... on a different subject ...
The State of Rhode Island has been run by the Democratic party for as long as I can remember - I have lived here for 30 years and of the 136 members of the General Assembly, only 6 are NOT Democrats ...
The State is among the worst five - and in some cases THE worst State in the Union - in most issues that matter - economy, jobs, education, etc. ...
The State newspaper - The Providence Journal - is the only statewide news publication, and has a very liberal slant, endorsing ALL the Democrat candidates for office from the Governor on down ... but the paper publishes at least one 'Letter to the Editor' every day from someone bemoaning the 'state of the State' ...

So what happened on Nov 4 ?
First, about half of the citizens eligible to vote, DID NOT ! ... of the half or so that did vote, 41% voted for the Democrat, 37% voted for the Republican, 22% voted for an Independent (who actually made more sense than anyone, and spent a TOTAL of $36 on his campaign) and the remainder went to 2 other independents ...
Not only did a Democrat win the Governorship, but the Dems took a clean sweep in ALL categories ...

Now, when one party has been in control for soooo long, and the 'state of the State' continues to decline miserably, putting party affiliations aside, wouldn't one think that it was time for a change???

I realize that the Governor of RI is perhaps the LEAST powerful and influential office in the State. In fact, we have had a Republican Governor for 4 of the last 5 terms, with 2 Reps being re-elected for a second term. However, with a totally lopsided General Assembly, many of their efforts went to waste. The current Gov was a Republican, who ran and was elected as an Independent (by 36% of the vote, with 3 people running), and mid-term switched to the Democratic party. His term was so bad, he decided not to run when his approval rating was somewhere in the 20's.
I am more prone to thinking that each Party ASKED him to leave, rather than he did so on his own!

So now, here is little RI or about 40% of the 50% of its eligible voters, giving its long standing office holders - and some new ones -, the ability to continue in their do - nothing ways, and the rest of us will continue to write 'letters to the editor' asking when something POSITIVE is going to be done in this State.
And as for our new Governor, considering the fact that she had BOTH Clintons, Mrs. Obama and the President himself appear here in person on her behalf, the only hope is that after 4 years she will be shooting for something on the national level. But then, 40% - or less - of the 50% of the eligible voters will blindly re-elect the rest of the same people and continue to wonder why the 'state of the State' is so bad.

To me, the GREATEST shame in all of this is that only about 50% of the eligible voters actually took the time to exercise that right and privilege.

Oh well, as someone (it has NEVER really been attributed) said "the definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result."
Rhode Island is the personification of that saying.

I was going to apologize for the rant, but then this IS "The Bar" ...

Tony, we have the same situation with keyboard industry. The way things go we will only end up with Yamaha and Korg. And Yamaha owns Korg too..So we are pretty screwed there. Imagine living in a country where you have only two parties😆. They could pretty much do whatever they want to. It's not like the other guy is much better than the first one😂..And it's not like we have a choice. 76 or 61 keys. Anyway we use prerecorded midi files.But we pretend that we are in control. All we can do is sing along😉.

???

That was about 20 years ago as far as I know. They definitely don't own Korg any more.

WHEW !!!

Regarding your original point, it is really very disappointing how many people don't care to go voting. The recent local state elections in the Eastern German states had very low participation rates, too. 25 years ago these people didn't have a democracy and could only choose between the candidates preselected by the Communist regime. Now, as elections are free, 50% are not interested in making use of their voting right...

But, what do you do when you have everything in your country that you ever wanted and then you choose your president to be someone like Bush junior?? Hehehe

... and then follow that with our current President !!! ...

I was extremely disappointed when I read what percentage of RI eligible voters actually voted, but I was even more disappointed when I recently read that on a NATIONAL level only about 36% of eligible voters voted ...

When I hear a person complain about the state of our State or Country, the first thing I am going to ask is if they voted ... I don't care WHO they voted for, only IF they voted ...

Tony, I can only agree to a certain degree. After what Bush did with America,I mean him and his crew, it doesn't matter who is the next fool that is going to take over.
I used to believe there are good and bad guys. Not anymore. It's all business. Unfortunately, just regular people pay the price.
What Americans did to Obama is in one word "shamefull".They would never do it if he was white.Where is he from? What religion is he? Like that will make him good or bad.If he as Christian than he is good, if not than he is bad.What a stupid way of thinking. Why nobody asked Bush about his IQ, or can he speak intelligent English when he is on TV??
But, he is white and rich and has Christian values (whatever that means).
Sometimes we should see the world not through Christian, or Muslim, or Jewish or even monkey's eyes.We might be surprised what we can see.

And I do agree, people should vote.But, who to vote for when everyone is the same.It just depends what kind of gloves they wear.From Russia, to Palestine, to Israel, to America end everyone in between. When they take their gloves down they all have bloody hands.
Unfortunate for young soldiers from all sides that pay the ultimate price.

Tony,

I never visit the bar and just happened to click on the link. As a fellow RI'er all I can say that is a very well thought out post..........and my friend you are on the money!!