Just when you think you’re through with me, I reappear with a vengeance. It is election-fever season, and I’m running hot. The dog cussing is starting already, and the election is still three months away. I can’t carry on a conversation with any of my friends for fear of hurting somebody’s feelings.

If you’re a Democrat, the Republicans think you’re a liberal weenie and all you want to do is give the farm away, and if you’re a Republican, everybody thinks you’re a racist snob and you want to put granny in a nursing home. Not just any nursing home, but one with dirty sheets and overflowing bedpans, which sends the roaches that don’t know how to swim scurrying up the wall to higher ground.

This is, of course, the national political scenario. The local political debacle only divides the neighborhood in which you live or the church you attend. Religion should have no place in politics whatsoever, but the fact of the matter is, it does.

In a world where it is illegal to post the Ten Commandments on the jailhouse wall or go dancing if you’re a primitive Baptist, Billy Joe Shaver wrote a song titled “God Loves You When You Dance.” I just don’t see how anyone could ever doubt this.

We are a divided nation on more levels than you can shake a stick at. The jail should have a copy of the Ten Commandments in every cell. Maybe one or two of them would take hold.

In the Southeastern part of the good old U.S. of A., it’s easier to elect a polecat than it is to elect a Catholic or a Jew. This, my friend, is a sad state of affairs seeing as how there are just as many redneck Jews and cracker Catholics as there are Pentecostal snake-shakers.

In an ideal world, we would only need one commandment, and that would be “Do the right thing.” This would cover all 10. Everybody knows it’s wrong to kill. Everybody knows it’s wrong to steal. Everybody knows it’s wrong to cherish your neighbor’s brand-new Harley, or covet thy neighbor’s brand-new 17-year-old wife. Everybody knows all of these things, but still we keep on doing them.

Actually, the one commandment should read, “Do the right thang, you moron.”

Between now and November you are going to hear a lot of good people call a lot of other good people some very bad things. Just try and block it out of your mind and hope that they aren’t talking about you.

“Everybody Loves Raymond” comes on the television on some channel or another 20 times a day. And everybody does love Raymond, but that is because he’s never run for office. If he did, the show would have to be called “Some People Love Raymond,” and the rest of us can’t stand his whiney you-know-what.

If you hear the words, “I wonder why they fired the school-board guy?” or “Did you hear the judge got canned?” or “Obama just banned Pearl Bailey because she wanted to sell liquor on Sunday,” just politely stick your fingers in your ears and walk away. It can only lead to an argument of which there will be no winner.

Vote for who you truly think is the most qualified candidate and not for the one who happens to be your cousin from “Daddy’s third ex-wife.”