Four weeks ago when the surgeon was briefing me on what to expect from my lung operation, he said, “This is very painful surgery.”  That’s about as heartening as hearing the pilot of your airplane say, “Oh shit!”  You expect the worst.  Well, the surgeon was right, to an extent.  Actually the surgery was painless, I didn’t feel a thing and I was pumping myself with so much morphine the first night I don’t remember much of that either.  It is when you leave the hospital armed only with a little bottle of pain pills you have to administer yourself that your duel with pain begins.  The first couple days I was popping two pills of oxycodone every four hours, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night to do so.  But then the pain reached what I considered a tolerable level so it was down to a personal battle between pain and me.  I don’t like to take medicines. So in defiance, I stopped the pills because the pain was no longer continuous.  It only came unexpectedly with really horrendous stabs in my back.  Because I decided not the take the oxycodone it reminded me of the old joke:  “Why are you banging your head against the wall,” the first guy asked.  “Because if feels so good when I stop,” the other guy responded.  Well, the sharp pains are over quickly, it feels good when it stops and I am still standing so I win.  Now the bigger problem is just an annoyance.  The surgeon said he was going to “freeze” the nerves in my chest area which supposedly make it less painful.  But what is has done is given me the annoying sensation that I have grown an upper beer belly that is pressing against my breast bone.  What bothers me is that I have a new beer belly without the benefit of drinking the beer.  Now that is really painful.

My friend the morphine pump

Women often say that if men wanted to experience real pain they should give birth to a child.  After my experience with lung surgery last Thursday I think I might have preferred taking a shot at childbirth.  However, with lung surgery pain you have an advantage, it’s called morphine.  I remember absolutely nothing of the surgery, very little of the recovery room and just became coherent enough in my overnight room to learn that the thing in my hand with the button and little green light would become my best friend.  When the little green light came on I pushed the button, opening the floodgates of morphine, drowning the pain and allowing a dreamy darkness to descend.  I became like Pavlov’s dog:  Feel pain, open eyes, see green light, push button, painless darkness.  Repeat. The clock was on the wall directly in front of me and every time I opened my eyes it was the first thing I saw.  I kept thinking what the hell is wrong with this clock?   It keeps jumping ahead ten minutes at a time!  I spent the entire night sleeping in ten minute intervals.  But at least they left me alone with my morphine toy.  By the next night I had been switched to oxycodone tablets which are not nearly so much fun as a morphine pump and the nurses kept waking me up throughout the night to take “vital signs,” give me pills and stick needles in my stomach.  When I finally got into some kind of deep sleep about 4:00 a.m., the door bangs open, the lights go on and the portable X-ray machine comes rolling in followed by the blood sample nurse. After another night of the same I was finally released.  Sunday night as I drifted off to sleep in my own bed imagining that all I had gone through was just a frightening nightmare, I began mumbling,  “There’s no place like home…there’s no place like home… there’s no place….”

When you acquire cancer, you get philosophical about things like considering diseases as metaphors.  I have friends who have various heart conditions whom I think of as living in a kind of “tornado alley” where disaster can strike with little or no warning.  On the other hand, cancer is like living in Florida where you can get wiped out by a hurricane.  But, you know it’s coming and you even know where it is coming from and sometimes how intense it will be, however, you don’t know how devastating it will be until it hits.  Now I have learned that my current cancer hurricane is located in my left lung and that it will make “lung fall” (couldn’t resist that) this Thursday morning when they will pry open my chest to take it out.  I have been told I will remain in the hospital from four to seven days depending how severe the cancercane is (couldn’t resist that one either).  So we’ll brace for the storm’s arrival, get through it, assess the damage and then figure out how to get on with the rebuilding.

Remember the old joke:  “They told me to cheer up, things could be worse. So I cheered up and things got worse.”  That seems to apply to my adventures with cancer.  It seems every time I feel terrific a doctor finds something else bad.  The cheek melanoma was discovered three years ago during a routine physical I passed with flying colors and I felt great.  That was surgery number one.  With that out of the way I was once again feeling terrific so they check the prostrate and bingo!—bad news again.  But before they go after that one they decide to take a full body scan.  Feeling great is evidently no indication of the evil lurking within.  They found the esophageal cancer. After recovering from the horrific experience of chemotherapy and radiation I finally started feeling good again. Really.  Hair came back, tai chi at the Y, playing petanque Saturday mornings, riding the bike, mowing the lawn.  Life is good and once again I feel great.  Then a routine scan to check that the throat cancer crap is still gone shows a spot on my left lung that turns out to be more melanoma!   So now we are about to undergo surgery number two.  But before that I had to see yet another doctor, a cardiologist, who must attest that my heart is working well enough that I will not have a heart attack on the operating table.  The good news is that I feel great and I passed the cardiac nuclear stress test and have less than a five percent chance of expiring on the table so the cardiologist says I can have the lung surgery.  The bad new is the cardiologist says I can have the lung surgery.  Maybe if I felt really lousy these things wouldn’t happen.

Although opponents of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) insist it is absolutely horrible, there are some elements that I believe are actually quite good and very reasonable concepts.  As one who has had an intimate relationship with our health care system, I would love to see the industry adopt electronic health record keeping.  Over the past three years, I have seen 11 doctors at four clinics and had three surgical procedures at two different hospitals.   I am now about to undergo some major surgery (at one of the same hospitals) but before that, I must see yet another doctor, a cardiologist, to reassure the officiating surgeon that I will not croak of a heart attack on the operating table.  For my appointment next Thursday, I have been informed I must stop by the doctor’s office to pick up paperwork I can fill out in advance or arrive a half hour early to do so.  That paperwork, I can assure you, will be very much the same as the paperwork I have already filled out about seven  times.  It’s hard to pin down the exact number since with some clinics I have had to go through all the information again if it was more than 30 days old.  There is no standardization among the forms.  They all ask basically the same information but they vary from office to office and some look as if they were written ten years ago and photocopied several thousand times.  In this day and age where Amazon can tell me everything I have ordered from them in the last ten years and Google has records containing every web site I have ever visited, it does not seem beyond today’s technical capabilities to consolidate health records between hospitals and clinics that are within 300 yards to 30 miles away from each other and several are members of the same health care system. 

