Will says maybe I shouldn’t or couldn’t stop doing this blog, but I think that is just because he was pissed off last night. This may be it. Following politics really does not improve my quality of life.

Half Blue Dogs Out

The house went about as I expected, but worse than I had hoped. On the up side, half of the lame “blue dog” Democratic candidates lost their races. Good riddance! It will be interesting to see what the Republican controlled House will do now. When it came right now to it, all the teabaggers turned out to be the same old social conservatives with a smattering of libertarians. For all of the teabaggers I saw who wanted to protect the individual rights of fetuses, I never heard one talk about protecting the rights of gays or drug users. Interesting, isn’t it.

Michael Bennet Pulling Away?

In Colorado, Democrat Michael Bennet seems to be pulling away from Ken Buck with 89% of the votes in. Still, no one is calling the race and there is sure to be a recount. However, recounts usually favor Democrats. Why? I think because poor areas have fewer resources. But don’t quote me on that. In Washington, we still only have 62% of the votes in. Democrat Patty Murray is ahead by 14,005 votes, out of roughly a million and a half. Very disappointing is how poorly Scott McAdams did in Alaska. I really thought he had a good chance of taking that seat. Now we have to hope that Lisa Murkowski manages to beat Joe Miller—even though she isn’t much better. The total write-in vote is 41% compared to Miller’s 34%. The question is how many of those write-in votes will count for Murkowski; there is no doubt that almost all of them were intended for her.

Not Such a Bad Night

In the end, yesterday was not that bad. What is bad is that I am going to have to be listening to people talk about how this is a mandate against Obama’s radical leftist agenda and so on—in other words, just pure nonsense.

Brown and Boxer!

I am very happy that great people like Brown and Boxer will be out there defending me and my rights. Brown beat Whitman by over 13%—almost a million votes! And the Boxer-Fiorina race that was supposed to be close wasn’t: Boxer won by 10%—almost three-quarters of a million votes! You know, when I first saw the acronym GOTV, I thought it was a cable station. Then I learned that it meant, “Get Out The Vote” and I had one of those Emily Litella moments. I did my part: I contacted every liberal I knew and reminded them repeatedly to vote; I also never mentioned the election to conservatives I knew, hoping they would forget. (Yes, I’m not a good person.) Clearly GOTV worked in California!

California Proposition 25

I’m very pleased that Prop 25 won in California—this is probably the most important vote that took place yesterday for anyone who lives here. It stops the small minority of Republicans in the state legislature from being able to block a budget being passed until a few of them can be given some form of political heroin to vote in favor of it.

California Proposition 23

Also important: Prop 23 went down thankfully; it was just a push by oil companies (out of state oil companies!) to effectively repeal our greenhouse gas reduction law. Long-term, this is hugely important: to our environment and to our economy.

California Proposition 20 and 27

Unfortunately, we are going to get the new redistricting law. I’m all for such a law—as long as all other states do it. As it is, it is bad for California on a national level.

California Proposition 19

And, of course, Prop 19 failed: the proposal to legalize marijuana sale and use. I think it was a victory to have it on the ballot. It still would have been illegal federally, so it would still have been illegal—just not if the state cops found it on you. What’s more, pot is still scheduled the same as heroin. Over the past 100 years, drug laws have been systematically federalized (Murder is not a federal crime, but holding a joint is—figure that out!) so any drug reform really has to be done at the federal level. I’m not saying that Prop 19 wouldn’t have made life better for pot smokers, but I’m more interested in a real solution to the problem: people’s private consensual behavior in their homes are felonies. Where are the teabaggers on that clear violation of the Constitution they claim to so love?

E. J. Dionne on Political Demographics

E. J. Dionne makes the excellent point that in the 2008 election 18% of the voters were under 30 and 16% were over 65. In yesterday’s election, roughly 10% were under 30 and 25% were over 65. So any idea that this election was some kind of mandate on Obama or the Democratic Party is just ridiculous. It is interesting; watch it.

It is also interesting that this election was also not a teabagger referendum. Of the official teabagger candidates (roughly 150), most lost (roughly 100). And this makes sense, because just about everywhere, teabagger support is right around one-third. So their candidates won about one-third of the time.

Mexico Fence

Steven King (who will be the head of the next House’s Immigration Committee) wants to build a 13 foot high fence between American and Mexico. I just did a back of the envelope calculation of this. Just the material for the wall (none of the material for holding the wall up and no labor or anything else) would cost about a quarter billion dollars. Just saying.

Let The Circus Begin

I have little to say. It will be a bad day. I have this image in my mind of watching a teabagger reading his portable Constitution. I still don’t understand how people can read the same document over and over and never understand it. Of course, without reading the Federalist Papers it is kind of hard to understand what it is really all about. But it’s kind of long. Anyway, as we know: facts don’t much matter to people who have made up their minds—especially people who have little education. Our country deserves the government it is about to elect. Unfortunately, the majority of the people do not.

