Place: Arby's
Lunch: All-American Roast Burger (no tomato), Bigger Beef n' Cheddar, Coke
The "Roast Burger" is a regular roast beef sandwich garnished like a hamburger, with pickles, onions, lettuce, tomato, mustard, ketchup, and maybe mayo...I can't remember for sure. Kind of one of those "Why didn't they think of that before" things. Probably because it doesn't quite work flavor-wise. Might be better without the mustard. But the Bigger Beef n' Cheddar...now that's a thing of beauty.
The elections are over, so the endless barrage of campaign ads can once again make way for the endless barrage of scare tactic ads for drugs by scumbag pharmaceutical companies. Think YOU are sick of political ads? Try living in Iowa. Our early caucuses and straw polls mean these guys have been hammering us with ads for TWO YEARS.
It was interesting to watch the development of Obama through all this. He started out sloppy...he would say the wrong buzz word or drop the wrong name in many of his early speeches. A local media guy would later point it out to him, and he'd bust out laughing and correct himself. He did a lot of that, and his opponents would point these out as examples of inexperience that could be dangerous as President.
But everybody forgot about that after Iowa. His victory speech was a grand slam. I heard his speech that snowy night while driving on some two-lane blacktop in Illinois and thought to myself "WOW. Now THAT sounds presidential". This was a guy the Democrats could market without resorting to their usual hate-filled scare marketing. This was a guy who could win on face time.
In fact, I thought the scare marketing was toned down quite a bit this year. It was certainly there...the Democrats had their "Palin is stupid" rhetoric going before she even was officially announced...but I thought the reasonable Americans could ultimately look at both candidates and say "Both of these guys are good people." I don't recall ever being able to say that in my memory of being able to understand campaigns (my first being Carter-Ford in 1976...my grade-school teachers were complete Carter shills). That's impressive considering the Democrats...both leaders and average registered voters...have been beating the country to death with their arrogant "hate hate hate Bush is stupid" bashing for the past six years.
Now that the Democrats have what they've always wanted...a complete dictatorship of the federal government...it'll be interesting to see what they do with it, and how the country responds to it.
They have no one left to hate.
They have no one left to blame.
They have no more excuses.
Without their rage and with no one left to blame when things go wrong, will they even know how to act as human beings?
