Buckminster in 2016

I realize we're only three days into 2015 but for those who make their living from the body politic of the United States (sort of like constitutional fleas) it's more like it's already three days into 2015.

According to NBC we have a baker's dozen (and some crumbs to spare) to keep an eye on in the race for the White House in 2016. Except, here's the thing and it's not personal, the list makes me throw up in my own mouth.

A parade of the gray-suited grafters, a choice of cancer or polio-Mick and Keef nailed it and they're not even US citizens. No, that's not what I want to howl at the moon about so early in this year, not at all.

We've become a nation of ADD but such an ailment adds nothing to who we are and more importantly to whom we can be. Somehow we've managed to lose sight of "e pluribus unum" (from many, one) as close to a slogan as any nation has any right to have and have opted, it seems to me sometimes for 'Quia fried poma cum terra, vis?" (do you want fries with that?)

I hope my right of center friends (assuming I have any; an assumption that also can be made for those on the other side of the aisle as well) will forgive me when I opine that I have little to no interest in what your party does in either the House of Representatives or the Senate as long as whatever it is they believe is in the best interests of the greatest number of us who live here.

Instead of working on a 140 character tweet or an eye-catching bumper sticker for Hillary, Rand, Jeb, Chris or Marco (or Polo) or any of the other folks who called shotgun in the electoral college clown car, how about we spend at least the rest of this year with some words from a long time ago?

These are some memorable words from a thoroughly flawed man who did his best even when his best wasn't good enough, "My country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right."

As we've discovered for the last fifty years or so, our civil discourse has continued to coarsen and we've stopped listening to one another in order to discuss the issues of the day only waiting until it's our turn to talk, we have a long way yet to go and a finite number of days to get ourselves gone.

Worries about 2016 are distractions from the task at hand, getting through this day in 2015 and the next one and the one after that. I agree with the shriekers on both sides of the political spectrum, there is much "wrong" in this nation but not so much that it cannot all be repaired in a day by what's right.
More sentences and paragraphs, and far fewer words. Starting now.
-bill kenny