11/03/2004 01:20:48 PM|||TEX|||

Couldn't have said it better myself.

I've taken down the Kerry blog. It was filling this place with the stench of defeat. Ok, not really, but it sounds good, doesn't it?

Since Chief Justice William Rehnquist is a walking dead man I'd imagine he'll announce his retirement from the Supreme Court before the week's out. All signs point towards Dubya appointing Clarence Thomas to take Rehnquist's place. Dog only knows who Bush will appoint to fill the vacancy on the court. I actually don't want to think about it too much.

All morning I've been contemplating various things - disabling the news channels on my TV, perhaps joining an eastern monastery of some sort, cultivating a serious drug habit... you get the idea. I'm in no mood to watch G.W. Bush dismantle the rest of the Bill of Rights, pass Patriot 2, enact even more regressive tax schemes, plot another pre-emptive war in the middle east, etc. Right now I wish there was some way I could just opt out of this country (and perhaps the world) for the next four years, at least.

The one thing that comes through loud and clear in this election is that we are rapidly becoming a nation of remarkable ninnies. I'm disgusted that young voters, between 18 and 25, didn't even bother to vote. I'm afraid the next time I see a 19 year old out in public somewhere that I'm liable to grab him/her by the throat and scream "are you out of your damned fool mind!?!?!?!?!?" I'm also appalled that, and this is made very clear by a glance at the various news agency's exit polls, most people who voted for the Shrub did so because they believe he's cornered the market on so-called "moral issues." Nice code for "we don't like homos and if women want to exercise their reproductive rights then they should do it in the bedroom."

It's obvious that the nation has taken a massive jump, not a gentle swing, to the right. People do not care if their civil rights are tossed in the toilet. They do not care if 90% of the tax burden falls on the shoulders of the working classes. They do not care if the rest of the world views us with suspicion and fear. They do not care if their children are sent to fight pointless wars to enrich oil companies. Nope. All we care about is making sure homos can't marry each other (and in quite a few states yesterday we emphatically declared we don't even want them to be able to enter into civil unions - sorry folks, but if your partner ends up in the hospital you'll have no visitation rights and won't be consulted on any major medical decisions either.). Oh, and ladies, your place really is in the home. See, we seem to know that crime and all that other nasty business that comes along with a modern society is caused by working women who don't stay at home to mind their kids. Oh, and you'll have kids, because we also don't want you to be able to choose whether or not to have them, unless you choose to do so by being celibate.

My head hurts.

See, it would be nice if we could claim that Dubya and the GOP stole the election. But that isn't what happened. Like I've said before, one of the unpleasant things about a democracy (even a half-assed representative democracy like the one we have) is that sometimes you have to face up to the fact that you're in the minority. We can't blame Karl Rove, Dubya, Dick Cheney, Rummy, Wolfy, Ashcroft, et. al. as if they're some sort of cabal of evil wizards corrupting the will of our nation. They're not. Dubya got about 4 million more votes nationwide than John Kerry did. More people in the USA agree with Dubya's view of the world than agreed with Kerry's. That's going to carry some weight politically for the next four years, and probably frames the debate going into the election in 2008.

One thing's for certain, Terry McAuliffe is probably going to be looking for a new job. I've seen a few posts around the web this morning suggesting a possible replacement - Howard Dean. Sounds good to me. Since we're in the minority we might as well be obnoxious, obstructionist and vocal about how we differ from the ruling party. Dean would do that very well. Of course, that won't happen. The Democrats will most likely see if they can pull their party even further over to the right. We'll be lucky if the next Democratic candidate for the White House is a couple millimeters to the left of Henry Kissinger.

I have to go vomit now.

|||109951480854022099|||Once again, leave it to the Onion...