Election 2010 Special Part 1: Election 2008 Revisited

Two years ago tonight a majority of Americans were hoodwinked into electing that creature that inhabits the Oval Office. They were promised Hope and Change and the universe on a silver platter and instead have received a giant, steaming, open-faced Turd Sandwich. And for dessert the nation got the bill to the tune of a couple trillion dollars...plus they expect a gratuity.

Notice I don't say "we" elected him. That would imply that I was included, and I sure as hell didn't vote for him. I tried to warn people before the election what was coming and folks drank the Kool Aid anyways. This is what I wrote after the elections of 2008, for those of my readers who weren't on board yet....
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My God. What have you people done? Yesterday marked the beginning of what will henceforth be called The Time of Great Suckage (a term I’m borrowing from author John Ringo).

Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?

This country, the nation that pioneered mass-production, first invented the airplane, first split the atom, first sent men to the moon, invented the artificial heart, was the first to reach Mars, and even mapped the human genome, sometimes can’t seem to tie its own shoes.

You do realize, of course, that when our founding fathers started this nifty little experiment called America that the Electoral College was put together to prevent what James Madison called in his Federalist Papers “the mischiefs of faction” in an electoral system?

He defined a faction as "a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority of minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community". Plainly, that means we have a backstop to keep dumbasses from knee-jerk electing a complete asstard, supposedly. However…

See, they figured that the average Joe farmer in 1778 might not exactly be smart enough to not vote for, say, his own donkey. And they had a backup plan to keep that from happening. Rather than directly voting for the President, our citizens cast votes for electors. Electors are technically free to vote for anyone eligible to be President, but in practice pledge to vote for specific candidates, and voters cast ballots for favored candidates by voting for correspondingly pledged electors.

Most states allow voters to choose between statewide slates of electors pledged to vote for the presidential tickets of various parties; the ticket that receives the most votes statewide 'wins' all of the votes cast by electors from that state. U.S. presidential campaigns concentrate on winning the popular vote in a combination of states that choose a majority of the electors, rather than campaigning to win the most votes nationally.

Methinks that the esteemed college was asleep at the wheel last night…and instead allowed the popular vote of the KoolAid-drunk masses to prevail. The Chosen One, The Messiah, The Anointed One, Barack Hussein Obama, was elected by you, the people.

Hey, America…your new President wouldn’t release his college transcripts, and his thesis on Soviet Nuclear Policy mysteriously vanished from Columbia University. How do you lose your thesis? How does NO OTHER COPY exist anywhere in the atmosphere? Me thinks that The Anointed One didn’t want anyone to see just how little he really knew when it came to foreign policy. Yet, you voted for him anyways.

Your Messiah has come right out and said that he’s all about redistributing your wealth to the poor huddled masses. Those same huddled masses now feel that they no longer have to work or pay their bills because The Chosen One will magically make it all go away. Meanwhile, who the hell is paying for it? The Rest of Us are. Why the hell should anyone try to succeed any more when, if we better our financial lot, the Feral Gummint™ will just tax the hell out of you to take care of those who just want handouts? And yet, you voted for him anyways.

It was shown unequivocally that The Chosen One had spent 20 years listening to the venomous hate speeches of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s anti-Americanisms, and he just back-pedaled and said “Gosh, I had no idea. He never did that when I was there.” And yet, you still voted for him.

It came out that after The Chosen One wanted to know how many houses his opponent owned because his wife is loaded, that the Chosen One Himself owned a $1.65 million dollar home purchased in a shady deal with convicted real estate developer and political fundraiser Tony Rezko. And yet The Chosen One seemed to not know who Rezko was. If I dropped over a million and a half bucks on a house I think I’d remember who was involved. And yet, you still voted for him.

The Chosen One has the weakest, most liberal voting record in the entire Senate, which seems to be his only real experiential qualification to be President, and yet you still voted for him.

