I’m wholeheartedly throwing my support behind Kinky Friedman for Texas Governor. As he would say, “Why the hell not?”

He’s making sense on education, health care and staying away from a lot of less important issues that are keeping the state government from accomplishing much of anything. Kinky’s up to 24% in recent polls.

Plus, he’s got cartoons and an action figure. How can you go wrong?

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I get to go vote against a state constitutional amendment aimed at providing unequal rights for all. Specifically, it’s a poorly worded attempt to squash out any recognition of any sort of viable relationship between two people of the same sex. I hope, that if you live in Texas, you will take the opportunity to vote on this issue tomorrow as well.

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I think the real “nuclear option,” and the best move for Democrats, is to simply confirm Alito to the Supreme Court. Will he shift the court in awful ways? Yes, I believe so. But, I also believe it’s the system and that this is really a decision people make at election time. In the long run, I think the majority of the “middle” in America, many of whom voted for Bush, will be truly put off by the changes that will come as a result of this ideological shift in the court. Maybe in the future, they’ll understand they need to have a better understanding of the ramifications of their votes. Maybe. Probably not, but it seems like a good idea.

I expect more than a few people who voted for Bush would be put off if the Family Medical Leave act was ruled unconstitutional.

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The media has developed a sudden and complete disinterest in quantifying the aftermath of Katrina. They were previously obsessed with guessing the death toll. Plastering Ray Nagan’s 10,000 number all over the place in the headlines. They briefly reported that initial sweeps seemed to indicate the number would not be that bad. In the last couple of days, as I’m sure much more accurate numbers are becoming available, every media outlet I regularly use has stopped mentioning the actual numbers. I’m sure there’s some official tally, which even if incomplete, is starting to be a bit more meaningful. Has anyone else noticed this? Am I using the wrong media outlets?

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Need relief from FEMA? I hope you have an up-to-date copy of Windows and IE 6. Because the FEMA disaster website IE-only. It’s also miles away from Section 508 compliance. What the heck is that about?

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Or at least a succinct and short version of it. They didn’t really adequately address the key problem in my mind. Money. Most people seem to think there is a relationship between drugs and violent crime. I don’t agree. There is a relationship between money and violent crime. Because drugs are illegal, the trafficking of them generates a ton of money. Thus it generates crime.

Drugs are a medical issue, not a criminal one. At the current rate, I think we’ll get the mass of the population and the government to agree with that statement in about the year 2400.

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Tom Delay has to be one of the biggest scumbags in politics today. I’m really tired of hearing about rule changes on his behalf, and the whole Texas redistricting snafu which was the biggest waste of state resources in recent memory. His leading the charge for Terry Schiavo into a venue where it didn’t belong was that much more annoying. Why do people put up with this guy!

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My buddy Jamie pointed out tonight’s Frontline, Is Wal-Mart good for america?. Looks interesting. We like Target better anyway.

If labor unions would stop wasting their time organizing for the Democrats and boycott Wal-mart, they might actually make some progress on keeping undesireable, meneal manufacturing jobs in the US.

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Oh well. Bush can’t completely destroy the country in 4 years, right?

Maybe he can. Don’t know. Probably depends on how many justices he gets to seat.

I’m ready to stop caring about politics again for a while anyway, it’s too frustrating. Kerry wouldn’t really have been that much better, and would probably be a bit of a lame duck with the congressional losses the Dems are facing.

Seth points out that many people ended up voting on moral grounds. Which he finds heartening, if not just for it’s defiance of the pundits. I want to find it heartening, but really find it a bit disturbing. It says to me that people are only looking for someone who thinks like them — or at least claims to — on many moral issues. Issues, which, to my mind should not be the territory of the government, anyway.

If Bush keeps up his fiscal irresponsibility, we’re just going to end up being the slave police force of the EU, the Chinese and/or Japanese anyway when they finally gather enough steam to twist the arm of our economy more publicly — so we might as well savor this last bluster of good old American bravado while we can.

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Sean has reluctantly fallen on the Kerry side of the fence, for thoughtful reasons. Like him, I have trouble offering any wonderful endorsement of Kerry…it was just the best option available.

I’ve never made my dislike of Bush a secret. I think he does a great job keeping himself looking really clean while others in his administration do the dirty work…but over time I’ve become more and more disgusted by the underlying seediness of the way his administration does business. Most publicly through Chaney’s brutal and misleading remarks, and most effectively through Carl Rove’s whisper campaigns and backdoor dealings. I didn’t like him in his days as Texas Governor, but it was in the South Carolina primary against McCain before the 2000 election that it really became clear the type of people that stood behind Bush and his willingness to tolerate whatever tactics they saw fit to use.

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Didja vote yet? Huh, huh? Didja?

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Boy I hope Bush loses. When it comes right down to the election, I’m realizing how nervous I am. I don’t know that Kerry would improve things that much in the next 4 years (especially if it’s a republican congress), but at least I don’t think he’d make things dramatically worse.

I think a lot of Bush supporters see him as representing the better option for an indepedent America that relies less on global influences. I don’t think that could be further from the truth, because ultimately its the economy that make America powerful, and his fiscal irresponsibility and rampant free-trade policies are making us far more vulnerable to global forces than most people realize. Combine that with with lack of vision for any real solutions to the energy problem long term and think for awhile about where we may be in 25-30 years when the oil starts to dry up and social security is crumbling.

I’ll probably be glued to the TV tomorrow night, watching the networks not declare a winner for fear of looking stupid. That’s the other thing I’m nervous about. Not knowing who won for months.

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I watched Farenheit 9/11 last night. While I’m a Bush-hater, I still didn’t much care for the movie. Moore’s got some interesting things to point the finger at, but that’s all he really does. He doesn’t make a case for anything. Just seems like a long list of “things that make you go hmmm.” Did have some good footage of Bush looking stupid though. I liked that.

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Went and voted at lunch. Thought I’d just kinda walk in and out with early voting, but there was still about a 20 minute wait…probably just because it was lunch hour. Glad to have it out of the way. I was disappointed by the shear volume of uncontested Republicans on the ballot for most of the state judge positions, etc.

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Steps toward oil independence. Hopefully we’ll actually take a few.

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I don’t trust electronic voting. I want a good old 10 ton hunk of metal with a curtain and lots of levers, or, better yet, a paper ballot. All methods are susceptible to fraud and tampering, but I really don’t want my vote lost due to a hard drive failure and I really feel it’ll be way too easy to do more widespread tampering with a fully electronic system.

Plus, when I was in elementary school they used to bring in the big huge voting machines every year to let us vote for student government and teach us about voting, so feel much more satisfied that I have voted after I hear that lever go “clunk” and record my vote.

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The debate was ok, I guess. Kerry presented himself better than I expected. Bush was as painful to listen to as I expected, repeated himself a lot and really didn’t sound like he cared much. I’ll be interested to see how the town hall format next week alters their presentation.

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I’m an undecided voter. I couldn’t be much more anti-Bush, but I’m not quite sure I can bring myself to vote for Kerry either. I often tell myself it doesn’t make much difference, since I live in Texas and the state will surely go to Bush in a landslide. Typically, I vote Libertarian — though I really only agree with them on legal issues and think the Libertarian social agenda would be a disaster. What to do, oh what to do…I hate that all I can ever muster in National elections is to vote against someone.

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This had me LOL.

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This site is a real eye opener — I especially like the ad.

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