John McCain lost the election due to mistakes that are the hallmarks of failed High School Student Council Elections. These are four of the lessons that John McCain should have remembered from High School:

1: The Homecoming Queen is rarely a good candidate: high school kids are smart enough to realize that candidates whose main appeal is their image usually have neither the ability nor the desire to serve their community.  In choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain assumed that her image would outweigh her lack of substance. It didn’t.

2: Avoid brown-nosing the Administration: in high school, the candidate who publicly tows the Principal’s line at the students’ expense is destined to fail. By voting with President Bush against the interests of the American people 95% of the time, John McCain made just such an alignment.

3: Regular Kids resent Rich Kids and their followers: High School kids have little respect for rich kids. So when a rich kid tries to “get in” with the regular kids with the help of one of his followers, they both become social pariahs. In recruiting “Joe the Plumber” as his mascot, John McCain assumed that Joe would bolster his popularity with the middle class.

4: Don’t Play Dirty: playing dirty usually backfires and, additionally, makes a person look bad (worse) in the community. John McCain’s attempts to tie Barack Obama to terrorists, communists, extremists, and elitists had just that effect.

By now, we’ve all heard John McCain tout “Joe the Plumber” (an unlicensed plumber) as his poster child for the middle-class American, but what many Americans don’t know is that John McCain went through a lengthy selection process (even longer than the selection process for Sarah Palin) to find the right poster child to exploit.

Here are the top 10 Runners-Up that John McCain had been considering:

#1- Sam the Eagle
John McCain was really enthusiastic about the possibilities of recruiting Sam the Eagle; he was a stoic speaker and an iconic representation of American Values. Sadly, John was crushed when he learned that Sam the Eagle had previously been employed by Jim Henson, a flagrant liberal.

#2- Del tha Funkee Homosapian:
Del was a preferred mascot until his association with a group called the “Gorilaz” came to light. Despite repeated assertions that they are a music group, the McCain campaign was convinced that the Gorilaz might be publicly perceived as an Afro-centric domestic terrorist organization.

#3- Harry the Demolition Expert:
John McCain was initially excited about Harry’s potential, but was disappointed to discover that his nickname was “Crazy Harry” and that focus groups frequently mistook him for Castro.

#4- Shelly the Nurse:
John McCain was really excited about Shelly’s potential as a token middle-class mascot, but backed down after intense pressure from his female staffers. He couldn’t understand why they were so upset, but he just assumed that they had better insight into American’s public perceptions of Asian people.

#5- Mike the Autoworker
Mike was dropped from consideration as soon as word came out that General Motors closed the plant where he worked and outsourced his job to India. Awkward.

#6- Dilbert the Engineer:
Dilbert was under consideration until Dilbert’s perpetual bachelorhood raised questions about his sexual identity.

#7- Cletus the Minstrel:
Cletus was under consideration until John McCain realized that questions about Cletus’ racial identity might be misconstrued as a “race card” attack on Barack Obama and his mixed etnicity.

#8- José the Strawberry Picker
Jose was under consideration until staffers suggested that his public image might negatively affected by the discomfort that Americans feel towards men with mustaches.

#9- Bob the Builder:
Bob the builder was under consideration until one of John McCain’s staffers alerted him that Bob the Builder’s union credentials might come into question.

#10- Larry the Cable Guy:
John McCain had considered recruiting Larry the Cable Guy, but after seeing Delta Farce, he decided that Larry the Cable Guy’s military service record might come into question.

The Republican Party has spent the last few days in an awkward spiral of jingoism, as evidenced by a slew of controversial statements. Let’s review the events of the last few days:

Friday, 10/17:

Representative Michele Bachman (R-Minnesota) states that she is “very concerned that [Barack Obama] may have anti-American views”

Saturday, 10/18

Representative Robin Hayes (R- North Carolina) tells a crowd that “liberals hate real Americans that …believe in God.”

Sunday, 10/19

Sarah Palin levies a new line of attack against Barack Obama by implying that an Obama Presidency would be an “experiment with socialism”.

Tuesday, 10/21:

Sarah Palin is forced to apologize for earlier suggestions that some areas of the United States are “Pro-America”; and that, by association, other areas of the country are less patriotic.

My fellow Americans, this is NOT an isolated series of unrelated Gaffs. These gaffes are the embarrassing side-effect of the Republican Party’s mindset; that it can successfully use the tactics of Joseph McCarthy, a politician who gained power by publicly targeting individuals and groups as Anti-American, Communists, and Atheists.

Yes, these statements are evidence that the Republican Party is returning to the values of McCarthyism to help them win this election. They do, in fact, want to paint Barack Obama as a communist, but they can’t because they wouldn’t be taken seriously.

Instead, the Republican Party is exploiting politically convenient semantics; “socialism” is closely enough associated with “communism” to concern Americans.

What the Republican Party has risked by playing by Joseph McCarthy’s rules is the possibility of redefining the concept of the “Red Scare”.

According to The Hill, Susan Bruce, a campaign blogger for New Hampshire Representative Carol Shea-Porter, was recently forced to resign after she raised the legitimate concern about Sarah Palin’s abysmal public treatment of her children, including her down syndrome afflicted son, Trig:

“I don’t think that putting a scarlet letter on your own teenager and throwing her to the wolves in front of the whole world is something to be proud of [and] I don’t think that using a special needs baby as a prop on late night TV appearances is a value to crow about.”

