"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation."  Sarah Palin

I've been listening to this constant drumbeat from McCain and Palin and their surrogates about who's a "real American" vs. who's a "fake American" and I have to confess that as someone who spent the first twenty-plus years of my life as a "real American" and the last twenty as a "fake American," I'm suffering from a little bit of an identity crisis right now.  Sarah Palin's comment was just the beginning.  Last week, a Republican congresswoman called for an investigation into which members of Congress are "anti-American."  (Didn't Joe McCarthy ferret them all out about fifty years ago?)  This was followed by a North Carolina congressman who was introducing John McCain at a rally and said that "liberals hate real Americans."  Then, when asked why McCain is trailing Obama in Virginia polls, a McCain spokesperson said that McCain had strong support in "real Virginia," which I'm guessing is a commonwealth in "real America."  And when you consider that "Joe the Plumber" has become the official McCain/Palin mascot, you realize that the McCain/Palin home-stretch strategy isn't all that complicated.  McCain/Palin are holding themselves out as the ticket of church-going, blue-collar folks from small towns in red states who are the "real Americans."  Obama/Biden represent the elitist, educated, white-collar, big city types who are all obviously "fake Americans."

Well, being a native-born citizen of "real America" and a naturalized citizen of "fake America," I have a few thoughts on this subject.  I established my "real American" bona fides growing up in a mining town in Montana.  As a kid, my next-door neighbor across the alley was a copper mine.  And when that mine was shut down and abandoned, it became our neighborhood playground.  Both of my grandfathers and my dad worked in the mines.  Nobody before my generation went to college unless they were going to become a priest.  I went to a Catholic high school and helped pay my way through a state college as a sewer worker.  John McCain and Sarah Palin think "Joe the Plumber" embodies blue-collar "real America"?  I was "Joe the Sewer Worker" in a freakin' mining town in Montana.  And when you hear Sarah Palin extol the virtues of "Joe Six-Pack" because apparently being a hard drinker makes you a better American?  Before I quit drinking, I was "Joe Wild Turkey with a Twelve-Pack Chaser" which was, after all, why I eventually quit drinking.  So I guess in my drinking days I was "Captain America."  Funny thing, though -- I didn't even realize I was being patriotic at the time.  I was just trying to get loaded.

But here's the thing.  With the help, support, and encouragement (read: "threats") of my blue-collar Irish Catholic parents, my five blue-collar Irish Catholic siblings and I all earned college degrees, and a few of us went on to earn advanced degrees.  But you know, despite all that book learnin', it never occurred to any of us that our parents' were only sending us to college to secretly subvert the small town, blue-collar, "real American" values of their kids.  Until McCain and Palin opened my eyes, I always thought that my parents sacrificed so much because they wanted their kids to do just a little bit better -- educationally and economically -- than they did.  Maybe I'm just naive, but I always kind of thought that was a cornerstone of the American dream.

And chalk this up to a lack of introspection on my part, but when I was practicing law in the latte-sipping Babylon of Portland, Oregon, I didn't feel like I was less of an American than when I was throwing back boilermakers in a blue-collar bar at the end of my shift at the local sewer utility.  Even today, when I'm sitting in the pews at Mass, I don't feel like I'm more of an American than some of my friends who choose to sit in other pews or no pews at all.  With the possible exception of the multiple novenas I'm starting nine days before election day, I've always felt like my relationship with God had nothing to do with being an American -- real or fake.

So here's an idea and I think it's just crazy enough to work.  Until we can officially divide "real America" from "fake America," and institute some kind of visa program that limits the amount of time big city kids can visit their small town parents before being deported, maybe we can put the division of our country on hold.  I've got to believe there will be plenty of time to split up the country and turn families against each other based on arbitrary divisions after the election's over.  So maybe we could back-burner the whole "real American" vs. "fake American" thing and focus instead on figuring out why ninety percent of us are "depressed Americans."  Now, I know we're going to need some sort of trivial distraction to take people's minds off of the impending civil war so I was thinking -- and I'm just spitballing here -- how about the economy?  Yeah, I'm pretty sure I heard there was something going on with the economy in this country.

"Secretary Powell says his endorsement is not about race.  OK, fine.  I am now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates he has endorsed.  I'll let you know what I come up with." 

