Exceptional
During this campaign season I've heard the term “American exceptionalism” thrown around on both sides. It got me thinking about what it means and how it’s measured.
Could it be that America is exceptional because on any given night 25 percent of our children go to bed hungry? Or maybe it's that among the industrialized nations, our students rank 25th in math, 17th in science and 14th in reading. Only in America do we pay a high-school graduate $40 million to play sports and someone with a Master's degree $40,000 to teach our children.
Or it could be because we have more people incarcerated than any other country in the world. No — it must be because we have more guns and gun deaths than any other country in the world.
Could it be that it's because we have a completely dysfunctional Congress whose members are more loyal to party than country? Maybe it's because our highest court has ruled that money equals speech and that corporations have the same rights as individual human beings.
Maybe it's because we're willing to spend hundreds of millions on war, but health care for all citizens is too expensive.
Could America's exceptionalism be because we allow the manufacture, sale and distribution of thousands of products that we know are hazardous to our health and turn around and spend billions on treatment and cures? America, where we've built a society that is solely based on making and spending money. American exceptionalism — am I missing something?
HAYES GOODRUM
Winston-Salem
Letter writers
In a way, I hate to see the elections coming to an end. While I will not miss all those TV ads, I will surely miss all those letters in the Readers’ Forum. They have been funnier than the real funny papers.
I could always tell if the writer was a Democrat or a Republican in the first two or three lines. Of course, I had the advantage of knowing that most of them were going to be Democrats since I was, after all, reading the Journal.
So, to all of you who have written your opinion to the editor this past year or so, thanks for the laughs that you have given me on a daily basis. I will miss them.
C.J. DENNY
Wallburg
The American way
There is no possible logistics plan to help Superstorm Sandy's survivors all at once. Our government is doing the best it can and our people in Sandy's path are pulling together. It's the American way.
Like many, I have not been inundated by a major weather event. I ask, I implore survivors of Hurricane Katrina to stand up and tell these Sandy survivors how they did it. Surely it was ugly, but I do know Katrina survivors can offer these people all the hope they need to get through one more day ... and one more day after that.
HILARY M. CONLEY
Winston-Salem
Unity in music
Thank you to the Winston-Salem Symphony for the dazzling pop concert with Jake Shimabukuro on ukelele. Starting the evening off with the Star-Spangled Banner set the tone for an evening of unity in music.
When it is all said and done and the election is over, we will still wake up as a country bound together in the freedom to respect one another. At the pops concert, a young Hawaiian wowed the audience with his talents and vision for this humble instrument. And for the duration of the concert, all politics were set aside.
He showed great humility, appreciation for the opportunities that had come his way and gratitude each time he took us on a musical journey. His audience was amazed and we listened with respect. A symphonic thank-you to Jake.
Now can we go back to being a country of 50 united states, celebrating diversity, embracing talent and listening with respect?
KATHY J. COOPER
Winston-Salem
Congratulations to all you loony liberal Democrats out there. You won, but America lost.
ReplyDeleteWe're in for a long four years.
Good morning, Bucky. Your congratulations are well received. Thank you. In all honesty, as I've grown older, I relish more the longer years over the short ones.
DeleteDs are probably +2 in the Senate too.
DeleteHee hee...gotta love it.
yep, and a Maine Indy who is pro-choice and will probably caucus with the Democrats. You can redraw congressional districts but you just can't redraw state lines (well,at least not in a politically significant way. I think they did redraw the NC/SC state line recently)
DeleteNEW YORK — U.S. stocks opened sharply lower Wednesday following the re-election of President Obama. In morning trading, the Dow Jones industrial average was down more than 200 points, or 1.7%.
Delete______
Just as I thought. Hang onto your 401Ks folks. They're going to take a dump.
Thanks Obama.
Dow down 265....was down to 400. Talk about lack of confidence in our 'wonderful' president.
DeleteTo all the conservative parrots out there, I share a hopeful skepticism when I say this: "Congress, the President doesn't make policy. Don't f*** this up!!!
ReplyDeleteWell, Obama pulled it off. After all these months and hundreds of millions of dollars--we have a political stasis. We are as we were 24 hours ago. Obama won by defining Romney early and often in Ohio and elsewhere and it worked. Trouble is, after this campaign, he has no mandate, no agenda that he will admit to, and worst of all--no good will behind him as in 2008. By the popular vote, he simply fell over the line with the nation split down the middle. The Senate has been justified as they were in their dereliction of duty and the House is justified as well. No telling what comes from the lame duck session. Next year, we the people may very well "live in interesting times". God help us.
ReplyDeleteWW....America is going to pay, and pay big for their errant votes this time around.
DeleteWe'll have to see if the Republicans blink on letting the Bush tax cuts expire, because Obama has said he won't sign an across the board extension.
