Tag: President

Saturday

My Saturday usually starts by being kicked out of bed at 0900 when Jessie (my wife) comes home. Sometimes I get lucky and she lets me sleep longer, but being a night shift nurse, her sleep pattern can be easily disrupted. If you’ve worked night shift or lived with someone who has, then you understand. Some days it’s hard to come home after a 13 hour shift and try to sleep as the birds are singing and the sun is burning off the dew.

Matt and Garrett (my sons, 12 and 10 respectively) spend Friday night binging online games with their friends since they can’t play on school nights. So either they wake up super early or sleep in from being up late. Usually they rotate who plays first and trade off who sleeps in on Saturday and Sunday. My wife is a gamer girl, so when she wakes up in the afternoon, she will jump in and play Fallout 4 on xBox as they find something else to pass the time.

And they all deserve the respite. She spend 12 to 13 hours in an ICU setting dealing with children with cardiac issues. Some of the hardest stories you’d ever heard. Some of the hardest stories I wish I’d never heard. So, she likes to destroy DIGITAL ghouls and build settlements and dress the settlers in each community in various themes. One settlement is all formal wear, another is all lab coats, one is dedicated to making donuts.

And the boys, if they make it through a week of school focused and doing what they are supposed to, then they can spend as much time as they want (within reason) learning and executing the various gaming platforms. That’s what they want their profession to be, digital design, et al. Then they are doing both relaxing and educating. Plus, it’s not like it was “back in MY day…” (Oh no… Here we go…) when we played video games for hours on end we were seen as antisocial or reclusive. Now, players are interacting with people from all parts of the globe, team building, executing prepared strategies, and completing various objectives cooperatively!

As Matt points out, “why can’t we play during the week?” Good question…

Yet, me… I don’t get a weekend off. I am “on call” 24/7. I am “Johnny-On-The-Spot” when things need to be done. When someone gets sick, when something comes up, when we need toilet paper, “Come, Captain Greenback. To the Grocery-getter… AWAY!”

The dishes don’t clean themselves on the weekend. (sadly…) The floors still get dog fur all over them on Saturdays. And allergy attacks in the middle of the night still happen on Saturday. Though not as much as when they were younger, they still need  some assistance. We are lucky to have one parent at home. Not everyone can have that.

And we do it a great cost. No doubt. It is hard to make ends meet, let alone get above water with one person at home. It can lead to some heated arguments about money. It’s not easy, for a guy, to be a “housewife” in our society. It is becoming more acceptable. But the stereotypes persist. It can take a toll on a person mentally. It demands self sacrifice that not everyone knows. My needs have to be the needs of the family. Even if my needs are the most important focus of the day, I cannot plan on anything concrete, because I can be called to pick up a kid with a fever from school, asked to get snacks for an ICU full of nurses that someone forgot that it was today and needs it in 2 hours before she has to go to work.

And all of that can be upended by the weather. It is Springtime in Kansas. No one here doubts for a second that, at any time, the sky could decide your game is over. It ads a bit of urgency to your day when black clouds roll off the prairie. It forces a person to take note of what matters most. And to work toward protecting that as best as you can.

As my wife and I struggle to keep it together, financially, as we put so much time, money, and effort into making our house a “net zero” house, with self sufficiency and climate change preparedness our priority, doing the “right” thing over the “wanted” thing is hard. As I sit here writing, and hear a “baby boomer” roar down the street on Harley-Davidson, I wonder if I should have not spent money on the granite we put on the outside of our home, the R30 insulation in the walls and attic, and the wind turbines I still need to install.

All of my time, effort, and money is invested in a future outcome. Gambling, in a sence. With such high stakes, I hope I get it right. Granite’s not as fun to ride as is a Harley-Davidson! It will last a bit longer, though.

Keep your head UP!!

So, How Do We Do This?

It is the intentional design of our election process that limits who can mount a successful bid for the Presidency. Honest, hard working men and women who have a family, who have bills to pay, who must work 40+ hours a week to keep their heads above water cannot run for President. The amount of effort and money and time necessary to got through the process… primaries through spring, nomination by summer, campaigning all the while, debates in the fall, press, campaigning, gab handing, back slapping, Election. One must be independently wealthy to ATTEMPT a run, then you have to attract the corporate entities’ dollar bills to get your message out.

A minimum of one year with no job. All donated time and effort toward a message campaign, a commercial, a roadside billboard. With no promise of winning. As a middle class American, I can say that is impossible for me to do! My family would go bankrupt.

