My Dad: John McCain by Meghan McCain (illustrated by Dan Andreasen)

I'm not entirely convinced that My Dad, John McCain hit the New York Times bestseller list entirely on it's credentials as a children's book. The fact that it's about Republican presidential candidate John McCain - and penned by his daughter, Meghan - might have given sales a push!

But that doesn't mean it should be relegated to the realms of political puffery. My Dad, John McCain is a cute kid's book (that promises to be quite a collector's piece if John McCain actually wins the Presidency.)

Meghan McCain penned a very touching book that oozes love and admiration for her father. She reverently retells the story of his days as a troublemaker in the naval academy, his heroics on the flight deck of the USS Forestal and his resilience as a prisoner of war - arguing that this strength of character makes him an exceptional candidate to become the President of the United States.

Except she doesn't use all those long words.

Meghan writes for children well - she has a very effective way of illustrating difficult concepts through examples that youngsters will relate to. For example, she explains that McCain got into trouble at Naval Academy for 'skipping school' (leaving out the drinking and hell-raising) and illustrates the horrors of McCain's incarceration by the Viet Cong by telling us how he once found a chicken's foot in his lunch (which is more kid-friendly than telling them about the beatings, whippings and torture he endured.)

The story is brought to life through full colour illustrations by Dan Andreasen, who does a serviceable enough job, although the pictures lack the details kids love to peer at and some of them - especially his illustration of the fire on the USS Forestal - are a bit vague and confusing. The clouds of noxious smoke he painted looked more like trees in the background, making the whole picture look like it was set in a park, rather than the deck of an aircraft carrier.

All in all, though, the book is a satisfying package and I think young kids will enjoy learning a bit more about the grumpy-looking 'McCain' guy they see on television (and who their parents are always talking about.)

Meghan's book highlights McCain's character strengths - his honesty, his bravery and his resilience. For kids (and quite a few registered Republicans) it's values like this that make a man a good candidate to run the country - not his politics and policies.

A snobby Eurotrash rant about America and electricty...

Wifey called me at work and warned me that rolling brownouts were hitting the state.

That meant absolutely nothing to me - so she explained.

Brownouts, apparently, are like electrical blackouts. All your lights dim, your blender slows and your toaster oven doesn't cook bagels so quickly. It's not quite like a blackout - when you lose power altogether - but a brownout basically means your house isn't getting all the electricity it needs to run everything. It happens all the time in America.

This, to me, is an entirely new experience.

Sure, I remember power cuts when I was growing up in England. But that was back in the eighties. For the last twenty years, they've been practically unheard of. All the cables are underground and England's pretty sorted as far as the power is concerned (because it's all privatised, but that's a rant for another day.)

In America, however, things are different (they're also privatised, but that's another rant for another other day.)

First off, the power grid is pretty suspect even in the best of times. Whenever Wifey plugs in the hair dryer, for example, the lights dim like that scene in The Green Mile when the electric chair was switched on. Lights dimming is not a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

Then there are the plugs... In England, we have chunky three-pronged electrical sockets that have a comforting 'click' when they slide into the wall socket. Here in America, because we require twelve appliances plugged in at the same time, as opposed to just one, there's a much sketchier system of two-pronged plugs that look about as robust as something you'd use to plug in an electric train set. What's worse, they actually spark and sizzle when you plug something in.

These sketchy sockets are used to power long daisy-chains of dollar store surge protectors, which mean you end up running long lines of rickety wiring that would have British Fire and Safety screaming in terror.

The average American house generally has wiring that you wouldn't recommend fiddling with unless you had valid life insurance and rubber soled shoes.

Now all the power to our homes comes from power lines, strung along the road on Telegraph poles. These are deliciously precarious things and strong rain storms, lightening or drunk drivers can knock out power to a block simply by pushing one of the poles over. The electric company tries to put a redundancy in to prevent this sort of thing by coiling lots of 'slack' at the top of each pole, so if one falls down, enough cable slacks out to prevent the electric cable snapping.

But it's not an exact science and it looks really crappy and badly strung together. At best, all that cable looks really messy and untidy. At worst, the damn thing snaps whenever a pole gets knocked over and that leads us onto the next thing that happens in America, but not so much in England.

Death by puddles.

Because New Jersey drivers simply aren't very good at driving, they're always driving into telegraph poles and knocking people's power out. Then, hopping cheerfully (or drunkenly) out of their cars, they exacerbate the situation by getting zapped by the fallen power cable.

The problem with all these above-ground cables and telegraph poles is the shitload of live high-voltage wiring that gets knocked over when people drive into them (or the wind blows them over.) If it's been raining, people jump out of their car into a puddle and then become human conductors of thousands of volts of electricity.

