http://www.yesweekly.com/articles.sec-232-1-omnibus.html So it%uFFFDs come to this. McCaint is forced to defend his opponent and gets booed for doing it. The chickens have come home to roost, and he has nobody to blame but himself. When he turned his campaign over to Rove%uFFFDs top two hatchet men, Steven Schmidt and Rick Davis, we could see it coming a mile away. ]]> Am I missing something here? Of the thousands of questions asked of the 15 or so candidates during this interminable presidential campaign, there is one that has not, to my knowledge, been asked. If I were one of the ones doing the asking, it would have been near the top of my list. ]]> Anytime anyone has a grand idea, the first question asked is invariably, %uFFFDHow much?%uFFFD And rightly so, provided it%uFFFDs not just a way of being a contrarian who opposes, doubts and critiques everything that he didn%uFFFDt think of himself. There are such unfortunates, and some of them live in Greensboro. ]]> While I would heartily endorse all those ideas, I%uFFFDm not sure that a fulltime farmers%uFFFD market, in and of itself, will be enough of a draw to make the ballpark the gathering place it needs to be. In fact, no single attraction will be enough, even if the downtown lines are redrawn all the way out to Yanceyville Street. ]]> I never know from week to week which hat I’ll be wearing come column-writing time. It vacillates from pessimist to cynic to provocateur to realist to satirist to visionary to wiseass at the… well, drop of a hat. But one hat you’ll rarely see me wear is that of optimist. ]]> Dear Sen. McCain: I am deeply honored that you would choose me above all the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other Republicans who are more qualified than I to be your running mate. It is obviously the opportunity of a lifetime, a moment that I will cherish forever. ]]> I may not have been a mile high after watching Sen. Barack Obama’s extraordinary speech last Thursday, but I swear there was a moment in there when I felt I was getting ready to levitate. I was among the hysterically happy throng at the former Mile High Stadium, if only vicariously. ]]> Anybody who’s lived in the Triad more than a couple of days knows that High Point has an inferiority complex. ]]> Carl Pettersson wasn’t the only winner at last week’s Wyndham Championship, only the most obvious. While the strapping Swede who was a Whirlie for two years and a Wolfpacker for four took home the big bucks and the Sam Snead Cup, there is a long list of winners who may rightly bask in his reflected glory. ]]> Sometimes you’ve just got to save yourself. Today, Sunday, I did just that. It’s something I almost never do, but it came down to a matter of self-preservation, so I did it. I trashed a column. Got about 200 words into it and dumped that sucker in the slush file. ]]> There is something very peculiar leftward, that the pendulum is swinging toward change and about this presidential he represents the status quo, that the stars campaign. I’m not are aligned against him, so this is his tactic talking about the of last resort. ]]> The Big “O” 2000, here’s the short version: “President” George W. Bush. Or the shorter version: the Duh. ]]> You hear it every four years without For the truth is that there are no fail. In fact, I'm quick fixes. The problems may not be not sure you can insurmountable, but we're looking have a presidential at planting seeds that may not bear election without both fruit for a couple of generations. ]]>