The Knee-Jerk 1-20-09 Sheeple Crowd

I swear, If I see one more bumper sticker reading “1-20-09” or see another rolling to-the-second countdown clock on MySpace to 1-20-09, I’m gonna climb a bell tower with a rifle and a bag of Doritos and have me a grand old time, snacking & sniping. I guess the chips are optional.

For over a year now I’ve been seeing these countdowns, done by eager people who probably don’t even vote, waiting for the end of the Bush presidency. I guess these folks have a better source of information than me. Because according to them all of America’s problems will instantly go away on the 21st of January next year.

Wow, that’s amazing.

On the 22d, if I’m to believe the Sheeple, the economy will be on the upswing, gas will be a dollar a gallon, unemployment will cease, the mortgage crisis will evaporate and allow the housing market to auto-correct in a heartbeat, Social Security will be funded in perpetuity, and all troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will be home by the weekend.

What utter bollocks. That’s not optimism. That’s not even properly wishful thinking. That even surpasses fantasy and delves into The Moon Is Made Of Green Cheese.

Look, I get it. Americans on the whole are looking to be rid of an unpopular President Bush; I’m really not used to seeing a sitting President being so openly reviled by the nation. But no matter who wins it’s going to take a year or two to get us back on an even keel. I myself have never exactly been a staunch Bush supporter, but I’m also not so much of a starry-eyed idiot to think that all our troubles will be over on January 21, 2009. While he latest poll I saw showed Bush's approval rating at 31%, the latest poll for the Democrat-led Congress that I saw had their approval rating at a paltry and sickening 16%.

All the Bush Bashing and 1-20-09 countdown crapola has me seriously concerned about knee-jerk voting. So many people simply hate Bush that come November they’ll just blindly and ignorantly vote for whichever candidunce the Democrats foist off on the American public after they finish slitting each others’ throats at the convention this summer.

I’ve heard dozens of people say they were going to vote for Obama simply because he’s black. And still dozens more have said that they’ll vote for Hillary because Bill was such a good President…… (What coma these people were in during the 90’s is beyond me). But by far the most people I’ve heard have said that they were simply going to vote Democrat because they hated Bush. That, dear readers, makes no freakin’ sense whatsoever. Why?

Regardless of who wins, George W. Bush will no longer be President in January. Voting for a Democrat doesn’t hurt him. Not one iota. You’re not voting him out of office, people. He’s already leaving. Get that through your noggins.

So instead of voting for someone out of spite, make sure you’re voting for someone who honestly will represent your interests and beliefs. I personally will not be voting for either Democratic candidate, as I feel neither are really qualified to lead me or my country.

Senator Clinton has served but one term in the Senate, and although re-elected in 2006 to a second term, she’s spent most of that term chasing the nomination. She keeps saying that she’s qualified because her husband was President. Big whoop, lady; just because I have a CDL doesn’t make my wife qualified to drive a truck. My first wife was a teacher, so does that mean that by default I’m qualified to teach, too? I mean, we lived in the same house & all. Just because you lived in the White House, that doesn’t mean you’re qualified to sit in the Oval Office. Unless I miss my guess, you weren’t exactly aware of everything going on at Bill’s desk anyways. She wants universal health care but has no plan on how to fund it. Her campaign has been rife with scandal on illegal contributions and all the usual Clintonian baggage, and don’t even get me started on her alleged landing in Kosovo under sniper fire. I trust her about as far as I can throw her.

And then we have Barack Obama, a first-term Senator who has spent a good part of his time in the Senate trying to become President. Congressional records show that he missed about 25% of the votes in the Senate last year. Senator Obama’s issues with Jeremiah Wright and his desire to sit & have tea and crumpets with Mahmoud Ahmedinijad of Iran leave me worried about his ability to lead much more than a pack of Cub Scouts to the dumpster & back without getting lost.

I believe in lower taxes, smaller government, and a strong military that we don’t send pell-mell to every Third World crapfest conflict that crops up. I guess I’d consider myself a moderate conservative, since I don’t completely toe the party line of the Republicans. I support the death penalty but am pro-choice. I support gay marriage and advocate responsible gun ownership.

I’ll be voting for John McCain in November, it looks like, unless a legitimate third party candidate can actually get onto my state’s ballots and can accurately represent my interests. But so far, Johnny’s my man. He served two terms in the House before being elected to the Senate in 1986, bringing 26 years of experience to bear. He’s a retired naval aviator who flew over Vietnam and spent five and a half grueling years as a prisoner of war after being shot down. That builds a lot of character, character that you don’t always find when ducking Whitewater allegations or listening to Jeremiah Wright spew rhetoric for 20 years.

