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

I was telling Scott the other day that the sheer depth of Pat Robertson's stupidity and narrow-minded evil spouting has lost its power to surprise me (this is Pat Robertson, he's been like this for years), but it is still mind-boggling.

This is just beautiful, and mind-boggling in the whole other direction.

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?"