A surfeit of good news

All right, stop it now. This is getting ridiculous. Tuesday, we watch the Republicans collapse in the elections. Wednesday, Rumsfeld folds up and goes home. Today, Allen concedes, giving Democrats the Senate. What next? Tomorrow, Bush and Cheney are abducted by aliens, who broadcast the anal probing to the whole planet’s television networks? The day after, it rains ponies?*

Am I missing a good bet by not buying any lottery tickets?

*OK, this one might be a little splatty and meaty and not so nice, unless they were magic flying ponies. I’m thinking it could happen right now.

Minnesota puts “evil in high places”

Minnesota elected a Muslim, Keith Ellison to the US House of Representatives. If he’d made his religion an issue, I’d be unhappy about this (just as I am about any other pious politician), but he didn’t—even though his opposition did—so I’m not perturbed. He seems to be advocating the right stuff.

Ellison said his race and religion weren’t as important as issues such as Iraq and health insurance for all. “We still have 43 million American uninsured. This is a problem for everyone in the United States,” he said.

He advocates an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq along with strongly liberal views. While Ellison did not often speak of his faith during the campaign, awareness of his candidacy drew interest from Muslims well beyond the district centered in Minneapolis.

If you want to see people blowing their tops, you’re going to have to go to Rapture Ready.

If I had my druthers, every leader of our government would be a Bible- believing, Christ -loving, running -after -God believer.

It is a sad day for America today. A happy day for Terrorist however.

The beginning of the end of Christianity in this nation!!! The fall of great civilizations usually begin with one small event. This very well may be that domino.

This guy is a security risk…BECAUSE he is muslim! He can NOT be trusted with any state secrets in the war on terror. Any information that would benifit the enemy can and will be leaked by this guy.

There’s plenty of paranoia to go around there, and there’s also an excess of irony. These two comments had me laughing.

NOT a good thing. You mark my words…within the year, we’ll hear about an Islamic “prayer room” being set aside within the Congressional building(s).

I have yet to see a Muslim who can seperate their religion from anything. This is not a good thing at all.

Too bad they’re completely oblivious to the fact that they’re just seeing the country through the eyes of every American muslim, atheist, pagan, Hindu, etc. right now.

Take the gloves off already

Holy crap. Look at what Bush said to Speaker Pelosi:

In my first act of bipartisan outreach since the election, I shared with her the names of some Republican interior decorators who can help her pick out the the new drapes for her new offices.

You going to take that kind of patronizing, condescending “bipartisan” baloney from Bush, Speaker Pelosi? I hope you’re getting warmed up for a good fight.

Say what? Rumsfeld out?

I’m in a Rove-induced state of total confusion. Suddenly, Rumsfeld resigns. Huh? Why now? Why not last week, when it might have affected the election? What game is going to be played here?

(Yeah, I’ve heard the Rumsfeld→retirement, Lieberman→Defense, Unnamed Republican appointee→Lieberman’s seat triple-play to preserve the Republican majority in the Senate, but to be so blatant and do it the day after the election doesn’t seem reasonable.)

(Oh…maybe my mistake is assuming “reason” in this administration. “Naked bugnut greed” is more the operational expectation.)

Morning-after cynicism

Democrats take back the House of Representatives and make gains in the Senate. It’s good news, right? So why am I not particularly happy?

One reason is how they won. Republicans were just plain vile: they stunk up the joint with corruption, incompetence, greed, and viciousness, and they are saddled with an unpopular president and an unpopular war. They should have been easy to beat, and the Democrats relied on winning by default. There was little attempt to campaign on progressive values, just an expectation that the discontent of the Republican voters with their ugly party would scrape away enough voters that we’d come out on top. And we did. Rah.

A perfect example: we threw Rick Santorum, one of the worst senators ever, onto the rubbish heap, to gain…Robert Casey Jr, a bland, boring, pious middle-of-the-road Democrat who is anti-choice. Was anyone excited about that candidate? You know he won purely because Santorum was such an idiot.