Cancer is the Al-Qaeda of diseases. It is sinister, unscrupulous, unpredictable and deadly.  And it is after me again.  A routine PET scan to see if the esophageal cancer was still gone, showed a spot on my left lung which a biopsy determined was melanoma!  Yes, I know, melanoma is supposed to be a skin cancer but as my oncologist explained it can travel through the blood stream and “hide” somewhere inside the body.   Then BAM like a roadside bomb it explodes from its hiding place.  So here we go again.  The good news is I don’t have to go through chemotherapy one more time.  The bad news is we’re going to undergo major surgery.  Let’s see.  I had melanoma surgically removed from my cheek three years ago.  I was diagnosed with prostate cancer (right now the least of my worries).  I had esophageal cancer requiring radiation and massive doses of chemotherapy and now melanoma is in my lung.  Do you think in my case Medicare can get a volume discount?

Well it didn’t take long for the Republicans in our Kindercongress to politicize the tragic bombing in Boston.  Republican Representatives Michael McCaul of Texas and Peter King of New York fired off a letter to the nation’s intelligence agencies stating the F.B.I. handling of the case was an “intelligence failure.”  Never to be outdone, South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham declared, “The fact that we could not track him has to be fixed. It’s people like this that you don’t want to let out of your sight, and this was a mistake. I don’t know if our laws are insufficient or the F.B.I. failed, but we’re at war with radical Islamists, and we need to up our game.”  Let’s throw in a crack at the “radical Islamists” to fire up more hatred against us while we are at it.  You can just feel the Republicans gearing up for a Congressional hearing so they can have another Benghazi moment.  Just for good measure, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa implied that the bombing raised questions about our immigration system that should be examined in the context of the bill under consideration (translation “slow it down”).  Nothing like a good tragedy to bring out the worst in our Republican lawmakers.

If any of you still believe we live in a democracy, I have bad news for you. All of us were taught since grade school that in a democracy our elected government is supposed to uphold the will of the people.  In simple terms we learned, majority rules.  This no longer applies to the United States.  Although every poll shows that 90 per cent of the American people want extensive background checks on all firearm sales and the vast majority want bans on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, a group of Senators representing the Senate minority party managed to defeat legislation that would have exactly accomplished the will of the people. Why?  Because those Senators are far more concerned with getting re-elected than governing our country and they are scared to death of the National Rifle Association. In short, they are a bunch of feckless cowards.  How can the N.R.A. command such power?  The association claims 4,500,000 members but the Washington Post Fact Check puts it more like 3,100,000.  The U.S. population is 316,000,000.  That means, my fellow Americans, that a mere 0.98 percent* of our citizens have managed to imposed their will on all the rest of us.  If we are to save our democracy, in every election we must fight to defeat every candidate the N.R.A. supports. 

* (Note: that is point nine eight, or less than one percent.) 

The Mouse that Roared was a 1959 Peter Sellers film that pitted the smallest country in Europe, the duchy of Fenwick, against the United States of America and ultimately the world.  The little country, in bad economic straits, decided that if it declared war on the United States, invaded it and lost, the U.S. would pour in vast amounts of money to rebuild it (Something America tends to do.)  By strange twists, the Fenwick invaders, about 12 men armed with bows and arrows, find New York deserted because of an atomic attack drill and they happen to take possession of the Q Bomb which is the most powerful bomb in the world.  Naturally the United States of America and all the other world powers fall all over themselves to curry favor with Fenwick.  In the end, it turns out the bomb is a dud but the world powers don’t know this and Fenwick essentially rules the world.  That’s really a funny, far-fetched plot except it is happening today.  North Korea’s dipshit leader Kim Jong-un is threatening to attack South Korea and declare war on the United States and send nuclear missiles to destroy LA and Washington, D.C. which is preposterous.  The United States which purports to be the most powerful nation in the universe poops it pants and decides to spend tens of millions more dollars on a missile defense system (which only works 50 percent of the time) on the west coast, postpone missile tests and generally let the little North Korean jerk make us look like a scared bunch of old, white men cold warriors.  Of course, that’s just what Kim Jong-un wants and he is probably laughing his ass off at us.  Now let’s play the kids game, if I were president this is what I would do.  I would write this letter to Kim Jong-un.  “Dear Kim, If you do something dumb like attack South Korea or launch a missile (nuclear on not) at us or our Pacific bases, we will wipe your crappy little country off the face of the earth.  Since your entire country is about the size of Mississippi we don’t even need nuclear weapons to reduce you to rubble which we will.  By copy of this letter we are informing your pal China that we will not spend one U.S. penny to rebuild the shit pile we will make of you.  China please note regarding North Korea, if we break it, you own it.  Sincerely the U.S President.”  Am I the only American who is pissed off at the way we are groveling to that North Korean fat boy with the goofy haircut?

President Obama’s comment that Los Angeles Attorney General Kamala Harris is good looking caused an enormous outcry.  Actually, she is good looking, but a huge group of people immediately went ballistic about how Obama was being ‘Sexist.”  This is a perfect example of how stupid the American public has become.  I just Googled “support for breast cancer,” and “support for prostate cancer.”   Breast cancer got 112,000,000 sites.  Prostate cancer got 33,200,000 sites.  I guess that proves that women’s breasts are more appealing than old men’s’ ass holes.  Is that being sexist?

Supposedly, the Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of gay marriage this week. What the court will really consider is whether religious doctrine that promotes bigotry and hatred will be the basis for establishing American laws.  If you do not think the opposition to gay marriage is religiously based, consider this:  Gay marriage will cause no harm to anyone.  No one will die. The economy will not be affected in any way. It will not get us into a war. Gay marriage will have no effect on heterosexual marriage which in itself is not such a righteous institution since it ends in divorce more than 50 per cent of the time. Children will not be corrupted.  The opposition is based purely on the so-called “Christian” belief that gay marriage is immoral and contrary to the will of God. Nobody, not the Catholic Church, the Pope, Evangelical preachers nor the National Organization for Marriage knows what God wants or thinks. This is another abominable example of bigots using God to justify their hatred and prejudice against gays.  These people are the ones screaming about government taking liberties away from them but they have no qualms about taking liberties from others in the name of God.  The gay marriage issues is a perfect example of why religion should be kept out of our government.

