In "Magnum Force" Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) stated to the young vigilante cops that he would continue to uphold the "system" until somebody came along with a better one. Well, the system that has been subjected upon us by Rove, Cheney, Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld and their thugs is a far cry from an improvement. We cannot allow ourselves to be submissive for another two-and-a-half years.

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"Out Of The Blue"

(This column appeared in THE LONE STAR ICONOCLAST, Crawford, Texas, and at www.LoneStarIcon.com the week of July 11, 2006.)

Let's assume that you want your Country* back.

(*Just to be straight, we ain't talkin' music genres here.)

You'd have to be a damned fool to think "no" at this point.

I know I want my Country back.

As do the majority of my family, friends and acquaintances.

According to the polls, the greatest number of American citizens, people I've never met, would like to have their - our - Country returned to us.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 70%, at last count.

With our rights intact.

This includes a sizeable contingent of those good folks who allowed Rovian tactical maneuvering to hornswoggle them into buying the fantasy that soon-to-be King George was just another "good ol' boy."

Those hard-working, salt-of-the-earth, sweat-dripping-from-the-brow people you see every day going to their jobs, the supermarket, Little League and soccer games bought a pig in a poke in 2000, then didn't have enough sense or guts to bail the U.S.A., and the rest of the Planet, out when November, 2004 came around.

People we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with in church, synagogue, and check-out lines; folks who make "Superman Returns" a hit, "The Break-Up" a flop.

Of course, lowlife political shenanigans in Ohio and Florida, combined with voting machines of no demonstrable numeric verification -- courtesy of Diebold CEO and Bush fundraiser Walden O'Dell - rendered the 2004 count moot.

Well, the trouble isn't in the big cities. Generally speaking large metropolitan areas, with their wide diversity of ethnicities and myriad eclectic variances, vote Democratic in presidential elections. The "blue" states are the more industrialized, densely populous areas.

As Meredith Willson put it in "The Music Man," the trouble, my friends, is right here in River City, his ideal for pig-headed, stubborn, narrow-minded small town middle-America (Iowa, to be precise).

Howard Dean has a good idea. Actually, it's a fantastic idea. How am I so sure the concept is fantastic? Republican mouthpieces and pundits have been knocking it, that's how.

He's not concentrating on a few key states for this year's mid-term elections. The Democrats are wearing out shoe leather and New Balance composite soles, walking sidewalks and rural roadways, making personal housecalls door-to-door-to-door in all 50 states. For homes where there's no answer, the Democratic volunteers have a very short, succinct tri-fold pamphlet that hangs quite conveniently on the doorknob.

It's an old technique that predates all the computerized bean counting and data gathering, the mumbo-jumbo of the psychologists and market researchers and people "experts" who study up, down, left and right how human beings are going to think. Of course, none of these schmoes who study people ever took any time as adults to spend any time one-on-one with regular people. As a doctor, Dean does know people; his care about and concern for humankind is clear in the persona he presents to the public.

This grassroots approach is precisely what the Democratic Party needs to defeat the money-grubbing, fear-spreading, war-mongering, non-governing Neo-Conservative Republican Party of Herr Oberst Karl Rove. RoveCo's sole interest is in mega industry profitability.

We must get out and vote. We need to vote as many Republicans out of the Senate and House of Representatives as we can.

These crumbums took over control in 1994 when Newt Gingrich led the charge against "rampant Democratic corruption." The handful of Dems that went down in flames had pulled off but a modicum of the illegal activities and pirated merely a smattering of ill-gotten gains compared to the monumental, cancerous conglomerate constructed by Smiler Tom DeLay and his K Street Hooligans, all paid for by you and me - the American taxpayers.

How ironic that Newtie was the first casualty of GOP malfeasance.

So far this Millennium the only GOP member who's been convicted is Duke Cunningham, in part because he was unable to lie as convincingly as the "evangelical" DeLay. From where I sit, it seems rather apparent the Dukester was a liability to the K Street Hooligans and thus sacrificed to the media feeding frenzy ravenous for a goat.

Yet, for all the under-the-table millions that can be traced directly to Smiler Tom, Inquisitor General Alberto Gonzales has elected to put the full force of his FBI minions onto Democrat William Jefferson. The Congressional Representative from New Orleans was caught with $90,000 in his freezer of an alleged $100,000 bribe. I doubt that Smiler would bother to even come to the phone for such a miserly pittance.

Denny Hastert, the shill hand-picked by Newtie to replace him as Speaker now has some fancy footwork to perform in order to explain the humongous profit he and several other investors will make from an insider land deal in Central Illinois. Yeah, despite his protestations I'm sure Denny and his pals knew absolutely nothing about the new highway coming through.

