The beginning of my Birthday Season!

Oh…um there is something else happening today, isn’t there? Just kidding. Yes, it is Election Day in the US, or you could more accurately say it is the end of the voting period, which for some states, started more than a month ago. So far, in the early voting, the rate of voting is significantly higher than even the total number of votes cast in the 2016 presidential election.

What does this mean?

Really, I have no idea.

I’ve pretty much said everything that can be said about You Know Who, so saying it one more time isn’t going to make a whole lot of difference. I am grateful for the voices of reason and hope, like Heather Cox Richardson, a historian who has been writing a daily newsletter about this election and the events surrounding it. I highly recommend reading her posts. I think they are probably collected in one place on her SubStack page, and you can book mark it and read it a few posts at a time if you need a little boost.

Just because voting ends today, the counting (and legal wrangling) could take much longer. Better to have some hopeful things to read instead of endless doom scrolling. (Okay, okay, I’m sure I’ll do some doom scrolling too)

I want to say a few things

First, thank you to all who have stuck with me through all this. An artists job is to make art about what touches us most deeply. Sometimes it is light, funny things; sometimes things get a little dark. I have learned to follow what my inner panda tells me to follow, to be true to what that inner panda is telling me is important. If you had to drop out for a while, I get it. Despite my wish to reread Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, there is no way in hell my nerves can take that right now. Same for 1984 or Animal Farm. Sorry, George.

I hope that after this is all over (and Joe Biden wins pleasepleasepleaseplease) that there is the will and power to get some important things done:

Voting is a right as well as an imperative. It should be easy to register and to vote for EVERYONE.
If the pandemic showed us anything, health care needs to be universal, affordable, and available for everyone, and not tied to employment.
While the Lincoln Project ads were devastating, clever, and brutal, everything they talked about are true things that tRUmp (and his minions) is doing. I know they won’t always be on our side. There needs to be room for conservatives, but not for them to lie or disadvantage voters who aren’t THEIR voters, as the current Republican Party has done. Promote what you believe are righteous policies and if they are what the majority of people want, well, then that is what will happen.
Gerrymandering needs to be put to rest. Voters should should choose their representatives. Representatives shouldn’t get to choose their voters. Corporate interests should not have the outsize influence that they have.

I swear there is a cartoon coming!

I sometimes wonder if maybe they way that I think is wrong. But I think the very fact that I can question my own beliefs, just might mean that I have an open mind. I see no such questioning from the people who support the terrible policies of Donald Trump. That elected officials can excuse and enable his terrible polices, tells me they are just as bad as he is. I hope they are voted out despite all the roadblocks they have thrown in front of their opposition.

If you haven’t voted already, I hope you have a plan to vote today.

And now, here is today’s ‘toon (warning, not particularly funny.)

Mittens Removal Day!

And for something funnier than I am today, check out Randy Rainbow’s latest video!

Panda on!
Bob T Panda

Back to Beary Poppins on Thursday!