Jerry Tenuto: 'King George, we're takin' our country back'
Jerry Tenuto, The Lone Star Iconoclast
Let's assume that you want your Country* back.
(*Just to be straight, we ain't talkin' music genres here.)
You'd have to be a damned fool to think "no" at this point.
I know I want my Country back.
As do the majority of my family, friends and acquaintances.
According to the polls, the greatest number of American citizens, people
I've never met, would like to have their - our - Country returned to us.
With our rights intact.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 70%%, at last count.
This includes a sizeable contingent of those good folks who allowed Rovian
tactical maneuvering to hornswoggle them into buying the fantasy that
soon-to-be King George was just another "good ol' boy."
Those hard-working, salt-of-the-earth, sweat-dripping-from-the-brow people
you see every day going to their jobs, the supermarket, Little League and
soccer games bought a pig in a poke in 2000, then didn't have enough sense
or guts to bail the U.S.A., and the rest of the Planet, out when November,
2004 came around.
People we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with in church, synagogue, and
check-out lines; folks who make "Superman Returns" a hit, "The Break-Up" a
flop.
Of course, lowlife political shenanigans in Ohio and Florida, combined with
voting machines of no demonstrable numeric verification -- courtesy of
Diebold CEO and Bush fundraiser Walden O'Dell - rendered the 2004 count
moot.
Well, the trouble isn't in the big cities. Generally speaking, large
metropolitan areas, with their wide diversity of ethnicities and myriad
eclectic variances, vote Democratic in presidential elections. The "blue"
states are the more industrialized, densely populous areas.
As Meredith Willson put it in "The Music Man," the trouble, my friends, is
right here in River City, his ideal for pig-headed, stubborn, narrow-minded
small town middle-America (Iowa, to be precise).
Howard Dean has a good idea. Actually, it's a fantastic idea. How am I so
sure the concept is fantastic? Republican mouthpieces and pundits have been
knocking it, that's how.
He's not concentrating on a few key states for this year's mid-term
elections. The Democrats are wearing out shoe leather and New Balance
composite soles, walking sidewalks and rural roadways, making personal
housecalls door-to-door-to-door in all 50 states. For homes where there's no
answer, the Democratic volunteers have a very short, succinct tri-fold
pamphlet that hangs quite conveniently on the doorknob.
It's an old technique that predates all the computerized bean counting and
data gathering, the mumbo-jumbo of the psychologists and market researchers
and people "experts" who study up, down, left and right how human beings are
going to think. Of course, none of these schmoes who study people ever took
any time as adults to spend any time one-on-one with regular people. As a
doctor, Dean does know people; his care about and concern for humankind is
clear in the persona he presents to the public.
This grassroots approach is precisely what the Democratic Party needs to
defeat the money-grubbing, fear-spreading, war-mongering, non-governing
Neo-Conservative Republican Party of Herr Oberst Karl Rove. RoveCo's sole
interest is in mega industry profitability.
We must get out and vote. We need to vote as many Republicans out of the
Senate and House of Representatives as we can.
These crumbums took over control in 1994 when Newt Gingrich led the charge
against "rampant Democratic corruption." The handful of Dems that went down
in flames had pulled off but a modicum of the illegal activities and pirated
merely a smattering of ill-gotten gains compared to the monumental,
cancerous conglomerate constructed by Smiler Tom DeLay and his K Street
Hooligans, all paid for by you and me - the American taxpayers.
How ironic that Newtie was the first casualty of GOP malfeasance.
So far this Millennium the only GOP member who's been convicted is Duke
Cunningham, in part because he was unable to lie as convincingly as the
"evangelical" DeLay. From where I sit, it seems rather apparent the Dukester
was a liability to the K Street Hooligans and thus sacrificed to the media
feeding frenzy ravenous for a goat.
Yet, for all the under-the-table millions that can be traced directly to
Smiler Tom, Inquisitor General Alberto Gonzales has elected to put the full
force of his FBI minions onto Democrat William Jefferson. The Congressional
Representative from New Orleans was caught with $90,000 in his freezer of an
alleged $100,000 bribe. I doubt that Smiler would bother to even come to the
phone for such a miserly pittance.
Denny Hastert, the shill hand-picked by Newtie to replace him as Speaker now
has some fancy footwork to perform in order to explain the humongous profit
he and several other investors will make from an insider land deal in
Central Illinois. Yeah, despite his protestations I'm sure Denny and his
pals knew absolutely nothing about the new highway coming through.
