The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, And The Incomprehensible

This is highly flammable. Don't read without your special asbestos-lined goggles.

If I don't talk about the elections, I will blow a gasket. Feel free to go somewhere else if you don't want to be part of the harangue. I won't be offended.

I expect nobody to agree with every opinion I'll be vomiting onto the page here. That's fine. That's why we have elections in the first place, because everybody has their own opinions and not everyone else will agree with what you or I see as pure common sense. If you want to call me a flaming dickwad because of anything I say here, go for it. That's your right (at least if you're an American citizen, and let me be clear that I'm thankful I live in a country where I can spout off without fear of the government coming to kick down my door and arrest me for doing so. Your mileage may vary in other jurisdictions. In any case, I consider it your God-given right to call me a flaming dickwad at any time, and in any place, and I'll defend to the death your right to do so.)

And please, PLEASE, if I offend you in any way, don't let my personal idiocy affect your fondness for the THANKSGIVING COMES FIRST stuff. That's as non-political as it gets, and if I find I've screwed that up in any way, via this rant, I will probably hang myself. In Massachusetts, that's still one of the best options.

Massachusetts

Ballot choice	Votes	Pct.
Assisted suicide
Would allow a doctor to prescribe medication, at a terminally ill patient's request, to end that patient's life. More infomation.
No	1,488,561	51%
Yes	1,430,543	49%

So, folks who consider life completely hideous, due to their viciously painful illnesses, will still have to resort to the usual self-concocted and haphazardly successful illegal solutions. I was torn about this one prior to voting, but the more I think about it now, the more I wonder just what in hell gives anyone the right to deny death to a person? I would NEVER choose to kill myself (at least, on purpose) because my religion frowns on that sort of thing, but if somebody spends their days wracked with pain and their most fervent wish is to be done with it, who am I to be judge and jury? What in Christ's holy name are the people who voted "no" on this thinking? That they're somehow doing someone a favor by keeping them alive to suffer some more? Yeah, maybe you want more time with a loved one. I can understand that desire. But, really, think about it. You're selfishly denying them release because of your needs, not theirs.

Ah, hell. I'm glad I don't have to face that sort of decision from either side of the equation. But, if I knew someone whom I loved dearly was constantly in pain, and I knew that they wanted to be relieved of that pain, and no medication or medical option was available for easing the pain, and that person asked me to kill him or her, I'd kill that person without a second thought and gladly let God decide if I was evil to have done so.

(I'm just getting warmed up, believe me.)

THE GOOD

Medical Marijuana was legalized in Massachusetts. Now the people who have been denied an easy way towards death will at least be able to alleviate a tiny bit more of their pain while they wait to die.

That anyone with even a modicum of compassion would not be in favor of this stuns me. Some ill-informed individuals have it in their heads that this will lead to their children becoming addicts. No, it will not. Marijuana is completely non-addictive in any physical sense. Yes, it can be as psychologically addictive as anything else - so are food, sex, tiddly-winks and blogging - but marijuana is utterly benign in a sense that alcohol, heroin, cocaine, and many other drugs are not. Comparing grass to, say, alcohol, is akin to comparing skiing to falling off of a mountain. They may look the same at certain times, but one is much more dangerous than the other.

In Colorado, marijuana was made legal, period. The same thing happened in Washington state. I applaud the folks in those two places. Unlike some of the folks in the other 48 states, they apparently don't have their heads implanted in their rectums.

(Now it remains to be seen whether these states will buckle to the inevitable pressure that will be applied by the feds to over-regulate, over-tax, or otherwise destroy these gains. In my current frame of mind, I hold little hope that the laws will be enacted unscathed.)

In other good news, Maine approved same-sex marriage.

I'm not in favor of same-sex marriage in general. But the reason I'm not has nothing to do with homophobia. I'm just against the government being involved in marriage, period, and I care not a tinker's damn whether it involves gay people, straight people, multiple aliens from Neptune, or fucking zebras. There should be no tax breaks for being married, nor should there be any penalties for not being married, and marriage should be a commitment entered into by two (or more) people at their own whim, in whatever way they desire, officiated upon by the cleric or non-cleric of their choice, and should in no way, shape, or form be subject to the changing morals and mores of some state or federal legislative body. My marriage happened before God, in a church, and the piece of paper the state issued concerning it has no more value to me than soiled toilet tissue. And if anybody else, of whatever sex or sexual persuasion, deems equal standing to a ceremony they were involved in, I truly don't give a damn one way or the other. If there is ownership of property involved, or children, or anything else that may involve legal matters later, draw up a contract. But leave the fucking government out of your bedroom and mine, thanks.

Having said that, so long as the state has deemed itself a worthy partner in people's private lives, then I don't see any reason for them to deny that partnership to anyone. I personally know of a couple of guys in Maine who I couldn't be happier for. They've been together longer than any legally married couple I know. So, more power to you, guys. And if you decide to make it legal under this new law, I'd be delighted to be in the wedding party in some way.

One other thing occurred on Tuesday about which I am unwilling to kill myself. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate for President, set a record for national vote total. He garnered 1,140,000 some-odd votes as of this writing. One of them was mine and I'm damn proud of it. That total will inch up as all precincts report. Of course, he still finished a distant and under-reported third to Obama and Romney, but I'm willing to take my jollies where I can get them at this point in my life.

