Close Meditations of a Visual Kind

Just a thought, which is the higher Law? From the U.S. Constitution:

Amendment 9 - Construction of Constitution. Ratified 12/15/1791.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Does this, being at a Federal Level, outweigh the rights of the States to so amend their own Constitutions?

They are exemplars of polite. I realise I need not explain this to the Southern Ladies who are on my reading list, but perhaps to some of the other folk. Politeness, you see, is a Southern Thing. One does not, can not live here for any length of time and not learn this. Even one such as myself, born and raised above the Mason-Dixon will learn this. Oh, there are a few who may not, and they are known as Those Damn Yankees. Doesn't matter, in fact, if one comes from Out West or even some other country all together. Don't learn Polite, y'all are Damn Yankees.

Now, do not confuse Polite with non-threatening. If one should commit a mortal offense upon a Southern Lady, she will continue to be exquisitely polite even as she stabs the offender to death or shoots them down dead. This is, in fact, the trait I'm discussing this morning. Because our next door neighbor, Ms. Peggy, is a Southern Lady. Some about here become confused about this because Ms. Peggy is also a Hippie, dyed in the wool and unrepentant. Again, the Southern Ladies on my list will see no contradiction in this, simply because Southern Ladies may also be quite iron-willed and unmovable. Politely unmovable, to be sure.

There's been a lot of this going on, reports in the news so it's not only a local phenomenon. People put up their campaign support signs for their candidates of choice, someone else comes along and defaces, destroys, or removes them altogether. This is not restricted to any one political party either. I'm not saying the political candidates themselves support these actions, only that they are happening.

And Ms. Peggy put up her sign supporting the candidate of her choice.

You'll notice no doubt that I'm not mentioning candidates by name. That truly is not the most significant aspect of this story. I've said I don't talk politics, but this year proved me wrong on too many occasions so now I say I won't discuss politics. Even this isn't really a political thing, because as mentioned the reports are not restricting this vandalism to any one party. It is happening.

I suppose, really, it always does to some extent.

At any rate, Ms. Peggy put her sign up, and then it disappeared. So she put up another sign, home made, in the same place. Being home made, it is actually a lot more prominent than the original, which came from candidate headquarters.

Outbound on our road, one reads:
Where Is Our Sign?

Inbound, one reads:
Are [candidate] Supporters Thieves?

Put the two together, and, well, whoever took Ms. Peggy's sign would of done their candidate a bigger favour by leaving it alone.

I probably saw the first new report on the outcome of the House vote on the bailout package legislation. Not claiming I saw it first, but probably, I saw the first one. Because it's pertinent to further discussion, and because I would do this eventually anyway, I followed a link to the Congressional Record for the results of the roll call.

Around now, I expect, those of you who've known me for a length of time (longer in this specific incidence by several months, but mostly I'm referring to several years at least to realise just how uncharacteristic this is) are thinking, holy cow madshutterbug is making his third politically related posting in possibly that many months. He never talks politics. I guess a more accurate statement even for me to make is I don't discuss politics. Evidence: once again, I've disable comments. If you know me well enough, you know how to let me know what you think.

So here we are, facing a huge economic crisis. And just in case anyone things I'm being quite provincial in my thinking, I've seen nothing, absolutely nothing in any news reporting to lead me to think this wee little boring crisis is confined to the geopolitical borders of my fair country. Great Britain is dealing with bank failures, the Russian stock market is in a tailspin along with most everyone else, keep going further along the verbal line of travel here and you can find that the Far East stock markets are wondering just what hit them as well. Therefor, this legislation is, truly, critical and monumental.

Which, of course, means that the CongressCritters involved in it start tossing around things like hey, it all got partisan in the end, that's why it failed.

Really?

It's true, I don't discuss politics, or the way I most often say it I don't talk politics. I do talk to politicians. This is something that started when we purchased our little corner of the universe and started paying taxes on it. Because of the local tax structure that means mostly I talked with local and state politicians. This escalated to talking to national politicians in 2001 when I got involved in some lobbying efforts by AORN to seek Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement for Certified Registered Nurse First Assistants (CRNFA). The biggest lesson in this for all of us is this: We hired these folks (regardless of where one lives, so long as one votes in an election, this is true) to work for us. It's their job. Every set number of years, they go through another 'job interview' to get re-hired or not, depending on their job performance.

And the only way they can know what to do, to do their job, is talk to the folks at home. One of the things I learned in that process is both how effective they can be by phoning/writing/e-mailing their representatives, and how apathetic most constituents are in not doing so. At least here in my fair country, Congressional Representatives and Senators generally figure that for each individual contact from someone 'back home' there are 100 more constituents who feel the same way. That's right, folks, the ratio of How Folks Feel is 100:1.

Now I know for sure that two people I know through LJ here contacted their Congress Critters. I know because one of you put up a copy of your letter, and I did. Due to that vociferous nature of the crowd I read, I expect there are at least three more of you who did so as well. That's five of us. That's 500 folk heard from, as far as the Congress Critters are concerned. Those are just the numbers I'm fairly confident about. I expect, actually, that this subject caused a huge number of people to contact their Congress Critters, I do, and I expect that influenced the outcome of this vote.

Back to the roll call, because of all that pointing and claiming It's All Your Fault. One of those claims is quoted as saying there were a dozen other Republicans ready to vote yes on this legislation and that partisan politics spoiled that.

A. Dozen. That's, um... 12. With a majority of the Nays being Republicans (2/3 of the R CongressCritters). And the bill went down to defeat, folks, by the huge, overwhelming margin of 23 votes. That's right, 23 more CongressCritters said Nay on behalf of their constituents than said Yea, and there were less than a handful of Abstains.

Let's see, 23 minus 12 is... 11. Those dozen 'on the fence' Republican votes would of made the difference in this particular bill passing, yeeee - Not So Much. And for the claim that it would, well, like one of my friends who lives in that Orange County on the other West Coast says, I call Bullshit.

Yes, something needs to be done to get the whole wide world over this economic trainwreck waiting to happen. And several of the people who in my estimation are contributory factors in that train being on the way to this derailment told us hey, trust us just one more time to do what needs to be done, without any oversight or controls. And it was close, Oh My Children, it was close, but the Word is No. Not that way. Needs some differences yet.