The Chosen One wants us all to have free health care, yet won’t say how it will be paid for other than with higher taxes, and despite worldwide evidence that socialized medicine sucks by and large. Yet you still voted for him.

The Chosen One claims that there will be no new taxes, but what isn’t being said is that there will be a repealing of all the Bush tax cuts, so while they won’t be “new taxes”, they’ll just be the “old taxes” brought back. And you still voted for him.

When The Chosen One says he wants to only tax the people who make over 250K a year, bear in mind that those are the people who employ you. And if you work in a smallish company of, say, 10 employees and your employer suddenly finds his taxes going up 10 or 15 percent a year, well guess how he pays the taxes? He raises prices, cuts benefits to his employees, and has to let a couple of you go because he can’t afford you. Welcome to Unemployment, friend. And yet you still voted for him.

It came out that The Chosen One served on a community board with former 60’s radical and terrorist Bill Ayers, founder of The Weather Underground movement which set off a series of bombs at public buildings and killed a few people, and yet you voted for him.

The Chosen One claims that he’ll have all our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan inside of 16 months of taking office. So, basically, he’s given Al-Q’aeda and the Taliban a timetable for when they can come back to power. All they have to do is hide in their caves for a year & a half and then wait us out, negating all the good work our troops have done and negating the sacrifices of nearly 5,000 troops who died to make that region safe for democracy. And yet you still voted for him.

It came out that The Chosen One has a questionable tie to noted Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi, and that video of the two interacting at a 2003 farewell dinner for Khalidi is currently being suppressed by the LA Times until after The Messiah has been elected, lest the truth come out. And you still voted for him.

It came out that His Obamaness has an aunt from Kenya living as an illegal alien in government-subsidized public housing in Boston after her amnesty request was denied over four years ago. And you still voted for him.

It came out that Your Messiah has a half brother in Kenya named George who lives in a dirt-floor shack on about four dollars a month, a brother that he refuses to help as he sits in his $1.5M mansion in the Chicago burbs. He'll help all of you but won't help his own brother? And you still voted for him.

Remember that in and amongst all the crap The Chosen One spouted about “Change” without really saying what the hell that, specifically, his “Change” was, he said certain other things that you people didn’t hear over the sound of the Kool Aid being poured.

Things like:

He’ll “spread the wealth around.”

He’ll “raise taxes.”

He’ll “have a civilian police force as strong as our military”.

He’ll “cut our military”.

He’ll “bankrupt new coal plants”.

He’ll make sure if his daughters “made a mistake they won’t be punished with a baby” in reference to abortion.

He voted against medical care for babies who survive botched abortions saying it would “burden the medical staff and question the woman’s original decision.”

He’ll “Look into drilling” when we need it now.

He’ll sit down one on one with the leaders of terrorist nations.

He did NOT originally condemn Russia’s invasion and aggression into Georgia. Rather, he felt both nations should come to an agreement.

He has called Jeremiah Wright a man who represents the “best the black church has to offer.”

And you still voted for him. And you've nearly elected a super-majority of Democrats into Congress. And when they FUBAR this country four years from now, they’ll blame-shift every single failure on their part solely on the previous administrations’ shoulders, telling you they need another four years to fix it all.

Oh well; we can vote him out in four years after we wake up and experience our Buyer’s Remorse. And since this election took about two years, we may as well start campaigning now. That way we’ll be prepared when we’re so far in the toilet that the Tidy-Bowl Man will have to call Roto-Rooter to come find us based on our last known position off the starboard bow.

A nation of so many accomplishments, and sometimes we can’t even tie our own shoes.

The Time of Great Suckage is Upon Us

My God. What have you people done? Yesterday marked the beginning of what will henceforth be called The Time of Great Suckage (a term I’m borrowing from author John Ringo).

Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?

This country, the nation that pioneered mass-production, first invented the airplane, first split the atom, first sent men to the moon, invented the artificial heart, was the first to reach Mars, and even mapped the human genome, sometimes can’t seem to tie its own shoes.