Local races left me little to cheer about. Bill Ingebrigtsen, the local thug who campaigned on a racist, anti-immigration platform but had loads of money to throw at mass mailings, won the 11th Minnesota senate district against a tepid, conservative Democratic incumbent. Michele Bachmann, creationist homophobe, is going to be one of Minnesota’s representatives. The creepy medieval platform of the Republican party still appeals to many voters—they’re just willing to throw them out after they’ve become associated with a failed regime.

The side of science has seen mixed results. Santorum’s gone, the Ohio races that pitted creationists against pro-science moderates seem to have all broken for the good guys, but Kansas has opted to support their creationist candidates. The fact that Bachmann could get elected in my state is discouraging: she’s a flaming anti-science, pro-god kook. Being an irrational nut is still not an obstacle to getting elected, apparently.

I don’t see a lot of hope to build on for the 2008 election. Here’s my prediction: the Republican candidate for president will run on the position that he is Not Bush, while still accommodating the core Republican constituencies of the religious and the rich. The Democratic candidate will run on the position that he or she is Not Bush, and, as we’ve learned to expect, will avoid being too closely associated with his or her core Democratic constituencies of the secular and the working class and labor in order to try to appeal to Republican voters. All the Republicans who fled their party in revulsion during this election cycle will look at their choices of two Not Bushes, and pull the lever for the one who panders best to their Prosperity Christianist faith. The Democrats will try to stir up a pro forma enthusiasm for their nominated functionary, and we’ll instead spend most of the campaign moaning about what a godawful boring Republican-Lite drone we’ve nominated.

We’ll lose.

Unless the Democrats actually learn to fight for a cause rather than moping about hoping to pick up voters disaffected by Republican incompetence, yesterday’s victories are only going to be temporary. Does anybody think that will happen in our new Democratic congress?

In the long run, though, the real issues have to be this thundering race between China and the US to see who can puke the most carbon into the atmosphere, America’s attempt to bankrupt itself with debt, and our ongoing efforts to blind ourselves to the problems with religion. The Republican goal is to make the problem worse, the Democrats will continue to bumble about and avoid any conflict, and the media will find Britney Spears’ divorce more interesting. Come back in a century and look at America, and I think what you’ll find is Easter Island with tabloids.

GO VOTE!

Minnesota polling places are now open. You should be able to vote between 7AM and 8PM, so get out there and do it!

I’m looking at you UMM students, too. No apathy allowed. I’ll have a bowl of candy in my office—show me your “I voted” sticker, or tell me you did (I’m so trusting), and you can have a piece.

I voted 15 minutes after the polls opened, and I was the 16th voter. I think turnout is going to be good out here on the Minnesota prairies.

It was a paper ballot, too, and if a candidate’s name had a (Democrat-Farmer-Labor) after it, they got my vote. I was jubilantly partisan today.

Where is the candidate brave enough to address this problem?

Now look what you’ve done, O American Religion. Even thoughtful people like Shelley are getting fed up with you.

Regardless of how this vote goes this week, we can no longer ignore the elephant sitting in the corner that is religious influence on politics and government. People are not always going to be able to complacently have their ‘faith’ and their ‘science’, because in too many cases belief in one denies the existence of the other. Members of a church may have to consider challenging the precepts of the church, and individual churches challenge their association with a larger body. Basic human rights can no longer be pushed aside in the interest of ‘culture’ and ‘belief’, and the religious faithful cannot be allowed to determine how the rest of us live or die; how and when we have children; who we can love; how we dress; destroy our world in the interests of ‘being fruitful, and multiplying’; reduce our science to superstition, and bind our ethics to obscure passages in ill-interpreted religious texts.

I’d like to dream that today’s election will be the beginning of a change, but even if the Democratic party wins big, I don’t see them ever trying to chastise that elephant.