Just got home from working the polls all day. The nation’s in trouble. Iowa’s solidly in incumbent fever; we even voted in a former governor over a sitting governor. But it was still a great day to be an American.
Our team’s location was a local church having a conference of international Christians. We must have had twenty Indonesians, Filipinos, Indians, Vietnamese, etc. taking images on their phones and cameras of the voting set-up and us workers. I remarked to one of my colleagues that some 29th century archeologist is going to uncover these computer files on some old phone relic and assume that back in the Tea Party days, international observers came to the ancient US to ensure fair elections.
Back to the funeral rites, tomorrow. More other posts to come.
Catholic Sensibility 
I think the prospects for the country have now improved considerably! I just wish a few more anti-life Dems had been sent out to pasture!
The prospects for our country just went down the tubes. There is no such creature as a Christian Republican. Being Republican is necessarily being evil. You support Satan with every Republican vote.
As far as the abortion issue, I wish I felt some hope. But I think it’s as entrenched as ever two generations after Roe v Wade. Both major parties seem pretty satisfied with the status quo. Even people who buck the party line know the judiciary will get their back. Either way.
As for the economy, I guess I see two possibilities for a big break in unemployment: an FDR-style federal activism, or the big corporations loosening their purse strings on their HR departments. Not sure I see a million small businesses hiring about a dozen people each.
So, John, why don’t you share with us how we’re going to get several million Americans back to work in 2011?
And Mike, I think Keith Olbermann just got two years of scripts and film clips prepared for him. In one night.
Todd, re. Olbermann: I hope you’re not inferring that is a good thing!
If the left would toss in MSNBC’s Mr. O card into the pile, I’d gladly reciprocate by placing Fox’s Mr. O card with it.
I take no pleasure in snark and smarm, haven’t for quite some time as a veteran on leave from the Liturgy Wars. But these are serious times, and the way I see it, we’ve basically been playing “Send in the Clowns” every two years since 1994 (I guess that’s snarky, a bit) when Newt wasted a true opportunity to lead, and chose to let congress run amok chasing stains on blue dresses.
We elect these people based upon how well they can keep their chin up and coin a phrase or two while lying about their vision quest about leadership and governance, and at every level “THEY” then bark at each other incessantly in chambers, budget deadlines pass, infrastructure crumbles, social bridges to nowhere are hotly debated. THEN, they turn back to their constituents and ask us to decide legislative agendae in state propositions!
Can you say “Cowardly Lion?”
Just say a “Deo gratias” you don’t live out west. We’ve shot ourselves in the foot with Brown and Boxer so many times the state can clinically be dubbed “masochistic” but dummies everywhere can carry their ounce of ganja proudly, including into the state capitol where nothing of merit happens anyway, and pizzas are delivered every twenty minutes that are FREE!
I wish, not pray, that everyone who’s acting like Goldilocks this morning, either crying or delighting over porridge, would choose humble pie instead.
Good thing? Probably not, but as an observer of politics, I know entertainment (or the perception of it) when I see it.
Send in the clowns? Too right. Ditto humble pie.
Oops, I got my Prop 19 misinformation from a local broadcast numbers switch. Apparently the NORML folks lost and will retreat back into the deep woods of Humboldt County and the Sierras.
10 months later, it seems the effect of Senator Brown’s victory in my state was to turn the Democrats out in force, such that my town north of Boston, long a GOP stronghold that turned purple in the past decade, went as blue as the Na’vi last night to a degree I would not have thought possible.
Yes,my daughter who works for a lead Democrat in the Commonwealth,thought she would be packing up her desk soon. Not so…breathing a sigh of relief.