Recalling the statement, "Desperate times call for desperate measures," it has never been more true than it is for the McCain-Palin presidential campaign. With the first Hail Mary pass of the appointment of Sarah Palin flat lining because of her complete incompetence to lead anywhere but into a ditch, now McCain is making a last, dare I say, ditch effort to postpone debating Barack Obama and in the process eliminate entirely a vice presidential debate between Biden and Palin. Now that's the mother of all Hail Mary's.

While politicians of all varieties keep falling all over themselves in praise of McCain's Vietnam service and sacrifice. I've silently (until now) feared for the world's safety should he actually be elected. No one can spend five years as a POW enduring physical and mental torture and come through that kind of experience without severe, lifelong psychological damage. No such person should be anywhere near the nuclear button. Such a person can continue to serve his/her nation in any number of capacities, but never in a life or death arena and never as a final "decider."

Now the question of competence is so paramount that one has to question whether McCain would be channeling Ronald Reagan as a White House occupant with early Alzheimer's disease. The footage appearing on any number of channels showing the man's stumbling and bumbling, his inability to discuss any subject--including foreign affairs--with substance, accuracy and judgment assures that if McCain does win, it will not be McCain running the country.

The religious fundamentalists will be saying their prayers, talking in tongues, and who can imagine what other endeavors in hopes that McCain won't fulfill a first term. They will have someone even better in charge than King George; they will have Queen Sarah, sitting at the right hand of---something.

Having lived through the tortuous Bush administration and reflected on all other administrations of my lifetime, I could not imagine a worse presidency than given us by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Now I know that much worse could befall this nation. And that is a John McCain/Sarah Palin presidency controlled from behind the scenes by such organizations as Club for Growth, Council for National Policy, and Americans for Tax Reform. (Come to think of it, these groups and their members and acolytes are already running the show. Only next time, with an even more incompetent White House, they will flex their muscles more intensely.) A McCain/Palin administration would offer up Phil Gramm as Secretary of the Treasury and who knows how many others who claim to be humans but who's humanity is grossly in doubt.

In war it is said that there are no atheists in the trenches. World, we are in the trenches.