What's left to say about 2024?

I can't help but say it...but here it is: 2024 was a year where, here in the United States, hate and bigotry won out at the polls.

And the price of eggs was used as a cover.

We, as a group, put a convicted felon back in the White House...a man who called for an insurrection when he didn't win the 2020 election...a man who, like his runningmate, ran with the nonetheless-debunked belief that immigrants in Springfield, OH, were eating their neighbors' dogs and cats...a man who won't take responsibility for his actions.

77 million voters showed they'd rather stick a twice-impeached man back in the Oval Office than put a woman of any color in there.

Yes...I admit that the Democrats would've been better off running a brokered convention at Chicago's United Center last August and finding Joe Biden's successor at the confab. (The leaders of America's legacy media probably would've trotted out the old "Dems in Disarray" headline.) And things would've been better if Merrick Garland and his people would've acted sooner (like on 1-20-2021) to make sure an insurrectionist never again held the nuclear codes...even if Garland would've been accused of doing this for political motivation.

I can't help but think the rest of the world looks at us Americans in light of last year's election and comes away feeling that our laws are toothless.

I remember what happened to Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro and how that country's government dealt with him.

Power-abusing Bolsonaro lost his presidential reelection bid in 2022...and went on to cast unfounded doubts about Brazil's electronic voting system. So...in June 2023, that country's top electoral court ruled him ineligible to run for any political office until 2030.

What if America's government officials had mustered the courage to do the same to a former reality-TV host?

Instead, starting on 1-20-2025, we'll be taking a ride many of us just might regret...the kind of ride we've been on before.

We'll see what happens.

Darn Right I Voted!

On Tuesday, 11-6-2012, I arrived at my neighborhood polling place, Omaha's Dundee Presbyterian Church, at 11:20 AM...and cast my ballot.

And as things turned out, I got some of what I wanted. (But then, when you go out and vote, chances are you're not going to get everything you want.)

John Ewing (my choice for US Representative from this district) didn't win...and that means former Omaha City Council member Lee Terry Jr. will be back in Washington, DC, for his eighth term in the US House.

Bob Kerrey won't be back in the nation's capital. Instead, State Sen. Deb Fischer gets to supersize her gig...and becomes one of a record twenty women who'll take the oath of office the first week of 2013 as US Senators.

But I was happy about The Big One.

Barack Obama getting a second term of office in the White House means- as far as I'm concerned- that America's got a real chance to really get back on its feet.

Over sixty million people just got through telling this country's government that, among other things, for a recovery to just plain take off, the nation's 300,000 wealthiest citizens have absolutely GOT to pay their fair share (or else they're going to continue to be labeled as traitors!).

Those voters also said: "Look, Republicans, the Affordable Care Act of 2010 is the law of the land. And if you don't like the law the way it is...don't repeal it! Strengthen it, okay?"

I'm excited about the possibilities ahead. (Maybe you are, too.)

And whether or not the people you preferred to win won their seats (or got reelected), it's long been time for all sides to get together and find common ground and think about We the People        and move this country forward.

Thanks for reading this blog!

Dear Mr. President:

I'm glad you're in there.

I'm so glad you came along when you did.

You've done a lot of great things for the United States, starting with that loan to General Motors and Chrysler. (Sorry, Republicans; it wasn't a bailout. It was a loan...and while GM's still paying off its debt, Chrysler already has paid its loan back.)

America's had 31 straight months of job growth, and now, according to information I got from reading www.factcheck.org, the nation's had a net of 325,000 gigs since you took the oath of office on 1-20-2009.

Helping out this country's auto industry WAS a bold, bold move...as was pushing for the Affordable Care Act of 2010. (I'd been saying all along: "With America's knowhow, why should this country be the only major nation still without a universal or equivalent type of health-care insurance plan for all its citizens?")

ACA really does save lives.

Then you've got DADT, the Dream Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Act, and...Osama bin Laden and Muammar al-Qaddafi aren't here anymore and can't check out what happens in next month's US presidential election.  

To top it all off, the stock market has skyrocketed on your watch (something the Republicans absolutely refuse to admit)...and, contrary to what the so-called GOP teaches, you've shown that you're NOT going to take people's guns away.

You really DO care about the country's low-income and middle-income households...and you really DO want all of us (including America's 300,000 wealthiest citizens) to pay our fair share to help keep these 50 states on the map. 

