Wednesday, June 01, 2005

 

ER Hometown News II

From the Sequoyah County Times

Praise Festival Set

Come See A Man Evangelistic International Ministries is presenting A Church Without Walls Praise and Preach-a-thon Festival ...

The event will be held at Jay Reynolds Park on the corner of Opdyke and Iola Streets in Sallisaw. Norman and Jeannie (M.) will present a puppet ministry, 'Monkey Business and Friends' ...

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Bikers Group Holds Meeting

Members of the Bikers Making A Difference (BMAD) Helping People charitable biker organization met May 15 at the Sallisaw Civic Center for their monthly meeting. ...

A moment of silence was held to remember (B.G.) who died May 14 while riding his bike. The group voted to send a wreath to his family. ...

Helen (G.) suggested members contacting her each month with a kind deed a BMAD member has done for another BMAD member so they can be given a token of appreciation and be the sweetheart of the month. This month, Jerry (T.) was surprised with a pan of his favorite food, cornbread that Helen made. ...

Melanie (D.) was the winner of the 50-50 drawing. She donated it back to BMAD. ...

A Pretty Boy Floyd Poker Run and Barbecue were held April 16 for Logan (L.), of Muldrow, who was injured in an accident when he was 2 years old. ... Logan is known as Logey Bogey to the BMAD members.

Anthony (E.) closed the meeting with prayer. ...

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News to Use

Tim (P.) and the 'Traveling Gospel Band' along with Forman (S.) and the 'Revelators,' and the 'Missouri Revelators,' gospel music groups, will perform at the Wilderness Gospel Singing beginning at 7 p.m. Saturday. Wilderness Gospel is located on U.S. Highway 59, three and one half miles north of Sallisaw. The public is welcome to attend.

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The 19th annual (A.) family reunion will be held Sunday at the (P.) Family Bluegrass Barn at Northview, 12 miles north of Sallisaw on U.S. Highway 59 and right for about three and a half miles on the blacktop road. ... A bluegrass music show will be held at 7:30 p.m. ...

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I love where I'm from. And these people are not naturally "red." They're blue. But no way in hell, or in heaven's name, would most of 'em vote for a Yankee lefty. Dems take heed.

--ER

Comments:
So, whom do they vote for then?? :)
 
:-)
Here's who they vote for, for lack of an alternative:

"Who are they? I mean the people obsessed with control using the government to threaten and intimidate; I mean the people who are hollowing out middle class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of the working class to make sure Ahmad Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq’s oil; I mean the people who turn faith-based initiatives into Karl Rove’s slush fund; who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets; I mean the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy. That’s who I mean."
-- Bill Moyers
 
"And these people are not naturally "red." They're blue. But no way in hell, or in heaven's name, would most of 'em vote for a Yankee lefty. Dems take heed."

--ER


"These people" are the people I ask for whom they vote. You say they're blue, but won't vote for a Yankee lefty. Seems most of what's offered on the left, for the bigger positions, are Yankee lefties. Who does that leave for "these people" to vote for?
 
I understood you Frenzied. And the answer is in that Moyers quote: They voted for Bush because, with no viable alternative, they fell for his faith talk, the fact that he is a (pseudo)Texan and sounds like "just folks." They were, and are, for the war in Iraq, mostly (but not all). The national Dems keeps running hard left, and the rural eastern Okie Dems will keep voting Repub. "Blue" does not mean stupid-crazy-lefty. It means, in the parlance of the day, "Democrat." These people -- MY people -- are Dems, fairly socially conservative ones, but freedom-loving, like myself. And the national Democratic Party has just about abandoned them.
 
Go here: http://www.electoral-vote.com/2004/past-elections/2000.html

Scroll down to the second national map. Note the blue counties in eastern Oklahoma. They went with Gore in 2000. My home county did not, actually; it is adjacent to Fort Smith, the most conservative city and area in Arkansas, and is being suburbanized. I don't think a single county in Oklahoma went with Kerry in 2004.
 
So why don't they just register Republican and vote Dem when they can find someone with whom they can agree?

You're right, according to the county map on USAToday.com, OK is completely red. CA looks like it stayed the same. Thank goodness my county is one of the red ones. :)
 
Habit, probably, as much as anything. But, truly, it is a poor-poor part of the state, with lots of American Indians, and most of them still find more succor with the Dems than the Repubs. Myself, I can STILL stomach the extreme lefties in the Dem party easier than I can stomach the extreme righties of the Repub party, and I imagine that lots of my fellow eastern Okie peeps feel the same way. Further, holdin' yer nose and votin' for a Repub president over a Yankee lefty ain't no reason to change party affiliation! There's more to partisanship that the very tippy-top of the ballot.
 
If the poor, poor American Indians have been following the Dems all this time, why aren't they in better circumstances by now?
 
Well, they ARE better off than they were until FDR hepped 'em. Lots of them were living in dirt and eating whatever they could kill until then. And THAT's who, and what, they remember, to this day. Further, right now there is a big brouhaha going on between those who are defending the last scraps of Indian sovereignty, and the big business (read: Republican) community, who want to strip it from them. The jerks simply cannot stand to see Indian tribes find success.
 
