Omaha,NV – Native Americans
The right to vote is the very bedrock of what it means to be American. One-person-One-vote balances the playing field (or at least it could) for representation in our government process. It is amazing to see how eventually all of us obtained the right to vote. For native-Americans and Women it didn’t come until a century ago. There are effort underway by one of our political parties to restrict the vote. For the sake of our democracy I hope it is eventually beaten back.
I think this editorial cartoon by Mike Lukovich says it better than I ever could. The monied interests just have too much power in our national affairs. That could be easily reversed if only ALL of us would simple vote. How severe does the income inequality need to get before some of us realize that basic fact?
I just finished voting. They have reduced the polling places in my small town now so it took 40 minutes to cast my ballot instead of the usual 10 minutes or so. I hate to think of the wait for those who do it on the to or from work. If it is like this for the general elections in the Fall it will probably be hours…
But that is a red State thing I guess; suppress the vote where possible…
I’m sure I am not the only one to see this presidential election as the strangest of all the fourteen I have voted in. And I’m also sure that I am not the only one who is planning to vote for the least of two evils. The source article below proves that fact:
I’m far more frightened about a Trump presidency than I am enthusiastic about a Clinton presidency. And why shouldn’t I be? The prospect of Donald Trump being the most powerful human being on Planet Earth is genuinely terrifying…. Among other things, Trump is impulsive, ignorant, vain, petty, bigoted, insecure, and possessed of an almost pathological narcissism. Every president faces crises during which the lives of large numbers of people, both in America and around the world, depend on that one individual’s judgment and calm. It’s little exaggeration to say that in the wrong circumstances, Trump’s copious personality defects could result in absolute cataclysm.
So when 80 percent of Trump supporters and 62 percent of Clinton supporters tell pollsters they’d be “scared” if the other candidate won, but only 29 percent of Trump supporters and 27 percent of Clinton supporters say they’d feel “excited” if their candidate won, we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, even a great president won’t turn America into Shangri-La in four or eight years, but a bad president can do an enormous amount of damage in the same time. And that’s more than a good enough basis on which to decide your vote.
Source: Why voting out of disgust is as American as apple pie
I have pretty much read about all the presidents in my life time. LBJ was pretty much a bully who liked to intimate those around him. He got off on yielding power. He was one one of my least favorite presidents but he did get a lot of important things done. There was the Great Society, Civil Rights Acts, and Medicare. He was not a great person but he accomplished great things. And then there was the Vietnam war…
Even though Nixon was a very paranoid person he also accomplished quite a bit in office. That is until Watergate brought him down. Reagan was a dichotomy of sorts. He ran on a balanced budget but in reality spent like a drunk sailor. His extreme spending on military things is what caused the Soviet Union to collapse and that was temporarily a good thing. George W. Bush ran as a compassionate conservative and on a business platform but the stock market was actually considerable lower and in much worse shape when he left office than when he started and he proved to be anything but compassionate. I can’t really say that he accomplished anything that I thought worthwhile during his time. And then there were the two wars and resulting “off the book” spending that drove deficits ever higher.
Obama was the one that I pinned my hopes on to turn things around. He seemed like a compassionate guy but in reality he has been merciless in his deporting immigrants and seemingly indiscriminate killing with drones. And then there are the two continuous wars that seems impossible for him to get us out of…
What I have learned from my fourteen times voting for president is that you don’t have to like the person you are voting for but you do need to at least tolerate what they stand for. I can say there is not a single thing about Trump that makes me want to vote for him.
So here I am voting for the least of two evils again…. 63 days and counting until this madness ends…. Thank God….
The quotes below are a nice addition to the recent post about voter suppression. The solution given is to add an amendment to our U.S. Constitution to say that everyone over 18 has an inalienable right to vote. This sounds like an ideal solution to me.
A Fourth Circuit panel ruled a few months ago that North Carolina’s voter ID law violated the Constitution because it targeted “African-Americans with almost surgical precision…the asserted justifications cannot and do not conceal the state’s true motivation.” More recently, Berman discovered an email from a Wisconsin Republican official refusing to put up an early voting station at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay because “students lean more towards the Democrats.”…..
Such an amendment would be very simple. It would mandate that every single citizen over the age of 18 be allowed to vote, without exception. Any voter registration system which did not make it quick and easy to vote would be struck down; more importantly, no more felon disenfranchisement, not even for people currently imprisoned. The moral justification is also simple: Suffrage is a right so fundamental that it should not be possible to remove it — just as one cannot sell oneself into chattel slavery.
If this topic is of interest to you I would suggest you read the source in its entirety.
I’m far more frightened about a Trump presidency than I am enthusiastic about a Clinton presidency. And why shouldn’t I be? The prospect of Donald Trump being the most powerful human being on Planet Earth is genuinely terrifying…. Among other things, Trump is impulsive, ignorant, vain, petty, bigoted, insecure, and possessed of an almost pathological narcissism. Every president faces crises during which the lives of large numbers of people, both in America and around the world, depend on that one individual’s judgment and calm. It’s little exaggeration to say that in the wrong circumstances, Trump’s copious personality defects could result in absolute cataclysm.
