PRIMARY,CAUCUS,CALL IT WHAT YOU WILL!

Well, one more holiday, New Years day, and the holiday season is over.
Then I can stop being so jovial, and get back to the business of bitching in earnest.
Ah what the hell.
I think it fitting to pitch a bit of bitch tonight. What with the Iowa caucuses coming up on the 3rd, followed by the “first in the nation”, New Hampshire primaries.
It’s getting down to crunch time. What I like to call mud season inside the belt way.
Here in the Northeast, mud season is the fifth season. We have spring, usually from the middle of April to the end of May. Then summer from June thru September. Fall starts around the beginning of October, and ends as early as mid November, even though the calendar says that winter doesn’t begin until December 22nd. Winter is the fourth season and lasts usually until the middle of February, when the fifth season begins. MUD season. To those of you from away, (anyone who wasn’t born in New Hampshire, Vermont, or Maine), this will mean little to you. You’ve never lost a boot in a mud hole, or a car in rut on a dirt road.
Mud season in Washington is when the candidates start sling accusations at whom ever they feel might be beating them in the polls.
Take for instance Hillary claiming that Barrack Obama hasn’t the experience in the ways of Washington to be able to get anything done.
And I wonder just what the sophomore senator from New York State has on her resume that gives her the experience she talks of.
She had four years as the first lady to make a difference, and while she made an attempt at fixing the healthcare issue, she failed miserably.
Funny how the minute Obama went ahead of her in the Iowa and New Hampshire polls, she started pointing out his faults?
Slinging the mud.
On the Republican side of the isle I was beginning to worry that Mitt Romney’s charm and charisma were going to win over the people.
A friend told me he was seriously considering voting for Mitt, to which a replied “are you sure he’s still running?”
When asked what I meant, I pointed out how he has flip flopped on the issue so often, I was wondering if maybe he hadn’t changed his mind and dropped out.
Then he drops the bomb shell about having seen his father march with Dr King…
When confronted with the statement, he said he was using seen as a figure of speech, like “My eyes have seen the coming of the lord.”
Brings to mind the words, “define sexual relations?”

Then there’s John McCain.
He’s leading in New Hampshire.
When he ran in 2000, I was a supporter. He had some great ideas.
His unwillingness to form a plan to exit Iraq bothers me.
He backed George Bush’s serge strategy, and is now claiming that it is working marvelously.
Has anyone noticed how there has been very little news coming out of Iraq the last few weeks?
Could it be by Republican design?
Could Benazir Bhutto’s assassination be another smoke screen to take the worlds attention off of Iraq?

What color level of terrorist threat are we on today?

Two things that really bothered me today.
During a conversation over lunch one of my employees claimed to have heard that George Bush was proclaimed the most interesting man in America by some poll?
She couldn’t remember where she heard it?
With the lowest approval rating of any President, (somewhere around 30%) (of course that was before his tuff talk about the people responsible for Bhuttos assination needing to be brought to justice), since they started polling, I guess I can’t quite figure this out.
If it’s true?
Maybe it was a survey of the Bush family?
Even then they surely couldn't have surveyed the entire family.
I have a feeling that Jeb might not have a lot of good to say about big brother! Since his political future is in the toilet thanks in no small part to the way George has conducted business.
I’ve got a feeling that George H W probably calls him an idiot from time to time.
My question?
“Why”, even with several calls for it, “has he not been impeached”?
I’ll make a bold statement here.
That just might come back to bight us on the ass before he leaves office…

While I’m on the subject of polls, in an article by Kenneth T. Walsh in this weeks U.S. News & World Report I read that the country's priority issues seem to be changing.
It seems the most important issue to voters is Jobs and the economy.
So says 44% of the voters.
Is that 44% of 100% of the people that will vote in the coming primaries?
Or 44% of people who think they might vote?
Or 44% of the ten people that work in the office of the company taking the survey?
Polls are tricky business, and just another way of attempting to swing the vote.
A paragraph later, sort of as an after thought, is the claim that in the same period of time the importance of the war in Iraq has dropped from 45% to 37%.
We’re getting bombarded on a daily basis with dismal forecasts for the economy, and a weakening dollar.
The price of gasoline and oil is through the roof.
Only one percent of the population of the country has a family member serving in Iraq.
How easy would it be to skew that poll?

I’m not a wise man.
I can’t tell you who the best candidate for presidency would be.
I will suggest that you should vote, and that you should do a little research. And that regardless of which is most important, the four things that any viable candidate should have a plan for are, Healthcare, jobs, the cost of education, the end of our combat related involvement in Iraq.
The few that I have heard claim to have a plan in all of these areas are, Bill Richardson, Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama, and Dr. Ron Paul.
Others have claimed to have a plan.
These are the only candidates that I've heard lay their plan out.

One more issue of concern is the illegal imigrant situation.
I don't even want to start... But I will.
They're illegal.
They need to leave, and come back legaly.
Now.
Not in three years or ten years, NOW.
They aren't citizens.
Why are the protected by our contstitution?
Go home.
Apply and come back legaly!
End of conversation.

I’ve struggled with this long and hard, and I’ve decided to back Obama.
My reason?
I like what he has to say.
I think he’s a man of integrity.
I don’t think he has been corrupted by the good ole boys in Washington.
It’s time for a change.