Some Post-Election Observations and Thoughts

So I fell asleep watching the election coverage last night.  My wife had fallen asleep earlier, and she woke up around midnight and turned the TV back on.  I vaguely remembered hearing that Obama had won, which was pleasing, but when I woke up this morning, I can’t say I was satisfied.  I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied with the state of our government.  And really, nobody should.  Government, like us, needs to change and evolve with the times.  If we went strictly by the Constitution, as some of us would like, women and minorities wouldn’t be able to vote, we could be thrown in jail or ostracized for practicing different religions and speaking what’s on our minds, etc.  That’s not the kind of government a society like ours needs.

I’m not saying the election didn’t turn out the way I’d wanted.  It did, for the most part.  But I just hope the two parties can now come together and make some positive changes for America.  Let’s get more people back to work.  Let’s get the economy booming again.  Let’s get energy independence and better education for our offspring.  Above all, let’s work together.

My wife and I were listening to the radio this morning, and this guy was complaining about how everyone he’d talked to was voting for Romney until he stopped at Sheetz and saw a girl in her twenties buying subs and soda and candy.  She said that she and all of her friends voted for Obama, and then apparently she pulled out an Access card (food stamps) and used it to pay for her items.  And of course this guy was all up in arms about this.  But my wife recognized a flaw (lie?) in his story.  You see, I don’t know how it works in other states, but in Pennsylvania you can’t use your Access card to buy prepared foods like Sheetz Made To Order (MTO) subs.  You can’t use it at McDonalds or other fast food joints.  You can’t use it to buy tobacco or alcohol.  You can only use it to buy groceries.  And my wife knows this well because she worked in a group home taking care of people with severe mental health and mental retardation diagnoses, and she would take them out shopping for food.  These women worked simple jobs (like putting nuts and bolts in plastic bags) so that they could use their earned money on personal items and trips to places like McDonalds where they could not use their Access cards.  And so this guy’s story was a bunch of baloney.

I’m not surprised that someone would embellish to try to prove a point like this.  Entitlement is a huge reason why certain people vote Republican as opposed to Democrat.  They think there is far too much of it, and they don’t want to see their tax dollars going to pay for someone else’s laziness.  And I get that.  Believe me, I do.  I had a friend who never wanted to work a day in his life and jumped around from job to job.  He had a relative who was on disability for mental issues, and so he went and did the same.  He was “diagnosed”, quit working, and started collecting checks from the government.  And man does that bother me.  I hung out with him enough to know that his “issues” weren’t severe (or even existent), and yet he got the doctor to sign off on his inability to work.  And by work, I mean pushing carts around and cleaning and stocking shelves.  So yeah, I GET IT.

But then I look at the little elderly ladies that lived in the group home where my wife worked.  I look at my own mother, who can’t walk unassisted due to severe spinal stenosis and who uses a wheel chair to get around.  Yes, there are jobs out there that people in these situations can do, but they aren’t the kinds of jobs that can pay for mortgages, automobiles, etc.  My mother worked retail her entire life, and just standing behind a counter waiting on people became entirely too painful for her.  Some people legitimately lack the mental or physical capacity to do meaningful work, and so without government programs such as food stamps and disability, they’d be unable to pay for anything.  Caring for those people should be a government responsibility, and if you disagree with me, I have to wonder what you would propose instead.  Should they receive no money and just be cared for by others, pushing that responsibility onto those who CAN work?  Or should the lives of the disabled be miserable because of their handicaps?

Even if this girl at Sheetz used an Access card, this guy had no idea what her life is like.  She could have been buying the items for her disabled mother, as my wife and I do for mine.  She could be a single mother to two or three kids with a deadbeat father who doesn’t pay child support.  And daycare isn’t cheap—it’s $30 per day for our son.  Think about that for a second… if you are working a minimum wage job, making $58 for an 8 hour shift BEFORE taxes, and then $30 of that goes to daycare, that’s leaving you with $28 a day to pay for everything else.  That’s $600/month BEFORE TAXES to pay for food for your kids, a house or apartment to live in, utilities, transportation, etc.  And if you’re in the unfortunate situation of where you have no family to help you out, what do you do?  And so even if this girl at Sheetz used an Access card and voted for Obama, this guy had absolutely no right to judge her.

