Tag Archives: election

So, Hillary thinks that if the election was held today, she might win. She’s wrong.

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It was reported today on CNN‘s site that Hillary Clinton believes that if the presidential election was held today, she might win. I have bad news for her. She’s wrong.

And it’s not because I don’t like Hillary Clinton, which is usually where these kinds of stories and posts go. It’s because of something much deeper that for reasons that make complete sense, NO ONE IN THE MEDIA UNDERSTANDS.

You see, there’s this strange belief in the mainstream media that everybody hates Donald Trump because the mainstream media keeps reporting bad things about Donald Trump. And they keep repeating this information over and over. Then they conduct polls among the people who consume their news and wonder why the results keep telling them everything they keep reporting. YET, this was exactly what they did with their polls and reports during the election, and they were completely blindsided by the results.

What’s going on is something that the media just doesn’t want to face, or is just too lazy to admit might be happening: They’re reporting on only one segment of the population, and that population isn’t the majority.

You can start to see this when you read through message boards that aren’t one-sided or pay attention to the comment sections of stories on pretty much every other web site out there. There is an entire segment of the population that seems pretty angry and is just not being heard. And whenever they ARE heard, they’re treated as outliers, or crazy people, and then ignored. Yet, I suspect they’re a major part of the reason why Trump was elected in the first place. And they’re a major part of the reason why he’ll be re-elected, even though I still keep reading stories about how he can only be a one-term president because of how so many people hate him.

The sad thing is: I mentioned this during the election when people kept telling me how Donald Trump was a joke and how he had zero chance of winning the election. Whenever I mentioned that I thought the media was missing a large segment of the population, people just laughed at me and told me I had no idea what I was talking about. I suspect they’ll do the same again now. Oh well.

My Thoughts on the Infamous Election

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governmentSo, I hear there was some kind of election that took place a week or so ago, and for some reason everyone seems to be a bit stressed about the results. Knowing how much my fan base cares so much about how I think about things, I thought I would just make a couple of comments about the whole thing. (Disclaimer: No one cares one iota about what I think, so I’m just feeding my ego by pretending that people actually do)