Granted, I do have some concerns over John McCain that trouble me. He’s a bit weak on immigration. Of course, the state he’s represented in Congress for 26 years borders Mexico, whose chief export is Mexicans. If he wants to appease the locals at home, he can’t really be seen helping Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA) building a border fence. And it seems that he’s pandering to Liberals by dabbling with the Global Warming conspiracy crowd, but over all, I think that given what we have to work with he’s my best bet. I honestly, deep down, do not feel that either Democratic candidate represents my interests.

But hey, don’t vote McCain because I said so. Vote for who you believe in. Please, do vote, and encourage everyone you know to vote. Don’t let American Idol have a better voter turnout than the Presidential elections of 2008. And for the love of all things small & fuzzy, don’t just knee-jerk Sheeple-vote Democrat thinking it’ll hurt Bush. He’s past caring who you vote for.

A Generalized Rant on Election Crap

By and large, I really have to agree with the statement that “Americans get the government they deserve”.

We Americans love to crow about how we have so many freedoms and can vote for our governing official and yadda yadda yadda, but so few Americans who are eligible to vote actually do so (or even register to do so) that it’s no wonder we keep getting stuck with the same old corrupt, self-serving turds in office. More Americans vote during American Idol than have ever voted in any Presidential election, ever. That’s seriously sad. Of course, most Americans also believe that we live in a democracy, which we don’t. We live in a constitutional republic.

I personally vote in all the major elections, and always leave the polling place with a measure of pride for having done my civic duty and for exercising my right and privilege to vote. Admittedly, I’m kind of lax in voting in the smaller local and municipal elections, unless they happen to coincide with the usual November elections. I’m appalled at how few of my friends and coworkers vote. The common reply I get when I ask them why they don’t vote is that they don’t think their vote actually counts for anything, and I also sometimes hear that they have no idea who’s running or what the issues are. That just blows me away. It’s up to the voter to get educated on issues and to believe in the idea that every vote counts.

About five years ago I stopped off late in the afternoon on an election day to snap a few pictures from the boat landing off Dorchester Road by Oakbrook, and as usual there was a group of military retirees gathered under the pavilion socializing as they did almost every day, and one of them recognized me and asked if I’d voted yet. I replied that I had, and he said to me, “Good. That means you also have the right to complain. You can’t bitch if you don’t vote.”

I had to laugh, but I agreed with him wholeheartedly. Folks love to complain about the government, but if you aren’t getting involved and voting, then you really have no right to complain, because you just sat back & allowed things to happen and allowed others to choose your officials for you without taking any part in the process.

However, it’s also easy to get what I call Electoral Burnout. Every presidential election season, they seem to start earlier and earlier with the campaigning and stumping and polling and mud-slinging. This time they started almost a year and a half out. I’m sick of hearing about it and the election is still over ten months away. It’s just going to get worse the closer we get to November. But starting 18 months out is a sure way to burn some people out to where they’ll just tune the whole process out. Voter Apathy can be prevented, Big Media…

I also love how the media declares a new winner every five seconds. The Iowa Caucus last weekend was a glorified town hall meeting. Residents of Iowa meet in precinct caucuses in all of Iowa's 1784 precincts and elect delegates to the corresponding county conventions. There are 99 counties in Iowa and thus 99 conventions. These county conventions then select delegates for both Iowa's Congressional District Convention and the State Convention, which eventually choose the delegates for the national conventions. Only about one percent of the nation's delegates are chosen by the Iowa State Convention, yet you could have sworn that Obama and Huckabee had received the official nominations the way the media went all hullbaloo over it.

That was, of course, until the New Hampshire primary. Based upon the opinions of however many registered voters who bothered to vote among the state’s population of 1,235,786 citizens, all of a sudden John McCain, who had been lagging far behind all the front-runners, and Hillary Clinton, who feels entitled to the Presidency because she used to live in the White House, were the ones acting as if they’d received the nominations.

Look, I love New Hampshire as much as the next guy. I’ve been there hundreds (if not thousands) of times, and my sister and her family lives there. However, I just don’t see the rationale in acting like the elections are in the bag because a few thousand Granite Staters burrowed out of the snowdrifts in order to prove to the universe that They Vote First.

Now the attention is focused here on South Carolina, where we have a primary coming p in a few days. And again, here’s hoopla and hype. Look, folks in Los Angeles don’t give a rat’s as about what we in South Carolina have to say politically; in general ya’ll think we’re rustic hicks plucking banjos and drinking corn squeezin’s, just like those voters in New Hampshire look at most of you Angelinos as lunatic-fringe latté drinkers car-chasing your way around a sprawling suburb of Mexico, ducking the paparazzi.

