I forgot to mention a few days ago that I voted. I was actually going to skip it because it was a busy day and I hadn't found the time to do the right research. But I felt guilty about that when I thought of people in other countries who can't vote, fought/died for the right to vote, or whose voting system is so corrupt it doesn't matter anyway. While our system has problems, we're not quite that bad yet.
I'm pretty apathetic when it comes to politics. There are only a handful of items I really care about:
--that our leaders are smart and maintain integrity
--a woman's right to choose
--equal treatment/civil rights/non-discrimination for *everyone*
--some degree of taxation to support the education system and those less fortunate
--separation of church and state
I left all of the judge elections blank since I didn't know anything about them.
For the House of Representatives, I voted for Darcy Burner, former Microsoft manager because she's a smart woman, not a career politician and not as icky as her opponent Dave Reichert. God forbid we should be able to find anything concrete about their views instead of empty rhetoric and blathering about lower taxes. Sadly, I don't think she's going to win - it's close and they're still counting but it doesn't look good. I am impressed that she made such a strong showing against an incumbent, with no political background.
I was also happy to see Jim Webb won in Virginia. His opponent George Allen is the kind of ass I ran into a lot growing up.
Other than that it was a fairly boring election. I guess the Democrats have taken over the Senate. Which is better than the alternative, but I wish we had less of this partisan crap and just more smart people running the country.
Like Martin Sheen, or at least his character on "The West Wing". I would love to see the day when an articulate Nobel Prize winner is our president.
Our current situation reminds me of this bumper sticker: "Somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot" How can you not love that? And even more, how great is it that we live in a country where I can say that freely on my public blog? Woo hoo!
Good for you! I voted too, via mail, which apparently means my vote won't really be counted. (They're only counted if the voters who went to polls don't make a decisive yes/no decision, and that just wasn't the case this time.)
ReplyDeleteI find I'm becoming more conservative -- fiscally -- as I get older. I actually ended up voting against most of the CA measures (though they all ended up passing and another $45B in bonds will be issued) except on the ones related to helping education. CA always has interesting measures that are good in intent but tend to be a little extreme. Like the anti-smoking proposition that wanted to add a whopping additional $2+ excise tax per pack of cigarettes. I know what they're trying to do, but I don't know why they don't make the amounts a little more reasonable...I think they'd get more support that way (from me at least). -LL