It ends and begins
So finally after a solid two years of rhetoric, threats, hate speech and prophecies of doom, the 2012 presidential election is finally in the books. To be honest I was a little worried that I would wake up today feeling like I did in 2004 when Bush got reelected, like the country literally just had a collective lobotomy. Instead I was happy that the country did prove, by a slim margin, that we have not quite reached Idiocracy levels just yet.
I managed to stay awake until the election was called for Obama after Ohio was checked in under the blue column. I heard the speeches by both candidates after the result was decided were good, too bad I missed them.
Once again Florida grabbed the spotlight as the voting idiots of the nation. You would think the utter embarrassment of the hanging chad 2000 election would have been enough to motivate state officials to fix the process. No, instead we had people waiting in line on election day for more than 6 hours in some cases because of horrible planning by various county election supervisors. Of course this election day problem was set up by our corrupt governor Rick Scott deciding to cut our early voting days nearly in half, something that was purely politically motivated.
Lee county which is right next door was one of the worst offenders. They had people waiting to vote at 11pm, 4 hours after the polls closed. The election supervisor in these counties should be absolutely crucified for their epic fail.
So now the question is what happens now? There are a lot of unhappy people today. Many people really believe that Obama is leading the country to an abyss. Although I am not pleased with where the country sits today overall, I think of the two choices, Obama was clearly the way to go.
It really amazed me that people could casually write off assuming the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression, two pointless wars, and a collapsing automobile, housing and financial industry as something that could be easily and quickly corrected with a wave of the wand.
These people will come back at you and say, “Well he PROMISED he was going to have it all fixed”. Did you expect him to say at his 2008 acceptance speech, “Listen, I am inheriting the biggest cluster f any incoming president has ever been handed. I am going to do my best to fix it but it might take more than 4 years to do so.” Of course not, many voters in our quick fix, immediate gratification, take a pill to lose weight society don’t like solutions that take more than 20 minutes.
So now, with no more reelection worries on the horizon I only hope we can make some real progress, despite having the House still under republican control. I am hopeful that finally, the promise of letting the Bush tax cuts expire is actually carried out. Rolling with the rates during the Clinton era is not going to make or break anyone.
The fact that corporate profits are currently at 50 year highs while unemployment has been hanging around 8% is all the proof you need that trickle down economics (Reaganomincs) no longer is the formula for all around prosperity for our nation. That trickle has had a sponge placed under it which is now squeezed and placed back into the supersized cup of corporate profits.
I also am hopeful that some meaningful and intelligent budget cutting actually happens instead of the horseshit numbers where they predict what will happen 10 years down the road. I also look forward to the trend of more and more citizens requiring government assistance beings reversed as things continue to slowly improve. If anyone thinks I support a lazy, leeching, entitled society you are sorely mistaken.
If someone is not making the effort to improve their situation and is content to exist on the governments dime there needs to be better enforcement and policing of these programs. Unfortunately that is very easy to say and very hard to do. Some scumbags are very adept at working the system.
If I was to give Romney any credit, it would be that he managed to make the race closer than I first anticipated it would be. He tried to morph himself into a jack of all trades, absorbing any political position that was currently convenient. Of course the way he did this was pretty sleazy but still, he hung in there.
Please, please, dissolve the law that looks at corporations as people when it comes to political donations, get rid of SuperPacs and anything that resembles them. Their efforts to distort and deceive on both sides of the aisle are truly disgusting and corrupts the election process to it’s core.
Let’s get this thing out of the rut, everyone get behind and push, Obama has the wheel.
Joe
You can check out both speeches on nbcnews.com. Just finished watching them both.