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Saturday, October 30. 2010

The End Is Near!

It’s been way too long since last writing anything here. How shameful. Just this month I’ve gone back to work, been … busy … but the state of the election, just a few days away, changes by the hour.

The crazy Teabagger crowd has gotten even crazier, believe it or not. In Arizona, they are using a blatantly racist ad against Democratic Congressman Raul Grijalva, depicting him as a Mexican bandito. But Grijalva’s opponents aren’t racists. Not more so than say Klansmen who portrayed African-Americans with stereotypical over-inflated lips and overly curly hair in their flyers and posters.

Christine O’Donnell, the gift who keeps on giving, asked during a radio debate where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state. And she seriously asked. It gets even funnier! When told — it’s in the First Amendment — she was surprised. And it’s a good bet O’Donnell thinks she won that point. She adamantly tried to win on that, repeatedly exhibiting her lack of knowledge and understanding of the Constitution every time she asked her opponent, Chris Coons, to clarify where in the Constitution was “separation of church and state” and where the “establishment clause” was in the First Amendment.

The audience burst into hysterical laughter the first time O’Donnell asked the question. When looking at the video, she appears to think the audience agrees with her, when in fact, the audience is laughing at O’Donnell.

Do we really want someone so seriously ignorant of the Constitution and Constitutional Law in the United States Senate? Apparently the voters of Delaware don’t. She’s so far back in the polls there’s no “there” there.

Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck said being gay was a choice and like alcoholism was influenced at birth. The Tea Bagger darling had a wide lead over his opponent Michael Bennett, but the gaffes and just plain extreme views of Buck have been shifting the electorate towards Bennett, who was appointed to the Senate seat after President Obama picked Ken Salazar to be the Secretary of the Interior.

Who are the other crazies? Oh yeah, our guy in New York, Carl Paladino. He trails his Democratic opponent, Andrew Cuomo, by more than 20 points in the Empire State’s race for governor. They had a debate earlier this week with all seven candidates for governor, which was good for Paladino because many of them were crazier than him. He almost looked and sounded moderate.

But then there is the guy running for the Senate up in Alaska, Joe Miller. He had his private armed thugs handcuff a reporter who asked a question about Miller’s questionable past.

Apparently, when Miller was an attorney for the Fairbanks North Star Borough he used city government computers to campaign for … I forget. It was for polling. Not really something that would discourage me from voting for someone, but once he decided to cover it up, then it became a point of contention.

And the “security” group Miller hired, Drop Zone, was not licensed in the state of Alaska to provide security, although “they” run a pretty good survivalist store. Two of those “security guards” are actually active duty soldiers. Oops. Now the Department of Defense has started an investigation. Their rules on active duty personnel working on political campaigns: “A member of the Armed Services … shall not: . . . [p]erform clerical or other duties for a partisan political committee or candidate during a campaign.”
 Thanks go to Salon.com for the excerpt.

When a person becomes a member of the military, we give up certain rights, for the good of the country we serve, and one of these is freedom of speech. While serving in the Marines, my mother was a political operative for the Democratic Party in Milwaukee, WI. I received letters from many of the day’s politicians: Congressman Clem Zablocki and Senator William Proxmire among the more prominent, but I was never allowed to appear on their behalf during the campaign seasons. One politician in particular was quite adamant about that, and now I can’t remember his name!

Back to Miller and his security detail. He claims the school where the incident took place told him he was required to hire private security. The school says that isn’t true.

But this all overshadows what Miller thinks about America: it should be more like East Germany! The now defunct socialist state that built a wall around its borders to keep people in! Miller was talking about building a wall to keep immigrants out of the United States and thought — thinks — the Berlin Wall is a good example.

Dude, the “wall” had a “no-man’s land” about a quarter mile wide filled with landmines, automobile traps, barbed wire and various other sundries designed to keep people from escaping East Germany, not to mention, border guards had “shoot to kill” orders for anyone trying to escape. It wasn’t just a wall.

Also, Miller thinks, like most Tea Party candidates, Social Security is unconstitutional and wants to get rid of it. As someone who is but seven and a half years from drawing an SSI check, that’s alarming. With today’s economy and my years of unemployment and under-employment, social security may be all I have to survive on in the coming years.

