THE DAY AFTER

THE DAY AFTER
I don’t usually cry over elections. But, it has happened now twice. It happened in 2004 when Bush was non-elected again, but those were not tears of joy. Those were tears of disbelief. I just could not believe it happened again. Of course, history has since proven that that election was stolen also. Sometimes I felt like a voice in the wilderness yelling about the electronic voting machines – hell, even I knew how to write a program to screw the voting to the way I wanted it – not that I would. Well, OK, that was an exaggeration… I have not done programming since I used to program my Commodore Pet 64… If you remember what that is – you are older than I thought!!! LOL! Anyway, I cried tears of sorrow 4 years ago knowing it was only going to get WORSE – and guess what???? It sure as heck did.
I was not a big Obama fan, not really a Hillary fan, but I was determined to not have another 4 years of lies, lies, and more lies. On the $$ side of things, I was worth a whole lot more under Clinton than I am today. And I can name over 4,000 Americans who were alive that are now gone. 4,190 is the last count on http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/. And that does not count the suicides of all the guys who have come home and just could not cope. Then there is the list of the wounded. Of course, in my opinion, every one who goes to war is wounded. And don't tell me how many were killed in other wars - like these kids don't count!
"If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle...your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos." – Martin Luther King Jr.
And then there are all those other nameless (to Americans) Iraqis, Afghanis, Pakistanis, and other people who were victims of what history will prove to be the greatest lie perpetrated on the world in recent years.
But McCain really, really scared me - and Palin was an insult to women. Unfortunately, a lot of them have never realized they were being insulted! My Republican friends and family sent me email after email filled with lies and words of fear and I wondered how in God's name they could actually believe these things? But, a long time ago, I was taught there are 2 kinds of people, those that think and those that react. And that is the key to scare politics. Don't give them time to think - just keep scaring them and they won't be able to think.
I remember a history prof of mine who said the way to control the masses is to "Get them in their wallets or get them in their gonads. Whatever you do, don't give them a chance to think before they react!" I was too young to really understand that - that was in the Kent State days, if you remember those troubling times.

I believe Obama actually won with a greater margin than we will ever know – again I do not trust those machines. Here in Virginia we will be getting rid of them and going back to paper ballots.
It was interesting sitting at the polls yesterday watching people coming to vote who have never voted before and those who have not voted in years. I knew by watching that our precinct would not go Obama. We got a few smiles our way, a few thumbs up, but most of my “friends” and neighbors did not speak or do more than cast a quick glance my way. Mostly they had their heads down, eyes lowered. They were not smiling. Those that came over and spoke, I could count on one hand.

As I said in a previous post, we had a tent. Well, duh, some of us do listen to the weather reports. You don't have to be a Weather Watcherer to do that! The opposition had a couple of folding chairs and signs to stick in the ground, that is all. We had a table under our tent with voting info for the new folks, 3 chairs, coffee, water, lap blankets, spare jackets in case anyone showed up wearing a political shirt that would not be allowed in the polling place.
When it started to rain, the “other” side folded up their chairs and came over to our tent, unfolded their chairs and plopped down. The one person never even said as much as hello – she just opened her chair and sat! We (grinningly) told them that if they were going to sit in the Democrat tent, they had to wear an Obama sticker! “She” slapped her chair together and stormed out into the rain, putting her chair and herself back in her car. He apologized, said it was her chair, folded his up and followed her to her car.
Had they bothered to even look at us, they would have seen we didn’t have any Obama stickers on – we ran out of them weeks ago! I felt guilty about that for a few seconds, but I got over it.

One of the voters, an ancient fellow, old and tiny, looked to be about a 110 but I am sure wasn’t a day over 95, toddled in to vote. As he toddled back across the street, a neighbor asked him if he had done his duty. “Yes, indeedy,” he replied in a shaky voice. “I voted for MacLaine and that hottie of his, Sarah Palin, and, whatshername, McDrake” (Thelma Drake, who lost reelection to congress.) Well, he got one name right! That hottie of his!!!!! I am still chuckling!!!!!

This morning, in-between spells of rain, I went out in the yard to take down my collection of yard signs. Unfortunately, I found this.
This 4x8 Obama sign had been hit before, and I found the piece knocked out of it and I'd put it back in place. My sign is one of the few Obama signs that did not get stolen. It has had beer bottles and pumpkins thrown at it, a hole punched in it – but this is what I found this morning.
My plan was to take all the signs down this morning, I don’t leave things up like some people do – it is over – take the signs down… but, the metal was so twisted, I could not get the post out. We used bunches of ties to make it more difficult for the vandals to just steal the sign by popping a few corners, so I guess they just got frustrated and pushed it to the ground. They probably got interrupted and ran before trying to twist the other 2 posts to the ground. These are those strong metal fence posts, about $6 a piece – not little flimsy things. This took some effort. All I can say is – how sad. But it is this mentality that made me support Obama. It is this mentality that sends out Muslim hate emails and tries to scare people with anything different.
The sign will remain out in the yard until one of the men come to pull it out. It is a testimony to ignorance and prejudice. Maybe it should stay there a while longer. The sad thing is – I am sure the doer is proud of his work. Guess he showed me, huh? – or Obama, right? Yes, but he is not aware of what he showed us.