Faith of Our Frauders: Candidates' Church Chat

Campaign 2008 hit a special new level of Pathetic on Saturday, when John McCain and Barack Obama were interviewed by some pompous self-appointed American pope about their religious beliefs.

Obama seemed a bit embarrassed by the whole thing, although he attempted to give thoughtful answers. McCain is crazy enough to think his recently conceived Christian faith is of great importance to the world -- which he hopes to bomb with nuclear weapons -- so he proudly jabbered a bunch of simple-minded Hallmark-card soundbites one of his writers got from a book, possibly written under McCain's name.

The dumb American Voter ate it up, with people on the left, right and middle wasting much of today arguing about who better answered the Spiritual Questions, or whether John McCain was sitting in his straight-talk limousine listening to Barack on the radio rather than having a nap in the Cone of Silence.

The United States of America is bankrupt, morally and financially. This country stands for nothing but bad loans, brute force and blind consumption. Everything is literally crumbling, from our roads and bridges to our financial system to our "bring all children down together" public schools. The White House's response to the Russia/Georgia war gets a smirking "whatever" from Moscow. Who are we to be telling anyone not to invade little countries? We've been doing it with great fanfare and steady failure since Vietnam, and we're bogged down in so many doomed occupations today that Robot Troops are the only hope. Maybe we can buy some from Japan, on credit. Or that famous swimmer Michael Phelps can save the country by, uh, swimming very fast to various problem zones, like Aquaman.

As the country continues its 40-year slide from a self-sufficient powerhouse of innovation and adventure to a bloated, broken debt-choked nation of service employees and disability cases waiting for their next benefit check or "economic stimulus payment" to make one last run on Sam's Club before the car is repossessed and the house seized by the bank (in China), the tiny percentage of Americans with money are nervously looking around for safe havens -- not just for their investments and currency holdings, but for themselves. Is a walled, privately-policed neighborhood of like-minded coastal elites safe enough, or is it time to move to the country estate with the cache of firearms and vegetable seeds?

When, like Halliburton executives have already done, will the wealthiest Americans simply write off the United States and head to Dubai?

How will the next sucker to serve as Imperial President handle America's fall into weak obscurity? Will it be done with grace and dignity, maybe something along the lines of Great Britain fading from Global Superpower to quaint tourist destination? Or will America go down in a series of cataclysmic defeats and humiliations like the Fifth Century Roman Empire, finally ending with a burnt, looted capital of snarling rats and human corpses? (Okay, but even worse than Washington today ... imagine lots more corpses!)

Barack Obama with his million dollars of assets and John McCain with his wife's hundred-million fortune are, respectively, near the bottom and the top of America's Rich. No matter how bad it gets, they'll be all right. The Obamas would be welcome just about anywhere, and Cindy could always buy a Persian Gulf island or something from an Oil Company.

But everybody else in America -- the 99.38% of you who don't have at least a million bucks in liquid assets -- are probably stuck here. You're going down with the ship.

Good thing voters are all worked up about what the candidates think about Jesus.

Ken Layne is the managing editor of Wonkette.