So, I have to change the rules. That’s why I want to be president, so why not start now? It is not unheard of for someone to run a ‘Front Porch” campaign. Due to illness or incumbent obligations, the candidates can have the media come to them. In this case, I can be virtually anywhere and available 24/7… AFTER I run kids to school, keep my blood sugar at acceptable levels, clean the house, do the dishes, fill prescriptions, make appointments, scrub the toilet…

Also a ‘whistle stop’ campaign can be added, where I will make time to go out an speak in different States, ALL 50 is the ONLY WAY. The 50 State Strategy, only not just a cute thing to say to attract voters… really. ONE CITIZEN=ONE VOTE. We ALL gotta have ‘skin in the game’ here. We all gotta own this.

So that means funding. We shall see? If anyone feels the urge to support this, GoFundMe and Patreon plz… BUT I must be on the ballot in ALL 50 States as an Independent Candidate. Each State has rules that allow for an Independent Candidate to be on the ballot by either a fee or petition. Here is a link-

https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_for_presidential_candidates#Requirements_for_independents

 

“Generally speaking, an independent presidential candidate must petition for placement on the general election ballot in all 50 states as well as Washington, D.C. A handful of states may allow an independent candidate to pay a filing fee in lieu of submitting a petition. The methods for calculating how many signatures are required vary from state to state, as do the actual signature requirements. For instance, some states establish a flat signature requirement. Other states calculate signature requirements as percentages of voter registration or votes cast for a given office.”– ballotpedia.org

In Kansas, the petition requirements are VERY tight on time allowed for getting signatures. The amount of signatures is not that high, only 5,000, but the time between the first signature obtained and the last is 180 days. Every State has a unique set of hoops to jump thru, and I CANNOT do it alone! I need volunteers. (Right now, unpaid as funds are….hold on, let me check….. $0. Yep, zero.) I hope that changes, but financial gain is not what were doing this for. With enough volunteers, the metaphorical lift will be light.

If enough honest and good-faith people step up to help collect signatures in each state we can do this. If anyone is interested, email me, comment here or on my YouTube vids, Tweet @MrJLCharbonneau. If we co-ordinate enough little groups in LOTS of places, we might see a point where a day outside of a Walmart or on a street corner for just a couple hours will win this. As I run it over in my head, I bet I could lock in a hundred signatures in an afternoon.

Would YOU be willing to donate an afternoon asking, on my behalf, for an independent candidate to have a CHANCE… I’m not yet asking for votes! Just the ABILITY to COMPETE for votes. The question I want EVERYONE to be asked is simple,

“Would you sign a petition to allow an independent candidate ballot access in the 2020 Presidential Election?”

Just want the chance. Leave the rest to me. I’ll try not to mess it up!

ps- When and IF the time comes, I will file with the FEC and follow the rules. Any donation not spent will be donated to charity, needy children of some sort comes to mind immediately, but it will go toward the benefit of someone in need. It would be the least I could do with donations from caring people.

 

Playing With Fire

I TRULY feel I have something that everybody’s looking for… they just don’t know it YET. It’s amazing. It’s hot as fire, it’s simple, it’s all-encompassing, it’s not new, but it IS THE ANSWER… as far as I can tell.

And I’m DYING to be told WHY I AM WRONG. Anyone? Please?!! I keep making the attempt and can’t find ONE reason I should not run for president in 2020 on the main-plank platform of Ending the Electoral College. I believe it. I found the answer BEFORE everyone else, it’s a great answer with amazing consequence, and I don’t want to mess this up! Not the ‘me-being-President’ part… that is a piece of the answer, not the motivation. I don’t want to paint myself and my motivations in such a way as to ruin a beautiful truth-

Mankind can GOVERN ITSELF. We no longer need a “failsafe“.

The Electoral College can be done away with.

The Electoral College MUST be done away with in order to bring out the best America has to offer to HUMANITY. By holding back the brightest and best people, we limit our evolutional trajectory. Our government used to be a stepping stone for innovative young minds. The benefit of our society came from people wanting to do good things for themselves and their Country/communities. THEN move with their talents and experiences gained into the privet sector. Both, our Country and the individual benefitting greatly.

Due to the MASSIVE amounts of money involved in campaign finance, and the deceptive nature in which corporations manipulate politicians. To bend a politician’s beliefs for campaign dollars. Presidents are picked by corporate dollars with little or NO direct input from the PEOPLE.

Yes… we are allowed to pick between two candidates. But, as I’ve seen it, in every election since 2000, it’s been a pick between Bad and Worse… BOTH in-bed with multi-national multi-million dollar ________. Banks, companies, you name it.

….and they have funded BOTH SIDES AT THE SAME TIME.

