While I was immobile at the doctor’s office for a few hours this morning, I met someone.  He was an older gentleman, who had retired from one of the local utilities after almost 40 years.  He was in the union while he worked there, but he is also a small business owner and entrepreneur.  He and I talked about kids, fishing, hunting, and just basically shot the bull for a couple of hours.  He, his wife, and I pretty much seemed to agree on most everyday things, such as raising children, the stupidity of criminals, and how hard things can be if you don’t prepare and work hard.

Only in the last 20 minutes or so did the subject of politics come up.  He seemed to be a mirror of myself coming from the left side of the political spectrum.  He tended to support Democratic candidates, but also spoke highly of one of our former Congresswomen, who happens to be a Republican.  He openly criticized some of what Obama had done, but said that he still preferred Obama over Romney.  Even when he explained why he doesn’t care for Romney and our local Republican politicians, he didn’t make it personal or venomous.

If only more people on both sides of the aisle could act the same way. 

In 48 hours, half of the American electorate is going to be pissed.  You can’t have as much of a divided population as we do and not expect a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth after a political loss.  But we have to remember that no matter who is President, we are all Americans.  We all deserve the respect that title brings with it.  Yes, there are knuckleheads on both sides of the political divide, and they have been particularly shrill this time around, but calls for either rioting or revolution after the last ballot is counted discredits us all.  We will always disagree, and the pendulum of politics will swing first one way, then the other, but we ought to remember that winning or losing with class and respect makes things work better than shrieking at the gods when we lose or rubbing a victory in our opponents’ collective noses.  Our system isn’t perfect, but it works so long as the winners keep the celebration down to a dull roar and the losers don’t try to get with the gun and the mob what they couldn’t get with the ballot and the speech.

 My new friend happens to be an American of African descent, a Democrat, and an Obama supporter.  However, he and I were able to have a rational discussion about life, politics, and the points we disagreed on with respect and laughter.  That is exactly what we need in the next few days and weeks, to celebrate those things we agree on, and to agree to respectfully disagree on those things we don’t.  I’m not perfect on this, but I’m trying.  I hope that more people than just me will try too.

This was originally posted on July 17, 2012

If you’re going to Ivy League universities based on the color of your skin, because you demonstrably didn’t earn your way there through hard work and grades, and other people are paying for it, you didn’t build that.  It was built by generations of hard-working people who created the scholarships you soaked up while you were getting high and ‘educated’.

If you’re a ‘community organizer’, theoretically continuing the struggle to achieve equality between black citizens and everyone else, you didn’t build that.  The hard work was done two generations ago by Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X.

If you’re a twit who thinks that having failed his way through Ivy League schools makes him a constitutional scholar and you’re teaching classes on constitutional law, you didn’t build that.  The men who built this country created the document on which you claim expertise.

If you’re a placeholder in the Illinois legislature, at least for long enough to run for higher office, you didn’t build that.  It was built by the man who freed your children’s ancestors from slavery.

If you’re an empty suit that got lucky to have his opponent be a stupid jerk who destroyed his own chance of winning a seat in the United States Senate, you didn’t build that.  The Senate was built by august men and women who actually wished to serve instead of being served.

If you’re living in government housing in the center of the nation’s capital, and you’re working a contract job for four years, with a remote chance of re-upping for another four, you didn’t build that.  It was built by better men than you, and we, their descendents, can’t wait to help you pack.

In closing Mr. President, I have two things for you. Actually, one’s for you and one’s for the horse you rode in on.  I hope you enjoy it, you insignificant footnote in the history of incompetent presidents.

This was originally posted on May 9, 2011

Well, the first political ad of the season just showed on the morning news.  Apparently we’re off to an early start.  Whoopee.

In 2008, we were handed a crap sandwich and told it was marzipan and happiness.  Nothing changed for the better.  In 2010, we threw it back in the politicians’ faces and screamed “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take this anymore!”.  Again, nothing really changed.  We’re still on the same trajectory toward insolvency and irrelevancy that we were on in 2006.  If anything, we’re accelerating down that particular track.

We need to change tactics.  As big a pain in the tuckus as we were to Democrats and establishment Republicans in 2010, we need to be even more painful to them.  We need to expose and shame ‘conservatives’ who vote against our interests so that they can gain favor with the President and his cabal of too-cool-for-school ‘progressives’.  We need to make the slumbering masses wake up and smell the house burning.

If necessary, we need to be ridiculous.  Snark must run in the streets.  Ridicule of politicians from all parties should be the order of the day.  I’m not talking about principled disagreements with their stands on issues.  I’m talking about lampooning them in the same manner Hollywood has been doing since Dan Akroyd tried to imitate Nixon on Saturday Night Live.  And then we need to vote every single national and state politician who was elected prior to 2010 out of office.

I’ve got my wookie suit and chicken suit in the closet.  Something tells me both will be getting a workout between now and November 2012.

This was originally posted on August 5, 2011.

Well, my month of daily “Two Minutes Hate” toward President Obama is winding down, and to be honest, I’m glad to see it going away.  I dislike the President and his policies, but to sit down every evening and vent my spleen is exhausting and depressing.  Not complaining, just rejoicing in the end of a chore.

We are at six days and counting in the initial phase of this election.  I look forward to the crazy season coming to a close.  I’m not going to predict who wins, but I do have some predictions for afterward.