  1. The result. During the primary, I remember stating numerous times that Trump really shouldn’t be discounted. I even described the whole situation as a potential “mule” effect, meaning that it may be one of those situations that defies predictive algorithms and statistical approaches. People said I was stupid and ignored me. They pointed to people like Nate Silver and said that was why I was wrong. Turns out, Nate Silver was extremely wrong (and still going on talk shows pretending that somehow he really wasn’t, even though he most certainly was). People are now starting to come out of the woodwork claiming that they knew this was going to happen all along. They didn’t. They were so completely wrong and just don’t want to admit it to themselves.
  2. Hillary was the worst candidate the Democrats could have ever run for president. I kept saying this to people. It wasn’t because I liked Bernie. It was because I really didn’t like Hillary. And I suspected that a great deal of people in the country didn’t either. Enough to mean the Electoral College might seriously disappoint her. The responses I got from people were quite hostile, so I stopped talking about it. And then people I really respected started revealing they “were with her” and I felt bad talking in negative terms to those people who I didn’t want to get into social biffs with. Well, she lost. And that’s just one of those things. First off, she was never all that popular with America in the first place. She was beaten horribly by Obama eight years before because people wanted pretty much anyone but her. This time around, the Democratic Party basically railroaded America into having no choice but her, so everyone had to sign onto her name as “with her”, and when the numbers were finally counted, people weren’t really with her. Oh, sure, she won the popular vote, but let’s put this into some perspective. She was running against what should have been a sure thing: A candidate who alienated practically every demographic, spoke out loud with his inner voice, and didn’t give a flying crap what anyone thought about him. And he still managed to beat her on the state by state basis so that the Electoral College is now his. She lost. He won. Except people don’t want to accept that and will continue complaining about it for the next couple of years as she’s unemployed and he’s the President of the United States.
  3. This should be the end of the Clinton Dynasty. Bill was great. No one wanted Hillary. Which means this should be the last we hear from them. Except that’s not going to be the case. In a few years from now, we’re going to start hearing about the GREAT CHELSEA CLINTON, who has actually done absolutely nothing in her life other than be the daughter of a president and a loser for president. Yet, she’ll eventually emerge as “OUR ONLY CHOICE” some day in the near future. Mark my words. The girl who has done nothing but receive a special network job ONLY because she’s someone daughter will one day be a shoo-in for political office. And we’ll have to endure more years of a dynasty that really should have been contained with one excellent president.
  4. Protests. Yes, I understand people are upset that Trump won when they didn’t want him. But rational choice statistics causes me to think: “Why protest if NOTHING can possibly change?” Protesting Trump isn’t going to lead to a recount and a sudden declaration that we were wrong, that Clinton should now be president. Protesting isn’t going to change the minds of the people who backed Trump (or any Republican) especially in an election that was much more about not wanting one candidate as much as another. Boycott businesses? Sure, but what purpose does that serve? Before and during the election, we heard all sorts of horrific comments from CEOs of Papa Johns, Hobby Lobby, Chick Fil A and a bunch of others, but people are still shopping at those places and not changing their ways. Boycotts don’t work when you weren’t originally a daily shopper at the place you’ve decided never to shop at in the future. So, about the only purpose protesting is doing right now is to serve one’s own personal desire to be upset, kind of like when little kids scream until someone acknowledges them. And like those kids, when no one acknowledges them, nothing really changes. And if the only acknowledgement you get is to be arrested (and have no support from the community around you as a result), then all you managed to do was start up your criminal record which will probably make it more difficult to get work in the future. Part of what made dumping tea into Boston Harbor in the 18th century turn out to be a good idea was that the community recognized this as a positive thing and supported future protests. None of the protests I’ve seen seem capable of doing that because for the most part, no one even knows the protests are even happening, other than to be inconvenienced for a few moments (like when an actor gets arrested for climbing up the side of the Bay Bridge and stopping traffic; most people are generally just pissed at the actor for making their commutes a bit longer).
  5. Going Forward. This is a more difficult one to discuss because our country seems to be in a bit of a pickle because few people want to move forward after the election, yet the reality is that eventually exactly that is going to have to happen. Trump is going to be president. That doesn’t get postponed or changed just because half of half of the country voted for the other candidate (the other half of the country didn’t care enough to even show up to vote). So, come January, things either move forward or we end up in total anarchy. Historically, and statistically, I don’t see the latter case happening, meaning that business will be as normal, even if a bunch of people walk around all pissed about it.
  6. Movements. The biggest casualty of this election, in my opinion, is the population of people who have gained great ground over the years that are completely frozen in time right now because alternative political forces routed them and beat them in the field of battle itself. This means a lot of people who were walking around with chips on their shoulders, convinced they were not only power centers but the power brokers themselves, are kind of on the outskirts of power, realizing that all of America didn’t respond to their proclamations as they were expecting. A lot of liberal power centers were seriously humiliated on that day, including boisterous celebrities, the Daily Show (and numerous other talk show personalities as well), and entire news media outlets. A sea change really should take place here, but won’t because the personalities involved will make the wrong assessments and continue to do the same things they did before, except now they’ll try to shame the conservatives who liberals have never learned generally don’t take that sort of bait (something they should have learned during the George W Administration). An example of what I’m talking about: I watched for about two weeks before the election of how many times The Daily Show went from being a satirical news site to being a cynical news site to straight out becoming an advocate for the Hillary campaign. I used to defend The Daily Show from conservative attacks, but wow, they were so over the top with one-sided commentary (not even humor) that I began to equate Trevor Noah with a Hillary talking bot. If that sort of thing continues, as I suspect it will, then we’re in for a very interesting four or eight years of negativity and shame approaches to reporting the news.
  7. Moving to Canada? This “threat” needs to just be removed from the English grammar process. We don’t live in a world where you can easily just move to another country any longer. Unless you’re already a citizen of Canada, your chances of being able to move to Canada are pretty close to nil. First, you have to have the economics to allow yourself to make such a move, apply to that country itself (which has quotas and immigration much like the US does), and you have to have some kind of job lined up for when you get there. If you don’t, your chances of being accepted aren’t really there. So the two prongs of this “threat” need to disappear. First, the threat is baseless and rarely ever going to be carried out. Second, trying to hold someone to it because that person made the threat needs to also understand those practical implications. A person threatening to move to Canada and someone actually being able to do it are quite disconnected. Now, a number of celebrities have made that threat, but if someone is a celebrity and that fame requires working in a country that isn’t Canada, again, its a baseless threat and should be laughed at and never taken seriously. I imagine we’re going to hear a bunch of conservatives shaming liberals these days about their threats to leave to Canada and that they never did. Just stop it already. Both of you.
  8. Future legalities. This is the one thing I find interesting because this election exposed both Clinton and Trump to all sorts of potentially illegal activity that should be addressed. From foundations that promised money to Haiti and never delivered to universities that might have cheated people out of lots of money, including federal funding, there is a lot that needs to be accounted for. I suspect NONE of it to be addressed over the next few years. And that’s really all I’m going to say about that.
  9. So, we had our election and now we’re back to the wait for our next election. Remember Rousseau’s claim (reworded for clarity): We’re only a democracy when we vote; at all other times, we’re under the control of the people who run our authoritarian government. Remember that as you pay your mandatory taxes and register your cars for the permission to drive on your country’s roads at a speed mandated by government representatives and enforced by uniformed men and women who carry guns. It’s our democracy.

