Don't Think Your Vote Matters?

Ask The Citizens of Gaza

Many people don't vote.  Their reasons (excuses, actually) vary: 
1. I forgot.
2. Who cares? They're all the same.
3. I don't understand the issues, so I don't want to cancel the vote of someone who does.
4. I would, but why bother? The other side is going to win, according to the pollsters. (Or my side is going to win anyway, according to the pollsters.)
5.  One vote doesn't matter, and besides I have to work.

The list is much longer, but the end result is the same: that person doesn't vote.

A vote matters.

To the non-voters, I say I don't want to hear you bitching about political matters.  You haven't earned the right to complain.

In 2006 the citizens of Gaza elected a slate of Hamas candidates to run their tiny country.  Now, most of the civilized world and even some Arab countries have Hamas at the top of their Terrorist Organizations list, right there with Al Qaeda.

So the citizens voted to be run by a terrorist organization.

Now they are dying - not for the first time - from Israeli artillery and air strikes, retribution brought about because over the years the duly elected Gaza government has fired more than 10,000 rockets into Israel, trying to kill its citizens.  Hamas, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, has sent kidnap teams into Israel, terror squads into Israel.

And now Hamas is being killed by Israel.  As they die, they hide their rockets and weapons in hospitals and schools and shoot at Israeli from those facilities, hoping that Israel will strike them and kill school children and hospital patients.  Israel does.  The photos show up on their accomplice network, CNN.  Hell, Hamas shoots their own citizens if they dare to object to having rockets launched from their front yard.

Hamas wants as many of their countrymen to die as possible.  A huge pile of children's corpses would be, in their view, a triumph.

While I wonder now how many of the Gaza citizens might have voted differently had they thought more than ten seconds about who Hamas is, I have no sympathy for them.  They elected this government, now they get to reap the whirlwind.  

There are, to your otherwise lovable Ostrich Killer's thinking, no innocent voters just as there are no innocent non-voters.

But these idiots have a way to save themselves: get rid of Hamas.  Seek them out, kill them wherever they are found.  Then hold new elections and see if they can join the community of civilized nations.

Don't think a vote matters?  Many Gaza citizens might now argue with that sort of mindless bullshit thinking.

But wait, some might say.  That's Gaza.  We're Americans.

Yes, we are.  Look who is President.  Look what he is doing.  He is LITERALLY singlehandedly and in direct violation of the Constitution destroying the United States, because that is what he wants to do.  And the majority of the electorate (voters) want him to do that.  Apparently, because they elected him.  Twice.

Makes me wonder about the oft-cited wisdom of the American voter.  There is scant evidence of significant populations of such creatures in our pop-culture saturated society.

A vote matters.  Yours.  Mine.  The neighbor's. Take it seriously, and use your brain instead of your emotions.  Think.

As usual, some of my readers may wonder if I have my facts right.  As usual, they are free to verify them for themselves.  That is what Google is for.

Now, another beer.  Too late for coffee.

THE CUBANIZATION OF EGYPT

Sorry for the invention of that word above, o Faithful Readers. Let your friendly Ostrich Killer define it for you, especially if you're less than, say, 65 years of age: 'Cubanization' refers to what happened in Pre-Castro Cuba, during the time Castro was staging a revolt. In the US during that time, we didn't know what to do: Castro seemed to be a popular revolutionary who offered some promise of a freer Cuba, although we also knew he had 'leftist' leanings. So as a country, our leaders elected the Ostrich approach to dealing with him: we stuck our collective heads in the sand and pretended all was well.

Of course history shows us that it wasn't.

History also shows us that we knew it wouldn't be.

But doing something would have been difficult, so we put our most optimistic faces on and applauded.

Just like we're doing in Egypt.

The outcome is very likely to be an Iran-like Islamic state that hates Western culture and thinks of us as enemies. That may very well spell the end of Israel's peaceful co-existence with Egypt, and will almost surely result in Egypt openly running arms and other supplies into Gaza so that the idiots living there can resume rocketing and otherwise provoking Israel.