THE BAD

Barack Obama was re-elected.

I don't think he's the devil incarnate, nor do I think he's an illegal alien, a terrorist, or any other ridiculous piece of flummery dreamed up by looney tunes like Donald Trump. His record on the economic front, however, is pitiful. The bailout was, and will probably remain, the worst piece of government domestic action in this century. It's absolutely amazing to me that a man with his record on the deficit and unemployment could be re-elected. If his name was Carter, he wouldn't have been. I could go on, but I won't. He's the one for the next four years and I hope (I pray) that we will not sink into a morass from which we are unable to extricate ourselves. I'd hate to wake up in 2016 to find that my ass is owned by a bank in Beijing.

(Romney was no bargain, either. He was, in my mind, the slightly lesser of two shitty evils. As I say, I voted for Gary Johnson. Didn't matter in Massachusetts, so I kept my flawless record of voting for non-winners in presidential elections intact. I would have loved to have seen how the campaign might have played out had Ron Paul secured the nomination, but I expect the outcome would have been the same. It would have been a lot more fun, though.)

Elizabeth Warren is the new senator from Massachusetts.

That so many people in this state had the wool pulled over their eyes by the miserably divisive campaign she ran... well, I suppose it should surprise me, but it doesn't. She painted Scott Brown as a misogynist (he isn't) and ran commercials that appealed wholly and unapologetically to the females in the voting ranks. The tagline, "She cares about US", came on the heels of an ad featuring only women speaking, outlining some questionable claims concerning Brown's voting record on women's issues. Had any male done similar, making an appeal to one gender - his own, that is - he would have been (rightly) skewered and barbecued. That she was victorious with such a slimy tactic makes me ashamed to be human.

(Am I in favor of what are termed these days as "reproductive rights"? Yes, mostly. Do I think the government should ever pay for birth control, abortion, or any other contraceptive measures, whether pre or post coitus? No, with the possible exception for a victim of rape. That some people have it in their heads that birth control of any sort should be handed out for free by government fiat, and that any politician who opposes that concept is anti-woman, amazes me no end. No, you are not entitled to dick, with or without pills, spermicide, sheathing, or anything else. And the same applies to Viagra, condoms, and any other male sexual option you want to bring up, just in case you were thinking of dragging that body into the argument.)

(And, as with Romney, Brown was no superb choice, either. He blew this election, via questionable tactics, just as readily as Warren won it. Making a major portion of his advertising play upon the claims Warren had made concerning her Native American heritage was a stupid, stupid, stupid mistake. She was already as hurt as she could have been by that gaffe. Brown jumping on it for further dead equine beating turned a lot of people, including me, right off. I still voted for him, since Warren makes my skin crawl, but I'm sure he lost many others. Anyway, if you took him to about 44 or 45 of the other states, gave people his voting record and didn't tell them he was a republican, they'd guess he was a moderate democrat. That he couldn't get elected in this lunatic asylum of a state I reside in says a lot more about The Peoples Republic Of Massachusetts than it does about him.)

I already mentioned the assisted suicide thing. What else sucks?

The general tenor of some of the campaigns, but I'll get to that in the next section.

THE UGLY

Need I say anything? Anything at all? Yeah, I guess I have to, so I'll make it nice and obscene.

Good Lord Almighty. I think the guy is a bad president, but can the racists please stay in the closet and not try to help? Thank you.

Will we ever get past the way we divide people up by skin color, religion, race, gender, wealth, or anything else, in this country? When the FUCK will the people who keep trying to make it "us" versus "them" (both the folks who hate other folks and the misguided do-gooders that think keeping these divisions is somehow helping things) just DIE the FUCK off and leave us with what little sanity that may still remain? How about we try just looking at each other as human beings for a while and see how it works? We can always go back to being assholes if it doesn't make things better.

THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE

That billions of dollars (that's "billion", with a "B") were spent on advertising for the presidential campaigns, with additional hundreds of millions spent on senatorial, congressional, and other races. I've complained a lot, but do I have any solutions I'd like to offer? Yes. If I could enact one law to make this whole thing more bearable, I'd make it illegal to spend more on advertising than the salary for the job you're seeking.

(Term limits? No. Term limits get rid of the good along with the bad. It's like bombing a country because the king or emperor or dictator-for-life says something or does something with which you don't agree. Fine, it's probably an effective way to kill him - if you drop enough bombs - but there are good, decent, kind people, with families and children, struggling to get by just like you and me, who are also being blown to smithereens, crippled, maimed, and otherwise getting what they don't deserve. There are more cost-effective solutions. We killed Sadaam without him being hit by a bomb. We can get rid of the lousy officeholders without resorting to the equivalent, too. It's called "voting". That it wasn't as effective as I might have liked, this time around, does not rule out its efficacy in future.)

The single most incomprehensible thing is that you stuck with me to the end of this. You truly are special. I am now decompressed and the usual benign fluff will resume next week and continue for the next four years. Thank you.

Soon, with more better stuff.