Carmel Valley Voter Report

VOTING DAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2012 ~ CARMEL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA

I always end up crying.

I  envision recent purple fingers of Iraqis casting first time votes. I picture marching Suffragettes before my time. The Revolutionary War and the Founding Fathers and the Civil War and all the country bloodied for freedom here then, the wars between, and more young and old dying on foreign shores for freedom there, now.  The days when only landed gentry could choose the government. The bad choices and the good ones of America’s present and past.

Little, sweet Carmel Valley.

To vote here is not like Brooklyn.

Brooklyn (God bless ’em in the throes of Hurricane Sandy) above.

Here is a tiny local place full of neighbors. Active, happy, but respected ground, 2 minute wait in line, wobbly portable ”booths” set a few feet apart, with privacy-possible side wings. No urgency, a second study of California’s propositions. I make my marks. This year we connect arrows.

At the entrance, a boy of maybe 8 years next to his little sister maybe 4 stand behind their father. The children peek at mystery. Before they turn to leave I place my hand on the boy’s back and bring him gently forward a pace and say, This is the place where you will come to vote when you’re older. Those are the places to mark your ballot. This is the way you choose your government and its leaders. You can do this because you are in America, and this will be your sacred honor.

I thank two banks of short tables of the maybe ten volunteers for being there. They all respond, smiling. They thank me for coming to vote. A serious-looking 18 year old girl has voted and walks out past me.

I take an “I VOTED” sticker for my car, protesting that it is bi-lingual. Do you have any that are just English? It is our native tongue, our country’s language. I embarrass the volunteer who says he understands, but steps back silent, clipboard protectively between us. 

Are we, in this great country, afraid of immigrants and ashamed to be proud of all we have managed to become. Yes. I fold off the non-English part of the I VOTED sticker and put it, altered to suit me, on my windshield.

Then I put the key in the ignition and weep, glad to live in the United States of America with all its turbulence and breathless, heart-wrenching, joy-filled longing to get it right. Today I am a part of that more than usual.

At the gas station before home I meet four people:  one (a small business owner) heading to vote, three who would not.
A construction worker, no, because, “It’s all rigged,” a girl in her twenties who said, “Do I have to?” and an elderly man who said he never ever votes. The traffic to the polling place is, nonetheless, getting busier.

credits: Grant Wood; NY Post; Norman Rockwell

Romney Killed My Wife advert

Okay already.

The news is full of not hot news that political opponents may deliver low blows. Recently under a lot of discussion is an Obama advert with a sorrowful steel mill worker who got laid off because of Romney. And as if that wasn’t enough, Romney essentially killed the man’s wife. And Romney didn’t even care that he killed the man’s wife.

I’m about to make a free of charge donation to Romney and the Conservatives.

I don’t remember the guy’s name in the ad, turns out he’s a regular in the sorrowful worker ruined by the hands of Republicans over and over and over again. But everybody’s missed the point. The point being, which was my very first reaction when I heard this is

WHAT KIND OF NUMBNUTS SONOVABITCH HUSBAND IS THIS WHO DIDN’T KNOW THAT HIS WIFE WAS SICK FOR FIVE YEARS?????????? and who even says, admits I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG SHE WAS SICK!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where are the feminists on this? Where’s Gloria Alred filing law suits for the estate on behalf of the kiddies? The enraged inlaws?

Where are the camp-outs on the White House lawn demanding to protect the legacy of this poor woman, a Democrat, who was married to a man too oblivious to her, his dear wife’s very life, to even notice she was terminally ill for half a decade?

Where are the angry editorials from Michele screaming about her own party using this sexist pig in an advertisement for her husband who is every working, contraceptive loving, health care desperate Democrat female in America’s defender?

And why isn’t Michele announcing a press conference  that oh yeah, you betcha, separate bedrooms, maybe a divorce!, until Obama, her husband, remakes the ad saying,

“Starting with me, your President, and on behalf of Democrats everywhere I apologize for this steel worker, who SAYS he’s a Democrat but he’s probably a Republican, who just stood by, not caring, and watched his wife die. We’re so embarrassed. I mean, it’s John Edwards all over again. And, I’m here to tell you, if Michele was ever sick, I’d know it. And we have daughters, and if they’re ever sick, I’ll notice that. I’m not like that guy at all.”

How about that?

I listen to this steel worker guy and I think what the hell he’s bragging that a woman he’s married to couldn’t tell him she was under the weather and maybe gonna die on Tuesday. And she had health care. Which she didn’t use. Which makes me wonder about their marriage even more.

Anyway, I’m thinking, come on, at least let’s name a park after her. Way too much suffering. What’s the steel worker’s phone number and home address? Where’s Spike Lee on this? And by the way this is exactly why Louise and Thelma left home and drove off a cliff. Isn’t Susan Sarandon gonna do anything???