GLAD HE'S NOT RUNNING

Former presidential candidate Dr. Carl Perrin is glad he is not running for office in this election. Politicians are pulling out all stops in their effort to dredge up any dirt about their opponents.

Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle of Nevada criticized mainstream Republicans in these words. “"The Republicans have lost their standards, they've lost their principles ... really that's why the machine in the Republican Party is fighting against me.” Her opponent, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is using her words against her.

In Connecticut Democratic candidate for the Senate Richard Blumenthal seems to have been mixed up about whether or not he served in Vietnam. (He didn’t.) His opponent Linda McMahon questions his veracity. “If he lied about Vietnam,” she asks, “what else is he lying about?”

It turns out that Republican candidate for governor of California, Meg Whitman, for nine years had a maid who was an illegal alien. This despite her strong stand about illegal aliens.

And then there is Christine O’Donnell, Republican candidate for Joe Biden’s old seat in the Senate. Every day new dirt about her appears. She used campaign money for personal expenses, she dabbled in witchcraft, she lied about having a college degree, etc., etc.

Carl Perrin’s heart goes out to these candidates. He knows what it is like to have mud flung at him from all directions. When he was running for the presidency, someone dug up the story about his failure to pay the fine on an overdue library book at the Portland Public Library back in the eighties. Even worse, some mud slinger dredged up the story about his having had contacts with “Natashia,” who may or may not have been a Russian agent.

If he were running in this election, Perrin knows, someone would be digging up a story about his addiction to chocolate or something. He has not decided whether to run for office in 2012, but all the digging and mud slinging gives him pause.

RAPE IS PART OF GOD'S PLAN

Sharron Angle is the Tea Party/Republican candidate for the Senate, running against Senate Majority Leader Harry H Reid. She has learned from the mistakes of other extreme candidates that the best publicity comes from avoiding the press, except of course right wing media like Fox News.

Sarah Palin revealed her insights into world events when she confused the state of Georgia with the Georgia, the former member of the USSR, when she couldn’t think of a single Supreme Court decision that she favored, when she referred to Africa as a country rather than a continent. John McCain’s staff soon kept the press away from her, hoping to teach her in a few weeks what she had failed to learn in the previous 40 years. Rand Paul, another Tea Party favorite, revealed that he wanted to go back to the good old days of segregated lunch counters. While there are probably some benighted people would like to do that, most voters find the thought repulsive.

Angle would like to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency and “transition out” Social Security, whatever that means. She is against abortions, even in cases of rape or incest. Right wingnuts might eat up that kind of talk, but a lot of voters find it pretty scary. So instead of seeking the media to report her views, she has started to avoid them, answering “no comment” to their questions, and steering clear of interviews. The Tea Party tactic evidently is to keep their ideas secret. Rational citizens will not vote for these people if they know what they really think.