Skip to main content

Report from the voting lines

This morning after meeting with some of my students, I grabbed my voter guide and headed down to my local voting place, the Marlinda Convalescent home. In the era of Obamacare, you can imagine how crowded that place was, what with all the death panelists hovering around. After wading my way through the mobs of black and brown people committing in-person voter fraud (CA has no voter ID initiative! You can imagine the chaos.), I grabbed a stack of ballots and went to my booth.

First up: CA has two propositions for funding state public education. Being a conservative, and a fairly well paid one at that, this was an easy call. No more welfare-addicted, single moms mooching on my tax dollars. NO and NO.

Next: Repeal of the state death penalty. Um, no thanks. My policy is to execute 'em all and let Peter sort  'em out at the pearly gates.

I didn't really understand the other ones. Nothing about gun rights, abortion or stopping teh gays, so I didn't have any horses left in the CA proposition races. So it was off to the senate. More easy votes: let's support the job creators by keeping taxes low. R, R, R...

Finally, the Big One. However, this wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. As I tried to push the bubble for Romney, my hand jerked over to Obama. I just couldn't help it. I guess John Sununu was right about how Colin Powell only endorsed Obama because he's black. Just as I can't resist fried chicken and talking out loud in movie theaters, I just couldn't help but vote for Obama. Weird. Fortunately, I live in one of the 49 states that doesn't matter for the presidential election. That would have been a disaster if I lived in Ohio.

Well, I have once again put in my time as a citizen. It feels good. Here's hoping that places like D.C. and Minnesota don't force us all to gay-marry, and instead succeed in protecting our democracy by suppressing the minority vot---I mean, suppressing voter fraud. As for the presidential race, it was an interesting ride. I thought that people were going to get distracted by the issues, like health care and stuff. Fortunately, the debates helped sort things out and caused us to come together as a nation to judge the candidates not on their ideas, but on the content of their pandering. The only challenge left is to see if I can get any work done today as I busily ignore the polling numbers so I can pretend to be surprised by tonight's outcome. Remember, if Romney fails, blame it on Sandy!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A view from your shut down

The Daily Dish has been posting reader emails reporting on their " view from the shutdown ." If you think this doesn't affect you, or if you know all too well how bad this is, take a look at the growing collection of poignant stories. No one is in this alone except for the nutjobs in the House. I decided to email Andrew with my own view. I plan to send a similar letter to my congressperson. Dear Andrew, I am a professor of astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). The CfA houses one of the largest, if not the largest collection of PhD astronomers in the United States, with over 300 professional astronomers and roughly 100 doctoral and predoctoral students on a small campus a few blocks west of Harvard Yard. Under the umbrella of the CfA are about 20 Harvard astronomy professors, and 50 tenure-track Smithsonian researchers. A large fraction of the latter are civil servants currently on furlough and unable to come to work. In total, 147 FTEs

The Long Con

Hiding in Plain Sight ESPN has a series of sports documentaries called 30 For 30. One of my favorites is called Broke  which is about how professional athletes often make tens of millions of dollars in their careers yet retire with nothing. One of the major "leaks" turns out to be con artists, who lure athletes into elaborate real estate schemes or business ventures. This naturally raises the question: In a tightly-knit social structure that is a sports team, how can con artists operate so effectively and extensively? The answer is quite simple: very few people taken in by con artists ever tell anyone what happened. Thus, con artists can operate out in the open with little fear of consequences because they are shielded by the collective silence of their victims. I can empathize with this. I've lost money in two different con schemes. One was when I was in college, and I received a phone call that I had won an all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas. All I needed to d

back-talk begins

me: "owen, come here. it's time to get a new diaper" him, sprinting down the hall with no pants on: "forget about it!" he's quoting benny the rabbit, a short-lived sesame street character who happens to be in his favorite "count with me" video. i'm turning my head, trying not to let him see me laugh, because his use and tone with the phrase are so spot-on.