How the Republicans Plan to Lose the Election

The Republicans always seem to have better qualified, more honest candidates for president.  They are doing well all over the country in lesser elections, but they seem to be incredibly capable of consistently losing the Presidential Election.  Here is how they plan to do it:

1. The Democrats will have a candidate that a) nobody trusts, b) nobody likes, c) nobody has ever heard of, or d) is so extreme nobody in their right mind would vote for them.  There will usually only be one to choose from.

2. The Republicans will run only candidates that are a) highly qualified, b) highly trustworthy and honest, c) well known, and d) proven to be competent and experienced in every way that matters.  There will be many to choose from.

3.  The Democrats will have only one goal: TO DEFEAT THE REPUBLICANS.

4. The Republicans will have many goals: a) save the economy, b) protect our constitutional freedoms and rights, c) protect our religious foundations, d) protect our cultural foundations, e) protect our nation from our enemies, f) strengthen our nation financially, spiritually, technologically, militarily...

5. Notice that none of the Republican goals include: TO DEFEAT THE DEMOCRATS.

6. It gets worse.  Not only do their goals not seem to include TO DEFEAT THE DEMOCRATS, their immediate goal is TO DEFEAT ALL OF THE OTHER REPUBLICANS!

7. At the moment, there are 14 Republican candidates running for President.  Some of them are, of course, better than others.  But, most of them are, at least, quite acceptable.  (See point 2.)  NONE of them want to make us over into a weakened, bankrupt, helpless, socialist welfare state that any third world terrorist can attack at will.

8. In the next year and a half, all of these many candidates are going to beat the crap out of each other in order to be THE ONE who will run for President.  At no time will they be running against the Democrats -- they will be running AGAINST EACH OTHER!

9. The media (almost all liberal) will LOVE this.  They will grasp and magnify every flaw that each Republican exposes in another Republican.

10. The fight will continue until all that is left is the candidate who was LEAST able to combat the other candidates.  For whatever reasons, he was weakest, least interesting, or least respected.  Nobody paid much attention to him.

11. ALL of the other good candidates, for one reason or another, have now been discredited.  NOW this remaining candidate is recognized as the only viable candidate.  He hasn't got a chance.

12. All this time, the Democrats -- who really don't have much in common with each other -- have been working toward their one goal: TO DEFEAT THE REPUBLICANS.

13. Now they don't have to defeat the strongest Republican, they only have to defeat the weakest straggler.  

14. Even if they lose, they win.  Even if the weak Republican straggler wins, he will be too weak to stand against the forces that are destroying the country.

Adventures in Auto Repair

I highly recommend that you replace your Ignition Coil, Spark Plugs, and Wires every 220,000 miles, whether they need it or not.  :-)

My $1800 1996 Sable Stationwagon began running really rough at idle.  It seemed to run OK at higher speeds, but at idle, it would almost die and would misfire bad enough that the check engine light would start flashing.  (That is the pull-over-and-stop-NOW indicator.) It would backfire when accelerating and have little power until higher speeds.  After a couple of minutes at higher speeds the light would quit flashing.

I was also having trouble with the transmission.  I suspected that the valve body was cracked.  It would hunt back and forth and slam into gear when slowing down and speeding back up at low speeds.  This got worse and worse.  Finally, it got so bad that I could no longer use overdrive -- I had to drive in D all the time.

I was also having temperature issues.  The engine didn't ever actually overheat, but the temperature would cycle up and down over several minutes.  I suspected a 'sticky' thermostat that was responding slowly.


Last weekend, I replaced the ignition coil, spark plugs, and wires.  I expected to have a LOT of trouble getting to the back three plugs and getting the plugs out of an aluminum engine.  Given the difficulty I have (age and condition) doing anything, it all went unusually easy.

However, when I started it up, it ran uniformly rough at all speeds.  I had a 50/50 chance of getting #1 & #2 wires swapped (they were hard to see and the wires were both the same length), so I swapped them.  It was MUCH worse.  OK, that wasn't it!  I checked all the connections.  Everything was plugged in good.

The guy at Advance said I might have a bad (brand new) coil.  I bought an OBD II DTC Code Reader.  It said that (only) 4 & 6 were misfiring.  The coil pack has 3 coils which fire the cylinders in pairs.  4 & 6 were NOT a pair.  That means it wasn't the coil.

I had been very careful with the front three wires.  They were very easy to get to and easy to trace.  And I noticed the odd pattern on the coil.  The back 3 were 1, 2, 3.  The front three were NOT 4, 5, 6.  So I had carefully put them in the order 4, 6, 5.

Since the Reader indicated only 2 cylinders, I dug the old coil out of the trash so I could read the numbers.  (The new one didn't have numbers.)  The order was 1, 2, 3 / 6, 5, 4.

I unplugged the easy-to-get-to wires that I was sure were right.  I carefully traced each one and put them back (correctly).  The car now runs perfectly.

Not only that!  The transmission shifts smoothly now!  The thermostat works good!  It doesn't kick in and out of overdrive going up hills!  The sun is shining and birds are singing!  Wow!