A question for my learned friends

It has been a vast number of years since I was in college and we sat around and argued the esoteric as if it really mattered. Somehow I think that if all of us had paid more attention to those discussions we might not be in this economic mess we are in today.

One of those discussions had to do with pure socialism and pure capitalism. The USSR has proven their communistic state did not reach pure socialism because of the greed of its leaders. We have just proved we could not reach pure unregulated capitalism because of the greed of our leaders and corporations. Russia is now trying capitalism and we are dipping our toes in socialism.

And I don't mean the socialism that McCain says that Obama will lead us into but the socialism that G. W. Bush has already had voted into practice: the ownership and control over our biggest "industry" the banks and investment firms. McCain wants to continue with deregulation which got us into this maelstrom which means we can yet own more industry in the US. And Obama wants controls that would not just rescue the financial firms that got themselves into this pickle but us lowly members of the middle class that are suffering because we don't have golden parachutes.

So here is the question: If there are always two ways to get to some desired goal - let us say a Utopian society like Plato wrote about - which will get us there faster? Or given that you never reach the ultimate - which will get us closer sooner.

I maintain that if John McCain were to achieve the White House and continue with the agenda that he and Sarah Palin have advocated we would see rioting in the streets. And we would also see a breakup of the United States as we know it (not unlike what went on in the USSR when communism failed). But Republican candidates advocate giving the states more discretion on their laws re abortion, etc. And since they obviously will be giving us and the states we live in less money why play? I say we get our National Guard home, make them a state militia and declare ourselves independent. Hey, Sarah advocated that for Alaska. As a resident of New Mexico I am willing to consider a compact with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona (if it kicks out the McCains).

A part of me really wants this direction. I am not overly fond of the government of late. Like the last eight years. But there would be chaos for a while and I am not sure the majority of our TV fed population could deal with chaos. And that could be a good thing as far as population reduction. I doubt they could feed themselves without microwaves.

Obama, on the other hand, offers the gentle route toward Utopia. I just think because it keeps people fat, dumb and happy (and the microwaves working) it will take one hell of a lot longer to get there. Don't get me wrong. I am voting for Obama but I have my contigency plans for a McCain victory, his death from poison, and the succession of Palin as president. God, what a nightmare.

So what do you think? What are you prepared for? This is more than three days until FEMA shows up provided it has the money to respond to any disaster these days.

Voting Fraud?

In the 2004 election New Mexico was one of the three states investigated by the BBC for voting fraud.

We have always rather excelled at the graveyard vote but this was different. We had those computerized voting machines with no paper trail and evidently a large number of those voting somehow missed voting for President. And then it was shown that with a cell phone votes could be changed from the parking lot.

New Mexico, under the leadership of Governor Bill Richardson changed over to paper ballots in the 2006 election. We were one of the first. Ohio still hasn't fully transferred back to polling with a paper trail. Nor has Florida I understand.

But irregularities at the polling places was not the only irregularity. Here in New Mexico a Republican organization in 2004 made a major drive to register voters. Seems they only registered Republican voters. And when those that thought they had registered Democrat showed up at the polls there was no record of their registration. They were allowed to cast provisional ballots but when no verification of their registration showed up the ballots were not counted.

So a couple months back someone professing to be from the Democratic Party called to ask if I wanted a mail in ballot. They would have one sent to me if I did. They said I could still take the mail in ballot to the polling place on the actual election day if I chose to do that.

My friends choosing to mail in their ballots have all received them. Once said the deadline for returning them was November 4th. I started to wonder about the information I had received over the phone so I called the Secretary of State Office. And she said that no way would I be allowed to vote on the day of the election if I was sent a mail in ballot. She referred me to the Colfax County Clerk who was very helpful. She checked the computer records and no request for a mail in ballot was made in my name. And I would have had to sign the form.

So my choices now are early voting an hour and a half from here or wait to the actual day. But there is something strange about that too. In the dozen years I have lived here we have always voted at the Community Center. They have changed it to the Angel Fire Courthouse - Clerk's office which is considerably smaller and which would require we all stand outside to wait to vote. This in November and with a far heavier than turnout expected.

So next week I am taking a day and driving to the County Clerk's office in Raton to vote. I really do not trust the process after GW cheated his way into office twice. So I am willing to go the extra miles and take the extra time to avoid being excluded from the process.

Paranoid? Maybe.

Sticks and Stones

I grew up in an era where kids in my neighborhood were not so much bullied physically as verbally abused. We called it teased in those days. For reasons I have never fully understood I was teased mercilessly. I can remember any number of after school chats with one or both parents after coming home in tears. They tried to assure me that kids only teased me because they liked me. Yah!?

But it was a friend that taught me the rhyme, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me," that helped the most. But words can hurt and do hurt as G.W. Bush proved in his last presidential election with the Swift boating ads, and his constantly calling Kerry a Flip-flopper. It certainly left a very bad taste in my mouth and put me back in those school yards with the verbal bullies. I am firmly convinced they did not like me.