This is where the famous America motto (which I cynically thought was invented by Drive-Thru MacDonald's promoters) 'Never get out of the car.' If you crash into a pole, stay in the safety of your SUV until the cops arrive and give you the all clear.

So basically, American houses are badly wired and the electrical grid is strung together by a bunch of incompetents who only got the job because they submitted the lowest tender. If you want to get an impression of just how pathetic the American electric infrastructure is, remember that the three day electrical blackout in 2003 was caused by a single branch falling on a single transformer in Canada.

God help us if al-Qaida ever get their shit together and attack us with lengths of wood. We'd be plunged back into the dark ages overnight.

But ignoring the badly wired American houses and the badly wired American power grid, there's one more crowning achievement in the inadequacies of America's energy incompetence.

There's not enough power to go around.

Considering America is the biggest energy consumer in the world, you might be surprised by this - but it's true. Union heavies promoting inefficient coal power plants, combined with environmental idiots keeping America's nuclear industry four decades behind the rest of the world, has resulted in a nation that can't even supply it's own appetite for waffle irons, air conditioners and electric curling irons.

In the height of summer, when we sweaty Yanks turn on our air conditioners, the power grid suddenly sucks up a whole lot more juice and there's not enough to go around - so we end up getting rolling 'brownouts' as our energy gets thinned out worse than American beer.

It boggles the mind.

I mean, this is America. The greatest nation in the world. It seems remarkable that we can't even supply our own energy without making an (expensive) pig's ear of it.

But where do the problems lie?

Well, let's start at the top and work our way down, shall we?

There's not enough electricity to go around...

As much as I dislike his snotty attitude, Barack Obama's got a point. Our current energy crisis is caused, at least in part, by the fact that we consume an incredible amount of energy. Wifey and I are following the pediatrician's advice and keeping our 650 square feet apartment air-conditioned to a tolerable 76 degrees - and that takes the work of three different air conditioners and four ceiling fans. Our neighbours have bigger houses and chill them to an icy 68 degrees.

The quickest and easiest way to eliminate brownouts would be to ration ourselves and stop consuming so much electricity. If we used less, we'd need less and there'd be more to go around.

The other option is to make more electricity. You'd think this would be the most logical idea and power companies would jump at the opportunity. But the problem is - they can't.

The environmental lobby has protested the building of any new nuclear power stations for thirty years (despite them having provided cheap, clean and safe power for countries like France for decades.) Besides, considering Americans are scared of talcum powder and plastic bottles, you can hardly expect them to line up and volunteer for them to have a big, scary nuclear power station built on their doorstep.

The lumpy old coal power plants still give America the majority of it's power (and the majority of it's pollution) and any talk of shutting them down is met by angry blue collar resistance from the Mafia-like unions, who remind people that the coal industry employs millions of Americans (although if they all got retrained to work in the nuclear industry, they'd statistically live longer, healthier lives than they would working down a coal mine all day.)

Just like the environmentalists block any progress in the nuclear field, the union heavies block any progress in the coal arena. It's all blissfully, transparently corrupt - but apparently nobody's got the testicular fortitude to stand up to them (after all, it's people like this who can win or lose Swing State elections, so politicians don't want to piss them off.)

Finally, the 'acceptable' options, like wind farms and hydroelectric power, run into the most practical problems facing the energy industry. They're expensive and inefficient and although the politicians and public applaud them, these environmentally sound options are never going to get put into production because nobody's stupid enough to invest in them. Besides, people don't want bloody great wind turbines on their horizon any more than a nuclear power station.

The electricity has problems getting to us...

Ignoring the fact that we don't have enough juice to go around, the problem of actually getting it delivered to our house creates major issues.

The snarling cable. The wobbly poles. Why can't we tear them all up and put them underground, where they'll be safely out of the way and less likely to get run into or snapped by falling branches? That's what (adopt snotty Euro accent) we do in Europe.

Well, the fact is, nobody stateside wants to invest in doing that.

The electricity companies are out to make a profit. Large-scale investment in their rickety infrastructure is going to hurt their short-term profits (and they couldn't care less about the long term) so they've got no intention of getting their chequebooks out to fix the problems.

The local townships could do it. You'd think it would be a great idea - providing work for local contractors and making the whole township safer and more beautiful. But despite demanding property taxes ten-times higher than Great Britain, the local township has their hands tied by the greedy school systems and the local law-enforcement, who thuggishly demand their 'pizza de action' and leave very little money left for doing anything remotely useful. (Trust me - our local township resembles Mexico City, but all the local police officers drive about in brand new, $30,000 Dodge Chargers.)

So short of getting a shovel and a wire cutter and doing it ourselves, there's really not much hope that anywhere except the swanky suburbs of Maryland and Connecticut will get their local electric grid sorted out any time soon.

Seeing a pattern here? American politics (and business) is centred around the Short Term Gain and ignoring the Long Term Insurmountable Problems (after all, these can be left to the next Mayor/CEO.)

