Saturday, October 21, 2006

Pat's Birthday is a Good Place to Start


I try to stay away from politics on this blog because it usually has nothing to do with sports, which is what I want this to be about. But, that will have to change for at least one post. I picked this article from the brother of Pat Tillman up from Deadspin today.

"Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that canĂ‚’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that."
As Deadspin noted in the copy and paste on their page, you could take just about any paragraph from this article and it would send a message. Grouped together, they are a string of very powerful words.

Check this article out and decide for yourself why any politician would care what the people think of them. When your chances of getting re-elected are near 100%, you can do just about anything that suits your purposes.

In November of 2004, 401 of the 435 sitting members of the U.S. House of Representatives sought reelection. Of those 401, all but five were reelected. In other words, incumbents seeking reelection to the House had a better than 99% success rate. In the U.S. Senate, only one incumbent seeking reelection was defeated. Twenty-five of twenty-six (96%) were reelected.
I won't tell you that you need to go out and vote Republican or Democrat, because they are both corrupt to their very bones. Vote one out, and vote another in. I don't care. But one thing is for sure, they wont start listening and working for your best interests until you send them a message.

Here's a pathetic graph of voter turnout in America for the Presidetial vote from George Mason University. Only pathetic because of the low turnout.By comparison, Iraqi's dodged bullets to get out and vote in larger than expected numbers. If you don't vote, don't blame anyone but yourself. Send what ever damn message you want to the politicians of this country, just send a freaking message!!!!!

2 comments:

Mike said...

Great stuff.

Pat Tillman truly embodied everything that is right with America. He enlisted for all the right reasons, and then wasn't afraid to speak up when he came to the conclusion that he'd been wronged.

If you haven't yet John, you have to read Gary Smith's Sports Illustrated story on Tillman from a month ago. Best piece they've ran in the last decade. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/magazine/09/05/tillman0911/

John Radcliff said...

That is a hell of an article Mike! Thanks for pointing me that way! Here is the link for anyone who hasn't read it. Pat Tillman