(D)ude: Man! The right to vote in the United States is in
peril and there is no foundation or organization that is enfranchising the
disenfranchised! There aren’t holiday campaigns promoting suffrage and the
United States Postal Service. Instead, we have Jeff Bezos promoting drone
delivery services and the Republican Party quietly tending to the business of cheating
US in the 2014 midterms by overriding the trends that result in greater voter
turnout, like early voting and being able to accommodate people at the polls
into the late night hours.
(M)an: Dude! Did you see the celebrations in South Africa
throughout the early morning hours following the passing of Nelson Mandela the
day before? I recorded The Rachel Maddow Show and if you fast-forward into the
show 26 minutes and 18 seconds, there is a White South African guy on the right
hand side of the screen dancing and high fiving a Black South African woman in
a robe. Both are so caught up in the crowd’s song and dance that they are
totally unaware they are being filmed, despite the jam of cameras and
journalists surrounding them on all sides.
D: Man! I’ve got to take a look! Did you just say that it
was 26 minutes into the Maddow broadcast from December 5th?
M: Dude! You’re about right. The actual high fiving doesn’t
appear until 26 minutes and 35 seconds into the broadcast. The song and dance
routine that breaks out between the two South Africans lasts a total of one
minute and fifteen seconds.
D: Man! Talking about calculations, I think Nelson Mandela’s
twenty-seven year imprisonment was a way to protect the intellectual powerhouse
from certain sudden death. And I also think that there is an apartness being hammered
into America’s Soul by the Republican Party and the Supreme Court.
M: Dude! American apartheid and the death of civil rights in
the United States is upon US when Ohio Senator Rob Portman can come on This
Week with George Stephanopoulos and insist that a living wage would only cause
more jobs lost as a result because only 2% of Americans work for the minimum
wage and of that group less than 3/10 of 1% is below the poverty level and 50%
of them are youth, specifically 16 to 24-year-olds.
D: Man! That’s a mouthful! But, then again, that’s a tactic
of the GOP, isn’t it?
M: Dude! Illinois Senator Dick Durbin responded to Senator
Rob Portman’s mouthful. Senator Dick Durbin clearly spelled out how the
Affordable Care Act and a living wage would economically benefit not just
individual lives but the economy of the United States as well. Senator Dick Durbin
continued to make the case for bipartisanship by emphasizing that Ronald Reagan
had supported the expansion of the earned income tax credit that had been
enacted in 1975.
D: Man! Did you know that lifting sanctions in Iran would
allow the country access to $3.5 billion dollars of previously frozen funds?
M: Dude! That’s good! According to the BBC, there is one
concern that will now be addressed to redress the lives of all Iranian families.
According to their estimates, a basketful of nutritionally balanced food cost a
family approximately $340 dollars per week. Now, that same basketful of
nutritionally balanced food will be reduced to approximately $80 dollars per
week.
D: Man! How did Iranian families afford to feed an entire
household when sanctions were in place?
M: Dude! Contrary to how the conservatives and
neoconservatives in the United States government choose to label the Iranian
people and their government, Iran does have in place a supplemental income program.
However, like recipients of SNAP and WIC in the United States, many Iranian
families go without a meal per day.
D: Man! Amazon is utilizing the United States Postal Service
because of their cheaper delivery rates worldwide. But news of possible drone
carriers of the future for Amazon really frustrates me. Jeff Bezos would be
best advised not to treat people and robotics as competitors in future markets.
There’s going to have to be a good number of human employees looking out for
those drone carriers.
M: Dude! How so?
D: Man! Well, you’ll have to monitor that there aren’t
second amendment and NRA enthusiasts and/or members playing clay pigeon hunter
with the drone devices. I mean, logistically, how much air traffic pollution
can the world truly sustain? If we don’t do anything about the environment for
humanity’s sake, at least we can do so for interspatial commerce.
M: Dude! Jeff Bezos needs to build up the case for people
first, not toys. And we as a country need to build up the United States Postal
Service. Do you know the hours our postal service worker spends delivering the
mail daily?
D: Man! It’s really an exhausting load that our postman must
handle. He begins his route at around 8 AM and doesn’t get through until 7:30
PM. I know because this apartment complex is his last stop in the evening. He’s
actually responsible for several routes, because I see him in neighboring
blocks that I’m certain the United States Postal Service had assigned to at
least two other workers.
M: Dude! You know, I remember them too! I don’t think the
United States Congress or Wall Street understand how the postman/woman are a
part of the family and the neighborhood. Twelve hours daily is too much and
there is no guarantee from Corporate America that our postal workers will be
able to hold onto their jobs. The two retirement plans they could avail in 1984
were the Civil Service Retirement System, or CSRS, and the Federal Employees
Retirement System, or FERS.
D: Man! What about after 1984?
M: Dude! The CSRS was replaced with 1987’s FERS. But keep in
mind that there was the Federal Erroneous Retirement Coverage Corrections Act,
or FERCCA, that passed both the Senate and the House and was signed by
President Clinton in 2000.
D: Man! The Reagan Administration was never looked upon
suspiciously for not having had the foresight to enact legislation like FERCCA
immediately?
M: Dude! The time to sign up for Obamacare is now. Either
you sign up now or forever hold your grievances with injustices in the United
States. And this is the season to be securing passports and other forms of
valid identification in order to cast a ballot in the midterm elections in
2014.
D: Man! Nelson Mandela and President Clinton had a real
friendship, didn’t they? I think President Clinton’s flip-flopping on the
Affordable Care Act and subsequent alignment against President Obama was too
much for Mandela’s soul to take.
M: Dude! I think of the death of his granddaughter that way.
Otherwise, I am certain Nelson Mandela would have championed onwards and
perhaps rivaled Bolivia’s Carmelo Flores Laura in years graced.
D: Man! Desmond Tutu and the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission’s handling of the past and building up South Africa through tearing
down the walls of silence was the first strategic step that newly elected
President Mandela took in 1994. President Clinton had been in office just over
a year?
M: Dude! The walls of silence need to be kept from resurrection,
beginning with the United States and the voter crises that the GOP have
scheduled for next year.
D: Man! The GOP is too silent to not be doing anything under
the radar! I knew it!
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