In the next few days I expect to receive my 2024 General Election ballot in the mail, under New York State’s Early Voting by Mail program. It’s great – once a year I request my ballots, and they send them in mail with a postage-paid return envelope. Get a pen and fill in the scantron, sign the outer envelope and drop the ballot in the mail. And it’s done, no lines and if the campaigns are competent, they’ll stop contacting me when the deed is done or so at least will be case with the campaigns associated with my data operation. At least that’s hope. Plus I just really like the convenience of voting from home.

I sort of like Kamela and a sort of don’t. I love the idea of the first black women as President, bringing forward new ideas. She is more of the younger generation, when so many of a leaders in country have been excessively elderly over what has nearly been a decade now. I think she will move our country forward, not always adopting policies I like, but she will be a voice of change, although probably somewhat like a voice in the wilderness screaming like a schizophrenic man at the city street corner as the Republicans controlling the US Senate tell her no. But it’s important to have a check on her power, even if it makes the partisans angry.

I think Kamela will be good on climate change and environment, and moving more towards renewable and electrification. Once we get rid of all those smoke-blenching furnaces and tailpipes with their bellowing mufflers, cities will be a lot cleaner. Cars and trucks aren’t as polluting as they once were – but electrification and burning coal and natural gas outside of city limits rather then thousands of individual smokes stacks and tailpipes will mean a whole lot less grime in the cities. Of course, we have to watch where renewables are cited and the trade-offs that come with electrification, such as pollution associated with batteries and electronic waste disposal, along with mining and other activities in the sphere. To say nothing about the industrialization of lands formerly farmed or forested. But that’s why we have the Republicans to put a brake on her most ambitious of plans. The upside, is the promotion of more electrification and renewable energy will only help to further lower the price of solar and off-grid equipment for when I build my own cabin.

I am concerned about Kamela’s gun control initiatives, though at least it seems like the Republicans are unified against her, and are willing to challenge any legislation she might propose and go to court to defend the second amendment. The Supreme Court, mostly thanks to the majority appointed by Trump thanks to the games that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell played with the appointments, is much more likely to defend the second compared to years past, though it seems like it’s not as activist as one would hope at vigorously defending our gun rights. But between the Supreme Court and conservative states, it seems like the right to keep and bear arms will remain mostly protected even under the extreme gun-control measures insisted on an elected Kamela.

I also worry she will lock up more of our public lands from public use – – her people will close and abandon more roads and trails to the back country, close ATV and snowmobile trails, and raise fees for public use of the lands. She will say it’s to protect the Walruses or some bull like that. But I think she’s just locking the people out of the land who are lawful, paid owners of land as American taxpayers. And she might raise my taxes, especially on money I’ve worked so hard to earn and save towards a better future. That sad, Kamela would appoint halfway competent people to run the economy and not engage in insane policies like tarrifs that would trash the stock market and the economy.

This year, however the issue I care about most is a national legalization of cannabis. As much as I love my guns and wish I owned more if not for ducking New York State, I do like smoking pot around the campfire and up in the woods, enjoying all the beautiful colors, the clouds and ripples on the water. It’s just horseshit that your committing a federal crime to smoke pot on federal land, and you’re considered a drug trafficker and a felon if you buy pot in one state at a lawful dispensary and bring it across state line. You’re also committing a federal offense to lie on your 4473 form if you’ve smoked pot in the past year when buying a new gun. You know the stupid ass law that Joe Biden’s son got in trouble for. It’s cannabis, really the coffee of the drug world.

It would be nice to travel with pot, have a relaxing smoke in the evening wherever you are, have more variety of strains and lower prices when states competete and it’s easier for more retailers to sell. Wouldn’t be wonderful if you could buy a safe, prepackaged joint at a gas station as your passing through town like a case of beer, for when you retire back to camp in National Forest? And I would like to see a bigger discussion of legalization of mushrooms and LSD for those interested in trying them out. Recreational drugs, used for recreational purposes should be people’s choices.

I think Kamela would be better then Trump on that even if she’s still a bit of right-wing reactionary who loves the pigs too much. I am actually not sure why we spend so much on law enforcement, maybe it would be better to assist police in finding new jobs in the private sector. I am sure law enforcement with all their experience could be trained in new fields of employment, from everything from manufacturing to driving city busses to outdoor guides. Maybe because I don’t own a color television, I don’t have much of a concern about crime. I mean what are going to steal of mine? A shitty old 20-guage Remington or 12 year-old dust covered computer monitor?

I was pretty sure I was going to vote third party, but I see New York legislators have worked hard to ensure that’s not an option with the way they wrote the Election Law to make it virtually impossible for anybody but Harris and Trump to get on the state’s ballot. I kind of like Chase Oliver, the libertarian businessman from somewhere in the south. I think he has some good ideas, and it would be a good protest vote. I could write him in. Or I could write in something silly as the protest like the Dire Wolf, mainly because I like that Grateful Dead song when I’m higher then high around the campfire. It’s not like my vote in the Presidential race counts for shit, as I’m in a blue state where the 70 percent of state in the NYC Metropolitan area will largely reflexively vote for whatever the Democrats find in the sewer including a large rat.

I am a bit hesitant though to fill in the blank next to Harris’ name though, as I don’t want to take credit for everything she does to screw the nation in the next four years. In my younger  years, I volunteered for a Spitzer-Patterson phone bank, and we know how that all turned out. That’s why I usually vote for Jill Stein or whoever that libertarian was in 2020 and 2022, whose names don’t seem to matter enough for me to remember. But whatever. Voting is like buying a lottery ticket, you might as well just throw in burn barrel as soon you as buy it.

At least voting is free and easy with the Early Voting by Mail with the postage-paid return envelope…