Voting Time

It's voting time again. While 2013 is an off-off election year, we still have some folks awaiting our decisions. In Concord, NC, we get to vote for our mayor and city council. I know that there isn't much fuss being made by our free press about this local election, mainly because the idiot teabaggers in Washington are giving the press so much material, but we really do need to get out to the polling places and vote. Election day is November 5th, but one-stop early voting begins at the County Board of Elections on October 17th.  The Elections Board is at 369 Church Street N, Concord, NC--at the Old Creamery.  So who's running? Well, we are lucky enough to have Scott Padgett running for Mayor again, and Scott needs your vote of confidence, even though he is running unopposed. Scott has been a fine mayor, intelligent, thoughtful and honest. Running against some opposition are Ella Mae Small and Alfred Brown. They need your support to keep the City Council as a progressive force in our area (unlike the neanderthal state government). Lamar Barrier is also running unopposed.
You may download a sample ballot by going to the following County site: http://www.cabarruscounty.us/government/departments/elections/Pages/Sample-Ballots.aspx

So get out and vote folks.  When you don't vote, you may well get the government you deserve.

And on that other larger front, the Washington Mess, an article just published in the Manchester Guardian, written by George Monbiot is deserving of a read. The article can be found at:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/14/obamacare-trade-superversion-subversion-threat-state?

It's Time to Vote

We are approaching an interesting period of comparative history. As most people know by now, George McGovern recently ended his hold on this life and is now gone from our world. Mr. McGovern presented this country with a sense of decency and intelligence now fast disappearing from our political arena. We are so in love with our media feeding frenzies that we seem unable, or unwilling to apply such decency and even common sense to our national decision-making processes.

George McGovern ran for the presidency in 1972 against a person, Richard Nixon, who has now gone into history as a criminal and a war crimes figure of historic proportions. He had a plan in 1968 to end the war in Vietnam, or so he told us. His plan was to enlarge the bombing campaign to include countries with which we were not at war and to expand greatly the killing fields of Southeast Asia.  We had a four year history to examine prior to the election in 1972. That history showed a compelling need for a “regime change” in America.  There were even early warning signs of a presidency that was resorting to outright criminal behavior to remain in office. Yet, the nation re-elected him, defeating George McGovern in a landslide.  What kind of nation might we have become had the reverse happened? We will never know.

Happily, in 2008, when Barack Obama ran for the presidency against John McCain, the Nation was so weary from the eight disastrous years of Bush and Republican misrule, arguably the worst period since the period just prior to the Great Depression under Mr. Hoover.  We opted to “throw the bums out”.

Having cleaned house, however, the Nation failed to understand fully the breadth and depth of the economic and global mess Mr. Obama had inherited.  Americans have notoriously short attention spans, and little to no memory of recent history. Americans were paying attention, only to a point.  By the time of the inauguration, it was back to business—“get me a beer hon, so I can relax and watch Dem Bears.”

Despite the reporting of just how extensive and how grave was the damage wrought by the Bush Neo-Cons, Americans seemed not to grasp what was happening. They expected a rapid turnaround, despite the collapsing structures all around them. It was as though we were in San Francisco in the middle of the 1906 quake, while assuming that the commute to work might be a little more difficult the next day.

So, after nearly four years of digging ourselves out, with zero assistance from Republican ne’er-do-wells—the “Just Say No” crowd—we are now officially fed up with blaming Bush for the continuing misery, and we imagine that by now, all the problems should have disappeared.  But the truth is, it’s really now 1936 all over again. Hopefully, it will not take WW III to bail us out, although Republicans seem to be heading in that direction for their answers.

The Nation under President Obama has made some large strides towards a more favorable economic structure, but we have miles to go before we sleep. Rather than reducing regulations and reducing the tax rates, we need to do the opposite. We need, in fact, to reinvent our entire financial system, much as we did after Great Depression I. This time, the changes may need to be reinvention more than redesign.

We also don’t need to mindlessly expand our military as some have argued (Mitt comes to mind). We need to reinvent our military, so that it can operate with relatively greater brainpower.  We probably need to reinvent the War against Terrorists. It is not really a “War” per se. In the Taliban and Al Qaida, we have one or more organized crime rings composed of assassins. They remain operational through exporting opium, and through their ability to hide in places like Pakistan that seem to have vast regions outside their national control.  The answer to that problem is not clear, but building three more nuclear submarines per year is surely not an answer.

If ever this Nation needed a thoughtful national election it is here and now.  Unfortunately, our media has deteriorated to the point of being a national joke, led in their mindless quest for ratings of course by Murdoch’s Faux News Network.  The people are surely suffering from election reporting fatigue. But we really cannot afford to succumb to such fatigue.  We must think as we go to vote, and go to vote we must. Thinking is hard, because it requires sweeping away the garbage heaped on us daily by the media.

My wife and I have already voted in North Carolina, joining several hundred thousand other citizens of this state.  Hopefully, the national polls are wrong and the President will be re-elected.

But before you enter the voting booth, it would be well to remember that a vote for Romney-Ryan is equivalent to a vote to re-elect George W. Bush. The Nation cannot afford such a disaster.

To Vote or not to Vote

I wonder whether the good folks at America.us, you know, just plain old folks who live and work and vote in America, will approach this upcoming election? The right wing press—the Faux News Network folks—seem to think it’s all over and we really don’t have to vote at all. They’ll be happy to tell us how it is going to turn out, so it probably isn’t necessary to actually vote. The Tea Party wins and everyone else can go to hell.  
According to them, Christie O’Donnell will finally have a job and can pay her bills. And of course, those good folks of the right persuasion, people like Rand Paul, and Joe Miller, and Sharron Angle, and of course Michelle Bachman, will be leading the charge, right after the election, to impeach President Obama, roll back ObamaCare, cancel Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, provide the Koch bothers and Rupert Murdoch with their coveted tax break, and, of course, outlawing masturbation.

So perhaps, we of the “other persuasion” should begin thinking about moving to another country. I mean, since the group in charge, Rupert’s people, seem to hate anyone not like them, we might not be welcome any longer. The question then becomes, where do we go? Who wants a bunch of old people with limited income (remember, no Social Security) and relatively high medical bills?

The obvious first choice is Canada—we can drive there, so no big travel bills. But I would imagine they might balk at the idea of 50 or 75 million old people and the great ranks of the currently underemployed, arriving at their doorstep. We could try the “give us your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to be free” speech as we try to gain entry, but I suspect that would get old pretty fast. I can see the door closing smartly and firmly.

It’s a daunting thing to consider.

Maybe, instead, we ought to consider first, actually voting. Perhaps the Faux News Network’s polls aren’t as accurate as they claim? Who knows . . . crazier things have happened, huh? Maybe after real people actually vote, Christy O’Donnell can go back to flipping burgers, or Reality TV, or whatever she did before deciding she should be President, or senator. And Sarah Palin can go back to her million dollar job at Rupert’s, move to Manhattan, and start hunting moose in Central Park.  And
maybe that crazy ass Rand Paul will be hired by Rupert to work at the Wall Street Journal. I mean, it’s not a real newspaper any longer anyway, right?

And then Obama can get back to work trying to salvage what remains of the United States after the Bush wrecking crew debacle. Who knows, maybe we’ll catch up to Greece economically.

It could happen . . .