Look, you have to educate yourself and vote for who YOU want, based on how you feel a given candidate will best represent your interests. You can’t just toss all your support behind whomever CNN or MSNBC or You Tube says is a winner. Don’t stop believing in a candidate just because some Talking Head on the news says he’s not the front-runner. (Crap like that is why no one gives any media attention to guys like Duncan Hunter (R-CA) who in my humble opinion is a damned fine candidate for President, but doesn’t have the huge name-draw or media support that other candidates have.) The actual nominees won’t be decided until the parties hold their national conventions anyways, so DON’T BE A SHEEP!!!!!


And I’m always appalled at people who just vote for any candidate that their preferred party throws out there. One night while he was filling in for radio host Rusty Humphries, I heard Douglas Urbanski say that he’d vote for anyone as long as they had an “R” after their name. Oh really? Almost makes you wanna run a guy like Hitler or some sicko pedophile as a candidate for the Republican Party just to see Urbanski eat his words. That sort of blind allegiance to a party is why things never get done in Washington. The Democrats vote against anything the Republicans do for no better reason than that it was proposed by a Republican, and vice-versa. A die-hard Republican could say the sky is blue, and at least one Democrat in Congress would argue that it was red. I’ve voted split-ticket many times. Although I’d consider myself a pretty moderate conservative with occasional liberal viewpoints, I refuse to label myself as Democrat or Republican. The closest I ever came to joining a party at all was registering in Maine as an Independent, but I do tend to vote more Republican than anything. I will say this much: I will not be voting for a Democrat for President this time around. Period. Regardless, this election is not about left or right; it's about right or wrong.

I am deeply afraid of how many of the Ignorati out there will knee-jerk vote for the Democratic candidate just because they hate President Bush and will blame all of his administration’s colossal failings on Republicans as a whole.

Take some time and Google up the various candidates to see their views and stands on the issues, and then believe maybe 60% of it. (A bit cynical, I know, but not too badly). Use that Internet for something other than surfing porn sites and sending me chain mail on MySpace.

No more tag...

What sort of world are we living in now? Ladies & gentlemen, I bring you yet another wretched example of the Pussification of the American Sheeple. Schools across the USA have been banning the game of tag. Yes, TAG, as in tag, ‘yer it. It seems that children were complaining about being chased and harassed. Oh, please.

Last I knew, wasn’t the main point of the game was to get chased? And it’s not like it’s a gang of kids chasing you; quite the opposite. One kid chases an entire group. And hey, zipperhead, if you don’t wanna be chased, then STAND STILL. You’ll get tagged and be “it”, and then YOU get to do the chasing.

Everyone’s so shit-scared of kids running into each other and falling down and getting hurt, that traditional games & sports that we had at recess and PhysEd class like tag, dodge ball, touch football, and in some cases, even soccer are now banned.

Sweet mother of pearl. Are you shitting me? How are these kids gonna ever learn to be a part of a team, work together, resolve disputes, negotiate rules, and learn that in most aspects of life, there are winners and losers and not everyone gets a fucking prize just for showing up?

And then there’s the pandemic of fat-assed kids who are being denied the only exercise that they might otherwise get because someone’s so shit-scared they might fall and skin a knee and that the school will be held liable.

This isn’t just happening in one certain area, either. Schools in places like Santa Monica and San Jose CA, Wichita KS, Beaverton OR, Charleston SC, Colorado Springs CO, and Attleboro MA are circling the wagons, raising the white flag, and rolling over.

Don’t forget the No Touching policy that is in effect at Kilmer Middle School in Virginia that won’t let kids even shake hands. God forbid, it might be a gang sign or might offend some immigrant who refuses to assimilate into normal American society. And then there was an incident at a Denver area elementary school in 2002 when seven 4th graders got a week’s detention for making finger guns on the playground during a game of “Army vs. Aliens”, thus exhibiting “violent and aggressive behavior” and violating the school’s zero-tolerance policy of making imaginary guns out of their fingers. What a load of crap.

America’s next generation of kids, the ones that are gonna grow up and take care of this nation when I’m too old & feeble to do it myself, are going to be so micromanaged and socially repressed that they will never be able to handle an adverse crisis, thinking that if shit runs awry, they an go cry & say they don’t like it, and some sissy-assed administrative official will make it all better for their bloated obese selves. Great. We’re doomed. Time to move to the Australian Outback and raise wombats.

Wake up, Sheeple! Take America back from the Idiots, or suffer with the results. Getting hurt is part of life. Kids need to learn this at a young age, or it will just be devastating later on.