|
|
        
|
|
No We McCain't Part II: Maybe We McShould
by N. L. Wilbur
2008-11-01 09:25:55 |
| Print - Comment - Send to a Friend - More from this Author |
   
 |
I sat at a bar across the street from the University of New Mexico campus, waiting for my girlfriend to get off work and trying to wash down the rancid taste in my mouth left over from earlier in the day, when I witnessed Sen. John McCain bark lies about his opponent to a crowd of brain-dead retirees.
 I wasted two hours of my life at this 1,500-person picnic for the Dustbowl State senator, and although I was excited for the breath of fresh air Barack Obama would bring at a UNM rally later in the evening, I was having a hard time accepting the fact that McCain was getting even that many votes.
I'm a patriot in the truest sense. I'm fair, balanced and respectful to all candidates, and while I openly love my country, I also am proud to exercise my right to criticize any government leaders who are a.) manipulative, b.) out of touch or c.) 72 years old and from Arizona.
I've had a difficult time keeping my composure during this presidential election. Some days I'm fine, but most of the time I feel like I'm on the emotional rollercoaster of a middle-aged woman who takes lithium to cope with menopause.
The campaign has been dirty, disgraceful and embarrassing as an American citizen, and for two years now I've loathed the nearly impossible possibility the Republican nominee could somehow steal the election on Nov. 4.
Even speculating about the unlikely outcome ignites my inner gag-reflex and makes me fall on the floor into convulsions, shout obscenities and type NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO! for pages and pages on my computer. (That ream of paper is in my desk drawer under the file name "The McCain Presidency.")
But sometimes luck is in your corner. Sometimes an angel will walk into your life and open your eyes to reality. Sometimes we're given another chance to right the wrongs we've committed and to put ourselves back in touch with the righteous path.
----------
I was about a half-rack deep and still queasy from the senior citizen picnic I'd witnessed earlier when a short, troll of a man walked in surrounded by a slew of black-suited bodyguards.
"You mind if I share the bar with ya, my friend?" the man said, and as I turned and looked at his swollen face, trying to focus but not stare rudely at the turkey hanging over his shirt collar, I recoiled in fear and cocked back my arm ready to swing. "Oh my God!"
"No," he said, calmly. "It's just me, John McCain."
"Get away from me!" I screamed.
"Oh! You're a fighter, eh? I'm a fighter too. You should join me in fighting for America!" he said. "Fight for our troops, fight for prosperity, fight for change, fight for toilet seats with cushions, fight for…" He stopped, probably noticing that my jaw was in my lap.
"Sorry," he said, shaking his head. "It's the only part of my stump speech I can remember without the teleprompter."
"I know," I said. "I heard it this morning."
He took the barstool next to mine and asked if I wanted a drink. It was the only thing he could have said that would make me stop waving my clenched fists in his face.
"Well, okay," I said.
"So what do you do for a living?"
"I hate you," I said.
"For a living?"
"Yes. Basically. It pays pretty well."
"You know, if Obama wins, he's going to increase your taxes on that well-paid job," he said as he waved over the bartender.
"You're a putz," I said. "I'll have a pint of stout, two shots of whiskey and a pretzel."
"Sure thing, my friend."
After ordering the drinks and resituating the scrunched up Depends diaper under his slacks, he launched into a furious rant about how he's losing in the polls and his staff won't let him speak unscripted to the American people
I rolled my eyes and downed the whiskey shots. As he ordered a second round, the ESPN Sports news ticker carried the headline, "McCain's Confession: 'Instilling Fear Is All I Have Left to Win.'"
"Make it Johnny Walker blue label this time," I said, but nobody heard me. McCain was arguing with the bartender.
"You won't take my money? What, are you an Obama supporter too?!" He was pounding his fists on the bar and tossing his tiny head around in a rage.
"No sir," the bartender said calmly. "It's just that we don't accept Monopoly money here."
"It's a five-hundred dollar bill you IDIOT! And I'm a WAR HERO, for Christ's sake!"
I stayed out of it as a bodyguard came over to resolve the issue by handing the man a campaign credit card with Sarah Palin's face on it.
----------
You wouldn't necessarily know it by his TV appearances, which show him mostly as a grumpy, abrupt, incoherent asshole, but John McCain is an emotion-driven chatterbox. I kept my eyes on ESPN and only halfway listened as he bemoaned his poll numbers and rally turnouts. A few more drinks from this guy and Anita be here to drag me out. But when I heard sobs and looked over to see alligator tears smearing the bondo on his swollen cheek, I had no choice but to turn to him and ask what was wrong.
"It's my staff," he said, blubbering with a chin covered in snot. Pounding his fists on the bar again, he screamed "They think I'm a loon!" and swallowed his pint all at once.
"You are a loon, arent' you?"
"Noooo!" he yelled. "I'm a war hero, for Christ's sake. And sure, I don't have an original thought to save my life…"
"--or your campaign," I cut in.