You do realize, of course, that when our founding fathers started this nifty little experiment called America that the Electoral College was put together to prevent what James Madison called in his Federalist Papers “the mischiefs of faction” in an electoral system?

He defined a faction as "a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority of minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community". Plainly, that means we have a backstop to keep dumbasses from knee-jerk electing a complete asstard, supposedly. However…

See, they figured that the average Joe farmer in 1778 might not exactly be smart enough to not vote for, say, his own donkey. And they had a backup plan to keep that from happenning. Rather than directly voting for the President, our citizens cast votes for electors. Electors are technically free to vote for anyone eligible to be President, but in practice pledge to vote for specific candidates, and voters cast ballots for favored candidates by voting for correspondingly pledged electors.

Most states allow voters to choose between statewide slates of electors pledged to vote for the presidential tickets of various parties; the ticket that receives the most votes statewide 'wins' all of the votes cast by electors from that state. U.S. presidential campaigns concentrate on winning the popular vote in a combination of states that choose a majority of the electors, rather than campaigning to win the most votes nationally.

Methinks that the esteemed college was asleep at the wheel last night…and instead allowed the popular vote of the KoolAid-drunk masses to prevail. The Chosen One, The Messiah, The Anointed One, Barack Hussein Obama, was elected by you, the people.

Hey, America…your new President wouldn’t release his college transcripts, and his thesis on Soviet Nuclear Policy mysteriously vanished from Columbia University. How do you lose your thesis? How does NO OTHER COPY exist anywhere in the atmosphere? Me thinks that The Anointed One didn’t want anyone to see just how little he really knew when it came to foreign policy. Yet, you voted for him anyways.

Your Messiah has come right out and said that he’s all about redistributing your wealth to the poor huddled masses. Those same huddled masses now feel that they no longer have to work or pay their bills because The Chosen One will magically make it all go away. Meanwhile, who the hell is paying for it? The Rest of Us are. Why the hell should anyone try to succeed any more when, if we better our financial lot, the Feral Gummint™ will just tax the hell out of you to take care of those who just want handouts? And yet, you voted for him anyways.

It was shown unequivocally that The Chosen One had spent 20 years listening to the venomous hate speeches of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s anti-Americanisms, and he just back-pedaled and said “Gosh, I had no idea. He never did that when I was there.” And yet, you still voted for him.

It came out that after The Chosen One wanted to know how many houses his opponent owned because his wife is loaded, that the Chosen One Himself owned a $1.65 million dollar home purchased in a shady deal with convicted real estate developer and political fundraiser Tony Rezko. And yet The Chosen One seemed to not know who Rezko was. If I dropped over a million and a half bucks on a house I think I’d remember who was involved. And yet, you still voted for him.

The Chosen One has the weakest, most liberal voting record in the entire Senate, which seems to be his only real experiential qualification to be President, and yet you still voted for him.

The Chosen One wants us all to have free health care, yet won’t say how it will be paid for other than with higher taxes, and despite worldwide evidence that socialized medicine sucks by and large. Yet you still voted for him.

The Chosen One claims that there will be no new taxes, but what isn’t being said is that there will be a repealing of all the Bush tax cuts, so while they won’t be “new taxes”, they’ll just be the “old taxes” brought back. And you still voted for him.

When The Chosen One says he wants to only tax the people who make over 250K a year, bear in mind that those are the people who employ you. And if you work in a smallish company of, say, 10 employees and your employer suddenly finds his taxes going up 10 or 15 percent a year, well guess how he pays the taxes? He raises prices, cuts benefits to his employees, and has to let a couple of you go because he can’t afford you. Welcome to Unemployment, friend. And yet you still voted for him.

It came out that The Chosen One served on a community board with former 60’s radical and terrorist Bill Ayers, founder of The Weather Underground movement which set off a series of bombs at public buildings and killed a few people, and yet you voted for him.

