WE'RE VOTING FOR PRESIDENT - NOT A KING OR EMPEROR!

Over the last several weeks people have become passionate about the Presidential Election, and in particular, the REPUBLICANS I associate with have become radical.  Oh the KNOW IT ALLS that I know!  (It's good to be passionate though!)

I'm convinced that TRUMP VOTERS are actually HYSTERICS who belong to a CULT.

One of my friends has a woman friend who WATCHES FOX ALL DAY AND NIGHT.  She has been leaving up to three crazy messages an hour about what will happen to us if a DEMOCRAT (KAMALA HARRIS) is elected, predicting CIVIL WAR and WORLD WIDE DOOM. 

I told him BLOCK HER NUMBER!

The DEBATE was so about candidates accusing each other of doing and not doing.

HERE'S A FACT:  Yes, the President of the United States, the best country in the world - and it could be argued the most influential in the world - has POWER.  But it IS NOT UNCHECKED POWER.  (And VICE PRESIDENTS have much less power than Presidents.  We barely hear about them in the media unless they run for the Presidency themselves, so anyone blaming VP Harris for things that went through legislation apparently doesn't know how it all works and should not be running for high office.)

When a candidate talks what they are FOR or NOT FOR, this is a position, a world view, a philosophy of life, an IDEALISM. It does not mean whatever they say they WILL DO will GET DONE!

WE ARE NOT ELECTION A KING OR AN EMPEROR!

A President of the United States DOES NOT (and SHOULD NOT) get to do WHATEVER THEY WANT to us.  No, there's the SENATE and the CONGRESS providing input and otherwise approving or disapproving notions and WE THE PEOPLE GET TO ELECT SENATORS and CONGRESSPEOPLE TOO!

I think most people VOTE FOR THEIR JOBS.

I think we cannot let just ONE ISSUE sway our entire vote.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES!

A DEEP MISTRUST.  (ANXIETY)

AN INABILITY TO MAKE A DECISION WITHOUT PLENTY OF RESEARCH.

AND THEN SOME.

I wish us all luck! 

C 2024  Christine Trzyna

VOTED EARLY ON the NEW COMPUTERIZED MACHINES LIKE THREE MILLION OTHER CALIFORNIANS

My friend and I were headed to an event when I suggested we just go vote on Sunday - a couple days early - on our way. Our minds were made up.  Why not?

Seems to me, last election, I stood in a line for over 8 hours - my dog beside me - and the next day paid the price. I was so dehydrated and hurting from this ridiculousness that I stayed in bed the whole next day aching.  I did, however, meet a woman in line who was in line with me for half of it - until finally a volunteer came down the line saying people who had their mail in vote in hand could just drop it off.   Four damn hours to drop off?!

She said she was the inspiration for Lou Reed's song Sweet Jane. She told me all sorts of things about herself and her relationship with Lou back in the day in New York and of course I loved every minute of it. 

Waiting in lines. 

I hate it.

At some point you think of all the time you already gave over to the effort and stick with it, like you do in a wrong relationship. At least I was in a park where there was shade from the trees and the day was not overly hot or cold. My dog stayed interested in life by watching for squirrels and salivating at the thought of a kill.  But once Sweet Jane left, I was bored and realized I was also hungry.  Why did I vote early in such an excruciating way?  Because I had a dentist appointment on the actual day to vote - with a dentist who often kept people waiting for hours too. ...

This time voting with the new computerized machines was almost effortless.  I walked in with my list of who I wanted to vote for and tapped a computer screen. The paper ballot paper was then inserted and printed and it slid back out so that you could re-read it.  But not to snatch it. The machine then swallowed the ballot and there must have been some place where all that paper wooshed to and was stored but I didn't see it.  My ballot had one of those strange scannable symbol maps (called a QR code) you sometimes see on products in the store or that you can download.  Voters have their own personal ISBN number.  I can be identified with this, via chip, instead of my teeth, need be. ...

These days I'm not too tolerant of people who don't bother to vote.  My attitude is if you vote then you get the right to complain to me.  If you don't vote, I don't want to hear it. 

Voting for locals is actually the most difficult part.  It can be a townie popularity contest.  The amount of information on any of these locals isn't much so you ask your friends who they've had good experiences with and go from there. 

