Friday, November 5, 2010

A few days after the election

The greatest and most satisfying thing about the mid-term election isn’t who won or lost, but that it is finally over.

Perhaps the worst thing about elections is having to endure the endless campaign ads on radio and television. Living near the state line, if you watch the local TV stations, you have to contend with double the ads. While Texas ads can be nasty, I think those from Oklahoma contain the most mud, unsubstantiated accusations and cleverly worded lies. The absolute nastiest ads are reserved for the night before the election. Everyone’s opponent is the worst kind of no account, low down bed-wetting, embezzling scoundrel. The guy paying for the ad; however, is a good guy, “one of us,” a family man and veteran who will fight for jobs and less government spending—unless he’s for more spending. Then, he’s for improving education, a better life for the poor, more parks, bike paths, going green, and the usual politician’s proposals for wringing more money out of the taxpayer to blow on schemes to get people to vote for him.

Nearly all the candidates say that, unlike their opponents, they want to discuss the issues. They repeatedly say the word “issues”, but none of them ever say anything about any issue that they can be pinned down on later. They say that they are “for this” and will “fight for that,” but never say precisely how they will do any of these things. I suppose the first thing they learn from Politics for Dummies is to never answer a question directly, be evasive; ignore all questions and instead answer a question that hasn’t been asked—one they know the answer to.

The outcome of this election wasn’t too much of a surprise. The polls predicted it pretty well. The GOP picked up over 60 seats in the house, which gives them not only control of the House, the ability to prevent any more of Obama’s socialist schemes from getting off the ground. The exact number still isn’t known. There are precincts in certain states where ballot boxes, in election after election, are discovered in the trunks of Democrat election judges’ cars and in their basements. Until the arguments over whether or not to count the fraudulent ballots are decided, no definitive total can be accurately tabulated.

The Democrats, as expected, kept control of the Senate, but without the House, they can’t get any of their or Obama’s legislation enacted. Gridlock is not always a bad situation. How bad could it be if a few thousand pages of new laws are not passed in the next couple of years? John Boehner (R-Ohio) will become Speaker of the House, and Nancy Pelosi will have to surrender her personal government jet and go back to her broomstick.

The president, disappointed as he surely must be with the turn of events, has to console himself with a junket to India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan. “The primary purpose is to take a bunch of U.S. companies and open up markets so that we can sell in Asia, in some of the fastest-growing markets in the world, and we can create jobs here in the United States of America,” Obama said Thursday (Nov. 4). I think the companies could handle that job better themselves and at considerably less cost to taxpayers, but if it gets him out of town for yet another vacation this year, some see it as a plus--despite the millions it will cost for he and his entourage.

Too bad the incoming office holders won’t take office until the first of the year. That leaves two months that the bitter outgoing Democrats can wreak more havoc on the country before starting their nice retirement at taxpayer’s expense. But on the bright side, there won’t be any more annoying campaign ads on TV for the next couple of years.