The Chosen One claims that he’ll have all our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan inside of 16 months of taking office. So, basically, he’s given Al-Q’aeda and the Taliban a timetable for when they can come back to power. All they have to do is hide in their caves for a year & a half and then wait us out, negating all the good work our troops have done and negating the sacrifices of nearly 5,000 troops who died to make that region safe for democracy. And yet you still voted for him.

It came out that The Chosen One has a questionable tie to noted Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi, and that video of the two interacting at a 2003 farewell dinner for Khalidi is currently being suppressed by the LA Times until after The Messiah has been elected, lest the truth come out. And you still voted for him.

It came out that His Obamaness has an aunt from Kenya living as an illegal alien in government-subsidized public housing in Boston after her amnesty request was denied over four years ago. And you still voted for him.

It came out that Your Messiah has a half brother in Kenya named George who lives in a dirt-floor shack on about four dollars a month, a brother that he refuses to help as he sits in his $1.5M mansion in the Chicago burbs. He'll help all of you but won't help his own brother? And you still voted for him.

Remember that in and amongst all the crap The Chosen One spouted about “Change” without really saying what the hell that, specifically, his “Change” was, he said certain other things that you people didn’t hear over the sound of the Kool Aid being poured.
Things like:

He’ll “spread the wealth around.”
He’ll “raise taxes.”
He’ll “have a civilian police force as strong as our military”.
He’ll “cut our military”.
He’ll “bankrupt new coal plants”
He’ll make sure if his daughters “made a mistake they won’t be punished with a baby” in reference to abortion.
He voted against medical care for babies who survive botched abortions saying it would “burden the medical staff and question the woman’s original decision.”
He’ll “Look into drilling” when we need it now.
He’ll sit down one on one with the leaders of terrorist nations.
He did NOT originally condemn Russia’s invasion and aggression into Georgia. Rather, he felt both nations should come to an agreement.
He has called Jeremiah Wright a man who represents the “best the black church has to offer.”

And you still voted for him. And you've nearly elected a super-majority of Democrats into Congress. And when they FUBAR this country four years from now, they’ll blame-shift every single failure on their part solely on the previous administrations’ shoulders, telling you they need another four years to fix it all.

Oh well; we can vote him out in four years after we wake up and experience our Buyer’s Remorse. And since this election took about two years, we may as well start campaigning now. That way we’ll be prepared when we’re so far in the toilet that the Tidy-Bowl Man will have to call Roto-Rooter to come find us based on our last known position off the starboard bow.

A nation of so many accomplishments, and sometimes we can’t even tie our own shoes.

CSI Walterboro: Election 2008

In the midst of this super busy and crazed electoral season, a certain local election here in South Carolina has caught my attention. It seemed that out of nowhere election signs started cropping up to try to sway my vote for the position of County Coroner for Colleton County. It sort of got me thinking…why in the hell are we voting for the guy who declares people dead?

The current coroner for Colleton is Richard Harvey. I’ve known Richard for nearly five years. I see him all the time at Stingrays hockey games. I joked with him during the last election cycle, asking him what he’d done for the dead people of Colleton County that should earn my vote. His opponent is Michael Crosby, whom I know nothing about but is probably a decent fellow.

Most of us likely think that a coroner and a medical examiner are the same thing, and most of us get our idea of what a medical examiner is from watching Jan Garavaglia on “Dr. G, Medical Examiner”, or Doc Robbins on CSI, who is listed as both a coroner and the Chief Medical Examiner in the show credits. Either way, it would seem that the individual in question declares people dead and does autopsies & such on the aforementioned deceased folk.

Medical examiner:
An appointed medically qualified officer whose duty is to investigate deaths and bodily injuries that occur under unusual or suspicious circumstances, to perform post-mortems, and sometimes to initiate inquests.

Coroner:
[related to Anglo-French corouner, from coroune, meaning crown]: An officer of a county, district, state, or municipality; originally, in medieval England, an official who upheld the monarch's rights of private property. From the 16th and 17th centuries on, the chief duty of the coroner was to hold inquests on the bodies of those believed to have died by violence or accident, or who suffered grievous bodily harm. In modern times, in the United States, the coroner is an elected official.

