babbling blue

I haven’t been doing many politically-themed blog posts lately, but that doesn’t mean I stopped caring or paying attention. Quite the contrary. But political posts take a lot of thought and effort, and it’s difficult to make them entertaining. Also, more often than not they just make me angry and depressed. But it’s time to cease the semi-silence!

As most everyone in the U.S. knows, there was an election yesterday. Despite being merely a midterm (which means midway through a presidential term, by the way), it was a huge election. Control of the House and Senate were both up for grabs. I’m happy to report that as of this hour, the Democrats seem to have won full control of the house, picking up at least 28 seats. . . many more than they needed. Unfortunately the Senate is not yet decided, but the two races that are still too close to call (Montana and Virginia) are both currently lead by the Democratic candidate. It looks promising, but I don’t want to get too confident yet; the lead in Montana is less than 2,000 votes.

All in all, this was a very satisfying election for us liberals in America. I kind of hoped that given how much the Republicans have been screwing up lately that our Senate victory would be more resounding. But then again most of the antics seemed to involve the House more than the Senate.

Some disappointments:

• Joe Lieberman won as an independent in Connecticut. He’s such a smarmy bastard! I don’t trust him.
• Tammy Duckworth lost in the Illinois 6th district (House). Duckworth is a Democrat that lost both of her legs serving in the Iraq war. She couldn’t be touched on Iraq (no one would dare accuse her of wanting to “cut and run”) but the attacks against her focused on immigration issues. Unfortunately it looks like the race baiting was effective in the end.
• A number of anti-gay marriage ballot measures passed. This includes Idaho, Colorado, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin (my home state, though after this betrayal I may refer to it as my “state of origin”). In fact the only same sex marriage ban that seems to have failed was in Arizona, but it’s too close to say for sure. The lovely state of Colorado hit us with a one-two punch, not only banning same sex marriage but defeating a measure to allow domestic partnership. To the all these states, and particularly CO, I say “Fuck You”.

Finally, if you didn’t see Comedy Central’s “Midterm Midtacular” last night (a joint “Daily Show” and “Colbert Report”), you really missed out on the hilarity. I’m sure you’ll be able to find the highlights on YouTube before too long. Otherwise it is available on iTunes (and it’s almost worth paying for).