This presidential election cycle had been one of the longest in recent memory, mainly as a result of the tediously dragged out Democratic Primaries. This partly explains why I am sort of bothered and bewildered to come across a Rasmussen Report indicating 9% of the sample to be undecided a mere hours before the actual polling booths open.

Whatever your pet issue, it is simply ridiculous that you have not made up your mind who best to lead the country after the conventions and the four debates. On all the crucial issues, e.g., the economy, the war, abortion, judicial appointments the candidates’ position could not be put in any clearer contrast than they have propounded at these events.

Let us revisit these issues for refreshers:

The war: McCain was for the surge and victory, Obama for cut and run and negotiate.

Economy: both voted for the bailout. Obama is for “spreading the wealth around,” McCain is for growing the wealth.

 Abortion: Obama for on-demand availability; McCain for parental consent restrictions.

Foreign Policy: Obama wants to make us more like Europe; McCain believes in American Exceptionalism.

Energy Policy: McCain is for oil drilling domestically; Obama believes domestic oil production is pointless.

It is a very reliable indicator that somebody is going to effectively fight for our interests if that somebody has already effectively put life and limb on the line to defend us. Such a candidate is Lee Zeldin.

Deploying him to Washington after his successful tour of duty in Iraq is a very logical next step for the proven fighter and defender of the American Dream.

Pull the lever for Zeldin, McCain/Palin on Tuesday and tell your friends and family to do the same.

The MLK dream was: that people shall be judged by the content of their character not the color of the skin. Secretary Powell’s endorsement of B. Hussein Obama is the exact anti-thesis to this dream.

When there was buzz about Gen. Powell being the best presidential timber in the yard, he did not make public his party affiliation. Or if he did, I simply missed it. My take is, Gen. Powell was acutely aware that the color of his skin was a significant component of his popularity. A Democrat/Republican angle would slice deeply into that popularity, especially given the fact that the black community is overwhelmingly a Democratic constituency.

It is misleading to assume that he is a Republican just because he was SOSOTUS in a Republican administration. After all this Compassionate Conservatism administration nurtured a Clintonite Mineta in its cabinet.

The Powel BHO endorsement is a quintessential anti-MLK moment. It is another eloquent illustration that this presidential race is all about race. Why else is BHO billed as the transformational candidate by the MSM? It is the triumph of pigmentation over character.

Kudos to Geraldine Ferraro for being the first one to point out this fact in public. She was taken to the cleaners by the mainstream media for it. But it only further illustrates the point how this presidential race is all about race.

Speaking of racial divides, B. Hussein Obama did consciously select his racial identity. Despite his white mother and his white grandparents who raised him, he went off as a teenager to seek out his black identity. Contrast this with Tiger Woods who publicly objects being identified as an African American on the grounds that it is disrespectful of his mother’s Asian heritage to be so labeled.

When BHO repeatedly points out that he looks different from the presidents pictured in the dollar bills, better believe that he is race baiting. Also better believe that he is doing it rather effectively. This is the only explanation that seems to make sense why there is a dearth of campaign posters and bumper stickers in the NY Suffolk county neighborhoods.

I consider it an act of political cowardice to buy into this racial nonsense. We have too much at stake in this election. It infuriates me that some are intimidated into not expressing ourselves. It infuriates me that my white neighbor who took from me a McCain/Palin yard poster but does not put it up on her yard because of her next door neighbor which happens to be a household occupied by a black family.

 If we are cowered into not doing what we want during an Obama candidacy, what else will we volunteer not to do in an Obama presidency?

For the record, I am a first-generation American. I am a non-white, married into three generations of a white family.  I am a registered Independent who voted for President Bush in 2004 as my first vote as an American citizen. I am outraged that in this election cycle we seem to be effectively intimated by the Obama campaign.

This is a rejoinder to Mona Charen’s column entitled Fair Taxation.

There are Reid, Pelosi, Obama, and ‘The Combination Thereof’. It's a housewives' tale but the secret to making delicious tea: you put one spoon for each person served and one spoon for the pot.

It's a basic dialectic of existence that the combination counts for something most important. That's why marriage is not just tea for two. There's the husband (hopefully a man), the wife (most preferably a woman), and the combination thereof.

When all three branches of government is controlled by the redistributive ideology, the fact that all three are in, is the lethal ingredient that brings in the doomsday scenario.

The judiciary will follow suit. If government no longer protects and promotes the pursuit of happiness, wealth and the most productive elements of society would ship offshore to Monaco, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and kindred places.

Then America becomes a wounded giant left to lick its wounds. This definitely is the change that Obama-mania promises.

As it is wisely said, any nation always gets the leadership it deserves!

Regain & Sustain                

Win Clean . . . Regain                

McCain/Palin

Political advertisement should not be considered negative if it contains an element of truth. It enhances the substance of the political conversation. An ad is negative only to the extent that it distorts or conceals facts for the purpose of deceiving the public.

In this respect, the McCain/Palin ad which divulges the Obama/Ayers collaboration on certain projects should be considered a valuable public service. It exposes the quality of judgment and decision making that a potential president has.

Here are a couple of things which bother me. I wonder if a few others are worried about them:

1.     Why is there very little talk of what Obama thought and did while in Columbia and Harvard. I contend that those intellectual maturation years provide a window into the ideological underpinnings of Obama’s ‘Audacity of Hope,’ before the preaching of Rev. Wright nurtured it to full bloom.

2.    The most notable executive position which Obama held was as chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. His initiatives, decisions, and accomplishments in that job ought to be a good part of the campaign conversation. The same executive reflexes may flourish in the Oval Office!

Roughly a century before the Nazis swept into power, in his Ode to Germany the poet Henrich Heine wrote, “Oh Germany, land of oak and stupidity”! The thought of a poet writing a century hence, “Oh America, your karma is to go down in Obama-mania!” is a torment to the soul, indeed.