Moving on, then I saw another post where the person said that everyone was tired of Obama’s excuses, and that every time he tried to do something, it was vetoed by the Senate.  He went on to say that now that the Senate is Democratic, there are no more excuses.  I’m just stunned by this.  First of all, the Senate doesn’t veto anything.  Laws are created in Congress and must be passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate before being forwarded on to the President to be signed into law.  If the President doesn’t like it, he can veto it.  The Senate does not veto anything.  Secondly, the Senate was already comprised of a Democratic majority prior to the election.  It was the House that was Republican, and the House still IS Republican.  Nothing has changed in the grand scheme of things aside from more minorities (thank goodness!) having been elected.  So I don’t know where this guy is getting his news and education from (Fox News, maybe??), but wow.  Wow.

Finally I saw someone post a message indicating that she was very upset with the outcome of the election because it meant that death panels could now deny people proper medical care.  Again, I don’t know where people are getting their information, but her post sparked a huge discussion about Obamacare and how it won’t work.  Ok, there are no death panels, so wherever people are getting that information from, they need to turn the channel or browse to another site (like here: http://www.factcheck.org/2012/04/death-panels-redux/).  Second, Obamacare is already working, and if you want to know more, just ask me and I’ll tell you.  I have very real data proving that it is working.

People are bitter.  It’s understandable.  For some I’m sure it feels like their team lost the Super Bowl.  And of course everyone is a critic.  Everyone has their own idea of how things should be.  And very few of us will ever be one-hundred percent satisfied with the outcomes of elections and the actions of our elected leaders.  And we really just all need to realize that fact.

But now it is time to move on.  If someone proposes an idea, we need to evaluate it and offer our own ideas—not flat out reject what has been given to us.  We need to see things as humans, capable of understanding middle ground and not seeing everything as a one or a zero, black or white, right or wrong.  In order for us to move forward, we need to stuff away the talk of liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans and Greens and Libertarians.  We need to simply all be AMERICANS, working together to make our country a better place for ourselves and our children.

Political Ads(Lies) and Voting!

Tomorrow is Election Day.  Man I’m glad.  I’m so freaking sick of watching political ads on TV—most of which are negative and some even blatantly wrong.  I’m surprised by the audacity of politicians and how they flat-out lie about what their opposition has/hasn’t done and misconstrue facts.  I could literally write a 100 page paper on all of the lies put forth by all of these annoying ads.  And even if they aren’t lying, they are skimming over the positives of their opponents and only pointing out the negatives.  Why don’t we have more laws in place to regulate what politicians can and cannot say to the public?  It's no wonder little girls are crying every time they see these ads on TV.

And what's with the creepy voices used by the narrators?  Seriously, those creepy deep voices could make ANYTHING sound horrible.  Just picture one of those guys doing an advertisement for Chuck E Cheese.  "Where a kid can be a kid?"  He'd make Chuck E Cheese sound more sinister than a retreat with Jerry Sandusky (Too soon or inappropriate? Sorry!)  Anything those guys say sounds negative, and the problem is that too many people believe them!

Why does it seem like very few of us actually do the fact-checking ourselves?  I was having a conversation earlier about how Mitt Romney is going to create 12 million new jobs, and that Obama can't and won't do that.  According to two different studies done by Moody’s Analytics and Macroeconomic Advisers this year (Google it!), 12 million jobs will be gained in the next four years regardless of who is president.  Why?  Well, mostly because Obama initiated a recovery by saving the auto industry and reforming health care, and that recovery will be responsible—not any further action by the winner of this election.  I listen to Romney’s statement and keep picturing some ancient caveman perched atop a giant rock telling people at the end of winter that, if they follow him, he’ll make the temperatures warm again and melt all the snow and make the plants grow.  And of course this caveman isn't saying HOW he plans to do this.  He just knows, based on patterns, that it's going to happen, and he's trying to convince the others to follow him knowing he'll look like a genius if they do.