Next up -- DeLay's would-be hand-picked replacement as Majority Leader. Upon
his arrival in the Beltway, Roy Blunt of Missouri was brought into the K
Street machine personally by Smiler. He was taught how to become rich and
powerful the DeLay way, Amen, and subsequently created his own
mini-organization.
Under Smiler's tutelage Blunt put together a political machine with such
heavy-duty clout that he managed to bring his son, Matt, in from left field
during 2004 and unseat Missouri's Democratic governor.
However, with DeLay no longer the schoolyard bully of the House, Blunt was
passed over for the leader role in favor of John Boehner of Ohio.
Some folks think we need to fix the two-party system. They often see the
Dems and GOPers as no different from one another - more interested in
self-preservation and garnering enough votes for the next election than
working at anything substantial. The politicians have to pander to the
corporations and special interest groups in order to get support for those
votes. Every election cycle the wheel of ass kissing just goes around and
around and around.
Meanwhile, those of us who have mortgages or rent to pay, car payments to
make, college tuitions to cover, grocery and utility bills get left behind
in the clutter.
It could be that they're right.
During the last decade of the Millennium just passed we had a President who
gave a damn, a guy who grew up in the most modest conditions. He was a
brilliant man, yet flawed.
Unlike the current Fascist Regime, most of what his administration attempted
to accomplish was positive and for the good of the man, woman or child of
average circumstances.
I'll take a real individual who can think like a regular person, warts and
all, before some schmuck from Connecticut who affects a bad trailer court
Texas accent so's folks thinks he's "jes' a good ol' boy."
As for a third party, I see nothing wrong with that. But it isn't going to
happen overnight. It's most likely not going to happen in an election or
two, or even three. At least not without a major groundswell.
The trouble with trying to bring a new party along too fast is running the
risk of losing progressive thinkers' votes that might have gone to
Democrats, thus allowing GOP candidates to win.
There's already a ridiculous 97%% return rate for members of Congress. That's
why nothing ever changes or gets done.
For a third party to really happen, it's going to take time. Serious,
dedicated people will have to organize and work at it. The effort may even
take a generation before there are enough voters and viable candidates to
make headway.
When John Hancock, Ben Franklin, Tom Jefferson and the rest of those guys
got so hot, sweaty, and uncomfortable that summer of 1776 in Philadelphia,
and whatever it was they were smoking and drinking got them to thinking "the
king's a horse's ass -- let's have a revolution," there were no Democrats or
Republicans. These guys were basically Libertarians.
(Were there swimming trunks or shorts and tank tops, we might be Canadians.)
All they wanted was Liberty.
Right now the only shot we Americans have at regaining the Liberty we once
knew and loved, but under-appreciated, is the Democratic Party.
Keep the Republicans in power and not only will it be two more years of the
same crap, but things will most likely get worse.
Herr Rove, much like Heinrich Himmler did to Germany from 1933 to 1944, in
cahoots with Dark Lord the Dick Cheney have been orchestrating the
systematic dismantling of one Constitutional Right after another. Our
freedoms are being eroded faster than the polar ice caps. They're spending
our money at a rate that it will never be recouped - except for the tens of
millions the West Wing insiders and their cronies are stashing in goof-proof
hideaways.
The most positive thing each and every American can do is register to vote,
then go to the polls this Nov. 7 and vote for any and all Democratic
candidates listed.
Once we take over the Senate and House, we can start to clean up the messes
of Herr Oberst Karl Rove, Dark Lord Cheney, their puppet King George XLIII,
and the rest of the Fascist criminals who illegally commandeered our White
House and shanghaied our Government.
If you want Libertarian or Green Party or Draculan or whatever other party
candidates we can begin to work on that once the blackguards are gone.
One word of warning: Be careful what you wish for, 'cause you just might get
it. Lest we forget all the backbiting and infighting that went on among the
Ross Perot bunch and the Green Party...
Up the Dems!
Shalom, Friends of Liberty.
Jerry Tenuto is an erstwhile Philosopher and sometime Educator. A veteran
with seven years of service in the U.S. Army, he holds a BS and MA in
Communications from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Depending
upon your taste in political stew, you can either blame or thank Jerry for
his weekly "Out Of The Blue" feature in The Lone Star Iconoclast. Visit his
blog Blue State View at
illinoiscentral.blogspot.com.
Copyright (c) 2006, The Lone Star Iconoclast
Source: The Lone Star Iconoclast
http://www.lonestaricon.com/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=292&z=42
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
