RIGGING THE VOTE

I am amazed at the blatant, cynical and unpatriotic voter fraud taking place in this country today.  It is taking place in the states of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to name a few.  Republican held legislatures and governors have passed voter ID laws that are defrauding voters out of their right to vote under the guise of stopping a nonexistent voter impersonation “problem”.  There has never been an arrest or conviction of this kind of “voter fraud” in the history of Pennsylvania as stipulated buy their own Attorney General. 

To make matters worse, they found a judge who is a severely intellectually challenged right wing ideologue to rule in favor of Pennsylvania’s fraudulent law last week.  It is under appeal. 

The right wing knows they can’t win this election on their policies of hatred and exclusion, their plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program where they give you a chit and send you out into the insurance marketplace to find your own healthcare, their plan to gut Social Security and Medicaid, to say nothing of their tax plans to further enrich the wealthy on the backs of the middle class.  These policies are not favored by the majority of Americans.

So they pass voter suppression laws that restrict voting hours, eliminate early voting and pass voter ID laws to literally take the vote away from citizens who have voted legally for many years.

Is this the democracy we grew up in?  We have been fighting for years and years to make it possible for every legal citizen to vote.  Are we going to let these bullies take us backward?

Rigging the vote is unconstitutional, illegal, unpatriotic if not treasonous and it is unconscionable.  This is a true definition of voter fraud. 

Don’t let these people steal our democracy.

AND THAT'S NO BULL.

THE TRUTH ABOUT "JOB CREATORS"

The Republican Party has long been promoting the myth that the wealthy and big businesses are “job creators”.  Yes, they do hire people when they need to manufacture something but they don’t create the demand for it. 

I have a friend who owns a small business and I asked him “If I gave you $50,000.00 would you hire another service person?”  He said “Of course not, I wouldn’t need one.”  Then I asked him “If you had an additional $300,000.00 in sales, would you hire a new service person?”  His response was “With that amount of additional business, I would need one.”

 My friend would not hire anyone if he had additional money.  If he had additional sales, he would be compelled to.  In this case, my friend’s customers created a job by purchasing more of his products. 

This is what I call “The Universal Rule of Job Creation”. 

If someone buys an appliance, car, truck, boat, box of cereal, or any other product you choose, some company somewhere will have to produce more of these things to replace what we purchased. 

When we buy more stuff, factory production has to increase to keep up with demand.  A perfect example of this is the U.S. auto industry.  When sales were down, they were laying off.  We are now buying more cars and they are hiring.

Enough of this “job creators are the wealthy” malarkey!   We are all job creators every time we buy something.  And on the way, us job creators have enriched those wealthy corporations who have produced all the products we purchase.

I believe it was Paul Wellstone who said “If everyone is working, then everything is working."

Our system is truly “demand and supply”

AND THAT'S NO BULL.

A CRUMMY WEBSITE?

What a joke! The Obama administration's feeble efforts to battle these horrible voter ID laws is to start a website to inform voters of their state's new rules.    http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/obama-campaign-launches-effort-to-combat-voter-id
I would have liked to been a fly on that wall.  Imagine the collective genius of the White House sitting around the meeting table:
Adviser  #1 "We really have to figure out a way to stop the states from enforcing these unconstitutional voter ID laws this election."
Adviser #2 "I say we file for injunctions against these laws in every state to halt their implementation until the courts determine their constitutionality."
Attorney General Holder. "Well, um, ah gee whiz guys, that really doesn't
sound tough enough.   Would we actually have to take someone to court?"
Adviser #1 "Yes we would, sir!  We'll make life real miserable for them."
 Holder. " I don't know guys, it seems awfully confrontational. Are you sure?
Adviser #2 "That's about as tough as we can get at this point, sir"
Holder gets a gleam in his eye and slaps the table. "Ive got it!  Let's start a website explaining all the new rules to these people. That'll hit the states where it really hurts.  Let 'em have it right in the old bread basket!
Adviser #1 "But sir, many seniors and poor people don't have computers.  How will they get the information?
Holder. "Come on man, this is the 21st century, everyone has a computer!
Do these idiots in the administration have a clue?  They are taking a chance on losing this election because Holder is the most confrontational averse Attorney General in the history of the country as evidenced by all the criminal charges filed to date against the Wall Street crime families.