This week marks the day in American history that will live in ignominy.   March 19, 2003, is the day George W. Bush, goaded by his neocon puppeteers Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, invaded Iraq without provocation. It was the most stupid episode ever in American foreign policy.  
The entire world knows that the Bush Republican Administration lied about the non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction just to satisfy its war mongering factions. The latest figures I have found report 4,488 American killed, over 32,000 wounded, 320,000 suffering brain injuries and one estimate that total death military and civilian are nearly 1.5 million.  It has cost us about $1.7 trillion and the residual effect of what it could cost over the next 40 years is $6 trillion.  That is enough to cover Medicare, Medicaid and Education for the next two decades.  All that American blood and money spent for nothing in return.  Let’s remember and honor all the wonderful young Americans who did what their country asked of them.  And let’s hold a moment of scorn for the rotten lying bastards who sent them there.

My last blog post generated this comment: “As I understand it, the government is now telling Catholics how to practice their faith regarding birth control.”  Here is my reply:

 There is no law that tells Catholics or anyone else how to practice their faith.  Contraceptives are legal in the United States but the law does not require you to use them.  Ironically, polls show that over 90 per cent of Catholic women do use them. However, if Congress passed a law prohibiting contraceptives, it would be doing so based on Catholic principles, thereby imposing a religious doctrine on the entire American public. Believe whatever you want but don’t force legislation that imposes your beliefs on me.  You may be referring to the health insurance issue on contraceptive coverage which, I believe, did ultimately exempt Catholic organizations.  The absurdity of all this is that government is getting involved in the legality of contraceptives at all.  It is a woman’s health and personal choice issue and the Catholic Church has no business trying to make its doctrine become American law.

It should not be a big surprise to the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics that some of us do not really care who the Pope is, where he comes from, what he thinks or what color his shoes are.  What does matter to us is that old men in colorful, fancy lace dresses with bright red hats and capes, carrying on quaint, medieval traditions are pushing their theological beliefs on the United States government.  The Catholic Church’s position on gay marriage (really cute considering many priests are homosexuals and pedophiles), abortion and contraception should stay in the cathedral and not the Congress.  The Constitution does not guarantee Catholics anything more than the right to exercise their religion.  The same people who scream about government meddling in their lives seem to have no problem when that intervention becomes laws that conform to Catholic religious doctrine.  By forcing Catholic doctrine into our laws through certain politicians, our political system is essentially condoning moral judgment against some of our citizens.  I don’t think Jesus nor St. Francis would agree with that.

Much to the chagrin of my Republican friends (or perhaps I should say “former” friends since the more right wing among them consider disagreeing with their views renders you no longer worthy of friendship) I have decided to get back into blogging.  Rather than dwell only on politics, I have decided to comment on the enormous stupidity going on in this meaningless world of ours.  I was going to resume with some uncomplimentary comments on the Republican Party but I don’t have to since the party is doing a good job of bad-mouthing itself. I could not agree more with Bobby Jindal that the Republicans are a “stupid” party or that Rand Paul is right by stating The Republican Party has grown "stale and moss-covered" and needs a fresh direction (good luck on that with the Teapartistas). Have you noticed how Republican pundits are flagellating themselves and the party for not “reaching out” to the minorities they have shit on for decades? Never mind Republican Senator Rob Portman’s new found support for gay marriage after his son came out.  So combine this with what’s going on in the Catholic Church and I doubt if I will ever run out of absurdities to comment on.  Stay tuned.

“I would have liked to see a little more on outreach and working together.  There was not, as I’ve seen in other inaugural speeches, ‘I want to work with my colleagues.’ ” That comment regarding President Obama’s inauguration speech came from none other than Presidential Candidate loser Republican Senator John McCain one of our best arguments for Congressional term limits.  Senator John probably forgot that after Obama’s last inaugural address which gushed with how much he wanted bipartisan harmony Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made defeating President Obama his main political objective.  The Republican Party then proceeded to swear they absolutely, categorically would not cooperate with Obama on anything and promptly became, and rightly so, the “party of no.”   As many of you have already surmised, I have no respect whatsoever for the Republican Party who drops their pants to the NRA and non-elected-to-anything dipshits like Grover Norquist and who haven’t had a new idea in 30 years.  Yes, I would like to be optimistic and hope the Republicans will finally participate in governing our country, but I doubt it.

The Republican Party is considering sending a thank you letter to Sabine Moreau, the Belgian woman who drove 900 miles off her route and ended up in Croatia instead of the Brussels airport 90 miles from her home.  Republicans are wildly acclaiming Sabine for giving them an excuse for turning so far to the right that a lot of Americans think the party has gone insane. Now the Republicans can claim it was all the GPS’s fault. Some Americans really believed the Republicans had set their political GPS on a route towards actually participating in the governing of our country. But instead, certain factions of the party kept resetting their GPS to indicate only right turns.  The public should have known there was a problem when as soon as President Obama took office, Senator Mitch McConnell made defeating him the main political objective of the Republican party. That didn’t work and it looks like with so many right turns the Republican Party is now running around in circles.

Guns are the most democratic things on earth.  A gun will kill you regardless of whether you are Republican or Democrat, child or adult, black, white, Hispanic or Asian, Jewish, Christian or Muslim.  I don’t see why the National Rifle Association doesn’t run full-page ads emphasizing “Guns are Equal Opportunity Killers.”  Instead, the NRA wants to see more guns in circulation on the ludicrous argument that more guns will mean less killings.  They want to arm school teachers, believe everybody should pack a heater and when Arizona bought back weapons and destroyed them, the NRA complained that those guns should be given to gun dealers and put back in circulation.  Instead of stupid arguments that defy common sense, the NRA should stick to the irrefutable fact that guns were made to kill and do not discriminate against good or bad guys.  Of course, the NRA is willing to consider a national data base of the mentally ill, but not a national data base of gun owners. Perhaps they are afraid too many names will appear on both lists.

And the Hypocrite of the New Year Award goes to… Idaho Republican Sen. Michael Crapo (applause).  Crapo, a self-professed lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, got busted on December 22 for drunk driving.  We all know from the recent Presidential Campaign that drinking is not permitted by the Mormon Church.  I suppose Republican Senators get a waiver from God.  According to AP reports he was quaffing vodka and tonic that night, couldn’t sleep and decided to go out for a drive (a wonderful example of decision making.)  After a half-hour, El Crapo decided he was too crocked to drive and headed home when he got nabbed.  At the station house his blood alcohol level registered 0.14 (legal limit 0.08).  With a BAH that high after a half-hour, he must have been really, really smashed when he left home.  He now joins General Petreus and Rep. Weiner in the Pantheon of Dumb Ass Behavior.

“KILL MORE PEOPLE FASTER WITH THE FANTASTIC BUSHMASTER AR-15!”

