I stopped writing about Bush and his minions a while back, because I was starting to get depressed that I seemed like a crazy man in Times Square shouting into a megaphone. I felt like no one was listening and we were going to continue on our downward spiral into a nation of rich and poor and less and less in between. A nation that would take away rights from people who had hard fought to earn them.
I am not happy that the Democrats won. I don't consider myself a Democrat. But I am happy that the nation turned against George Bush and his cronies and said "No More!" This is OUR country and you are no more than a glorified civil servant ("where's your manager?"). And that feels wonderful. I am certain that some good Republicans lost their jobs yesterday because they aligned themselves with the president, but that is their own fault. If you knew in your heart that the direction of the country was the wrong one and you went along with it for party loyalty and increased campaign contributions then you deserved to lose. An elected official is supposed to be an American first and a party member second.
I'm happy Joe Lieberman won. I was disappointed in his stance for the Iraq war, but at least he was willing to stand up for what he believed in and jeopardized his Senate candidacy in the process. He's done a lot of good work for Connecticut and this country and would have made a very good vice president if he got elected in 2000. I'd much rather vote for a man who believes in something even if I don't, than someone who's meekly willing to go along with the party line. (John McCain, don't let this BE YOU!!)
Hillary Clinton needed to win in New York by a large majority to have a legitimate shot at winning the 2008 presidential election. One prognosticator said she'd need 65% of the vote to be a frontrunner--she won with 70%!!
I was so happy when George Pataki became governor of New York back in 1994. He was going to fix the roads and give us back the death penalty. Well the roads got fixed and while the death penalty officially came back on the books, no murderer ever went down in the 12 years since. BUT, the crime rate dropped like a stone since then, so for that you have to thank both Rudy Guiliani and Pataki. But in the last few years the roads have gotten bad again and the budget is a mess. Elliot Spitzer might be the right man or he might be another Mario Cuomo, I hope he's the former.
The House went back to the Democrats. The new Speaker of the House, San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi is 3rd in line to be president if anything were to happen to Bush and Cheney. That probably won't happen, but just the fact that it could has to be scaring the Virginia Jim's of the world immensely. That's reason enough to smile.
I'm disappointed that Harold Ford Jr. didn't win the Senate seat down in Tennessee. He would have been the first black senator in the South since the late 1800s. He was eminently qualified, but it would take some kind of miracle for a black man to win in the Deep South. If he had won, the Democrats would be in full control of the Senate. It might still happen with Virginia yet to be recounted.
The greatest threat to the union in some states was not terrorism or a shrinking economy for the underclass, but Gay Marriage. Boogedy Boogedy. The scary gays wanted civil unions so they could share health benefits and protect themselves financially in case one got sick or died. But this was too much for certain constituencies to handle and they voted it down. For the first time in American history, married couples no longer make up a majority of households. So many old people are turning away from marriage for mostly Social Security reasons and here is a group that wants to get married and these states will not allow it. Silly.
And then to add a cherry to this Election SUNDAE, Donald Rumsfeld has handed in his resignation from bullying the Pentagon and running our Iraq war effort into the ground. Maybe now our soldiers will finally get the equipment they need including bulletproof vests and better yet, maybe this new Defense Secretary will come up with a plan to bring these people home. I was happy we went into Iraq for the sole purpose of getting rid of Saddam, his henchmen and especially his horrible sons.
But now thesons and the henchmen are mostly dead or out of power, Saddam is facing a hanging probably around Easter and Iraqis are now in control. It's time for us to get out of there and let the Iraqis fight it out amongst themselves to find out who will be in charge. I think three separate countries of the three different tribes would probably be best. The nation was set up unnaturally by Winston Churchill in the first place. Let it break down naturally into its tribal parts.
An Excellent Day. Now let's hope the Democrats have a plan and right this mighty ship. There's a lot of work to be done and even more work to be undone. We need a higher minimum wage that's tied into the cost of living. (One raise of the minimum wage in 25 years from $3.35 to $5.15 an hour, meanwhile in that time Congress has voted themselves raises totalling $35,000 a year.) We need some kind of health care coverage for every American. We need each town to mark off areas for affordable housing and not ugly projects, but suburban-type developments where a person can afford to live in his own town and not have to travel 2 hours to get to work.
We need more cooperation between government and big warehouse stores (like Costco and Home Depot) in the face of natural disasters like Katrina. For all its wrongs, no one is better suited to move large quantities of food, water and supplies than Wal-Mart and they should be a go-to contractor for events like that if or when they happen in the future. And we need to put restrictions on monopolies like we had for 50 years from Roosevelt to Reagan.
Companies that can run roughshod over competitors will do it if they have no controls to stop them. And they'll run roughshod over communities, too. A bully who has the ball can threaten to take that ball and outsource it to India unless he gets major concessions from the local townspeople. With monopoly controls and tax repercussions for removing jobs from this country that could all stop.
These anti-monopoly laws go for retailers like Wal-Mart and Home Depot (destroying local economies); banks like Chase that suck up all local banks and set uncontested savings rates (and get into other areas that scream of collusion like insurance andstock management); oil magnets like Exxon/Mobil which set unnaturally high gas prices; and broadcasters like the big networks which can buy up all the local TV and radio stations in the market and leave little room for a dissenting voice to be heard.
I want this to be an active Congress working hard to correct so many of these wrongs. People need hope and trust again. We engineered it yesterday, now these elected officials need to earn it.
The Freditor
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