The Problem With Our Government and Classified Information

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For those of you who already know me or about me, you know I used to be a counterintelligence agent. I worked with and about classified information. It was basically my job. What I’m about to say now is probably going to be taken as a bit of hypocrisy or at least with a sense of strangeness. You see, I don’t think most of what is classified these days really should be classified at all. I’m being nice by saying “most”, but in actuality, I mean none of it.

The first part of the problem is that we classify way too much. If some decision-maker thinks there’s a fear of our “enemies” finding out something about what we’re doing, he or she immediately feels that information needs to be classified. In my time, I’ve seen people feel the need to classify newspaper articles. Yeah, I’m serious. Mass-printed and mass-distributed newspaper articles. Someone in our government (and by someone, I mean a LOT of people) reads an article in a newspaper and then decides that information needs to be classified, so it gets made “Confidential”. Then someone up that chain reads the release, feels it’s even more dangerous if our enemies find ou about it and upgrades it to “Secret” or even “Top Secret.” Meanwhile, some farmer in Utah is reading that exact document with his morning coffee because it came from a newspaper, not from the CIA. Yeah, that happens a lot.

Which brings me to the philosophical part of the argument. If we were an autocratic government, or a dictatorship, or some country that basically lives its existence by doing evil deeds in the shadows, well, then, I would think we need to classify a lot of things. But that’s not supposed to be our government. We’re supposed to be a nation that exists as one where the people make the decisions. The people decide who goes into office. The people decide who creates new laws. And at a lot of times, we vote for a lot of the laws that run our very lives. At no time did we elect a dictator-in-chief, nor did we ever sign up for a Master-of-Secrets. We have a free press because our news people are supposed to be able to tell us what’s really going on so we can properly decide on the right people to keep representing us for the laws we would like to see enacted.

A perfect society should have no secrets. At all.

I know the immediate response to this is “but what about our enemies???” The thought is that we need to keep certain information from our enemies to make sure they don’t know what actions we are taking against them.

Okay, why are we taking actions against anyone to begin with? Cause they don’t like us? Cause they hate us? Cause they do dastardly things targeted at us?

What would change if we were more upfront about the information we collect? We have entire police agencies that operate mostly in the sunlight, yet they are still quite capable of stopping a lot of really bad people. Sometimes, they don’t tell the whole story of what they’re doing, and most of the time when that information has been revealed, it turns into a bit of a scandal, and the Monday Morning Quarterbacks indicate that they probably should have been a lot more honest about what they were doing. And even if that wasn’t the case, our police agencies collect information until they make the arrest. And then the courts are privy to the information. We generally don’t try people with “secret” information. The few times we have tried to do that, it has backfired horribly. And yeah, I know there are a couple of instances going on where we’re doing exactly that. Mark my words: Those will backfire horribly, too.

