It's me once again!! As you know I've been writing blog entries surrounding new music videos from Ray Stevens (released this past Monday) and in my previous blog entry I noted that Ray has two entirely different music videos that are just as active on YouTube and social media as the brand new music videos happen to be. I mentioned the highly active "The Quarantine Song" music video and I also mentioned "Grandpa Voted Democrat". I believe everyone can be united in a fight against voter fraud wherever it may exist or at least be united against the presence of voter fraud and irregularities that undermine the integrity of the voting process. To deny existence of fraud or to diminish it as being so miniscule that it has no impact on the outcome of an election is an irresponsible attitude, I think.
On August 11th of this year the music video had garnered 2,511,520 unique views. The video had been uploaded onto YouTube in 2012. On October 13th of the year the music video had risen to 2,713,458 and I wrote a blog entry promoting the music video obtaining 2.7 million unique views. Now then, I just looked at the totals for the 8 year old music video, and as of right now the video is sitting with 2,877,319 unique views. This is a pickup of 163,861 in less than a month's time. It's a pickup of more than 300,000 unique views between August 11th and November 11th. It's hard to tell how the post-election fallout will continue to play out. There's numerous lawsuits and mandatary recounts that are going to take place...and some States are still counting votes more than a week after election day!!
However this all plays out in the next couple of months, "Grandpa Voted Democrat" takes on voter fraud in a lighthearted fashion...but it makes it's point crystal clear if you listen carefully. Also, the sentiments expressed in the music video are still relevant in 2020. I don't know if that's something to be proud of or not?? This video, as mentioned, debuted in November 2012 and here we are 8 years later...with situations emerging from various States which allow the idea of voter fraud and corruption to dominate the election cycle!
It's me once again and I decided to take a look, once more, at the Ray Stevens music video "Grandpa Voted Democrat". As you could probably guess with this being election season the music video has had a resurgence of on-line sharing and discovery. The video made it's debut on November 3, 2012 and it had a massive response not only on that day but in the days and weeks after the 2012 election cycle came and went. The issue of integrity in the 2020 elections became an issue when a lot of States, using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse, decided that this election cycle voters in States that have never dealt with mail-in voting, would receive ballots in the mail and for them to fill the ballots out and then mail them back. Mail-in voting had become something of a routine thing in a few States. Early voting is going on as I type this. Some, like myself, prefer to wait until Election Day to cast my vote. We're three weeks away from Election Day.
The decision by some States to mail out ballots by the millions has obviously alarmed a lot of people who feel there's too much potential for fraud and abuse when ballots are being mailed out to voters...in some cases to people no longer living or being mailed to addresses of voters who no longer live at that location. I may have referenced this in a blog entry from August of this year but a relative of mine recently received voter correspondence for someone in the family who recently passed away. The relative that passed away was living at the same address as the caretaker...but the local office hadn't deleted the relative from the voter registration records.
We've all heard stories of local fraud and abuse taking place with ballots...and the argument from Democrats is always the same: "it's isolated...it doesn't represent the country as a whole...". Well, in a national election where millions of mail-in ballots have been sent out, the potential for larger widespread ballot abuse should be something that we keep in the forefront and not let it become lost among the chaos and confusion that's bound to show up in three weeks time. The rush to push mail-in voting when it was not necessary deliberately set the stage for chaos and confusion. COVID-19 is simply a convenient scapegoat.
"Grandpa Voted Democrat", back on August 17, was sitting with 2,511,520 unique views. When I looked at the numbers a couple of minutes ago the unique view count had risen to 2,713,458. This is a pickup of 201,938 unique views in a little more less than 2 months time! I'm hoping there will be no voter fraud, abuse, or integrity issues but it's difficult to say there won't be with this year's election cycle consisting of so much mail-in ballots in the postal system. I'm hoping with so much attention focused on fighting the potential for fraud and abuse that it causes those who are thinking about disrupting the 2020 elections to think twice.
Hello all!! I'm taking a look back at "Grandpa Voted Democrat", one of the classic political comedy songs Ray Stevens released in 2012. The song itself is from his political comedy CD, Spirit of '76, released a year earlier in 2011. The video hit YouTube just prior to the 2012 election and so when you watch the video you're going to see some topical imagery from that time period...screen caps from cable news channels...and other imagery on the minds of people during that election cycle. An unforeseen benefit to Ray's funny political videos is seeing public figures in entertainment and politics that have either gotten out of the spotlight or have since been voted out of office.
I took a look back at this particular music video back in May of this year. When I reported the numbers in May the video had 2,330,401 unique views. A couple weeks later in early June it had risen to 2,396,531. A quick math recap shows that from May 22, 2020 through August 17, 2020 the "Grandpa Voted Democrat" video had been accessed 181,029 times to bring it's overall total of unique views to 2,511,520 as of this writing!!