A coroner is not necessarily a medical examiner. Medical examiners are medical doctors who have specialised in anatomical- or forensic pathology. In countries such as the United States, where the coroner is an elected, political position, a coroner need not be a medical examiner, though many are. Many jurisdictions in America have replaced the coroner with M.E.’s, which leads me to the argument of how/why do we go about electing a coroner in this day & age?

I mean, I have yet to see a debate between coroner candidates. Maybe we should get the candidates together on TV and have some slick moderator bait them like they do with Presidential candidates? Well, it turns out that there was a debate of sorts, on October 13, when candidates for all elected offices were invited to come and meet their constituents by the Colleton County Taxpayers Association (CCTA). The event was open to the public. The format for the forum consisted of candidates being asked three to four questions from the planning committee of the event, then they were asked questions from the audience, and finally they were given the opportunity to address the gathering in a two-minute closing statement.

The questions from the Taxpayers Association for the Office of Coroner included; (1) Will you be a full time coroner? (2) Will you or have you ever used a county vehicle without reimbursing for gas? (3) How many deputy coroners do you/would you have? And (4) How diverse is your workforce? From the audience the candidates were asked about their medical training and background and their knowledge of autopsy policy and procedures here in the South Carolina. In addition, Mr. Harvey was asked about how much of his time is spent away from the county teaching at MUSC.

Kinda lightweight, if you ask me. Where’s the hardball questions? Stuff like “What will you do for the dead people of Colleton County?” I’m assuming that the question about the gas reimbursements would relate to personal use of a county vehicle, since asking someone to pay for the gas they use in the performance of their official duties would be ludicrous. And something tells me that if someone dies while Richard is in Charleston at the Medical University, chances are that they’ll still be dead when he gets back. Let the man teach.

I’ve yet to see any flyers in my mailbox highlighting their positions, either. So far, all I’ve seen are the ubiquitous roadside signs asking for my vote. Of course, what positions would a coroner really need to have? It seems to me to be a position that really should be a hired slot, filled by a well-qualified individual, instead of having to shell out money for signs and stickers and buttons, and taking time away from doing actual governmental work to get elected, not to mention the governmental expense of the balloting/voting process. I mean, hell, you hire a town manager based on a resume and work experience, and that person operates your entire town. But we have to have an electoral process for the person who shows up in the plain white van to say “Yup, he’s dead”.

I know that’s really oversimplifying the duties of a coroner, but it’s not exactly a CEO deal, and in dinky old Colleton County, South-by-God-Carolina, we’re not exactly in the same sort of criminal forensics territory of, say, Los Angeles….or even Omaha or Des Moines. We don’t get too many exotic methods of death here. Most non-natural causes of death here involve someone wrapped around a tree.

What exactly does one have to do wrong in order to get voted out of office as coroner? Declare someone dead who wasn’t? Refuse to declare an obvious corpse dead?

So, don’t forget to vote in November, and don’t forget your county coroner. Make sure the right person zips closed your body bag and sends you off for toe-tagging. You’re really only pronounced two things in your life, and that’s either married or dead, and one of those you can only do once despite what they say about till death do us part. Make sure the right person declares you dead.

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.

Top Ten Reasons to Vote For Ron Jeremy

As a follow-up to yesterday's blog:


Top Ten Reasons To Vote For Ron Jeremy

10. Meets all the criteria for election.
9. Native New Yorker who can carry the state and its vital 31 electoral votes.
8. Master’s Degree in special education means he’s prepared to deal with Congress.
7. If told by another nation to go screw himself, he probably could.
6. Wide appeal to both young and old voters. Everyone loves Ron Jeremy!!!
5. Comes ready-equipped with Secret Service nickname: Hedgehog.
4. No worry of a sex scandal in the White House. It’s all in the open, baby.
3. Guaranteed support and backing from the entertainment industry.
2. With dual undergraduate degrees in elementary education and theater, and having acted in 1700 films and directed 250, if we can elect an actor in 1980, why not now?
1. If America is gonna get screwed by the White House, shouldn’t we get it from a true professional?