An important question to ask is why do we have enemies in the first place that we have to keep information from? I think if we dug deep enough, we could probably find some circumstances we did in the past that made things as they are. Some, maybe not. But that still doesn’t indicate a reason for having to keep information confidential from people we generally don’t trust. If the Iranians know that we have lots of cruise missiles on ships parked off their coast, knowing about it is probably not going to do them a whole lot of good. But even so, I’m not advocating telling our “enemies” about our troop movements, but about changing our mindset from one of secrecy to one of sunshine diplomacy. We are a very powerful country. If a potential enemy sees us on their doorstep, classifying stupid memos doesn’t change the fact that they’re going to realize that they’re being watched, and they’re being watched by a pretty powerful potential foe.

You see, the problem I perceive is that our secrecy is being used as a type of cloaked power that it was never designed to be. The press, our check on government, is told that it can’t find certain things out because of “national security” when most people know there’s absolutely no national security at stake in most cases that phrase is used. What’s generally at stake is embarrassing information that certain actors don’t want to reveal to the press because it might cause them to lose their leverage in the cloaked power of secrecy they currently maintain. A fresh slate means that people can make honest decisions based on honest observations. Way too often in the past, someone in power has stated that something cannot be revealed because “government knows better”, which is slang for “some moron in government thinks he knows better than you do.” Sorry, but I call them as I see them.

The biggest problem I perceive in my suggestion is that people will constantly cling to the old adages of Cold War philosophy, thinking that diplomacy is a weapon rather than a tool. We still think in terms of how another country can benefit us rather than how we can use this mega machine of democracy to develop more democracies and, in turn, fix our own. Because in case you don’t realize it, since 911, we’ve moved further away from democracy than we have in decades, and we’re still cascading down that path towards oppression. And most of us don’t even see it because we’ve been blinded by nearly a century of having gone the other way.

Government should never be used as a vehicle to drive over its citizens, but as an implement to take those citizens to somewhere better. Right now, we’re going through a pre-election period where absolutely NONE of the candidates are talking about that better road. Well, one of them maybe, but he’s being cast aside as inconvenient rather than as an actual player. Which means we’re going to have nearly an entire decade of continuing to travel down the wrong path without ever realizing we’re not even traveling to the place we set out to go when we first started.

Politicians paying lip service to the OWS movement

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I was pretty excited when I saw that President Obama was announcing changes to the federal student loan program that would benefit those of us with outstanding student loans. And then I started examining the details before I realized that for the most part, they help practically no one who currently has any student loans. In other words, if you are currently in school and racking up student loans, you might get a bit of a nudge in the way of help, but if you’re one of those saddled with $150,000 worth of student loan debt, well, the government isn’t really interested in helping you. As a matter of fact, every action the government has taken over the last few years concerning student loans has worked completely against helping anyone discharge (or pay) their student loans. The last piece of “help” we received was when the government sided with the credit card and bank lobbyists and made it impossible to use bankruptcy to discharge your student loan debt. You can discharge your debt for killing someone, losing your business, or throwing all of your money into the ocean, but if you took out student loans, you are stuck with them for life.

Students who have been part of the OWS movement have been screaming for some kind of help from the government since the protests began. As a result the Democrats have realized that a huge segment of their voting population are now tying themselves to this movement. So, obviously, they had to do something to look like they’re on the same side. What better way than to pretend to be doing something, which is exactly what President Obama’s action the other day did? As usual, the government response to a popular protest has been to pretend to be doing something and then hope the movement goes away long enough for people in power to get reelected. In other words, let’s continue to ignore the man behind the curtain.

I don’t think our current crop of politicians seems to understand what’s going on in the country right now. People are pissed off that their chances of a good future have been squandered away by corporations, banks and government officials who kept kicking the cans down the road. Sure, you can blame students for taking out loans, but you really can’t do that until you analyze why they took out the loans in the first place. The corporations, banks and government told them that the only way they would ever have a sustainable future was to take out these loans because the corporations, banks and government weren’t going to be picking up the bills for education. Throughout most of our lives, we realized that our economic future was going to be somewhat of a disaster if we tried to go it alone without education (sure, you can argue that a few people managed to make it without college, but they’re really a statistical outlier rather than anywhere near the norm), so we really had no choice. But now we’re finding out that the promise of a future was really a lie, created by people who realized they had to sell us this lie in order to continue making insane profits.