Reid Wins!

This is very exciting: Harry Reid won in Nevada—and it looks like it is by a much wider margin than expected. I’m still hopeful for McAdams up in Alaska—but it is really hard to say. Colorado keeps going back and forth; it is currently slightly Buck (Republican), but I’ll keep hoping. Regardless, the Democratic Party keeps control of the Senate. Now they had better get rid of the filibuster, because with it, Rand Paul alone could destroy the world’s economy (this is not joke).

And, of course, we keep hearing how the teabaggers have been so important in this election. This is total bullshit. As we have seen again and again, the teabaggers are just the most conservative Republicans. They aren’t for the Constitution. (They don’t even understand it!) They aren’t for fiscal responsibility. They aren’t against Wall Street. Why do we know this? Because they believe in many things that are flat out against the Constitution; they want to balance the budget at the same time they want to cut taxes without cutting 80% of the federal budget that is Social Security, Medicare, and the military; are they were eager to vote for candidates who were bankrolled by Wall Street. This election had nothing to do with the teabaggers. It had everything to do with the 9.6% unemployment rate.

Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues

I couldn’t find Bob Dylan doing this, but this young man—Rex Noble—does a fine job. I fear we are back to this level of thinking. The question is: where are the beats?

More on Lauren Valle Attack

It bothers me that the attack on Lauren Valle is repeatedly referred to as a “stomping.” It was not a stomping, it was an attack, or if you prefer a more legal term: assault. There is more news on the attack, though. According to KTAR, the man accused of tackling her is Mike Pezzano. (It also bothers me that this act is repeatedly referred to as her being “held down”—sure, she was held down—right after she was tackled.)

When asked if he thinks he should apologize to Ms. Valle, Tim Profitt said, “I would like for her to apologize to me to be honest with you.” He did not go on to explain that he felt this way because he’s an ignorant, bigoted, small-minded man with a penis the size of his world view.

No Control of 50 ICBMs: Who Cares?

According to the LA Times, a computer glitch caused 50 ICBMs to go “off-line” at a Wyoming Air Force for 45 minutes. Given that the US has roughly ten thousand ICBMs, I don’t see why we care. The glitch did not put us in any danger of the missiles being launched. Just in case you were wondering.

Jack Conway’s Brother Matthew

The Louisville Courier-Journal recently reported that the brother of Kentucky Democratic Senatorial candidate Jack Conway’s was under investigation for drug trafficking. Even after almost 3000 words, the article never mentions what that drug might be. What’s more, the definition of trafficking is so broad that this could mean that Matthew Conway shared a joint with a friend once. Regardless of all this, there doesn’t seem to be any there here. There were two complaints, and the first seems to have come from Conway’s recently divorced wife. Certainly the narcotics officer investigating concluded that it was a case of revenge. He said, ““It just seemed like [the complaint} was a BS … domestic kind of issue.”

The conservative blogosphere is all over it, though. They are trying to make the case that Rand Paul’s campaign member’s stomping on the head of a Move-On protester is just a pretense to cover up the drug trafficking case. This is all sounding very much like those claims that Bill Clinton was a big-time drug dealer while governor of Arkansas.

And remember, this whole “scandal” is about Jack Conway’s brother—not about the candidate himself. So the real question is, “Who cares?” And the real answer is, “Conservatives, who never care about facts—who only care about winning.”

Teabag Crazy

This is just too good not to watch. It is an almost endless list of the teabagger craziness.

I Can Be a Writer!

I just saw a review on Amazon by one Jon R. Stosser, commenting on S. E. Cupp’s Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity. Stosser writes, “I just [saw] Ms. Cupp on RealTime [with] Bill Maher and watched in amazement at her surprise that communism was akin to a State religion. She didn’t seem to know very much. I guess I am just jealous, cause I now know if I was conservative I too could be an author. Unfortunately, I live in the world where things are complex and grey.”

I feel much the same way. Last night, I did a good deal of writing on a book I have been putting off for too long. It’s hard work because I know that the book has to be good. I too am jealous; I know that I could write an un-researched conservative polemic in a couple of months, get it included in the Conservative Book Club and make enough money to live on for the next ten years—with health insurance! I also know that it would be trivial to create teaching materials for Christian home schoolers. It just isn’t right that people in the reality-based community have to work so much harder.

GOP No Longer Pretends to be “Big Tent”

Indiana Govenor Mitch Daniels suggested a value-added tax at a speech at the Hudson Institute. Daniels had been a possible Republican candidate for President in 2012. But not any more, it would seem. According to Grover Norquist, “[T]his is disqualifying. This is beyond the pale.”

The Assassination of Dr. Tiller

The Rachel Maddow Show presented a special documentary called The Assassination of Dr. Tiller. It is very sad, but very much worth watching. I highly suggest spending 45 minutes watching it.