Note:  There are zero sports references in today's column.  The one-column sabbatical from sports will end tomorrow with the NFL Power Rankings and weekly picks.

To Michelle Obama, if you didn't feel proud to be an American before, I can't see how you'd feel proud to be one now.  We have digressed so far as a nation, that Sarah Palin could actually be our Vice President.  I'm not looking for a cheap laugh there either.  The fact that she could be our Vice President worries me more than thinking about who John McCain would appoint to the Supreme Court.  I was a Hillary democrat.  When the election process began, I was scared to think about Hillary's losing because I wouldn't know who to vote for between Obama and McCain.  After a little thinking, I decided that I would vote for Obama because of the Supreme Court appointees that will be coming.  Now?  I think my reasons for voting for Obama look like this:

1.  Sarah Palin can not be our Vice President.
2.  The Supreme Court's makeup with Ginsburg and Stevens leaving.

I really can't understand how anybody could vote for McCain right now with Sarah Palin as his running mate.  This has to be the most unqualified person to ever run for the office, and no, I'm not forgetting Dan Quayle.  To hear smart people rationalize their McCain vote is embarrassing.  Here are the two reasons I'll accept for why you're voting for McCain:

1.  You're rich.  You want the capital gains tax to stay the same.  You don't care about much else.
2.  Your religious beliefs guide your vote.  You want to ban abortion.  Stem cell research and gay people are evil.

If either of those are your reasons for voting Republican, fine.  I couldn't disagree with you more, but at least there's some rationale behind your vote. 

The other night I was up watching UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown's press conference when he was announcing the UK bailout plan.  Here's what struck me first:  the press grilled him and even framed some questions in an accusatory fashion.  Some of the questions started like this:  "Isn't it true prime minister that with this bailout . . ."  Could you imagine Bush or Palin having to answer a question like that?  The breath of fresh air was Brown's ability to give straight answers and to stay respectful of the press member asking the responsible question.  He didn't dodge the question and he gave the answer that the taxpayer needed to hear.  A nice change of pace from the U.S. media and our question-dodging politicians.  I know that Britain runs things a bit differently, especially with the Prime Minister answering to the House of Commons, but is it too much to ask for our leaders to answer the question that was asked of them?

I'm proud to be an American because of the system we have in place.  Our founding fathers created a system that remains unparalleled in the world today.  Our system of checks and balances, valuing the idea that no innocent person should be imprisoned, and most importantly to me, our civil liberties.  It's all there on paper and it's the law that we are supposed to abide by.  That being said, I am not proud or our elected officials.  We have a President who has looked out for his friends.  That's about the only good thing I can say about the man and I'm not sure that's a good thing.  I never thought he'd go down as the worst President in history because I thought Warren Harding had that all sewed up, but every other month, Bush has added to his Worst President In History resume.  Here is a quick list of events that have occurred under his administration:

1.  Iraq - WMD.
1A.  Empowering Iran in the region.
1B.  Contractors in Iraq.
1C.  Torture.
2.  Not going after Bin Laden.
3.  Sub-prime mortgage crisis that has killed not only our economy, but that of the entire world.  (Note:  Our market is 30 points away from dropping below 8,000 points as I write this.)
4.  Alberto Gonzales and the AG firings.
5.  Hurricane Katrina cleanup. 
6.  Harriet Myers.
7.  Scooter Libby.
7A.  Outing a CIA agent.
8.  Walter Reed.
9.  Patriot Act.  Bye bye civil liberties.
10.  Turning the executive branch into the legislative branch.
11.  Tom Delay.
12.  Long time denial of global warming.
13.  Ties to Saudi Arabia.

I could go on, but it's not worth it.  To continue with the point, as bad as Bush is, Sarah Palin's worse.  She is a religious zealot.  She is not the smartest person in any room.  She doesn't know what the Vice President does.  She does not believe in civil liberties.  Again, I could go on, but what it boils down to is that she would be a complete embarrassment if she isn't already.  The fact that she is even up for office makes me ashamed of my fellow Americans.  Why do Americans want someone like themselves in office?  Why do you have to be an outsider?  If God forbid I needed heart surgery, I wouldn't want my surgeon to be as qualified as I am to do the job.  I'd want the best cardiologist on the planet.  Why do we treat the highest office in our country any differently?  Our country is in the worst shape in years and there are several people who want a simpleton to run things and that accept the simpleton who currently runs things because they're like the rest of us.  It's utterly embarrassing and no, I couldn't use that word enough. 

