I remember in my youth, my next door neighbor managed to grow an outrageously gigantic pumpkin. He had been trying for years, and finally - with the proper mix of soil, night protection, and various types of animal feces - he succeeded in growing a pumpkin rivaling the size of a half-ton truck. So massive was this pumpkin that were there any pagans in my small French Acadian neighborhood, they would have stripped naked and danced around the gigantic gourd in the moonlight. Now, he wasn't the type to take his prized overgrown squash on the road and enter it in the local fair to win the coveted blue ribbon - his ambitions lay on the most hallowed of tooth decaying festivals, Halloween.The pumpkin reached it's full fruition in late September, so it was with some puzzlement that my family saw him sawing a massive hole in the top of the pumpkin and shoveling its guts out before October had even arrived. As the week pressed on, he sawed and chiseled at the thing until he had managed to carve an imposing looking Jack-O-Lantern. He put it on his front yard and lit it with all sorts of mega wattage lights that could have provided sufficient illumination for a Rolling Stones concert. He lit it for a few days, and people drove by and oohed and aahed, but then he abruptly pulled the plug on Mr. Pumpkin until the big night. Unfortunately, by Halloween, when he lit the thing, it looked the melting face of that guy at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The left eye had rotted away into the nose portion, and the mouth was barely discernible. It looked like a massive tumor was on display on his front lawn. Those who waited with smaller, less imposing pumpkins stole the show. All my neighbor could do was lock himself in his house, drown himself in peach schnapps, and wonder how such a wondrous pumpkin could have turned into such a disaster.
Enter Barack Obama, the disfigured pumpkin on the front lawn, who tonight is facing the beginning of a convention with a highly divided party and a populous who are starting to see the veneer rust off his shiny exterior. As we go to print, Obama's once comfortable lead has disintegrated into a dead heat with McCain, each sharing 37% of the vote. His choice of Joe Biden as a running mate is a tacit admission that he a naif when it comes to foreign policy, and that he desperately needs to shore up the "new democratic" wing of the party that he hopes Biden will be able to capture for him. Senator Biden is also a self-aggrandizing ego-maniac who risks going off message on the campaign trail, creating new messes for Team Obama to sweep up after.
So far this strategy has been disastrous. In a conference call this morning, the Obama camp was unsuccessful at dispelling rumours swirling in the press that Clinton supporters are almost coming to blows with the Obama people over how much time and autonomy Bill and Hillary will be given at the convention. Clinton supporters are protesting outside the convention center in Denver, and delegates are speaking openly to the press that they are still going to cast their vote for Hillary. Convention organizers are quietly speaking to reporters about their fears of a "nightmare scenario" that would entail renegade Hillary supporters causing trouble, and Bill going off message and embarrassing Obama.
...and the tale of the rotting Pumpkin gets even more interesting. At a non-televised test poll, conducted by Frank Luntz among Democrats and undecideds, when asked to describe Obama, they used words like "scary”, “new”, “terrifying”, “unknown”, “inexperienced”, “unaffordable” , and even “apocalypse” - when card carrying Democrats use a word more fitting to describe a Mad Max movie, you know you're in trouble. When these same people where asked to use words that best described what they thought of McCain, they said things like “dependable”, “strong”, “patriot”, “veteran”, “experienced”, “honest”, “older”, and “integrity”.
The McCain camp took full advantage of the situation and released a litany of ads showing a former Hillary supporter who has never voted Republican before throwing away her "Hillary 08" sign, and proudly displaying her new "McCain '08" sign. All of this is mixed with clips of Hillary Clinton taken from the campaign trail describing what a disaster it would be to vote for Obama. Hillary later took a moment to disassociate herself from the ads, but it was half-hearted at best.
And then, there is the litany of shady characters and friends of Obama.
1 - Tony Rezko - Tony Rezko is a former real estate broker and political fund raiser. In 2003 Rezko helped raise $14 Million for Obama's senate campaign. In 2005 Rezko helped Obama to secure a $1.5 million house, a suspicious $300,000 below the market value. In 2008, Rezko was found guilty of 16 charges of using his influence to demand kickbacks from companies wanting to do business in the state. Rezko was a close associate of Senator Obama, which means the Senator is either extremely corrupt, or extremely naive - either answer screams that he is unfit to serve as President.
2- Bill Ayers - Bill Ayers is someone Obama has claimed as a friend and mentor, and coincidentally, is one of his next door neighbors. Ayers was the co-founder of the violent terrorist group "The Weatherman", responsible for a litany of atrocities in the 1960's including the bombings of of the Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972, and the New York City Police Headquarters in 1970. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Ayers admitted that a bomb destined for a nearby military base accidentally exploded, killing 3 of the group's members. In 2001 he claimed he regretted that he did not inflict more damage on the Pentagon the day he bombed it. No wonder Obama says he is willing to meet with any leader from a terrorist nation. He has lots of practice at home.
3 - The Reverend Jeremiah Wright - Here is another one of Obama's former friends and mentors, and was the Senator's Pastor for close to two decades. Reverend Wright likes to rant on about the evils of Israel, jump up and down like a crazed Eddie Murphy character screaming "God Damn America", and - like Adolf Hitler - is a proponent of Eugenics, believing the brains of white and black people work differently. Obama continued to defend the Reverend, claiming the quotes had been taken out of context, until Wright appeared at a National Press Club event where he clearly asserted that these where indeed his core beliefs for the last 20 years, and it would have been impossible for Obama not to have known that as a regular parishioner. If my priest began to preach that raccoons were messengers from God, and that deceased pets from his childhood came to visit him at night with advice from the Big Guy, I would be out of the door quicker than you can say; "That guy is nuttier that squirrel shit".
4- Obama's Own Massive Ego - There's little doubt left in my mind that once inspirational junior Senator from Illinois developed a Messianic complex somewhere along the campaign trail. On June 3rd Obama sent pundits into fits of bowel loosening laughter when he proclaimed;
"...generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal...This was the moment - this was the time..."
Quite the fella this Obama guy. Jonah Goldberg retorted;
"The Barack Obama I know is going to make the ocean levels sink -- cats and dogs are going to sleep together...Obama's workers are not supposed to talk about the issues, they're supposed to talk about how they...'came to Obama' -- like how some people say they came to Jesus"
Obama is in trouble. The Senator road the waves of his celebrity appeal, but the cracks are starting to show, and people are asking if the "change" Obama keeps talking about is just more of the same old re-hashed expensive Jimmy Carter liberalism. The so-called "Skinny kid with the funny name" is starting to resemble the giant rotting pumpkin that once adorned my neighbor's lawn. Those who had sufficient alcohol and Gravol to endure day one of the Democratic convention last night got a bizarrely sedated snooze fest. The only highlight was watching creepy looking old ladies wearing so much make up I wondered if they were drag queens from the San Fransisco delegation, weeping over Michelle Obama's tough times on the South Side.
Anyway, there it is. The much awaited Obama piece. To be fair to Obama fans, I've included an Obama quote that will lift your spirits;
"The world will not help, the people must help themselves. Its own strength is the source of life. That strength the Almighty has given us to use; that in it and through it, we may wage the battle of our life. The others in the past years have not had the blessing of the Almighty - of Him who in the last resort, whatever man may do, holds in His hands the final decision. Lord God, let us never hesitate or play the coward"
Did that inspire you? Oh wait, that wasn't a quote from Obama. That was a quote from Adolf Hitler.
Cordially
Joe
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