And that's NO BULL.

FOR THE LIFE OF ME

For the life of me, I can’t figure out the modern day “conservative”. They appear to have lost their empathy for the less fortunate. Facts seem to be totally irrelevant if they don’t agree with their viewpoint. Many have become hateful, spiteful, angry, frightened people who are willing to support positions that are contrary to their own best interests. Like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders, some are union members voting for republicans who will turn our state into a right to work state. If the “divide and conquer” tape doesn’t convince you Walker has a hidden agenda, what will?

If Walker wins, the Wisconsin I see will have a privatized school system. We will be a right to work “for less” state. There will be no collective bargaining, private or public. Planned Parenthood will be gone. There won’t be any healthcare for the poor. Job losses will continue and we’ll give more tax breaks to the wealthy. The state will fall deeper in debt. He will sell off state assets and there will be more rampant cronyism. We will experience more pollution of our lakes and streams and less aid for towns and counties. Roads and bridges will continue to deteriorate. Effectively, there will be no DNR. We will see continued acrimony in Madison with millions of dollars coming in from outsiders trying to run our state.

Let’s not forget the real possibility of watching our Governor being perp walked down the steps of the court house. Won’t we be proud!

Do they want us to be the Mississippi of the north? Don’t buy into all the propaganda Koch money can spew on TV and mailers. They’re trying to play us all for suckers. Don’t fall for it.

YOUR NEW BOSS, MITT?

Does Mitt Romney remind you of anyone? Maybe someone you worked for in the past? Not necessarily your immediate supervisor but his boss. You know, the "suit" from the VP's office. The guy who never did a day's labor in his life. The guy who gives you the reluctant "limp dishrag" handshake? The guy who walks through the plant and spy's you wiping the sweat off your forehead and runs to your boss and demands he dismiss you on the spot for loafing. The guy who looks at firing people as sport. We all know this guy. Clueless, aloof, has a mean streak and no sympathy for anyone working with their hands. Most of us have worked with our hands at some time in our lives and can recognize this guy. Is this the guy you want to be President of the United Sates?

ENOUGH?

Last week at the high school my son attends, they had a “lockdown and emergency evacuation drill” in the event there were ever to be a shooter in the school.
This drill, I think, was generally a good idea but what does the need to even have it say about the world we now live in?
To my knowledge, students bringing a gun to school and killing people is a rather recent phenomenon. What has brought us to need to run drills in case our children become potential murder victims while attending high school? This is total insanity! Our kids can no longer feel safe even in their classrooms. What’s next? Cops in every classroom? Arm the teachers? Arm the entire student body? Arm everybody?
We are becoming so desensitized by all the shooting and violence that surrounds us that we accept it as a fact of life. Where is the outrage? Why are we so docile? Why do we shout at each other over political smoke and snake oil while completely overlooking the horrible violence that surrounds us each day? When will we say collectively: enough?

SPECIES

As a species, we humans are a real piece of work. We have perpetrated violence on one another since Cain and Abel. We even have the audacity to think of ourselves as cultured and civilized while at the same time engaging in tribal warfare all over the world.
Some have managed to twist our bibles; you pick the religion, and interpret what was intended as a moral compass into justification to hate and kill. Throughout history our leaders have understood how to play us against one another in order to gain wealth and power. Nothing has changed but the sophistication of our weapons. We can now kill more people than ever with less effort than ever before.
It has become easy for those in power to influence millions overnight. They continue to play upon our fears. They continue to point out who we should hate. We continue to fall for it. How much longer are we going to remain so gullible? How much longer are we going to blindly follow these hate mongers?
Not only are we barbaric, we are intellectually lazy. If we do not search for and speak truth to the powerful, we are doomed to follow them right to the gates of whatever you envision as hell. By then it will be too late.