Didn't mean to get all political on your ass...

I am in a blogging drought - I'm doing more reading than writing lately on this, the Internet. I am listening to the debate right now and am about 3/4ths through, and the thing that is really sticking out to me thus far is how John McCain keeps saying "my friend/s" before answering anything.

Between him and Palin I feel like the Republican party is really trying to get everyone to be "besties" with them and not running a fucking country.

OK, I am editing to add that I am annoyed at the following McCain statement in reference to the withdrawal of troops from Iraq: "There was a lot at stake there, my friends. And I can tell you right now that Senator Obama would have brought our troops home in defeat. I'll bring them home with victory and with honor and that is a fundamental difference."

Give me a MFing break. Are you saying then, that the fortunate soldiers who made it home from Vietnam were lacking honor, as many historians purport that the conflict in that region was a draw at best? I have a major issue with the use of the word honor as it relates to either success or failure, as well as the use of the word defeat in reference to the US actions in the Middle East. Is victory or defeat not relative to your unique perspective and level of personal involvement in ANY situation, military or otherwise? In order to declare a winner or loser in this fight, should there not first be a definable enemy, a specific purpose for action, and an established benchmark against which to gauge success? In my view, the nature of our current global climate and the manner in which the US entered this war all but prohibit those broad guidelines from being met.

This is not the American Revolution where you meet on an open field and count the casualties when the cannons run out of ammo. Sophisticated, multi-fronted, covert, far-reaching, culturally misunderstood, morally ambiguous, dangerous,and laden with ethnocentrism. Those are the words I use to characterize the current situation in the Middle East. I certainly don't have most of the information, am ignorant of much of the historical context, and have none of the answers, but I will not back a man, Veteran or not, who can call a return of our soldiers to their families, even if in supposed "defeat", dishonorable.

PS I wish Tom Brokaw would read me bedtime stories every night.

ETA Again: I have been scanning the political blogs for a general idea of how people felt about the debate and something else has pissed me off. It seems to me that there is a widespread assertion across cyberspace that Sen. McCain's addressing Sen. Obama as "that one" was racially motivated. Come on people, lets get some context here - I didn't take it that way when I saw it, and while I thought it might be a tad condescending and mildly un-Presidential, racist it did not seem. As someone known for their hypersensitivity to those types of comments, I was surprised to find this interpretation all over the Internet. What did you think?