And for the second time this year, the King said, “No.”

I admit it: I voted for W, twice. But I can’t wait for high noon on Jan. 20, 2009, when he’s finally gone.

Of course, if John McCain takes over, Bush won’t really be gone at all. He’ll just perform the third Bush term.

But what if we go in another direction? What if we use this post as a forum to come up with serious solutions to what we see as Rockford’s and the region’s problems?

See, I’ve lived here all my life, and for all my adult years I’ve heard complaints about this, complaints about that, conspiracy theories galore about what “they” are doing at City Hall or the courthouse or the School board to shaft the taxpayers.

These are mostly fact-free observations and urban falsehoods like, “We voted against the MetroCentre and they built it anyway.” The facts are: Voters rejected a property tax increase to build a civic center in the mid–1960s. In the 1970s, the legislture passed a bill to fund civic centers with taxes from racetrack winnings. So, the MetroCentre was built with racetrack tax money, not our property taxes.

I could go on. And on. And on, exploding myth after myth. But I’ve done it so many times, frankly, I’m bored trying to explain things to people who have no intention of listening to me.

All I’ve heard for 40 years on local talk radio is an endless series of paranoid rants. I often think that if someone thinking about moving to Rockford listened to the people who were born here, he’d turn his car around and get out of town at 80 mph.

So, let’s hear it, Rockfordians. Let’s turn the page.  Give me some positive ideas for the future, with as many details as you can provide about how the job should get done.

Most of this “Should Hillary get out” chatter has been the featured story on the cable news shows. So, instead of Hillary getting out, I say that Wolf Donner & Blitzen should get out. And Comet and Cupid, too.

Let’s get the ball rolling. Here are some people who I think would make good candidates, although I have no idea whether they’d actually run:

Ald. Doug Mark, R-3rd; Ald. Nancy Johnson, D-8th, Ald. Carl Wasco, D-4th, Ald. Joe Sosnowski, R-1st.

You’d also have to put state Sen. Dave Syverson, R-Rockford, on the list, although I’m not sure why he’d want to take on a “buck stops here” type of job.

According to people who do polling for both parties, Morrissey’s favorability ratings remain high, riverwalk or no riverwalk. But if we have a third “100 year flood,” or the potholes next spring are as bad as this year’s, all bets are off.

Will Doug Scott abandon the Blago ship and come home to run for mayor? Stranger things have happened, but I doubt it. It might make more sense for Scott, who was an effective state rep, run for state Senate in 2010. The 34th district, which Syverson represents, is equally balanced between Dems and Repubs; in fact Dems argue it leans their way.

Airport board chairman Mike Dunn would also be a good candidate, but under which banner would he run? A lifelong Republican and friend of former Gov. James R. “Big Jim” Thompson, , political switch-hitter Dunn is Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s biggest fan in Rockford, because Durbin, assisted by U.S. Rep. Don Manzulo, R-Egan, has been remarkably successful in bringing federal tax dollars back to Rockford. If Dunn ran as a Democrat, he’d likely have Durbin’s support. But Dunn tells me he’s not running.

I don’t see how an overt Republican spouting rhetoric from the Heritage Foundation has any chance of becoming Rockford mayor. The GOP had its last, best shot in 2001 when businessman/humanitarian Dennis Johnson nearly beat Doug Scott in a four-way race.

There’s talk from time to time that former police chief Jeff Nielsen might run for mayor, I suppose as a Democrat. But he always looks as if he’s about to blow a gasket.

Frankly, I don’ think there are enough Republicans in Rockford to elect a mayor who ran as a partisan GOP candidate. But a Republican who ran an inclusive campaign, someone like Mark, for instance, could have a chance to win.
Who are some people you’d like to see as mayoral candidates?

Democrats, especially if they nominate Obama, will be painted as the appeasement party, not to be trusted with the role of commander in chief of the world’s most formidable military. Obama, McCain is already saying, is the favorite candidate of Hamas, the terrorist organization. (McCain, you may remember, says he abhors negative campaigning.)