To the left is a new link in the Blogroll. "Blue Dog Coalition." Read about the Blue Dogs. These are the kinds of Dems I'm talking about. U.S. Rep. Dan Boren, son of former U.S. Sen. David Boren, now president of the University of Oklahoma, who represents eastern Oklahoma, is one of 'em.
 
By the way, I do not support the Blue Dogs' support of the recent bankruptcy reform.
 
Hate to butt in on an A and B conversation.

I just wanted to comment on the local news. Sounds like a lot of "gospel" being pushed out there.

Anyway I can see how people out there could feel contempt from the current administration.
 
And to throw in my personal 2 cents:
Party politics in Oklahoma has a long and strong history that many are not willing to give up. For the time from statehood until the '60s, this was strictly a Yellow Dog Democrat state. Very loyal and faithful to the party. People here were grateful for what the Dems did for them in Washington, getting reservoirs and highways here to end the Dust Bowl Days. WPA projects helped make this state habitable.
Younger voters are less likely to remember those days, but I REMEMBER going to the christenings of dams in eastern Oklahoma as a family with my parents and grandparents, they were that important. Yep, we even had home movies of being the first people to walk across the dams and ooh and ahhh about their magnificence.
And yes, they changed this state, not only by controlling flooding and making irrigation possible for farmers, but by providing electric service to areas that previously had little or no service. No service, no homes. No homes, no people. No people, no jobs. No jobs, no taxes.

And please, DO NOT get me started on the discussion about the rights of tribes to maintain sovereignty. I come down firmly on the side of the Indian nations. I'll say no more now, not here. Suffice it to say that this issue cuts deep with me.
 
And may I add, no government, no service.

And since the Repubs, despite the current administration's dalliances with big statism, tend to dislike government, no Dems, no government.

I like government. There. Said out loud. It is We, the people!

Nothing gets me riled more than a bunch of Repubs trying to run a government they fundamentally dislike.
 
Dab nab it! I had a comment and my dang computer froze.

Anyway, I think I said something like:

You're definitely not interrupting, Pecheur. I've been asking questions because I know next-to-nothing about OK history. It's been an interesting conversation.

I'll have to look up your references later, Press, when I have more time. We'll see if I have anything more to ask after that.

Thanks for the additional history lesson, Trix! :)
 
Thanv feline lover!!!! I too love coming here and getting edumacated about OK history. ER really knows his stuff, or at least he pulls it off well. I wish he would become a history prof somewhere and corrupt the minds of the innocent

With much respect
 
What do the OK tribes do to support themselves? Here in CA, especially close to where I live, it's casinos. They seem to be giving Las Vegas a real run for their money, so guess who fights them the most over their right to build them?

There are a few areas surrounding reservations that are benefitting from the tribes' success. For example, the tribes have been able to form or upgrade their own fire departments, and they make themselves available to serve communities off the reservation, which are typically small places with volunteer fire departments.

A nice example of getting along. :)
 
Here, Frenzied, the larger tribes -- Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, Cheyenne and Arapaho, for instance, do have have casinos, and smoke shops, but some have real estate development companies, manufacturing, convenience stores and other mainstream bidnesses. I will never oppose anything they decide to (short of illegal drug running, illegal prostitution or, I guess, anything else that's illegal), ever. The so-called Christian nation stole this continent, in my view, and will never be able to make up for it. The least we can do is stay the heck out of their way. And if they want to be a drain on the U.S. Treasury, then they can do that, too, as far as I'm concerned. In some ways, the way the Indians were treated was worse than the way the majority of slaves were treated.
 
The economics of the tribes here are much like any local economy. There are schools (with teachers, counselors, cafeteria workers, bus drivers and all the associated jobs), health care (with doctors, nurses, counselors, social workers, etc.), housing (construction and management), real estate, farmers, ranchers, light industry, information technology, newspapers, radio stations, hotels, bookstores...

And yes, there is gaming in some tribes, with a variety of jobs, and smoke shops, and museums.

The thing is, the tribal structure also makes a huge difference in how a particular tribe operates. As sovereign nations, they have independently determined their own forms of government. In some, property is owned by individuals. In others, property is owned communally by the tribe.

You will see tribal members wearing suits when they have appointments with other professionals, just like anyone. Or you'll see them wearing blue jeans when they farm and ranch. The truth is, and I absolutely mean this, Oklahoma has become so diverse that often you cannot look at someone and say "Oh, that's an Indian." You can't generalize any more and say that "an Indian" has red skin, black hair, braids, and sniffs paint or drinks all day.

There are tribal leaders who also have been elected to positions in Oklahoma state government and have Irish surnames.

It's a long ways from the "wild wild West" here. Some of the most estute business people in the state also are members of tribes.
 
And the following was returned to them only during the New Deal, which is why most of them still love the Dems!

"As sovereign nations, they have independently determined their own forms of government."
 
Yes! And thank God it was, after so many incidents like those in "Cimarron" where tribal property was stolen by "the Christian Nation" for a bottle, in some cases. Ugh, I didn't want to start on this.
 
Okay, we'll pause this conversation for a later date and let Trixie cool off. ;)

Thanks for the enlightenment!
 
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