Throw the red flag, please . . .

Saturday. Coffee. Now I am watching Auburn and So. Miss. on the tube. (I guess that phrase is on the way out. I don't think newer televisions will have tubes or even be a tube anymore, but I may be the only one who cares). I love college football. It is so much fun to be a fan. Looking forward to the game. Planning your Saturday so that nothing interferes with kick-off. Snack selection. I am an Alabama fan, but any game will do. I actually pull for Auburn until a game affects the fortunes of the Tide. I hope that doesn't put my UA degrees in jeopardy.

One of the many, many things that amuses me about us college football fans is the frenzy we achieve during the recuiting season. We start tracking some prospects of good lineage when they are freshmen in high school. We read about them, covet them, analyze and forward their big plays posted on youtube. By the time they are high school seniors, we know them by first name and dream about what they can do for our program.

But then comes signing day. If they put on the cap or jersey of our team, their greatness is confirmed before they even register for classes. If they have the audacity to choose another school, then we realize that there must be something wrong with them anyway, if they didn't choose us.

So I love it. It is a great and healthy diversion from the stress of real life.

But our government is real life. We cannot afford the luxury of indulging in the fantasies that we enjoy in our support of sports teams. As an Obama supporter, it has been torture to see my man undergo such extreme scrutiny for the last year. I admit that I started out with a positive impression of Obama because he was on my team. I wanted him to be as good as we had heard during recruiting. I did not like it when he was being so closely examined, even though that is part of the process. The folks he had not signed with were relentless.

Now, after the hard part of that is over with, I realize that it has ultimately been to Obama's advantage to be so thoroughly sifted.

Now McCain has chosen Palin. I have tried in my own mind to be objective. Maybe I am just too much a Democratic fan to pull that off. After all, she is on the other team.

But I still don't get it. It appears that Sarah abused her power as governor in firing the safety commisioner who refused to fire her ex brother in law. It appears that she lied about the pork involved in the Bridge to Nowhere debacle (She never returned the money, and the completion of the project was a plank in her gubernatorial campaign). I don't think it's a big deal that she didn't actually sell the state jet on e-bay as she and McCain laughed about. She tried, but the price didn't get high enough. So, she sold it to a Republican politico in Alaska who had contributed to her campaign. Maybe there was nothing wrong with the transaction, but the sell was at a loss, not a profit, as she and McCain have stated several times now. That sale concerns me more than ebay. There is evidence that when she was mayor, she fired a librarian shortly after the librarian told her that she would not take certain books off the library shelves. When she took office as mayor, her town had zero debt. When she left office she left a multi-million debt. She has said that God is leading our effort in the Iraq war. She believes that it is God's will that a thirty million dollar pipeline project be approved. She is willing to risk damage to the great Alaska wilderness for oil that will make no significant difference in the energy crisis. And her minister is not exactly mainstream.

But I am afflicted with the Democratic liberal curse. Fairness. It seems to be a real negative in this political climate. As I watch the Dems on the tube and the pundits, I keep wondering, what in the world are they waiting on? Do they not know how to use the google? But then I think, I guess they're trying to be sure about the truth and context of these allegations before they talk about them. And that is the way it should be. I suppose that's one reason I'm a Democrat.

But it is mighty hard to take when she's wearing the other team's cap.

But it is not football. It is the future of the world. I pray that somebody is working hard to get to the truth. And when it comes out, however it comes out, I pray we, all of us, will hear it. After all, on this great earth, there is really only one team. Really.