On Tuesday, the very day that Barack Obama's campaign announced he would be taking a 36-hour respite from campaigning to visit his seriously ill grandmother in Hawaii, CNN  reported that John McCain's campaign was giving up on Colorado just one day after a blitz in the state by running mate Sarah Palin.

The flurry of activity in Colorado followed by a decision to concede the state is reminiscent of what happened recently in Wisconsin.  It was in Wisconsin that a man attending the rally sizzled with rage when he asked what America could do about turning the federal government over to "socialists" in a certain reference to a prospective Obama administration.

The correlative proposition one strategically ponders following the Colorado move is the curious McCain strategy to intensify efforts in Pennsylvania, a state carried by the Democrats not only by John Kerry in 2004 but extending back all the way to the last Republican victory in the Keystone State by George Bush the Elder in 1988.

It appears that the "wing and a prayer" strategy devolves heavily on Sarah Palin and her ability to generate enthusiastic crowds in rural areas.

That is the question!  The Seattle Times on October 21 carried the news brief in its regular column "Across the Nation."  The article datelined from Little Rock, Arkansas, read:

"A popular local TV anchorwoman who had a small part in the Bush bio-pic "W", was in critical condition Monday after being beaten in her home.  Police question whether she had been targeted.

"KATV anchor Anne Presley, 26, was found early Monday -- a half hour before she was to appear on the station "Daybreak" program.  Little Rock Police spokeswoman Cassandra Davis said Presley's purse was gone and robbery may have been a motive.  Presley appeared briefly in Oliver Stone's new movie about President Bush that opened over the weekend."

The film "W" is a depiction of the life of George Bush beginning mostly with a sharp focus on his college challenges and the expectations of his father, the Elder Bush, also, a president who went to war against Iraq but stopped before invading Baghdad.  The Elder Bush's Gulf War had been accomplished in a record time, and was considered a resounding success.

Oliver Stone didn't got into the details of what had triggered the Gulf War.  The event that triggered the rage of Saddam Hussein was the slant-drilling theft of Iraqi oil by neighbor Kuwait.

Zealous right wing ideologues of the Bush administration insulted some of America's most trusted allies during the buildup to the Iraq War as on Air Force One the words "French fries" were eliminated from the menu in place of "freedom fries."

Any expression concerning cool reflection rather than rush to "shock and awe" from the international community was greeted with insults compatible with the prejudicial slams from a Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage as Germany became a nation of "kraut eaters" and Swedes "quiche eating sissies."

A parade being led by an administration featuring Vietnam War draft dodgers spouted an insulting barrage of epithets at sophisticated nations and their people.  It sickened the stomachs of Americans of intellect and conscience.

A recent poll conducted by London's Guardian reflects what people from leading nations throughout the world think in turn of George W. Bush along with the clones who seek to replace him with similar policies while lacking the intellectual courage to admit as much.

Joe Klein the October 27 Time Magazine accurately descried where th Republican Party is now:

"It wouldn't be fair to blame McCain for the bilious mess his party has become.  The most vehement of the Republican faithful lives in an alternate universe, fermented by decades of Rush Limbaugh's brilliant meretricious baloney and Sean Hannity's low-rent bullying.

"As Mr. McCain's audiences went out of control Hannity stoked the rage with a documentary about Obama that featured without qualification, a poisonously flaky anti-Semite who claimed to know Obama was a Muslim.

"But McCain had consistently stoked the rage as well, with nonstop negative advertising and questioning Obama's patriotism trying to make an Everest out of Obama's association -- passive at best -- with the former terrorist William Ayers."

Since the Republican right is seemingly incapable of looking forward and only looks backward, meaning backwards to America's most cruel political and economic past, it is interesting to examine the antecedents of the current robo calls being made in important battleground states by the forces of John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Richard Nixon made his first foray into national politics after being discharged from the Navy after answering an ad placed by a committee of right wing professionals seeking a candidate to run for the seat of 10-year veteran Congressman Jerry Voorhis.

Nixon was intrigued.  The district included Nixon's hometown of Whittier.  The young lawyer demonstrated himself to be politically active as he ran successfully for student body president at Whittier College.  

He would also prove adaptable at serving the needs of his professional benefactors, as was later exemplified by the secret fund established by them for his personal use after he was elected.  

This gave rise to the teary-eyed Checkers Speech when he denounced that he was not giving up the Cocker Spaniel that his daughters had been given by a citizen admirer, hardly on point, but then again when the facts are clearly against you, what do you do if you are Nixon?

Ted Miller of Oakland, California in his Letter to the Editors of the New York Times October 15 is placing the blame for the economic meltdown right where it belongs:

"Thomas L. Friedman should not blame the Americans who opposed laissez-faire capitalism, starting with the Reagan revolution, for the current financial mess, nor its innocent victims for accepting houses they could not afford given to them by the un-regulated Ponzi scheme capitalism.

"The blame lies with those still in the White House, and those trying to get there, who foster the belief that government regulation is not necessary because the market will take of itself."

This letter explained the economic destruction de-regulation has brought about.  However, I would never classify all of the 2 ½ million people who went along with buying these foreclosure homes as buying something they couldn't afford at the point in time they made their purchases.  But they are not necessarily all innocent victims.

Some observers of the current presidential campaign have expressed surprise and asked why so many forces of hate have shouted angry epithets of "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" at emotionally tinged Sarah Palin rallies.

The real question to ask is "Why would these hateful elements not be there?"

Republican operatives realize that there is a far right, kook element of their party that they make fun of in private, with such documentation currently existing, but pander to in the saddest, most debasing way at political crunch time.

