Voted, love the email subject
My eyes lit up when I saw this subject line pop up in my inbox last night. – “Sirius XM Requests Your Feedback” It was a follow up to my call the other day to change my billing to monthly. I was quite happy to let Sirius know how I felt about the 25 minutes of hold time as well as their company in general. Hopefully it gets in front of some eyes that aren’t located in India.
Damn Phillies went down in flames again. They at least showed some ability to hit the ball but this time their middle relief fell apart. After taking a two run lead in two consecutive innings the Phillies pitchers walked the first batter, a cardinal sin, in the process allowing three runs.
Now the team has a huge mountain to climb. If any team can do it is the Phillies. Over the past three years they have demonstrated an ability to get off the mat and win big games. Hopefully this year isn’t when the streak ends.
Yesterday I took advantage of early voting in Florida and cast my votes. I went over to the election office in the late afternoon. I was surprised there was absolutely no line, it was kind of cool. I have to just shake my head when I used the NEW voting system for the second time.
As you all remember Florida was in the middle of the 2000 election cluster f with their ridiculous punch card voting system. Who can ever forget the term “hanging chads”? Well afterwards a huge initiative was put into place to modernize the voting process in the state. Tens of millions of dollars were spent on fully computerized voting machines which were used for several years.
Well a couple years ago, some genius decided that the electronic voting systems were just too unreliable. Yea our entire financial system is run 100% on computers but we can’t trust them to be used for elections, brilliance. So, they threw out all of the computerized voting machines that were still being paid for and went back to paper, yes, paper.
They print out a paper ballot where you darken in circles with a pen to indicate your choice. There is still an electronic element to the process as you feed your completed ballots into a scanner that reads and records your choices. Having the back up of paper makes the old farts feel more secure I guess.
So anyway I made my choices, voting mostly democrat but in a few instances voting with my registered party of the republicans. I even voted for one independent. I am not a dyed in the wool anything.
I also am not oblivious to just how sour the environment is for Obama and democrats in general. The republicans have done a bang up job of driving home the message that Obama is a reckless spendaholic that must be stopped at any cost. Hell it has gotten to the point where accusing a candidate of liking Obama is akin to saying he kicks puppies.
To me, this is utterly ridiculous when you actually look at reality instead of the narrow spun version neocons would like you to look at. Yes, Obama has SPENT a ton of money since he took office, the question is what was it spent on?
Ok so let me ask, what would you have preferred the man do? Would we have been better off if he let the majority of the financial system implode, the automobile industry evaporate, let the millions of unemployed people dig in trashcans for food, pump zero money into stimulus packages that have provided work for countless construction and energy conservation initiatives across the country? Even with all he has tried to do the economy is in a state that the population is unhappy with. Imagine if he did NOTHING? Think about that.
I love the constant bullshit that is thrown out by republicans regarding the health care plan. The same plan that they fought viciously to neuter down to it’s current state. The huge insurance companies spent hundred of millions of dollars to influence the American public into actually believing that providing health care for individuals is a bad thing. Did you know when Medicaid and Social Security was implemented there was a similar reaction, yet today you wont find a politician on any side that will say these programs are a bad thing.
One of the headlines that you see thrown about the plan is how it will cut hundreds of millions of dollars from Medicaid. What it doesn’t tell you is that “cut” is actually a savings from clamping down on the rampant fraud and waste that exists in the system today. You know, the stuff that Florida Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Rick Scott took advantage of that earned his company a 1.4 BILLION dollar fine. Yea, that sort of fraud.
So anyway, when you do eventually find yourself in a voting booth all I ask is you do yourself a big favor and don’t let public spin managers that carefully create smear campaigns built on nothing but one liners be the major deciding factor in your choices. Think for yourself and think about what would have happened if we did NOTHING.