Oh no! Not another election???

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“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.”

~ Groucho Marx
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My my my... elections anyone? Everyone is having fun I hope... I wish I could but I can't say as I am.

I have far more friends who will be voting for Obama than for McCain. I live in a blue state, what can I say? Actually the western 3rd here is green and the eastern 2/3 would overall qualify as a tan color I suppose. The desert is multi-colored, hues and shades that are phenomenal. Here in the west though, we only have 3 colors in winter... green, brown and grey. So I'm not big on that blue state thing. I think all the states are feeling a little blue these days.

So... friends voting for Obama... Me, nah. While I reserve my decision to vote until that moment I mark my ballot and stuff it in the envelope and mail it off (yes, Oregon has mail-in ballots and I like it even tho' I miss the trip to the polling place) I won't be voting for either of the two major candidates. I'm personally sick of 'em both.

And it is less anything specific than it is most things in general. I'm tired of the charade. I'm tired of the richest geting richerest (richester?), I'm tired of having my friends send their children off to Afghanistan and Iraq for multiple tours while Katrina's damage still lays heavy on the south (listen to Doctor John's latest, City That Care Forgot for one piano playin' man's perception of that fiasco).

I view the "two-party system" as one beast with two heads. While they seem to argue, they actually work in concert, to the same end. And that end, it seems, could very well be our end. John McCain and Sarah Palin are the perfect icons for our state of affairs as a nation. John McCain, whom I've never met, comes across as a snide, rude man. Sarah Palin... the young, female equivalent of that.

If I were to vote Dem or Repub I would vote Obama. While others berate his youthful activism I applaud it. Obama is smart and behaves with respect towards others. Of course him I've never met either.

Whomever you want to see as President... we'll get what we get. Heck, if we can make it (albeit just barely) through 8 years of George Bush, who knows... but whomever we get our next President he will be facing a huge challenge. Possibly the largest challenge our nation has ever faced.

We are disturbed and stretched to the breaking point. Consider that "Retirement accounts have lost $2 trillion" in the last 15 months... that is a lot of loss for a lot of folks... put that together with a country now $10 trillion in debt and what do you get? Broke, like me. Poverty can be a great equalizer.

What I hope to see is that the financial crisis is not handled like Katrina was. Word...

What I hope to see is a President who will figure out that our husbands and wives, son and daughters, and brothers and sisters can come home from the middle east. What I hope to see is a President willing to invest the moneys wasted in middle east adventures instead put those funds to work here. Fixing the south, fixing our roads and bridges, raising the bottom line on our health care system, equitably rehabilitating our education system... What I hope to see is a President who acknowledges that literacy is the key to many things, that an educated society is far more effective than a nation addicted to low grade television pap with a reading level that barely raises above the 8th grade. What I hope to see is a President who says that a nation that leads the world in its rate of incarceration cannot stake claim as the "Land of the Free."

When Katrina hit and then through the horribly slow days of misery after its departure we failed to respond. IF our National Guard troops had been home they could have set up housing and helped distribute food, water, participated in rescue and salvage... Mr. Bush could have called upon those of us with skills who are unemployed or underemployed (especially among our veterans) to come and work for a period for minimum wage, 2 squares a day and a roof (even if only a big tent) and bed.

My dad worked with the CCCs building trails in the Olympic Mountains in Washington state. When I lived in Fresno (California) many of the sidewalks in the old neighborhood where I lived bore the Works Progress Administration stamp. Many of the small highway bridges over our many creeks and small rivers here in Oregon are WPA projects.





So, no, I will not vote Democrat or Republican. A pox on both. I hope the voters deliver a message far stronger than the one we last delivered to the Republicans. The Republicans have to get off that nasty attitude high horse they're riding. The Democrats need to grow a pair.
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"If we ever pass out as a great nation we ought to put on our tombstone, 'America died from a delusion that she has moral leadership."

~ Will Rogers

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