2 Days

"There are too many people, and too few human beings."  ~Robert Zend

I have hit my saturation point. Then again, I think it’s safe to assume that the next time that a canvasser knocks on your door during dinner requesting that you vote for Candidate X, you might skip on the politeness and head straight towards flipping the bird. We’re all pretty much done.

My realization of just how annoyed I really am with EVERYONE and EVERYTHING was a few weeks ago when  a Tea Partier made a comment on Twitter and my first reaction is to flinch and go on the offensive. For how dare someone make claims against all Progressives as if Progressives should be treated as a cohort. As if we’re not individuals with our own thoughts on the (tragic) state of the country but of course not to a Tea Partier because all of us with a voter registration card with a D on it are exactly the same. Exclamation point!!11!

Now imagine that last sentence being said in one breath with a dash of hysteria for good measure.

We all get a little bit crazy at times. Especially when after six months of non-stop, in yo’ face campaigning. Campaigning complete with the occasional death threat among accusations of fascism with a little bigotry on the side. The First Amendment has never proved so necessary as it has during this election.

I work in politics and it has something that I have always been passionate about. I always have to encourage friends of mine to vote and pay attention because this shit is important but they’re so disinterested because God forbid there is a difference of opinion, as your brains might be all over the sidewalk courtesy of an overzealous volunteer. Clearly these are the extreme cases but it’s the extreme cases that get the most attention hence the apathy. Its really difficult to get involved when someone is threatening to kill your children if you vote for Sharon Angle.

So yeah. Tuesday is almost here. I’m not looking forward to the outcome but I am looking forward to a little breather from the bullshit. And if that doesn’t happen there’s always Canada. Or maybe Guam. Am I right or am I right?

Post Sanity

"She had heard someone say something about an Independent Labour Party, and was furious that she had not been asked."  ~Evelyn Waugh

Soooo, buddies, what are your plans or next Saturday early-evening(ish)? I already know that during the day on the 30th of October you will be attending the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Keep Fear Alive but what about after that? I don’t know about you but I’ll probably want a beer or actually a Glenlivet o I’m going to take my progressive yet sane self to the bar at the Beacon hotel and imbibe. Do you...I don’t know...would you like to join me? A total old-school hang out post rally to just chill. Hell, you don’t even need to speak to anyone just show up and get your martini on.

5PM
Beacon Bar & Grill
1615 Rhode Island Avenue, NW (you can take the Red line to either Dupont Circle or Farragut North)

I’ll be there. I think that Laurie and Kristen will be there. So it’ll be a good time.

See you then!

So you want to be a Senator

"Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever." - William Howard Taft

No one ever pays attention to the Supreme Court. Actually I shouldn’t say that because tourists do. Particularly in the way that they stand directly in the middle of the sidewalk thereby prohibiting people from moving around their fanny-pack clad asses as they gawk at the building; but other than that, nope. Not really. That is until the Supreme Court hands down a decision that people are suddenly outraged by and they cannot fathom how the justices managed to interpret campaign finance law without asking the American people. I mean how dare they use their own opinions?!

At times I find the general ignorance - not necessarily in a bad way but in a “but they don’t make the laws, so why should I care?” way - about the court to be amusing. I smirk when I hear of people who pay no attention to why Presidential elections and Senate races are the two most influential things on the outcome of the highest court in the land. The President chooses a Supreme Court nominee, the Senate confirms said nominee, then that person gets to be on the bench until FOREVER and EVER and EVER.

The ambivalence towards what the nine justices do starting the first Monday in October is truly frightening. Not that I am up every night poring over recent decisions with a mug of chamomile tea by my side but I do make a point of...I don’t know...at least casually paying attention. For these are the people who are paid to interpret the Constitution and they get to do this FOR LIFE.

(I keep emphasizing the FOREVER thing because really, I mean really, being on the Supreme Court is like marriage with the whole ‘Til Death’ clause and if you decide to drop out early it can get kind of awkward and messy and then Orin Hatch wants to filibuster your ass because you might be a baby killer)

I’m telling you all of this to express the way my eyeballs shot out of my head during last night’s Delaware US Senate debate. Chris Coons and Christine “I’m not a witch” O’Donnell went head-to-head with Wolf Blitzer tossing them questions on the obvious. This being a United States Senate debate the issue of the Supreme Court naturally came up. Wolf asked both candidates if there are any recent Supreme Court decisions they disagreed witha and, I shit you not, both Coons and O’Donnell had this deer in the headlights look on their face.

It’s like walking into your Biology final, seeing ‘miosis and mitosis’ on the page and being all “Oh damn, I didn’t know this was going to be on the exam”. It’s Biology. What exactly were you expecting? These are two people who would like to be United States Senators and probably couldn’t pick Samuel Alito out of a line-up is but already have a couch picked out for their new office in the Dirksen Building.

Pro Tip: If you want to be a Senator, learn a little something about the Supreme Court.

The most recent case that O’Donnell could come up with was actually a decision by a Federal District Court so naturally her back-up was Roe v. Wade. I wonder how she feels about Miranda v. Arizona or even Plessy v. Ferguson while we’re at it. Her final response was “Can I get back to you on that one?” Then Wolf turned to Coons who mentioned the Citizens United case. And Wolf said, “Anything else?” And Coons said, “Nope” and Wolf said, “Alrighty then!”

And then I prayed for the state of Delaware because OMFG. Good luck!

It is 2010 and we have a bevy of information literally at your finger tips and I’m assuming that as a candidate for the United States Senate you also have staff with access to the Internet who could at least provide you with the URL of Wikipedia. I was a big fan of Oyez during the college years which includes oral arguments and a handy dandy calendar. And there’s always a little site called GOOGLE.

Oh and I don’t know what Wolf meant by ‘recent’ but since O’Donnell went with Roe v. Wade and Blitzer (kind of) accepted that as an answer; I think I’ll go with Bush v. Gore as a case I disagree with. Sometimes I dream of a world in which the outcome to that case were different. There are a lot of rainbows in that dream.

Other takes on the debate:

O'donnell's Palin Moment

How Christine O'Donnell should have answered the Supreme Court question