You've got no excuses now.
If you want Donald John Trump out of there, you're going to have to vote for Thomas Jonathan Ossoff this coming Tuesday.
That's all there is to it.
You just can't afford to sit this one out...the way some of you not only sat out last year's US presidential election, but also the 2010 and 2014 midterms.
Some people here in America don't think any sort of anti-Trump resistance is taking place. After all, Democrats are 0 for 2 in special elections thus far this year. Kansans in what used to be Mike Pompeo's US House district rejected James Thompson, the Democrat who was trying to take the seat out of Republican hands.
And Montanans just got through demonstrating that they wanted Republican Greg Gianforte (who beat up a reporter, Ben Jacobs of The Guardian, on the eve of Big Sky Country's US House election, the effort to replace Ryan Zinke) instead of Democrat Rob Quist.
You folks are the firewall. You can't afford to wait until next year and cross your fingers.
Registered Democrats have GOT to end their history of staying away from polling places whenever there's a midterm election or a special election.
I mean, don't you understand, after all these years, that if you don't go out and cast a ballot, you give the opposition the choice?
Don't you remember how millions and millions and millions of Americans put their lives on the line- even gave up their lives- to expand the right to vote beyond White male landowners?
You've got no excuses. None.
The cat didn't eat your homework. What's more, if you electronically turned in your homework, the cat didn't walk across your laptop and hit "Delete."
Matter of fact, I researched Ossoff's platform and that of his opponent, Karen Handel (who, in 2007, became the first elected Republican to serve as the Peach State's secretary of state).
*First of all, the 30-year-old Ossoff has made suggestions that could save the US government $16 billion (an assertion Politifact agrees with). For example, if the government consolidated its data centers, it'd mean $5.4 billion extra to spend. And if the Department of Defense could try strategic sourcing, $4 billion would be freed up.
*If our businesses played with money the way America's government does, those firms would be in deep doo-doo. TJO wants to bring our government up to private-sector standards. (Think about this: The General Accounting Office found out that, in fiscal 2014, Uncle Sam made improper payments totaling $124.7 billion. Also, GAO found out 6.5 million active Social Security numbers have been set aside for people over the age of 112...despite the fact that only 42 such people the world over are currently drawing breath!)
*Jon Ossoff wants to promote high-tech and biotech research...at a time when today's GOP-led Congress wants to cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control, one of Georgia's top fifteen employers.
*On top of that, he's out to prioritize STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) programs, colleges, universities, and technical schools. Ossoff would like to let college students refinance their loan repayment programs and, in the process, reap the benefits of lower interest rates.
*Atlanta native Ossoff supports abortion rights and access to contraceptives.
*He doesn't want nonviolent drug offenders imprisoned. (With those nonviolent drug offenders clogging up the jails, where's the room for the convicted murderers, sex offenders, what have you?)
*Jon won't raise your taxes; in fact, he's in favor of lowering taxes for small businesses.
*Ossoff wants the United States to stay in the Paris climate accord.
*Although he doesn't want a single-payer health-care system, he's in favor of keeping the Affordable Care Act the law of the land. (Don't get him started on the proposed ACA replacement, the so-called American Health Care Act.)
*To top it all off, this son of an Australian mother will work for comprehensive immigration reform...the kind that strengthens enforcement along the US-Mexico border and makes a citizenship path for America's 11 million undocumented immigrants.
If you flip this platform around, you can just imagine what Handel's platform looks like.
Still, here it is:
*Handel wants to repeal the ACA (as did Tom Price, the new HHS secretary whose House seat Ossoff and Handel are after) and replace it with the AHCA...a proposal that, contrary to Republican assertions, reduces protections for preexisting conditions (in addition to taking health insurance away from at least 23 million Americans!).
*She's made it clear that she opposes the minimum wage: "I do not support a livable wage."
*Handel opposes abortion rights, government funding of Planned Parenthood, and embryonic stem-cell research.
*Karen wants to limit Uncle Sam's role in combating climate change; she'd rather leave it up to the states and their cities. What's more, she doesn't believe that we human beings are the biggest reason the world's average temperature has gone up.
*And, of course, Handel doesn't want an automatic (or any kind of) path to citizenship for those undocumented immigrants.
