Sometimes, it's more than just funny

A week or so back, I was watching Senator McCain soft-shoe his way through the softball Q&A he calls a Town Hall Meeting. Along with the usual marshmallows, and the wonderful sidesteps when a questioner went off script, there was one question that actually gave the G.O.P. standardbearer a moment of pause.

We import oil from many places. Some of them are our friends, some are not. If we were to increase purchases from the people we like and reduce purchases from the people we don't like, it might help. So could you tell us which nations you would buy more from and which ones you would buy less from?

It took about eight beats until Senator McCain could start grinding out the double-shuffle about how he would not presume to tell the American people how they should feel about other nations, and then tossed out the usual "Me.....Good. Obama.......Bad" closer and repeating the fascinating (in it's earliest meaning) theory that Obama, if elected four years ago, would by now have gas prices into double digits through losing the Iraq War.

Since Senator McCain seems to have accepted the premise of the question, why is it that nobody has suggested percentage changes as a carrot-and-stick tool in foreign policy? Granted, some balances are out of even Mr McCain's control; for example, our second largest supplier, Mexico, is running low in current supplies, and our largest supplier, Canada, is going to be increasing output anyway, but why not? If the whole idea is to get out from under Middle Eastern Oil, why not just increase our purchases from our top four suppliers, and further decrease what we buy from the Middle East as we reduce demand?

No good deed goes unpunished

Senator Obama has completed a successful overseas tour, partly at the urging of Senator McCain.

Naturally, the McCain Camp has spent the time sniping at every event, and spinning every word to make their guy look adequate. Good for them. I do enjoy the hopeless causes.

So why is it that nobody is mentioning the primary difference between this tour and the dozen or so overseas tours undertaken by the presumptuous .. sorry, presumptive ... the word gets used so often in regard to Obama one forgets that one can write about the campaign without it's use.

Note for new writers: I see many people misspelling "presumptuous" in various comments. Soon we will be in the final 90 days of the campaign, and you can use the McCain-Approved Synonym: "Uppity" without fear.

Oh yes, the difference in the two candidates? Other than his trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, where he was accompanied by senior Senate colleagues who had their own reasons for their presence, Senator Obama paid for his trip from campaign funds. His Senate staff left the entourage when the other Senators headed for home, and the campaign staff came on board. How is that different? Simple. In his dozens of trips each year since 2000, all of which include "off-duty time" spent in fund-raising or other political acticivies, Senator McCain takes three or more senators, drawn from a group known in D.C. as the Mac Pack. The presence of this bunch of drinking buddies meant that the trip is going to be paid for out of Senate funds ..... unless he hits a military base somewhere, where it gets reimbursed by the DoD.

So the candidate that pays his own way gets called an elitist and the candidate who has had very few subsidized days in his life is somehow "Just Plain Folks???"

It's the little things that get up your nose

I have become used to the idea that there are few people writing comments to Huffington, Politico, or any of several others who know that there is a difference between "to", "too", and "two".

I am getting used to the new convention that "loose" (opposite of tight)* may be used in place of "lose" (opposite of win)*.

I can almost keep from retching when people** insist on substituting "service" for "serve". The results are usually entertaining.

But I do draw the line at "unquote". If you started by signaling you are quoting by saying "quote", then you have quoted. When you end the quotation, the phrase is "end quote". "Unquote doesn't even make sense, other than some kind of speech defect, or regional accent that runs the two words together.

As a result, I admit to being an unabashed fan of Dr. Rachel Maddow. I thoroughly enjoy Kieth Olbermann, but ending an otherwise erudite segment with "end quote" reminds one of the Prince Charles "carbuncle" critique of contemporary architecture.

Now if the people at MSNBC would drop one or more of the endless repeats of "hardball" and gave Rachel Maddow her own show.......... dare to dream

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* Yes, I am aware there are many other meanings. None of them support the single spelling.

**People is the plural of "Person". "Persons" is what third grade students write before they learn that there are other way to make a plural that adding "s" to the end of a noun.