The Crimson Tide

So, I voted this morning.  I know, the three of you reading this are saying to yourselves, “so what, I vote all the time, big freakin’ deal.”  I understand completely.  But I have to admit, it was actually, a little exciting.

I became a citizen of these United States late last summer, so this was my first opportunity to perform my civic duty.  Well, there was something last year about raising a tax to establish a commission to study the possibility of extending passenger rail service to some counties that couldn’t be bothered to vote on it themselves, or something like that.  But this was the first election of consequence I have had the opportunity to participate in.  Granted, it would have been better if there were candidates I felt good about supporting, instead of a list full of candidates I felt I had to vote against, but, I’m told the democratic process isn’t always pretty.

Warm and fuzzy feeling aside, by the time this is posted it will likely have been a pretty depressing day for the party in power.  Projections, made apparently by people who project things, have Democrats losing between 50 and 75 seats in Congress, and up to 12 state governorships.  Ouch.  Essentially, every gain Democrats have made since 2006 will have been wiped out.  There really is no way to spin that complete and total a loss into a positive.  Some people will try, but they’ll only look foolish doing so.

I’m sure there will be plenty of navel-gazing and analysis of what went wrong for the Democratic party.  If they’re interested, I’ll save them a little time.  Democrats are staring down the barrel of 60 seat losses for three reasons.  First, they spent more time cannibalizing each other than sparring with the opposition.  Typical Democratic behavior.  Why hunt wild game when you can eat your own young?  Second, they are the worst political sales team in the history of history.  They couldn’t sell water in the Kalahari Desert.  “Well sure this water will prevent you from dying of dehydration, but the bottle is only 15% post-consumer recycled plastic, and it may contain traces of Bisphenol A which may or may not cause cancer, and the water may have come from an over-burdened aquifer somewhere in Arizona, and 35 tons of carbon dioxide were produced by the truck that delivered it the store, not to mention the airplane that flew it out here, so we would really prefer if you didn’t buy - or drink it for that matter.”  And finally, they spent too much time waiting for unicorns to crap rainbows and not enough time making it rain, forgetting that it is in fact rain, and not unicorns, that produces rainbows.

What I do find endlessly amusing about this election cycle is what voters say they expect out of the upcoming Congress.  The results of a New York Times/CBS poll last week indicate that even though the entire media establishment is pitching this election as a referendum on the President, only 10 percent of respondents blame him for the current state of the economy.  Ninety percent said they considered government spending to be an important issue, yet majorities were opposed to significant spending cuts and/or any tax increases.  A pillar of the midterm Republican party platform has been repeal of healthcare reform.  Yet by a margin of 45% - 41%, respondents indicated healthcare reform should stand.  And most bizarre of all, in a cycle where the Republicans that will be swept into power are significantly more partisan than those ousted in 2006 and 2008, 78% of voters said they Republicans should compromise some of their positions to get things done.  All this (particularly that last result) can’t help but beg the question, are we all stupid?  In what universe should people expect less partisanship from more partisans?  Probably the same universe in which they expect lower deficits from higher spending and reduced tax revenue.

In a curious, non-political piece of news, as of November 1st, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange began selling rain futures.  That’s right, rain futures.  You can now gamble on whether on not it will rain during your Memorial Day barbecue in 2036, and make a killing off those bastard cumulonimbus clouds if it does.  The exchange already sells snow futures, fire futures, and all kinds of other exotic “products” to compliment their agricultural futures, so I guess rain insurance really isn’t that big of a stretch.  Apparently there is absolutely nothing in the world you cannot gamble other people’s money on.  Quick, who wants to be the first to organize rain futures into collateralized debt obligations and sell credit default swaps against them?  What?  Why are you looking at me like that?  What could possibly go wrong here?

A commercial for “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” just flashed across my television screen.  At one point Palin is shown riding an ATV and in the voice-over she can be heard saying, and I quote, “I’d rather be doing this than in some stuffy old political office... I rather be out here being free.”  You and me both Sarah.  You and me both. 

Finally, as my wife gleefully attended the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear this weekend, at some point between another disappointing Fighting Irish football loss and the complete waste of time that was the first 30 minutes of Sunday’s slate of NFL games, I stumbled across Chiller’s “72 Hour Horror Movie Marathon.”  For those of you without cable or satellite (I’m told you do indeed exist), Chiller is a channel dedicated to thriller, suspense and horror movies, primarily those not quite good enough to achieve theatrical release.  As Chiller and I crossed paths, “Assault of the Sasquatch” was ending and “Halloween Night” was about to begin.  Between the two films I lost count of how many arms were severed, eyeballs were stabbed, kneecaps were shot out, heads were smashed beneath the wheels of pickup trucks and torsos were run through with “Dead End” road signs.  But I did happen to notice that the very first time an uncovered female breast popped up on screen (no pun intended), it was subjected to the disappointing white digital fuzz of censorship.  Forgive me for asking, but what kind of society do we live in, in which it is perfectly acceptable for adults to view dismemberment and mutilation of human beings, but completely unacceptable to for those same adults to catch a peek of a  female nipple?  I just don’t know how to make sense of that.  I guess, the rent is too damn high.