It's election day...finally! I voted at the local High School at around 10:30 AM. The place was packed. There were no parking spaces left in the huge parking lot, I had to park on the grass. This is a small town and yet there had to be 200 people in the gym with me, along with dozens of local folks serving as election officials. I voted, then drove 5 miles to someone's house to do a massage.

Voting is a funny thing. I have voted in every national election since I was 18, 30 years ago. I have seen my vote count as one of the ten write-ins that elected Bernie sanders to his first term as mayor of Burlington, VT, so I know that voting can matter.

I have also seen the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections stolen, with nary a word in the corporate press about it.

Voting is funny because it is active participation in a system which I know can be corrupt, and more deeply it is participation in a binary system which is deeply flawed. Generally, in the US, whoever has the most money for PR tends to do best in the election. This is not always the case, but at the national level it definitely takes a fortune to campaign for office. Between corporate lobbyists and monied special interests, it's usually pretty difficult for the "little person" to make a difference, and yet Obama has raised over $600 million mostly in the form of small donations from individuals. This shows how hungry people are for the change Obama represents.

I am not naive enough to believe that Obama will or even can make all of the changes that I think are needed. He has corporate ties. He has said he will escalate the war in Afghanistan. He voted in favor of legislation that excused the Bush administration and some huge telecom companies from accountability for illegally wiretapping phones and reading email of Americans. He is in favor of building new nuclear power plants. These are positions which I disagree with 100%.

Obama is clearly an intelligent educated man. He appears to be educable and interested in learning; a far cry from the current occupant of the white house. He also speaks (intelligently!) as an advocate for the so-called middle class with regards to economics, health care, education, and food security.

Like McCain Obama has not mentioned the poor, the homeless, the utterly disenfranchised in the US. I tell myself he has done this for political reasons, but that he does care about all the people. I hope that's true.

Montana has traditionally been a heavily Republican state. Now, however, there are two democratic Senators and a Democratic Governor. The polls have determined that Montana could go either way in the presidential race. we shall see tonight!

If you haven't listened to my election episode on "Stories from the Road" you can go to the show's archive page and listen to the show and the accompanying musical selection. I think you may find it enjoyable and affirming.

I'm All For An Auto Industry Bailout!

The solution is obvious. Auto makers get subsidized only if they agree to dedicate themselves to high efficiency vehicles. They've had designs and prototypes for decades which they have suppressed because of their partnership with oil companies...but this has to end. Now.

If any of the Big 3 will get right on the envirofriendly car, they get help. If they say no...let them fail, and let someone else step up to the plate, get the subsidy, and make the envirofriendly vehicles.

Seems like a no-brainer to me.

If you like this idea, share it...get some buzz going...maybe we can make it happen!

Hard to believe I posted last 6 days ago. It's been a good week for me personally. Things are working out well for me here. I accepted a 20 hour a week as an on-call crisis stabilization worker, starting next week. I did an afternoon of chair massage today. It looks like I will be offering an Elements of Magic class, and also doing some one on one teaching of the craft. I'm also going to be doing some PR for a local musician. I have a diverse palate. I enjoy doing different kinds of things. It keeps me engaged, interested.

I continue to read about and discuss the current political...what to call it...bizarro world comic-like events. Here are a couple of things I've posted recently on the NYTimes site and the Washington Post site.
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If McCain "wins" it will be due to election rigging and voter suppression, both of which the GOP is extensively involved in.

1. It has been reported in West Virginia last week during early voting that election machines were switching votes from Obama to McCain. This also happened in Ohio in 2004.

2. The GOP continues to try (and in many cases succeed!) to disenfranchise especially minority (Democratic) voters across the country. They tried it here in Montana but were stopped by a Republican judge who was appalled at the GOP's blatant efforts to derail democracy in the 2008 presidential election.

If McCain wins through fraud, then a lot of people are going to be pissed off. We've had the last two elections stolen so that the corrupt idiot and his gang of criminals could occupy the White House. I think Americans have had enough.

If McCain wins, through fraud, and people are pissed off enough, some people may choose to take to the streets. Why wouldn't they??

When the election was rigged in Ukraine and people took to the streets, they were praised by the US press, by Bush even, as standing up for democracy. So if our election is stolen, again, why shouldn't we stand up for democracy, take to the streets, and refuse to accept the next criminal regime?

I do not advocate violence. I advocate liberation.
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The answer is a resounding "No!" (to more nuclear power) for a multitude of reasons. Safety is the first issue. There is no such thing as a safe nuclear power plant, there are only plants which haven't YET had an accident. Included in this issue is that of nuclear waste, which cannot be safely disposed of. Economics is second. They are NOT cheap, they always run way over estimated cost, and nuclear power is yet further centralization of power generation and further profiteering by large corporations at the expense of the people, and the earth. We need to decentralize. Each town or even each building can produce much of it's own electricity through wind, solar, hydrogen. And we have barely scratched the surface in terms of what we can do by being more energy efficient. Third reason...by turning our focus to renewable energy we will create more jobs than nuclear power ever could, both in terms of R&D and in terms of implementation.

The arguments in favor of nuclear power are short sighted and based in an economic model which disrespects life, commodifying life and reducing everything to it's monetary value. Life is sacred. It is immoral to commodify life. A society which is powered by immorality, where can that lead? Look around and we see it. Divisiveness, politicians who steal elections and lie, corporate control of government, a military industrial complex run completely amok, and the list goes on.

We as a nation need to invest in renewable energy or we will make ourselves extinct.
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Sarah Palin...well I've never met her so I am not going to make a personal assessment, but from what I've seen of her on TV, and what I've read both about her and quoting her, she seems to me like a spokesmodel. She's Vanna White. I would be thrilled to see her on a game show. I bet she'd be great at it too! She's sparkly and kind of cute in her affectations. But a heartbeat away from the presidency? Noooo, not a good idea.

I just read piece by Kathleen Parker at the Washington Post. Click to see it.

I wrote her a response:

Kathleen, to what do you attribute blind adherence to ideology when reality blatantly proves the ideology is a flawed abstraction? It's a real question, I am interested to know your thoughts.

It can't be stupidity, one cannot generalize such a characteristic to as large a group as the current neo-con Republicans.

I can't generalize mindless greed or spiritual bankruptcy to such a large group either, and yet I don't know how else to explain to myself what I've seen happening in this country especially the last 8 years. I know the military industrial complex took a larger role under LBJ, and has been expanding itself ever since, with the aid of government, all bent on security and profit. I know that the foundation for this corporate takeover has been in the works for decades.

I have a pretty well informed world-view for an American. I've traveled, I've spent chunks of time in other countries, and I've traveled extensively in North America. I see that most people are kind and want to be kind, even when they don't have much. I saw people in New Orleans in 2005-2006 show such compassion and wisdom as I had never seen before. I have also seen people be mean, I have to say mostly I have seen police be mean in crowd situations, and I have seen a lot of mean spiritedness on the blogs coming from the right. For the most part my impression of humanity is that humans are prone to a foolish shortsightedness, but they mean well most of the time...except for those "in power" who, for the most part, enrich their friends, themselves of course, and carry out ideological agendas that always include cruelty; killing people and Earth in business transactions, truly psychopathic behavior. Here's a link to a paper I wrote on the topic. http://www.healingmagic.org/articles/narcissism.pdf

Anyway, what do you really think is going on in this country? Maybe that can be your next column.