| There are two primary editors for this website: Les Blough and me. We've known each a long time and over the years we've had disagreements, although they've always been minor and with a lot of time between them. But there is one thing on which we have agreed since the beginning: We have always encouraged American voters to stay home on election day.
We think that voting in the US is pointless, probably fraudulent, completely incapable of electing good government, and it just encourages the buggers. No matter who's running for office, they are all cut from the same cloth - some might be a little better than others, but they are still not worth the paper they're written on. [It's not a coincidence that a grouping of baboons is a 'congress'.] Les lives in Venezuela, where elections (according to international observers) are fair and transparent. I live in Canada, where elections are generally fair (except during the term of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper). That gives us some latitude to sit back and observe the US election scene without having to be directly affected by it. But imagine our shock and dismay when it dawned on us that the current US election season and its seemingly never-ending run for the presidency is a great source of entertainment. As we looked on for longer and longer, we realized that, at last, we are finally able to say to the American people, 'Get out and vote; do it as many times as you can. And here's who you should vote for.' More about that later. Who's Who In order to understand why this presidential election cycle is so entertaining, let's look at what we have on offer. We'll start with the Democrats first because 'D' comes before 'R' in the alphabet (also in the word 'drivel'). Democrats: There are only two candidates with any hope of gaining the party's nomination to run for president: Bernie and Hillary. We'll start with Bernie Sanders (I was going to start with Hillary - ladies first, and all that - but I'm not sure it applies). Bernie Sanders is a longtime member of Congress and he has certainly been stirring things up a bit in this campaign. Most people would have considered his candidacy to be wildly improbable - but the guy's got some traction. He's a little old to be running for president, but there aren't really many years between him and the other candidate.
While it is certainly fair to say that Bernie has some attractive rhetoric, that's all it is. Even if elected, he surely must know that the President is the most powerless person in the US government. All the glorious changes he promises could never come to pass because the owners of the United States wouldn't let them. It is a telling condemnation of the American political landscape that Bernie can be called a 'socialist'. He is nothing of the sort. Sure, there are some issues where he seems to point in the right direction, er, the left direction; but thinking of him as a socialist is much like thinking of the Grand Canyon as a ditch. So we'll turn to Hillary Clinton. This is a dynamic woman - of that there can be no doubt. But she is also a real danger to the world, and to the US in particular. To know that, all you really need to do is remember: Libya, Iraq, Whitewater, Benghazi, or a whole lot of other files she has botched. Not one of those places is better for having known her. And it certainly seems clear that she has learned nothing from these experiences. From some folks, she earns sympathy just because of who she married. And that seems fair to me. By the same token, others heap scorn upon her because of who she married. Either way, she is carrying the baggage Bill left behind. During his presidency, she was given one task - besides being 'the other woman' (nudge, nudge) - and that was health insurance. If you live in the US, you know that never happened. It had to wait for the next Democratic president - who introduced such a bizarre piece of crap that it's a wonder he ever got anyone to support it.
Hillary has lived in the White House before, you may remember, and she seems determined to get back there. I'm not sure why, though, because she is surely rich enough that she doesn't need to live in the government's most costly subsidized housing. It's always hard to know who's leading and who's trailing in election campaigns, but at this point I'd have to guess the edge goes to Hillary. Republicans: No matter what you say about this crowd - and let's face it, who doesn't - they are an endless source of mirth. They have some of the dumbest people ever to learn shoelace-tying that we've seen in a long, long time. And it's almost as though they enjoy outdumbing each other. I'm not going to speak to all the Republican candidates because there have been a lot of them, and they're all essentially the same anyway. But there is one who stands out like a beacon, like a sore thumb, like a teenager's first pimple. You know who I mean. Donald Trump must be just about the biggest waste of skin in the entire country. Yet he is clearly leading in the race to become the Republican Party's candidate. He personifies everything the rest of the world despises about America: racism, crass materialism, non-stop self-worship and self-aggrandizement; and rank vulgarity. The fact that so many people seem to think he is fit to be President of the US probably says more about the warped society it has become than anything else could. It certainly calls into question the brain capacity of Republicans who support him
[Full disclosure: We actually gave some thought to supporting Trump's candidacy in the belief that anyone who would vote for him would deserve what they got. But in a moment of clarity we realized were aren't that ...]So What Can Be Done? Glad you asked. I've pondered this for some time. Since the role of President is to do nothing, accomplish nothing, and try not to screw anything up too badly, it seems to me the US would best be served by a President who is guaranteed to be harmless. It's time for a dead President. The idea doesn't originate with us and we're sort of embarrassed we didn't think of it ourselves, but there you go. Consider:
Now you have to bear in mind that running for office when you're already dead means you'll have to be a write-in candidate. Luckily, US law allows for that. So I gave this some thought, spent a little time on Google, and came up with the answer. There is one such individual who has all the requisite qualities:
So with all this in mind, Axis of Logic is encouraging ALL American citizens to get out and vote in November 2016. And we urge that you elect a write-in candidate: the much-loved, and conveniently dead, Gracie Allen, along with hubby George Burns as vice-president. Gracie did run once before. One day in 1940 these words came out of her mouth: "George, I'm tired of knitting this sweater. I think I'll run for president this year." And what better reason could there possibly be?
Gracie ran a clean campaign, with simple and achievable goals:
And she hatched the genius of a sew-on political button, which would prevent supporters from changing their minds. Gracie comes with her campaign song already written - a catchy tune called Vote for Gracie: So listen up, America: do yourselves a favour and elect the Allen-Burns ticket with a write-in campaign. You won't regret it, and the rest of the world will thank you for it. There's no need to thank Axis of Logic for this advice - it is offered freely and without conditions. © Copyright 2015 by AxisofLogic.com This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of the article in its entirety, respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite the author and Axis of Logic as the original source including a "live link" to the article. Thank you! |