Wouldn't that would make a great advertising slogan for Bushmaster Firearms International, LLC.   Adam Lanza managed to pump up to 11 rounds into each of the 20 grade school kids he killed in Newtown, Conn.  Bushmaster must be really proud of that.  If you research the rifle you will find it is the most popular gun in America, that comes in various colors and with numerous accessories like different capacity clips.  They even raffled off a pink one for breast cancer research.  You can’t be more public spirited than that.  It is so popular it has been the weapon of choice in recent mass killings in movies, shopping malls and the intentional ambush that killed two firefighters in Webster, NY on Christmas Eve.   Malcolm Brady, a retired assistant director with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms told NPR in an interview:  “The weapon has a, shall we say, a Rambo effect, just cool to carry.  It may be for protection. It may be for the coolness. And it may be for the fact that people will be in fear that the weapon will be put back on a banned level, and they want to obtain it before it is banned again. But I think you will see the popularity of it and the purchase of them increase drastically, in between now and the holidays, near Christmas.”  Obviously, Bushmaster’s AR-15 sales will get a terrific boost from all its recent publicity.  I suppose the NRA’s Wayne La Pierre can now claim that the AR-15 is good for the economy.

Big Wayne La Pierre swaggered into town, hitched up his gun belt, squared his jaw and declared, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”  Those of you who read my December 20th blog, will immediately recognize the John Wayne Fantasy Syndrome:  The delusion that if you pack a gun you will someday save dozens of people by wasting a bad guy with an assault rifle and you will become a national hero.  LaPierre then proposed that armed guards be stationed at every school in America.  In other words, the NRA believes the way to stop gun violence is with more guns.  He also maintained that mass killings in America are the media’s fault—movies and video games--and gun availability has nothing to do with it. For a long time you have heard the NRA mantra:  Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.  No, Wayne, people with guns kill people.  You and I and every sane person in America have got to tell our rotten politicians to stop groveling to the NRA and pass meaningful gun control.   Or would you rather wait for the next Sandy Hook?

In radio interviews, facebook postings and internet chatter some men have been declaring the government better not take away their right to pack a rod for their own defense. These guys (they are all guys) are suffering from what I would call JWFS or “John Wayne Fantasy Syndrome.”  They fantasize that one day they will be in a shopping mall when a wild-eyed young man, dressed all in black, wearing a bullet-proof vest, will pull out an AK-47 and point it at the innocent, helpless crowd.  As the people shriek, cry hysterically and run, he will whip out his trusty Glock 9mm pistol and with consummate skill, he will drill the madman between the eyes with one shot.  The crowd will cheer and he will be a national hero.  Ironically, these are the same guys who want everyone else to be able to obtain guns.  I guess that’s so they will have somebody to defend themselves against.  I have lived in six major cities in the United States and done considerable travelling and never once in 75 years have I known anybody (including myself) who has required a gun for self-defense.  These guys either need reality checks or testosterone suppressants.  Probably these John Wayne wannabes would all like to live in Florida where they could shoot un-armed teenagers and claim self defense under the “stand your ground” law.  Hey Congress, wake up!  We do not live in the early 1800s anymore.  Maybe our laws should reflect that.

Inevitably, someone stated on Facebook that if the school teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School had been armed and trained the tragedy would have been avoided.   This is indicative of the depths of stupidity we have to deal with in America when it comes to guns.  I suppose these morons believe we could eliminate mass killings by arming everybody in places where such shootings have taken place:  fast food restaurants, post offices, universities, parking lots, churches, mosques, etc. Would you feel safer if you knew the kid serving you a Big Mac had a Glock 9mm 25-shot pistol under the counter?   Last  August  7, after  a lunatic killed six people in a Wisconsin Sikh church I wrote it was “thoughts and prayers” time again. Whenever one of these senseless mass killings takes place, our politicians wring their hands and declare their “thoughts and prayers” are with the victims and their families.  You know what?  Those “thoughts and prayers” don’t do those poor dead children and their families one God-damn bit of good.  What might help is if our spineless politicians stood up to the NRA and passed some laws that would ban the assault weapons, ammunition and high capacity clips that are the mass killers instruments of choice.

Let’s do some math.  Suppose I had an earned income of $10,000.000.  (Disclaimer:  I do not make $10,000,000 a year.)  At the present tax rate of 35 per cent I would pay $3,500,000 leaving me with $6,500,000 to live on.  Now if the proposed tax rate of 39.6 went into effect I would pay $3,960,000 meaning I would have to get by on a measly $6,040,000.  But some tax rate hike proposals exempt the first $500,000 meaning I would pay 39.6 per cent of $9,500,000 or $3,762,000 now leaving me with $6,238,000.  Now if, hypothetically, all my income was unearned (you know capital gains and dividends) I would pay only 15 per cent in taxes, so I’d pay $1,500,000 and have to scrape by with $8,500,000. The whole point of this mathematical exercise is that people like me who do not earn $10,000,000 a year and who dutifully pay their taxes have no conception of why enormously rich people are so adamant about not wanting to pay more in taxes.  Now the philosophical question is, do really rich people hate taxes all that much or is it because 1) Republican politicians are doing the bidding of the exceedingly rich donors who are greedy and do hate taxes or 2) Republican politicians are really dumb and have no other ideas to campaign on.  Those of us in the 98 per cent simply can’t understand why the one per cent does not want to contribute a little more for the good of our country. Warren Buffet excluded.

A Thanksgiving Story (or Stories)

Thanksgiving is often called the most American of holidays but there is something universal about it.  My daughter-in-law is Romanian.  Yesterday we spent Thanksgiving with her, son and granddaughter and 15 other people, a mix of Romanians and Americans.  The ages ranged from nine months to 75 years.  A soccer game from Eastern Europe streamed on a computer in one room and the Lions battled Houston on the TV in another.  The table held plates of turkey, beef brisket, ham, stuffing, baba ganoush, a lentil dish, stuffed cabbages and sever plates I could not identify but tasted wonderful.  It reminded me of a Thanksgiving many years ago when I took a new job in Chicago.  I had no one to spend Thanksgiving with so a co-worker of Italian descent invited me (I had lived in Italy for 12 years).  Her family, including grandparents who had come from Italy, served a huge traditional American Thanksgiving dinner--Turkey with all the trimmings--with the addition of a half-dozen bottles of Italian wines on the table and everybody was speaking Italian.  A friend who is actually in Italy right now decided to show her family there our tradition.  Her husband, she emailed, ordered the turkey from a local poultry store but made a little mistake in the weight conversion. Thinking in pounds he ordered a 13 kilo bird which is actually 28.6 pounds.  She managed to change the order to seven kilos which is a more manageable 15.4 pounds and she said she roasted her best turkey ever.  I hope you all had a very Happy Thanksgiving.

