I want to tell you all two stories today.
Because I’m a storyteller.
1. In Las Vegas at the age of about four I learned what gambling is
I began my education on the subject of gambling at quite a tender age.
When I was very young my family—with four kids—went to Las Vegas (for some unclear reason). It turned out most of the motels wouldn’t take children because there were gambling machines in the lobbies, and it wasn’t legal for children to stay anyplace where there was gambling.
We drove around and around. We children were getting pretty darn tired.
Eventually, we pulled up in front of a convenience store to ask for help, and there was a one-armed bandit out front (on the sidewalk!).
My dad hopped out with a nickel and said to us wide-eyed little kids, “I’m going to show you what’s wrong with gambling. See this nickel? I’m going to put it in that machine, pull that handle, and get nothing back. Nothing. I’ll have thrown away my nickel.”
He went up, put his nickel in, pulled the handle, and got about five nickels.
When he got back in the car, we were all the backseat yelling, “Do it again, Daddy!”
My mother was laughing. “What are you going to tell the kids now?” she said.
He turned to us and said, “This is the second thing I’m going to teach you about gambling: quit while you’re ahead.”
Boy, talk about a lesson learned.
2. Now, today, November 6th, Americans are voting
Whenever we’ve been able to fight our way, in our daily lives, through the incessant clamor of television “info-tainment,” beyond our families’ sky-rocketing financial needs, and around the now-inescapable marketing industry still working overtime to drain our wallets. . .
We Americans have actually paid very close attention to what our President has done in the past four years.
“That we are in the midst of crisis is well-understood,” President Obama told us in 2009. “We are in the midst of war, our economy is in tatters, our healthcare is too costly. The challenges we face are real, they are serious, and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short space of time.
“But know this, America, they will be met. We have chosen hope over fear, unity over discord. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts, a path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work. America is bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions.
“Starting today we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin the work of re-making America. Everywhere we look there is work to be done. We will act, not only to create new jobs, but to lay the foundations for future growth. We will raise healthcare’s quality and lower its cost. All this we can do. All this we will do.
“There are some who question the scale of our ambitions. Their memories are short. We extend opportunity to every willing heart not out of charity but because it is the route to our common good.
“And we will not give up our ideals for expediency’s sake.”
Well, did he end the War in Iraq? Did he reverse the impending collapse of our tattered economy? Did he pass historic healthcare reform, so that we average American families can get affordable care for our sick children, ourselves, our elderly, even with ‘previous medical conditions’?
Let’s look at the empirical data:
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Ending the War in Iraq after unprecedented numbers of Tours of Duty (ask any military family you know) and returning our troops to their loved ones
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Reversal of the gutting done by the previous (Republican) Administration of our Veterans Benefits—medical and financial support for those Americans who risk their lives and limbs on behalf of the rest of us
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The nearly-impossible reversal of an economy in free-fall
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Recovery of an entire blue-collar industry in Detroit teetering on the verge of collapse, estimated at one million jobs
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Bringing Americans up to the healthcare standards of the rest of the developed world—about which this Republican father says, “The next President will determine the length of my son’s life.”
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Plus passage of the most powerful-ever US legislation giving women equal status with men—because, somehow, up until the past four years Americans had still not legally allowed that women are equal to men
All this and mountains more in just four years.
Sure, there’s more to do. How do you repair decades of undermining one of the biggest economies in the world in four short years? Obama’s a heck of a guy, but he’s still only one human being.
Could you have accomplished what he has?
As you consider this question, please keep in mind:
President Obama accomplished all that he has in these four short years against the unprecedented obstructionism of a Congress packed with lunatics whose only goal was preventing our federal government from working so the Republicans could claim in 2012 that President Obama had “failed” to fix everything.
I guess they didn’t count on such a powerhouse of a President.
Or on their own Republican voters realizing what they were doing and turning against them.
Yes, Republicans for Obama are standing up against the neo-con appropriation of their Republican Party.
Republican voters are saying, “Not on our turf, you don’t. We’re ahead of where we were four years ago, and we’re quitting you loons while we’re ahead.”
Because President Obama got all this done in spite of the obstructionists.
Wowza. Backfire with a vengeance!
Imagine what our President could accomplish with a Congress that actually wanted the federal government to work.
Now, I know the Republican Party line with American voters since the neo-cons took over the GOP has been, “Look, we’re rich! You can be rich too! All you have to do is allow us to stop paying our fair share of income tax!”
Trickle-Down Economics, you betcha.
Don’t worry about working hard for what we get, tightening our belts through hard times like our ancestors did, having patience and re-doubling our efforts to take care of ourselves and those around us when circumstances beyond our control turn against us, because when the going gets tough the tough get going. . .
Instead, just develop unquestioning faith in an economic system based entirely on the idea that if we allow an aristocracy to arise in our country they just might—just might, if they felt like it—allow a tiny bit of their massive wealth to “trickle down” onto the heads of the rest of us.
You know what we call that, people?
Gambling mentality.
There’s a reason Las Vegas and Atlantic City are as huge and glittery and fake as they are. There’s a reason the casino owners roll in money the way they do. There’s a reason you never see a casino owner in the Unemployment Line. . .
Because the house always wins.
The Republican Party neo-con leadership egging Americans on to gamble with their economy and their children’s futures is the casino, you guys. But it doesn’t matter how much sincere faith you throw at them and their ‘Trickle-Down’ system.
You can’t beat the house.
And there was never a gambler in all the history of gambling who was simply so lucky the casino owners took them aside and said, “You—you lucky individual—wow, it turns out that you, of all the other millions in your exact position, you’re one of us. Welcome to the club!”
That.
Never.
Happens.
So don’t buy the hype. Don’t ever, ever, ever buy the hype. Don’t gamble with your lives and your children’s lives.
Turn off the television. Stop listening to whoever has the most tens of millions of dollars to throw at you in ads. Educate yourself on the issues.
And VOTE.
YOU are the one who decides DECIDED how this story ENDS!
On behalf of myself and my husband and my loved ones and especially my son, whose very future we all hold in our hands—thank you all, from the depths of my heart.
THIS POST is in honor of next year’s centennial celebration of the Sixteenth Amendment, created in 1913 to ensure taxation of the wealthy of America on behalf of the rest of the country as described in our Constitution, to protect the middle-class and keep the playing field level so that all Americans remain equal.
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