"…yeah…but, but, but my friend, even my campaign manager says he's only working for me because of the wardrobe! And if you allow Barack Hussein Obama to get elected, a man who is very unmavericky, then he's going to blow up Kansas."
I choked on a mouthful of stout and spit it all over the senator's tiny head.
"That's right, my friend," he said, wiping makeup all over his face. "It's some Muslim terrorist thing his family has done for generations. Look at Hawaii. Obama grew up there. And now Hawaii has volcanic eruptions, like, every day! His grandparents planted bombs under the volcanoes, my friend. Mavericks don't do that. Mavericks stop domestic explosions!"
I had the familiar but this time unwelcoming feeling that I was drunk. Was I imagining this? Did he really just say that? Everything was slurring together, my mind was racing and I couldn't tell the difference between what was happening in my head and what was reality.
After a boring segment on game three of the World Series, The ESPN news ticker was back with another headline that read, "McCain Actually Throws Kitchen Sink at Campaign, Hits Two Colorado Pollsters."
"Oh my God."
"Yeah," he said. "And he's going to raise your taxes! Bartender, two more pints, and two shots of Crown Royal for me an my fellow Maverick."
"I thought he said he's going to cut taxes."
"Well…whatever. Maybe. Did he say that? Either way, he's going to increase your taxes if you're in the top 3 percent of income earners."
"I'm not," I said. "Criticizing you is lucrative, but it's not that lucrative."
"Luck has nothing to do with it," he said, and again I wonder if I had misheard him. "But under my plan, someday you will be in the top 3 percent, my friend. Don't you see that? I'm going to create jobs and grow the economy. Hussein Obama is going to increase your taxes and redistribute it to people who sit at home and smoke marijuana cigarettes all day. Drink this."
He handed me a shot of Crown and flashed a smile that reminded me of my father. It was at this moment, staring into his empty eyes and inhaling his sour old man breath, that I had an epiphany. Technically he was right. Technically, Obama was going to increase people's taxes. No one could argue with that.
As we toasted to "Fighting the Righteous Fight" and downed our drinks, the Dustbowl State senator segued into Obama's plans to expand America's foreign policy to include what he called, with a twisted grimace, diplomacy. He told me that, "in fact," Obama was conspiring with the Palestinians and the Iranians to eliminate Israel from the map and usher in a new communist doctrine, crafted and carried out by the Russians, in order to eventually eliminate what is currently known as the United States of America, then he bought another round.
----------
As we drank, my fear of this man grew, but when he launched into a bit about Obama planning to burn the Constitution and assassinate any Republicans who disagree with his policies, I realized that my fear of Obama was even greater.
I don't know how long we sat there, and I can't recall exactly how many drinks we put on his tab, but I know one thing for sure: John McCain is the most generous drinking buddy you could ever dream of, and Barack Hussein Obama is a con.
He was blathering on and on, his words becoming more and more indecipherable, his tone more desperate, his tears more pitiful, and then suddenly Anita was at the door waving me outside. "Mr. Maverick, I'm rilly slurry, but the Osama rally is starting, and I sworn to my gullfend en mom, my sister, my grandprarents, neighbors, Internet chatroom acquaintanences, strangers off the street and some old ladies in the suppermarket perkin lot thother day that I would attend." He gave me a thumbs up and I stumbled out.
----------
"Yull never BILLEEVE what I jiss heard," I told Anita as walked to the corner. "I jiss sat with John McLain!"
"That was not John McCain, honey."
"Was too," and I started in about all the lies we'd heard, juxtaposing them with the truth McCain shared about what this alleged "reformer" Barack Hussein Obama was going to do if we let him into the White House.
When I got into the bit about the volcanoes blowing up Israel and Obama's family being Russian, she slapped me across the face and demanded I shut my mouth until we got home. Typical. Typical information-suppressing Democrat, I thought. Right then, Anita turned and glared at me.
"What did you call me?!"
"What?"
"Are you drunk?" she asked.
"Nooooo. Are YOU?!" I demanded. It was all I had.
She rolled her eyes and pulled me by the arm toward the UNM campus. The ground was moving like a bed of slithering snakes and the buildings ahead had some crazy, new-age psychedelic architecture. "WOW!" I yelled.
"Shhh!" She sounded pissed, so I stayed quiet until we found the line into the sports field, where the traitor was scheduled to spew his communist manifesto.
"Will you shut up!" Anita said. It was not a question, and by the grip she had on my arm, I knew she meant business. I decided to stop thinking altogether. It was dangerous territory with all these Democratic terrorists around.
----------
 The line to get into the event ran two miles long, according to later news reports, but Anita and I never found the end of it that night. We walked all the way around the campus, but by the time we hit Lomas Avenue, my knees were shaking and it didn't look like the line ever stopped.
"Less go back to the bar," I suggested.
