Do You Vote By Consensus or Conscience?

I’ve been chewing on PunditMom’s post “How Are You Going to Vote?” for a while now.  Mostly because it’s a subject that bothers me every election.  PunditMom queries each of us if we are voting by consensus or by conscience?  In other words, are we voting with the herd or voting with our heart?  Are we casting our ballot for the candidate most likely to win or the one who best represents our world view, our stand on the issues, and who we think can lead our country as we wish it should be?

I have long thought that most of us choose a candidate to vote for using the least brain-wracking methods.  We choose candidates based on what party we believe we are in and most of the time we have signed on to a political party because that’s the party our parents, boyfriend/girlfriend, or husband/wife is in.  We choose candidates because that’s who someone we know is voting for — my grandmother always voted for whomever my grandfather told her and after he died, she would always ask my parents who she should vote for, though she never liked their non-Republican answer.  Then there are those of us who are hung up on just one or maybe two issues.  Nothing else matters as much.  As long as the candidate swears on the souls of his or her dead ancestors that he or she will do everything in his or her power to grant their wishes on that one issue, there are those of us who will sell our vote.  We choose candidates because that’s who’s leading in the polls and we like to be part of the winning team.  We choose because of peer pressure.  We choose because that’s who our preacher or our favorite talk show host told us to choose.  We choose because the candidate had more advertising or more mudslinging ads.  We choose because the candidate is the right skin color or is the right religion or is the right gender or is better looking or has the right education or married the right wife.

We often choose candidates for a lot of the wrong reasons.

Read the rest of this entry »

Remembering Sheriff Harry Lee

I’ll always remember Sheriff Harry Lee as kind of the Godfather of Jefferson Parish. There’s no doubt about it that the “Chinese Cowboy” was a Good Ol’ Boy Louisiana politician but just as he was controversial and sometimes a little crazy, he was loved,  respected, influential, and he was one of the few politicians who not only came through Katrina unscathed by the catastrophe but almost heroic.

When FEMA for some unfathomable reason cut the communication lines in Jefferson Parish after the storm, it was Harry Lee who sent in his armed deputies to reconnect the lines and post guards, determined that no one was going to mess around with his territory. And Harry Lee kept looting and crime low after the storm by increasing patrols of abandoned areas of Jefferson Parish.  When FEMA told WAL-Mart and Sams to remain closed despite the need by locals in the area for supplies, Harry Lee “commandeered” the ones in his area and instructed them to open anyway.

This was the man in crisis mode after over two decades of service and he kept it together with the same loyalty from his staff that he always demanded and received.  He did things his way and that worked.   I’m not saying that he was ever the ideal politician. He was, after all, a politician, and a Louisiana politician at that.

Read the rest of this entry »

Politics Is The New Racism

racism

a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

politics

the opinion you hold with respect to political questions

the activities and affairs involved in managing a state or a government

WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.

I’ve said for years that politics is the new racism. It just seems that it makes so many people so angry and intolerant. Everyone these days seems to have an opinion and not just any opinion, a strong, passionate opinion and, God forbid, if you don’t have an opinion, if you don’t follow the news and keep up with what’s going on in local, national and world politics! That may just be the worst sin of all.

Read the rest of this entry »

What I Want From Congress, The President, & That Other Branch

I know I’m not alone in being disillusioned and frustrated where politics is concerned these days. A year ago I was confronted by a friend who told me I was “too angry” and “too negative” about politics and my country. I think it’s hard not to be when you feel passionate about the direction the country is going whether you are a conservative or a liberal or somewhere in the middle. Personally, I don’t really think anyone is particularly happy at the moment with the State of the Union, despite promises from Bush and Pelosi and other big names on both sides for a kindler, gentler attempt at bipartisanship.

And the truth is that I got burnt out and disillusioned about the same time. It’s hard to keep running in place at full speed even when you’re full of anger and passion, especially when you’re full of anger. You may want to change the world, you may dream of it, you may have high expectations about how you’re going to do it, but there’s only so long that you can run on that passion and hope and not see any progress before you burn out and run out of steam.

The Democrats taking back Congress wasn’t enough for me. I want to see progress.

Read the rest of this entry »

Getting Nowhere Since November

A local business owner where I procure my breakfast most mornings told me that he didn’t understand why “they” hadn’t just marched right into the Oval Office yet and arrested Bush. He and I agree that Bush has done quite a lot of dirty deeds since he became President, some of them just might have actually been mistakes (which he’ll never own up to — a sure sign of an irresponsible man incapable of learning from experience and undeserving of any kind of leadership role), including lying to and misleading the American people, spying on American citizens, supporting torture of human beings innocent or not, imprisoning without right to consult or charge citizens and not on mere suspicions for years at a time, trying to redefine his presidency as a dictatorship, wasting billions of tax dollars and thousands of American lives on an unneeded war when we weren’t finished with the first one, and blocking any attempt at oversight and investigation.

Read the rest of this entry »