Post-election wrap up

I'm not gonna bother posting links in this one, cuz all of America (except, ya know, all the stupid ones) already know all this stuff already.

So the Dems took the House and later, the Senate. Bully for them then. Now they just have to make the president cooperate with them, and vice versa. This will be a fascinating two years.

The best news today, though, was Rumsfeld's resignation. This news was so good that it (almost) made me recover from my general ire with the state of Tennessee.

Now I'm generally used to all manner of crap Tennessee can pull. But this election really kinda yanks my chain. I expected the gay marriage ban to pass, and I kinda expected Corker to win. But that doesn't make me happy about it. This is primarily due to the way the results for the marriage amendment turned out: 80.4% for and 19.6% against.

Generally, people who study such things say that in any given population, somewhere between 10-20% will be LGBTQ people. You know what this means for Tennessee?

Only gay people voted against the amendment.

Disturbing, much?

The only thing that gives me any comfort is this odd feeling that someday, legislating a particular this brand of morality is gonna come back and bite some people in the ass. ;)

No further comment.

WARNING: Resist urge to participate in mass suicide should Democrats lose

Political people are weird. From the Times, discussing how disappointed Dems would be if they don't take the House:

Mr. Cook put it more succinctly. “I think you’d see a Jim Jones situation — it would be a mass suicide,” he said.

Honestly. Is an election worth killing yourself over?

PSA for Tennessee Voters

I realize that this campaign season has been bizarre, but hear me out.

Tennesseans: Please ignore advertisements that suggest that Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. has supported the "radical homsexual agenda 80% of the time."

Why should you ignore these ads? Because, I hate to break it to you, there is no gay agenda. We don't have one. Period. Even if you find a spoof of one on the internet, it's not real.

You hear me? It is physically impossible for any lawmaker of any ilk to support the "radical homosexual agenda." We don't have one. It doesn't exist.

(And if we do have one, then the religious right has thus far failed to share our agenda with us, though we thank them for taking the time to write it on our behalf. After all, straight white Christian men have been making decisions for other people for centuries, and think they're pretty good at it.)

Trust me on this.

Also, vote NO on Amendment 1.

The politics of disgust

Unfortunately, it's almost time for an election. This means all forms of media (the term airwaves is no longer sufficient) are riddled with the most ridiculous and insane methods of scum-sucking mudslinging that the English language (and sometimes Spanish) can sustain. There are some particularly flashy examples, but I'll let you find those on your own. More up my alley is the creative analysis of all this garbage found mostly on the internet.

One embarrassment is that the British (via BBC Magazine), known for their own mad dirt digging skills, have dubbed our current election season particularly spooky.

I suppose there was a time when candidates asked people to vote for them because they shared a political philosophy. I suppose that time predates modern democracy.

Now, it's vote for me because I'm not a paedophile, or a drunk, or a mistress-choking adulterer, or a moron - all of which members of Congress have been accused of, with varying degrees of veracity, in the last month.

As Mark Twain once said, there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.

I certainly agree with the author, and I especially dig Mark Twain's lovely addition. It seems about accurate, and in spite of my belief that the "mistress-choking adulterers" will probably lose, I'm not terribly confident that anyone more decent will when.

But then the president and his former challenger get involved, and it gets worse. From NYT:

When the president of the United States gleefully bathes in the muck to divide Americans into those who love their country and those who don’t, it is destructive to the fabric of the nation he is supposed to be leading.

I feel like that about sums it up. All fear, all lies, all the time. I really wish "freedom from fear" had been written into the Constitution. Maybe that would make campaigning a little nicer.

Is civility too much to ask for? Or do I have to spend my life learning about who fucked whose corrupt, gay, illegitimate pet monkey?

Randomness generally pertaining to politics

I took this quiz just now that tests on civics profiency. I got 52/54, which ain't bad. The test is targeted to baby boomers, but I feel like basically everyone should know this stuff.

I continue to be amused by the Tennessee Senate race. For one, things in Tennessee don't usually garner a lot of attention. Secondly, an ad run by the RNC (or RSCC - I forget which) declared that Rep. Harold Ford, the Dem candidate, attended a Super Bowl party at the Playboy Mansion, and the ad was rounded out by some alleged porn star saying "call me, Harold." What amuses me more though is Ford's response: "I like women, and I like football, so yes, I went to the party." A remarkable amount of candor for a politician these days. You can find the goodness either on YouTube or Wonkette.

Also, election day is coming up. I get to revel in voting for non-voting people. Ah, the joys of District of Columbia living. Of all the democracies and pseudo-democracies on earth, DC is the only capital of such that is not represented in the national legislature. Nonetheless, there is an opportunity to get a better Congress out of this contest, though I'm not terribly hopeful. Notice I said "better" rather than "Democratic." It'll take a lot more than getting to see Speaker Botox sworn in to make Congress better.

And yet, Chester Crocker expressed last week that Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf would probably be a better head of state of the U.S. than our current POTUS, while said EJS was speaking at Georgetown. This is particularly funny coming from a man who was an assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration. On the whole though, not a bad idea.
Sorry for not putting in more links. Too lazy. :)

EDIT: Mother Jones' blog is now claiming that the above mentioned basically racist ad was pulled because the Canadians protested over a derogatory line pertaining to their country, rather than, ya know, just being racist.