Senator John McCain, perhaps to set himself apart from the Republican administration promised a civil campaign on the issues and then, sorry about this, Flip-flopped. He called in the big guns (Palin has killed moose and advocates killing wolves from airplanes) and went the route of schoolyard bullies everywhere. Even worse is that his nasty and underhanded rhetoric was inciting violence among his followers. He and Sarah were stirring up racial hatreds we all thought long buried. And was a lesson for me. Today if I had used that sticks and stones rhyme I would say it silently so people would not consider it a mandate to check it out.

To McCain's credit he did on at least once occasion try to nullify the hatred he was stirring up. Too little? Too late? Where will these stirred up radicals go or do if McCain loses? And it is beginning to look like he just might. Seems I am not the only independent thinker that was teased as a child. Polls show that the electorate is responding quite negatively to the nasty campaigning of Sarah Palin and John McCain. And they are in increasing numbers disparaged by McCain's choice of Sarah as attack dog.

These are serious times it seems. And the voters, especially those still sitting on the fence, want to hear some serious answers from the presidential candidates. They are abhorred by McCain's about face regarding his campaign, and no other single decision has more aligned him with the president we all love to hate, GW Bush. We don't want more of the same as we have endured the last eight years. And that goes for policies, campaign style, and lack of looking presidential. God, but I am sick of him leaning drunkenly on the podium!

So it seems that John McCain has seen the handwriting on the wall (national polls) and is trying to clean up his act. Tonight he has the opportunity to act like an adult in the debate unlike the little finger pointing brat of the last debate (boy, but it reminded me of my brother and that isn't good). The question is whether it is too little, too late. I hope so.

But I am most concerned about the damage his rhetoric has already done to race issues here in the United States. Once you set the dogs loose it is not that easy to call them back. Will we see a rise in hate crimes here in the US because of those things a schoolyard bully with national coverage said? I certainly hope not. Shame on you John McCain.

McCain's Tragedy at Sea

As McCain continues to lean on his war record as a hero more and more blogs and websites come up with revealing "truth" and official records that counter McCain's glorification of himself.

Because both his father and grandfather were Navy Admirals there is no doubt that McCain was allowed to get away with things like his plane crashes due to foolish stunts that would have gotten other Navy pilots assigned ground duty or swabbing decks. And he admits that his father interceded more than once with his son's commanding officers.

But Truthdig has a very comprehensive and revealing article on the Forrestal incident. I urge all my readers to not merely read this report but e-mail it to your friends. Senator McCain is using lies to bolster his run for President, but McCain's actions immediately following the fire (and while it was still burning) put his line about "knowing what all men on deck means," which he used when canceling his campaign and debate because of the economic crisis.

Is this the man we want at the helm of our ship of state?

Less Than a Heartbeat?

A lot of doctors and interested parties have been calling for a complete release of Senator John McCain's medical records. He claims full disclosure. And sometime back he did hope some 400 or more pages of his medical history to a group of reporters for 45 minutes or less. Of the 22 reporters only two had medical degrees. Would you know where to turn in a medical file to find relevant information?

Or know at a glance what is relevant?

I have a sister who is a nurse and speaks in that medical jargon that at times leaves me dazed. And due to a very serious accident I got to spend a lot of time review a lot of my own medical records. Doctors speak in codes. You need to know the language to understand what you are reading. I spent hours on the Internet looking through sites such as Med Line trying to decode my own records.

Dr. S. Gupta of CNN was one of the doctor/reporters that was present during this "full-disclosure." At the time he said he saw nothing to be of concern but the medical records did not address McCain's mental health. He has since spoken of worrying signs that all is not okay with this aspect of the Republican candidate's health. Dr. Gupta is a neurosurgeon. McCain has crashed five airplanes and been beaten in a POW camp. He has suffered brain trauma.

So maybe the four melanomas coupled with his age is not the only thing to be concerned about. Those two factors put him with a 1 in 6 chance of dying within the next five years on the actuary charts that insurance companies use. This alone puts Sarah Palin uncomfortably close to being president of the United States. She already thinks it is the Palin/McCain ticket.

But perhaps even more worrying is McCain's erratic behavior and mental slips. He has some classics that I am frightfully aware of because of my closed brain trauma (CBT) six years ago. His repeating of a tag line or information multiple times in a speech and not for effect, bad temper when being question, not finishing sentences and substitution of any word that begins with the same letter, and not being able to remember the make of his car or how many homes he owns are not just "senior moments." As posted on Firedog: A McCain Brain Watch site they are indications of failing short term memory and memory of memorized or frequently accessed memory.

Deficits in these two areas impair your ability to make decisions or to access all the information necessary to make an informed decision especially when stressed or tired. This is critical with that 3 a.m. call on the redphone at the White House.

