This column can't be limited to one topic this week, so we'll start by teaching us all how to give a Barack Obama speech. Then we will look at why both he and John McCain should not be elected in a more perfect world.

How to give an Obama speech: First, find out what your audience wants to hear, and start 9 of 10 sentences with the word "I." Speak fast if attacking McCain, speak slowly and precisely when speaking of yourself.

After all, what is important?

Follow the pattern below:

"I am (fill in the blank)." Turn your head to the right, look slightly upward and pose heroically. "I will (fill in the blank)." Turn head to the left, pause, look saintly. "I will (fill in the blank). Turn head to the right and look heavenward. Look heroic until cheering dies down. "I am (fill in the blank)." Look directly over the heads of the audience as if observing some far away scene almost as important as your own message. "I will (fill in the blank)." Point right index finger directly toward heaven, then turn right again. Look valiant. "I am (fill in the blank)." Look to the left and upward. Smile beneficently.

Repeat.

Now, let's talk about the $700 billion bailout.

We can safely assume that the government, for all practical purposes, is broke, in that its bills exceed its income. That was before the bailout.

The U.S. government has just obligated itself by law to pay out another $700 billion it does not have. That means that the government must somehow create the money. Or perhaps, Bush, Pelosi, Reid, Obama, and McCain can get Santa Claus to make an early trip down from the North Pole with a big bag of greenbacks.

The problem is reality; something that Washington doesn't like to deal with. The government is not going to create $700 billion out of nothing, and Santa Claus is not coming to the bad boys and girls who run our government.

That money (and all the pork that our big-hearted representatives gave

themselves) will come from people who actually work. Some of it will be stolen from our retirement funds through inflation, part of it will come from begging other countries to buy our debt, which will be paid back with interest by our children and grandchildren, if the Republic lasts that long.

So how much money is $700 billion?

If you had a million dollars, you would be a millionaire like most of our senators. If you could take a million dollars from a thousand millionaires, you would have a billion dollars. If you could take a billion dollars from a thousand billionaires, you would have a trillion dollars, which is just about what this mess is going to cost us.

According to the Census, there are about 1.5 million people working in Iowa. If every worker in Iowa gave every cent they made for the next ten years to Washington, the Feds would still be $50 to $200 billion short on the debt they created for us this first week of October.

In other words, if every working Iowan became a slave to the government, living only on the charity of friends from other states, we would all be in servitude for ten long years, only to come up short at the end.

We were told that this debt had to be taken on immediately. There was no time to discuss it. There was no time to do anything but vote "yes."

When the House voted against it the first time, the world was going to end.

Yet, if this is all true, why did every piggy in Washington manage to get his snout up to the trough so that our "honorable" representatives could keep their well-maintained rears sitting in Washington for another term?

This was either not the emergency it was made out to be, or our congress "persons" make used car salespersons look like saints. They not only drilled holes into a sinking ship, they then tried to pull in a few extra bucks by selling fake passes to people trying to abandon the wreck.

Our shameful representatives, including our presidential hopefuls, reminds me of something supposedly said by Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. "Someone has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us."