And look at some of the companies who have profited off of our stupidity. Look at the Fortune 500, and you’ll see nothing but lists of corporations that have played the game all the way to the top. And they did it in some pretty shitty ways, too. I look at the misinformation campaigns, and I”m shocked that we continue to allow it to happen. We have fake colleges selling fake degrees to students who think they are providing a future for themselves, yet are really only getting themselves further into debt and will have absolutely no future. Sure, you can point your fingers at the profit colleges, but what no one wants you to recognize is that legitimate, innocent looking companies are also the ones behind them. While we can all point at Haliburton and the Fox Corporation and claim all sorts of evil, there are so many companies like the Washington Post, which really doesn’t want you to know that it’s practically running one of those profit colleges that the government has been “claiming” to want to curtail, but when lobbyists got involved, suddenly the government didn’t want to “hurt students”. This happens in so many different avenues of business that we don’t even pay attention to it any more. And no one reports it because the major news agencies are all part of the same problem that caused our dilemma, and who wants to report on themselves? Certainly not NBC, which is owned by General Electric. And the lists just go on and on.

But right now, there are people out there making themselves heard, and they’re probably not going to last very long. Just yesterday, Oakland Police were tear gassing protesters and then shooting projectiles at Iraqi veterans who have joined the protest. But no one pays attention long enough to really care. And like the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and 1970s, we’re probably going to condemn the protesters because it’s become really easy to ridicule the protesters instead of actually give them the coverage they really need.

You see, the protesters are out there for more than just themselves. They are out there advocating for everyone who doesn’t have a voice. And for the most part, they’ll be ignored, beaten and ridiculed by everyone else, even though everyone else is part of the 99% they’re there to represent. In the end, they’ll probably give up because we didn’t care long enough to help them make a difference.

And the fault will be ours. But we’ll never know, because we didn’t even take the time to care.

Can Anyone Actually Beat Obama in 2012?

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There are a bunch of Republicans trying to run for office, and tons of talk about stupid subjects, like will Sarah Palin run for office, but what no one really seems to be discussing is the HUGE elephant in the room, and that’s the fact that the incumbent rarely loses, especially when no one else is massively popular in the same arena. If you would have asked me back during the second election for George W. Bush if he was going to win or lose, I would have actually thought his chances of winning were slim. But it turned out that incumbency was the overriding factor that propelled him towards a second victory.

We’re in that ballpark again right now. We have a president who was thrown into office with a massive wave of popular support, but even his most loyal critics would be willing to say he’s been quite disappointing as a president. There was a lot of hope for hope and change, but unfortunately the only thing that really changed was the person in office, and to be honest, this man has been somewhat of an after the fact speech maker who seems to think that the bully bulpit is the only thing he needs to run the country. It’s one thing to have a great orator in office, but when all he does is make great speeches, you start to wonder what kind of person you really put into the Oval Office.

But having said that, the Republicans have absolutely no one with any sense of popularity that can get someone elected. Their options are crap, more crap, and a lot of the same. Their show stoppers are carnival clowns that make the audience jump up and laugh, but other than that, they have no one capable of doing any real damage during the election. So, unless they somehow find an underdog that no one is expecting, or one of the boring people running right now suddenly becomes infused with superpowers, I don’t see anything happening this time around other than another four years of a very insignificant, do-nothing president who will basically be a place-holder until someone new comes along.

If you think otherwise, say something. Let us know. I certainly don’t have the last word here, but for some reason people seem so quiet over this issue, or they end up being reactive, falling into political paradigms and relying on talking points that don’t mean anything. So speak up and let us know what you have to say. Otherwise, this is going to be a very boring election with absolutely no surprises whatsoever.

I’m Curious…Is America Over?