There’s another ad with a woman saying how she voted for Obama in 2008 hoping for change, but that hasn’t happened and she is worse off now than she was when he was elected.  So let’s think about this...  When Obama was elected, the auto industry was in a nosedive.  Unemployment was skyrocketing.  Banks had just received their bailout prior to Obama taking office (signed into law by GW Bush), which if you don’t recall costed $700 Billion dollars.  Lots of people pin that on Obama, but that was already a done deal by the time he took office.  And it didn’t create jobs, and it really only gave the banks who participated in risky banking practices (think subprime mortgages) a cushion so that they wouldn’t fail.  And I don’t know this as a fact, but I would assume that automakers, with their manufacturing jobs, would employ a lot more people than banks.  And when you think of manufacturing jobs vs. banking jobs, it’s fairly obvious that bankers tend to make more money—and thus would be better off had they lost their jobs.  So Bush bailed out the white-collar guys who were up to no good, and Obama bailed out the blue-collar guys who were just trying to put food on their tables.

But this ad with this woman saying she's worse off now drives me nuts, because she makes it seem like America is a pit of despair compared to when Obama was elected.  As my wife has pointed out, America is not worse off when we can spend millions of dollars on things like Halloween decorations.  Americans are not worse off when we can afford to (and rightfully should) hand out $10 or $20 each to the people in NY and NJ struggling after Superstorm Sandy.  People aren’t losing their houses at record paces any more due to foreclosures.  Unemployment is coming back down.  Did you know that when GW Bush took office, it was 4.2%.  When he left office, it was 7.8% and rising.  Obama started with 7.8%, it went up to 10%, but then as his policies began to take effect, it dropped back down to 7.9% where it is now.  So unless Romney does something drastically different than GW (and we still aren't clear on WHAT he will do), is it going to go right back up again?  AND we even went through one of the worse recessions in our nation’s history when Obama took office.  Obamacare has slowed—and in some industries REVERSED—the trend of annual premium increases in health care costs.  Don’t believe me?  Check out my post from August 3, 2012.

So lady in this stupid ad, I really have to disagree with you.  America IS better than it was 4 years ago--or at least it's heading in a much better direction.  We aren’t all the way there yet, granted, but it’s hard to accomplish anything in 3.79 years with half a Congress working against you.

After Superstorm Sandy knocked out my power, my basement filled with water because my sump pump stopped running.  Water was coming up from the ground, and when the power came back on, my sump pump started running again and started pumping it out.  I kept checking it every half hour, and it looked like nothing was happening the first few times I opened the basement door.  And boy was I anxious.  But I didn't go pull my sump pump out and buy a new one because the one I had wasn't working fast enough.  I'd just bought the thing a year ago, and I knew it worked well.  We just had too much water to deal with.  I knew it would get that water out, and after a few hours and with the help of my dehumidifier, my basement was dry again.  No change to routine.  No added costs.  Just patience.  And honestly, if I had bought a different sump pump, maybe a red one that resembled an elephant rather than my blue one that resembled a donkey, I'd probably have left that one in too if I knew that it was working properly.  But considering that I had a red, elephant sump pump in there a few years prior to my current one, and that one really crapped out and flooded my basement to the point where I needed a new water heater, dehumidifier, etc.--well, you get my point.

You can tell who I’ll be voting for tomorrow.  But even if you don’t agree with me, please get out and vote.  I find it even more alarming, aside from all of the lies and mistruths in political ads, that we live in an apathetic society where less than two-thirds of us actually vote for our leaders.  If you hate what Obama has or hasn’t done to our country, get out there and do something about it.  And if you do or don’t believe what these politicians say in these political ads, at least get out there and let your voice be heard.  It doesn’t take much time (typically only 10 minutes for me), and it’s one of if not the most important thing you can do as an American citizen.

And if you think that voting is a waste of time because you are just one tiny little vote out of so many millions, just think about this: in the event of an Electoral College tie, which can happen under nearly three dozen different scenarios, the newly elected House of Representatives chooses the President, and the Senate chooses the Vice President.  And considering how close those contests are, and considering that each state has numerous Representatives that are elected LOCALLY (meaning I live in Central PA and therefore can't vote for the Representative from Philly or Pittsburgh), it's critical to get out there and vote.  Because if there is an electoral college tie, and if the House remains a Republican majority and the Senate remains a Democrat majority, Mitt Romney will be President and Joe Biden will be VP.  But if the House switches to a Democrat majority and there is an electoral college tie, Obama remains President.  In other words, your single vote for your local House Representative really could end up deciding who is President or Vice President.

