Listen up!

Most of you know that John McCain is running for president of the United States. What almost all of you do not seem to realize is that he is the nominee of the Republican Party. Senator McCain has taken great pains to hide the fact that he ran for and won the nomination in primary contests that featured millions of republicans voting for him because he is a member of the party in good standing as he has been for most of his adult life and that he is indeed the nominee of the Republican Party.

His opponent, Barack Obama, has repeatedly chided Senator McCain for supporting republican policies during his quarter of a century in congress and for standing shoulder to shoulder with the present incumbent, George W. Bush, more - way more - than ninety percent of the time. Senator McCain responds, of course, by ignoring the fact that he is a member of the G.O.P. and that all of his backing is from members of that same party – again that Republican Party which has been in charge of the nation for the past eight years and for most of the last generation.

John McCain is in lock step with George W. Bush with regard to the two wars we are fighting. He agrees with Bush that tax cuts for large corporations and for the richest among us should be made permanent. Until it became unpopular with voters, he was with Bush in wanting to privatize Social Security. I could go on, but even those of you who support Senator McCain must agree that he certainly appears to be a republican, even if he says doesn’t act like one. It’s kind of like the actor who says he isn’t a doctor but plays one on television; John McCain isn’t a republican he just wears the label as he plays one on the hustings.

Were John McCain to be elected – and I use the subjunctive with great hope – he would proudly wear the label `republican’. He would choose the overwhelming majority of his cabinet and thousands of other appointees from the ranks of what? That’s right, the Republican Party. Now just what kind of change would John McCain bring to Washington? None, you say; you’re damn right, `none' is the answer to that great question.

Now bear with me for just a few more minor points of logic. If John McCain is the nominee of the Republican Party, and if John McCain appoints almost all republicans to senior positions in the government, and if John McCain continues the foreign policy of George W. Bush, and if John McCain supports virtually all of the domestic policy initiatives of the George W. Bush administration – as he has for these woeful last eight years. Can we properly label him both a supporter of George W. Bush and above all can we categorize him as being a republican? YOU’RE DAMNED RIGHT WE CAN.

Just a little bit more now; stick with me. I – like the vast majority of the American people – blame George W. Bush for a terrible foreign policy that led us into one war that should never have been fought, a war terribly costly in blood, treasure and international prestige; the policy that fought the war that should have been fought without the necessary men and munitions because the president took his eye of that war to fight the unnecessary one. I – again like most Americans blame - George W. Bush for ignoring the financial crisis that built like a tsunami on his watch that has now led to the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. In all of this, John McCain was and remains one of George Bush’s greatest enablers.

George W. Bush and John McCain are joined at the hip. They are members of and true believers in the in the philosophy and polices espoused by the Republican Party and both have been supported in their leadership of that party as they took us down the road that leads to ruin if we do not change course.

The Republicans have put us in the position we are in as a nation. George Bush and his prime supporters, including John McCain, have now entrusted the leadership of the party and – they hope – the nation into the hands of John McCain.

Obviously, if you have a brain and you have read and understood the above, you will be punishing the Republican Party and its new leader, John McCain, for leading us on fools’ errands both foreign and domestic, and you will all be voting for Barack Obama for president of the United States on November 4, 2008.

If you’re not for Obama, you’re clearly b.s.n’ me, but, more important, you’re b.s.n’ yourself.