The above was Rush Limbaugh's e-mail to political reporters yesterday morning after learning that Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama.  Spin this anyway you want, Limbaugh is saying two things:  First, Limbaugh is saying that General Powell's endorsement of Obama amounts to nothing more than "black folks sticking together."  Second, when General Powell says that his endorsement of Obama is not about race, Limbaugh is calling him a liar.  So now the question is, what does John McCain have to say about the matter.  Well, if McCain does have anything to say about Limbaugh's blatantly racist comment, it's tough to hear him over all those crickets chirping on the straight talk express.

You might recall a couple weeks ago when Congressman John Lewis said that McCain and Palin were "playing with fire" by stoking up their crowds/mobs with innuendo that Obama had some sinister unknown background -- statements which, in turn, elicited shouts from the crowd/mob of "kill him" and "bomb him" at the mere mention of Obama's name.  Congressman Lewis said this type of incendiary talk was dangerous and he invoked the memories of George Wallace inciting his crowds/mobs with hate-filled speeches as a cautionary example.  As a man who was beaten nearly to death by George Wallace's Alabama state troopers on Bloody Sunday, this was a statement that Congressman Lewis undoubtedly did not make lightly.  Instead of pausing for a moment to reflect on the somber warnings issued by a man who John McCain had described just weeks earlier as one of the three wisest people he knows, however, McCain instead feigned outrage at Lewis's remarks and sought to take political advantage of them by claiming that Congressman Lewis had called him and Palin racists and segregationists -- a tortured and absurd interpretation of Lewis's remarks.

With nothing substantive left to talk about, McCain continues to ride his manufactured victim complex for whatever he can squeeze out of it.  Just yesterday morning, McCain again brought up the subject on Fox "News" Sunday and said that Barack Obama should repudiate Congressman Lewis's statements.  McCain went on to state, "I have repudiated every statement made by any fringe person in the Republican Party."

Which brings us back to Rush Limbaugh.  Will McCain risk alienating Limbaugh and his legions of dittoheads by calling Limbaugh's statement what it is -- a racist smear of General Powell?  Will McCain man up and repudiate Limbaugh's racist smear?  Or having already jettisoned every other principle he once held, will McCain continue his pandering ways and, at best, offer some tepid mealy-mouthed distancing from Limbaugh's statement or, at worst, just give Limbaugh a pass completely?  I know what my bet is.  Any takers?

"It wouldn't be appropriate to have a festive occasion while a near tragedy or a terrible challenge is presented in the form of a natural disaster." 

So said John McCain this morning (8/31/08) on "Fox News Sunday" in explaining that he might call for the Republican convention to be suspended because of Hurricane Gustav.  Hard to argue with him on this point.  A festive occasion during a natural disaster would be wildly inappropriate.  Which makes you wonder what John McCain was doing three years ago on the day that Hurricane Katrina was pummeling the gulf coast and the levees were breaking in New Orleans.  Well, as it turns out, McCain was having a birthday party in Arizona with President Bush to celebrate his 69th birthday.  (White House file photo below.)

So is McCain's new "no parties while Americans are dying in large numbers" policy just another one of his convenient election-year flip-flops like offshore drilling or the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy?   Or maybe McCain doesn't consider one of his birthday parties to be a "festive occasion" anymore in light of his advancing age.  But boy I don't know -- he and Bush sure seem to be having a pretty good time posing with that birthday cake.  Heck, when you look at those big old goofy grins on their faces, you would think that Bush and McCain didn't have a care in the world.  To look at those two, you wouldn't even know that at that very moment, just three states away, thousands of Americans were dying, hundreds of thousands more were being left homeless, and the City of New Orleans was degenerating rapidly into "Lord of the Flies" on the bayou.

Oh well, the important thing is that it didn't rain on their party.  Let them eat cake.

For all his vain efforts to try and distinguish himself from George W. Bush, John McCain demonstrated in his first presidential decision that he's not just a carbon copy of Bush -- he's a clone.  More troubling is that McCain has chosen to emulate Bush in the area that has been the hallmark of the disaster that has been the Bush Presidency.  In selecting Sarah Palin -- an individual who, when McCain began his 2008 campaign for President, was still the Mayor of Wasilla, Akaska (Pop. 8,400) -- McCain proved that, like Bush, he is far more interested in politics than governing.  Think Harriet Miers and Heckuva Job Brownie.  Actually, that's not fair.  Harriet Miers has more government experience than Sarah Palin and she wasn't being nominated for Vice President.  Just think Heckuva Job Brownie.

