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COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO

Writer's picture: aimgralnickaimgralnick

Paul Revere on his midnight ride yelling, “the British are coming, the British are coming!”, Alan Arkin running through town yelling, “The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!” or the rooster crowing his alarm, Cock-a-doodle-doo. Take your pick, but wake up America, wake up!

liberty bell-how long before the crack breaks the bell?

Not since Revere’s ride have we needed someone to start a life and death ride at break-neck speed to wake up Americans. Just today the GAO announced that the two people leading the Department of Homeland Security are there illegally. This will go to the courts but it could mean that any decisions they made were illegal because the shouldn’t have been in the chairs they occupied when they made those decisions.

Then there’s this pandemic thing that has a script that reads like it was written by Lewis Carroll and acted out in Wonder Land. Incredically obtuse things are being told to us but we don’t seem to hear them because we’re too far down in the tea pot. Every so often we citizens playing the dormouse stick up our heads, are overwhelmed by what we see, and sink slowly back into our dormancy.

In a much smaller but equally important happening, EPA signaled it would end the restrictions on methane emissions. Add that to determined efforts to drill and mine in the Artic, the destabilization of the perma-frost, and a host of other anti-climate change decisions and what do you get? Not bippity-boppity-boo but a further worsening of the green house gas effect.

Remember this and what it stands for?

In his opus Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens wrote, “If that is what the law believes then the law is an ass!” I can’t decide where such a sign would go up first, at the White House or the Dept. of (In)Justice. This brings us to November 3rd. The stream of endless unsupported attacks on mail-in voting (which the president himself is using), and the removal of counting machines from post offices around the country, machines that could be stored on site, and happen to be machines that would count ballots are worth screaming, “The Postmaster General is Coming! The Postmaster General is coming!” Are we the 350,000,000 blind mice? Are we going to sit still and whine that some SOB cut off our tails? I wonder.

In terms of immediacy of course we should be shouting, “The election is coming! The election is coming!” The president could make it disappear right in front of our noses like David Copperfield did with the Statue of Liberty. Copperfield and Trump count on us not looking hard enough, long enough, and in the right place. Nobody pulls the chain or curtain or lever to find that what you see is not what you get, even if you see it in the constitution.

As American as…

“Oh me, oh my, what to do?” would ask Winnie the Pooh. I’ll tell you.

  1. Take a page from BLM. Say something, do something. Scream and holler. Flood the White House and Congressional phone lines with angry calls. Picket. Let the President know that actions have consequences.

  2. In you must vote by mail get your ballot as soon as possible.

  3. Fill out the ballot immediately

  4. Check it two or three times

  5. Mail it immediately–the same day you get it

  6. Give your ballot some value–put a first class stamp on it , other wise it goes 3rd class. ‘says something right there. The singular right in a democracy doesn’t make it past 3rd class mail.

  7. If you are unable to yourself, find someone to either drop it off at the election office or if your city has ballot boxes around town, have it dropped in one of them. Best not look for a mailbox, David Copperfield, or the PMG is making them disappear too.

Without action you will see November 3rd come and go. Unless whenever there is an election and it is an overwhelming victory for Biden/Harris, I see two scenarios. One is a re-run of Bush v. Gore in Florida, the other, if it’s close, is Biden having Trump forcibly removed from the White House. There is just one more little possibility. That would be a military coup, right here in the good ole USA–at least from my perspective.

Leaving the upbeat, smiley feeling of his book, “The War of the Itchy Balls and Other Tales From Brooklyn” (Amazon.com, kindle or paperback), Bill is into thing that are beyond serious like the end of American democracy. Instead of saying, “Read. It’s good for both of us” he implores you: Vote! Don’t let anything stand in your way. Like the beleaguered Post Office–nor rain, nor sleet, nor snow…vote!

He’ll see you here next week.

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