Hello all! The subject of mail-in ballots and voter fraud continue to periodically make headlines. There is an effort to play up the advantages of mail-in voting and downplay the pitfalls of mail-in voting...and it's all based on each politician's point of view regardless of party. Ray Stevens addressed the topic of voter fraud in his recording, "Grandpa Voted Democrat", which hit YouTube several days before the 2012 election. Those that downplay voter fraud often argue that cases of it are minuscule and rarely effect the outcome of elections while those that bring up voter fraud argue that you shouldn't have complacency when it comes to votes being counted from unregistered voters and showing indifference when it comes to mail-in ballots that are lost in the postal system. Those who favor mail-in voting for all do not want to hear about what they consider isolated, non-consequential issues of fraud and abuse.
There has long been absentee voting...often for members of the military and for those with over-whelming physical incapability that they're unable to show up in person at the polling place...but what this pandemic has created is an avenue to install mail-in voting on a permanent basis. Do you really think in next election cycle will be 'normal'? It'll more or less be mandated that voters mail-in their ballots...regardless of there not being any pandemic by that time. This is why it's dangerous when Government takes advantage of a crisis. In the aftermath they'll call it a 'new normal' rather than go back to the real normal.
Now, since the workforce is being asked to keep 6 feet apart from co-workers and when you're in line at a store you're to remain 6 feet apart...why in the world can't local polling places have a policy about remaining 6 feet away from the next voter or maybe have a sign on their window saying so many voters are allowed in at a time?? The idea of pushing mail-in voting for the entire country is ridiculous and, yes, a recipe for potential fraud and abuse. The people at the board of elections are, in effect, lazy if they don't want to try and figure out ways to have the polling places open on Election Day...less than 6 months from now. It shows me and it should show everyone that they just don't care...mail-in ballots and mail-in voting is going to be the 'new normal'. In the meantime...here's the Ray Stevens voter fraud music video from 2012...
I hadn't been keeping up with the unique view statistics of this video because it hit nearly 8 years ago but I know that it's gotten a whole new resurgence within the last several weeks based on how many times it's being posted on social media and being re-discovered. The total number of unique views as of this writing is 2,330,401.
Oh it's me once again!! Yes, this is November 7th...not exactly "election eve" this early in the morning...but the build up to Election Day 2016 should get into full swing later this afternoon/evening. I title this blog entry for the upcoming Election Day tomorrow (November 8th) but there have been millions of people casting ballots for several weeks thanks to early voting. The one and only Ray Stevens cast his vote early.
For those that hadn't been paying too much attention on all things politics there's definitely been a shift in opinion polls. Clinton doesn't exactly have a commanding lead anymore but...
Disturbing could be the best adjective or baffling could be another but the national sampling of likely voters continues to have Clinton leading by a couple percentage points. It's baffling considering the unethical baggage she and her spouse, Bill, carry around from 30+ years in public office and it's disturbing that there are people out there that apparently are going to turn a blind eye to the scandal-plagued Clinton's and vote them back into the White House.
Yes, I choose to use the word "them" because it'll be a third term for the Clinton's. Yeah, I know it isn't technically a third term since it's Hillary as the candidate but come on, it's Bill and Hillary, or, Hillary and Bill, or Billery as they were referred to in the early years of the internet...it's a third term regardless.
The topic of voter fraud/voter suppression is often a hot topic and even though it's not entirely likely voter fraud issues are going to play a part in this election cycle it's something that shouldn't be pushed to the side as something that couldn't happen. The action to silence those that bring up the very real issue of election antics is something else that I'd like to comment on. Nationally there's been a big ordeal made concerning Trump's consistent arguments about there being a "rigged system". He's under attack for reminding people to be aware of suspicious activity and report it to the people at the election site. Is there anything sinister about such an alert? I don't think so...but many election board officials think it incites suspicion in the election process, period.
Keeping within the same topic there's a certain YouTube video from Ray Stevens that has crossed into the million unique views stratosphere. "Grandpa Voted Democrat" has gotten 1,025,860 unique views so far and this meteoric rise is, of course, tied into this being election season. The video had been in a resurgence since "rigged system" became part of the election dialogue and on Sunday the video had gotten more than 995,000 views and so it more or less steam rolled into the 1,000,000 plateau rather strongly.
In an effort to keep things in perspective, though, this YouTube video
is 4 years old. Originally meant as a lead-in to the 2012 elections (the
video debuted on YouTube on November 3, 2012) this video, as most of
his other politically themed releases, have the ability to remain
entertaining in spite of the content being topical and in the moment.
This can be credited entirely to the natural gifts of Ray Stevens in
crafting a song either through the lyrics or the arrangement or, in the
case of video, his visual performance. The topicality of the songs seem to remain relevant in nearly any election cycle. The songs/videos that he's released about Obama can easily be applied to Hillary: It's a different person but it's the same unethical agenda. Also...let's not forget that Obama Care is crumbling, if only from a mathematics stand-point, but if Hillary's elected she'll keep it in place and "force it" to work.
From the 2014 election cycle comes this entertaining slice of political comedy, "If You Like Your Plan", as Obama's promises of everyone having health care in the private sector will not see any changes or spikes in premiums and deductibles as a result of Obama Care. Electing Hillary Clinton will most surely continue this path of health insurance destruction. Also not to be forgotten is the fact that the ones that drafted Obama Care in 2009 and the Congress that passed it into law on a party line vote in 2010 designed it to where the most negative aspects of the law wouldn't kick in until 2017...after Obama's vacated the White House and the next President steps in.