I can fully relate. For the first few years after my head injury I could come up for appropriate plans to go away for another MRI only by putting each necessary task on a 3 x 5 card and then spreading those cards around my dining room table and trying to put them in the proper order. My CBT has gotten better. And obviously for a period of time so did John McCain's. But I would never subject myself to the stress of running for high office or presume I could be President of the United States. I am fully aware of my limitations. And the prognosis for the future.

CBT puts you at greater risk of stroke, cerebral bleeds, Alzheimers, dementia, and inability to function when stressed or exhausted. It makes you quick tempered when you cannot perform to your expectations of yourself. Coupled with melanoma and his age it is not a pretty picture. But that is assuming the lapses in McCain's memory are due to the CBT and not cancer which has spread into his brain as in the instance of Senator Ted Kennedy.

So maybe it is really a Palin/McCain ticket. It has me worried enough that I have been doing research on what happens if McCain dies before the election, after the election but before the Electorial College vote, after the EC vote but before the confirmation of the vote by the House of Representatives, after that and before the inaugration. Even if I was a Republican (and I have even worked for a Republican Senator in my past) I would be totally unwilling to take the risk of voting for this ticket.

Been There, Done That

Real Clear Politics had the following quote:

"I went through this hatred that so many of the American people are going through now, but fortunately I got over it. I had all this anger for this loss for our country, a serious eight-year loss, and now I just want to say you've got to laugh, a little bit, about this whole thing. It gets so painful that humour is the only antidote. If you didn't, you'd go bonkers. You'd become a raging lunatic on a blogosphere, writing anti-Bush screeds." - Oliver Stone, in an interview with The Guardian explaining why his new movie "W." isn't "angry."

I am not sure I can say that I have gone beyond my anger at GW. And that he cheated his way into office to do this. I personally think he will rank beside Hitler and Stalin in my list of world leaders that have done the most harm. And if you argue that he did not foster the mass murder of thousands to millions I give you the Iraq War: the illegal invasion and occupation of an independent nation. We list our dead on a daily basis but seem to ignore those we have killed. Or would that seem more like a score card?

Had anyone but a United States President invaded Iraq the United Nations would have been there with troops to expel them. And if you doubt that just look at how we reacted to Russia going into Georgia.

In the eight years GW has been in office he has totally turned off all our once allies in the world, invaded an independent nation, made us a nation that tortures, thrown out all our civil liberties and rights to privacy, and gotten us into the worst financial crisis since the great depression. Yes, I said it, the Great Depression. Notice how everyone is dancing around that with other phrases?

And every single act since the Supreme Court put him in office has been illegal in the World Court or illegal in regards to the United States Constitution. But to even act like we wanted to impeach him has invited the worlds unpatriotic or traitor and the not so subtle but unspoken threat of Gitmo detention. I was Googling some aspects of the constitution the other day (can I get a law degree through Google) and discovered that who should have decided the problem of the hanging chads in 2000 was the House of Representatives. But that legal body was controlled by the Democrats. The would have sided with Gore.

So not only am I still angry with Bush and all that have conspired with him to bring us to this place in history. I am a bit disappointed in my fellow citizens. Why didn't we riot in the streets? Call for a constitutional convention? Demand his impeachment? Only one reason - 9/11. Did he allow that to happen in order to forestall all he could see happening because of his illegal occupation of the White House?

The Non-Answer Answer

I watched the debate last night. After the CBS interview with Palin that went so horribly wrong how could you not? And as circumstances happened I was pet sitting for a neighbor and went there to watch it on a real television.

And this morning I have been up reading the early media comments and blogs on the subject. Most put Senator Joe Biden as winner but some say Palin won in that she did not fall flat on her face.

She has obviously been heavily coached in the last couple of weeks and spent a lot of time reading from her notes on the podium. She also fell back on the non-answer answer that politicians have so mastered. When she did not have an answer to the question posed by the moderator she substituted an answer to a question not asked. In a college debate forum she would have lost points. Seriously lost points.

As it was she did lose points with CNN's panel of likely voters for her colloquialisms. I frankly would have slammed her for the winks and those cutesy little wiggles of her head that teenage girls do when trying to curry favor with the boys. But she is not a laughing stock of YouTube like she was after the Katie Coric interview. But she also did not provoke Biden into attacking her even when toward the end she resorted to giggles while he was answering the questions. I frankly would have slapped her and said, "Grow Up. This is serious business." I hate women that want to play on a level playing field with men and then resort to female tricks that should be beneath us even when dating.

But what was really interesting in the analysis afterwards is that most people thought she hurt McCain. Not satisfied with the Mayor-Governor-Vice President accession she was trying to position herself for a 2012 run for President. God Save the Queen. We may need to throw ourselves on the mercy of the Brits again. "Sorry, your majesty, we apologize for that tea party thing a couple centuries back. Just take control again, please."

But Joe Biden made me proud. He gave answers to the moderator's questions and stayed on subject. But I was especially for his closing statement. While Palin fell on canned campaign rhetoric (much stolen from the Obama campaign) the Senator spoke from the heart. I almost stood up from the couch and waved the flag.