Since being selected to the Republican Ticket, Sarah Palin has made a continuous spectacle of appearing at public speaking events with Trig. Likewise, Sarah Palin has cast her unwed, pregnant, teenage daughter Bristol into the spotlight in an attempt to emphasise her “traditional family” values.

There is a gratuitous example of misplaced outrage. The GOP’s complaint was that such comments wouldn’t be permissible against Barack Obama. And they’re right.

Complaints about Barack Obama aren’t permissible because Barack Obama is a responsible parent who keeps his children in school, where they belong.

The LAST thing that a pregnant teenager and a mentally challenged infant deserve is the agenda-driven overexposure to the stress of a political campaign. If the Palin Family was being investigated by Social Services, the Palin children would have been placed in protective custody by now.

Susan Bruce was forced to resign because, in the absence of social services, somebody had to raise these legitimate concerns about Sarah Palin’s parenting skills. And in the abscense of the GOPs family values, somebody had to be martyred for doing so.

John McCain has recently complained about YouTube’s policy of removing campaign videos that infringe upon copyright protection laws is unfair.

As John McCain sees it, removing these videos (which frequently use televised debate footage and pop songs before negotiating the rights to them) ’stifles free speech’.

John McCain has no right to cry about the fair usage in the Media. He didn’t see any problem in using songs by The Foo Fighters, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Jackson Browne, Frankie Valli, Van Halen, and Heart without their permission.

In fact, the McCain Campaign continued to use Heart’s song “Barracuda” after they expressly asked him to stop, and Jackson Brown even had to sue the Republican Party to stop John McCain from using his song.

If John McCain wants to cry to youtube, perhaps he should listen to the pleas of the musicians he’s tried to exploit first.

A Quick Tact Quiz for My Readers:

Question: You are a prominent politicians hosting a political rally. While talking about your opponent, your supporters yell “TERRORIST!”, “TRAITOR”, and “KILL HIM!”. Which of the following choices is the right course of action:

A) Calmly ask your supporters to refrain from such inappropriate language
B) Have security remove and detain the supporter who threatened the life of your opponent
c) Accuse your opponent of supporting and attacking your supporters.

If your answer was C, then you might be affiliated with the McCain Campaign.

Yes, the John McCain campaign issued the below statement in response to Barack Obama’s offense at being jeered as a terrorist and traitor (and having his life threatened).

“Barack Obama’s assault on our supporters is insulting and unsurprising….It is clear that Barack Obama just doesn’t understand regular people and the issues they care about.”

It’s inaccurate to say that John McCain took the low road in refusing to defend his opponent against hate speech and death threats. There isn’t a road low enough to describe John McCain’s attacks on Barack Obama’s righteous indignation.

John McCain is counting on the tactics of the Klu Klux Klan to win this election: encourage ignorant peoples’ hate speech and threats against Negroes and hope that he can surf the wave of emotion this causes.

In a move that is sure to rattle Republicans more than Barack Obama’s misinterpreted “lipstick on a pig” comment, conservative columnist David Brooks decried Sarah Palin as a “fatal cancer to the Republican party”. He went on to say that, like George W. Bush, Sarah Palin prejudicially scorns not only liberal ideas, but ideas entirely. Continuing his criticism, he also added that Sarah Palin is “absolutely not ready to be president or vice president”.

Conversely, David Brooks praised Barack Obama as a “dazzling” intellectual with “tremendous powers of social perception”. Furthermore, Mr. Brooks admitted to being highly impressed by Barack Obama’s phenomenal ability to build a team of “the most impressive people in the Democratic party”, adding that the people Barack Obama has chosen are “exactly the people I think most of us would want to choose”.

Mr. Brooks also predicts a 9-Point Obama Victory this November.

It’s a powerful statement about the stability and the electability of the Republican Party when its former mouthpieces are abandoning The SS. GOP. Perhaps they know something that the rest of the Party doesn’t.

In talking about the economy at a rally in Pennsylvania today, John McCain had a rather amusing gaff:

“Across this country, this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners.“

As I see it, there are five possible explanations for this gaff:

1) He had been hoping to invoke his experience as a Prisoner of War (yet again) as one his credentials sometime during this speech.

2) This gaff is the result of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The traumatic experience of campaigning, especially after last night’s rhetorical beat-down at the hands of Barack Obama, has been stressful enough to trigger random flashbacks. These flashbacks, in turn, are the subconcious basis for his Freudian Slip.

3) John McCain shares Ronald Reagan’s senility in addition to his values.

4) This is the latent result of Brain Damage that John McCain suffered during the Vietnam War.

5) This is a desperate cry for help, because Cindy McCain and Sarah Palin have secretly conspired to hold him hostage and force him to run for President.

The Republican Party is actively trying to deprive hundreds of thousands of Americans of their right to vote by illegally purging them from voter rolls, according to a reports by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice and the Public Interest Group USPIRG (their reports are available here and here, respectively).

This disenfranchisement campaign, which is being undertaken by at least 19 State Governments, is in direct violation of Federal Laws that prohibit the purging of voter rolls within 90 Days of a Federal Election. Specific disenfranchisement tactics have also included erroneously listing voters as former convicts, mass flat-out purging, and in the case of Florida, mismailing letters to (black) voters and then using the “failure to deliver these letters” excuse to wipe them from voter rolls.

But all is not lost. Steal Back Your Vote is an organization dedicated to helping you guarantee your right to vote. They also have provided a comic book voters’ guide, which is available by clicking on the picture below