I was debating whether or not to call this blog entry Ray Stevens and the politics of Humor or Ray Stevens and the humor of Politics. I decided to go with the former rather than the latter because I don't particularly find politics to be funny...but there are many ways to find humor within politics and that's what Ray's been doing the last three years. It all started in late November 2009 with the release of "We The People", a song that criticized the ObamaCare bill which hadn't been signed into law at that point. A music video emerged soon after in December 2009 on You Tube...and from that point forward Ray's mostly been issuing politically oriented music and videos. A 2010 CD/Mp3 release, We The People, arrived in the summer of 2010. Several music videos were put together from songs on the 2010 project...a project that features 22 songs.
Earlier this year Ray issued a book titled Let's Get Political which features political essays written by both Ray and his songwriter/business associate, Buddy Kalb. The book also contains the lyrics to all the songs on both his 2010 and 2011 projects. Unfortunately the book was never publicized too heavily and is mostly known to those who either visit this blog on a frequent basis or visit Ray's web-store and are familiar with their items. It isn't a book in the traditional sense where there's hundreds or thousands of pages and a million chapters...it's much like a standard 75-80 page paperback book one might pick up and read in one sitting in the waiting room at a hospital or in the lobby of an airport. The book's pages aren't numbered, though. His latest release, "Grandpa Voted Democrat", tells the story of how collecting the names of people no longer living were being used in numerous voter fraud scandals. If one looks at the song's title you'd think it would be a song about how a grandfather's staunch political views but when you hear the song you'll learn about this bizarre chain of events that saw a grandfather "vote" Democrat.
The Grandpa Voted Democrat Mp3 is available at Ray's web-store for 99 cents. As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, the song comes from Spirit of '76 and it, too, can also be purchased in Mp3 format for those who don't want to have a CD copy. The songs from the 2011 CD that hadn't been made into music videos are: "Mi Casa Su Casa", "Cap'n Trade the Pirate", "News Machine", "November Storm", and "New Normal". The CD has 11 songs and so, of course, that means 6 of the 11 have been released on-line as music videos: "God Save Arizona", "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore", "Obama Budget Plan", "Mr. President - Mr. President", "Obama Nation", and the just released "Grandpa Voted Democrat".
Hello all the Ray Stevens fans...it's a very, very early Monday morning...one day before the big election of 2012. Now, of course, since all of us know that Ray's contemporary music has a political overtone and he has a brand new music video available as well, my blog entries will be decidedly political, too, leading up to the election tomorrow. After the election comes and goes I'll resume the Golden LP Series of blog entries I've been working on and pick up where I left off...but for now I've embedded "Grandpa Voted Democrat" once again...
The music video's obtained more than 45,000 views in less than 2 days time. The total so far is 45,856 views. For those familiar with You Tube you'll recall that the site was experiencing technical issues the very day that Ray's new music video was uploaded. It was described by some as an upload server issue of some sort. This no doubt effected the availability of many newly uploaded videos on Saturday and it also effected the unique views of videos, too, as the site was basically running slow (if connecting at all). When you do a video search at You Tube for Ray Stevens + Grandpa Voted Democrat the results page will show up and you'll see the most up to date unique view count for Ray's video. However, as of now, when you click the video and the video's page opens up, because You Tube was having server issues for so many hours on Saturday and into early Sunday morning, the view totals for this particular video were affected dramatically.
On the video's You Tube page it shows it has 17,496 views but yet when you do a site search for the video it shows the video has 45,856 views. That has me believing that more than 26,000 views had been obtained during You Tube's technical problems on Saturday but those numbers haven't been applied to the totals on the video's main page. It's the only way to explain such a dramatic discrepancy in the numbers. Since this kind of thing had never happened before with any of Ray's other music videos I wonder how long it'll be before the total number of views on the video's main page are brought up to date.
Good Saturday evening Ray Stevens fans! As I was putting together the previous blog entry about his 1980 comedy album, Ray released a brand new music video on You Tube. The video's been available for a little more than an hour...released on a Saturday evening no less...but it's gotten more than 300 unique views in it's short time on the internet and I'm sure it'll garner thousands upon thousands of views in the hours and days leading up to Election Day 2012 this Tuesday. The brand new video, "Grandpa Voted Democrat", is embedded below. The song comes from Ray's Spirit of '76 CD. Spread the video around as you would his other music video releases. The message in the video revisits a voter fraud scandal where names of deceased people were credited as legitimate voters in an effort to falsify an election result.
Ray opens the video speaking directly to the viewer about the importance of voting. There have been rumblings here and there that Obama supporters are
possibly going to use a voter fraud accusation or other similar tactics
and make it appear that voters were "disenfranchised" in some way, a
word that's grossly over-used by Democrat operatives to cast suspicion
on any election whose results are not to their liking.
