Why I vote Democratic

As a Georgia voter trapped in Hall County, I vote as much a Democratic ticket as possible. Why? Some influence from my mother while watching Nixon/Kennedy debate. She said something like, "We're Democrats because we're poor people. Democrats are for the poor people.' That would be the very start.

Not done. The Democratic Party maintained an office/store front one block from our home. When I walked by, I always read the Kennedy 'Ask not' quote. More reinforcement. Then, always more news on that President until I associated even the Presidential seal as being Kennedy's seal, not a seal of office. Remember I turned 5 in 1960.

The 1963 assassination fixed Kennedy and the Democrats as being the only choice. I had a fist fight with my best friend in 1964 over the Goldwater/Johnson election.

Then, the war, the protests, drugs, and hippies moved me towards my father's world view. By 1972, I voted Republican in my first secret ballot.

By 1980, after taking a few college courses, watching Nixon's treason followed by Ford's pardon, and my first real world job working with a group of men/mechanics, members of the Teamsters Union, I had voted for Carter and found nothing but terror in that actor from Hollywood.

After Reagan, I became a solid Democrat for economic reasons, an ever increasing awareness of my social obligations as a humble member of the working class.

By 1990, I knew my place in the world. I had grown up as a son of a disabled Korean War veteran and the oldest male child of four children. My parents had been forced to feed me with food stamps and the free cheese package. At my birth, we lived in public housing. Later, in a shoddy home bought through the VA programs, bill collectors hounded us on Saturday mornings. Once, we had our power cut off while my parents were at work. A wonderful way to act. As teenager, even the money I made in odd jobs went towards emergency bills.

So I knew by 1986 that I would never be an uncouth member of the newly rich shunned by old money.

So I vote for the Party of social programs like food stamps, public housing, rent control, a mild pro-union attitude, Medicare, Medicaid, free public schooling, that Old Age program called Social Security, and the ghosts of the elder Kennedy sons, Jack and Bobby, and my mother's ghost, watching a black and white TV telling me in a Kenndy like speech, 'Democrats are for the poor people, not poor in spirit, nor poor in family, nor even poor in wealth. But poor through exclusion by a system often if not always tilted towards wealth and the many types of power passing sometimes as leadership.

A payment for being ruled?

Oh my head hurts over this one.

Remember that college class you had to take on Philosophy? Painful, wasn't it? So bad, you couldn't even sell the book.

My Little Philosophy Book fell on my head while I was sleeping on my back. Today. Or, maybe yesterday. Damn Dr. Bloom and his literal translations from the original Greek.

Alright.

So maybe Plato/Socrates said there was a payment due to government for being ruled. WTF!

Loss of freedom? Social contract? Taxes? The concept that I owe a debt to a tyrant sucks.

But, and there's always some but, But, isn't the answer to that a way of separating the men from the boys?

There is a debt owed to government for being ruled. I can't tell you what it is. Answer to yourself. Then, apply that to how you've been voting and what you hope will happen because you voted.

Cartoon Fun

Just a little something on Healthcare and Washington. The GOP has been saying, "Let's Start Over!" on healthcare.

Outside of Washington, heathcare doesn't have playground do-overs. If a patient dies, they stay dead. It doesn't matter if the death was from neglect or departmental turf wars. Dead is dead. There's no starting over.

The GOP killed healthcare reform over the past 14 months by doing nothing. So to the GOP:

"You can't have a do-over if you haven't done something!"

And, to the Democrats: Eavesdrop on the message to the Republicans.

In the greatest country in the world, people are dying because insurance companies won't let doctors save lives. Period.