C’mon. I KNOW we can do BETTER! That’s what we NEED. The people were demanding it this past weekend, in Kansas City at the March For Our Lives. The inequality driven between us by a united set of ENTITIES worth more money than 99% of the PLANET COMBINED is killing us. It’s not a group of PEOPLE…. people have compassion. People want to see good things for others. The corporate ENTITY is an all-consuming critter. They are supposed to be, right? It’s how it survives. Like a wildfire.

In Kansas, every spring the Flint Hills are burned off to help stop wildfires from consuming cities. Controlled burns NOW will limit a fire sparked by lightning in the middle of August. ACTION taken NOW will prevent…

I don’t know. I’ll stop with the metaphor. I could turn it a thousand ways and make it pop, or possibly rhyme… maybe a catchy slogan or cute phrase. But…

neveragain_kc_2
Kansas City, MO, #neveragain

As I walked the crowd with my family at the neveragainKC march, I could not help but feel overwhelmed by sadness and anger, and at the same time joy and hope. All sorts of ideas and slogans were plastered on signage, people with crosses. And people with a hole in their heart. People with a longing for unity, after losing someone they miss greatly.

No one has this thought yet and may not for many months to come. I do not want to soil this or ruin it for that moment when it ‘clicks’. This is NOT MINE, this is EVERYONE’S idea. No one has yet challenged the premise that we were taught as kids. It’s time SOMEONE does it. We all say it, or hear it. No one DOES it. We must find out if we can-

“ANYONE can become President of the United States.” Is that true? Or does the corporate ENTITY need to approve? May I volunteer to be the President for all of us? I may not be the best, or the one you would prefer, but I am DOING IT. I decided to do it, and if you would allow me the CHANCE to be on that stage in the debates in 2020, I will try not to let you ALL down.

There’s too much at stake for me to get this wrong. That’s what I’m afraid of most- a misstep or an action I should have done that led to a misunderstanding. There seems to be very little precedent for this. So I guess I’ll have to pave the way. I built the first approved grid-tied solar panel array in Wyandotte County, KS. It was also the first DIY homemade grid-tied solar panel array in the United States. NO ONE else had done it, I had to teach the guy inspecting it how to inspect it. It took a while, but I did it.

Everyone else thought about it. I decided to do it.

Keep your head UP!!

JC

 

An Independent President

As I see it, there is only one solution- we MUST elect a President who has NO intrest in a political career, who has no political ‘history’ (THE reason Hillary lost, IMHO), and is a ‘working stiff’ like myself. The “Average Joe”. AKA someone who represents the MAJORITY of Americans.

 

me_pic
Mr. Jack Charbonneau

 

 

Under normal circumstances, I would NOT run for President. I would say there are MANY more qualified persons we need to be at the helm. But we have reached a ‘tipping point’ in our country. What we have created, this intercontinental economic powerhouse, born and bread here in the USA, is now attempting to, and successfully I might add, change the rules… change the legislative structure ITSELF… to its own benefit.

If the law makers are sympathetic to your company, even better have worked for or will be working for your company, then laws can be passed or undone in your interest. Our government is similar to refs in an NFL game. What would happen if the players were allowed to be the refs? At some point the game would come to a halt due to the inflated egos on the field! Instead of a competition of skill, it would become a “battle royale”.

Though the idea of a death match on the Senate floor MIGHT sound appealing…

I hope over the course of 3 years I will be able to lay out a full description of myself, articulating my positions on as much as I can think of, as well as any questions thrown this way, to show exactly why I can be President. Because we all KNOW the President is only as powerful as the Congress allows. If they are all in agreement, progress CAN be made. It has happened before. It MIGHT happen again!… maybe… I’m optimistic. Not 100%, but at least 65% confident…

A President with an UNDENIABLE MANDATE from the VOTERS, THE PEOPLE, from whom this government gets its marching orders. By sending a representative from the PEOPLE, NOT the special interests, NOT the legislative elites, NOT the wall street leaders.

A person who, when someone looks at that leader and asks “Is he looking out for my interests?” You can absolutely say “Yes”. Because, as I see it, the MAJORITY looks, acts, and THINKS exactly like I do. We bust our ass, follow the rules, try to get ahead, set a good example for our kids, then see the banking industry gamble all OUR money away on risky loans and NOT GET PUNISHED. Or see Donald Trump break LAWS and… nothing. Or watch an oil company kill 11 workers due to negligence and no one goes to jail!

NOTHING?? If I go to the casino tonight, put it all on red and come home broke, my family’s financial future is bleak. If I were to attempt to write off those losses, my ass would be in jail. Same for anyone else. Accountability used to be universal.

Let’s make America ACCOUNTABLE again. Your actions speak volumes. EVERYONE is accountable for their actions, GOOD and BAD. Let’s do good, for everyone, together.

Keep your head UP!!