Mr. Obama, I voted for you on 11-4-2008...and I'm going to do this again on 11-6-2012.

I know you and the other Democrats (as well as independents and other non-Republicans) have a whole lot of things you'd like to do to help get America back on its feet.

And I support what you're doing. Big time. 

Now if you can really take it to Willard M. Romney next time you and he debate (and expose him for the out-and-out liar he strikes me and millions of other Americans as)...

GO GET 'EM!!

Sincerely, Jim Boston

He Wants It Back!

And I hope he gets it back.

Three days ago, former Nebraska State Sen. Ernie Chambers announced that he wanted to get his seat back from his District 11 (Omaha's north side of town) predecessor, Brenda Council (a one-time Omaha City Council member who twice- unsuccessfully- ran for mayor here in town during the 1990s).

Chambers (he's a barber by trade) first was elected to this state's legislature in 1970; after taking the oath of office in January 1971, the Creighton Law School graduate went on to serve another 38 years...the longest tenure of any state senator in Nebraska history.

Here's the reason:

Chambers has spent his whole professional life speaking up for this state's rank-and-file citizens...especially Nebraska's downtrodden people.

He'd still be in Nebraska's Unicameral right now...except in 2000, most of those Cornhusker Staters who went to the polls that November decided it was time to put term limits on the state's senators.

As a result, if you're a Nebraskan and you want to be a state senator (yep, it's a $12,000-a-year gig), you're restricted to a pair of four-year terms. Want to get back in once the eight years are up (if you didn't get voted out of office first)? Wait another four years.

That's what gives Ernest W. Chambers the legal right to run next year for his old seat in America's sole one-chamber legislature.

If you've ever seen a 1966 documentary called "A Time for Burning," you might remember watching Chambers (cutting a customer's hair) talking to an official from Augustana Lutheran Church...at a time when (let's face it!) Omaha was running neck-and-neck with Birmingham, AL in housing discrimination.

When your state's got a one-chamber legislature, the chances are more likely that a lot of bills that really don't help citizens in your state will get to become law than in a state with a two-chamber government. In America's other 49 states, their senates often act as checks-and-balances to those states' houses of representatives (and vice versa).

Here in the state that gave us Carl Curtis and Jim Exon, the state's voters are supposedly the legislature's buffer.

For 38 years, Ernie Chambers was a much more effective buffer than any group of voters.

He helped make sure a lot of bad bills didn't get out of committee, let alone become law.

Dig this: In the two years since Chambers last served as a state senator, lots of those questionable bills got proposed; some even became law. (For example, Sen. Charlie Janssen of Fremont introduced a bill allegedly designed to curtail illegal immigration here in the state where Taylor Martinez is finishing up his formal education...but the bill was really set up to allow Nebraska's law enforcement officials to use ethnic profiling, a la Arizona's bill. And earlier this year, another bill was announced designed to restrict the presidential and vice presidential field to those candidates whose parents were born here in the United States. And then there was the bill designed to abandon Nebraska's "winner take all" system of allocating electoral votes...because John McCain didn't get to pocket all five of the state's electoral votes in 2008. On top of all this, you've got a bill calling for teachers and school administrators to carry guns to class!)

Chambers will tell you that many of the things that should've gotten done in the Unicameral these last two years (such as a few remaining state senators not fighting hard enough to keep bills out there that DO help most Nebraskans) haven't been getting done...and that's why he wants back in.

Nope...I don't live in EWC's district (I live in District 23). I still admire him because he speaks his mind and makes a lot of sense.

Common sense is what Chambers brings to the table. He wants people to start using their minds more and start thinking for themselves more; in addition, he wants us to start fighting for the things we really want instead of waiting on Someone Else to hand them to us.

CTI (Cox Cable Channel 22 here in the Big O) just got through rerunning his Tuesday night call-in program. Ernie talked about how we've become reluctant to vote whenever there's an election...yet we want to start petition drives (especially a drive to wipe out the law that makes affirmative action illegal here in the state that gave us Bob Gibson and Gale Sayers).

Can't sign a petition of this kind if you're not a registered voter.

Yes, there's a big hole in the Nebraska Legislature now that Ernie Chambers isn't a part of that legislature anymore...and, as he likes to put it, nobody's really stepped up in Lincoln to speak up for those America's Establishment likes to step on. (Sadly...that also means Council.)

And I hope he gets back in next year.

This state's legislature could use a real wake-up call.