Next up -- DeLay's would-be hand-picked replacement as Majority Leader. Upon his arrival in the Beltway, Roy Blunt of Missouri was brought into the K Street machine personally by Smiler. He was taught how to become rich and powerful the DeLay way, Amen, and subsequently created his own mini-organization.

Under Smiler's tutelage Blunt put together a political machine with such heavy-duty clout that he managed to bring his son, Matt, in from left field during 2004 and unseat Missouri's Democratic governor.

However, with DeLay no longer the schoolyard bully of the House, Blunt was passed over for the leader role in favor of John Boehner of Ohio.

There are folks who think we need to fix the two-party system. They often see the Dems and GOPers as no different from one another - more interested in self-preservation and garnering enough votes for the next election than working at anything substantial. The politicians have to pander to the corporations and special interest groups in order to get support for those votes. Every election cycle the wheel of ass kissing just goes around and around and around.

Meanwhile, those of us who have mortgages or rent to pay, car payments to make, college tuitions to cover, grocery and utility bills get left behind in the clutter.

It could be that they're right.

During the last decade of the Millennium just passed we had a President who gave a damn, a guy who grew up in the most modest conditions. He was a brilliant man, yet flawed.

Unlike the current Fascist Regime, most of what his administration attempted to accomplish was positive and for the good of the man, woman or child of average circumstances.

I'll take a real individual who can think like a regular person, warts and all, before some schmuck from Connecticut who affects a bad trailer court Texas accent so's folks thinks he's "jes' a good ol' boy."

As for a third party, I see nothing wrong with that. But it isn't going to happen overnight. It's most likely not going to happen in an election or two, or even three. At least not without a major groundswell.

The trouble with trying to bring a new party along too fast is running the risk of losing progressive thinkers' votes that might have gone to Democrats, thus allowing GOP candidates to win.

There's already a ridiculous 97% return rate for members of Congress. That's why nothing ever changes or gets done.

For a third party to really happen, it's going to take time. Serious, dedicated people will have to organize and work at it. The effort may even take a generation before there are enough voters and viable candidates to make headway.

When John Hancock, Ben Franklin, Tom Jefferson and the rest of those guys got so hot, sweaty, and uncomfortable that summer of 1776 in Philadelphia, and whatever it was they were smoking and drinking got them to thinking "the king's a horse's ass -- let's have a revolution," there were no Democrats or Republicans. These guys were basically Libertarians.

(Were there swimming trunks or shorts and tank tops, we might be Canadians.)

All they wanted was Liberty.

Right now the only shot we Americans have at regaining the Liberty we once knew and loved, but under-appreciated, is the Democratic Party.

Keep the Republicans in power and not only will it be two more years of the same crap, but things will most likely get worse.

Herr Rove, much like Heinrich Himmler did to Germany from 1933 to 1944, in cahoots with Dark Lord the Dick Cheney have been orchestrating the systematic dismantling of one Constitutional Right after another. Our freedoms are being eroded faster than the polar ice caps. They're spending our money at a rate that it will never be recouped - except for the tens of millions the West Wing insiders and their cronies are stashing in goof-proof hideaways.

The most positive thing each and every American can do is register to vote, then go to the polls this November 7 and vote for any and all Democratic candidates listed.

Once we take over the Senate and House, we can start to clean up the messes of Herr Oberst Karl Rove, Dark Lord Cheney, their puppet King George XLIII, and the rest of the Fascist criminals who illegally commandeered our White House and shanghaied our Government.

If you want Libertarian or Green Party or Draculan or whatever other party candidates we can begin to work on that once the blackguards are gone.

One word of warning: Be careful what you wish for, 'cause you just might get it. Lest we forget all the backbiting and infighting that went on among the Ross Perot bunch and the Green Party...

Up the Dems!

Shalom, Friends of Liberty.

© 2006, The Lone Star Iconoclast

Authors Website: www.lonestaricon.com

Authors Bio:
An erstwhile Philosopher and sometime Educator, Jerry Tenuto is a veteran of seven years service in the U.S. Army. He holds a BS and MA in Broadcast Communications from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. For two decades Jerry filled the airwaves with rock, roll and banter as a disc jockey -- until greed, the rebirth of payola, and de-Reaganlation ruined that medium. Depending upon your taste in political stew, you can either blame or thank Jerry for his weekly "Out Of The Blue" feature in THE LONE STAR ICONOCLAST, Crawford, Texas, www.LoneStarIcon.com -- because somebody from that community has to do the world right.