Hedgehog For President

Every time one opens a newspaper or turns on the TV or radio you get inundated with non-stop, 24/7, second by second, up to the minute Election 2008 coverage. It starts over a year in advance of the elections and just gets worse every 4 years. It’s Obama this, and Hillary that, sprinkled with a side order of McCain said whatever. Of course, you’re not really obligated to vote for just one of the major candidates, you know. You can write-in a candidate of your choice, so long as they meet the qualifications for President of the United States. In fact, if you’re really feeling froggy, you can write me in; I’m over 35 and meet the residency requirements.

Article Two of the Constitution sets the principal qualifications to be eligible for election as President. A Presidential candidate must:

* be a natural-born citizen of the United States
* be at least thirty-five years old
* have been resident in the United States for at least fourteen years

And there are some folks who just think it’s funny to write in Mickey Mouse. Frivolous write-in votes of cartoon characters are tossed out and not counted as a general rule, but according to some sources, Mickey received 428 votes in the 2003 Florida elections.

If you’re considering voting for a write in candidate, there are a few dozen choices. I found them at http://www.politics1.com/p2008.htm
You have:
Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party
Jesse Johnson, Cynthia McKinney, Kent Mesplay, and Kat Swift, all of the Green Party
Thirteen candidates running for the Libertarian Party, not including Ron Paul
Gloria LaRiva of the Party of Socialism & Liberation
Reverend Gene Amondson of the Prohibitionist Party
Brian Moore of the Socialist Party
Roger Calero of the Socialist Worker’s Party
And perennial independent candidate Ralph Nader

Additionally there are 55 other independent/write-in candidates who have yet to achieve ballot status in any state, including Cris Ericson of Vermont’s Marijuana Party, John Taylor Bowles of South Carolina, representing the National Socialist Order of America (a complete front for the KKK. Their website scared the shit out of me.), Pennsylvania’s Jack Grimes of the United Fascist Union, and who can forget Jonathon “The Impaler” Sharkey of New Jersey, running from the bully pulpit of the Vampire, Witches & Pagan Party. I kid you not.

Of course, I have a few more that you can choose from too:

Cobra Commander- Sure, he’s been portrayed as a villainous tyrant bent on world domination, but a lot of people say the same thing about George Bush too. Cobra Commander is all about keeping a strong military.


Christopher Walken- The epitome of cool. You know what America needs? More cowbell!


Angus MacGyver- Come on, man, the dude made an ultralight aircraft built from bamboo, garbage bags, duct tape and a cement mixer engine. I think he can fix the economy with a rubber band, chewing gum, and a tampon.


And personally, I’m throwing my support behind Mister Ron Jeremy Hyatt, of New Hyde Park, New York. Ron Jeremy meets all the criteria. He’s 55 years of age, a natural born citizen and has resided in the United States for at least 14 years. Ron Jeremy attended Cardozo High School in Bayside, Queens, where former CIA director George Tenet and actor Reginald VelJohnson were classmates. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in education and theater and a Master's degree in special education from Queens College in New York. He is also a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon international fraternity. He taught special education classes in the New York City area and was a substitute teacher for regular classes before embarking upon, shall we say, an alternative film career. He holds a Guinness World Record for most appearances in adult films. He’s a published author and frequent public speaker and is a spokesman for PETA. So THINK BIG: RON JEREMY IN 2008!!!!!

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.