Obama has turned America into Venezuela, where the poor, immoral, illegal, and dependent run the country.
For the moment we are somewhere between France and Italy but behaving like Japan. Europe has been waiting on our verdict and by the end of this month, events in the EU will roll out quickly. Our election came about with no marches in the streets, no declared coups and that is a blessing. The same can't be said of many EU capitols.
DeleteBoy, Walter Dalton took a beating yesterday. 'Ol Bev had a stratospheric 31% approval rating. That didn't help any. Add in a 100 years of Democratic screw-ups, and North Carolinians said no mas.
ReplyDeleteRomney won a 'narrow' 3 point victory in N.C. last night. Of course, it would have been a landslide had Obama won by such a margin.
ReplyDeleteMcCrory was elected thank goodness, and he will lead N.C. back from a Democratically infused financial mess. He has arrived just in time. Too bad we couldn't have gotten Romney in the deal.
The GOP had better enjoy it while they can. The writing is on the wall. The 21st Century is here and we will never go back.
ReplyDeleteYou may think society is going forward, but I'm watching my backend.
DeleteWe really need to get some gay, anti-leering legislation on the books.
I'm seeing a lot more BDs here lately. What's up with that?
DeleteOK, now it's crybaby time...boo, hoo, hoo.
ReplyDeleteTwo neat items...Obama carried Forsyth County and...
Patrick Murphy beat the famous slime merchant and war criminal Allen West in Florida.
And Tammy Duckworth defeated Joe "Deadbeat Dad" Walsh.
DeleteRick Berg just conceded to Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, so the final Senate numbers are Dem 53, Rep 46, Ind 2...the Dems control 55 votes.
DeleteI think the R's only have 45.
DeleteYep...bad arithmetic...send me back to second grade.
DeleteSpeaking of crybabies:
ReplyDelete"Obama wins because it's not a traditional America anymore. The white establishment is the minority. People want things."
___Bill O'Reilly
I found Karl Rove's total denial of Ohio being called for Obama on Fox last night to have been most entertaining to watch.
Deletedotnet....I'm just glad you were watching FoxNews. If you keep it up, you 'might' become more enlightened as to what is going in the political world.
DeleteOf Bill O'Reilly....he was right. People really don't want to work hard anymore. Obama's primary constituency is made up of liberal, dependent, city dwellers.
I'll bet most of them wouldn't know how to grow a tomato if their life depended on it.
It's no myth that our society is going down hill. That's why Obama was elected. Our electorate is no long the same class of people it once was.
You can see that by some of the ridiculous comments made by one of our infamous forum participants.
Yes dotnet, we enjoyed the Rove meltdown as well. We had four screens, one tuned to Fox for entertainment purposes, because we knew that they would act like fools as the truth dawned.
DeleteStomp your little foot, Carly.
Rove was priceless last night. Just priceless.
DeleteI almost think he's been putting on a show for his marks...oops, I mean rich superpac contributors.
As I've said before, unless the Republican party learns to expand its base beyond angry old white men, it's going to go the way of the Whigs. The future belongs to us.
DeleteYou are right.
DeleteMy vote for biggest crybaby has to go to Donald Trump. Someone please take away his Tweeter account!
DeleteGood afternoon folks!
ReplyDeleteLTE 1: There's no denying the US has its problems, but that is true of all nations. Good question about what actually defines the word "exceptionalism". In the case of the US, I suppose it would come down to the citizens ruling themselves as opposed to a monarchy that is passed down through birthright. People in the US have historically had more economic mobility than European countries where the citizens were pretty much stuck to the class they were born in.
LTE 2: Yes, TB's from both sides make their presence known quite early in their letters.
LTE 3: My hope is that the lessons from the mistakes made in the Katrina recovery effort have been learned and will not be repeated. I'm sure the Sandy survivors would appreciate words of advice and comfort from Katrina survivors, however, I think at this point they would much rather have a warm, dry place to stay.
LTE 4: Been thinking about taking up the ukelele myself. I have seen Mr. Shimabukuro's talents on some tv programs, and was quite amazed at the sounds he was able to generate from such a humble little instrument. As far as going "back to being a country of 50 united states, celebrating diversity, embracing talent and listening with respect", when was that ever the case? lol
What struck me last night is that even with an approval rating in the single digits, the same ol' crowd was sent back to DC. I recall reading that only 60 House seats or so were actually in play, while the rest were gerrymandered in or had no opposition. To me this is the problem. When 86% of the House is essentially guaranteed a seat for life unless scandal or district redraw, what incentive do they have to listen to anyone other than their campaign donors and party TB's?
ReplyDeleteI hold my nose almost everytime I vote. I hope people don't actually think Obama is an honest politician.
