Here are some highlights from CNN/Facebook Live’s running status commentary from the public regarding Bobby Jindal’s response:

• … thinks Gov. Jindal was speaking to a class of kindergarteners
• … Jindal tried to look inspirational like Obama. What a joke. It’s like the Republican’s are desperately shouting “We have minorities too!”
• … thinks Jindel is a hypocrite like many other republicans.
• … I think this Bobby guy just is not ready to follow our President.
• … was wondering if Jindel needs a better speech writer and voice coach.
• … Bobby Jindal need to produced his birth certificate.
• … Jindal apparently trusts health insurance companies more than he trusts the government… will you take that bet?
• … Jindle doesn’t look genuine. He looks and acts like a salesman
• … if republicans think that this Jindal dude is going to stir up trouble then they’ve been watching to much Slum Dog
• … So much for Jindal in 2012
• … jindal/palin=obama win
• … Jindal was trying to spread his Jihad in America!!! Not on my watch!

And that’s when it dawns on me that I really need to spend some time in the health policy arena and follow up with some serious business training.  So here’s the timeline I’m looking at:

2 years of medical school left
+ min. 3 years of residency
+ 1 year of health policy internship
+ 2 years of business school

= 8 years of schooling and training remaining.

That has me wrapping up somewhere in my 34th year of life.  I started school when I was 7.  Minus the year I took off after college, I will have been in school for over 25 years.

Sheesh.  No wonder health care in America is screwed up.  From the looks of it, one has to spend half his life just getting qualified to do something about it.  Between politician, doctor, and businessman, it seems like you can reasonably be two of the three, but not all three unless, like me, you want to be a professional student.

Yes we DID. It is always darkest before the dawn, and just when the United States entered its darkest hour in almost a century, our nation again showed why it is the greatest democracy on this planet.  The American public has spoken.  Decisively.

We have in our hands a great opportunity to rebuild our nation at home, our reputation abroad, and our promise to ourselves.

We live in the land of the free and the home of the brave.  We are one nation.  And I am more proud than ever to be a citizen of the United States of America.

Remember when I vehemently expressed frustration at the Orwellian responses being given on the to the media by Republican strategists after Obama’s DNC acceptance speech?  Well it’s getting worse.  The masses at the both party campaign rallies have a adopted quite a repertoire of three-part phrases to capture their political views.  Some, such as “U.S.A!” or “Yes We Can!” are innocuous though still vacuous.  Others are less so.  But their unerring repetition is, well, frightening.

Recently, at a Palin rally, Dana Milbank overheard these gems:

- “I am Joe!”
- “Drill, baby, Drill!”
- “Use Your Brain, Vote McCain!”
- “No-Bama!”
- “Bless your heart!”

It’s sad that our campaigns are being reduced to a collection of pithy expressions to capture otherwise complex issues.

It’s a question that’s worth asking because it seems like the McCain/Palin ticket has a definition of who is a real American and who isn’t.  They haven’t cared to define what it is explicitly, but here are some comments from the Republican Party, members of McCain’s staff and some McCain/Palin supporters that shed some light.

Some of the ideas I’ve found around the web (multiple sources: Miami Herald, TPM, MSNBC.)  I can’t believe I found this many with a two-minute search.

- “A real American is the average person who works 9 to 5 for an average paycheck”
- “It means being normal, having a mom and pop making it in a business, paying their fair share of taxes”
- “[Real Americans] all did the same thing. They wanted to get their hair done on Saturday and go to dinner Saturday night. They were all ethnic and minority groups, and they just wanted to live a good middle class life… Obama is a Harvard elitist.  He never grew up in a middle class environment”
- “Sometimes I think this country would be better off if we could just saw off the Eastern Seaboard and let it float out to sea”
- “Liberals hate real Americans that work, and accomplish and achieve”
- “We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation”
- “I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of people in Congress and find out if they are pro-America or anti-America”

George Washington, who, unless I missed something recently, is widely considered a “real American,” warned America to “guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.”  It is a sad day when people from every ethnicity, religion, gender or parentage no longer look to the United States as the land of opportunity.  It is a sad day when we forget that we are a nation of immigrants and instead become a nation of bigots engaging in repetitive witch hunts to isolate the “pure” from the rest.

Fear has long been the ally of the Republican Party. I’d like to say that message is getting old, but they keep coming up with new ways to make Americans scared.  He’s a run down of all the fear-messages I can remember off the top of my head from this election cycle.

Fear Obama because he:

- is a Muslim
- is a crazy Christian
- is a radical liberal
- is inexperienced
- has anti-American views
- has previous associations with Bill Ayers and ACORN

Fear the Democrats because they:

- will tax us into oblivion
- want to concede defeat in Iraq
- kill babies
- will allow homosexuals to marry and serve in the military
- will take away your guns

Now, John McCain is asking people to vote for him because they should fear Democratic control of both the White House and Congress.  Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama in power is a dangerous triad because “one-party rule” is bad.

Couple of problems with that argument.  First, to argue that split White House and Congress is better requires conceding that the Clinton years were good.  Second, to argue that one-party rule is bad requires conceding that the Bush years were bad.  Third, Republicans gained the “mandate” in 2004 by convincing the American people that one-party rule was necessary to get anything done in Washington.

The Republican Party is well-known for being ruthless with its membership.

But with John McCain’s campaign on the ropes, survivors are breaking ranks to fend for their own political futures.  Michele Bachmann was cut loose, and the RNC is cutting back ad spending in congressional races in Colorado among other states.  This defection is spreading, and CNN is suggesting it’s infecting the top ticket, with Sarah Palin now reapeatedly and deliberately going off message.  CNN reports:

A second McCain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.

“She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone,” said this McCain adviser. “She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

“Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.”

It’s little wonder she’s interested in her own political future.  McCain’s campaign heads Nicole Wallace and Steve Schmidt were instrumental in limiting Palin’s access to the press.  And for good reason.  CNN continues:

But two sources, one Palin associate and one McCain adviser, defended the decision to keep her press interaction limited after she was picked, both saying flatly that she was not ready and that the missteps could have been a lot worse.

They insisted that she needed time to be briefed on national and international issues and on McCain’s record.

“Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic,” said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was probably the “hardest” to get her “up to speed than any candidate in history.”

Steve Schmidt had to play damage control, saying that some entities within the campaign structure have “their own agenda,” but what they said, my friends, is what John McCain would call “a little bit of straight talk.”

It’d be interesting to see registered and likely voter breakdowns as well to see what kind of turnout a candidate could expect from the Indian community.

I get irritated when I hear John McCain talking about ”victory” in Iraq as if this were the same kind of war we fought against Nazi Germany or against the Vietnamese.  So I decided to go to the McCain website to see exactly what John McCain meant by victory.

Forget the surge “strategy” which only sends the Sunnis and Shias into their respective corners and doesn’t try to tackle the problem of getting them to live in harmony.  That strategy just keeps us there forever.

No, John McCain went one step further.  In “Calling for International Pressure on Syria and Iran,” the website states:  ”The United States must also bolster its regional military posture to make clear to Iran our determination to protect our forces and deter Iranian intervention.”

Unless I’m missing something, how is this not advocacy of a larger Middle East military presence?  It makes me think about Bush’s famed “Mission Accomplished.”