I Didn’t Watch The Election

It would have been too stressful for me; instead I went down to West Haven to hear Namoli Brennet. I first heard her sing up in Provincetown at Fantasia Fair and I enjoyed her music, she writes all her own music. She was born in Waterbury, moved to Pennsylvania and now lives out in Tucson when not traveling around the country singing. At Fantasia Fair when she was preforming she said that she was going to have a contest, but what could she give as a prize? I yelled out “A trip to Holy Land” and that broke her up. You see, it is an inside joke. If you been to Waterbury you will see a big cross on top of one of the hills. A local convent built a model of the Holy Land on the hill based on the Stations of the Cross and they use to charge admission to aid the convent. So anyhow, I enjoyed listening to her and bought a number of her CDs. She played some of the old favorites and added a number of songs from her new CD, “Live” and of the new songs that she played I liked “Iowa” and “the Grapes of Wrath” the best. (You can listen to her songs from “Live” here.)

Before her set George Morgio played, he is a local folk singer from the 60s and many of his song followed the tradition of folk singers of the 60s with social advocacy. One song he played was called “Killing of New Orleans” which was about hurricane Katrina and how the poor were treated during the storm. But he also sang “Think of You” about breaking up with his girlfriend. (You can listen to a sampling of his songs here.)

I guess I have to say something about the election.

Probably the election is best summed up as “status quo,” nothing really changed. The divide in the House and the Senate is basically the same, some new faces and a lot of old faces, but what was interesting for me were three things for this election.

First was that the president won the women vote and second the president increased the percentage of Latino and Black vote. Lastly, marriage equality won in Maine and Maryland and a constitutional amendment seeking to ban marriage equality was rejected in Minnesota.

This is what I think it all means, first the people rejected the Republicans’ war on women. I think that the Republicans have to back-off their quest to ban abortions; women want the right to choose what they do to their own bodies. They must also back-off from their efforts to close Planned Parenthood and they must support programs like mammograms, WIC, Head Start and other women heath programs.

Next the Republicans have to become more diversified, they have to reach a compromise on immigration reform and end their efforts to chip away at the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They must also end their war on LGBT people. The religious right has hijacked the Republican party and changed it from a party of smaller government and getting government off the peoples backs to a party that want to bring government into the bedroom and in to our most private lives.

The Republicans also have to comprise on the economy, they have to come up with some tax increases and at the same time the Democrats has to look at deeper spending cuts. One of the problems that they will face is that these spending cuts cannot be done at once but over time. When you cut out programs or government agencies, people will get laid off and you must allow the economy adjust to those changes in gradual steps.

Lastly I want to say that I think the people voted for the devil that they knew as opposed to the devil they didn’t know. It is very hard to overthrow an incumbent.

I leave you with a video by Namoli Brennet from her “Live” CD… enjoy.