A few final words on the election, most notably on the political demise of two outspoken and independent voices who will be sadly missed when the new Congress meets in January; they are of course Representative Alan Grayson (D. FL) and Senator Russ Feingold (D. WI).
That they were considered "mavericks" tells us much about the mostly sycophantic others that roam the halls of the "peoples" Congress. Their departure removes two voices of sanity who don't compromise with wrongheadedness and bad policy, speak their mind clearly with due consideration and are men of principle and conscience; all qualities sadly lacking in most of their colleagues).
Both were vocal in their outspoken opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, rejecting Obama's escalation of the Afghan war. Feingold was one of the few Democrats in the Senate who voted against Bush's determination to preemptively invade Iraq. Both men were outspoken against our use of torture realizing the embrace of "enhanced interrogation" against terrorist suspects indefinitely detained is counter productive and sides us with those we have traditionally fought against and even prosecuted in the past for committing the very thing we have resorted to now (notably the Japanese military men who committed atrocities during the Pacific war and of course the officers of the German high command who were tried and convicted during the Nuremburg trials after the war with Germany).
Both men have been vocal in their opposition to Israel's oppressive occupation of the Palestinian's in the West Bank, the illegal blockade and siege of Gaza and the "flotilla" incident at sea where Israeli commandos illegally boarded a peace flotilla ship that resulted in the death of nine Turkish citizens by the commandos.
Feingold also voted against the bailout of the "banksters" realizing the big banks were the perpetrators of the financial crisis and should not be rewarded for their wayward behavior with taxpayer money. He was also one of the few Senators that voted against the "Graham, Leach, Bliley" Act that Clinton signed into law in 1999 that essentially overturned "Glass- Steagell" the 1933 act that separated the commercial banks from the investment banks and a prime regulation coming out of the ruins of the Great Depression. "Graham" did the job of completely deregulating and unmooring Wall Street to engage in the sub prime mortgage free for all of derivatives, credit default swaps and the securitization of mortgages whose market collapsed with the bursting of the sub prime mortgage bubble.
So it seems, if you take a reasoned, well thought out and principled stand you eventually pay the price and get the boot.
In the case of Feingold in his bid for reelection, he was seriously outspent by an avalanche of outside money, the sources of which are shrouded in secrecy. Here's a man who refused to take the big moneyed corporate and special interest bucks and suffered the consequences. Meanwhile his opponent millionaire Ron Johnson was awash in corporate cash which funded the ads that slandered and negatively impacted Feingold which apparently swayed the majority of voters in Wisconsin to vote him out.
As to Grayson, he represented a mostly conservative district in the Orlando, Florida area, was seen as vulnerable this election year by the Republican leadership and the "money tree" organization of Karl Rove. As a prime target of the Republican onslaught, he went down in defeat as part of the conservative tide that swept the Republicans back into the majority in the House.
Yet when you consider the likes of presumptive new Speaker, John Boehner of Ohio in the House and Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader in the Senate, who are the recipients of mountains of corporate cash and are nothing but tools to further the interests of those that bankroll their campaigns for reelection, it will come as no surprise to this observer that the new Congress will be misled and the country will be in for harder times (to which these two frauds will have nothing to offer).
At least with the voices (but unfortunately not the leadership) of Grayson in the House and Feingold in the Senate you could at least hope their counsel would eventually be heard. Now they'll be silenced. That's a sad revelation.
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