After all of his bluster about the importance of experience and choosing somebody who can step into the Oval Office without missing a beat, McCain chose a person who's previous experience in handling confrontations with other governments was her ability to resolve a zoning dispute with the neighboring town of Moose Drool. 

McCain's recklessness becomes all the more stark when you consider that roughly one in five U.S. Presidents have died in office and none of them were seventy-two years old with recurrent bouts of cancer when they took office.  So if McCain is elected President and has a heart attack on inauguration night because he decided to celebrate by popping one of his little blue pills and having his annual romp with Cindy a couple of months early, does anybody really sleep well at night with the thought that Sarah Palin will be staring down Vladimir Putin on the morning of January 21, 2009?

Nobody can even seriously argue that this was anything but a political stunt on McCain's part.  Can anyone say with a straight face that if the newly elected Governor of Alaska and former Mayor of the village of Wasilla was named "Sam Palin," he would even be in the top 500 contenders for the ticket?  Of course not.  But, just like Bush, McCain is willing to gamble with this nation's future if there's political advantage in it for him. 

To put it bluntly, in light of John McCain's age and health, the statistical reality is that Sarah Palin's chances of becoming President of the United States are only slightly lower than McCain's.  Of course, at the end of the day it strikes me that John McCain is really the only citizen of this country who can rest easy with the thought of a Vice President Sarah Palin.  Because if Sarah Palin ever has to take over as President, John McCain won't be around to suffer the consequences.  Too bad he wasn't thinking of the rest of us when he made his choice.

In an interview with Katie Couric that aired yesterday morning, John McCain was asked about the fact that he was either too rich or too mentally infirm to remember how many houses he owned.  (Katie didn't put it quite that way.)  The ol' straight talker's first response was to tackle the issue head-on by reminding Katie that he was a P.O.W.  (Huh?)  McCain then immediately went into a discussion about how "blessed" he's been financially by the opportunities of this great nation and he challenged anyone who would "disparage" his blessings.

Now since McCain has never earned a dime in the private sector during his entire seventy-two years on this planet, you might ask yourself what are these "opportunities" he's been so "blessed by" that now allow him to own more houses than he can remember.  Well, it turns out it was really only one opportunity but McCain jumped on it when it presented itself.  It was when a forty-three-year-old John McCain met a twenty-four-year-old heiress named Cindy Lou Hensley at a party in Hawaii in 1979 and promptly began having an affair with her.  After about a year of cheating on his wife of fifteen years -- the wife who had kept vigil during his entire POW experience -- John and Cindy decided to make it legal and tie the knot so he could move to Cindy's home state of Arizona and run for Congress.  He divorced his wife Carol in April 1980 and married Cindy -- and her money -- a month later.  As you would expect, the wedding was a grand society affair befitting the marriage of a twenty-something debutante to a middle-aged man.  The only blemish to the entire event was the conspicuous absence of the three children who McCain had walked out on and who didn't speak to him for several years afterwards.  But, hey, can there be a bigger downer at your wedding than having your abandoned kids throwing rocks at you while everyone else is throwing rice?

So when John McCain talks about the blessings of marrying a wealthy heiress, we all need to ask ourselves whether the family he abandoned considered his philandering and abandonment to be a "blessing."  When Carol McCain learned that her husband was kicking her to the curb because he had met someone younger and richer, do you think she said to herself, "what a blessing"?  When Carol McCain had to sit her kids down and tell them that their dad wouldn't be coming home anymore because he had met someone younger and richer at a party in Hawaii, do you think they all collectively said, "what a blessing"?  When these same kids read about their middle-aged dad marrying his new twenty-five-year-old wife in the society page of the newspaper, do you think they looked at the photos of the wedding they didn't attend and said, "what a blessing"?  Somehow neither do I.

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3-10) in which Jesus lists those who are blessed.  I've read that passage more times than I can count and I'll be darned if I can remember the passage, "Blessed are the philanderers and those who abandon their family for financial and political gain; for they shall inherit the Bush White House."  Maybe I've just got an old copy.