You can't complain if you don't vote? Says who?

I really despise election season.  This year more than in the past, the fear-mongering rhetoric is at all time high.

Some call it racism in disguise but frankly, it's just a plain problem of the two-party system that the tone of negativism is now the only way you can pander to the extreme factions of your party.

But the most hilarious line I see during EVERY election is the old "you can't complain if you don't vote" bullsh!t.  And that's what it is, bullsh!t.

Let's see, where do I start? Um, okay, the 1st Amendment to the Constitution, which protects my freedom of speech by being an American.  It does NOT qualify that with "oh, ONLY if one votes".  Let's stop there since frankly, I don't need any other reasons.

So clearly, by our own Founding Father's wisdom, I CAN complain if I don't vote.  And let's not forget that when they wrote that piece of wisdom, women and minorities weren't considered eligible to vote and they only GOT that Right by what? Oh yeah, complaining when they didn't vote.

Get over it you blowhards, you're only saying this to justify your OWN knowledge that you're likely backing a losing candidate and therefore, by saying it, it lets you rail on for the next two or four years annoying all of your Facebook friends who don't give a sh!t about your politics.

Look in the mirror, will you, you idiots??

This is the thing that gets me about the political rhetoric each and every day and the extremes to which it's gone:

A well-known 'right winger' posted this about Benghazi "Who in the H do these tyrants think they are? Manufacturing a story about a scapegoat video then threatening to criminalize speech?"

It just strikes me funny in that a very valid response should be "the same type of tyrants who manufactured a story about WMD to start a war and who created Homeland Security which opened up the door for our own government to listen in on each and every conversation we have each day without just cause"

Both sides are wrong but neither see it and are only driven by their own extreme ideologies. Somewhere in the middle has to be the majority of us, no? I'm finding it hard each and every day to NOT believe that the true majority lies in the heart of the bell curve but just keeps getting ignored in favor of extreme talking points trying to drive agenda.

You Can't Fix Stupid

Last night, while I was watching the Chicago Bears beat up the Detroit Lions, the third and final Presidential Debate was going on.

Since I early voted that very afternoon, there really is no reason for me to watch and frankly, the BEARS were on, so there was no choice.

I 'second screen' while watching most sports and had Hootsuite wide open.  It was a weird mix of a stream.  33% with political punditry, 33% Monday Night Football and 33% NLCS.  Not long after the debate ended I saw THIS tweet go by from Ann Coulter.

I was stunned.

Look, I'm not one to get hung up on word-policing.  I'm pretty much of the mind that there should never be controls on words and language.  You do not have a 'right' to NOT be offended, like I HAVE the right of free speech.

Further, I really like Ann Coulter and although I see her for what she is, a conservative whip who is there to over-bloviate the right wing agenda, I'm an Independent voter and see merits in both sides of the argument and cast my votes as such when entering the voting booth.

I decided to respond as follows:

But for as much as I've heard how Joe Biden disrespected Paul Ryan in the one and only VP debate and how Barack Obama has been disrespectful to Mitt Romney, from where I sit, there has been a continuous stream, for four years, of disrespect to the office of the President by the right side of the aisle which pales in comparison to anything that has happened in this election season.

Well Ms. Coulter, you've just been pwned by a VERY Special Olympian.  You were classless in your comment last night and when "icons" of the Right decide to degrade themselves by using words like you did, you just give permission to all of your followers to do the same.  Way to raise the level of discourse.  Mr. John Franklin Stephens has taken you to task.

1 week, 1 pound, slow start

7 days into my Weight Watchers diet plan and I'm down 1 pound.  I'm not happy but then again, I know I wasn't as vigilant as I should have been and the Saturday night dinner out at The Clubhouse blew scads of points by my inability to refuse a massive White Chocolate Cheesecake dessert.  Until dessert, I still would have been a pretty good boy.

So frankly, I'm actually pretty happy that I lost one pound, it could have been a gainer week and that would have been disgusting in general.

This week will be a bunch better.  Starting to plan out the dinners so that they are points-friendly and have a breakfast/lunch plan now that at least gets to me 45-50 points remaining for the rest of the day.