OHIO FLORIDA PENNSYLVANIA AND SPIRITUALITY

Well, it looks like it's starting to happen; Americans are starting to turn away from McCain/Palin and toward Obama/Biden, at least in the biggest of the potential swing states. If Obama takes Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida? Well then John McCain can kiss it goodbye.

I really can't say how much I think last week's shenanigans hurt McCain. He was basically saying, "I'm going to stop campaigning and go to Washington to 'be the President' and get this bailout thing knocked out." So he goes, inserts himself into the debate, and gets creamed BY THE GOP MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE. He goes to DC and gets himself all involved in the bailout, while Barack Obama sits quietly letting McCain make the mistake.

Let's face it; John McCain failed in his first attempt to be the President and failed miserably. And failed on the economy: an issue that he is completely unqualified to even discuss, little less actually deal with.

It proves how divided Republicans really are - as opposed to Democrats whose divisions were heightened by the fact that Bill and Hillary Clinton were the dividers.

It also proves how inadequate Senator McCain is when it comes to presidential leadership. Yes, he has crossed the aisle in the Senate but not for bi-partisan gain. No he crossed the aisle because the opposition party ACTUALLY LIKES HIM BETTER THAN HIS OWN PARTY.

It also shows how impulse is not a quality we want in our President.

And then there's Governor Palin, who I'm starting to feel sorry for. She really has no clue what she's saying. By agreeing to this Veep position, she has allowed herself to become an object of ridicule and parody. Yes, she was a bold choice, but not a very smart choice. She really has no idea (or I'd say interest) in what goes on in the rest of the world. She has no sense of history, or how it affects the present. She's another C+ student thinking that her instincts (and her love of God) qualify her to run the country. So all she really does is remind the electorate that she's George W Bush redux.

So here's what the GOP has put up for the American public to see:

A presidential candidate who is, old, impulsive, hated by his party, and is only a good candidate if Iraq is the signal issue of the day, and is a LOUSY candidate to speak on the economy.

A Vice-Presidential candidate who reminds the country of the out-going President [who is so despised that his presence in the bailout debate just made people hate the bailout even more.] And a Veep candidate who is so ignorant of basic facts and figures that her only hope is to elicit feelings of pity.

Let's at least hope that's what people see, because they still might see a "black guy" on election day and pull the trigger for the two above-described folk.

But it would appear that people are finally seeing that the GOP really isn't offering anything except fear.

And Obama? Here's what I think...

I think he's the first politician in my lifetime who really can speak to what I'll call spiritual principles: humility, justice, kindness, courtesy, empathy. I'm not saying he's perfect or anything like that, but in the cesspool that is politics, he's the first one I can look at and say, yes, he does operate under some real spiritual guidance. I don't mean the George W Bush egotistical fashion of mistaking the decisions of his own ego as messages from a Higher Power. No I'm talking about a set of principles in which the other person is more important. Where instilling needless fear and creating enemies to bring people together is a sin.

I think that, in 1993, the Democrats made a deal with Bill Clinton: you get out there and prove that we're not losers and we'll overlook your ungenerous nature; your self-centered personality; your inner anger; your addictions. I think the GOP made the same deal in 2000: make us winners again Mr Bush and we'll overlook your character flaws. But the problem with the GOP is that, more than any other group in the world, they define "winning" in this equation: money=spirituality. And that is an untenable position. Money is not Holy, and the pursuit of it is the least Holy thing in the world. But when one believes that money is Holy, then one's acquisition of money would indicate that one is on the same side of God.

I really believe Barack Obama is the one person who can ease the worship of money. It has to stop, or at least ease, or the United States will continue to polarize into a country of haves and have nots. Money is not the answer. Human beings are the answer. At least when the question is, "into what should we put our best, our most courageous, our most caring efforts?"