*Do you remember when the 55-year-old Handel was an executive with Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure? Remember when, in 2012, the foundation pulled back a $700,000 grant to Planned Parenthood to fund mammograms and other breast-cancer-related services?
The cutoff was completely and totally political.
And it had Handel's fingerprints all over it.
The same woman who purged voter rolls as soon as she became Georgia's secretary of state five years earlier.
So there you are, Democrats in GA-6. Take it from me, a man who, in 1986, failed to cast a ballot in an historic election here in Nebraska.
Two women- a first here in these fifty states- fought for Bob Kerrey's gubernatorial seat as he sought a seat in the US Senate. Instead of former Lincoln Mayor Helen Boosalis keeping the governor's mansion in Democratic hands,
State Treasurer Kay Orr put it back in the GOP's lap.
My excuse: "I ran out of time before I had to go to work."
I got raked over the coals for my decision...and ever since, I've made it a point to cast a ballot every chance I could get.
This one's too important to pass up...especially if you want Trump impeached and then convicted (before he and his people do further damage to America and its reputation).
Please...get up off your excuses and VOTE for Jon Ossoff!
Sincerely, Jim Boston
This year, I've been following more NCAA Division 1 women's basketball tournament games than NCAA Division 1 men's basketball tourney ones.
The big reason: I'm upset at CBS CEO Les Moonves for crowing that the sexist, racist, homophobic, religiophobic, etc., etc. rantings of Donald Trump and other 2016 Republican presidential candidates are "good for CBS." Moonves likes how all the excrement slung by the Elephants' office seekers means more advertising money for the folks at the Eye Network. (Never mind the continuing corrosive effect the propagation of hate has on the collective American conversation.)
So while I'm watching ESPN and ESPN2 whenever they show D-1 women's tourney contests, it's TBS and TNT for me when it comes to seeing D-1 men's tourney teams play. (To get truTV, I'd have to pay my local cable outlet for another tier of channels.)
Speaking of ESPN2...I was watching this afternoon's Tennessee-Syracuse game (the Orange won the Midwest Regional final, 89-67, to get into the D-1 Women's Final Four for the first time in program history) when I saw the scroll on the bottom of the screen: "Geno Auriemma won't apologize for his team's success."
Why should he?
Yesterday, his Connecticut Huskies mauled, crushed, demolished, and crucified Mississippi State, 98-38,
for the biggest victory margin in any regional or Final Four game since the NCAA started conducting a Division 1 women's hoops tourney in 1982. (The 60-point margin topped the 51-point difference between UConn and Texas in one of last season's East Regional semifinals.)
It was the 72nd straight time Breanna Stewart and Co. won a game; Stewart led the way with 22 points, 14 rebounds, and five blocks.
After the game (one in which the Huskies put in the game's first 13 points, enjoyed a 32-4 lead on the Bulldogs, then stretched it to 61-12 at the end of the first half), Auriemma fielded a reporter's question about whether Connecticut's total domination of D-1 women's b-ball- three straight championships and ten overall coming into this 2015-16 season- is killing the sport.
The head coach with the most Division 1 women's basketball titles ever wasn't pleased with the question.
"When Tiger (Woods) was winning every major, nobody said he was bad for golf," said the Man from Philadelphia. In fact, Woods' phenomenal success drew more fans to golf as the 20th Century was getting ready to make way for the 21st Century.
What's more, Tiger's presence on the links made the other PGA golfers step up their game.
Result: Since the current century began, golfers like Phil Mickelson, Padraig Harrington, Zack Johnson, and- more recently- Rory McIlroy, Bubba Watson, and Jordan Spieth have shown they can frequently come away with The Big Check, too.
Same thing happened in NCAA Division 1 men's basketball...which, from the 1963-64 campaign to the 1974-75 season, was in the grip of one team: John Wooden's UCLA Bruins.
The Bruins took ten of the twelve D-1 men's titles offered during that span of time. It would've been twelve straight if Texas Western hadn't stopped Kentucky, 72-65, to end the 1965-66 season- a season where Oregon State interrupted UCLA's reign in the old AAWU (now, of course, called the Pac-12); and if, in 1973-74, North Carolina State hadn't beaten Marquette, 76-64...after the Wolfpack dethroned the Bruins, 80-77, a couple of days earlier.
By the way...a year after their school won it all in men's hoops, Texas Western College of the University of Texas officials changed their institution's name to the University of Texas at El Paso.
