John McCain accepted the Republican nomination and adopted a disturbingly conservative platform, disguised behind a smokescreen of supposed “change.” He accepted no responsibility whatsoever for his huge role in his party’s policies that squandered many beckoning opportunities for us to live in a land of peace and prosperity with America acting as a responsible citizen of the global community.

After witnessing that frightening Republican National Convention with its blind acceptance of Bush’s pre-emptive war, the savage and distorted personal attacks against Barack Obama for espousing progressive ideals, the arrogant pretense conveyed in self-righteous rhetoric that their private God has somehow chosen the GOP to lead, and the hypocrisy of McCain’s message of change coming from a Washington insider who has too often been Bush’s obedient lap dog, I once more contributed some of my small, fixed income to the Democrats’ campaign to bring real reform, ethics, peace, racial harmony and global respect back to the White House and America.

With their untrained Alaskan pit bull now on board, the urgency is even greater that the sham campaign of the Party of Fear be exposed and dismissed by the voters. I beg my fellow Mainers of good will to join the battle to reject the bogus Bush-McCain approach to the politics of deception and division.

Roy Van Til, Vienna