It's official. The winner is.....

....actually it's a tie.  It seems the good folks, all 10 of them, in Dixville Notch, NH have split their votes 5 (Obama) to 5 (Romney).  Dixville Notch is famous for opening its polling place at midnight, becoming the first to report election results to the world.  What they need is one more person to move there, and assuming he's an eligible voter, insuring there will never be a tie again.  Until one of the others dies. *sigh...why is this always so complicated?*

Here's what I'm proposing to end the stalemate:  I'll offer myself up as President.  Actually "Dictator" might be more appropriate.

My agenda: 

First, I'd banish all professional politicians to France.  That would mean no more Congress.  Those 9% of you who still like Congress....get over it!  They're now France's problem.

Next I'd go to "Wall Street" (the term to include all the ivory-tower crooked financial types), round 'em all up, and banish them to France.

Telemarketers and those who load up my mailbox with junk mail will be banished to France.  (This means YOU credit card companies!)

Anyone who's mean to dogs....let's make that just mean people in general....will be banished to France.

Chefs who insist on putting "colorful vegetables" on the same plate with my steak....will be banished to France.

Football would become a year-round sport, playing in two shifts.  Each plays for six months, then takes six months off for knee surgeries and rehab while the other shift keeps us me entertained.  Anyone who objects will be banished to France.

Anyone driving an electric car will not have to pay taxes.  Not because I like electric cars, but because they're saving lots of gasoline....FOR ME!  They'll be allowed to vacation in France, but they won't have to.

Anyone not in construction or agriculture who owns a pickup truck will be banished to France.  Minivan owners are on thin ice, too.

And people who are in front of me at a traffic light, yapping and texting and not paying attention, who wake up just as the light turns yellow again, making me miss MY turn to go.....will be banished to France.

I think I'm gonna like this Dictator thing.

Feel free to petition me with those you'd like to see banished to France, too.  After all, I'm here to serve.  :)

S

Sorry for dozing off....is it over?

No, I didn't actually doze off during the final presidential debate last night, but it was touch and go for a while.  The polls this morning all agree President Obama won, but I certainly saw no knock-out punch or anything even close.  What I saw was a surprising amount of agreement on the issue of foreign affairs.  On many occasions Romney said he agreed with Obama's handling of (xyz).  Where was the blood and broken, flying teeth?  I just thought it was a boring event.

I will have to say that Obama did successfully (in my mind) call out the discrepancy in Romney's claim of a plan to generally cut spending and move towards a balanced budget all while cutting taxes across the board and increasing defense spending.  That arithmetic just does not compute, and unless Romney can/will provide specifics on how he's going to do it, I'm a skeptic.

I will also agree with Obama that raw numbers of military hardware (ships, planes, etc) are no longer as important as weapons system capability and survivability.  I've met many military leaders over the past dozen or so years and they all seem to agree.  I sleep well.

What shocked me was the fact that Europe, Africa, South America, Australia, and most of Asia except China have just disappeared.  They are apparently no longer even discussed when it comes to foreign affairs.  Did you hear them mentioned last night at all?  (OK, Russia was mentioned very briefly, but that was it.)  They've just vanished!

No, the only part of the world that matters seems to be the Mideast and SW Asia.  We seem to spend ALL our time / money / effort trying to civilize those heathens, and all we ever really do is buy off a few despots and corrupt generals.  All because they have oil.  There isn't a damn thing there besides that.  As I've said before, we need to develop our own secure sources of energy so we can quit beating our heads against the wall trying to schmooze those bastards.

OK, now I'm worked up and awake....about 12 hours late.

S

The next Big Stink

This has been a really bitter election year, a really bitter and divisive 4 years for that matter.  Here's something to consider:  I'll bet you the upcoming election results will NOT end the bitterness, but will intensify it.  Here's why....the electoral college might well crown one man the duly-elected "winner" while the popular vote will say the other candidate really won.

So what exactly is this electoral college? It was our Founding Father's way of putting a layer between the common man, the actual voter, and the election process.  They didn't actually trust the common man.  They were afraid a tyrant would somehow get control of a party and be able to manipulate enough uneducated naive voters to win the popular vote, and this was their way of being able to override such vote rigging.  (They were a very suspicious / paranoid bunch!)

FYI, in the election of 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes had a quarter-million fewer popular votes, but won the electoral college vote 185-184.  In the election of 1888 Benjamin Harrison had 80K fewer popular votes, but won the electoral college vote by a lopsided 233-168.  And more recently George W. Bush won the election of 2000 with 500K fewer popular votes, but with 5 more electoral votes, 271-266.

I'm seeing signs something similar might happen next month.  They say Obama and Romney are neck-and-neck in popular votes, but the number of solid Obama states has many more electoral votes than Romney's solidly red states. Regardless of which candidate you / I prefer this election year, I just think that's wrong.

So why don't we just do away with the electoral college and vote directly for president?  Because it would take a Constitutional Amendment, which would require a super majority of state legislatures and congress, and BOTH parties have benefited at one time or another from the screwy electoral college process.  Both see they have more to lose than to gain.  In short, nothing is going to change.

Sharp as our Founding Fathers were, I'm thinking they bungled this one, at least as seen through modern eyes.

S

Wanna see my vacation pictures?

It's odd to me how politics is all the talk around the water cooler, yet here on Blogger people seem to be going out of their way to talk about the weather, the grand kids, what they had for lunch, anything BUT politics.  This seems like a very non-confrontational group.  I'm not looking for "confrontation", but just a good healthy discussion and exchange of ideas.  I guess I'll just have to have that exchange with myself.  So be it.  Y'all can relax.  I've got this.

