Date posted: November 5, 2008 - Wednesday
Title: Random thoughts on elections
Current mood: annoyed
OK, it's Tuesday, November 4 and I have voted.
And now I feel like writing.
I have been holding my tongue for a while now. I stopped writing my weekly news and politics blog because I got damn tired of being angry all the time. And it was the things politicians and the government were doing that were making me angry.
I avoided commenting on the candidates because that is usually a quick way to alienate people and get yourself quickly discounted as being 'for' one way of thinking or another.
Truth be told, I wasn't too fond of either of the choices I had in this election, but I voted nonetheless. It didn't border on holding my nose while I was voting, but it came close enough.
There was enough mud, blood and bile thrown around during this election campaign it is a wonder they didn't have to offer shower stalls at the polling places so voters could clean themselves up from the stuff that got splashed on them while watching the two major political parties battle it out.
So now I offer a few tidbits which have crossed my mind in the last little while. There is no rhyme or reason to a lot of this and so this won't be a tight, coherent offering, but hopefully there are some little gems here for everyone.
During the last week of this campaign I was averaging 10 pieces of political mail a day. I just wonder if any of the people who were a party to this election are worth the trees that were killed to print the blather advocating their candidacy.
I am suspicious of anyone who spends huge amounts of money just to get a political office that doesn't pay one tenth of what was spent on the campaign.
How do you know a politician is lying? His/her lips are moving.
I perused my local ballot and stopped at one of the races for school board. I don't care how great a person might be, I will not vote for anyone who refers to himself as "Frodo."
While some ballot propositions may be well intentioned, none of them are going to make the immediate change in our lives the ads predict. No, even if that energy proposition passes here in California, it will not immediately take four plus tons of crap out of our air.
How do you know a politician is a liar? He/she is still breathing.
Superman is a fictional character. And politicians running for office who claim they will work wonders and blunders once they are elected are blowing smoke up your skirt. One politician is just that -- one politician. Legislative measures are passed by a whole lot of politicians. One guy may be important, but he/she isn't the be all and end all and they sure as hell aren't going to be able to do it all by themselves.
Ditto for the office of President. Barack Obama and John McCain are just one man. To get anything done they still have to get the cooperation of hundreds of members of Congress.
This is going to be the most expensive political campaign in history; and probably one of the nastiest. After more than two hundred years you would think we would have refined the process to the point where it was a little neater than what we have witnessed over the last few months.
I picked up my paper this last week and saw where the Bush Administration is going to go out like it governed for the last eight years -- pushing its' own agenda no matter who it hurts.
The story said the administration is going to use the lame duck portion of its tenure (and has there ever been a lamer duck than George Bush?) to push through as many changes to loosen regulations as it can. Changes in regulations concerning things like the environment and safety.
And the 'legacy' of these changes will effect and live with us for years. Because, in order to put new regulations in place to protect us there will have to be new hearings and getting the agreement of enough members of Congress to pass them.
The old joke is that a presidential administration works the first four years to get reelected. It spends the next four years working on the presidential legacy and the presidential library.
True to form, the Bush Administration is going to spend its' last days sh*****g on everyone it can in order to push its' own world view on the public.
I am putting each of the presidential candidates on notice right now. Yes, I know, I am just one guy and neither of the candidates probably gives a damn about what I think. Just the same I want the winner to know I will be watching very closely to see what you do.
You shot your mouth off pretty good during the campaign about what great things you were going to do. So now I say, prove it.
I am going to be like the guy who goes to the comedy show and sits in the front row with his arms folded and says, "OK, be funny."
Only I am going to be the one sitting here with my arms folded and saying, "OK, be presidential."
And on a completely different note … I picked up my Sunday paper and there it was right in front of me. Advertisements for Christmas decorations and toys. Hell, it isn't even Thanksgiving yet and already we are getting inundated by ads for crap in the stores they want us to buy for Christmas.
Obviously retailers have hit the panic button early in this economy and think a longer period of yelling and shouting will get us out of our homes to buy the latest round of useless products.
Hey, here's a clue. Why don't you price things reasonably and stop trying to convince us we need things like a gold plated, electric nose-hair trimmer or our life will never be the