Anyone But Hillary in 2008

All the past couple weeks I’ve been hearing about how Hillary Clinton thinks her résumé makes her qualified to be President of the United States. What a crock. From what I can see, she’s qualified to be the disgruntled pseudo-wife of a career politician, qualified to look the other way to cover for his philandering, qualified to be embroiled in the shady Whitewater land deals, qualified to be the first First Lady ever subpoenaed by a Federal grand jury via “Travelgate” with charges that the White House had used alleged financial improprieties in the Travel Office operation to give the business to Arkansas friends of theirs, qualified to be implicated in “Filegate” which was the June 1996 discovery of improper White House access to hundreds of FBI background reports on former Republican White House employees; accusations were made that Hillary Clinton had requested these files and that she had recommended hiring the unqualified head of the White House Security Office. Senator Clinton was cleared in all cases, but it still makes one wonder…and we won't even go into all the mysterious deaths that have surrounded the Clintons through the years.

Mrs. Clinton is also eminently qualified, it seems, to accept donations illegally from Chinese nationals, too. This was a trick she picked up after her husband accepted money from Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie in 1996. Immediately after donating $460,000 to President Clinton's legal defense fund in March 1996, Trie sent a letter to President Clinton that expressed concern about America's intervention in tensions arising from China's military exercises being conducted near Taiwan. Trie told the President in his letter that war with China was a possibility should U.S. intervention continue. A month earlier, Trie had invited Wang Jun, chairman of CITIC and Poly Technologies (an alleged front company for the Chinese military ) to a White House "coffee" with President Clinton. Also busted in the 1996 investigation to illegal campaign contributions was another Chinese-born Clinton friend, Johny Huang. Prosecutors said Huang was responsible for arranging about $156,000 in illegal campaign contributions from employees of the Lippo Group banking conglomerate in Indonesia to the Democratic Party.

Last month, Hillary fund-raiser Norman Yung Yuen Hsu was revealed to be a fugitive on the run for the past 15 years in an investment fraud case. He is also suspected of having possibly broken campaign finance law. Fancy that. In August, an investigation by The Wall Street Journal revealed potential campaign finance irregularities involving Hsu, in his role as a "bundler" (someone who bundles contributions from many individuals into a lump-sum contribution to circumvent the limitation upon personal contributions from any one individual of $2,300) and his long-time associates, the Paw family of Daly City, California. Specifically, members of the Paw family made donations of over $200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005.

These donations closely tracked those of Hsu in terms of timing, amounts and those donating. In addition, the donations appeared to be much larger than would be expected given the Paw's modest income. According to records obtained for the investigation, the Paws own a gift shop and live in a 1,280-square-foot house that they recently refinanced for $270,000. In the San Francisco area, a $270,000 house is pretty damned modest. William Paw, the head of the household, works for the U.S. Postal Service and earns approximately $49,000 a year. So this dude has donated his entire salary for the past 4 years to the Democratic Party? One focal point for the investigation concerns whether any of the donations by the Paws were reimbursed by Hsu, which would constitute a felony. In addition to the $260,000 he contributed to federal candidates, Hsu also contributed at least $330,000 to state Democratic candidates and state party committees and ballot initiatives during the 2004 and 2006 election cycles.

Hsu skipped out on a $2million bond when he failed to appear for a bail reduction hearing on September 5 at which he was expected to turn in his passport. A "no bail" warrant was immediately issued for his arrest and Hsu forfeited the $2 million. Authorities began to search for Hsu and on September 6, he was arrested by the FBI in Grand Junction, Colorado, after becoming sick and falling on the California Zephyr train headed for Chicago. Hsu now faces federal charges of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Hillary’s campaign is now being forced to give back $850,000 donated through Hsu. Some great friend, Hillary.

You’re barely qualified to walk & chew gum at the same time. If you’re such a great Senator for the people of upstate New York, why is it that Kodak, the last major company left in Rochester, is rumored to be thinking of moving out of state? Oh wait…Kodak out-sources most of its digital camera manufacturing to Chinon, a Chinese company. What a coincidence, Comrade Hillary.

Now…..would someone like to tell me how the United States Secret Service allows their charges to meet up all the time with nefarious and shady characters from China?