Of Yellow Dogs and Stuff

From back when I was a Democrat until this very day, I have known Democrats who would swear they would vote for a yellow dog, if he was a Democrat.

There are a lot who actually would....its not a joke.

There is a lot of "tribalism" that goes into political parties, I guess.

I was always a bit too independent to turn over my political choices to a group that anybody could join, so although I supported Democrats back in the day with whom I didn't fully agree, I didn't pull the straight ticket lever but once. That was in 1964. Big mistake. Have not done it since.

But back to yellow dogs....I have seen some candidates who wouldn't be able to stand up to a good yellow dog, and from both parties. I have nothing against yellow dogs, per se. In fact, I like dogs, even yellow ones.

Where I take issue with those Democrats is when the candidate doesn't measure up to a good dog, and they will vote for him or her anyway, if they run for election as a Democrat. (To treat everyone the same, I would feel the same way about a Republican who would do such.)

Of course, there are some elections where neither of the parties offer a decent choice. One that comes to mind was the last election for governor here. There were lots of candidates, but I wasn't real happy with either of the two parties' candidates, and the independent, although an old friend, just didn't measure up. So I voted for old UT graduate Kinky Friedman, because I knew he couldn't screw things up nearly as badly as the others could. But Kinky, although really a Democrat, wasn't a yellow dog.

I came up with this yellow dog business today as I was pondering some of the emails about Obama that are flying about the Internet. You know, the ones about his birth certificate, his travel to Pakistan on a foreign passport, his college records, and all that stuff.

Now, I have no idea whether those allegations are true or false.

But what I do know is that the allegations have been out there since before the election (many are based upon his books).

That raises the question: how can anyone have voted for him without knowing the answers to the questions?

The so-called mainstream press never pressed any of it, although private parties tried to. I understand Obama has spent nearly a million dollars keeping it all hushed up. He, like any individual, has a right to privacy, but it would seem that a candidate for President would not be concerned about a birth certificate. Or college records (we had Bush's). Or passport records.

I have been in public service for over 40 years, and my life has been an open book. I never had anything that I was sufficiently ashamed of to hide. Why is Obama ashamed?

He could very easily solve the problems and answer the questions.

And that is what got me to thinking about the yellow dog.