My 9,897 votes creamed Buddy Roemer’s.  OK, that’s a bit apples and oranges since Buddy was on the Republican ballot.  But Buddy is a former governor of Louisiana ― pure political royalty ― and I’m a mid-west suburbanite who has never held public office.

Indeed, there are probably no more than two or three people in the entire state who know my name.  While I may not be the most unqualified candidate, I can claim, “without fear of contradiction,” to be the shyest.  I assiduously avoided the media to the point of not returning the phone call from The Times-Picayune.

I doubt many people researched my platform.  I got more votes than my website had visitors, cumulative since it went live.  Those that had done research might not have liked what they learned.  I’m for pure austerity.  My URL, “workmorekeepless.com,” sums it up.

Yes, I may have gotten some votes by mistake.  Obama’s and my name do share “B” and “O.”  But seriously …

So where did my votes come from?

I suspect most came from those who concluded “I’ve never heard of this guy so he can’t be any worse than the rest of these clowns.”  It seems a strange indictment of our political establishment that obscurity becomes an asset.

More than strange, the ease with which I garnered 6.6% of the vote is scary.  Suppose I had the charisma of a motivational speaker and the financial backing of a couple of billionaires?  We forget (or given the state of our education system, were never taught) that Adolph Hitler was democratically elected Chancellor of Germany in 1932.  Stressed, anxious and disenchanted democracies can make horrible mistakes.

They say that in a democracy you get the government you deserve.  We deserve better.  That was the impetus for my getting on the ballot.  We need a political establishment that focuses on the serious issues our country faces. If they do not, if our current leaders do not clean up their tiresome and morally bankrupt act, we may end up with something a whole lot worse.  We may end up with me.

Bob Ely, April 2012

This should be the most important election of our lifetime. But it’s clear that something is seriously wrong. How can we be having such an underwhelming, uninspiring and irrelevant election campaign at such a critical juncture?

Never before have voters people had more opportunities to participate in the political conversation; share and disseminate information, and speak directly to our political leaders. Yet the dialogue coming from both parties is as dysfunctional and corrosive as it has ever been in a campaign.

This has been a relentlessly nasty, divisive and vapid race. The only way to achieve victory has been through negative advertising — where the candidates play a secondary role to Super PACs.

The result has been a declining level of confidence, both domestic and international, about our leadership role. Our political system, once the ideal, is now a subject of widespread ridicule.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75084.html#ixzz1ssOa6WyC

People in politics talk about the right track/wrong track numbers as an indicator of public mood. This week Gallup had a poll showing only 24% of Americans feel we’re on the right track as a nation. That’s a historic low. Political professionals tend, understandably, to think it’s all about the economy—unemployment, foreclosures, we’re going in the wrong direction. I’ve long thought that public dissatisfaction is about more than the economy, that it’s also about our culture, or rather the flat, brute, highly sexualized thing we call our culture.

Read more at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303513404577354221282508372.html

David Gothard

The extent of damage is only just now coming to light in the form of millions of false 2011 income tax returns filed in the names of people currently receiving Social Security benefits. That includes a very large number of elderly and disabled people who are ill-equipped to recognize or fight the problem. It’s an impact pervasive enough that the IRS now has a form just to deal with it: Form 14039: Identity Theft Affidavit, December 2011.

http://www.cringely.com/2012/03/the-30-billion-hack/

Never before have voters people had more opportunities to participate in the political conversation; share and disseminate information, and speak directly to our political leaders. Yet the dialogue coming from both parties is as dysfunctional and corrosive as it has ever been in a campaign.

The home of laissez-faire is being suffocated by excessive and badly written regulation.

Two forces make American laws too complex. One is hubris. Many lawmakers seem to believe that they can lay down rules to govern every eventuality. Examples range from the merely annoying (eg, a proposed code for nurseries in Colorado that specifies how many crayons each box must contain) to the delusional (eg, the conceit of Dodd-Frank that you can anticipate and ban every nasty trick financiers will dream up in the future). Far from preventing abuses, complexity creates loopholes that the shrewd can abuse with impunity.

The other force that makes American laws complex is lobbying. The government’s drive to micromanage so many activities creates a huge incentive for interest groups to push for special favours. When a bill is hundreds of pages long, it is not hard for congressmen to slip in clauses that benefit their chums and campaign donors. The health-care bill included tons of favours for the pushy. Congress’s last, failed attempt to regulate greenhouse gases was even worse.

From http://www.economist.com/node/21547789

• Many Americans do not see the value in bailing out the banks or spending trillions on foreign wars while the middle class struggles to remain solvent.
• Most Arabs do not see the value any more in greedy autocrats.
• Many Chinese do not see the value in a centralized government that doesn’t support the lower class.
• Many Europeans do not see the necessity of austerity to stay in the eurozone.
• Many Iranian people are much less hostile than the Iranian government.
• Most Russians believe that their elections are rigged.

Gingrich: Fail

Media: Fail

The People: Nothing

Newt Gingrich slams John King for question on ex-wife (2:01)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/newt-gingrich-slams-john-king-for-question-on-ex-wife-201/2012/01/19/gIQA7fRKCQ_video.html

If an airplane were do this, the consequences would be immediate and dire.  In fact, I suspect the plane would have jet escorts by its side before it even landed.  Yet, we learn that the practice with cruise ships doing this is acceptable behavior?

We Deserve Better!  How can this not be better regulated.

Of course, this references the Costa Concordia disaster where the death count continues to rise.

There are numerous articles on this

http://gma.yahoo.com/cruise-ship-wreck-search-suspended-ship-moves-045931732–abc-news.html

The captain’s behavior is reprehensible.  He is reportedly to have left the ship before many passengers and refused to return when asked!?  Really?  This guy is licensed to captain a vessel with 4,200 people on it?  Nice.

What are you doing? Are you abandoning the rescue? Captain, this is an order, I am the one in charge now. You have declared abandoning ship. There are already bodies.

Coastguard official’s instructions to Francesco

http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16150533

Time to wake up and think about how things are done.  With all the high tech available, this should never have happened.  The fact that it is a regular occurrence really exasperates the issue.  In every possible way, we deserve better!

Follow Up:

Just saw this:

“The shipping industry newspaper Lloyd’s List reported that Friday was not the first time the Costa Concordia steamed extremely close to shore near Giglio.

Satellite tracking data obtained by the paper show that the ship passed within 230 meters (755 feet) of the coast of the island at least once before — even closer than the location where the Costa Concordia hit the rocks this weekend.

The pass happened on August 14, 2011, Lloyd’s List reported. Costa Cruise lines said it would issue a statement about the report later on Wednesday.”

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/18/world/europe/italy-cruise-main/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

So, Lloyds knew this and still insured the ship and company!?  *sigh*

Outlook for House, Senate also shows scant accomplishment for ‘12 session

It’s official: Congress ended its least-productive year in modern history after passing 80 bills — fewer than during any other session since year-end records began being kept in 1947.

Furthermore, an analysis by The Washington Times of the scope of such activities as time spent in debate, number of conference reports produced and votes taken on the House and Senate floors found that Congress set a record for legislative futility by accomplishing less in 2011 than any other year in history.

The Senate’s record was weakest by a huge margin, according to the futility index, and the House had its 10th-worst session on record.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/15/congress-logs-most-futile-legislative-year-on-reco/?page=all#pagebreak