One
obvious thing that occurred to me about the recent election was that it was in
no way a reflection of the way President Obama has conducted himself. The economy is steadily growing and the stock
market is making new highs and all the other of those fourteen points are still
true. The voter’s little hissy fit was
engendered entirely by the hysterical hype of FOX news. I doubt it has anything to do with a desire
to see the affordable care act repealed, or that mothers and children were
flooding across the border last summer or ISIS or Ebola or any other
excuse. Clearly having Republican
governors and Republican senators will solve none of these problems. Today the President was scheduled to have a Bourbon
summit. Sean Hannity accused the President of “already
drawing a line in the sand”, which is something I would have done but is out of
character for the President. And we know
how reliable those “lines in the sand” are anyhow. Expect the Trans-Canada pipeline to be one of
the first things the President approves.
If it were me dealing with Mc Connell I would say “I am not going to
sacrifice the last shred of credibility I have with my base. I already know I’m not trusted one bit by you
and John Boehner; I don’t want people
who have supported me now despising me with an equal passion. Certainly you can understand that. Of course this whole thing was set in
concrete months ago. Since June we’ve
been hearing “The Republicans are going to take back the US Senate and there is
nothing our side can do about it because people on our side just won’t show
up. Who would guess that there was a
record low nationwide turnout of 37%.
On Election night the media led us to believe this was some ground swell
of heavy turn-out viting with conviction.
Now we learn it was never that way.
This whole deboccle was preventable in any number of ways- - most of all
if the President had gotten on the campaign stump the way Harry Truman did for
his party in 1948. His situation was
even worse because he faced already both houses of congress in the hands of the
Republican party- - as it looked like an inevitable ground swell of Republicans
were passing bills right and left over the Presidential veto. But if THAT was a “do nothing congress” this
past congress is far WORSE in that regard.
But like I say this whole thing was pre ordained just like the networks
telling us that the Twin Towers were going to come down on 9 – 11. And when they did the cameras were ready with
live coverage. This election thus was
one gigantic train wreck in slow motion.
I
would not for a minute minimize the severity of the loss on November 4th. It’s a rare thing is a democrat wins ANY race
because they say there is not a single blue democratic district left in
Arkansas and looking at the map of the nation the thing is a sea of red with
isolated patches of blue. We are a
Republican nation and both congress and the states are more dominated by Republicans
since Herbert Hoover was President, and suddenly that doesn’t scare
anybody. But John Warner held on for
another term in the Senate in Virginia as a democrat. There was some last minute concern about him. And of course Al Franken won- - who tied
himself openly to the President, vindicating my theory that is more democrats
had done that more would have won. But the media saw to it that all of the polls
everywhere were tied neck and neck. How
many times did we hear “There have never been so many dead heat races”. But it was all just a media ploy to keep us
interested, or perhaps it was just the usual “red shift” we’ve been seeing the
last decade or so where magically votes turn up republican. Things don’t look good at all for the runoff
of Mary Landreau of Louisiana. The
numbers are against her. So is she like
eight or nine? Monsanto dumped untold
sums of money into the Genetically Modified Organisms labeling campaign in
Oregon, and apparently there is no definitive result there after three
days. But Sean is right of course. The devestation was pretty much total. You also had more younger republicans winning
as well as more blacks and women going republican. But one thing Sean keeps managing to forget
is that President Obama is still President for two more years. So when Sean says “I think it would be wrong
for Mc Conell and the President to come to any agreements” I’m not sure what he
means. Because it’s something he and I
agree on. I don’t want there to be any
AGREEMENTS (as a code word for selling out principles) either, and I would be
perfectly happy at this point is the Republicans would go back to what they
have proved themselves so well at doing- - absolutely nothing- - just spending
taxpayer’s money.
I
don’t think we have EVER had an eight year Presidential term where a chief
executive faced an unrelenting wall of resistence for all eight years. Few Presidents have had to face congress in
the hands of the opposite party the past six consecutive years as Obama
has. Those hoping for some turnaround in
2014 won’t get it, and the political nightmare lives on another two years, at
least. Last night Paul called me on the phone just
after five. I was concerned my phone
wasn’t even working because people would keep calling and the line would be
dead. Paul voted for Young Kim, who is a
lady who is pro life and anti gay and anti California high speed railroad. I may agree with her on all three of those
issues- - but it’s canceled out if she’s an unqualified flake to begin
with. I confessed to Paul that in my
zeal to follow aspects of the national results, I have been derelect in finding
out how various local races went. Paul
said he was going to be in the same room with David Limbaugh tonight and even
invited me to come along, but I declined.
I told Paul how I disagree with the thumbs down on Props 45 and 46 but
Paul did not specifically say he voted AGAINST these two propositions
himself. I only assumed that he did
because Judy was so against them. I told
Paul this cold has been going on for two weeks or something as some never
ending virus. I don’t know. I’m starting to get a complex about it, like
it really isn’t a cold but T B or something.
I know they have ways of testing for it- - and OK I had a test but there
was such an elapsed period of time between the injection and the examining - -
I’m not sure if we can trust the results.
We move once again into
the looney land of Judy. I watched that
“Earth is the center of the Universe after all” trailer and the thing offered
no proof of it’s outrageous statement other than saying that cosmic rays come
from all directions equally, and also that “the galaxies are perfectly aligned
in concentric shells around the earth”, which is a statement I’ve never heard
before in over fifty years. Then there
was the statement from two Iranian leaders that President Obama is the weakest
president the United States has ever had.
I suppose we could drop a bunch of bombs on them in an endeavor to
convince them otherwise. “If you think
we’re just stupid, maybe we can’t trust ourselves to negotiate with you without
your pulling the wool over our eyes, how about that?” After two thirty I watched the John Boehner
press conference. I would make my
response to John Boehner plain. "You
welched on the “grand bargain” in the debt deal of summer 2011. Your good buddy Mitch Mc Connell avowed to
his buddies the day I took office that he would do everything he could to make
me a one term president. So it isn’t a
question of making a deal with him because he thinks I’m an illegitimate
president to begin with. Also at great
cost of credibility to myself I delayed a ruling on whether I would use
executive power to help with the immigration situation. I gave you a full year to come to an
agreement, and by failure to even bring up the Senate bill, you have already
made your decision on the matter and your word now, even if you gave it, which
you haven’t so far, would be worthless”.
I
bookmarked the page on voter turnout.
The turnout in this last election is the worst we’ve ever had by about
three points and you can sort the thing either alphabetically by state, or by
the 2010 date or the 2014 date, and even sort by the amount of change in those
two dates. There was no demographic
breakdown, but in another site- - it’s the young people who didn’t show
up. I thought I saw that there were
twice as many people over sixty who turned out- as opposed to under
thirty. That’s a horrible figure. Also there was a drop in Latino voting, which
given immigration, is understandable. It
was beef Stroganoff for dinner with generous corn (it gave at the office) and a
green salad. I felt bowied in my energy
from the vitamin C from the fruit plate.
We had tapioca pudding for desert which they served and I ate first. There were no seconds. After this I paid Federico two of the five
dollars I owed him at the office window, and confirmed my dental appointment
tomorrow
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