The problem is, right now, most Americans wouldn’t mind seeing “big oil” doing some more drilling.  Bigger oil, it seems to me, would translate into smaller prices at the pump.  This is basic economics, the law of supply and demand, which Democrats do not seem to understand.

Ironically, Democrats continue to tell anyone who will listen that, when President Bush came into office, gas was just $1.50 per gallon. Fair enough. So why not let oil companies drill for more oil to move gas prices down again? And if oil companies truly are against drilling, why is it necessary to keep a congressional moratorium on drilling in place?

Two questions for which I would love to hear an answer.

Of course, if the McCain Campaign really did try to introduce race into this election, the mainstream media would be on it in a heartbeat.   Later Obama had to back off of this backdoor claim of racism, saying that he did not believe McCain was racist, just cynical.

So if Obama wants people to see their differences, why not accept McCain’s town hall debate challenge?  If you’ll remember, President Clinton honed and perfected this style of debate, and there were none better.  The AP reported yesterday that Obama has backed away from his earlier commitment to a series of town hall debates and now wants to do the standard three debates, with one vice presidential debate.

John McCain has embraced this format and will spend hours answering voter’s questions, not shrinking from any of the questions thrown at him.  Obama has been doing larger events, taking fewer questions, and basically has been leaning on his media advantage.

But now that his lead has evaporated in record time, what will he do?  Obviously the McCain Campaign’s efforts to reach voters are showing success.  And Democrats in Washington are beginning to worry as well.  You can feel the undercurrent of worry there.

It was the first time our girls had ever been there and we spent the day looking around, visiting the falls, and then having dinner at the local Rainforest Cafe. And in August, when summers are the hottest here in Maryland, heading as far north as possible is always a good idea.

Of course, you Google various things and look for help to find hotels and activities, especially now that we have kids. One site that has been helpful isTrusted Tours & Attraction online travel guides. They cover several destinations of interest to us. They show quite a few fun things to do in New York as well as things to do in Orlando. Madame Tussauds tour also looked interesting. I noticed too that there’s a special promotion where you can win a $150 iTunes Gift Card by signing up for their newsletter. Bonus!

Called “The One,” it highlights many statements from Obama which you might think of as “interesting.” Statements such as, “I have become a symbol of America returning to our best traditions;”whatever that means. It evens features a snippet from Obama’s victory speech, given once he had finally clinched the nomination for his party, where he tells a crowd of screaming supporters that someday they will look back upon this as the day where the “rise of the oceans began to slow and the planet began to heal.”

Following the quote comes a snippet from “The Ten Commandments” starring the late Charleton Heston where Moses parts the Red Sea with the statement, “Behold His mighty hand.” As the Red Sea parts, Obama’s home made presidential seal rises from the waves.

I think it’s safe to say that this new ad makes the previous ad look rather tame. I can’t wait to hear what the media-ocracy has to say about this one.

Meanwhile, McCain has been getting minimal notice in the press. What has been clear, however, is that the media is more than willing to tell us when McCain “disagrees” with Obama. So, when McCain talks about his own vision for the country, he gets no attention. When McCain critiques Obama’s words or actions, he gets attention.

Well, it seems the McCain Campaign has figured this out and rolled out an ad two days ago which threw Senator Obama’s rock-star like status and treatment right back into his face. And it did so very effectively, with nothing in the ad being false or deceptive, but rather giving us a visual view of where this candidate is on the issues.

Of course, the media was livid. And in their anger, they moved this ad up to the top of every media hour, right where you can be sure most Americans who are paying attention could see it.

What has happened since the debate began? If you look at the Gallup daily polling numbers, you find that the first major lead Obama has enjoyed so far in the race, which came on the heels of his world tour, has been erased. For the first time, Senators Obama and McCain are tied at 44% each.

Of course, there is still a great deal of time left in the race and this will change again, but it will be interesting to see if this trend produces any change in strategy from the Obama Campaign. In speeches over the past several days, Obama has been accusing McCain of “inciting fear” in voters over the fact that he does not “look like those others presidents on our currency.” Certainly a less-than-subtle referral to Senator Obama’s race. But other than that, it has been business as usual for Senator Obama.

So is Senator McCain the problem here? I would argue that he is not.

Senator McCain is merely responding in the only way to which the media rewards. The media has consistently rewarded McCain for negativity, therefore he is giving them what they want; what they are willing to respond to.

These media professionals tell you they hate negativity, but, at the same time, they reward it with more attention. So, it is a surprise that we see more from candidates?

Of course, Pelosi and Reid both know that if the issue goes to the floor for a vote they would lose and oil companies would gain access to oil-rich areas in and around the US they’ve been so long seeking. Reid and Pelosi have tried to place blame everywhere but where it belongs, on their leadership. In this case, I guess we would call it their lack of leadership. Pelosi and Reid favor a lawsuit against OPEC, but they refuse to allow American companies to tap our own resources in order to become less dependent on OPEC.

Perhaps the greatest irony coming from the mouths of these so-called Democratic “leaders” is this: Pelosi and Reid insist that oil companies don’t want to drill because they want oil prices to remain high while, at the same time, they refuse to allow oil companies to drill for more oil.

Someone please explain this to me.

Ultimately, we know for sure that we have enough natural resources of our own to completely replace the oil we currently import from the Middle East. I think most people would agree that having the ability to declare our independence from Saudi oil would be a great thing.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid don’t seem to agree.

1) This is a huge waste of taxpayer money. When President Clinton took office in 1992, he fired upwards of 92 of the 100 US attorneys working for him. These positions are entirely political and they work, as all aides and advisors do, at the privilege of the president. It wasn’t a scandal for President Clinton and it is not for President Bush.

