Presidential Debates Round 2: A Town Brawl?

Tomorrow night we have Round 2 of the McCain-Obama Debates, and this one will be in a “Town Hall” format (with questions from the audience and the Internet), moderated by Tom “I Used To Be A Newsman” Brokow.  Based on today’s events on Wall Street, and the Full-Frontal Assault by both campaigns on each other; this might just prove to be the most interesting one of all.

This is supposedly McCain’s forte, these give and take sessions with regular folks like us…you know, the guys who are lucky to have one home let alone 12.  Regular folks like us who have to have both parents work, or have one parent with two jobs; not a Senate position that pays six figures (or a CEO job that pays eight) annually and a generous pension to boot.  Normal, average folks who struggle to pay their monthly bills, put food on the table, and try not to go broke because of Health Care costs.  Yup, you betcha’…regular folks just like us.  Questions that will come from an audience who could care less about Weathermen, and William Whatshisname and any schoolyard terrorists…er, bullies…that Senator Obama may have known because he was in the same third grade class as they were.  Yeah, this is Johnny Boy’s favorite format…until tomorrow.

Because that’s when Johnny Boy goes nuclear.

In his hate filled, trash talking campaign speech today, you could just sense that if Senator Obama were there in front of him, there would be a fight.  The hate and venom that was seething forth from the podium like a dry-ice fog at a 1977 Yes Concert was hard to miss; it was like watching the dials on a reactor slowly creep into the Red Zone.  It wasn’t the polls that made him this way, hell…it wasn’t even righteous indignation at the Wall Street crowd that had him mad as hell.  It was two little words that were whispered around the campaign for months, two little words that when uttered in this man’s presence could send him to a guaranteed fit of rage.  Two hushed words that have been avoided for over two years; the ones that Obama supporters have been waiting to hear for weeks now.

Pssssssssssst….”Keating Five”.

The Keating Five was finally mentioned by the surrogates all weekend, building up to the release of a nicely done 15 minute video on the history of the Great American Savings And Loan Scandal from the late 1980’s by the Obama Team today on a separate web site and on You Tube: http://www.keatingeconomics.com/

There it is, in all it’s infamous glory, no longer a whisper but out into the light of day like a scream made by a wailing banshee.  You could see the anger being tightly controlled as he uttered the words of his oh-so poorly worded text (Johnny Boy, you REALLY need better writers.  I’d offer my services gratis, but I’ll only work for honorable people).   You could see that the very fact that he was resorting to the most vile of campaign tactics in the past few days wasn’t paying off for him…and he knew it too.  Imagine!  The sheer AUDACITY of the Stock Market to pick THIS moment to COLLAPSE and overshadow his well-planned moment of attack but a mere week after he single-handedly saved the economy (and the Republic) by his Divine influence on his fellow Republicans to vote for the bailout Bill!  (Curse you, Barack Obama!)

I’m almost certain that Johnny Boy was getting ready to have a very different Town Hall tomorrow night.  He would have most certainly laid a trap for Obama to fall into: he could mention something about his middle name of Hussein, or his connection to a 60’s radical (now a Professor)  who lives in his neighborhood who committed acts of violence when Obama was 8.  Perhaps he could mention that there were more terrorists in Obama’s closet, and maybe now was the time he could in fact reveal that Barack Obama was responsible for the Crimean War.  (See?  I predicted this just last week!)

Well, like Bob Dylan said, “It’s all over now, baby blue”.  You’re just going to have to discuss ISSUES tomorrow night, Johnny Boy…that is, unless your mainstream media-whore Tom Brokow feeds you a question on the matter (which wouldn’t surprise me at all).  Otherwise, you’re on your own.  You’ll have to talk about how your Medical Plan would be the single greatest middle-class tax increase in history by taxing employer health benefits.  You’ll also have to talk about how part of how your plan on paying for this is by cuts in Medicare and Medicaid; that should win you Florida, Johnny Boy.  You’re going to have to talk about paying the bills around that mythical kitchen table (one of the dozen or so you have)…especially paying the Mortgages.

Ah yes, Mortgages!  As in, the very instruments that got us into this Financial Disaster; the ones that were made possible not only through greed and avarice on Wall Street, but made possible by the very legislation you and Saint Philip of Deregulation championed.  Mortgages that are making Banks and other Financial Institutions fail, leaving thousands of stockholders and Taxpayers a hell of a lot poorer…some whose life savings and 401Ks were invested in those companies and who are now wiped out.  Mortgages that are toppling the Stock Market; not only causing our Financial Markets to crash, but others across the globe.  You’ll be forced to play by the rules, Johnny Boy; unless you decide to go tangential like Sarah Baby…only on you, it will appear like the onset of senility; not hubris masquerading as carelessness.

Remember…YOU started this, Johnny Boy.  YOU decided to go negative.  Barack Obama has already indicated that he will not be the first one throwing the punch, but he will certainly be the last one throwing one.  This all could have been avoided.  You decided to throw caution to the wind maintaining your poor judgment of the past few weeks…hell, the past few years.  The same poor judgment that the Senate found you lacking in the Keating Five scandal.  You weren’t found guilty, censured, or exonerated either.  You were damned by your own poor judgment…IT’S PUBLIC RECORD.  So tomorrow night, I’d stay away from playing in the mud, Johnny Boy because if you do, those two words that you hate so much will be brought up in this Debate because THEY ARE RELEVANT TO THE CURRENT FINANCIAL CRISIS AND TO THIS CAMPAIGN.  The two words that Barack Obama will utter, and explain clearly to the American people as only he can; millions of them watching on television.  The two words that will make you lose it:

Keating Five.

Senator Obama, duck fast…I hear Johnny Boy has a mean right hook.

“Never start a fight, but ALWAYS finish it.” – Ambassador David Sheridan (Retired) (Babylon 5/jms)

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