He is also for repealing the 17th Amendment, which changed the selection of U.S. Senators: instead of being appointed by state legislatures they are now elected by direct vote: in other words, voted into office by the electorate.

Gotta give props to Mr. Miller though, He did agree to let Rachel Maddow of MSNBC interview him as he walked from an event to his waiting SUV. His answer to all Maddow’s questions seemed to be: leave it up to the voters of the individual states and if a Constitutional Amendment banning all abortions were to make it through the process, he would vote for it.

More troubling with Tea Party candidates is their disdain for being interviewed by the press. All of these candidates refuse to be interviewed and therefore can’t be asked questions about their views, extreme or otherwise. Nevada tea Party senatorial candidate Sharron Angle says she wants the United States to withdraw from the United Nations. We don’t know what her views are then to keep the “coalition of the willing” (she used that term during this campaign) together in Afghanistan.

What are Angle’s views on Iran? We don’t know. We do know Angle doesn’t like Hispanics, or at least appears to dislike Hispanics. She has an ad in Nevada blasting her opponent’s views on immigration, which isn’t a bad thing. But it’s the way she does it that’s so offensive. Even FoxNews made note of it! The ad show big, hulking, thug-like Hispanic men crossing the border in menacing poses juxtaposed against video of young White children in school. The message: the criminals from South of the Border are coming for the White Children.

For another ad that vilified Hispanics, Angle explained to a group of Nevada high school students, many of them Hispanic, that those weren’t necessarily Hispanics in the ad, but could have been men from Central Asia crossing the border with Canada. And, Angle added, she has been mistaken for being Asian! That’s rich! We gotta give props to Angle though; she gave the Hispanic kids a laugh! Gotta wonder though: does she think all high school kids are stupid, or just minority high school kids?

Angle sent flowers and a thank you note to Joy Behar after the co-host of The View called Angle a “bitch” for creating that ad. Angle insists being called a bitch by Behar brought over $150,000 in contributions to her campaign. On the other hand, the racist ads could have energized an otherwise moribund Hispanic electorate to get out the vote in Nevada — for Angle’s opponent, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Two Republicans who are running for office but don’t align themselves with the Tea Party are Meg Whitman, running for governor of California against Jerry Brown, and Carly Fiorina who is running to unseat Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate. Both Whitman and Fiorina are behind in the polls and the gap continues to grow as Election Day draws near.

Interestingly enough, both Whitman and Fiorina declined invitations by the Palin campaign … err … Palin camp … to have Sarah Palin appear at rallies for the two candidates. They may be opportunistic political dilettantes, but they’re not crazy.

Here’s what’s interesting about both Whitman and Fiorina: both are campaigning on reducing the deficit, stopping illegal immigration and (this is the kicker) putting Americans back to work. Yet, between the both of them, some 50,000 California workers were put on the unemployment rolls. That, somehow, is the right experience for putting Americans, and Californians in particular, back to work.

They ought to just make the commercials for Holiday Inn: “We’re not actual good politicians, but we did sleep in a Holiday Inn last night.”

The Boxer campaign has been running an ad that highlights Fiorina telling an interviewer that sending HP jobs to a foreign country was the right thing to do. O Dear …

Well, at least we can’t hold past election mistakes against Whitman and Fiorina — Whitman cast her first ballot in the 2008 election and Fiorina didn’t register to vote until 2000 and since then has only voted in 25% of the elections. But in 2009 Fiorina did admit, “it’s never good not to vote.” Gosh, now there’s an example for us all!

Fiorina was briefly hospitalized this week when she came down with an infection related to the incision from her breast cancer surgery. She might get some sympathy votes from the experience, but not enough for her to overtake Boxer in the polls. Glad she’s doing all right though. It would be less than human to wish someone ill, especially when it is so closely related to something like breast cancer.

The election is just a few days away; my guess is the Republicans are not going to take control of the House of Representatives or the Senate. The take over of the party by the Teabaggers will be the demise of the GOP. Right now Teabag Commander-in-Chief Sarah Palin is the face of the Republican Party, but in the latest polls Palin has a lower favorable and higher unfavorable rating than Dick Cheney did in 2007. And if the opinion of swing voters is that Republican candidates are as goofy as Palin, then everyone will be surprised on Tuesday.

Posted by Tim Forkes in NEWS and POLITICS at 00:01 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

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