Anyway, I thought last night's presidential debate was a good one.   Both candidates came prepared and it showed.  Neither fell on his face like Obama did 2 weeks ago.  The consensus this morning is that Obama narrowly won the night, and I guess I wouldn't argue with that.  It seems pretty obvious that these two don't like each other....it's become personal.  

I'm guessing Romney thought it a good thing that he got to go first, based on a coin flip.  Trouble was, it meant Obama got to speak last, with no time for rebuttal.  Obama in essence had a closing statement, and Romney didn't.  This is where Mitt's 47% quip was brought up again and eloquently hammered home, and was left in the audience's mind to ponder overnight.  Shrewd or just luck, I think it will show up in this coming week's polls.

Speaking of polls, have any of you ever been polled by Gallup or ABC or CNN any of the more prominent companies?  I haven't, nor do I even know of anyone who has been.  Part of that might be because I live in Texas, which means the pollsters just consider me and everyone else here a Red Stater, so why bother polling me?  Because of the fairly wide discrepancy in results, I'm thinking polls get waaaaay more attention than they deserve.  That's what I think.

S

It's the BANKS, stupid!

Dateline NY, Sept, 7, 2012

"...after four years of studies, hearings, and round tables, the Securities and Exchange Commission late last month abandoned efforts to impose new regulations on money market funds intended to prevent another panic like the one that occurred in 2008 and eliminate the need for a taxpayer bailout of the multi-trillion-dollar funds."

It seems three of the five SEC Commissioners, two Republicans and one Democrat, indicated they would NOT support any new reform proposals.  Make that BANKERS, 1; all the rest of us, 0.  Game, set, match.

Here we are in the heat of another election year, our economy is still in the toilet, and the Democrats and the Republicans are both pointing fingers at each other saying, "It's all THEIR fault.  If you elect us WE'LL FIX THIS!"

Truth of the matter is, it's BOTH their faults, and until someone stands up to the bankers, NOTHING is going to get fixed!  Oh sure, they'll let us squabble over things like abortion and gay marriage and whether there should be prayer in public places, but when it comes to anything with a dollar sign attached, they (the bankers / financiers) call the shots.  And the outcome is pre-ordained:  They will win, and the rest of us will....well, they don't give a flip.

From 1999 (essentially the end of any meaningful banking regulations) until 2008, the bankers had things going exactly as they wanted, and they made BILLIONS along the way.  Then when their unrestrained speculation imploded in 2008, they (mostly) kept their winnings, hit the reset button (raided the taxpayer's piggy bank) and started over again.  (It's nice to know own the right people, huh?)

So which political party is most likely to get us out of this vicious financial cycle of boom (for them) and bust (for us)?  Let's review:

Mitt Romney is firmly in the banker's camp (he's actually one of them!) and his veep is their head cheerleader.  Now don't get to feeling too smug, Democrats, because Obama had his chance to stand up to them in March (?), 2009 and wimped out.  And the people he listens to most closely, such as Sec Treasury Geithner, are so far up the banker's asses all you can see are their shoelaces.

So who then?  There are a few brave, knowledgeable people out there such as former Fed Chmn. Paul Volcker and former Citibank CEO Sandy Weill who say publicly that our mega-banks all need to be reigned in and broken up into not-too-big-to-fail pieces.  Problem is they're older, retired, and not in policy-making positions.  They're non-factors.  (The premise is if the bankers know they won't be bailed out again....that they're not "too big to fail".... and know they're being watched over by regulators with teeth, they'll act more responsibly.)

We're gonna have to start from scratch.  I'll volunteer to stand out front, but I'll need about fifty million other uncorrupted citizens to stand up with me.  (Do we even have fifty million uncorrupted citizens?)  And we can't become fractured by other social issues.....we must stay focused on this one issue only.  So who's with me?

*que the music*

As John Belushi so eloquently said in the classic 1978 movie Animal House, "Our forefathers didn't back down when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, and we can't afford to back down now, either!"

Seriously, they're probably too rich / powerful to take on right now.  We'll have to catch them when they come calling again for a handout, and that day WILL happen.  Unfortunately I'm afraid the next crash could be even more devastating than it was in 2008.

S

Spewings from my odd mind

Ever wonder about the origin of holidays?  Some are obviously religious....Easter, Christmas, Hanukkah.  Some are obviously contrived for commercial reasons, like Valentine's (thank you Hallmark Cards and FTD).  Some are to recognize the sacrifice of our armed forces....Memorial Day, Veteran's Day.  But Labor Day?   Yes, it is to honor those who "labor", and it was pushed for by the early labor union movement, but it wasn't until 1894 that President Grover Cleveland made it a national holiday after a particularly bloody fight between the military and federal marshals and strikers at the Pullman Co. (railroad car mfg.) ended in a number of deaths.

Fearing more labor violence, Labor Day was a bone thrown at workers to calm things down and prevent further unrest.  The Prez was careful, however, to NOT have it the same day as International Worker's Day so as not to give any credence to the growing communist movement.  Now you know.

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I heard a quote today that resonated with me:  "Don't have an opinion where you have no responsibility."

This as opposed to the way things are now, namely, "Opinions are like a__holes....everybody has one."

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I also read something interesting written by a journalist covering the Republican convention last week.  He observed, "There is no organic connection between Romney and the GOP base.  He is renting the party to fulfill his dream of becoming president, and they're renting him to get rid of President Obama."  Good point.  It really doesn't feel like they belong together, but they're trying to force it, sort of like an arranged marriage.  It's just an odd chemistry.  

The Democrats start their convention this week.  Now it's their turn to bore us to tears.  Football season couldn't have come at a better time, for me at least.

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We're forecast to have triple-digit heat most of the week in Dallas, but a weather front comes in for the weekend cooling things off into the 80's.  Do I dare hope?  Is this "it"....the first stirrings of Autumn?  I even like the sound of it....."Autumn".  :)

S