Politics is getting really crazy these days. I get a lot of things in the mail, people wanting money. Because, sometime in the past, I gave to NRA related things, I am now, apparently, a member of the Republican National Committee. They want me to give them $28,500. If I get married I can give them $57,000. Or, I can raise them $200,000 from all sources per year and thereby get into the Republican Regions Club. There are other, lower levels, but the one to be aspired to is the Regions level.

Then, the NRA wrote to me as a member and advised me that I should vote for Mitch McConnell. They suggest I should send Mitch McConnell money and that he is a great senator. I have been acquainted with McConnell for thirty years. He has been real successful at obtaining power for himself. In fact, this whole Republican Congressional contingent has been very successful at obtaining power for themselves. But, the proof of the pudding is in the eating and ever since we have been represented by all or mostly Republicans, the State of Kentucky has fallen behind the rest of the country in education, economics, agriculture, drug abuse.

The efforts of Hal Rogers’ UNITE are laudable on some fronts. However, too much of what they do has to do with putting people in jail who are using prescription drugs made by the friends of this Republican administration and purchased by prescription. It seems like we should just cut back on all this dope. Then we won’t need UNITE so much.

The Democrats are not immune to this. Bill Clinton is writing to me suggesting that if I don’t give more money to Barack Obama’s effort, he may well lose. Well, I can’t give anymore. Maybe they should look at their donor list.

Then, there is my old friend John Edwards. No one but his wife was more disappointed, nor more surprised, than I was to discover that John had been fooling around with one of his staffers. I have been acquainted with Edwards and his wife Elizabeth since we were young trial lawyers. I always thought he would be something special and I deeply mourn this trouble. I hope that he did not spend the money that I donated to his several campaigns fooling around with women. However, if he did, I would come a whole lot closer to forgiving him if the temptress was really hot. This one doesn’t appear to be.

One of the common complaints, about the Kennedy family over the years by my local Baptist and Pentecostal friends has been that their father owned a brewery. In fact, he was Ambassador to England and imported Scotch whiskey at the end of prohibition. It is a distinction without a difference. But they never get it right.

Now, they would never forgive a Kennedy because of this alcohol connection. However, they don’t have any problem with John McCain and his lovely wife Cindy, though Cindy’s considerable fortune emanates solely from the sale of alcoholic beverages. I think it has to do with the known fact of Jesus being a Republican.

My friend’s children don’t serve in these wars, don’t do public service, but that’s no matter. They are great Americans because they’re "Conservative". They never put that information on my dog tags, not on my father’s, not on my son’s.

More politically interesting has been the racial attitude of a lot of my friends. Jimmy, a big fat friend, who lives in the remnant of a coal camp, says that he is not voting for no "damn nigger". Another friend of mine says he’d hoped he’d never live long enough to have a "nigger or a woman" elected President. Now, he realizes that "if he wants to live, he’s going to have to have one or the other". Another friend of mine, better rounded, says he doesn’t see what the big deal is about a black man asking white people to vote for him. After all, he says, we have asked black people to vote for us for two hundred years.

Anyway, politics and religion are making strange bedfellows this fall, but the good things in life stay that way. My Evangelical friends are still looking for church members. The more money they have, the more they can be out of line with the teachings of Our Lord. Apparently, the thinking is that if you can get a few rich people into church and get them to tithe into the church treasury, it will finance so many fine ministries that it will outweigh any evil those few people do. I don’t know about that. But it does seem that conduct doesn’t matter to most of my Christian friends. Especially on the issue of race. It’s just important regardless of what we do, we all say we’re one of them.

Bill Hayes is a Middlesboro attorney. Contact him via e-mail at editor@middlesborodailynews.com.