DeleteAnyone who has to hold their nose when they vote is sadly out of the loop. You can either get involved, thus have influence over who runs, or you can shut up, because if you are not involved, nobody cares what you think.
DeleteI agree with dotnet....the way we nominate and elect House members has gotten completely out of control...Bachmann at least had to break a sweat, but despite her national display of ignorance, she is back for two more years. At least we got rid of the rat West in Florida.
Not so fast...the rat is not done...even though he is not close enough in the vote for a recount, he says that there should be one. When told that that would not happen, he filed a motion asking a judge to seize and impound all voting materials in the 18th District.
DeleteHis mouthpiece claims that there are still "tens of thousands" of absentee ballots to be counted in Palm Beach County, which is not true, because there are not tens of thousands of voters in the part of Palm Beach County that is included in the District. But West have never been one to let truth get in the way of a good lie.
He also alleges that there were "disturbing irregularities" at the polls, including possible tabulation errors and voters being locked out. When asked for proof, he used the same answer that Buckboy is so fond of: "I know it happened because I know it happened."
I suspect that there is union skulduggery afoot as well. Palm Beach County is heavily unionized. I know because I met a union member there once.
Hey, the fun is just beginning. Wait until the Republicans begin shredding each other over yet another disastrous campaign.
I was someone surprised at Rove's disputing the OH call. All the other "battleground" states exc NC had gone to Obama. And, the other battleground states were similar to OH (rust belt, unionized), plus the Cleveland area, heavily Democratic, was still reporting. Rove appeared panicky, not the great "The Architect," as he is billed by Hannity.
ReplyDeleteYep, this election, as with all elections, was all about unions...those evil unions stole the heavily unionized states of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado and Virginia, and are working on Florida as we speak.
DeleteExit polls nationwide showed that the first thing on the minds of 97% of those who voted for Obama was unions.
As for me, I lie awake every night worrying that the next morning I will wake up and find myself a union member. The few times I manage to fall asleep, I have nightmares about being chased by unions through the streets of Latta, SC.
Union, union, who's got the union?
We now know what cost Governor Romney the states of Pennsylvania and Ohio.
ReplyDeleteIn a late night interview last night, Fox News host Jamie Colby asked election attorney Doug Burns what went wrong.
Burns raised claims that the Black Panthers may have intimidated voters, renewing a story that got wide currency on Fox when two members of the New Black Panther Party stood outside one polling place in the 2008 election. That single incident put Obama in the White House in 2008.
Fox’s website reported earlier in the day that one member of the leftist group had been seen outside a Philadelphia polling place Tuesday morning. Other members of the group reportedly appeared at polling places in Cleveland “where they have also maintained a presence at early voting sites,” Fox reported.
What about the large mural of Obama that appeared on the wall at one Philadelphia precinct? The image — entirely inappropriate at a polling station, where electioneering is not allowed — was eventually covered by poll workers.
There can be no doubt that these incidents caused the Governor to lose both states. Late returns had Obama winning Pennsylvania by about 300,000 votes and Ohio by roughly 100,000.
But what about the other states that Romney lost? Not a single Black Panther was reported in New York or California or Illinois. The Republican Party's leading intellectual and philosopher Bill O’Reilly had the answer there. Romney’s vote deficit was caused by four easily categorized culprits: poor people, blacks, Latinos and women, who elbowed all others aside to cast their selfish votes, trampling men, retirees and children in their greed to vote, and then vote again.
In the left wing liberal states of Massachusetts, New York, Illinois and California, signs were posted at every polling place forbidding entrance to the rich, white people and men of any color.
And don't forget the usual union shenanigans. They put the final twist on the Governor's failures.
Now that we know what happened, we can hunker down for what is coming in the next few months…the complete and utter destruction and fall of the United States of America…think the Roman Empire…think Sodom and Gomorrah…think the Boston Red Sox.
OT, the only reason I mentioned that those states are unionized is that they share a similarity that made it likely that they would have similar voting patterns, as the Rust Belt states did. I made no mention of union perfidy in that analysis. This election was won fair and square.
ReplyDeleteI understand fully. However, you have to realize that anytime you type "union" it triggers my "Stab's union obsession" sensor.
DeleteI'm just joking around most of the time.
Earlier you mentioned my comments on Christians. I have many good Christian friends and respect them mightily.
But when I comment on Christians, I type the word two different ways. When I am referring to real Christians, the word is capitalized. When I am referring to the pseudo christain haters and bigots, the word begins with a lower case "c". Just trying to save myself having to type "so-called" over and over again.
Obviously, I seldom use the upper case, because good Christians, as Jesus recommended, are usually invisible, their good works known only to them and their God. Certainly that is the case for all of my good Christian friends, and they would have it no other way.
