Published: August 26, 2008 06:20 pm            

McDONALD: Let political games begin

“Every once in a while, you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You can’t do that. It’s gone, gone forever.”

— former U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle

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While it is so seldom that I am right, and nobody usually notices but me I thought I would point out this once per year occurrence. In my August 6 column I predicted the following prior to the Olympics in Beijing. “In its attempt to be open and welcoming, the Chinese government has provided demonstration areas for protesters. Why that is very nice isn’t it?

Odds are you won’t see many protesters in those areas as protesters pay a consequence. According The Washington Post, eight Chinese farmers with a grievance against the government have been consigned to “Olympic limbo.”

During the Olympics, 77 applications were made for protest. All applications were denied and most of the applicants were detained for 30 days.

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When it comes to the English language and how to stumble over it, Sen. Joe Biden is to the Democratic Party what President George Bush is to the Republican Party.

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” Biden said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

Barack Obama said he didn’t take Sen. Biden’s comments personally.

And, of course, last summer Biden attempted to endear himself to an Indian-American supporter by telling him that in Delaware, “you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”

Then of course Sen. Obama has his own gaffes such as saying he has visited 57 states and has one more to go. Or when speaking about healthcare “Everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma, they end up taking up a hospital bed, it costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early and they got some treatment, and a, a breathalyzer, or inhalator, not a breathalyzer.”

Well, apparently between the two of them they have lost the votes of some African-Americans, Indian Americans and offended alcoholic asthmatic young people everywhere.

“On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.” Sen. Barack Obama seeing dead people at a Memorial Day ceremony.

Just when I thought this campaign was going to be boring things look like they could spice up a bit.

Maybe Obama and Biden should curtail their off-the-cuff remarks and just used prepared speeches. Sen. Biden is good at that. No strike that, his speeches are good because he lifts really neat parts of the speeches of others without attribution. In my classes, I think I grade down or fail a student for that.

Then again, on the Republican side Sen. McCain can’t keep track of his houses. Does a condo count as a house? Does it count if it is owned by a trust? This is what truly makes America great that an individual can achieve such a level of success that you need a staff to take care and count of your homes. Perhaps five generations from now many Indian Americans can succeed from the wealth of the Dunkin Donut or Seven-Eleven trust funds established by their immigrant ancestors.

I can hardly wait for Sen. McCain’s vice presidential pick. While Obama has Sideshow Bob, we can expect Krusty the Clown for the republican VEEP (Krusty and Sideshow are characters on “The Simpsons”).

Not to be left out of politics, Madonna began her new tour this week which included a couple of video montages. Images of destruction and global warming flashed on to a screen during a video interlude at Madonna’s concert in Cardiff, Wales, on Saturday night. Those were followed by pictures of Adolf Hitler, Zimbabwe’s authoritarian ruler Robert Mugabe — and McCain.

A later sequence at the concert showed slain Beatle John Lennon, climate activist Al Gore, Mahatma Gandhi and finally Obama, McCain’s democratic rival. I think the material girl may be a Democrat, but I could be wrong.

Tim McDonald can be reached at timothy.mcdonald@agsfaculty.indwes.edu

        

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