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us flag  

Towards the end of the Roman Empire, after centuries of power, prestige and prosperity, the great nation crumbled inwards as its inability to acclimate to new events and changes finally led to an eventual collapse. Historians often point at the Visigoths and other non-melting immigrants to the empire that finally brought about Rome’s demise, but it may be possible that the sacking of Rome was more a symptom than a cause of it undoing, as it had probably seen its end on the horizon for at least a century before it realized things were as dire as they became.

Which leaves one to wonder if there had been a number of people who saw it coming but just kept hoping that things would last long enough for their own retirements, the ends of their own mortality and beliefs that it would last just long enough for their children to escape the eventual destruction that was sure to come. Somewhere, at some point, there had to be a number of people watching the horizon, realizing that the end was near, suspecting that it was closer than they were seeing through their focus on the distance.

Which then brings me to today, to looking at our own civilization, our own society and the wonderment at whether or not the Visigoths are already within our borders.

For years now, we have been struggling with cyclical recessions that seem worse some decades than others, yet we continue to tell ourselves that things are still great, that we are still the great empire that we once were. We are Americans, and we see ourselves as the successors of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, having lived through the various vicissitudes of struggles, always emerging with the belief that we are better for the efforts of our past, kind of like a version of the “if it doesn’t kill you, it only makes you stronger”.

Yet, I’m left wondering if we are still the same country that stood up to the British monarchy in the 18th century and then again at the dawn of the 19th century. Are we still the people who rushed to defend Europe during the first and second world wars, emerging as the victors, producing what we believed to be a shining beacon of freedom to the rest of the world to always aspire to. Or did something happen that changed us so that the next generations were no longer the same people who could pat themselves on the back as the nation of people who believed they were most definitely a part of an exceptionalism that we believed no other nation could achieve, yet every nation under the sun might one day aspire?

After the Vietnam War, the United States changed, or at least it may have metamorphasized into something different than what we believed it to be. Instead of that nation that others aspired to be, I start to wonder if we began to live on laurels of people who lived before us, convinced that the rest of the world would always see us as the exceptional Americans we believed ourselves to be, even though journeys to other nations would allow to us to see how little other people actually respected us and believed us to be that shining beacon we still kept adding to our resumes.

Over the years, we have supported vicious dictators who killed their own people, all in the name of feigning friendship to us. When a cold-blooded killer emerged to power in some far-off land, we turned our eye and accepted him because he offered us future economic incentives that we used to enrich already very wealthy people in our lands, even though the majority of the people in our country did not benefit as well. And then we sent soldiers to other lands to defend evil people whose only connection to us was they weren’t the “other guys” who we didn’t like a little more than the ones we were supporting. And now, a lot of those choices our forefathers, or our actual fathers and grandfathers, made have come back to haunt us over the years. Where we sided with bad people because they had fossil fuels we could use to propel ourselves to the local Wal Mart, the children of those who suffered no longer see us as the friends we used to believe we would be seen as because of our past dealings.

Which brings me to today. A lot of very wealthy people in this country seem to control the majority of the government, the economic power and even every decision we might make as a nation. The common person has little input, power or even a voice in this current era of government, which leaves me to wonder if all of our efforts led us to create a dynasty of misplaced power that is only now starting to become cognizant of the dangers that lie in the path before us.

Essentially, we have a nation where those who hold the strings of power have little to no connection to the majority of the people who have to live in that paradigm of a society. The last election should have actually been a wake-up call to those holding the reigns of power, but instead voices of complaint have managed to yield no response from those who are now being tasked to make some kind of comment. We have a nation of leaders who claim to represent large segments of people with whom they have never communicated, and yet believe themselves to be worthy of such power.

As was pointed out previously, there had to be Romans at one point who realized there was something on the horizon yet coming closer to the protection of the front gates. Is that repeating itself today, but we’re reacting the same, partying in the chambers of the Roman Senate until the Visigoths finally overthrow us, slaughtering us in our sleep because we never even realized there was a problem in our midst?

All I can hope is that I retire or reach the end of my coil of mortality before it happens. Some may not be so lucky.

This Just In! Duane’s 2011 Spending Plan Extension Has Been Approved!

