I Speak With the Tongue of a Thousand White-Hot Lies!

Well, just like four years ago, I will be spending the daylight hours trying to ignore the election (I voted last Wednesday), and the evening hours obsessively refreshing FiveThirtyEight and, I dunno, maybe NPR. (After the Supreme Court health care decision debacle, I don't trust CNN to not call the election for the Green Party at 8:30pm.)

The differences are, this year I'll be at work until 9, so the obsessive refreshing won't be for as long, and this year the Zweeble not only knows there's an election, he has a preference in it.

Vote, vote, vote, y'all! The Zweeble compels you!

And I'm sure the other side didn't know what the heck they were looking at.

Though my personal favorite is "Satan's cake is a lie."

The President has made a few revision notes on a speech.

Obviously, I love this. But I have two words for the President's speech writers: double spacing. Seriously. Make all your lives easier.

via BoingBoing:

"As president, I believe that robotics can inspire young people to pursue science and engineering. And I also want to keep an eye on those robots in case they try anything." --Barack Obama, speaking to Washington D.C. schoolkids on Monday as part of his science education initiative.

Okay, that's cool, but I'm still waiting for Federal and State Zombie Contingency Plans.

The Zweeble was having a rough night last night, so I was huddling in my bedroom, next to my sleeping husband, refreshing CNN, the NY Times, Making Light, and Fivethirtyeight. Hoping, but cautious.

At 11:01, I refreshed CNN and suddenly the entire West Coast was blue, and I just ... sat there. Hands to my face. Thinking, Oh, wow. Look at us go. And also, Bruce Schneier was right--everyone was just waiting until the west coast polls closed to call it.

Then the baby was crying again, so I shut it all down and got him situated, and went to bed. And then this morning, I got up and found out that Florida went for Obama.

Amendment 2 went through. So did Prop. 8, in California. That sucks. That makes me angry and sad.

But ... I have more pride in my country right now than I have in years. I look at our President-elect, and I look forward to voting to repeal those stupid amendments. Because it'll happen. Today I'm sure of it.

Took about an hour and fifteen minutes to vote, from the time I got in line until I walked out the door with my sticker. I stood in line next to this older gentleman (I was one of the youngest people in the line, aside from the baby in a stroller ahead of me), and we'd been chatting about polling places and voting in general off and on--I mostly read my book, and he really didn't seem too bothered not to chat--oh, and we both enjoyed the drama that ensued when they moved the line.*** So we're finally at the front of the line, then glance to the left, where the bulk of the line is, and then down the street, and then back along to the parking lot, and around the other side of the building ...

Holy cats, that's a lot of damn people on a Friday morning, waiting in line to vote!

I said, kind of without thinking, "You know, the wait time is a little annoying, but it's pretty awesome that this many people want to vote." And the two people in front of me, the guy next to me, and the three people behind us all agreed with me. :)

My quote of the day, though, came when we were inside the building, waiting to get our IDs scanned, and my friend from the line started inspecting the posters on the walls.

"I didn't know I had a voter's bill of rights," he said. "I thought the first one pretty much covered that."


***They shifted us so that we weren't blocking the entrance to the sleep clinic that's in the same building. But they wound up with two lines--twelve people were on the left side of the door to the polling place, and the rest of the line was to the right, then curving around along the access road back past the entrances. Which was fine with everyone, because we all knew the twelve people had been at the head of the line before, but then six or seven people got in line behind them. And this lady calls out, "Hey! We have line cutters!" So this little old dude, who was a volunteer polling person, had to shoo those people to the back of the line, at which point half of our line applauded. In the midst of this, the guy next to me asked, "You think there'll be a riot?"

I got my sample ballot the other day, and I did not know that we had one of those "define marriage as between a man and a woman" amendments on the ballot.

I am beyond outraged. Not surprised in the least, mind you, this is the state where gay couples can be foster parents for however long a kid needs them, but can't legally adopt those kids. Apparently adoption papers transfer the gay cooties or something. I'm surprised we haven't had to vote on this already, but that's as far as the shock goes.

There are so many reasons I'm voting NO YOU MORONS! on this one. The obvious one is--hello? If you want to get married, you ought to be able to. I'd like all my friends to have the opportunity to join me in my tax breaks.

Of course, the bright side to this is that dealio actually has to vote, now. HA!

The other thing that ... is it disturbing? Maybe? Well, it's disquieting for sure--that is the one amendment that I did not have to look up to understand. The language on all the others is extremely confusing (Amendment 1 actually reads as though it's proposing the opposite of what it's actually supposed to do), but that one? Clear as freaking crystal.

So I followed a link to Things Younger Than John McCain and started kinda giggling, then sort of boggling (the ZIP code system? Really? Penecillin?!), and then I hit May 20th, read the first sentence of the entry, and had a shocking realization ...

My father is younger than John McCain.

(doggiesushi is now laughing.)

You have to understand, my father is old. He was the oldest parent out of all my friends' parents, except for John's (and his folks and my father were around the same age). It's been a running gag for most of my life that my father is older than everything besides rocks and dirt.

And yet, he's younger than John McCain. Dad may know what George Washington sounded like, but apparently John McCain remembers Good Queen Bess. :)

In honor of all the people I know who use one hand as a map to show where they grew up, and Via Making Light, I present:

Michigan Democrats for Romney.

And, come on, no "Mitt" puns? How wrong.