Try holding YOUR candidate, better yet YOURSELF, to the same standard. Seriously, where do they find you guys? You're basically the poor man's Smurfed-up version of Sean Hannity.

http://bgladd.blogspot.com/2008/09/surge.html

Obama's response on O'Reilly was weak.

I want to punish the Republicans as much as the next guy, but can you really be that obtuse? Is it really McCain who is at fault for mindlessly chirping change?

About eight years ago, I actually thought McCain had substance, character and honor. I feel truly bad that he and so many others spent time as POWs in a past imperialist failure. I was horrified as he caved - time and time again - to carry water for the Bush Administration.

He has become nothing more that a two-dimensional cut-out of the man he once was... a poster boy for stupid old white men.

As for his running mate, she is nothing more than an cynical disguise for a stupid old white man.

Simply saying the word "change" a lot isn't enough. What did Obama offer people that was really new?

And so, irony lives to greet another day.

John Edwards used to be the candidate who promised to "fight" for us. Now it's McCain. Yawn.

Oddly enough, looking at the speech yesterday night what was most vivid is how old and frail John McCain looked as he stood there. Old, frail, yet covered in makeup to make him look younger. He did not take pride in his age. He would talk of strength and yet his voice was weak. This is not meant as a critique of his age -- older statesmen have shown remarkable strength. It is not meant as a critique of the weariness that comes over every politician after a long campaign. It is just a fact -- his being did not match his rhetoric, and he seemed frail and out of place on that stage...

..it inspired me to sleep. Wake me up on Nov. 4.

"What did McCain offer people that was really new?"

I did hear one new thing - as McCain repeated his POW status for the umpteenth time, his cynical attempt to milk that story for maximum drama made it sound downright pornographic.

Like all porn, it offered the audience a vicarious release through cold fake intimacy. The crowd started cheering as if they were survivors standing tall, rather than just a bunch of people listening to a guy recite a well worn anecdote.

But it wasn't just metaphorical. This part does sounded like it was heading somewhere naughty:

"But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before, for a long time, and they broke me.

When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn't know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door to me, my friend, Bob Craner, saved me."

I expected the next line to be: "He showed me what the love of a good man can do. Hunh!"

Empty is the new Meaningful

JOHN MCCAIN'S ACCEPTANCE SPEECH AT THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION

Unlike any Republican Presidential candidate in the last 16 years, John McCain did not rally his base with anti-abortion morality lectures, or other common planks in the Republican Party Platform. He spoke of getting back to basics. He was telling the Republican Party that they had lost their way. How extraordinary.

If you are an alcoholic and you attend Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), you begin the meeting by saying "My name is John, and I'm an alcoholic." In his acceptance speech, John McCain basically said, "My name is John McCain and many in the Republican Party have lost their way and forgotten how to represent the American people."

I say it again. How extraordinary.

EVERYONE KNOWS THAT PEOPLE WANT CHANGE, BUT ONLY THE DEMOCRATS APPEAR TO HAVE A LIST OF CHANGES

One thing that was shockingly missing in the Republican Party Convention was any idea of what change the Republican Party wanted to create.

How can the Republican Party or its Presidential Candidate, John McCain, claim to be agents of change when they don't know what they want to change?

Conservatism is antithetical to change, because conservatism believes in "conserving" the status quo. How do "conservatives" create change?

The Republican Party is emerging out of its convention as schizophrenic. But for those who long for change, this is a good thing. If the Republican Party wanted to keep things the same and the Democratic Party wanted to create real change in health care, education, the economy, etc., the Republicans would have blocked such change. However, if the Republican Party is ready to create change, then all that needs to be done is to agree with the Democratic Party as to what and how much to change.

ARE THE REPUBLICANS SINCERE?

Since Karl Rove became the "architect" of the George W. Bush presidency, pure political crassness has been the name of the Washington game. Sincerity became a casualty of the "continuous campaign" while Bush was president.

There has been a true lack of sincerity in almost everything pushed through the Congress when the Republicans held both the White House and both houses of Congress. President Bush appeared sincere in his belief that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. However, from insider accounts, we now know the Bush administration knew that it was stretching the truth and the plan to invade Iraq has been in preparation as soon as Bush started office. 9/11 provided them a vehicle for using their Iraqi invasion plan.

The Republicans in Congress had sought to increase the power of law enforcement to be tough on crime for years. These measures included providing police more latitude in warrant-less searches, the ability to hold suspects for longer periods of time for questioning, and increase NSA's ability to listen in on Americans. When 9/11 shocked the nation, the Republicans in Congress used it to sincerely ask for the Patriot Act and pass legislation that many Republicans had been working on for years prior. The Patriot Act was sincerely argued as a solution to make the nation safer when it was in actuality a laundry list of things Republican lawmakers had always wanted.

Another example is the sincere look that Republicans use when they say they want to help the nation decrease its dependence on foreign oil through off shore drilling. Republicans have been arguing for off-shore drilling for decades before the current energy crisis. It is a fact that off-shore oil drilling will NOT lower the U.S.' dependence on foreign oil for at least a decade, due to the need to explore, identify sites, analyze the quality of oil from the site, approve construction of the oil platform, construct the oil platform, drill for oil, build refineries to refine the oil and then sell the oil in the United States. In the end, it is estimated that even if we allow oil companies to dot the nation's coastlines with oil platforms, the oil increases would make a small dent in lowering our dependence on foreign oil, because of the escalating purchasing from China and other industrializing nations would take up the slack. So, off shore oil drilling is actually a non-solution, even though uninformed Republicans, working for oil companies, have been told it will help.

Change is not implementing a bunch of old solutions. Innovation is not found in the closet of old Republican legislation. Political Conservatism is not innovation or change.

Conservatism must be downgraded to a bad idea. Liberalism, innovation and change must be renewed as words of hope.

In a nation where the top 80% of wealthiest corporations pay no taxes, and the middle class pays the vast majority of taxes that sustain the nation, isn't the United States ready for a "New Deal"?

HOOVER & FDR

When the nation entered the Great Depression, Hoover attempted classic Republican ideas to fix the economy like advocating for volunteerism -- a large part of the Republican's solution for the Great Depression was "volunteerism" because they could not conceive of a bigger role for government.

Over the last 40 years, anyone who even attempts to take FDR's New Deal programs away, like Social Security from retirees, might as well jump off a political cliff. Conservatives don't like to remember that some of our government institutions would never have existed if Conservatives had been allowed to stop all innovations in public policy solutions.

Unless McCain starts creating a plan to create real change, he might as well be Herbert Hoover.

THE POLITICS OF CHANGE

Six months ago when I wrote The Politics of Change (due out in paperback at Amazon.com in mid-September 2008), I never dreamed that both the Republican and Democratic Parties would be fighting for the change mantel, in effect agreeing that "change" not "experience" was the key to winning the election.

If you would like to know more about my book, please visit http://www.prodigybooks.com for more information about my up-coming book.