The Republican quest for the presidency was like a fairy tale.  Romney was the handsome prince who would ride his white horse into Washington and save the country.  So the Republican Party kissed his ass and he turned into a frog.  It is almost painful to watch the agonizing gyrations the Republicans are going through to justify or explain away what happened on Election Day.  The far right wing maintains that their anti-gay, anti-women, anti-Hispanic, anti-health care, anti-taxes, anti-regulations, anti-anything-Obama proposes, is absolutely the right way to go and they lost because the party chose the wrong candidate.  The prince-now-frog himself blames his humiliation on Obama’s giving gifts to all the voting groups he not only distained but insulted.   The Republican Imbecile-in-Chief Rush Limbaugh (among others) claims the loss was because Romney’s main constituency, angry white middle- aged and elderly males (the “white horse” the prince would ride to victory) did not turn out to vote.  Then some prominent Republicans like Bobby (Maybe I could run for President) Jindal maintains the only problem was that Romney did not explain Republican policies clearly enough.  Like if you carefully explain shit it turns into chocolate ice cream.  While many Republican apologists and pundits are claiming this is not the beginning of the end for the Republican Party, it can also be seen as just that.  More and more young Americans are realizing that Republican policies are not good for our country.  And old white Republicans are dying.  Unfortunately, they probably won’t take the party with them.

Would Mitt Romney please shut up!  You lost, Mitt, get over it.  Go to one of your houses and pout in private.  Our world-class liar, political opportunist, flip-flopper and former presidential candidate held a conference call with his top donors whining that his loss was due to "gifts" Obama made to specific groups of voters.  As the Associated Press reported, Romney told his money pit Obama won “because of the ‘gifts’ he had already provided to blacks, Hispanics and young voters and because of the president's effort to paint him as anti-immigrant.”  The AP also reported, “Among the "gifts" Romney cited were free health care "in perpetuity," which he said was highly motivational to black and Hispanic voters as well as for voters making $25,000 to $35,000 a year.” Doesn’t this sound like the same groups Romney denigrated during the campaign?  You know, the 47 percent of Americans who are moochers, misfits and bums who don’t take responsibilities for their own lives.  That’s Republican code for “blacks” and “illegal Hispanic immigrants.” This is but one more example of the underlying racism and bigotry which have become mainstays of Republican “values.”  Of course, if Romney had won, that same phone call to his donor fat cats would have confirmed that they voted for him because of his promised “gifts” of lower taxes on the rich, repealing  Obamacare and eliminating regulations so corporations can reap bigger profits by screwing middle class Americans.

On this Veterans Day, it’s appropriate to discuss how Americans feel about our men and women who wear or have worn the uniform of the United States.  Following 9/11, Bush’s immediate invasion of Afghanistan, which has now dragged on to be the longest war in our history, his unjustifiable invasion of Iraq which cost us too many American lives and enormous amounts of borrowed money, our military has been elevated to some kind of Godlike status.  We gush all over our men and women in uniform who have all become automatic “heroes” and we all feel smug and full of ourselves because we are “honoring” them.  Let’s rewind back to Vietnam.  I have a dear friend who fought in that war earning several medals including two purple hearts.   He tells of returning to the U.S. where his fellow Americans spat on him and called him obscene names as he walked through the airport.   Americans have short memory spans so now returning soldiers are thanked when they walk through airports and I’m sure a lot of those who hated our soldiers then are waving flags at Veterans Day parades now.   Of course we had the draft in the Vietnam era so a lot more Americans had some stake in the war because a loved one or friend fought or died there.  Now Americans are like a lot of beer-bloated, face-painted football fans cheering on their military team but God forbid one of their kids should be down on the mud-soaked field.   It eases our collective conscious to say how much we love our military.  But let’s remember ALL of them on this Veterans Day not only World War 2 veterans who  clearly fought to preserve our liberty, but also all our fine young people have been used to do our politicians’ dirty work ever since.  They have done so with honor and commitment and deserve all the praise they get.  And for the record, I am a veteran and very proud of it.

Whatever happened to Mitt Romney?  I know, I know, you are asking which Mitt Romney:  The one who passed a law as Governor of Massachusetts requiring people to purchase health insurance and when it morphed into Obamacare he denounced it?  Or the one who was a devout, severe conservative who transformed himself into a center-rightist a couple weeks before election day?  Or maybe the world class liar who, among other whoppers, told his cheering crowds in Ohio that Jeep was moving all it’s production to China which, of course, was a big “liar-liar pants on fire?”  Whichever Romney du jour you preferred, the American public has relegated him, as they say, to the dustbin of history.  If Romney has any legacy at all, it is as an ambitious, sleazy opportunist who wanted to realize his American dream of becoming President of the United States. Some future playwright my use him as a tragic figure in theatre, a kind of Willie Loman of politics.   The every-politician who is willing to do anything, believe anything  or say anything to reach his prize and failed.  As Aristotle might put it, his misfortune was not brought about by vice or depravity, “but some error or frailty.”  Romney will join George W. Bush as a pariah for the now and future Republican far right to completely ignore.  Romney can’t go back into congress like Paul Ryan and begin a 2016 Presidential campaign.  Of course, Romney doesn’t have to worry.  He is 65 and can collect Social Security and Medicare because he and the Republicans didn’t destroy it.

We have reached the final day of reckoning.  Today Americans vote not for a man to become President but to determine if our country will continue its dangerous slide to the right.  Since Regan, who declared war on government, Republicans have been shifting America to the political right culminating in the disastrous George W. Bush presidency which brought the nation to the brink of ruin.  Let’s look at just a few of the Republican policies that have nearly destroyed us:  Bush’s far right neo-cons--Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz--pushed him into an unnecessary war that the Washington Post estimates has cost us $3 trillion.  Note that Bush borrowed most of this money which contributed immensely to the deficit.  Trickle-down economics—giving enormous tax breaks to the rich which supposedly would “trickle down” and produce investment to spur the economy and create jobs—does not work as has been discredited by nearly all economists.   Eliminate regulations and the market will resolve all problems itself.  This Republican article of faith allowed the banks to run wild, rake in enormous profits for themselves and came close to destroying the world’s economic system.   There are more examples, such as dismantling Social Security and Medicare, but these will do.  Romney has clearly indicated he will continue these policies.  Unfortunately, many Americans are either hopelessly naïve or incredibly stupid and will vote Republican because they oppose gay marriage or hate black people.

