Shaking Hands Across The Aisle

So what do you do when have had a dispeptic start to a blog due to lack of time and inspiration? Come back with a controversial blog that will probably lose you the few readers you had left. Yup, that outta do it.

So what does it take in NE Ohio for voters to reach across the aisle's and welcome candidates of both parties? It seems just a black man to run for President of the United States. That seems to be the only explanation that comes to mind as I drive thru my suburban, upper middle class neighborhood and around town. As election day finally comes to pass, I am noticing many a yard with yard signs for Democrats Trafficanti, Cordray, et al, and next to them, a yard sign for "John McCain". Ummm, I am sorry, maybe I havent researched my local candidates closely enough, but I am pretty sure that most of the probable policies in a McCain administration, run counter intuitive to the local Democratic electorate. It is with little doubt in my mind, that these yard signs are tell-tale signs that racism is alive and well in the Presidential campaign here in the swinging state of Ohio.

Say it isn't so! I am sure some of you sigh'ed a collective DUH! to that, but why do so many try to pretend it isn't so? As I have said, I am from that liberal socialist state of California, but the notion that racism was alive and well in this state was driven home quite early in my move here some 10 years ago. When I first moved here, I decided to drop in on a regular writers group that used to meet at Barnes and Noble in Boardman. Two weeks into meeting with this group I met a sweet young black lady that had just moved here with her husband from Chicago, for his new job. They were excited to move into a nice home and she was telling me that she loved the area, but thought her neighbors seemed relatively quiet and stayed to themselves as they were moving in and doing yard work the first couple of weeks. Four weeks into their new home, the next door neighbor installed a black lawn jockey in the landscaping beside their front porch. Welcome to the neighborhood! That was the first time in my (over 30) years, that I have ever been witness to such innate and purposeful racism.

This election is bringing some of the worst of our country back to life. John McCain and the Republican party has brought negativity back to an art form. His poor excuse that it wouldn't have happened if Obama had just met him at his Town Hall Meetings he cried for is both disingenuine and speaks volume about his character. "Well I would have stayed away from negative, but he wouldn't play on my terms, so he made me go negative." A perverse paraphrasation, but true. Sure both sides have a few bad apples at their campaign stops, but rallying cries of a terrorist running for the White House, and talks of lynching is not even close to a bad apple, it's enciting evil to it's core.

I am ready to live with the consequences of this election, and there will be consequences no matter who wins, but I will be d*mned if I am going to sit idly by while a once honorable man, takes the country to it's basest instincts on his quest for "leadership." You with those ambivelent yard signs in front of your house. Pick a side! I pray that true bipartinship can be attained, but admit it, that's not your intentions. You are racists, pure and simple, no matter if you do sleep better at night with the blanket of "bipartisanship denial" keeping you warm.

(I am going to retake some of the picture examples I was going to post with this, but on closer inspection, they show too much of what the owners house looks like and that is wrong of me to expose in and of itself. New pics to come.)