"Lions & Tigers & Bears!"

Scene from "The Wizard of Oz"

A woman in my building at my work, who was one of the rare McCain-Palin supporters, said today that she was afraid and doesn't feel as secure now that Barack Obama will be president. Mind you, she said this in front of me and not my bi-racial friend, "Jimmy". She said that his race had nothing to do with it and she was certain that he is a fine man who will govern as best he can. So, I asked her what was she afraid of? She said that his "youth and inexperience" is what worried her about with him.

She said that was the only deciding factor in whether she cast her vote his way or McCain's way. I assured her that she had nothing to worry about. I said to her... "He's 47 years old, not 27 years old." I reminded her that John F. Kennedy was 45 years old when he entered the White House and he did just fine. Bill Clinton was also 47 years old when he entered the White House and, despite the sex scandals, he left the country in pretty good shape. I don't know if that made her feel a little bit better or not.

She is scared... NOW she's scared! Well, I was scared too. Do you want to know when I was scared? I'm glad you asked. I was scared in 2000, around this time, when they pulled off that farce that they called an election and allowed this man, George W. Bush, to become president by a Supreme Court vote. I was scared after believing that we got bamboozled and the election process was really flawed... that the fix was in from now on and maybe I was wasting my time voting in the first place, if this was going to be the way things were done. I was scared knowing this man was now president and rumored not to be the brightest bulb on the tree in the first place.

I was terrified when he appointed an attorney general who was judged by the people of his own state to be so abhorrent that they would rather vote for a recently deceased man, rather than him. I got scared when The Mosad (the Israeli version of the Secret Service) and German Intelligence (not to mention our own FBI) told his administration all during the summer of 2001 that there were certain individuals in Florida that needed watching because they were taking flying lessons but, not learning how to land. I was horrified to learn that he and his administration chose to do nothing and then on September 11, 2001, all hell broke loose! And, guess what? The same individuals that we were warned about turned out to be the 911 terrorists... their pictures were in the newspapers the very next morning. Somebody knew who they were, right?

Furthermore, I got real scared when they came out with the Patriot Act and started shredding the constitution at will. I got scared when we opened up Guantanamo Bay and started holding suspected terrorists in custody without due process of law for months on end. I was scared when instead of directing all of our energy towards getting Osama Bin Laden and the folks that made all of this happen, this president started beating the drums for a war in Iraq... a country we had already beaten 12 years before and had surrounded by our ships and posed no danger to us. We were told that they had weapons of mass destruction and they posed a danger to the world. We've been over there since 2003 and nobody has yet to find a weapon of mass destruction of any kind.

Then, there was Katrina and how I saw people standing on roofs, wading through flooded streets, and the government agency that was supposed to help them, (which was headed by one of our president's college buddies who couldn't find a birthday cake in a bakery) was no where to be found. Now, we have the bank failures, the near financial collapse of the U.S. economy, and the possible bailout of three big automobile makers. If this hasn't frightened everybody then, I don't know what can. If this is an example of mature and experienced leadership then, I'm really afraid!

After all of that... this woman is afraid NOW??? She was willing to vote for four more years of THAT??? Please!!! I would have rathered she said that she didn't vote for Barack because he's black... at least, that I could understand. I'm not scared of lions and tigers and bears but, I've been scared during the Bush Administration!!!