But before I knew it, we were in a dead sprint next to an 80-year-old woman and her husband, who was bound by an electric-wheelchair and still out-sprinting us all. "WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?!" I yelled.
"Just run," Anita said, pulling me forward. I could taste the Crown at the back of my throat, but I kept on, and soon enough we were running across a flattened metal gate into the sports field. News reports said later that while police had been escorting people through the security checkpoint at the opposite end of the stadium, a few fanatics had jumped the gate and flooded the field. Those behind them in line didn't see the five-foot metal fence and plowed through it, opening up the event to the entire line.
We were just in time. Obama took the stage within minutes of our arrival, and I relied heavily on my bullshit filter when listening to the deception of this fallen angel's charming rhetoric.
----------
The Obama rally was rather uneventful. Forty-five thousand screaming fans, witty one-liners, details about how the Maverick had skewed his policy positions, jokes about George W. Bush and McCain being like Batman and Robin, pleas with the diverse crowd to help elect a responsible, reasonable president who would listen to the people and restore confidence in America and abroad. It was a bore. And although I was impressed with the turnout, I couldn't help but fear for the poor Kansans who would soon be the victims of nuclear attack under the Hussein Administration.
He tried explaining himself, in his usual composed, inspirational, pragmatic style, but I saw through it thanks to the Maverick's preparation. When he noted that McCain had voted with Bush 90 percent of the time, making a laughing stock of the war hero by pointing out that the McCain recently had tried chastising the president about a slew of failed policies, stating that "John McCain really decided to stick it to George Bush 10 percent of the time," I recoiled in disgust.
When he said it's time the working middle class be rewarded for keeping this country afloat, I thought of Israel. And when he talked about health care like it was something deserved by every American who works for 40 years, I thought of all the patriotic areas of this country, the pro-America pockets where they didn't buy into this crap, and I prayed that the rest of the country would finally understand what a con Obama was.
----------
While I used to think McCain was a snobby, temper-tantrum throwing Navy brat who was a screw-up until being launched into the role of celebrity-status hero after being a prisoner of war in Vietnam, now I think Obama is a terrorist.
While I used to throw beer bottles at the wall when I heard McCain skew the facts and declare it socialistic of Obama to propose cutting taxes for the middle class and return to Clinton-era levels the Bush tax rates for the top percentage of American income earners, now I think Obama is a full blown tax-and-spend Marxist.
And while I used to puke in my mouth a little bit every time I heard the Dustbowl State senator talk about "Joe the Plumber" and "Bill the Bricklayer" -- and especially "Jose the Electrician," as he did here in New Mexico -- now I only dry heave.
The fact is, folks, that Obama is a bore. As Bill Maher noted, he does nothing for the average (or even stellar) American comedian out there, and if McCain ever watched Maher, we would surely be blessed with another McCain television ad blasting Obama for not supporting the comedy industry.
You could bet your now-empty retirement fund that McCain would be airing that television ad if he weren't busy trying to hang on to the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida -- and even his own territory, Arizona, as well as Texas, Georgia, and the energy producing state of Alaska.
But no. McCain is out on the campaign trail fighting against his own staff and trying to spread the facts about Obama's terrorist leanings. God give him strength to keep it up and see it through…
----------
I've been sleeping on the couch now for almost a week. Anita barely speaks to me, and when she does, it's a rant about what a fool I've become. She won't admit that I actually sat with John McCain, and she continues to spew a bunch of crap about change and hope and prosperity and progress.
"Can you really support someone whose only policy on Iraq is to talk without detail about victory and honor, a man who claims to have some secret to capture Osama bin Laden but won't share his plan with the world?"
"But McCain's a Maverick," I say.
"Then what about health care? You honestly believe that taxing employee benefits will improve anybody's life?"
"He was a prisoner of war, for Christ's sake!" I say.
I've relied on the same two lines to stun her into speechlessness, just as the Maverick does when he's facing down the Liberal elitists from the mainstream media, and it works.
Sure, Anita is too set in her ways to change her mind, but I can't help but think that if McCain had told the rest of the country what he told me, this would be a whole different race.
As I sit here writing, just days before the election, the feeling of doom grows more intense. I ponder the fates of Kansas and Israel, the Constitution and the hard-working people who one day will be in the top 3 percent of income earners -- then be taxed up the ass so those damned hippies can smoke their marijuana cigarettes.
Worst of all, Anita is constantly breathing down my neck, spying on me and deleting my objective news stories every night after I go to sleep. She insists I'm crazy and refuses to let me so much as answer the phone. I guess no one will really understand the depth of insight, intellect and rationality we pro-American voters possess.
Everything I say to her falls on deaf ears, so I rarely talk aloud anymore.
"Will you shut up over there!"
Barack+Obama John+McCain US USA |
|
| Print - Comment - Send to a Friend - More from this Author |
|
|
|
Newsletter
Subscribe
Contact
Search