Whether you like President Obama or not, you know where he stands and he won’t do anything crazy.  With Romney it’s a crap shoot.  And it is scary. When campaigning in the primaries the Mittster was severely conservative because he needed the support of his party’s extreme right to get the nomination.  In the third debate he swerved so far so fast to the center he certainly surprised me as well as many in his own party and we saw yet another of the many faces of Mitt.  We have heard the question, “Who is the real Mitt Romney?” since the beginning of this campaign and on the eve of the election, we still don’t have an answer.  What is truly frightening is that he is such a liar and so opportunistic now, do you really think he will suddenly change if he gets elected?  A lot of people will be calling in their markers.  The Tea Partisti and the neo-cons have not gone away and if Romney wins they’ll push him to the far right and you can bet the neo-cons will pull out the same old policies they foisted on George W. Bush.  That’s why a President Romney is dangerous.  Romney has a track record of going whichever way the wind is blowing.  When the neo-cons start manipulating him as they did Bush, we could be headed for big trouble.  Do your remember the scenario of a middle east country with a ruler we didn’t like who was developing “weapons of mass destruction” but claiming the nuclear program was peaceful.  Mix that with a President who wants a bigger defense budget and believes we are supposed to lead the world and you have a very frightening mixture.  I think America would be better off going with Shakespeare on this one and “rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of?"

If you really need a reason why Mitt Romney should not be President of the United States, try this one:  He is a despicable, opportunist, two-faced liar.  How can you trust a man with the most important job in the world who is a shameless liar and has changed his position on issues so many times nobody can be sure where he stands on anything? When it comes to the Mittster’s flip-flopping, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg made that clear:  “In the past he has taken sensible positions on immigration, illegal guns, abortion rights and health care — but he has reversed course on all of them, and is even running against the very health care model he signed into law in Massachusetts,” Bloomberg said. When it comes to lying, yes Obama and Biden have had their share, but let’s look at Politifact’s finding. (By the way Politifact is generally considered right-leaning.) Obama/Biden’s statements were found True and Mostly True 45 percent of the time.  Romney/Ryan were found to be honest only 29.1 percent.  When it comes to the lying categories of False, Mostly False and Pants on Fire (really bad), Romney/Ryan were lying 43.9 percent of the time compared with Obama/Biden 28.8 percent.  Now get this: Romney/Ryan had four times as many Pants on Fire lies than Obama/Biden and the Mittster alone has well over half of all Pants on Fire, more than all the other candidates combined!  You wouldn’t even buy a used car from a shyster like Romney, why the hell would you elect him President?

Well, at least the Republicans haven’t blamed Hurricane Sandy on Obama.  I’m sure they will come up with something hurricane-related to blame on him in the next few days.  They say everything that has happened since his election—recession, unemployment, gas prices, house foreclosures—are all his fault.  Does anyone remember George W. Bush?  Of course Republicans are in denial that he ever existed, got us into two disastrous wars, turned a budget surplus into a humongous deficit, let the financial industry run rampant and nearly destroy the American and global economy. But Republicans have their own kind of logic.  It involves ignoring their own history, pretending their failed trickle-down policies actually work (which they don’t), never acknowledge they caused a lot of problems though obstructionism, and truth has no relevance in the pursuit of power.  You’ve heard the latest Romney lie that Jeep is moving all its production to China.  Even after the lie was exposed the Republicans kept running the TV ad.  It’s unfortunate that Sandy arrived at election time.  Hopefully we can avoid another disaster.  Sandy’s mess can probably be cleaned up in a couple months.  If Romney is elected the mess he will create will take a generation to fix.  Remember what P.J. O’Rourke said, “The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then get elected and prove it.”

We all know that life is not fair. But one of history’s greatest inequities would be Mitt Romney becoming President of the United States.  Whether Republicans will admit it or not, Obama’s policies have begun to take effect and the economy is turning for the better—slowly, indeed, but turning. Most economists agree that whoever becomes President, things will improve.  So if Romney becomes President, Americans will see a brighter picture and he will claim credit for fixing the economy although no credit will be due.  An example of this is Romney’s spurious statement that he will create 12 million jobs in the next four years.  Economic forecasters have long predicted that 12 million jobs will be created over the next four years no matter who is President.  Romney knows this, but he is already claiming that his plan (whatever that is) will be the reason for those 12 million new jobs, which it won’t be.  Romney has already made the outrageous claim that his election alone will produce a wave of optimism because of what he will do, although no one is really sure what that is.  I would venture that Obama’s reelection would also greatly bolster the American spirit if for no other reason than this dreadful election campaign will be over and we can get on with our collective lives.  The Republicans caused the mess and then obstructed every attempt Obama made to correct their mistakes.  Rewarding them with a Romney victory would be a horrible mistake.

Dear God,

The Republicans are at it again.  In addition to blaming their bigotry on You, now they’re saying You’re the one causing women to get raped. "I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen," according to Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock. I really find that hard to believe. I realize that Your Bible isn’t precisely clear on rape like in Deuteronomy where if a woman was raped in the city both the raper and rapee were stoned to death but if it happened in the country they just wasted the guy. Another prominent Republican, Paul Ryan said his position is that “the method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life.”  You see he wouldn’t allow a women to get an abortion even in the case of rape or incest (which I know you are against, Leviticus 18:6). So, according to Mourdock, if a woman gets raped You wanted it to happen and then, according to Ryan You are adamantly against abortion no matter how conception took place.  Oh I forgot to mention Missouri Senate candidate Republican Rep. Todd Akin who said women subjected to "legitimate rape" (presumably sanctioned by You) get pregnant only because their anti-rape conception system failed.  Kind of like getting pregnant by rape is their fault. It seems the Republicans’ attitude towards women in just about everything is, oh just screw ‘em.  Excuse the pun. I do hope You get through this Presidential Election with Your reputation intact.