Nicely said.
DeleteThanks. I try really hard to be a good person.
DeleteObama won for two reasons:
1. His superb ground game, as mentioned below.
2. An outright rejection, especially by women and those who love and respect them, of the disgusting "ideas" of Akin, Mourdock, Ryan, etc and Romney's failure to vehemently disavow them. I think Mitt is simply tone deaf, a fatal disease for any politician.
A fascinating tidbit, gleaned from the national exit polls...about 50% of all Americans place the blame for the economic crash on George W. Bush. So the GOP campaign to shift the blame to Obama has not worked very well.
I understand that the origin goes back at least to Reagan, and is shared with Bush I, and Clinton, but we can hardly blame people for having a shorter memory.
Why is Florida voting such a mess? One of my cousins in Florida helped me understand this.
ReplyDeleteDespite so-called improvements since the 2000 fiasco, Florida is still well short of the 21st century when it comes to voting technology.
Voting is a two-part process. Voters first fill out a paper ballot, then feed it to a scanner. Pretty primitive. Compare to Forsyth County, where the ballot appears on a touch screen, the voter presses (or mashes, in some folks terminology) a button, then is given a review page where changes can be made, then presses "VOTE". Simple and efficient.
I went with a friend to observe the local voting process. She waited in line about 15 minutes at the Government Center, about a minute to get signed in and on a machine, about two minutes to actually vote, and done. Some who were obviously less familiar with the process were spending as much as 6 or 7 minutes on the machine, no more.
DeleteIn Florida, both during early voting and on election day, many voters stood in line for hours, then required 30 minutes or more to actually vote. Why so much longer? NC and Florida have about the same number of offices to vote for. But Floridians had to contend with a Byzantine set of 11 ballot initiatives put there by the Tee Tee Party controlled legislature.
As you might imagine, the initiatives were mostly foolish, fundamentalist nonsense, such as one aimed at nullifying Obamacare, which would have had no legal status even if it had passed. Another prohibited public funding for abortions, which is already de facto in Florida. Another was meant to give the legislature increased power over the courts, clearly unconstitutional. An attempt to cap revenue limits, based on an already failed program in another state. Another attempt to limit abortion by removing medical privacy restrictions.
To pass, a measure had to receive 60% of the vote. The eight idiotic ones didn't come close to 50%. The three that did pass were sensible measures to provide property tax relief to disabled veterans and their surviving spouses and certain categories of senior citizens. The source of all the wasted time.
Then, the Tee Tee Party legislature, in an attempt to disenfranchise potential Democrat voters, shortened the early voting period from 18 to 8 days (NC had 15 despite TT Party attempt to shorten). As you can imagine, that resulted in long lines and angry voters.
Governor Bald Eagle could have, with the stroke of a pen, extended the early voting hours, but refused to do so for the same reason that the hours had been cut in the first place.
So who is to blame?
Count 1: The legislature for being too cheap to provide modern efficient voting machines.
Count 2: The legislature for cutting the number of early voting days.
Count 3: Governor Bald Eagle for abetting the legislature's voting suppression attempts.
Count 4: The legislature for adding a bunch of confusing right wing Tom foolery to the ballot.
Guess what. Obama is going to win Florida despite all their devious efforts because his vaunted ground game really is vastly superior to anything that the GOPs can put in the field. When voting started in Florida, Team Obama had about 800 full time staffers on the ground, directing an army of tens of thousands of volunteers. And finally, add in pissed off voters, who were fully aware of what the GOPs were trying to do, so were willing to stand in line for 8 hours or more out of pride and determination.
As one middle aged Latina who had been standing in line for about 7 hours said to a reporter "Tell the governor that I am going to vote just to spite him."
Compare this mess to the natural disaster mess facing another Republican governor in New Jersey. With power problems and transportation problems, Governor Christie said "I'm going to do my best to see that anyone who wants to vote can vote." He opened voting sites in county clerk's offices and schools and figured out a way for people to vote by e-mail and fax. And when the new system became overwhelmed, he did something that no one had done before, extended the voting hours through Friday, three days after election day.
Which man would you choose to vote for, Governor Bald Eagle or Chris Christie. I wouldn't have any trouble making that choice.
I agree, and I suspect that Christie will be a prime contender next time. That appearance with Obama, a good thing by itself, also will carry for 4 years, sensible politicking.
DeleteYes, a perfect example of two politicians who know how things work.
DeleteAnd, of course, Obama got a lift from that great story about connecting Christie with his long time idol, the Boss.
I've been certain for some time that Christie is way smarter than the other GOPs and is firmly focused on 2016.
Not sure yet whether Hillary will decide to make a run then as well, but boy oh boy would that be a great knock down drag out. We might actually get one that even Nate Silver couldn't figure out.