• The election isn’t going to end when the polls close on November 6.  There are going to be court challenges, recounts, and blowhards on the TV and Internet for weeks afterward.
• I don’t think there are going to be riots after the election, at least not widespread.  I look at the jerks who are threatening them on social media the same way as I see the people who threatened to leave the country if Bush won in 2004.  I think it’ll be more like a few drunk bastards smashing a few windows and starting a few fires before they go to jail to sober up.
  • That’s not to say that I don’t plan on staying close to home on election day and that I haven’t checked our supplies in case the worst happens.
• If you thought this election cycle seemed to drag on forever, you haven’t seen anything yet.  Election 2014 and 2016 will begin approximately 10 minutes after the last court challenge in Election 2012 is over.
• If Barack Obama does not win, I would be surprised if he didn’t spend the next four years campaigning to re-take the White House.
  • If he does, look for a replay of the 2008 primaries in 2016.  Hillary Clinton isn’t going to let him get away with losing the White House and possibly the Senate.
• If Romney wins, I doubt his coattails will be strong enough to give the Senate to the Republicans.
  • I see this as a good thing, actually.  A Solomonic situation in the Congress will keep the stupidity on both sides of the aisle in check. Obama and the younger Bush did their worst when they had majorities in both houses of Congress.
  • If the Republicans do take the Senate, it won’t be a filibuster proof majority.  It might be thin enough that a few mavericks like Rand Paul or Marco Rubio might have the power to try to get something constructive done under threat of not supporting the party leadership in close votes.
• Expect a raft of Fast and Furious related pardons from an outgoing President Obama.
• Expect a lot of investigations in 2013 if Romney wins.  Most of them will be looking for the truth, some of them will be punitive in nature.  All of them need to happen.
• Either way, I’m going to enjoy a cold adult beverage to celebrate the end of this election.  It’s been one of the nastiest elections I’ve ever heard of, and certainly the worst in my lifetime.  If this is how it’s going to go from now on, we are in trouble.

This was originally posted on September 9, 2011

Yesterday, when the TelePrompTer in Chief was set up in the halls of Congress for the President’s speech, were Democrats required to genuflect towards it as they crossed the middle aisle of the hall?

This was originally posted on March 3, 2012

At GM’s Hamtramck plant in Detroit . . . I got to get inside a brand new Chevy Volt fresh off the line, even though Secret Service wouldn’t let me drive it. But I liked sitting in it. It was nice. I bet it drives real good. And five years from now when I’m not president anymore, I’ll buy one and drive it myself. –President Barack Obama, 2011

GeneralMotors will suspend Chevrolet Volt production from March 19th to April 23rd in order to bring supply of the plug-in hybrid car in line with demand, according to the Detroit Free Press.   Chevrolet sold 1,023 Volts in February, which up from 603 in January, but far from the 60,000-unit annual output originally planned for when the car was launched in December, 2010. Less than 8,000 Volts were sold in all of 2011. Fox News, 2012

This was originally posted on January 24, 2012

I’ve heard and read a lot of references lately to the “Democrat plantation”.  The term refers to the belief that Americans of African descent will tend to support Democrat politicians and causes so long as Democrats continue to provide them with bread and circuses.

I’m not just calling out Democrats on this.  The Republicans have their taken-for-granted class too: conservative voters.  For an example, consider the push to make Romney the nominee even though his appeal to the conservative base of the party is shaky at best.

You can call them plebs, serfs, peasants, peons, or whatever; it’s all the same:  people who are brought up in a system that assumes that they are at the bottom of the ladder, don’t see that there are better options, and have little to no motivation to find something better or different are used to ensure that some political movement or another gets and stays in power.

Every person or group that wants to exert control over everyone else requires a lower class because it provides the muscle, either at the ballot box or in the street.  The Chekists in the USSR didn’t draw from the cream of Bolshevik society.  They recruited their foot soldiers from the lower classes of Russian/Soviet culture and used them to instill fear in anyone who might oppose the regime.

The Democrats have their reliable voting block of urban African-Americans.  The Republicans have their reliable voting block of conservative middle-class voters.  Either way, they’re all just peasants working the fields of those who tell them just enough scary stories about the bogeymen on the other plantation to keep them in line and voting a straight party ticket.

Thoughts like this are one of the reasons that I’m considering myself an independent voter more and more.   Maybe I’m just cynical, but I honestly don’t believe that either party cares at all about what happens to the people on the streets of America so long as their personal gravy trains and power trips keep rolling. In this way, they’re no better in my eyes than the most staunch Stalinist or banana republic dictator.  So long as we all know our place and do as directed, they’re just fine.  If one of us pokes our head up and dares to bleat out of time with the rest of the herd, then they drop the hammer down on us or cut us off from the herd lest our disease of independent thinking infect the rest of the flock.  Only if enough of us make our voices heard do we have hope that those who think they rule our country will listen.

So I’m going to stop being a good peasant.  I will vote for a good Democrat instead of a bad Republican if I think that the Dem would do a better job.  I refuse to vote for or against something on the ballot just because the local Republican committee thinks I ought to, and I won’t be quiet about it.  Hopefully others will get the same idea.

What do you call it when the peasants quit working the fields or toiling in the factories?  You call it revolution.