The Ojai Post

So the Republicans have decided to run against themselves. The bums have
tiptoed out the back door and circled around to the front and started
yelling, "Throw the bums out!" They've been running Washington like a
well-oiled machine, to the point of inviting lobbyists into the back rooms
to write the legislation, and now they are anti-establishment reformers
dedicated to delivering us from themselves. And Giuliani is an advocate
for small-town America. Bravo.

They are coming out for Small Efficient Government the very week that the
feds are taking over Fannie and Freddie, those old cash cows, and in the
course of a weekend 20 or 50 or (pick a number) billion go floating out
the Treasury door.

It is a bold move on the Republicans' part - forget about the past, it's
only history, so write a new narrative and be who you want to be - and if
they succeed, I think I might declare myself a 24-year-old virgin named
Lance and see what that might lead to. Paste a new face on my
Facebook page, maybe become the Dauphin Louie the 32nd, the rightful heir to the
Throne of France, put on silk tights and pantaloons and a plumed hat and
go on the sawdust circuit and sell souvenir hankies imprinted with the
royal fleur-de-lis.

John McCain has decided to run as a former POW and a maverick, a maverick's
maverick, rather than Mr. Bush's best friend, and that's understandable -
but how can he not address the $3 trillion that got burned up in Iraq so
far? It's real money; it could've paid for a lot of windmills, a
high-speed rail line in Ohio, some serious research and development. The
Chinese, who have avoided foreign wars for 50 years, are taking enormous
leaps forward, investing in their economy, and we are falling behind.
We're wasting our chances.

And a former mayor of a town of 7,000 who hired a lobbyist to get $26
million in federal earmarks is now running against the old-boy network in
Washington who gave her that money to build the teen rec center and other
good things so she could keep taxes low in Wasilla. Stunning. And if you
question her qualifications to be the leader of the free world, you are an
elitist. This is a beautiful maneuver. I wish I had thought of it back in
school when I was forced to subject myself to a final exam in higher
algebra. I could have told Miss Mortenson, "I am a Christian, and when you
gave me a D you only showed your contempt for the Lord and for the godly,
hard-working people from whom I have sprung, you elitist battleax, you."

In school, you couldn't get away with that garbage because the taxpayers
know that if we don't uphold scholastic standards, we will wind up driving
on badly designed bridges and go in for a tonsillectomy and come out
missing our left lung, so we flunk the losers, lest they gain power and
hurt us. But in politics, we bring forth phonies and love them to death.

When you check the actuarial tables on a 72-year-old guy who's had three
bouts with cancer, you guess you may be looking at the first female
president, a hustling evangelical with a chip on her shoulder who, not
counting Canada, has set foot outside the country once - a trip to
Germany, Iraq and Kuwait in 2007 to visit Alaskans in the armed service.
And who listed a refueling stop in Ireland as a fourth country visited.
She's like the Current Occupant but with big hair. If you want
inexperience, there were better choices.

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