turnout election, of the 600 or so people who voted that day, exactly one person asked for a ballot in a different language. And a lot of immigrants live in Skokie, which is in Illinois, where English is of course the official language.

In other hand-raising questions, the Octuplets of Uncertainty couldn't agree on the killing Osama bin Laden, or the use of force in Darfur.

More idiocy:

Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut said we need to "Restore the constitutional rights in this country." I'm unaware of any that have been taken away.

John Edwards, who is itching to break out of third place in most polls, stated that "We no longer have the moral authority to lead the world." Because we've shown the world that we are willing to fight for what we believe in--freedom and self-determination--in Iraq and Afganistan, I believe our moral authority is stronger.

Borrowing failed policy from the Jimmy Carter era, Gov. Bill Richardson thinks we should boycott the Beijing Olympics because China buys oil from Sudan. Of course the Soviets, if you use geologic time, immediately withdrew from Afghanistan. But if you use the same measure of time I do, they did leave--nine years later, and not because American sprinters and archers didn't travel to the Moscow games in 1980.

Sen. Joe Biden thinks the time for public financing, that is, taxpayer financing of elections is needed. Of course a new bureacracy would be needed to oversee that, something Biden didn't mention.

Dennis Kucinich: Lotho said "People want to love American again." I never stopped loving it, Dennis. He also spoke of holding a 9/10 forum. Crawl back into your Hobbit-hole, Lotho.

I hope it was a slip of the tongue, but Obama said we need to "fund rural hospitals that don't have computers." Obama has had a few malaprop moments as a presidential candidate. I was reminded of that when the junior senator of Illinois said that "Everyone supports the troops, everyone knows that."

But in Iowa four months ago, he spoke of "3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted."

My favorite moment amongst the suffering was Wolf Blitzer grilling John Edwards and Hillary Clinton on voting for the Iraq war authorization without reading the 2002 intellegince report handed to them about Saddams's regime.

HRC said she was "throughly briefed, totally briefed" on the report. Edwards replied in a similar fashion.

I'm sure senators are handed dozens, maybe hundreds of similar long studies to be reviewed and they can't read them all, but this one Clinton and Edwards should have read--cover to cover.

But they, not I, live in a Salvador Dali painting, so who am I to judge them.

I was wondering if Blitzer was going to ask the candidates to "Raise your hand if blue was your favorite color?"

To a person, I'm certain each one of them would have responded as Sir Galahad did in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when he was asked what is favorite color was by the man from scene 23 at the Bridge of Death:

"Blue...NO, RED!"

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