Are We There Yet? Romney-Obama Election 2012

Well, it's another election night eve for me, and lord knows I've been through a lot of them. 41 consecutive years of casting votes for somebody since I turned 21, back in 1971.

The year after I turned 21, I worked on the campaign that successfully gave 18 year olds the vote, when I was already legal, as we used to say. Seems it's my life karma to be early or late, never in perfect step. In other words I have always had to bring my own music and make up my own dance as I went along, while time and circumstance did it's own thing. But that's another story. I digress.

Thinking about what we are about to do again, which is to give the reins of government back to Barack Hussein Obama for another four years, makes me happy, sad and nostalgic all at the same time. On this night, this election eve, the climax of a never ending campaign that started on inauguration day 2009, I'm feeling like what Fannie Lou Hamer said, “I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.” This time around, it was too much. Too much information. Too much lying. Too much pontificating and equivocating. My head hurts.

I've been watching elections since before they were televised in color. I've been voting since before somebody dreamed up HDTV.

General Eisenhower is the first president in my memory. I was born during Truman, but not until just before his election. John Kennedy was the first president I loved. It wounded me deeply when he died. Never met Lynchin Bains Johnson. That's what we called him. He signed the Civil Rights Bills into Law, but that didn't endear him to me. Not then.

Rumor had it that he was nuts. We had a crazy man in the White House, who may have had our beloved JFK killed. However, nobody really knows or will ever know who hired the gunmen on the grassy knoll down in Dallas that day.

Nixon was the first president with whom I shook hands, both he and his wife. Didn't vote for him. Wasn't quite old enough to vote against him. Do know I didn't like his bigotry. Smacked of the same ole shit being dished out by the likes of George Wallace and Bull Connor, except this man occupied the White House.

I was still naive enough back in the day to believe that if a man could rise to the level of President, he certainly couldn't also be a bigot or a racist, not really. Silly me.

Gerald Ford, the man who took over for Tricky Dick Nixon was a decent man. I was a working reporter by the time he came into office and I was humbled by the fact that he knew me on sight and called me “jo.” President Carter was another decent man who has been totally disrespected and wrongfully forgotten.

I interviewed Ronald Reagan four times, starting in 1976 at the Republican convention and could never get past the fact that I was talking to an actor, somebody who was playing a part in a B movie. The conversations were great, but I never bought the good guy act. His voodoo economics initiated the downfall of the American Middle Class and the decline of Unions as well as worker's rights.

Daddy Bush, Bill Clinton and Junior Bush were merely days at work...more fun with Clinton, less so with George the elder and George the younger. The younger Bush especially was like hitching a ride across the ocean on a boat named Titanic with no Leonardo DiCaprio to save my ass.

And then comes Barack Obama.

I was not a supporter in the beginning. I didn't believe a Black man could be elected in America. I dreamed of the possibility, but expected to be dead by the time it actually happened. I believed the racists were too strong to let it happen. I still believe they will turn out tomorrow in an attempt to keep him from a second term.

And I still fear for his life. Because in this country, it's a truth that what white men can't control, they kill. They kill when their status quo is threatened, and Barack Obama is the walking, talking example of threat to the complacency of the masters of the universe.

Obama is one of the few people who can move me to tears. I cried when he won in 2008. I cried at his Inauguration. I cried when I heard him speak last night.

But Last night at the UC arena, I also heard within his speech echoes of the last speech of Dr. Martin Luther King, and it bothered me.

“I have been to the mountaintop....”

Those uncomfortable echoes are resting heavily on me tonight, as I write this now.

In the meantime....I will happily vote tomorrow to move this country forward, and wait for what I hope will be a joyous night. History to be made, and a happy ending to be written. A celebration of the 44^th President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama.

To be continued......................................

Newt Gingrich, Anointed in SC, Jesus Mary and Joseph!

With all the flair and petulance of a three year old, Newt Gingrich has won the South Carolina Primary by a very wide margin over the anointed one, otherwise known as Mitt Romney. Ricky the pope Santorum finished a distant third while the hobbit, Ron Paul, came in fourth, visibly demonstrating his short legged disadvantage.

So what does this mean? Well, I see shades of 1976 in this one. 1976 was the last time that the GOP had a real fight for the nomination. It was also the first time that I covered a convention as a working on air news reporter. It was held in Kansas City and Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford came in with a 50-50 split, or thereabouts in delegates.

I was personally appalled by what I saw and heard coming out of the delegates' mouths and rightly guessed that Ford would be the nominee, because I naively believed that “right” would prevail (there were still real live conservatives in charge of the GOP at the time, and I do like real conservatives instead of this fake christian variety now). It did, sorta. What really happened was a deal apparently being cut with the Mississippi Delegation. Pre convention, the delegation was supposed to be solidly in Reagan's corner, however when boss Haley Barbour stepped to the mic, he threw his delegation to Ford much to the consternation of most of his delegation.

