Archie Kobain

Captain America’s been torn apart
Now he’s a court jester with a broken heart
He said, turn me around and take me back to the start
I must be losing my mind, are you blind?
I’ve seen it all a million times

So, this has nothing to do with the election…
(at least the first part doesn’t)

First of all, it has to do with the New York Marathon. 
As you probably know, after Hurricane Sandy put a serious hurting on the Northeastern U.S., leaving many without homes and many more without power, the New York Road Runners, organizers of the event, decided to cancel this year’s marathon.  New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg favored moving forward and continuing to hold the race.  Due to overwhelming public criticism, however, the Road Runners decided to cancel the event.  Seriously?

I understand that Sandy left many people devastated with the loss of family, homes and whatever else you can think of.  And if the marathon were held and it’s organizers didn’t offer to somehow support the Hurricane Sandy victims, we could surely criticize them then and call them insensitive and/or greedy.  But who are we, the whiny American public, to demand that an organization like the New York Road Runners should suffer an even greater hit than what Hurricane Sandy had already delivered.

Instead of putting the marathon in a position to help, this decision, based on public criticism, is potentially costing the marathon millions in lost revenues, refunds to runners, and refunds to sponsors and television broadcasters who paid for an event that didn’t happen. Not to mention all the money spent by runners, many of whom traveled to New York, only to then find out that the event was being cancelled.

Have we really become a country of “poor us”, “poor them”, “poor me”..?  And once someone cries “poor me”, then everything else is fair game, regardless of who gets hurt?  If this were a smaller, or less well-funded, organization this cancellation could put them out of business. I guess no one cares about that and all the goodwill that the marathon generates every year.  Shame on us – the whiny American public.

Next is the No Doubt video…
You know No Doubt… Gwen Stefani…  Possibly the coolest hot chick on the planet?
Well, No Doubt released a video for their new song, Looking Hot.  (Yes, Gwen – you are.)

Gwen Stefani “Looking Hot”

After watching the video, I’m convinced that Gwen and the boys were making fun of old cowboy/western movies but apparently the Native American community found the video offensive.  Seriously?  How is this video offensive?  Oh, that’s right…  It’s the whiny American public again or, in this case, the whiny Native American public.

I know – there go my chances or ever running for public office.
God forbid that I exercise amendment given right of freedom of speech.

Maybe I don’t like Sterlin Harjo’s portrayal of white people in his film Barking Water.  Aaron Riggs plays the part of Elvis in the film.  Is Harjo saying that all white people from Tennessee remind him of Elvis?  …or is he making fun of white American heritage?  I’m offended either way – or – is it possible that I’m just being a little overly sensitive?  You know, like the turmoil over the No Doubt video.

Aaron Riggs as Elvis

BTW… Nothing personal, Sterlin, I was just trying to prove my point.

So, in the end, No Doubt took their video down down from their official Vimeo and/or YouTube sites and issued an apology stating, “it was never our intention to offend anyone”.  Of course, you weren’t… This whole ting is silly.  The good thing is that, although the video has (technically) been “pulled”.  I found it here…

http://en.musicplayon.com/play?v=775232

Hopefully it stays up for a while there.

So now, you watch it and you tell me…
Do you find this potentially offensive in any way?

Whiny America wins again.

By the way, once upon a time, right after the first No Doubt tour, Gwen Stefani dyed her hair red. Apparently she didn’t like it but that shouldn’t stop her from being this week’s Redhead of The Week…

And now, onto the election…
Neither candidate really addressed the issues surrounding our nation’s debt crisis. That’s probably because it is spiraling out of control and no one really know what to do about it.  Not talking about it is a good political strategy because, to solve it, all Americans will have to feel the pain and we the whiny American public doesn’t want to hear about that.  So let’s ignore the problem and see if it goes away.  My bet is that it will not.

All that said, President Obama ran a brilliant campaign.  He kept focusing on the fact that Romney was a rich guy who had made a lot of money and pays less taxes than you do.  Of course, the taxes part isn’t true but political campaigns are mostly immune to whole truth in advertising thing. So, if you’re not a rich guy, it’s pretty easy to hate rich guys – after all, they have everything.  If on top of that, he pays less taxes than we do – then he’s just a self-centered lyin’, cheatin’ bastard right?  Of course he is.

Then there’s the part where Romney wanted to fix healthcare, medicare and social security because the mathematicians will tell you that the current system is going to fail soon.  Well, it was easy to say, “Look – the rich guy wants to change everything and screw you out of the things that you’ve been promised”.  So, instead of taking responsibility for these things, let’s just stay the course, ignore the problems, and hope they go away.  My bet is that they will not.

At the end of the day, President Obama brilliantly targeted the whiny American public and said, “poor you, poor me – please don’t let the rich guy run our country.  Instead, I promise to take from the rich and give to poor you” …and the whiny American public voted.

Now, let’s put the election behind us and start “the real work”.  Let’s figure out how to unite Americans on common ground and form a new major political party.  Let’s focus on the things we all want and throw out the things that divide us and should have anything to do with our national government. I believe more than 60% of America will join us if we do this properly. Then our country can really start to make progress and end the ridiculousness which defines American politics today.

You can start today. Obama was re-elected. Now let’s see if he’s willing to start fixing things.  Weren’t you tired of watching the dirtiest election campaigns in history with all the lies and negative ads?  Thank you to the Supreme Court and Citizen’s United for that.  Well, again – let’s see if we can fix it.  Let start here.  By signing this open letter to the President.

https://www.unpac.org/dear-mr-president/

Thanks for reading…
Thanks for caring…

– Arch