Your friend,

Bill

Oh poor Mitty Boo Boo.  That bad old Mr. Obama was attacking him and he didn’t like it.  “Attacking me is not an agenda,” Mitty Boo Boo complained more than once during the last performance of the Presidential Debate Show.  Of course, Mitty Boo Boo would never think of being so nasty as to attack Mr. Obama.  Oh no.  As you can see I am sparing you a rehash of all the lies Romney told which have been factchecked to death.   At several points in the “debate” I heard Romney repeating the same things the President had just said, essentially agreeing with him.  Romney’s pattern seemed to be he would do the same things the President is actually doing only he would somehow do them more, tougher and better.  Like he would have started sanctions against Iran sooner and would make them tougher.  Of course, since he was not the President, he did not actually have to deal with the problem so he can say “would have,” “could have” all he wants. Romney agreed with Obama that America has to work with China economically and politically except that Romney would declare China a “currency manipulator” on day one which hardly seems like a good start for working with another country.  If you look back at all the debates what came out of them?  Nothing substantial.  They were the same old stump speeches woven into so-called debates but all anybody remembers is that Romney came on strong in the first debate and Obama looked like he was suffering from constipation. At least the third Presidential Debate gave us one thing to be thankful for.  It was the last one.

Sideblog:  Romney won the lapel pin issue.  His American flag pin was bigger than Obama’s.

There is a very specific reason why Mitt Romney keeps changing his position on just about every issue. He’s a career businessman.  Businessmen exist for one reason: to make money.  You can’t make money by never modifying your product or updating your service.  Right now the Mittster is adamant that he wants to create jobs in America, but when it was advantageous to him to send American jobs overseas that’s what he did.  For anyone who has spent years in business (and I have) particularly in sales, you learn very quickly that you have to offer a product the clients want to buy.  You may have a product that would be better for the clients but if they don’t want to buy it, they won’t.  For example, when the Mittster was running in the primaries, his main client was the extreme right wing Tea Party so he bragged about being “severely conservative.” It worked. With their backing he got the nomination. Now that he has it, and 75 per cent of the American public think the Tea Partisti are nuts, he has new clients—the entire voting public—so he has to modify his product to appeal to them.  Remember the guy who hated Obamacare so much that he would repeal it his first day in office?  Well, he now says some aspects of it are great and he would keep them.  Could it be that those aspects are products his new clients would like to buy?  Oh, remember the Romney that hated regulations because they cripple business?  He has been replaced by the Romney who thinks some regulations are necessary.  And oh, remember the Romney who slimed 47 per cent of the American public and declared he did not care about them.  At that moment his customers were fat cat supporters.  Now the new, improved Romney says, "My campaign is about the 100 percent of America, and I'm concerned about them.”  Of course, the customers now include the scruffy 47 per cent.  The question for Americans now is:  Would you buy something from this man when you are not sure exactly what he’s selling?

Right after the second Presidential debate women became the demographic target du jour for both parties.  Just think, if you were a black, Hispanic, evangelical lesbian you would be constantly bombarded with solicitations aimed at the category vote every day.  I found it somewhat ridiculous that Romney’s idea of proof that he supports women’s issues is that he appointed women to his cabinet in Massachusetts. Wow!  Millions of women are paid less than men for the same job, they’re worried about their health care, their right to choose, right to obtain contraceptives, victims of abuse and Mitt Romney appoints women to his cabinet.  Did you need more proof that he cares for women than that? He claimed he intentionally solicited names of qualified women which produced the now famous “binders.”  Chalk up another lie to Romney.  Prominent women’s groups in Massachusetts had already compiled the binders to give to whoever became governor.  He did not solicit them they were given to him.  He put women in his cabinet because he already knew he was going to run for President and it would look good.   His popularity in Massachusetts plummeted in his last year because voters felt he was spending too much time out of state preparing his Presidential run.   In case you forgot, here is the actual debate question:  “In what new ways do you intend to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females making only 72 percent of what their male counterparts earn?” Romney replied he appointed women to his cabinet in Massachusetts.  Obama replied that the first bill he signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Play Act which extended the statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay lawsuit regarding pay discrimination. You figure it out.

If Mitt Romney had gone to high school with me, he would have been called a “snot.”  Snots were the kids who always considered themselves better than everyone else. We also had our ”nerds” but we called them “brains” because, although they might be a bit awkward socially, they were really smart and we admired them because at that time getting good grades in high school was very important to us and our parents.  But the snots, sometimes referred to a “stuck ups,” were universally disliked.  That’s the Mittster’s problem.  He is just not a likable guy.  He really does think he is better than everybody else and that’s the way he comes across. You have heard him defending his offshore bank accounts and bragging about how successful he was in business.  But does he really have to ram it down our throats?  “I’m not going to apologize for being successful,” he says, but does he have to consider everyone who has not attained his millions a failure?  When he labeled the famous 47 percent of Americans moochers who don’t take responsibility for their lives, does anyone doubt that he really meant that?  Of course he did.  The spin artists blow it off and say well he was talking in private so that doesn’t count.  Of course it does.  When speaking to your snotty club members in private that’s when you say exactly what you mean.  Once a snot, always a snot.

Welcome to the Second Presidential Debate pre-game show with Harry and Clyde:

Harry:  Well, excitement has been mounting for the second meeting of the series between Romney and Obama.

Clyde:  Right, Harry.  The Obama fans are hoping their guy can make up for his lack-luster performance in their first outing.

Harry: And the Romney side hopes he can keep up his continuous talking stream regardless of what he says just as long as he keeps talking.

Clyde:  But you know, Harry, it really doesn’t matter what anybody says during these debates because most of it isn’t even true.  What really matters is the performance.  You know, how did he conduct himself, was he too aggressive or not aggressive enough.

Harry; Yeah we saw that in the one game series between Biden and Ryan.

Clyde:  Ryan won that one on number of lies and how many swallows of water he took while Biden clearly led in smirks, laughs, interruptions and eye rolls. You know, the AP scored 92 smiles for Biden which could be a debate record.

Harry: Well, the scoring could go any way tonight since the playing field layout has been changed.

Clyde: Right, it’s town hall rules tonight. And we’ll be right there to explain it to you after it’s over since you probably will miss a lot by concentrating on how the players look and behave rather that what they say.

Harry:  Right they’ve said it all before anyway but you still need pundits to explain it to you in case you didn't get it the first 300 times. 

Clyde: We’ll see you tonight at the event.

