STAND UP FOR AUDITS AND RECOUNTS NOW!!

Fellow citizens, our rights are in danger!!
Perhaps not immediately, but it was anticipation of worse that helped start both the English Civil War and indeed our own Revolution!
The counts in five hotly-contested states--Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida AND North Carolina--have too many irregularities about them NOT to be suspicious! NOW IS THE TIME to call and call LOUDLY for all these states to be both audited and recounted! If you let the GOP get away with this evil Trumpery, you will send a message to them that they can get away with this sort of rigging! Together with their gerrymandering and roadblocks to make it harder for people of color, women, seniors, students and the poor generally to vote, this will enable them to rig elections while they:
1)Privatize and ultimately abolish Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, thereby pauperizing many of us
2) Put a hammerlock on the Supreme Court and the rest of the judiciary and thereby reverse Roe and many other rulings such as Gideon and Miranda which expanded ordinary people's rights
3) Repeal Amendments 13 through 19 which protect the rights of people of color and women as independent and voting citizens and democratize income and elections. (Except the 18th, which was already repealed in 1933: Prohibition)
4) Set up a neo-feudal system in which rich white men will hold ALL the power and most of the wealth!
When we all have more freedoms, we all have more freedoms. Including white men. Freedom (including freedom from want) is not a zero-sum game UNLESS you're just afraid that, in a really honest system, no one will be lower than YOU on the totem pole! And you know what? That 'addytood', as some say in my old hometown, REEKS!!! Anyone with that addytood shows just how much lower than a snake's belly they are! However, lower even than that is knowing you HAVE that addytood and doing all you can to hide it, paper it over as opposed to CHANGING it inside yourselves!
Not to mention such an addytood shows you really don't think a whole lot of yourself, and THAT is really too dam' bad! Especially when, with a little bit of good education and job training, you can be, as the old song says, better than you are. It might be a while, though, before you can swing on a star or carry moonbeams home in a jar but we all start somewhere.
Finally, Bernie is only too right about our crying need to go BEYOND identity politics! We need to get out of our identity and/or issue silos and start educating (NO patronizing allowed!) and connecting with each other!
Now shout out with me: "Audits! Recounts! Audits! Recounts!" Then remember, that's only part of the beginning!

OPEN LETTER TO THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

An open letter to the members of the Electoral College.

Ladies and Gentlemen: By now I needn't remind you of the power given you by the Constitution. That is, to vote for whoever you think best for our country. I know of some states that fine you if you vote for someone else besides the winner of the state's popular vote, but twenty-one states don't compel you that way, or any other way, at all.

Hillary's popular vote margin is now, at latest report, at a million and half and still growing. I've also seen a bit of news that Trump himself expected his campaign to be over by October of last year, after which he planned to endorse Christie. I mention this to suggest he, like myself, might not really want the job. But, still, while I entreat you to elect Hillary Clinton as president, I would ask you to vote for me before Trump, for the following reasons:

1)We have equal experience in politics and government, which is of course to say, we both have none.

2) On the other hand (finger maybe?) I have read history since I was seven, politics and government since I was eleven and have watched politics since 1968 when I turned twelve that August. I hope this counts for something.

3) I listen better. As I am not a habitual liar, my b.s. detector still works pretty well. When I don't know something, I know how to find out who to ask about it and to do just that. Ask.

4) No conflicts of interest. As we are all finding out, Trump seems to be, increasingly, a veritable web of such conflicts. Vote for me in his place, and all those conflicts of interest become academic.

So much for myself in preference to Trump, but I'd really rather you choose Hillary over me for at least the following two reasons: First, she has, as I mentioned previously, a growing popular vote margin nationwide, now at 1.5 million by report. Second, no one knows these 'onions' like she does, except maybe Bernie or Elizabeth (Warren). She knows all the levers to pull and overblown egos to massage (something at which I am positively abysmal!) in order to get necessary things done!

Third, a cloud is over some of those wafer-thin margins for Trump in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida and North Carolina. All of these are states where voting laws which have disproportionate effect on students, seniors, people of color and the poor generally, being able to vote as easily as propertied white men. And Democrats being Democrats, they probably either didn't factor in those laws, or not to enough of an extent. Which lead to the polls being off. I think you ladies and gentlemen understand me.

I shall post and share this on FB and my website at http://nopartyline.blogspot.com. and ask for signatures.

Thank you all for your time and consideration of this most urgent matter. Again, I ask you to elect Hillary Clinton for our country's sake.

KEEPING THINGS STRAIGHT

Let's get a couple of things straight here: the bulk of Trump's support did and does come from open or covert white racists and/or sexists of varying stripe. On the other hand, of the voters who actually put him over the top in Wisconsin, Michigan and (sob!) Pennsylvania at least include many people who voted for Obama in both 2008 and 2012!
Now how cometh this? Thus: Trump's voters are not all racist by any means, but I think it's safe to say almost none of them are anti-racist. That is, Trump's winning votes came from voters who may not be racist (or otherwise prejudiced) themselves, but for whom Trump's voiced racism, sexism, etc., ad nauseam (!), was not a deal-breaker. These are very important distinctions, because we who are anti-racists need 1) to give no quarter to the real racists and 2) show the non-racists why, and how, racism and all its kind MUST henceforth be a political deal-breaker!
Before I go any further, let me also say what I don't mean by racism: I do not mean a preference for one's own people or culture simply because it is one's own. Just be aware of the 'why(s)' of that preference, that's all. Racism's groundwork is laid when we act as if our way is perfect and we got it all. Little secret which ought not be a secret, especially for my fellow Christians: NO ONE has it 'all' or ever will this side of Judgment! Got that?
I don't even mean honest worries about how (un) assimilable the latest arrivals might prove. Such worries are as old as the Scotch-Irish migration to what were then the Colonies. Even then, some of the previous (English) arrivals wondered about that. I hope that can be discussed civilly and without too much rancor.
I think what I do mean is the desire to maintain straight white male patriarchy or the assumption of it as the 'natural' or, worse, the divinely ordained way things ought to be. And Zionism is not racism; it's the Jewish People's Liberation Movement. The Arab world is WAY more racist than Israel will ever be. Just read what brother Eldridge had to say about both!
I'm willing to bet that anywhere from 3/4 to almost all of we palefaces who voted for Hillary are active or passive anti-racists. And this is where I give our collective back a pat. Consider this: at NO TIME in our history have so many whites been actual ANTI-racists! That's right. Not even in 1865; probably no more than ten percent (if that) of the white population was anti-racist then.
I hope that informational tidbit serves us as a bite and a sup, to employ the old phrase, to sustain us on the long journey and job ahead. We have work to do to better organize and coordinate ourselves, educate our 'non-racists' and utterly defeat our open and covert racists, sexists, etc. Let's get to it. NOW.