But it's not all glumness!

No, there is hope!

Okay, I'm not exactly sure what that hope is, where it's coming from or what it consists of, but you know I'm an enormous fan of America in general, so I didn't want to end this rant on a bum note.

Although, with the elections coming up, maybe there is hope for the future.

Barack Obama's right out. With Al Gore strong-arming him, I don't think our Democratic candidate actually has any hope of pursuing a practical solution to the energy crisis.

John McCain's a much stronger proposition. He actually understands the energy crisis and believes in climate change (meaning, unlike most idiotic Republican politicians, he's looking beyond 'drillin' fer more oil, yuck yuck.')

He's actually looking at practical solutions to the energy problem. Like building 150 more nuclear power stations (to the ire of both the lunatic left and retarded right, who want airy-fairy windfarms or more coal and oil power plants respectively.)

John McCain is enough of a maverick to resist the idiots within his own party and the more verbose villains in the environmental movement. He's practical enough to look at both the long term and short term when it comes to finding a solution to the energy crisis.

Maybe - just maybe - there's hope for us yet.

But as for our 'local' problems - like the ropey wiring and precarious telegraph poles?

Well, maybe it's time to just chalk that down as an 'American idiosyncrasy' and stop worrying about it. After all, what's a brownout every now and then?

Cringe...

"Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English -- they'll learn English -- you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish."

10th July. Remember this date. For me, at least, it's the day Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency 'Jumped the Shark.'

The term 'Jumping the Shark' refers to the tipping point in a long running television, film or comic series. The point where it goes from 'good' to 'dire.' Specifically, a 1977 episode of the popular sitcom Happy Days in which greaser 'The Fonz' jumps over a man eating shark on a pair of water skies - and Happy Days goes from the second most popular show in America to an oft-mocked (and soon cancelled) joke.

Obama's reached that stage, as far as I'm concerned.

I've mentioned many times how frustrated I am with the pandering towards the Spanish language in America. Almost all signs and instructions are written in both English and Spanish and if anybody complains, they're labelled as a 'racist.'

I've run into more and more problems recently. For example, my credit card statements - despite numerous complaints to Bank of America - continue to be delivered in Spanish (Bank of America automatically assume any immigrant has to come from south of the border.)

Yesterday, I bought a new microphone for my computer and the warranty instructions were given to me entirely in Spanish - because that store has very few English speaking customers.

This is not acceptable.

America is an English speaking country - and if Russian, Chinese and Iranian immigrants can manage to learn English when they move here, I fail to understand why Spanish-speaking immigrants are not expected to.

But what's worse - why our potential new president doesn't have a problem with this! In fact, he's ordering (not suggesting, ordering) us to teach our children Spanish.

Bugger that!

Here and now, Mr Obama, let me tell you this... My child will learn French. Not Spanish. French - and if he wants to learn a second language, that's his choice, but I'd recommend Chinese. Or Polish. Or Swahili. Anything other than Spanish.

Why?

Because America's children should not have to be bilingual to live here! America is an English speaking country! As I've repeated ad nauseum, I was expected to learn French when I worked in Paris. Why the hell should it be any different here?

But this is all old news. An argument I've repeated many times before. It's only worth mentioning here because Obama just out and out said what I'd been dreading - that he's pandering to the Hispanic vote by promising them whatever they want to hear.

Which seems to be his stock in trade. Obama talks big and makes broad promises and gullible, foolish people (myself included, until recently) swallow them up.

He tells liberals 'I'm against guns!'

He tells 2nd Amendment nuts 'Your guns are safe with me!'

He's pro choice, pro gay-rights - but doing a better job than centrist-conservative McCain at winning over the evangelical movement (up to 15% are reported to have defected to the Obama camp since the campaign began.)

He comforts the liberals: "This notion that's peddled by the religious right - that they are oppressed is not true. Sometimes it's a cynical ploy to move their agenda ahead. The classic example being that somehow secularists are trying to eliminate Christmas, which strikes me as some kind of manufactured controversy."

H courts the conservatives: "Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. The majority of great reformers in American history repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause."

Basically, Barack Obama tells you whatever you want to hear -depending who he's talking to (and hoping neither group compares notes.) It's only when November rolls around that we'll see the true 'colour of his money' (and his real credentials.)

"Change you can believe in."

That's the motto of the Obama campaign - and what a wonderful piece of marketing it is. By pandering to the disgruntled and unsatisfied (which is most of us, let's be honest) he promises the one thing that appeals across the board. 'Change.'

You don't need to quantify this change. You just have to promise it - and we gullible voters will envision whatever it is we want changed (and assume that Obama can give it to us.)

