TBV Feature: 50,000 and a Goal

Fifty thousand hits is a nice milestone in the life of a blog. We're drawing in some regular readers and others are stopping in from time to time to check us out. We're beginning to make a little bit of an impact in the blogging world. We're beginning to make our "voices" heard. But, of course, we've still got a ways to go to be a major force - along the lines of fifty thousand hits a day or more and hundreds of comments per entry. That would be nice. We may not reach the promised land, but hey, 50,000 hits, that's a good start. At this milestone, the individual Voices here are sorta taking stock, trying to define our goals and ambitions, trying to come up with our own definitions of political victory. Here's my two cents on the subject:

After the twin jolts of Vietnam and Watergate, the ship of state was floundering around rudderless during the Ford and Carter administrations. The oil crisis and the hostages in Iran added to the national malaise. Ronald Reagan then grabbed the tiller and drove us at ramming speed down the wrong path. During the elder Bush and Clinton administrations, I was beginning to think we were going to stop and ask for directions or something, but the younger Bush came along, grabbed the tiller, and said, "I think we were going this way." And off we went down the wrong path again. Now, here we are, miles off course in a boat that's taking on a lot of water.

Americans got suckered by the same old con job that the Repubs have been pushing since the last Gilded Age; it's just been updated a little for the New Gilded Age. What's good for business is good for America. You can cut taxes, explode the military budget, and still balance the budget; and, if you can't, deficits be damned. There's a survival of the fittest mentality to the Repubs. If you can't pull yourself up by the bootstraps and make it in this world, the hell with you. The middle class is under attack and the poor are taking a daily screwing. Smoke and mirrors. A huge con. This party hasn't had a good idea since they were the anti-slavery party. Most of the time, they've tried their best to impede progress. But the Repubs (with the help of the so-called liberal media) have taken advantage of a great cultural divide and an apathetic, uninterested populace to capture all three branches of government. The Democrats are now just ineffectual bystanders to the carnage, and have been short on good ideas themselves here lately. Since Clinton, the New Democrats, the Republican-lites, have taken over the party. Any liberals that are still hanging around act like they're ashamed to be called liberal.

And of all the Repubs available, we got stuck with the worst of the bunch. George Walker Bush and his Repub minions stole an election that was too close to call, then rode a national tragedy that they were asleep at the switch for to another election that they may also have stolen. Some mathematicians seem to think so anyway. Bush the lesser has been a disaster for this country. To me, it's a question of whether he's simply a bad president or the worst of all time. He's got some heavy competition, but he's right down there at the bottom. Maybe Buchanan was a little worse; some of his actions before the Civil War bordered on treasonous. Bush led us away from a war that we should have been fighting to start an unnecessary war. He's turned all the regulatory agencies that should be protecting us, the common people, over to the industries that need to be regulated. He's turned large sections of the government over to political hacks who almost daily redefine the word 'incompetent.' The only economic plan he has is tax cuts. If tax cuts won't fix it, he doesn't have a clue or doesn't care. But that's his governing style. He's taken detached and distracted to new heights. He's reinvented government to the point where the Feds now take a week to respond to a natural disaster that anyone who watches the Weather Channel can see coming. Jeez.

So my main goal, getting rid of George W. Bush and replacing him with a Dem or a different Repub or a Libertarian or a Green or...just about anyone, is just a matter of time. Inauguration Day, 2009, is only 697 more days away. Unless there's some sort of national calamity that requires the suspension of the 2008 elections - I wouldn't put anything past this bunch. No matter who the next one is he can't be any worse than this one. He couldn't possibly be and still have a pulse.

I don't have a lot of faith in the Democratic Party. 'Democratic leadership' is just an oxymoron these days. I'm reminded of the words of Will Rogers: "I'm not a member of an organized political party. I'm a Democrat." I DO hope they make some gains in the '06 election so that we can at least get back to a two-party system of government with checks and balances. I hope the Dems nominate a viable candidate in '08 - maybe Citizen Gore, or maybe an up-and-comer like Brian Schweitzer, or a Feingold, Conyers, Edwards or Boxer, but I'm afraid they'll end up going with Hillary or Kerry again.

I would really like to see a restructuring of the parties into three or more segments - maybe Bush conservatives, real conservatives, moderates and liberals - more voices heard, more points of view. I would like to see more people become better informed about what's going on in their country and how politics is important to their daily lives. And how voting for a Repub is like slitting your own throat economically unless you're a millionaire. I would like to see more on the news channels than runaway brides and "he said, she said" debates.

I guess that's what I'm striving for here in this blog, and it's probably what the other Blue Voices are trying to do - inform, enlighten, and even entertain. I think most blog readers come into it already knowing what side of the fence they're on, but it's my goal to just keep plugging away and hope that occasionally one of those page hits comes from an undecided voter who comes away saying, "Hmm. I never thought of it like THAT."

Update: Well, no one caught me on my faulty math, but I knew that figure didn't quite sound right. It seems like I've left an entire year out of my calculations. It's not my first mistake, definitely won't be my last. It's now 1062 days until President Dubya is gone. But it's not that bad. He's been a uniter, not a divider, and almost everyone, Repub and Dem, is now united in opposition to his policies, and every poll shows that almost universal disapproval of him and his policies. The "lame duck" tag is coming early on this prez.

| +Save/Share | |