2) This is more political thuggery than anything else. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars for aides to defend themselves from constant subpoenas by career politicians. I didn’t like it when it was happening to Clinton Administration officials and I don’t like it now.

Consider the amount of money Congress spends on these investigations. I believe the cost of the Monica Lewinsky investigation was upwards of $10 million. Now multiply that by hundreds and you see how much waste there is in Washington. A waste of time and a waste of your money, and an unnecessary burden on those public servants who earn close to minimum wage in the thankless role of “presidential advisor.”

I was walking from work to my bus stop in DC I came upon an interesting scene on 20th and K street. A fairly large tree had just fallen about 10 minutes before, landing partially on a white van. The whole thing happened right next to my bus stop, so I captured a couple of images before walking two blocks up to the next stop.

Unfortunately for Senator Obama, the huge media attention he received has yet to translate into any meaningful poll numbers. In most of the battleground states and in general, Obama’s lead is within the margin of error, making the race, in essence, a tie.

Of course, in most recent presidential election cycles when a Democratic candidate was running against a Republican incumbent, the Democratic challenger had large leads in the polls over the summer. This was true of Jimmy Carter when he ran against President Ford, though the race wound up being quite close. It was also true of Michael Dukakis and John Kerry. Normally, those large leads fade and the race evens up when the Fall campaign season begins and people begin paying more attention to the upcoming election.

This statistical dead heat must be troubling at some level to the Obama Campaign, though, according to Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, you would never know it from the way Senator Obama has been acting. Mr. Milbank commented today that Senator Obama’s campaign is being run more like a “victory tour” and that “as he marches toward Inauguration Day (Election Day is but a milestone on that path), Obama’s biggest challenger may not be Republican John McCain but rather his own hubris.”

Now the McCain Campaign has taken soundbytes and images from what was supposed to be the decisive moment during the Obama world tour and thrown it right back in Senator Obama’s face. There he is on screen, with 200,000 Germans chanting his name, acting like the president of the world, but what does this mean for average people like you and I?

It’s a pertinent question. I wonder if we can expect an answer from Senator Obama any time soon.

This whole campaign has the look and feel of a huge expectations bubble. Similar to the Dot Com bubble and the Housing Bubble, the expectations hugely outweigh what can actually be delivered by even so skilled a politician as Senator Obama.

We’re told we need to buy into Obama with almost no knowledge of what he’s all about and how he might lead. Senator Obama has been in congress for three years now, and most of that time has been spent campaigning for President. We hear of “hope, audacity, and change.” But hope for what, and what kind of change are we talking about?

Change can be good or it can be bad. Should we just trust that Senator Obama’s version of “change” is going to be all good? Should any politician, Democratic or Republican, be so completely trusted?

Is that an arrogant statement or a confident one?

I think it’s a confident statement, and hugely necessary.  How can a people be great if they don’t believe in their greatness?  How can a nation be great if it’s citizens don’t believe in it’s greatness?

If someone from Germany tells me to my face they are the greatest nation, while I might disagree, I would respect their confidence and conviction.  My reply would be simple.  “How is your nation the greatest?”  It’s not all about words, it’s also about deeds.  Put your money where your mouth is, as we say in America.

These days in the US it seems like we have more naysayers than we do even overseas.  Overseas I am likely to debate someone as to why my nation is the greatest, but in the US I’m more likely to have to  debate over whether or not we are the worst nation ever to exist.

We have a big problem in that there are many many Americans who hate America.  They hate that we are powerful and that we are influential.  They want an America that is “humble” and “knows it’s place.”

I would argue that this is already true.

We are humble, and we do know our place.  We generally temper our strength, while at the same time we know we’re strong.  After 9/11, we didn’t re-institute the draft and go to war with every Muslim nation.  Instead, we went after al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan and finished the job in Iraq that we should have finished back in 1991.

If you know your history, then you’ll remember that, after WWII, we were the most powerful nation on earth by far.  While most of Europe and Asia lay in ruins, the US was on a roll both economically and militarily.  We controlled the seas with our ships, the air with our planes, and our troops were all over the world.  We had 16 million men under arms by the end of WWII.  And we were the only nation with the atom bomb.

So did the US take the next logical step and take control over the shattered nations of the earth?  No.

Instead, we brought our troops home, helped rebuild Europe and Asia, and  got back to the business of democracy and prosperity.  The word “meek” is defined as “strength under control.”  After WWII, and for ever decade since, we have demonstrated that we are indeed a meek, if misunderstood, nation.

Yet not a perfect one.

If I told you that you use only about 20% of your brain, would you conclude that it’s worthless and want to get rid of it?  If your leg were only about 50% functional, would you cut it off?

So the United States is not perfect.  You could argue that we’re not even close.  I would agree with that argument.

But we are still the greatest.  We have a long way to go, but we’re closer now than we were when 100 years ago.

We’re freer, wealthier, more powerful, and more influential than ever.  Even with an economy that is in somewhat of a downturn, the world still looks to the US for leadership.

Not perfect, but still the greatest nation.

In November of this year we will select a new president to lead this greatest of nations.  While I believe both candidates can lead, I also believe that one of them is more ready to lead.

While I believe that Senator Obama is a great man and a great candidate, I think that Senator McCain is ready for the job.  Senator Obama is hoping to become president on the force of his charisma, Senator McCain hopes to become president on the force of his experience.

Senator Obama wants us to have faith in him, Senator McCain wants us to have confidence in him.  That’s the kicker for me.

My faith is in God only.  My confidence is in McCain.