Despite the Mississippi vote, Nixon's Southern strategy was working back then, and obviously from the vote last night, is still working today. However it was circumvented or short circuited by the powers that be in the GOP. The final result, Ford wins the nomination, but loses the presidency to Jimmy Carter.

It remains to be seen if the GOP elite will force feed Mitt Romney to their constituents, in the same manner in which they force fed them Gerald Ford. Romney's been running since the 90's and still nobody who claims to be republican likes him, or wants him to represent them. If the GOP elite is smart, they will make the base happy and come with somebody like Newt. But Newt has burned every bridge he's crossed on both sides of the aisle. Final result-democrats win again. The question is...will they win big or bigger.

Ricky and Ron have the lifespan of a snowball in hell, or maybe an ice ball in hell. They are both going to Florida, but probably not much further. Which brings us back to Newt, he of the self proclaimed towering intellect powered by prepubescent temperament unbecoming a man with so much white hair on his head.

Gingrich is playing his sideshow for the voters with no memory of his past. They seem to care only for the stuff coming out of his mouth, true or not. Most of his stuff is not truth based in the slightest of senses. Kinda reminds ya of that cool breeze that unexpectedly blew in from Wasilla, Alaska, a few years ago. The only difference between the two is their gender..one female...one male...both legends in their own mind.

To quote Kathleen Parker, “Newt Gingrich is an angry little attack muffin.” He attacks anyone and everyone who doesn't think the same as he, or want to live inside the fantasy in which he cloaks himself.

After all, it was just a couple of weeks ago, in Iowa, where his petulance and mental instability was on full display after he loss to Romney. Romney lost too, but we didn't know it until the recount this past week.

Regardless, Newt was pissed and he showed it, and he's been taking it out on anyone and everyone since that night.

Like the good liberal that I am, I am going to pop some popcorn, lay in a couple of bottles of my favorite wine and watch it all play out for as long as it takes. And I really hope it takes all the way to July for the GOP to settle on a candidate.

And since I'm in a predicting mood...I'm gonna tell you who it is they are going to choose to represent them...

His name is TOAST.

C-ya in November!

The Godfather, The President and The Dictator

Old folks, or those older than me, have always said that deaths come in threes. Well, we got quite a triumvirate this past Christmas weekend.

On the first day of 2007, as we mark the loss of 3000 troops dead, and 22,000 wounded in this illegal war in Iraq, we also lost James Brown, and former President Gerald Ford.

The third member of the big three went quietly but not willingly. He was ushered out kicking and screaming. That would be Saddam Hussein, who was hanged for crimes against his people. He was buried Sunday, in the town of his birth.

Brown, not that you’d know it, had a connection to the City of Cincinnati. He began his recording career at King Records, which was based right here in the Queen City. King Records is long forgotten. The only evidence are the many still existing vinyl records in my collection and the collections of others, bearing the King label.

My favorite album, was Brown’s “Live” at the Apollo, recorded October 24th, 1962, but pressed right here in Cincinnati. I was twelve and would put on that album and dream of being old enough to be in the audience when performers like Brown took to the stage.

I’m surprised it’s still in such good shape, because I literally wore the grooves out playing it over and over.

I think it would help the city resurrect its image by remembering what Brown and King Records in particular, meant to the music industry and to Cincinnati. How about a street named after Brown. How about a King boulevard or Avenue in the neighborhood where the record company used to do business?

I’ve already talked about Mr. Ford (The Accidental President). I liked him. He was one of the good guys. We now know that he was against going to war in Iraq, and that he was not too fond of how his former proteges Rumsfeld and Cheney were handling our military. That news comes after his death because he was too much of a gentleman to slam a sitting president.

We’ve also learned Ford favored, and quietly worked for affirmative action, LGBT rights, as well as women’s rights. I wish he had spoken up. Maybe the republican party, while still leaning right, might not have stepped off into the deep end of fundamentalist conservatism in which it is now mired.

Both James Brown and Gerald Ford leave huge holes in the cosmic fabric that surrounds us, as did Saddam Hussein.

He was a bad man, a killer, a despot, a dictator. I guess he deserved to be hanged. But while he was alive, there was no al Quaeda in Iraq. There was no terrorist machine turning out angry young men and women dedicated to killing Americans. There was no practice field for would-be terrorists to get good at killing innocents while perfecting their homemade bombs.There was no threat to the USA from Iraq. He served his purpose. America did not suffer while he was alive.

Those of us left behind by the passing of these three, must now pay the price of their loss.