Wooden showed that he could get UCLA to the top with any kind of team, be it a run-and-gun kind, a patient team, or one headlined by a certain 7-2 center who, while still in high school, had college recruiters all over the country knocking each other over to sign him.
Lots of other head men's hoops coaches breathed heavy, heavy sighs of relief when John decided to hang up his whistle after the 1974-75 season...a campaign that ended when UCLA thwarted Kentucky, 92-85.
That's how the 37th NCAA D-1 men's hoops tourney ended. Before the Blue and Gold seized control of men's D-1 roundball, 18 different squads had won the first 25 NCAA D-1 men's basketball tournaments, starting with Oregon (the 1938-39 kingpin). And Kentucky was the sport's gold standard, with four championships- 1947-48, 1948-49, 1950-51, and 1957-58.
By the time the 1974-75 season ended, 21 teams had won the 37 NCAA D-1 men's b-ball tourneys. Since then, 14 others had taken the pot of gold for the first time ever.
And men's college basketball has grown exponentially in popularity since then...to the point where the gender's D-1 Big Dance is the NCAA's most lucrative event. (An event where this country's president fills out a bracket every March, just like millions of other Americans.)
While the 78th NCAA D-1 men's hoops tournament is going on, the 35th NCAA D-1 women's basketball tourney is also happening.
And, as Geno will tell you, it's all taking place at a time similar to what was happening in men's Division 1 ball during the 1963-64/1974-75 era.
Connecticut's first D-1 women's title came at the end of the 1994-95 season. Before that, eight different clubs claimed the first 13 NCAA Division 1 women's basketball tournaments, with Tennessee leading the way (the Volunteers, then under Pat Summitt, were tops in 1986-87, 1988-89, and 1990-91).
Since UConn got that first notch, teams headed up by Auriemma and Summitt nailed down 14 of the next 20 titles in D-1 women's roundball...with Tennessee grabbing three championships in a row from 1995-96 to 1997-98,
then triumphing in 2006-07 (the act that angered Rutgers fan Don Imus) and 2007-08.
Five other teams accounted for the other six championships of the 1995-96/2014-15 period- Purdue (in 1998-99), Notre Dame (whose 2000-01 title prevented what ultimately could've been a UConn five-peat), Baylor (the only one able to go for seconds; the Bears followed up their 2004-05 championship by ruling in 2011-12), Maryland (the winner in 2005-06), and Texas A&M (which took it all in 2010-11).
So, that's it...coming into March Madness 2016, 14 different squads have won the first 34 NCAA D-1 women's b-ball tournaments.
At this very moment, the Huskies are working on a four-peat.
But first, they'll have to take the Longhorns out of the way tomorrow night to win the East Regional.
Two more victories after that, and Auriemma will get his eleventh title as a head coach...and he'll pass Wooden in the process.
The way I see it, Connecticut's success (that's putting it mildly) in D-1 women's basketball isn't killing the sport.
Media apathy toward the game is.
I mean, it hurts to turn on one of Disney's ESPN networks each March and find a good, good game being played in front of...rows and rows of empty seats.
It hurts, too, that these same media people- even those at Disney- don't lavish the same attention on women's ball as they do on men's ball. The scrolls themselves offer a clue: Rarely this season were you told how many points Stewart had in this or that game. (By contrast, Georges Niang's name was almost always seen in the scrolls here in 2015-16.)
Listen...Iowa State's Niang and Connecticut's Stewart were two of college basketball's leading players these last four seasons. Let's give 'em BOTH shout-outs!
And that speaks to something else.
How committed are many of the NCAA's Division 1 schools to their women's basketball teams?
Not just in money...but in spirit.
It's been 44 years now since Title 9 became law...and it hurts that, 44 years later, lots of resentment continues to exist over the law. The resentment not only shows up on TV and on sports radio, but in no telling how many athletic departments at no telling how many schools here in America.
How much support do the Breanna Stewarts really have, given- let's face it- America's anti-female heritage?
Breanna herself had one real answer to giving women's NCAA basketball a boost:
"Teams need to get better, players need to get better, and that starts from before we even get to college."
John Wooden had no problem with women's college basketball. He, in fact, called it a purer form of the sport than the men's kind.
I've always thought athletes were athletes, regardless of gender.
How about you?