This brings me back to why I'm writing this article.  I watched the Gordon Brown interview and then thought about our debates.  Our debates are a complete joke.  They're not debates.  They're canned responses and one-liners and everybody is guilty of them.  Ask John McCain about how to fix Social Security and he'll give you some bologna about reaching across the aisle.  Ask Barack Obama about Georgia and Russia and he'll turn the question into something about Bush's failed foreign policies.  We won't mention the vice-presidential debate because I don't want to.  Here's an anecdote that sums up my feelings about the vice-presidential debate:  I went to a sports bar to watch the Dodgers game against the Cubs and had the debate Tivoed at home.  Unfortunately for me, my friends and about 100 other Dodgers fans at the bar, there were about 250 people there to watch the debate.  The bar kept the sound on the debate, meaning that I was watching the first three innings of the game in silence.  I'll ignore the fact that these people were shushing Dodgers fans when Russell Martin cleared the bases with a double, even though they voluntarily went to a sports bar to watch a debate during a Dodgers playoff game, but I noticed something else.  If the Cubs grounded out, Dodgers fans would clap quietly.  If the clapping coincided with Joe Biden's talking, these idiots watching the debate figured the clapping was for Biden and would start cheering loudly as if he'd just said something profound.  A bunch of sheep.  These are the people who the debates are for.  For every person who registers to vote so that he can vote for Obama and is looking for some credit, I say this; if you had registered four years ago and voted for Kerry, we wouldn't be in half the messes we're in right now.  But that's the society we live in.  People want credit for doing their civic duty.  People cheer when they have no idea what's being uttered.  Our candidates are talking about change, but who really needs the changing?

I went to services yesterday for Yom Kippur.  My rabbi talked about change and the candidates' usages of the term.  He talked about the crisis in the global economy.  He talked about a lot of problems that plague society.  That's the problem.  These problems all seem to big for us, so rabbi asked, what about changing our city?  Still too big, what about our neighborhood?  Still too big, you don't know everybody in your neighborhood.  It boiled down to what we do on Yom Kippur.  We're there because we're atoning for our sins and we're looking to change ourselves.  That's what we need.  We need a nationwide Yom Kippur.  Our leaders don't give us straight answers because we don't want them.  We want happy talk.  We're a me-first generation who doesn't want to work for the changes we need.  We want to elect someone to do it for us.  Therein lies the problem.  Neither John McCain nor Barack Obama is going to give us any real change.  We're so far gone that it's going to take more than 4 years of fixing.  Righting the ship in Washington is about the best we can hope for, but that still won't solve the problem.  Barack Obama is smart enough to give us a real response to how he would structure the bailout, but he turns his answer into some rhetoric about Main Street help instead of Wall Street because he knows what will win him more votes.  He places blame and looks at the past instead of giving us an answer as to how to move on in the future.  We, as individuals are the problem, and as a result, our best and brightest are catering to the ignorant.  If I want to change my government and how it works for me, then I first have to take responsibility for anything I may be doing to worsen the problem and so must the rest of society.  I remember how our country reacted after 9/11.  We came together and did anything we possibly could to take our country out of the crisis.  I was never prouder to be American than in watching people treat each other nicely and helping one another out.  Well our country is in crisis once again and we need individuals to take responsibility and do anything they can to help our society out.  I'll end this column/rant with a story my rabbi told at Kol Nidre services.  He said he went to dinner with a friend who had two sons, one 3 and one 13-years old.  The three-year old announced that he needed to go to the bathroom, as only a three-year old could.  The 13-year old stood up and offered to take his brother to the bathroom.  On their way there, the 13-year old put his arm around his brother and his little brother reciprocated.  The mother said to her rabbi, "you know, nothing makes me happier as a parent than when my children are kind to each other."  To which the rabbi told our congregation, "and so it is with God." 

We have to get back to the ideals that make our nation great and it doesn't have to involve a presidential candidate.  The problems we have will take individuals to fix.  The first changes have to come from within because those are the changes we need.  I hope those are changes that I can believe in once again.