If in place of Palin a Candidate X were to address Republican rallies arguing strongly for a different economic plan to bring the U.S. economy out of its doldrums this would call for thinking rather than vicious shouts.  Appeal to the narrowest base of the party and the fringe element angrily converges.

Wasn't it George Bush who, when asked if he consulted his father, the Elder Bush, regarding the Iraq War, answered no, explaining that he did consult with his other Father, meaning God?

Of course it is blasphemy to suggest God advised Bush to launch the Iraq War.  The logical reason is that we now know that the Iraq War was launched on a well orchestrated media blitz of lies.

This week on Turner Classic Movies I saw the Alexander Korda move "The Jungle Book" starring Sabu.  One powerful scene of an individual being designated as a witch and being run out of town aroused my interest.

My mind flashed back to a Keith Olbermann MSNBC television scene of an Alaskan Pentecostal preacher with his hands held over Sarah Palin's head as he performed some unspecified religious rite.  It was mentioned that this same preacher had visited a Kenya village, where the natives invited him to help due to the fact that villagers were having so many accidents.  

A key rule in presidential political analysis involves just which states candidates are vying for in the crucial period coming down to the wire.

During the 1988 campaign Republican operatives delighted in noting the shrinking Democratic state effort, which they ultimately belittled as the Dukakis "18 state strategy" when resources were gradually pulled from states that the party had original designs of winning.  

When offices were closed in Florida and resources transferred elsewhere it became increasingly apparent that what was being sought was elimination of a blowout that could cost the entire party maximal damage at all levels.

While Barack Obama is correct in asserting that the effort needs to be continued aggressively and nothing can be taken for granted, it is confidence enhancing for Democrats to see that now the Republicans are in the position of becoming a dangerously marginalized and sharply diminished party.  

John McCain has always been known for a low boiling point.  After he received the Republican presidential nomination speculation mounted over whether, at a strategically vital point in the campaign, he would erupt.

Here was the man who was so volatile that, according to Michael Dukakis, he and equally soft spoken Tommy Thompson were rudely "thrown out of the office" of McCain by the  Arizona senator himself because he opposed the Amtrak train project that they were promoting.

McCain was bipartisan in that instance but not very wise, taking such rude action against the Democratic governor of Massachusetts and Republican governor of Wisconsin, two important states from the eastern seaboard and Midwest respectively.

McCain's appearances in the first two presidential debates against Democratic rival Barack Obama revealed the Arizonan attempting to sell himself as an experienced candidate ready for the presidency in the way his younger rival was not, declaring that he would "look Vladimir Putin" in the eye when meeting Russia's president.

An October 13 Associated Press article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Liz Sidoti is headlined:

GOP FRETS ABOUT McCAIN'S STRATEGY

Liz Sidoti states:

"McCain has to make the case that he's different than Bush and better than Obama on the economy," said former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

The current campaign fandango duo of John McCain and Sarah Palin increasingly resembles two spinning tops moving around and around without deviation or alteration, ultimately frustrated when nothing happens.

What the Republicans of the Steve Schmidt variety, the protégé of Karl Rove, do not recognize is that the only message they have had in years, that of attack and more attack while avoiding the real issues confronting Americans, is not working with the people they need to forge a majority.

While some mainstream media analysts shake their heads and comment about a strategy based on futility that is failing to show results, a focus on basic human psychology indicates why the same attacks are repeatedly used, even after their own Republican internal polling almost assuredly reveals that the efforts have been fruitless.

One of the hardest things to do is to teach a dog new tricks, and this is probably doubly so relating to attack dogs.  

The horrifying economic meltdown with the stock market and banks losing trillions, and some individuals losing their life savings didn't happen overnight.  Lack of oversight and regulation taking place over decades.

Nobody contributed to this historic meltdown much more than none other than the highly revered former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Runner-up honors would have to go to former President Ronald Reagan, whose mantra was "Get the government off of people's backs".  This often used cliché translates to, "We don't want our banks and our businesses supervised by your government and that translates to de-regulation."

As we now know de-regulation and lack of oversight led to this tragic economic crisis, if we will only admit it, and change what brought us to this point.

With all the recent talk about a different John McCain and all the mud being hurled in the presidential campaign, someone unfamiliar with the history of the Republican Party in the post-World War Two years might think that something new is occurring.  Even a cursory look at the record reveals a familiar story.

After Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman established the New Deal and Fair Deal respectively along with confronting the Nazi and Fascist menaces in winning World War Two, a Republican Party hungry for victory as the fifties beckoned used the Cold War against the Soviet Union to advance their presidential aims.

The era of McCarthyism-Nixonism was launched.  While grand smears were launched questioning the patriotism of loyal Americans and targeting those who opposed them, a party that had been out of power for twenty years achieved the presidency under World War Two military hero General Dwight David Eisenhower.  

As perceptive journalists said at the time, the apolitical Eisenhower took the "high road" and his aggressive vice presidential running mate Richard Nixon traversed the "low road."

In the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Letters to the Editors October 10, Rick Kalamar of Shoreline, Washington lashed out with logic and wit concerning John McCain's friendly image that he displays part of the time on his bumpy campaign trail:

"John McCain, don't patronize me by calling me your friend.  I am not your friend!

"The 80 plus lobbyists in your campaign, including many who work for the financial and insurance industries that are responsible for the meltdown of the economy, are your friends.  Your buddy, George W. Bush, who you voted with 90 percent of the time is your friend.

"The war profiteers that are cashing in on the Iraq War who are the only real beneficiaries of your tax cuts are certainly your friends."