I’m sorry I had to keep it a secret from all my friends, family and readers.  But you know how these things go - word gets out, and complete pandemonium breaks out.  We didn’t want to give our opponents any extra time.  And I’m sure you’ll agree, this is a complete surprise!  At least, I bet you didn’t see it coming.  (note: the announcement of Sarah Palin as VP pick is just a ruse to throw off the Obama campaign.)

It gives me great pleasure to announce that John McCain has picked ME to be his Vice Presidential Running Mate!

That’s right!  ME!  Wayne!  aka whall.  The Whallster.  Whallify.  Creator of WHALLcats.  Proud father of a fourth-generation middle-name-Wayne member of the Hall family.  Decorated non-wartime military hero bandsman.  Unifying force for Unix, Windows *and* Mac use in business and at home.  Conspiracy Theorist Esquire.  Hot Blogger Calendar Nominee.

One of the first things John and I sat down to discuss was our brand.  We all know that without a good brand, there’s no success.  Dell is a leader in the computer idustry because it’s a short name.  Same with IBM and HP.  Think about it - who would vote for “Stephanopolous-Garfinkel”?  The advertising budget alone would sink a compaign faster than tacking “Edwards” to the end of a ticket.

We settled on a single word - McWayne - instead of the typical lastname+lastname.  It rolls off the tongue much better than “Obama-Biden,” don’t you think?  Say to yourself - “Vote McWayne“.  It’s incredibly efficient!

We didn’t want to be known as McCain-Hall or McCain-Wayne, although the rhyming words probably would help us in the polls.  We also toyed with using “John Wayne” as our mascot and name because John Wayne is clearly an icon of strength, integrity, rugged individualism and pure Americana.  However, we thought there were too many pot-shots that the pundits could easily take, such as “we’re going to put an actor in the White House???!?“ 

We all know the urgent issues facing America today.  And that’s why we need a leader, not a messiah.  We don’t need “change we can believe in.”  We don’t need “hope.”  Try putting change or hope into your bank account and see what that gets you.  But think for a moment of the promise that LOLcats bring you.  Yeah, you’re feeling it now, aren’t you? 

That’s right!  And we want your vote.  We have a few buttons you can add to your blog.

We hope to usher in a new era, where voters turn out in droves to submit their own captions to nominees.  We will make a fully automated system where you can take any picture of any candidate, and create a clever set of words and phrases and have them presented for Internet voting.

I see they’re already starting to pour in.  Here’s a recent submission for your perusal:

Well, those of you in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont… you can vote.  It’s been a long time since a Texan’s vote counted, and we have so much crossover voting and assumptions going on, it’s hard to make heads or tails of it.

Polls say one thing and reality is often another.  Why do we even allow polls anyway?  Or better put, why do people believe or trust polls?  They’re wrong so often.  There’s that Zogby poll that showed Obama ahead of Hillary by as much as 13 percentage points and then lost by 10 percentage points.  There’s the other one that showed the two neck and neck but Obama won handily.

Stop trusting polls!

And then there are the things that don’t get into the mainstream news.  Some of it has no place, granted, but I’ve collected some stories I’ve learned over the last couple of weeks here for your review as you consider who to vote for.

• McCain is very old.
  Ok, maybe you’ve heard that already.  Reagan was older when he started his second term, but still, McCain is pretty old.  But as Reagan said he wouldn’t hold Mondale’s youth and inexperience against him back in 1984, maybe McCain should play the same cards.  With both Hillary *and* Obama, because you can say “35 years of experience” all you want, but Hillary is just not presidential with her experience.  I will say that Obama’s lack of baggage is something I can support.  I’m not for life-long politicians in general.  Our founding fathers were business owners first and politicians begrudgingly.
• One of Hillary’s biggest financial supporters is Wal*Mart
  I don’t care one way or another.  But Hillary supporters who hate Wal*Mart might want to know this.  Even though she “returned $5,000 contribution” last year.
• Obama’s middle name is Hussein
  But who gives a flying pancake?  And who cares if he was in a turban? There are some who think he might be the antichrist and closely portrays the AC depicted in the Left Behind series.  But I’d lend more credence to the thought of “fear-mongering” if people are trying to get his middle name mentioned at any cost.  Some of the claims are downright creative and insane ”Barack = Iraq, Hussein = Saddam Hussein, Obama = Osama” and the adding up of his name = 666 (so does Reagan’s).  I will say this though: his ties with Louis Farrakhan and his ability to totally entrance people with his speech with very little substance behind it does scare me, antichrist-like or not.  I also don’t like his association with Dorothy Tillman and the thought of a potential lawsuit against US for “slavery reparations” paid to African Americans, just because they’re African Americans.  Sure, Obama was against these reparations before elected to Senate, but has since changed his mind.
• If you attack “big oil”, you attack yourself and other middle class Americans
  A friend sent me a link to this article by Ben Stein and even I didn’t know this stuff.  Essentially, Hillary keeps attacking “big oil” and the $40b or whatever profits Exxon Mobil made, but 99% of those profits go into pension funds, money markets, and stock portfolios of average Americans, NOT billionnaires sitting in the back counting their money. So if Hillary wants to go in and take their profits like she’s alluding to, she’s really stabbing hard-working americans in the back pocketbook.  If you have a 401K or IRA or any kind of savings plan, you might want to look to see how “big oil” has prevented your savings from going to nothing.
• Don’t be fooled by Democrats wanting to “stick it to the rich”
  As mentioned in a post last week, seven of the eight richest CEO’s have 100% of their political donations going to the Democrats.   I believe that both Hillary and Obama will actually be sticking it to the middle class by way of taxing us into bankruptcy.  McCain isn’t any better here, either.
• Can the economy afford more entitlements?
  I wish I had more time to research this and really understand the numbers.  I know it might sound backwards, but I don’t think that a hard economy means more handouts.  I think a tough economy means those who are working need to keep more of their paychecks.  By doing that, the hard-working Americans can afford to buy more, spend more and stimulate the economy.  By taxing the hard-working American an increased amount (which McCain, Obama and Hillary are all likely to do), you limit what they can spend and instead someone is promising to send it to someone else, but in the form of entitlement.  Entitlement doesn’t help the economy because it just takes from person A and gives to person B.  If the money is in person A’s wallet, it can go with person A to the grocery store or the hardware store or the furniture store, pay for goods and services, and then create a job for person B.
• Tons of people are cross-voting
  At least, they’re calling into the radio stations and saying they did so.  Lots of Republicans have now voted Democratic in the primary and put their vote in for Hillary because they think McCain can beat her easily.  As I mentioned last week, this was up for debate but the idea of it left me feeling icky.  So while I didn’t do this, I know tons of people are.  I’m planning on going to the Republican Caucas tonight.

Anyway, happy voting!