I went for some years without voting myself.  I thought of my not voting as sending a message that "none of the above" candidates interested me.  Eventually I got re-activated. 

Last Presidential Election Bernie had withdrawn his candidacy and so you weren't supposed to write him in and so my vote was "wasted." Four years later, although I don't agree completely with any candidate, I feel myself more inline with his thinking than ever.  Saturday Night Live's parodies and mimicries have kept me laughing about politics in a damn-serious time.

Often, because I TALK TO STRANGERS, I meet more people who are in dire economic circumstances.

If you're reading this in California, you can now REGISTER TO VOTE the same day you do vote.  You can vote at ANY LOCATION (that QR code will put your vote in the right precinct) and you can even vote if you are street homeless.

Please VOTE!



C 2020 Christine Trzyna

FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT WAS NOT A SOCIALIST - WHY IS BERNIE SANDERS?

The news that Bernie Sanders, at 77, has decided to run for President of the United States, and that in a day he had $6 million in campaign funds donated - smaller donations - more voters - reached me this morning.  I was cheered by the news and read around the subject via various news services.  

Lots of Democrats are declaring themselves.  Marianne Williamson, a New Age preacher, declared her self some weeks ago in an eloquent YouTube video I watched.  There are so many candidates that televised debates might be limited to two nights and twenty.  (How the twenty would be determined, I do not know.)

A criticism I heard is that he is "too old,"  (though probably in better health that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was during his campaigns and four terms of Presidency and though probably in better health than John Fitzgerald Kennedy ever was, though much younger.)  The stigma of being a "cripple" /disabled was understood at the time and in both cases the press/media conspired to not show the President in a wheelchair or with a back brace and only in recent years have health revelations been made about JFK.  For those who suffer from pain and dealing with pain management or some other health issue that make them partially or fully disabled, knowing someone struggling also made it to the highest office is inspiring.  Who a Presidential candidate of age or ill health chooses to run as a Running Mate - Vice President is always a question.  One thinks "What if they die?  What if there is an assassination?"

Yet I know of a 98 year old who is still walking three miles a day and others who carry the age of 77 well, while several of my friends over the years have died - of AIDS, breast cancer, leukemia, brain tumor, brain stroke, and massive heart attack, so much younger.

I wish the term Socialist had never been applied to Bernie Sanders. Our only four term President, FDR, instituted so many governmental funded work programs and programs that many people have come to depend on ("The New Deal") including Social Security.  Though he apparently offended members of his wealthy class, I suspect polio gave him new associations and new understanding.  Socialist?  No way. 

Sanders seeks to expand some, invent others.  Let's think New Deal Continued.

Joe Biden would also make a good Democratic candidate, and main stream, not suffering the Socialist stigma, but I'm not sure I could imagine a Sanders-Biden or Biden-Sanders ticket.

I flash upon the last campaign when I was on a bus with passengers that represented the full diversity of Southern California.  When I stated I was for Bernie Sanders a Black woman jumped out of her seat and yelled, "You have to vote for Hillary Clinton!  You can't let the Republican's win."  Some people think the utter chaos of the current Presidency as a result of the election of President Donald Trump was caused by too many people running as Democrats or Sanders and Hillary Clinton splitting vote.  This looks to be right doing the math.  As much as I feel traumatized and confused by the current Presidency, I hope to hell Clinton stays out of this race. 

Ultimately, people must ask themselves WHY THEY ARE OK with so very many people enduring poverty and limitation.   People must ask themselves WHY SO MUCH SPIRITUAL SICKNESS in a so called country "Under God."  I can't make them.  But I hope this post will make YOU think!

Christine Trzyna

MILLER CENTER ORG on FDR  READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT WHERE WE ARE NOW.

From the site: Faced with the Great Depression and World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt, nicknamed “FDR,” guided America through its greatest domestic crisis, with the exception of the Civil War, and its greatest foreign crisis. His presidency—which spanned twelve years—was unparalleled, not only in length but in scope. FDR took office with the country mired in a horrible and debilitating economic depression that not only sapped its material wealth and spiritual strength, but cast a pall over its future. Roosevelt's combination of confidence, optimism, and political savvy—all of which came together in the experimental economic and social programs of the "New Deal"—helped bring about the beginnings of a national recovery.