THIS is a CLOSE-UP?

This was what I had to look at, driving to and from work, for around a month leading up to the election.  In case you can't make everything out, you have an empty chair at the base of what looks an awful lot like a hangman's pole, with a "Defeat Obama" sign hanging where a person would be.  So here, the empty chair can be (a) a nod to Clint Eastwood's performance art "think piece" at the RNC or (b) what someone would stand on as the noose is slipped around the neck at a hangman's pole or (c) all of the above.  This scene was surrounded with Republican ground signs, all flanking the centerpiece of ignorance and hatred. After a few weeks, I got so fed up that I sent the pic to the Petoskey News-Review along with a letter to the editor, both of which went nowhere.  And a few days after that, I sent an email to 9&10 News with the following message: On Resort Pike Road (between Intertown and Williams), there currently sits a scene captured in t...

As always, what follows is only my poorly-formed and crudely-articulated opinion.  If you want more information about the proposals in more specific detail (often with much less colorful language), then please seek out that information, from multiple sources if possible.  Above all else, I want you to vote...but I'd also love to see informed voters vote with their brains and hearts.  And my brain and heart are telling me the following: Proposal 1 -- Referendum on PA 4/Emergency Manager In principle, it's not a bad idea to have an impartial party enter an intractable situation and help to break gridlock and conflict -- after all, third-party mediation helps grease the wheels in ways that "negotiation" sometimes can't, as the NHL would be wise to heed -- but the evidence we have so far in Michigan w/r/t emergency managers involves highly paid individuals accountable to only themselves overruling and trampling over elected officials and contracts and the like,...