One of the motivating reasons for creating this unofficial publication was to provide an alternative viewpoint on political, social and cultural issues from a locality that is lodged in a perpetual state of conservative traditionalism rooted in evangelical Christian patriarchy. I’ve heard more than a few visitors from other places in the USA and overseas…
Continue ReadingAuthor: Route66Kid
Ten years without Carlin: Oh George, how we miss thee!
I am forever grateful to live in such an interesting time and place such as in the middle of the United States in 2018. The more things that focus the attention of both brilliant less gifted minds weighing in on daily happenings in America and the World, my calling as a chronicler of the events…
Continue ReadingVeterans, candidates and an approaching primary election
“Conditions win elections and not speeches.” That assertion was once made by Oklahoma’s most famous Democrat, Will Rogers. If the conditions created by implementing radical ideas enabled by one-party rule in my beloved home state for the better part of a decade are not enough to move a majority of voters to shift the needle…
Continue ReadingOverturning the New Deal
Long game strategies, when employed with simplicity, specificity and devout dedication, are the most effective way to cause change lasting for decades. When the Labor Movement and others seeking to safeguard the rank-and-file worker and common citizen from economic calamity gained a friend in the White House, many of their ideas and demands found their…
Continue ReadingThe spring of the grassroots
We are well into May of a midterm election year and in spite of an unseasonably cool spring, primary election campaigns are off and running. Regardless of what may be happening in the larger national and global picture, the focus on local state legislative politics is heating up. Given that all politics is local, that…
Continue ReadingA citizen’s testimony of a failed state government
Like many other evolving stories which illuminate and illustrate our life and times along this, the most conservative stretch of Old Route 66, I have had to stop myself more than once from writing this piece before the subject matter was ripe enough to rate appropriate commentary. Since January 2011, the Oklahoma State Senate, House…
Continue ReadingA look back on a leader in crisis
As I have often mused while waxing nostalgic, the more things change the more they stay the same. As a child, I remember asking certain of my elders what they thought of what we were seeing on the evening news only to be dismissed by categorical proclamations that the World and the nation were “Going…
Continue ReadingWitness to a movement: Marching for their lives
Power concedes nothing without demand. Those in government who currently wield the power of crafting legislation and have done nothing in the face of the crisis generated by mass school shootings were served notice on Saturday. A genuine grassroots movement is on the rise and their collective voices demanding action to reign in gun violence…
Continue ReadingThe bottom line question for all voters in 2018
As most regular readers have noticed, there is a stock in trade of what gets published on this blog. For the most part, the stock in trade of Reason Rest Stop is information. There may be an occasional humorous story or a run down of an entertainment event or a book or movie review, but…
Continue ReadingA rising Democratic tsunami
Oklahoma’s own Will Rogers once pointed out as only a political pundit of his stature could: “Conditions win elections and not speeches.” As anyone with a thorough knowledge and understanding of the history of American politics will tell you, there has always been an element of contentious polarization from the beginning of the Republic to…
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