LeBron James brings me joy. It's as if the basketball gods got together one day, and declared, "We shall combine Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson...throw in a dash of Dr. J, Charles Barkley, and....mmmm....we'll give him the speed of Michael Vick." I watch every Cavs game I can. It is like watching history happen, before it happens.
Why should you care? Because LIFE GOES ON.
Repeat after me.
Life...goes....on.
I do not know many of the people who send me email these days. They send me all sorts of questions, like, "what's the deal with your website's numbers?" Or, "I've got a good one for you from Auglaize County." They get to me via this website.
http://ohvotesuppression.blogspot.com/
This is not my website. I applauded its inception when I was invited to contribute. I got on here because before the election, I was just as worried as anyone about potential vote fraud in Ohio. I was poised and ready to report. I was a Kerry challenger on election day in Cleveland, committed that Florida 2000 would not happen in my backyard.
Then, we lost. Repeat. We lost. I cried a little...looked at the numbers, which I know well from 15 years in Ohio politics. Accepted the inevitable. Rubbed my forehead. Got drunk a lot. Didn't shave for a week.
Then the basketball season started. Cue Lebron. Life got better.
In Ukraine, there is video footage of ballots stuffed into a box, folded in stacks of 20, all marked with the same pen. Footage of destroyed ballots. Footage of people being beaten. I recognize this, because I once saw it all, first hand, as an election observer in a different dictatorial former soviet republic, and it broke my heart when no one cared enough to protest that one. My heart is warmed by the pictures out of Ukraine of outraged citizens not taking it anymore.
The US is not Ukraine (where I also worked once). Ohio's election system is dysfunctional, but none of it is even in the same universe as Ukraine. I am not crawling through the provisional ballot numbers in Cuyahoga County with my green eyeshades. I am not heartbroken by the fact that Americans are not in the streets.
What does break my heart is Americans deeming themselves competent to compare Kiev to Cleveland, when they have been to neither. My heart is broken by the absurdity of Democrats, yes, Democrats, donating money to ANOTHER POLITICAL PARTY to pay for a recount for silly candidates who got less than one vote per precinct. My heart breaks for my party as I watch it gleefully hurl itself over a cliff by entertaining the notion that Howard Dean, who LOST, over and over, should be chairman of the party.
This post will likely get me off of this blog's contributor list, which is fine. Hell it might even be censored before anyone sees it...which won't be the first time a liberal blog has censored me....you probably want to read this for background.
It's time to breathe again, folks. We have a political party on the brink of electoral oblivion, and we have to fix it. Yes, we also have a messy election system that needs fixing, too. We can do both. Reality must be accepted first.
In the meantime, I remind everyone that the Cavs play Phoenix tomorrow night. Watch. It is infinitely more entertaining Cleveland-watching than hitting the refresh button at the Cuyahoga Board of Elections website.
And Lebron had a sub par night last night, which means he will bounce back big time tomorrow. Guaranteed.