5 - What I’m Not Hearing

So who do you figure you’re going to vote for this time around? If there is anything the establishment seems to have heard from the citizens they’re supposed to be serving, it’s the battle cry of Obama, in the point that we want a change. And what a change they’re offering us! How can you not get excited when you see what’s laid before you?

The first black president? The first woman in the vice presidency? I mean come on now? How better to depart from the old standard by placing a whole new roster on the playing field? Just ignore those two old white guys standing there if you’re looking for change, and the possibilities are endless!

And if you’re satisfied with the status quo, then just ignore the other two.

Therein lies the conundrum. Despite the addition of color and gender, the offerings look much the same. And that’s what I’m not hearing. Perhaps I just haven’t got my ear on the conspiracy channel. This little snarf may be all over the airwaves, which I don’t really give two flips about anyway. But this little picture was just too interesting not to wonder about. When you think of it, isn’t it a head scratcher?

Everyone knows what went on with the Democrats this year. Nobody could say for certain who was going to win the nomination, but the other folks in the voter bloc were damn sure they didn’t want either of the front runners to make the grade. Obama wins it, by a nose, by a state, by a clear enough margin… however he won it, he got the top prize. Hillary as the first woman with a serious shot at winning the presidency, was apparently too scary for many to accommodate. Yes, she had a big support bloc. Now how is Obama going to handle that? Well… he Could have tapped her for the vice presidency. But instead he chose…

Mr. White and elderly and possibly conservative. “Change” is in the air, but we don’t want too much of it all at once. Was this a move to attract conservative Democrats? Radical Republicans? Was it a move to appease his support bloc that didn’t want Hillary in the office? Or was it keeping a toehold in the status quo? Or was it something else?

Let’s look over in the other corner. John McCain, who has almost always had the nomination clenched and was only waiting forever and a day until he knew just who his primary opponent was going to be before he picked his partner. And who saw that coming? A woman most of the country hadn’t heard of, to my scant knowledge at least. Now, that isn’t to say a woman has no place in the vice presidency or the presidency… we don’t follow the “a woman’s place is in the kitchen” here. (Mom would skin me alive if I even had a smidge of that thought in my head.) No, I’m sure this lady would do as excellent a job in the post as Obama’s running mate, or anyone else McCain would have picked.

What I wonder, is Why he picked her? What were her qualifications over anyone else… you know, the Other names the pundits and “politicos in the know” were drawing straws and hedging bets over? Could it possibly be that some advisors or other folks were sitting around the Republican camp saying to themselves “how can we woo some of those unhappy looking Democrats”? What could be more logical than the answer that if around half the party wanted a woman for president, maybe they’ll vote for a woman over here?

Of course, by the same measure, Democratic advisors might have just whispered that “those unhappy looking Republicans might just be persuaded to vote for us if we had ourselves a nice old conservative sounding white guy.”

I must say I’ve heard McCain’s camp saying how they intend to change the government and block all the special interest groups and kickbacks for people like big oil. Oh if only it were true… but I really kind of doubt that. Politics equal money, and money is a very powerful motivator. You and I both know that the people who need it most don’t have it, and the only thing we’ve got to offer the system is a tax dollar they refund much of, and one vote. … Oh the mountains they’ll promise to move for that one vote. But from where I sit, the mountains are still right where they’ve always been.

What would I like to see? The aforementioned less special interest funding and less government spending. You want to impress me from office? Drive your own car. Say, a Toyota Corolla. Turn the lights off in your building. Let a country that said they hate us with a passion go hungry. Stop paying my local business owners to support illegal immigrant workers. (Hell stop paying them to support legal ones - let each worker come to work on his own merits and don’t pay half of Jose’s salary and make the business pay all of mine.)

Keep to the budget you propose… if you have to shut the doors a month early, take a lesson in real life and go work at McDonalds until the next budget kicks in. And take a benefit cut while you’re at it… either pay what we pay for the same shoddy health care insurance and insane medical bills, or do without like the lesser fortunate do. (Maybe then you’ll figure out real solutions to real problems.)

First stop, kill the damn inaugural ball. No one threw a party when I started working at WalMart, and we don’t need lavish black tie affairs to put you to work in the White House either. (How much did a Clinton chocolate bar cost? I don’t care what they did with the cash, that’s just idiocy.)

Second stop, gas and oil. We need fuel. Fine, I’ll accept that. Greenhouse gasses? Iffy? I’ll accept that. But every single figure says that no matter what we do with oil, we’ll still run short. And dependence on a foreign country for anything invites said country to have a strangle hold on our opportunities. We would like to have the rest of the world over a barrel and the rest of the world is eager to return the favor. Get with the program and stop hoping for damn handouts. Use some of that power you righteously hold to tell big money corporations to stick Their strangleholds in their ear. Actively push real alternatives through those companies and the public, and quit laughing because “there’s no money in it.” We’re not interested in how much we can throw away forever, but in things we can do now. We have solar, we have wind, and we have even more options most of us know even less about. Yes, they can’t solve the problems either, but after you install solar cells and a wind turbine you get three times the energy options working for your home. If it works for Jay Leno, it can work for us. (And you know if there isn't any wind, there's more solar, and vice versa.) There are hundreds of small inventors that have tripled gas mileage for their cars or eliminated gas usage altogether. A whole plethora of proven workable ideas and nobody is buying because some high paid persons work for other agendas… stop that!

You want to do something for America? Do something For Americans. You promise change? Deliver it. Don’t just talk about it. Please. And maybe, just maybe, those folks like me will believe in the system again. We might even lend you our ears.

k