Whether you have to battle the snow today, or your community attempted to celebrate the holiday over the weekend, today is Halloween - or All Hallow's Eve, to some. It's a day filled not just with cherubs in costumes begging for goodies, but also with the mythological frights of kids and adults alike.
This week also marks one full year until the 2012 election.
What worries us most about the next 365 days isn't the news from this weekend about U.S. plans for continuing U.S. Persian Gulf military presence, or the ever-more-obvious effects of the Supreme Court's 'Citizens United' decision as outside groups succeed in buying ever bigger stakes in our American political process.
It isn't even the series of unnecessary and offensive abuses by law enforcement brought against the Occupy protesters this past weekend.
What scares us most is the ever growing list of needs the American people have that their Congress refuses to address - and that too many Americans may yet be more than willing to re-elect the do-nothing idiots currently sitting on their rears in the House and Senate.
Today SHOULD begin a race to accomplish something for a Congress that has so far done next to nothing. On the positive side, the Democratically-controlled Senate has no more breaks scheduled between now and their year-end holiday break. Unfortunately, the Republican-controlled House has at least two more weeks of "recess" scheduled just this month, with a target for their year-end break to begin the second week of December.
The super committee MUST make its recommendations for revenue enhancement methods - tax increases, mostly - and budget cuts by the end of this month. There are a whole pile of funding bills that MUST make it through multiple committees AND both the House and Senate, including agriculture, criminal justice, transportation and housing bills. And Congress has to make sure the government doesn't shut down - or even threaten to shut down, as has already happened three times this year.
In a country so desperate for so many solutions on so many fronts, we're glad that the President's advisor, David Axelrod, had the courage to say out loud this weekend, what so many Americans, left, right, and center have been quietly saying to each other for some time.
Axelrod said about Congressional Republicans, "...you have to ask a question, are they willing to tear down the economy in order to tear down the president or are they going to cooperate? Listen, there’s a reason why the Congress is at nine percent in some polls, approval, lowest in history. Because this is different than we’ve ever seen before."
So far, President Obama has been willing to do almost anything to try and get positive results accomplished for the American people.
When he hasn't been hamstrung by this do-nothing Congress - like in foreign affairs - our President has been amazingly successful. For that, we thank him.
That's not how our government is supposed to work, however - and it's certainly not how it works effectively.
As Halloween passes, and turns towards Thanksgiving - and the 2012 elections - we hope the political hopefuls and those already in office remember what we told them nearly a year ago.
When the polls open one year from tomorrow, our legislators will be judged on what they've actually accomplished for the 99% of Americans who've been decimated by the all-too-real real horrors of our current economy. Without any accomplishments, the "grades" of those legislators will be zero - which is the same number of votes we hope candidates who have done nothing will receive.
We also hope the fear of a 2012 political "bloodbath" of do-nothing legislators losing their cushy jobs will scare some sense into those Congresspersons after all.