So now you know what recent history hints may be the outcome.

Do you think that Barack Hussein Obama knows this? Two possible answers: Yes, he knows, in which case he is on the wrong side. Or No, he is unaware, which makes him ignorant and / or stupid.

You choose.

AMERICAN ANTI-SEMITISM

The other day I had lunch with a close friend, one who served in the armed services of the United States with distinction. The subject of Israel's blockade of Gaza came up.

I was astounded at my friend's ignorance of history. He said words to the effect that if Britain and the United States hadn't divided up the middle east and helped Jews steal the land that is now Israel from the Palestinians, none of the trouble we see today would be occurring. Then he echoed the MSM (Main Stream Media) line that Israel's enforcement of the blockade had been 'botched' and probably criminal.

He is a frequent listener to PBS, the government-owned and run propaganda radio network.

In thinking about this later, I came to the conclusion that he lacks knowledge, and isn't truly an anti-Semite. I know him to be a man of good will and soft-hearted. He's just ignorant and too lazy to do a little research on the actual history of the situation there. Then I went on to extrapolate that his functional anti-Semitism mirrors much of American thinking, or rather lack of it. Much of what passes for thinking and knowledge in the United States is little more than spouting the latest buzz phrases delivered by the MSM.

So yes, I place a lot of blame on the MSM for the message: Jews are wrong. Never mind that they're trying to prevent re-arming of Hamas, the elected government of Gaza and officially a terrorist organization. Never mind that any time Gaza gets an uninspected shipment of 'humanitarian relief' supplies, a barrage of rocket attacks on Israel ensue.

The MSM is the collective lapdog of the Obama regime. Barack Hussein Obama is an anti-semite, both in words and in actions. Other than Jimmy Carter, he is the only president in recent history to be so obviously an enemy of the Jewish State. So it's no surprise that the MSM, lapdog that it is, spouts Obama anti-semitic propaganda and simply refuses to provide their listeners with the truth about the blockade. So it's no wonder that their historically illiterate and intellectually lazy American audience thinks poorly of Israel for the 'botched' blockade enforcement.

What should Israel have done? Their 'botched' enforcement wound up costing the blockade runners nine lives and deportation. The blockade held. Very humanitarian, among the annals of historical blockade enforcements. And it accomplished its mission.

Your Ostrich Killer, being simpler-minded and less interested in keeping my enemies alive, would have simply sunk the ships who refused to comply with their order to either go into port for the usual (yes, usual) cargo inspections prior to transshipment to Gaza, or to leave those waters. A blockade is a systematic act of war, legitimate and time-honored, but is only useful if the imposing country is willing to enforce it. In short, a blockade is not a blockade if it isn't enforced. Gaza has fired over 4,000 rockets into Israel. I'd say that constitutes a state of war, wouldn't you? Plenty of reason to blockade them.

So I am with the Israelis on this matter. They have the absolute right to self-defense. And I'm talking about forward, active, pre-emptive defense of the sort we, as Americans, would use in their place if we received a constant rain of rockets from across any of our borders. However, apparently the rest of the world thinks their mere existence is an affront to peace and thus should suffer this endless barrage in silence and passively. I am ashamed of my current government's position on this and other matters concerning the state of Israel. And I shake in my boots at the awful prospects for that region as long as Barack Hussein Obama is in power. How long can it be before the states hostile to Israel detect - or think they detect - a Barack Hussein Obama green light to attack Israel? If they do, this time it's likely millions will die. And those deaths will be directly attributable to Barack Hussein Obama.

He needs to go. Thank God he appears to have committed an impeachable offense in trying to bribe people with white house jobs.

My hat is off to Benjamin Netanyahu for his standing up for his country, against pretty much the rest of the world. I'm with you, buddy. And I'm not alone. God be with you and your countrymen.