It's only when you start reading between the rhetoric that the hollow shell of Obama's campaign is revealed. In his July 10th speech, Obama promised 'change' alright. He promised to pressure Americans to make their kids learn Spanish - so the continued wave of illegal immigrants he welcomes to this country don't need to.

What it would take to make me vote Republican...

(Citizenship, for a start...)

If you'd asked me a week ago, I'd have said Senator John McCain would come off better in the McCain/Obama November showdown.

But as former Prime Minister Harold Wilson admitted, 'a week is a long time in politics.'

A week later, I think I've got it figured out - and believe the election will go to Barack Obama.

That being said, I'd consider voting for McCain if he could just keep that damn party of his in check. I like McCain. I think he's an honorable and independent politician who represents, in his own stuffy Republican way, real change.

But to make me support McCain, he'd have to make some alterations:

Dump the Social Conservatives: The Republican party is supposed to be the party of liberty and constitution. When it was founded by Thomas Jefferson, his political philosophy was one of personal freedom. These days, the Republican party seems dominated by faithful fascists who want to control every aspect of the American way of life.

Limiting civil rights for gay people. Forcing religious doctrine into the classroom. Censoring freedom of speech in the interests of 'family values.' There is not a single constitutional amendment [Except the 2nd one - Editorial Bear] the social conservatives are unwilling to trample on - all in order to turn America into neat, twee, homogenized Christian Disneyland.

Politically, the social conservatives are dynamite. Evangelicals represent upwards of 80 million Americans and their vote can win or lose elections (just ask John Kerry.) That doesn't change the facts, however. The social conservatives are hypocritical, fascist and unAmerican. Until the Republicans return to their roots and shed these political parasites, they remain unsupportable.

Fix the Damn Budget! Hypocrisy again. The Republicans rant that Democrats will raise taxes - yet our last three Republican presidents have nobbled the economy and crippled the working and middle classes with higher taxes (or rampant inflation.)

The philosophy of the Republican party - and this dates back to Thomas Jefferson as well - is a small federal government. The smallest possible, existing only to organize the operations vital to a country's survival. Things like an effective army, a postal service, federal highways (although even those Jefferson was against.) By keeping federal government to a minimum, the tax burden on American citizens would also be kept to a minimum.

Yet essential to this idea was a government that operated effectively. Instead, we have a bloated federal government that spends far beyond it's means (the taxpayer will feel the burden of the Iraq war for decades to come) and the operations it takes responsibility for are mired in bureaucracy and inefficiency.

If John McCain wants my support, he has to fix Bush's mistakes. The federal government needs to do it's job cost-effectively. No more loans. No more deficits. No more bankrupting and mortgaging off of American assets. If the Republicans honestly want us to trust them with the responsibility of running our nation, prove that they can balance a cheque-book first.

End the Fiscal Dogma - If another Republican raves about Ronald Reagan, I will slap them. Reaganomics was a farce. Ronald Reagan's idea of tax cuts for the rich 'trickling down' to the working and middle classes has been proven not to work. Back when Reagan was slashing his rich friend's tax burden, payroll taxes for the average American actually went up.

Low taxes will stimulate the economy - but not if you give them to the rich. The rich save their extra money, so it doesn't stimulate the economy at all. Only by giving tax cuts to the working and middle class will more money actually be pumped into the economy. Middle class Americans actually have to spend the money they get - on gas, clothes, food and utilities. Giving 100 working class Americans $1,000 will see more money put back into the American economy than giving 1 rich American $100,000. Yet the Republican party is too stupid (or too politicised by rich people) to see this. As a result, the poor make less (the bottom 90% of Americans saw a dismal 3% increase in income) while the rich make more (the richest 10% saw their income raised by 31%.)

I'm not suggesting any socialist rubbish. I'm not advocating taxing the rich any more. I don't want to redistribute wealth. I want tax cuts, that's all. I want an efficiently run government to reduce the tax burden it places on it's citizens - specifically it's middle and working class citizens.

When it comes down to it, there's no more Republican philosophy than that.

In the Mean Time...

Pipe dreams.

When it comes down to it, that's all my ranting comes down to. The fact is, the Republican party isn't going to change. They're not going to realise overnight what a farce they've become and how removed they are from the party of Jefferson and later Lincoln.

Like the oil industry it's so entrenched with, the Republican party has a (generally) successful strategy for success and they're not interested in changing it - even if they are vaguely aware that the resources they've relied on for so long are drying up.

Until reality bites, I'm going to have to support Obama. Not that he isn't without his faults - and not that the Democratic Party isn't almost as stupid as the Republican party. For many people, Barack Obama and the Democrats offer the possibility of change. As far as I'm concerned, they just offer the lesser of two evils.

I'll leave you with some wise words from the great American himself - highlighting a problem that has plagued American politics since the day it was conceived.

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine." Thomas Jefferson