That might not do the trick, however. Americans are focused on the economy, and they’re not too concerned anymore with the war in Iraq and the “War on Terror.” The GOP can’t win unless they scare people to death.

The only way to refocus Americans on the bogeyman of danger — International Terrorism — is to do what George W. Bush may do, in an effort to help McCain win the presidency and the GOP to avoid disastrous losses in Congress:

Sometime this summer or early fall, an “incident” will occur that causes the U.S. to retaliate, probably with air-strikes, possibly escalating to sending in Marines.

Inevitably, the “incident” will be in the Middle East region, most likely Iran, or maybe Syria, or it could be an attack on Israel by Iran.

Do I think the incident will be staged? Obviously I don’t know. But my knowledge of history informs me that we’ve done it before.

LBJ had his Gulf of Tonkin attack. The story at the time said that North Vietnamese gunboats attacked two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Turned out this was a “Wag the Dog” attack because it didn’t happen. That’s not my opinion. That’s what the declassified U.S. government report concluded.

Nevertheless, it was ballyhooed in the media at the time, and it gave Johnson a reason to send 500,000 troops to Vietnam.

Or how about the explosion that blew up the battleship U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbor, back in 1898. The American press, led by Joseph Pulitzer (the yellow journalist they named the prize after ) and William Randolph Hearst, immediately hit on a slogan “Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain” to sell papers and stoke fires of resentment against the colonial power that ruled Cuba.

That resulting hew and cry gave President McKinley the cover he needed to wage the war against Spain that kicked the colonial power out of Cuba, and out of the Phillippines, as well. Both countires became American protectorates, so that the U.S., the nation begun as a revolt against the British Empire, ended the 19th century as a colonial power.

So, who or what caused the Maine to explode and sink? To this day, the U.S. Navy says it doesn’t know.

In 1941, the American people remained isolationist despite the twin terrors of Hitler ravaging Europe and the Imperial Japanese forces marauding China and the South Pacific.

On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor, causing the U.S. to finally enter the war that had been raging for two years in Europe and longer in Asia. Britain, undergoing severe bombing by the Luftwaffe, was begging us to join the fight to smash Hitler before he controlled the entire European continent.

Debate continues to this day over whether President Franklin Roosevelt knew in advance that the Japanese were planning to attack, but did nothing to prevent it in order to change public opinion in favor of war against the Axis powers.

(I must add that I agree with Winston Churchill, who, when asked if he thought the Americans would join the war, said, “The Americans will always do the right thing — after they`ve exhausted all the alternatives”)

In more recent history, we have the Bush administration’s “weapons of mass destruction” argument for invading Iraq. Turns out there were no such weapons; the administration embellished — fictionalized — parts of the intel reports.

No, I don’t believe we staged the 9-11 attacks, and I believe our invasion of Afghanistan was fully justified. We should have stopped there, however. The Bush spin machine, unfortunately, used 9-11 to gin up war fever to invade Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9-11.

Betcha didn’t learn any of that in high school histroy class.

I said  Obama would win NC, 57 to 43 percent; he actually won 56 to 42.

I said Clinton would win Indiana, 52 to 48 percent; she actually won 50.9 percent to 41.1 percent.

Overall, a good night for Obama at the end of a very bad two weeks of his campaign. Still, the media pundits are seeing the contest in terms of the “white working class voters,” who are for Clinton. So, the commentators’ template is, “Obama would be in trouble in November because he can’t win the white working class vote.” Rarely did I hear “Clinton would be in trouble in November because she can’t win the black vote,” which is going 92 percent for Obama.

The way the pundits have it figured, if Clinton is the nominee, she’ll get the black vote because almost all blacks vote Democratic and have nowhere else to go,  while white, working class voters would bolt their party if Obama is the nominee and vote for McCain.

I’m not so sure. The myopic talking heads on TV ihave been so miserably wrong this year that it just could be that the opposite of what they say may indeed be true!

Joining Bush and Manzullo for the signing were Laura Bush, Senator Dianne Feinstein, (D-CA.); Congressman Joe Crowley of New York; Senator Mitch McConnell, (R-KY).