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brucoe 

(Brucoe, the one independent member of Duane’s government. He is still undecided on the budget.) 

Today, after a marathon session involving his partisan stuffed animals, Duane Gundrum has declared that he has come to an agreement to continue his spending plans for the next few weeks. Up until this time, his conservative stuffed animals, led by Scruffy the Bear, were holding out for more cuts in collections from his job at the Piggly Wiggly Convenient Store. However, after promising that Duane would cut back on discretionary spending, specifically Root Beer flavored Laffy Taffy candy bars, the conservative bloc decided it would fund Duane for a short period before he would have to reexamine his finances again.

Liberal leader Elmer the bean bag frog pointed out that Duane has been making numerous sacrifices this year by avoiding payments of his electricity bill, his cell phone bill and normal expenditures of necessary pornography at the Double Juggs Adult Bookstore. In Elmer’s words: “Duane has been suffering greatly during this period of downturn, and thus, we couldn’t see any other areas in which he could cut,” even though conservatives claimed that there were areas of spending that could be curtailed, such as iPhone apps, “special” massages at the controversial Madame Wong’s Swedish Massage Parlour, and random purchases of Twinkies and Ho-Hos.

elmo darth 

(Liberal representative Elmo during a particulary tense negotiation session with the conservative whip.) 

Members of both parties recognize that without a dedicated budget agreed upon by all members, Duane will continue to barely function economically and further discretionary spending may suffer as a result. There has even been a fear of insolvency with gas purchasing and difficult to cancel Netflix memberships.

This is the third time since both parties could not come up with a budget that Duane has been forced to push a spending plan into the new fiscal year. It is hoped that a consensus can be reached by the Stuffed Animal Lobby that is influencing finances in Duane’s government. We will keep you informed of further developments.

In other news, girls still don’t want to date Duane. We go to Angela in Grand Rapids for more on this continuing story…..

women 

(A random selection of women willing to go on the record as “not interested in dating Duane”.)

Why Most of the US was Pissed Off During this Election

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It’s amazing how the media can talk itself into a frenzy and still never manage to actually say anything of merit. I’ve been reading and observing all sorts of reports that purport to explain why the midterm elections went so bad for the party in power, and almost every time I read a newspaper article, watch a television broadcast or avoid a crazy person screaming on the streets, I’m left with the same conclusion: These people don’t live in the real world with the rest of us. Well, the crazy guy on the corner screaming does, but his view of our world is a completely different story.

No, what I’m talking about is how two economists can go back and forth about the economic bank bailout and not understand a single thing about why the consensus of the country was negative. One economist will talk about how there was not enough money invested (and there needs to be more), while the other argues that too much money was spent on the banks, but it was spent improperly. And yet another will argue that the wrong banks were bailed out, or shouldn’t have been bailed out so that nature could have taken its course.

The problem they don’t perceive is that the average person looked at billions of dollars being spent on very rich people and very rich organizations, and they don’t feel like the solution ever impacted them in any way, shape or form. Banks still forclosed on people regardless of how much money was spent propping up the banks that had invested unwisely in real estate adventures.

I’ll repeat that. NOT ONE single penny was spent on bailing out people who were losing their homes through faulty mortgages. Instead, they were the ones who were thrown into the streets and forced to make do with nothing while the banks were given billions of dollars of taxpayer money to prop up their bad investments. When not one cent was spent on propping up the average voter who lost his or her home, then that whole “bailout” thing seems like it happened to people who didn’t deserve it in the first place.

The solution would have been for the government to have stepped in and propped up bad mortgages instead of the banks themselves. By coming to the rescue of banks, the very rich were the ones who were sheltered by the government, and not a single “normal” person received a single bit of benefit from the government. So when Obama gets on the soapbox about how the people just didn’t allow enough time to let things settle, or they were too focused on other things, perhaps Obama needs to realize that he’s focused on the wrong things, if he’s at all interested in why the country has turned 180 degrees against him.

People have a really hard time being told that they’re wrong for feeling one way or another, especially by someone who is not suffering in any way whatsoever. A lot of people were hurt by the economic turn around, and being told that it’s their fault and they just need to own up to their own failures is never going to go over well, especially when Wall Street entities were told the exact opposite and given huge cash payouts to make sure they didn’t feel bad.

