! ONE MORE DAY !

With one day left before America Votes, we stand on a precipice and by consensus will decide the forcefulness of our jump – but jump we shall.

The GOP has cut taxes and raised spending. Bush 43 proudly boasts of the unfunded mandate he has vested on local communities and local property taxes – a mandate known as “No Child Left Behind.”   

The Patriot Act has threatened our basic freedoms and the very essence of the American ideal – what the world views as the American way of life.    We have our speech restricted and are told we can only exercise “freedom of speech” in “free speech zones” – far from any meaningful location where the speech could be heard.

Tomorrow the credibility of American Democracy could be on the line.    The world is watching.    Will there be a paper trail?    Will we be able to verify the vote count?    OR    Will we have to take the “winner’s word” for the validity of the count?    Will we take Hitler’s word? Castro’s word? Rumsfeld’s word? Bush’s word?    Yep, that’s what we are facing with the touch screens in the land of the hanging chad – we need to take their word for the count.    And we need to do it in a state where 37,000 voters were registered by election officials ... 37,000 in a county that only has a population of 31,000.    YEP!    We, and the world, will need to accept on faith – GOP faith based voting – the outcome of tomorrow’s election.

It doesn’t matter which candidate wins.    If the result is close and “ faith based there isn’t a rational person in the world who will accept it as credible.    More important, there will be noone in those nations, where democracy is needed, who will be able to point to America as an example of what they want – an example of how they define freedom.

One more day.    Will it go to the lawyers?    If so, America might just fail that global test – we might just lose the credibility that a leader needs to be a leader.    We could lose what little is left of the credibility that a leader needs before people follow willingly.    We cannot drag people to Democracy; we cannot impose it through the barrel of a gun.    We are seeing that in Afghanistan – where elections were held, the vote appeared honest, but the leadership has no credibility with those they must lead..

! ONE MORE DAY !