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Aug. 31st, 2004 07:45 pmThere's an apparently very heated race for the office of Sheriff in my county. It features the incumbent, a man named John Flynn, who I don't really know anything about, and his opponent, a man named Guy Glodis, who I don't know anything about. My parents don't either, but my stepdad allowed the Guy Glodis campaign to put this huge sign at the end of their driveway because the man who came to their door lives right down the street and Jim didn't want to say no.
So, I've been doing some research on both gentlemen. Sheriff Flynn seems pretty unremarkable. He's in his 70s, has held the post for nearly two decades, has worked in Corrections pretty much since he came home from WWII, and doesn't seem to have caused any big waves in either a positive or negative way. At least, not that I can judge from cruising a couple pages worth of google links.
Guy Glodis, on the other hand, is a Democratic State Senator who is pro-life yet also wants to bring the death penalty back. He wants to virtually eliminate bilingual education in this state. Articles pulled off the Boston Globe and Aljazeera online gave me this info--in 2003 he circulated a letter to his colleagues detailing the story of a man named John Pershing, a General in the Phillipines early in the century.
According to Glodis, Pershing captured and executed some 50 Muslim terrorists. But before they shot the terrorists, the soldiers supposedly slaughtered two pigs and soaked their bullets in pig blood.
The ritual "horrified" the terrorists, who feared they would be "barred from paradise (and those virgins) and doomed to hell," the flier states. "And for the next forty-two years, there was not a single Muslim extremist attack anywhere in the world," the flier reads. "Maybe it is time for this segment of history to repeat itself, maybe in Iraq? The question is, where do we find another Black Jack Pershing."
I'm sure the man has done some good things during his time as a state senator but I couldn't find anything particularly noteworthy. I'm willing to be educated by anyone who has good things to say about him or knows more about Sheriff Flynn, of course, but really. Any one of those four things listed above would be enough to make me wish I could not-vote for him a bazillion times.
I worry about the state of MA--we're given this liberal reputation and yet we have 'Democrats' like Guy Glodis, we've got people like my in-laws, employers and landlords, and I haven't yet seen a Kerry/Edwards sign or bumper sticker, though I've only counted four Bush/Cheney ones. Everyone pissed and moaned about the DNC even as it was going on and we were getting speeches by the Clintons and Barak Obama and John Kerry. We've got Mitt Romney as our Governor and he's worse than Gov. Ahnold, if less flashy--and also, you know, less of a real citizen in the state he governs.
I hate to think that the conservatives in this state might go out fighting for their 'underdogs' and make an impact because the rest of us have been lulled into complacency by the 'knowledge' that we're a liberal state where liberals will always rule. I apply that to every race from local reps to Governor to President...there is no always. There is no sure thing. There's no guarantee that someone else will go out and make sure your town/state/country is run the way that you'd want it to be run, everyone has to go out and do their research and vote for themselves.
*sigh*
I decided I'd write popslash by the end of September, hopefully break myself out of writer's block by posting to LJ three times a week, but I didn't intend to blither about politics more than once, I swear. I'll climb off the soapbox now...well, after I call my mother and ask her to get that man's sign out of her yard. ;-)
So, I've been doing some research on both gentlemen. Sheriff Flynn seems pretty unremarkable. He's in his 70s, has held the post for nearly two decades, has worked in Corrections pretty much since he came home from WWII, and doesn't seem to have caused any big waves in either a positive or negative way. At least, not that I can judge from cruising a couple pages worth of google links.
Guy Glodis, on the other hand, is a Democratic State Senator who is pro-life yet also wants to bring the death penalty back. He wants to virtually eliminate bilingual education in this state. Articles pulled off the Boston Globe and Aljazeera online gave me this info--in 2003 he circulated a letter to his colleagues detailing the story of a man named John Pershing, a General in the Phillipines early in the century.
According to Glodis, Pershing captured and executed some 50 Muslim terrorists. But before they shot the terrorists, the soldiers supposedly slaughtered two pigs and soaked their bullets in pig blood.
The ritual "horrified" the terrorists, who feared they would be "barred from paradise (and those virgins) and doomed to hell," the flier states. "And for the next forty-two years, there was not a single Muslim extremist attack anywhere in the world," the flier reads. "Maybe it is time for this segment of history to repeat itself, maybe in Iraq? The question is, where do we find another Black Jack Pershing."
I'm sure the man has done some good things during his time as a state senator but I couldn't find anything particularly noteworthy. I'm willing to be educated by anyone who has good things to say about him or knows more about Sheriff Flynn, of course, but really. Any one of those four things listed above would be enough to make me wish I could not-vote for him a bazillion times.
I worry about the state of MA--we're given this liberal reputation and yet we have 'Democrats' like Guy Glodis, we've got people like my in-laws, employers and landlords, and I haven't yet seen a Kerry/Edwards sign or bumper sticker, though I've only counted four Bush/Cheney ones. Everyone pissed and moaned about the DNC even as it was going on and we were getting speeches by the Clintons and Barak Obama and John Kerry. We've got Mitt Romney as our Governor and he's worse than Gov. Ahnold, if less flashy--and also, you know, less of a real citizen in the state he governs.
I hate to think that the conservatives in this state might go out fighting for their 'underdogs' and make an impact because the rest of us have been lulled into complacency by the 'knowledge' that we're a liberal state where liberals will always rule. I apply that to every race from local reps to Governor to President...there is no always. There is no sure thing. There's no guarantee that someone else will go out and make sure your town/state/country is run the way that you'd want it to be run, everyone has to go out and do their research and vote for themselves.
*sigh*
I decided I'd write popslash by the end of September, hopefully break myself out of writer's block by posting to LJ three times a week, but I didn't intend to blither about politics more than once, I swear. I'll climb off the soapbox now...well, after I call my mother and ask her to get that man's sign out of her yard. ;-)