What has happened is that a lot of centrist thinking people in this country are coming to the realization that they don’t matter to the government of their own country, and that’s a really sobering throught when you get around to thinking about it. But instead of facing that dilemma, we ignore it and sort of hope that it will just go away. Or throw more money at rich people and hope that somehow that will trickle down to those who no longer believe the powers that be are interested in the people without power. Unfortunately, neither alternative leads to anything but class division, and as more people in the class with the most people come to the realization that their disenfranchisement also brings along a lack of care by those in power, then you’re going to end up with a very pissed off electorate.

The real problem is that as that electorate gets more upset, and votes out the “bums” over and over again, eventually they’re going to realize that their angry votes aren’t getting them anywhere. And as long as government entities continue to think that rewarding the rich with more riches is the way to a better nation, we’re going to end up with a very pissed off group of citizens who have realized they have no way to institute change in a system where elections reward those who are already in power. And once we reach that point, there’s no telling where we go from there because institutional anarchy has no way of being predicted, no matter how much the smartest guys in the room keep believing otherwise.

Essentially, we’re playing a game of hoping that we can gain enough riches before the whole system comes crashing down, not once thinking about the ramifications of what happens immediately after that moment. Because once the system crumbles, there’s no telling what you inherit after. And if that’s not scary to the average citizens, then I don’t know what else would be.

Vote for Elmer, my stuffed animal frog, for office

Politics, , , ,

I’ve been noticing that there are a lot of political signs up on the sides of the road these days, all instructing me to vote for people I’ve never heard of, promising me that these unknown people somehow have my best interests at heart. But whenever I read the newspaper, I read nothing but bad things about the people we elected, and the bad articles go on for days, never ending until the next corrupt person enters office and starts the cycle again. I read the letters to the editor section of every newspaper, and there are so many people trying to convince me that some  unknown dweeb has the best qualifications to be elected for some random position.

Then someone will come on the news and berate me for not wanting to vote. In some sanctimonious tone, some rich, privileged individual will tell me, matter-0f-factly, that by not voting for a bunch of people I know I can probably never trust, that I’m somehow responsible for the bad state of affairs in this country, in my county, my state, my district or wherever. It’s always my fault. If I vote for someone, it’s my fault. If I voted against someone, it’s my fault. If I don’t vote, it’s my fault. Not once has anyone ever thought of the possibility that maybe the fact that we’re voting for people in the first place means it’s THEIR fault.

That’s why I’m proclaiming Elmer my choice for every political office under the sun. Oh, I know you won’t vote for him, because you’re so convinced that Joe Politician has your best interests at heart, even though he’s never done anything personally for you, has been accused of all sorts of crimes of stealing OUR money, but because he’s actually a living, breathing person, he’s a much better candidate in your opinion.

Well, let me tell you about Elmer. He’s never cheated on his taxes. Not once. He’s never even thought about it. Not once did he vote to send troops into harm’s way. He’s never even written a letter to the editor claiming that would be a good thing to do. Not once has he ever taken money that didn’t belong to him. He’s never been friends with anyone who did either. He’s just that good.

Let me tell you what he has done. He’s ALWAYS been a good friend no matter what happens. When I came home drunk from that party and didn’t score with that girl I was trying so hard to win the heart of, he was there for me. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. He’s just that kind of guy. Instead, he sat there and let me figure out how to get ready for the next day without any condemnation. A politician would have thought less of me. But not Elmer.

Elmer has also never lied. Not once. Whenever he speaks, he speaks the truth.

He also cares about everyone. He’s willing to let everyone hug him and be his friend. And he’s never taken back that friendship from anyone. He’s just that way.

So, when the next politician starts lying to you to gain your vote, think about Elmer. Would Elmer do that? No, he wouldn’t.

So vote for Elmer next time you vote. You’ll have to write him in, but that’s okay. He’s not proud. He’ll take whatever he can get. And he’ll even work for free. Or hugs. Whatever you want to give him.

Let’s see another politician promise that, and mean it.