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1) I have once again restored my friends-list to the way it was before I moved people who were posting lots of political stuff to an RSS reader. Not that you can see the difference, but I assure you I'm reading you all on my friends page again. :)
2) Yes, I expect I'll see a lot of political posts in the next day or two, but they won't be trying to convince me how to vote and in any case are unlikely to continue indefinitely.
3) This is my post also, but cut-tagged for those sick of politics.
I really deplore the tendency of the media to call the races so early. For pity's sake, when I first saw Utah go to McCain on the Yahoo! News map (which is fed from the AP declarations), they were virtually tied in percentage of vote and had only 1% of precincts reporting. That is so fucking stupid. (They are no longer virtually tied, but still have only 27% of precincts reporting.) Frankly, the tendency to call early is just stupid, IMO. Wait and see. Report the current percentage, and percentage of precincts/votes counted, yes. But don't call who "won" a state when hardly any of its votes have been counted. Maybe they should shade the map from a very pale red or blue darker and darker as the percentage of votes counted goes up.
That said, if things stay as they are right now in both the national and my local races, I will be very, very happy. I tend to lean Democrat, and Obama was very much my choice. (Caveat: he's not perfect, there are things I don't like about him, and I hope to hell he's prepared to scrub some of the idealism off and do the job. But, he was still the best candidate in my opinion, based on my research and impressions. Here's hoping, since he appears to have won, that I am not wrong in that belief.) In local races, I'm dubious about our senator, but I'd be dubious either way. I voted for Merkley - the Democrat - who is currently winning, but I did it holding my nose and I'm still not sure it was right. I like his positions more than Senator Smith's, but the truth is that between both of them, and their parties, and the ads that were run (VERY negative campaign), and the rest of it, I'd have loved to chuck them both out and start over. (There was a third-party candidate, but...no. Viable alternatives, yes, that alternative, no.)
In the state and local measures, every measure I cared about strongly is going the way I wanted it to. (There are a few I'd've liked to see go one way that are leaning the other, but...such is life.) Assuming things stay as they are, Sizemore will have once again failed to fuck up our system. (It is not, although it should be, a sure thing - sometimes he manages to get something passed. Sometimes he even is trying to fix - or claiming to try to fix - things I think should be fixed. The measures with which he proposes to "fix" them are, however, pretty universally scarier than the problem. I always read them in case he screwed up and got something useful on the ballot, but....)
And now you know where I stand and stood through this, but did anyone who knew me really doubt it? I also pledge you, I was reading the political posts, just not on my friends-list. I was listening to those of you who were Republican supporters, or more middle ground. And I thank you for making me think. (I am registered Democrat, because I want to influence the primaries for the party that is most likely to field a candidate I support. But I don't vote party lines because they're party lines. I have in the past voted for Republicans, and I likely will in the future. I had a hard time picking between Merkley and Smith this year - and it wasn't the party that did it, it was the issues, which just barely tipped the balance enough to counter the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's incredibly negative (and sometimes incredibly stupid) radio ads against Smith. I hate negative campaigning.
Tomorrow morning I'll check again and have more confidence in the overall results. And whatever they are, I'll hope that we as a country have indeed reached the best answers we could at this time. And I really, really hope that we can get to a place where elections aren't this divisive again....
2) Yes, I expect I'll see a lot of political posts in the next day or two, but they won't be trying to convince me how to vote and in any case are unlikely to continue indefinitely.
3) This is my post also, but cut-tagged for those sick of politics.
I really deplore the tendency of the media to call the races so early. For pity's sake, when I first saw Utah go to McCain on the Yahoo! News map (which is fed from the AP declarations), they were virtually tied in percentage of vote and had only 1% of precincts reporting. That is so fucking stupid. (They are no longer virtually tied, but still have only 27% of precincts reporting.) Frankly, the tendency to call early is just stupid, IMO. Wait and see. Report the current percentage, and percentage of precincts/votes counted, yes. But don't call who "won" a state when hardly any of its votes have been counted. Maybe they should shade the map from a very pale red or blue darker and darker as the percentage of votes counted goes up.
That said, if things stay as they are right now in both the national and my local races, I will be very, very happy. I tend to lean Democrat, and Obama was very much my choice. (Caveat: he's not perfect, there are things I don't like about him, and I hope to hell he's prepared to scrub some of the idealism off and do the job. But, he was still the best candidate in my opinion, based on my research and impressions. Here's hoping, since he appears to have won, that I am not wrong in that belief.) In local races, I'm dubious about our senator, but I'd be dubious either way. I voted for Merkley - the Democrat - who is currently winning, but I did it holding my nose and I'm still not sure it was right. I like his positions more than Senator Smith's, but the truth is that between both of them, and their parties, and the ads that were run (VERY negative campaign), and the rest of it, I'd have loved to chuck them both out and start over. (There was a third-party candidate, but...no. Viable alternatives, yes, that alternative, no.)
In the state and local measures, every measure I cared about strongly is going the way I wanted it to. (There are a few I'd've liked to see go one way that are leaning the other, but...such is life.) Assuming things stay as they are, Sizemore will have once again failed to fuck up our system. (It is not, although it should be, a sure thing - sometimes he manages to get something passed. Sometimes he even is trying to fix - or claiming to try to fix - things I think should be fixed. The measures with which he proposes to "fix" them are, however, pretty universally scarier than the problem. I always read them in case he screwed up and got something useful on the ballot, but....)
And now you know where I stand and stood through this, but did anyone who knew me really doubt it? I also pledge you, I was reading the political posts, just not on my friends-list. I was listening to those of you who were Republican supporters, or more middle ground. And I thank you for making me think. (I am registered Democrat, because I want to influence the primaries for the party that is most likely to field a candidate I support. But I don't vote party lines because they're party lines. I have in the past voted for Republicans, and I likely will in the future. I had a hard time picking between Merkley and Smith this year - and it wasn't the party that did it, it was the issues, which just barely tipped the balance enough to counter the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's incredibly negative (and sometimes incredibly stupid) radio ads against Smith. I hate negative campaigning.
Tomorrow morning I'll check again and have more confidence in the overall results. And whatever they are, I'll hope that we as a country have indeed reached the best answers we could at this time. And I really, really hope that we can get to a place where elections aren't this divisive again....
no subject
And that wasn't a mistake - they were calling NM an Obama state through 3 or 4 updates online while the results favored McCain. The votes did eventually swing Obama's way, but still.....