 

Harry:  Wait a minute, aren’t the Yankees and Tigers playing tonight

Well, it looks like the miserable people in America are going to decide the Presidential Election.  All we have heard during this campaign is how miserable Americans are.  The news media and politicians, left and right, have gone on endlessly about people who lost their jobs, can’t find a job, have an upside down mortgage, got evicted, have a mountain of debt, have no health insurance… Both parties have been courting these miserable people.  According to the Republicans, everybody in America is miserable and it is all Obama’s fault so if you elect them they will fix all Obama’s mistakes and put you out of your misery.  According to the Democrats a lot of people in the United States are, in fact, miserable but Obama’s policies are turning the situation around so re-elect them and you will no longer be miserable.  This presents a somewhat unique problem for Romney because most of les miserables are in the 47 percent he doesn’t give a shit about but now he says he really does care and wants to make them less miserables.  But to counter this, the non-miserables who have tons of money want to elect Romney so they can continue to be non-miserable with even more money and screw the miserables.  I feel kind of lost because I am not miserable and I don’t have tons of money so nobody cares about me.  I used to think I was middle class, but I can’t be.  The politicians keep telling us the middle class is miserable, but since I’m not miserable, I can’t be middle class. I wonder just how many forgotten people like me there are out there? 

Good news and bad news.  My PET/CT scan and yesterday’s endoscopic ultrasound confirmed the cancer is gone.  Obviously, that makes me very happy.  But the bad news is, now that I will be around hopefully for several more years I will contribute to the increase in health care costs, worsen the deficit and become a burden on society.  I now have to live with the Republican guilt trip they have laid on us seniors for years and have really ratcheted it up during this election cycle.  You know the pitch, we seniors suck up too much government money with our expectations that we collect the Social Security we paid for, we like Medicare but we cost the government too much and we are screwing up our grandchildren’s future.  Since I have been personally and totally immersed in the health care system for most of this year I think I can speak with some authority.  First, Medicare is good and it works.  I know the Republicans will go ballistic on this point, but we would be far better off with a single-payer government-run health insurance system.  Before the right wing dings start screaming, universal health care does not equate to socialism.  Every democracy but ours has it.  Second, there are drastic flaws in Medicare which I have seen firsthand but they can all be fixed without turning it over the insurance industry.  I have lived in countries that have universal health care and the insurance companies still make tons of money. The Republicans say the richest country in the world can’t afford to provide health care for its citizens.  The truth is they don’t want to provide health care for all Americans (Mitt can tell you how many freeloaders we have).  I suppose it would make Paul Ryan happy if people like me just died and stopped wasting taxpayers’ money.

There is a scene in the 2006 Broadway play "The Lieutenant of Inishmore" where two characters are hacking up corpses to render them unrecognizable.  The stage is strewn with dismembered body parts and totally spattered with blood.  One of the characters screams in desperation and despair, "Will this never end!?" This strikes me as an appropriate metaphor for our current presidential election campaign.  Not only does it seem like it will never end, we have also hacked decency, honesty and civility in political discourse beyond recognition. Outright lying has become the norm for both parties with Romney-Ryan holding a significant edge in that department (see last week’s Time cover story).  We all know that candidates’ promises are basically meaningless since they serve only to get elected not as a basis for actual policy making.  This is where I have my biggest problem with Romney.  He keeps saying “I know how to…”  He makes all these assertions that he can fix everything then offers the same “solutions” Republicans have been spouting for years: lower taxes, less regulation, cut spending, all of which will suddenly create jobs and lower the deficit.  They haven’t and they won’t.   Regarding Obama, the Republicans will never admit that they have been a big part of the problem for the last four years.  Yes, Bush and company actually did create the mess, but they won’t admit it. The day Obama took office they swore they would not cooperate with his Administration which has been the major reason our government doesn’t get anything done.  These are facts.  But Republicans have a way of dealing with real facts. Take a drop in unemployment, they just pull a Jack Welch and say Obama’s government falsified them.  Even some prominent Republicans balked at that, so maybe there is hope.  But I doubt it.

This election does present a really difficult choice.  If you are a radical religious rightist you have to decide between a candidate who is pro-choice on abortion and believes women should have the right to control their own health decisions and one who was pro-choice but has decided he is now pro-life and if women become pregnant through rape or incest, well, that’s really no different than any other insemination so it’s just too bad. Let’s not even get into gay marriage. Then if you also happen to be a bigot, you are faced with the additional dilemma of choosing between a Mormon and a black man.  Which do you hate the most?  Politics really does get difficult doesn’t it? What if you are an independent who is totally fed up with the crap being flung around by both parties?  Do you trust Romney who keeps saying “I know how to… (fill in the blank)” He’s claiming that he knows how to do just about anything to correct everything but since he has not done anything on the national or international scene (Massachusetts is not the United States--it does not have a foreign policy) how can you believe that he can do all he says, especially when his position changes according to what day it is and his audience.  Obama claims that his policies are working and will bring us salvation given enough time and that our wealthy elite exists solely for the purpose of shitting all over the middle class while being coddled by the Republicans with huge tax cuts.  You will notice I have spared you more commentary on last night’s debate.  Romney came across as more energetic, articulate and well prepared.  Obama looked like he would have rather been any place but where he was.  Both of them said nothing we have not heard before.  As one commentator said today, last night’s debate probably ensured that there will be fewer viewers for the next one.

Some of you may remember I am also running for president.  I was unanimously nominated by all six delegates to my convention at the Palace Saloon. We have all heard Romney declare that he knows how to create jobs, get Republicans and Democrats to work together (fat chance), and do anything to get us on the right track.  And Obama claims he will be the hero of the middle class and just needs more time to fix the economy and keep the Republicans from cancelling grandma’s Social Security and Medicare.  Now here’s my platform.  It is guaranteed to fix our country no matter what your party affiliation.  First, I will establish term limits for all congressmen so they will not spend their entire lives pandering to private interests for money so they can keep getting reelected.  Second, I will get rid of the Electoral College so everybody’s votes will really count not just those in the “battleground states” (those with a lot of electoral votes).  Third, I will require all states to establish an independent commission to draw honest congressional district lines so state legislatures cannot blatantly stack the deck in their party’s favor.  Fourth, all Congressmen will participate in Social Security and Medicare just like every other American.  While in office, their Social Security and Medicare deductions will count toward their eligibility for benefits at age 67 which makes sense because after their term limit they will have to go get another job.  While in office they will participate in a 401k which they can also take with them to their next job.  This platform will, undoubtedly, fix many of the flaws in our system and hopefully get our politicians to think more about what’s right for our country rather than how they can keep themselves and their party in power and line their own pockets.  The Republicans and Democrats will never adopt this platform of course because it’s not in their own selfish interests.  You notice I was not invited to participate in the debates.