So go vote!

Women's Rights Riddle

Here’s a riddle for you.  Conservatives believe that there is just too much federal government.  They want as little as possible, and they would instead desire a transfer of many federal powers back to the states.  However, most conservatives are pro-life, and therefore they want to overturn Roe v. Wade and make it illegal for women to have abortions.  Isn’t this the ultimate invasion of personal rights—way too much government interfering on a very personal issue?  How exactly does that work?  No, no, no, there’s just too much government….but…when it comes to women, the government should be in charge of your body?  That just makes no sense.

Honestly, I have very mixed feelings on the topic of abortion.  Ending a life, even after the first spark of it in a mother’s womb, seems wrong to me.  But on the same token, I can’t see any instance where the government should have any right to decide what is best for a woman.  In other words, morally I think that many abortions are wrong, but legally they should never be.  And if you want to argue with my logic, well, there are plenty of things that are morally wrong in this country, yet people do them anyway.  I personally think it’s morally wrong to not hold the door open for someone, but stand outside any convenience store for, oh, maybe two or three minutes, and you’ll see it happen a handful of times.  It’s morally wrong to gossip.  It’s morally wrong to bully.  Yet, sadly, those things still happen.  In reality, if we had moral police, I’d guesstimate that 95% of the population would serve jail time or at least pay fines.  I’m sure I would be for one thing or five or fifty.

But for a politician to say what a woman can and cannot do with her body is wrong as well, and I don’t see any reason that it can be justified—especially from a conservative standpoint.  You can’t say that there is just too much government and then say that women should be denied the right to choose.  You can’t have elected government officials—most of which are old white men—tossing around words like “legitimate rape” and that "pregnancy from rape is a gift from God" and promising to defund Planned Parenthood.  That just makes no sense to me.  It shouldn’t make sense to a lot of people.  Especially women.

I see a lot of women out there who are pro-Romney in this election.  Can you explain to me how you can vote for a guy who would much rather have abortion be illegal and who wants to make you pay for things like birth control, mammograms, etc.?  What, do you think women's health medicines and preventive screenings being free is unfair to men?  According to 2012 statistics at cancer.org (found here: http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@epidemiologysurveilance/documents/document/acspc-031941.pdf), 29% of all cancers in men are prostate cancer, while 29% of all female cancers are breast cancer, 6% are uterine cancer, and a 3% are ovarian cancer.  So that’s 29% of male-specific cancers, and 38% chance of female-specific cancers.  Looking at the estimated death rate, prostate cancer is responsible for 9% of all men diagnosed with cancer.  Breast cancer is responsible for 14% of women's deaths, ovarian cancer for 6%, and uterine cancer for 3%.  So of all the different types of cancers, 9% of men with cancer will die from male-specific cancer, while 23% of women will die from female-specific cancer.  Again, that’s 29% of male-specific cancers affecting men vs. 38% of female-specific cancers affecting women and 9% of men vs. 23% of women dying from it.  It seems to make sense to me that we NEED to have government programs in place to help women with these issues.  Wouldn’t you agree?

There are plenty of things that don’t make sense on either side of the American political spectrum, but this is one I struggle with more than many others.  Sure, Liberals may be, uh, liberal with our country’s money, but President Clinton sure wasn’t, erasing a deficit created by Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr.   Obama HAS increased the deficit, but he had to in order to keep us from falling into a Second Great Depression--one that came about as the result of a Conservative Republican's failed policies.  But Obama also created a universal, affordable healthcare law that will ensure that women get the treatments they need.  Romney wants to repeal that, defund Planned Parenthood, and who knows, maybe he’ll even take on Roe v. Wade.

If you are a woman, and you are planning to vote for Mitt Romney, I really want to know why.  If you are a father, or a husband, or a son, or a brother, and your daughter, wife, mother or sister has ever been the victim of a sexual crime, or even if she has just had some medical issues and has had to previously jump through hoops to get them resolved (including paying tons of money for preventative procedures), I want to know how you can justify voting for Mitt Romney.  Because I sure can’t.