15 | October | 2014 | WEGGIEBOY'S BLOG by Doug Thomas

Thanks to my generally poor shape, I vote by absentee ballot. The place where I am supposed to vote, which is clear across town, often requires a long walk from a parking place to the polling place, the part that gives me problems. Standing in line, too, causes problems, and I am good for only a short time. If I couldn’t vote by absentee ballot, in short, I’d have to consider not voting at all.

Yeah, I guess the ballot envelope’s marked this way so the US Postal Service, long beset by the shenanigans of a US Congress bound and determined to break its back so they can call it a failure and complete the job of privatization, knows this is democracy in action, a serious piece of mail, maybe the one piece of mail that will help toss out the pup currently representing our district and…well, a postal employee can dream, eh?!

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The return envelope and ballot give different instructions on what one’s to use to mark the ballot. I followed the ballot instructions. Actually, I’d already voted, using a black ink pen, so what the hey?! It better get counted!

Lots of choices this time as everyone and his dog decided to run. Lots of times, there is one candidate for an office, and you either vote for the candidate or leave the ballot blank for that position. Not me: I vote in all races and on all initiatives. (Is this any way to run a state? Apparently so.) I even wrote in one person’s name because he was very good at a job he held once in the county, but wasn’t Republican enough, I guess, to retain it in the last election.

Even so, I don’t like voting for or against retention of judges since all but one on the ballot represent different parts of the state than the district in which I live. I vote for retention usually because usually there isn’t anything damning in the paper about any of these people. When they act up in naughty way, as they sometimes if rarely do, they usually resign from office or get shamed into resigning. Don’t have to wait till the election for that!

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This is the least expected initiative on the ballot. This is Nebraska, folks. Prime Tea Party territory. Land of Mitt Romney’s reliable five Electoral College votes. I will be shocked if it passes, but stranger things happen.

So it goes. I’m always glad for this opportunity to make myself heard, even if I’m not a multi-billionaire. I’ll continue to vote as long as I can hold a Nr. 2 pencil or whatever they want me to use to mark my ballot. My ballot is in the mail.

I am concerned, of course, that Ebola made its way to America, though not surprised that the initial responses were less than perfect or that one patient died after being sent home first for three days.

It is easy to stand back and find fault with the way things were handled, yet the reality, to me, is that we can only prepare for the worst once we know just how bad it can get. The way Katrina victims in New Orleans were handled, for example, was a much greater failure to handle a disaster in a timely, appropriate manner than the Ebola response.

No point in frosting that cake, though: learn from the experience, adjust strategies, make better preparations (if Congress allows enough resources to those who need them, eh??!), and don’t [blank] up the next time. Finger pointing won’t bring back the dead or help the living.

If handled intelligently, without politics or self-serving whitewashes of the facts, knowledge of the errors can bring about improvements in the way we deal with the next Ebola patients.

In the meantime, panic and ignorance need to be held in control so we can see the problems of Ebola control clearly and not waste precious time and resources dealing with monsters under the bed.