Practical Magic

Here we go again!  Many countries around the world are showing the strain of trying to cope with what is.  Fortunately, more people in the world appear to be trying to figure out what's going on in our world and how we could do it better.  Is this different than any other time?  I don't think so.  From what I have seen over my three quarters of a century on this planet, what goes around still comes around.  Anybody out there besides me see the U.S. standing tall in November due to a cheerful campaign instead of a snipefest?  I see the success of Governor Walker's gutsy positive Wisconsin leadership indicating another sea change.  What do you see?

By now, every dire warning has been thrown out on the table as to the current relentless drive of some to replace our Constitution with one or another global regime. The now ten-year-old UN Agenda 21 plan continues to seep into American communities such as mine with nary an apparent caution as to the purpose of the three pronged Big E attack on individual enterprise.  Okay, I get it!  Control the Energy, the Environment and the Education of a people and you control them.  I am glad for the fervor stirred up by this prospect, but I do not see profitable the constant slams at "the other side" in this latest teeter totter exercise. What looks more useful to me is this list of reminders suggested by Marcia Wood's post on Tea Party Nation: 

The USSR is no more.

The Arabs can't live off of crude oil.

China doesn't want us to fail. Where would they sell their trinkets?

Wall Street doesn't want us to fail. Who else can they profit from if not the good old USA?

Terrorists don't want us to go away. They need a boogieman to whip up their own frenzies.

The question remains, who is it that wants us to fail?  Like Marcia says, Once again, we have to dig a bit deeper for the usual suspects. Who views us citizens as less than mice to be scattered so they can pick up the pieces?  No question that although none of us have all the answers, some of us are highly effective cheerleaders.  Consider one of many past governors whose respect for us mice was helpful to economic prospects during earlier hard times.  How’s this for déjà vu?

Government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem. - Ronald Reagan
 

The answer remains, who cares who wants us to fail as long as we insist upon thriving no matter what?  Various surveys show the Nation’s debt increasing about $3.93 billion per day and each citizen’s share surpassing $50,000.  Do we want that debt on our own plates?  Not anymore likely now than when it was said by Cicero (106-43 B.C.) that “The budget should be balanced; the treasury should be refilled; public debt should be reduced; and the arrogance of public officials should be controlled."

Please tell me, what have we got to lose by trusting that America's strong foundation will prevail if we dig in our heels for the long haul?  If not now, when will we count upon something much bigger than mere mortals to pull us through this time around?

I don't want anyone taking care of me!

I don't like much of anything about our "political process" right now. I'm beginning to think that's a very good thing. It seems to me that we Americans all need a good swift kick to get our heads back on straight.

What makes our Republic exceptional is being one nation, under God, indivisible! What's with presidential candidate Mitt Romney saying he wants to take care of "the middle class"? That's the kind of talk that made me so "not Obama" last time around. Who the heck do these guys think they are?

We so need people in public office who know they are as flawed as the rest of us. Real Americans know everybody has to fend for himself and that the struggle isn't pretty. I don't like candidate Newt Gingrich much, but I am glad he's not a slick willie. I am sick and tired of the phoney baloney "American Idol" show. Why does anybody want to watch lots of talent getting judged by a bunch of showboat egomaniacs?

I'd rather take my lumps from a leader with grandious ideas on how to do his own job well instead of from one who tells me how to do mine! Besides, how could we possibily imagine we can find, or that we remotely deserve, a perfect leader this side of heaven?

Making our votes count

In hopes of a Happy New Year for all, I'm heeding this alert from Tea Party Nation: "We can rally until the cows come home but if we do not eliminate voter fraud, nothing matters." With that thought in mind, here's a heads-up, at least for me:

"In Illinois, today if you need to buy drain cleaner or other caustic substances, you must show a government issued ID and you will be entered into a database. The impetus for the law was attacks on two women where acid was poured on them and they were badly scarred. Chicago Democrat Representative Jack Franks pushed this measure and the bill sailed through the Democrat controlled state legislature."

When something bad happens, why not punish wrongdoers instead of law-abiding citizens? Two people were attacked out of a city of 2.7 million and now if you need to get something to unplug your drain not only do you have to show a photo ID but you must also end up on a government database. Why? And what's up with the Chicago state legislature forcing law abiding people to produce a photo ID to buy drain cleaner while resisting all efforts to require a photo ID to vote? Could all this have something to do with these reports of voter fraud discovered in other states?

"In Colorado, the Attorney General discovered almost 12,000 illegal aliens registered to vote. In the 2010 election, at least 5,000 of them did. In December 2011, four Democrat Party officials from Troy, New York entered guilty pleas to voter fraud. In Tunica County, Mississippi, a Democrat official was sentenced to five years in prison for voter fraud. In the last two years, ACORN itself and former ACORN officials were convicted in Nevada for voter fraud. ACORN submitted as many as 60,000 fraudulent voter registrations. They even registered the entire starting line up of the Dallas Cowboys as voters in Nevada."

It couldn't hurt, right now, to remember that Stalin said, "I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how." In 2006, George Bush extended the Voting Rights act for 25 years. The original bill passed almost 50 years ago only covers southern states with a history of disenfranchising minorities. We need to revise the Voting Rights Act to focus on eliminating opportunities to engage in voter fraud. For instance, while neither Tennessee nor Texas need to be under the scope of this law, Illinois, Nevada and Wisconsin clearly do if we want only legal votes to count in future American elections.

Governor Perry's razor sharp focus on seeing that our federal government sticks to its Constitutional business, including taking us back to a part time U.S. Congress, looks likely to make cheating less profitable for everyone. In any case, I'm glad to see the march going on these days to do a better job of preserving the great promise for the world of our American Republic.