After my last rant (Crap, Apr 09), I got a deluge of hate mail from lawyers about my “slurs” regarding professional lawyer-politicians. The general tenor of the messages I received was that, while there may be some bad lawyers, most are quite good people. So, Crap, the Sequel is born.

Clearly, the folks who responded to me must have poor reading skills. They clearly missed my apple barrel allegory. I guess I have to make my points to “esquires” a bit less subtly.

So, here we go.

---Alert---

Plain talk follows.

If someone bakes, I call them a baker.

If someone lies, I call them a liar.

Professional lawyer-politicians are deathly afraid of our military and our military veterans. Professional lawyer-politicians recognize themselves as weak and lacking in conscience. At the same time, they know our military personnel, at every level, are better men and women. Americans know this as well, at a visceral level. That’s why Congress’ approval rating is lower than MSNBC’s viewer ratings, and conversely, why our military is very likely the most honored institution of our society. What other group competes?

- The press and media?

- Church and clergy?

- Academia?

- Wall Street?

- The Judiciary?

- Maybe the US Postal Service?

- How about the Department of Motor Vehicles?

- Certainly not political parties, local, State and federal?

So, if you know you are overmatched going into a fight, you have three options:

- Run

- Improve yourself.

- Weaken or marginalize your opponent.

So, what do you think the political parties have decided to do?

They can’t run away, because they can’t DO ANYTHING. They have no marketable skills except voting themselves perks and buying votes with your tax dollars. Self improvement is hard work, so they rationalize that their abysmal and dishonorable performance in representing their constituents is good enough. That leaves one option – use their power and position to cut down their opponent.

That’s why they can’t let the military vote.

That’s why they print ballots days before an election and refuse extra time for military absentee votes to be received (New York Special Election for Congress, Apr 09). Then, even when the Dept of Justice files a face-saving lawsuit to extend the time, they sue for 15 days less than the minimum time needed to turn the ballots around. Because they want to marginalize veterans, the Dept of Veteran’s Affairs offers up proposals to require private insurance to pay for combat related injuries. Their disdain for all things military shows clearly when the Dept of Homeland Security distributes an official government position paper to remind local and State law enforcement that returning military personnel are threats – they have combat skills and are ripe recruitment targets for those well known terrorist cabals like anti-illegal immigration groups, anti-abortion groups, and those gun clinging Second Amendment freaks who are buying out ammunition stocks across the nation.

Yes, that is some warped logic. Some spineless, pin-striped, bureaucrat wonk, writing a paper which warns that members of the most respected institution of our society are at high risk to somehow go astray and become the same enemy they’ve been fighting – a slap in the face to soldiers who are fighting just to make sure the manicured wonk is safe to buy his six dollar lattes.

I’m going out on a limb – I’d call that ironic.

What’s next? Is NASCAR to be designated a terrorist organization? Truck drivers? Tea party attendees? I’ll bet you a dollar to a donut that the real reason that soft and fuzzy political appointee wrote that DHS paper is because he lost a girlfriend to some returning soldier. She’d been dating this well-dressed guy with a BMW working in DC. Then she met Sergeant Joe with his re-up pickup truck. I’ll bet she dumped Latte Boy faster than you can spend $20 at a strip club.

But do politicians really believe that crap about terrorists in the military?

No, they don’t. They’re only trying to weaken those they see as rivals. Self-preservation is what politicians do for a living.

And oh, by the way. Both political parties do the same damn thing.

- That’s why over half of our States’ voting laws basically preclude our military from voting.

- That’s why State legislatures don’t enact legislation needed to allow our military to vote, even though the State politicians know exactly what’s needed. The smart military lawyers at the National Defense Committee (www.nationaldefensecommittee.org) have repeatedly recommended precisely what’s needed in every State to each State’s Secretary of State and key members of the State Legislatures – yet year after year, we see little or no action by the politicians.

- That’s probably one of the reasons the Florida and national Republican parties donated money to virtually every politician running for dog catcher in 2008, but not even a penny to the congressional campaign of Allen West (LTC, USA, Retired).

Politicians are afraid – and they should be.

- After the Civil War, six of the next seven Presidents were veterans of that war.

- After WW II, the next eight Presidents were veterans of that war.

- When our current crop of servicemen and women become politically involved, and with the support of the previous generations of Veterans, there is a significant possibility that a significant number of professional politicians will be replaced by veterans again.

So Yes, Secretary Napolitano, I’m a Veteran – and yes, I want a Revolution.

- I want friends, family, and veterans to fight for the right of our military to vote.

- In the meantime, I want our military to fight through the ridiculous obstacles that prevent them from voting, and through voting, force the political parties to come to them.

- Then I want to see more veterans run for office, and win.

Then we’ll see a revolution.

A revolution the way it’s done in the United States of America.

By voting bums out – and putting men and women of conscience in.

Ruck the Vote!!!!

Don Johnson

The Small Print

Don Johnson doesn’t like professional politicians. He thinks they make snakes seem like philanthropists by comparison. If you have a position on this issue, feel free to comment on this rant at our new blog militaryvoting.blog . If you think our military deserves the right to vote, donate your time and/or your money to Count US In. You can donate at the website www.countusin.us. If you want to volunteer to help us out, contact Lizz at lizz@countusin.us . If you think Don needs to be cut down a notch or two, email him at ids49@comcast.net. His comment to those who disagree with him – Bring it on!!

Oh, and by the way, Lizz reminds me to tell you that we have Facebook, Twitter and other stuff of that ilk.

I have no idea what the f#@%k those terms relate to, but word on the street is – Lizz likes being tweeted.

(What the hell does that mean?)

Ed.Note: YES, she does!