Keep the Change (Pt. II)

Okay, the post in August was a trifle melodramatic. I can’t give “spoilers” because this is an intense family problem. My favorite troll posted a comment that made it appear that he was drunk, and a dare was involved; I won't take you up, because there is some intense personal business involved here that doesn't lend itself to the Internet. Folks have asked if a state agency can investigate. The GBI only investigates at the invitation of the local authotities, i.e. the sheriff's department. They refuse to invesitgate. Nothing is being done, except for trolls saying I should sober up. I tend to ignore such jibes as desperate, juvenile attempts to attract attention. I welcome the BS, as long as it’s reasonably clean. Of course nobody reads this column, except for what the Sitemeter world map betrays. South America through Europe to Indonesia, Australia, and all points in between. I am flattered beyond belief by my constant readers.

I am not going to offer a concise explanation of what happened to me in August. Something happened, and it is not explained by insomnia, the blunt edges of my desk, or half a cup of coffee. If you want to be an amateur forensics person, go back to the posted photo, look at the angle of the facial lacerations and bruises, and tell me this was somehow self-inflicted. I am not in the habit of bashing my head against the furniture, then waking up in my wheelchair, upright, with a face full of blood.

I am amazed that no women have excoriated me for saying they are not suited for ground combat; also in the last post...I want the ladies rolling in with the ground-attack aircraft; I can become a feminist like Alan Alda PDQ at that point.

None of this is to the point. The Wall Street crisis is beyond my ken; I invest in gold or real estate. Ayn Rand has a chapter in Atlas Shrugged about “making money”. Today’s investors have not done that; they play paper games with opium, i.e. OPM…Other People’s Money. [Thank you, Governor Palin, for the pronunciation of the acronym.] People who produce make money; those who speculate and play the markets play with the money others have created.

I am not an economist, and not qualified to comment on the current crisis. I live below my means and below most radars, although I’ll doubtless take a hit for the mismanagement and golden parachutes of others. Thanks, guys, I just wanted to buy some propane this winter.

I opened my absentee ballot today. It goes back next week. No secret where my vote lies; I have no choice. Bob Barr has poisoned the well for my Libertarians, and Osama Bamalama will bring this nation down kicking and screaming.

To the crux of the matter: I am of the generation and birthplace that remembers a president named Jimmy Carter. He was my homeboy; I thought he could do no wrong. He ran for president on the platform of being the outsider who would bring change. From the moment he arrived in DC and took the oath of office, he was defeated. The entrenched DC bureaucracy never gave him a gasp of breath, and he ended up with double-digit unemployment, gas-shortage lines at the pumps, a military disaster in Iran, and pleas for us to button our sweaters and persevere.

I cried the night Ronald Reagan displaced my homeboy. It was the last election I ever voted for a Democrat. Thinking back to Watergate, I was sure the world had ended now that Republicans were back in power.

My favorite folk singer, Roy Harper, has a single line in “The Spirit Lives” from his HQ album: “What a young fool I am!” That line resonates across 30+ years.

I seem to recall some rhetoric from Osama Bamalama that this campaign would be above the mudslinging that characterized the Lincoln-McClellan race of 1868. Instead, this has turned uglier, at least on the part of the Democrats. I have cancer, and having that fielded as a tool against Senator McCain and Governor Palin, by Mad How Dean’s brother and PMSNBC, is unspeakable. How about you try to win an election on the merits of your candidate?

Since the Democritters have none, it’s all about another rock ‘n roll song: “Follow Me Down.”