I'll give you a Lincoln, I know what you're thinkin'

You'd rather have Jackson or Grant, And Benjamin Frankin's a friend, He can buy you a lot of things Abraham can't

Any American boy can be President, I have a loftier wish

Salmon P. Chase is worth ten thousand Washingtons, You take the Presidents, I take the fish

Keillor says that,

"America has paid a terrible price for one family's decision to take a boy out of the public schools of Midland, Texas, and send him off to Chutney or Amway or whatever his prep school was called, and then to Yale, where he picked up a permanent grudge against people who were smarter than he."

I think the problem is that many of our countrymen instead of looking up to those who are smarter and accept them as our leader, our countrymen look down on the smart ones and want to be lead by those who are either of equal intellect or even lower. I don't know about you, but I don't want someone who is dumber than I am leading me. The trouble is the current occupant, as Keillor calls him, does not have the smarts to be a leader and, frankly, Mr. McCain does not either. Let's face it, McCain was on the bottom of his class. Would you want to have the surgeon who was on the bottom of his class working on your heart bypass?

Great read GK.

Enjoy California (if you're still there).

Re: GB.

What's scary is he was elected; not once but twice!

I often wonder who has more sleepless nights wondering how they lost to this man, Al Gore or John Kerry?

But that's just me.

I keep emailing the editors of my local paper, part of the McClatchey chain, that they need to syndicate your columns. Liberal "knife throwers", to borrow from a McClatchey article about Floyd Brown a year back (he is a conservative knife-thrower par excellence) are thin on the street in these parts and elsewhere. Certainly none can boast your skills with the pen and the literary sword. As conservative slimers way outnumber the opposition here, your columns would provide us with some feel good repartee and just might aid in the effort to turn this red area to magenta.

Thanks for the article. I plan on sharing it, legally of course.

Great read. You made my day!

but what's to stop the Republican Party from stealing this election, too? It doesn't seem to matter who the better candidate is or even how many people support him. What matters is who owns the voting machines, the election supervisors, and the courts.

and basically, that's still what I am.

But I treasure what I've learned from Californians. They know how to live.

It seems to me that the essence of politicized, punitive "social conservatism" in this country is driven by the absolute dread that Americans will become more like Californians.

And the threat represented by California is not so much that they're all weirdos, gays, dope fiends, orgiaists, vegetarians, or people who harbor weird fringe notions about spirituality- but that California is a place where most people don't care if other people live their lives like that.

(It's as if they're a Fifth Column of that global menace, the Dutch.)

So instead, the vaster part of the rest of the country lives under the social regime of "don't dare be like California."

Sure, when Eastern Establishment political leaders deign to refer to California, typically it's with breezy, mocking condescension. Those grown-up children, the Californians. (With their seventh-largest economy in the world.)

But underneath the patronizing veneer, there's real fear. Fear that if too many people adopt that dreaded "mellow", multicultural gumbo of lifestyle values instead of chasing their way up the pre-ordained status ladder, that The Game is up.

Can't happen quick enough for me.

Glorifying the English people for embracing freedom is like praising president GW for his intellectual curiosity.

England has become a surveillance state where awesome numbers of cameras keep an eye on the population. Also check wikipedia for the "anti-social behavior act" - particularly the 2003 version. The English people have already surrendered freedoms that bush hasn't had the audacity to try snatching. It's like they're a test bed for governmental over reaching in the context of democracy.

Furthermore, I listened to obama talk. He said all the right things about illegal spying and FISA. He had my support and, yes, I wanted to learn more about the man. That's Obama's weakness. The man behind the voice is deeply flawed. He proved that his words don't mean a thing when he supported GW's imperial ambitions with regard to privacy, now legal spying, telecom immunity, and limits to the rule of law. His words didn't mean anything when he decried off shore drilling.

I fear that Garrison has been taken in by a carpet bagger in a shiny, but empty, suit.

It seems to be that one of the themes of the upcoming election ought to be that the current administration has rolled over and kowtowed to terrorism by imposing all kinds of restrictions on Americans carrying out hitherto legal operations such as taking a tube of toothpaste on a plane, a bottle of water into an airport departure lounge, or just traveling to the Caribbean without a passport, while simultaneously several million illegal immigrants continue to live and work in the US where they have easy access to bomb-making components and to guns.

The UK is great, but methinks Keilor is over-romanticizing the issue (hey, first time for everything.)

Londoners do roll with the punches. That’s why their government could put thousands of cameras to watch their citizens, with nary a peep.

That’s why they have “community support officers” that have the power to detain any UK citizen at any time for any reason. As stated in their recruiting material, “Community support officers provide a visible and reassuring presence on the streets.” I hate to go Orwell, but “reassuring”? Roll with it baby!

Maybe the Londoners, Californians and, hell, everybody else, should stop rolling with the punches so well, and throw a few punches of our own.