A New Philosophy

The Real McCain stands up!

Anewphilosophy — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:02:41 GMT

Is the real John McCain back?

Well, I saw a gleam today in this article. Not only did McCain refuse to promise to support Palin if she became a candidate for president ("I can't say something like [I'd promise to support her]. We've got some great other young governors. I think you're going to see the governors assume a greater leadership role in our Republican Party"), but he also rejected certain complaints from the RNC that Obama has not been honest about his contact with disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich:

"You know, in all due respect to the Republican National Committee and anybody -- right now, I think we should try to be working constructively together, not only on an issue such as this, but on the economy, stimulus package, reforms that are necessary."

This sounds more like the normal John McCain, the John McCain I'd always said would have made the 2000 election a tough choice for me. Now, if he can only stop pretending to like evangelical conservatives and go back to supporting a woman's right to choose, he'll be completely restored.

Bipartisan Berating!

Anewphilosophy — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:55:58 GMT

Since this past election I've been posting less and less on politics— partly because my candidate won and I'm just too relieved to bother posting much these days, and partly because the election itself was so long and exhausting that it's been nice to ignore politics for a little while.

But I know that there are some political mavens on PNN who read my political stuff much more frequently than they read my other stuff. I also know that there are both conservatives and liberals who occasionally drop by to read my posts and either back me up or refute my arguments.

So in the spirit of bipartisanship, I'm going to berate liberals AND conservatives today. Let the healing begin, y'all!

Liberals:

Okay, guys— I know this has been a hard eight years, and I know you were pretty much treated like so many terror suspects during the Bush administration, so it's natural that you're clamoring for more of a voice in the Obama era. But y'know what? Just stop whining about how we're not getting any seats in the Cabinet.

First of all: um, what? What do you call Gov. Richardson? Trust me, I used to live in New Mexico; he's no Blue Dog, I'll tell you that. And what about my gal Hillary? How has Hillary somehow gone from liberal darling to some sort of ill-gotten compromise? Hillary was always our woman— a true liberal who also happens to understand the fine art of pretending to agree with conservatives in order to get what she wants tucked into a piece of legislation.

Second of all: of course a liberal president won't appoint only liberals to his Cabinet. Have you people ever heard of POLITICAL MANUVERING? If Obama wants to win again in 2012, he's got to show moderates and moderate conservatives that he's not opposed to listening to them.

Furthermore, I truly believe that Obama WANTS to listen to conservative voices. Isn't that why we chose him as our candidate— because he's inclusive? Because he knows that every American has the right to a voice, regardless of whether or not that voice is actually saying intelligent things?

In fact, that's a GOOD THING. As I've said before, the Bush Administration may partly be an example of the failure of conservative policies, but it's mostly just a cautionary tale about what happens when you ignore an entire segment of the American population. I think Obama could benefit from hearing from all sides, and from advice that he might not get from his regular circle of advisors.

So guys, just take a chill pill. We're smarter than this. Well, some of us are, anyway.

Conservatives:

I've been reading a few articles lately by conservative writers who are trying to figure out how to reinvent the Republican Party. Many conservatives want to know how they went from talking about a lasting conservative majority in Congress to being political pariahs in the relatively short period of six or so years.

My wonderful friend Olivia pointed me towards this article at the National Review; it seeks to explain public distaste for Republicans by insisting that it's not the conservative message that's the problem— it's the way the message is conveyed to the public:

And to an extent, I agree with him. I don't think we've just seen a massive ideological shift in America; I agree with Mr. Steorts when he asserts that "the evidence — the election results, the exit polls — simply don’t support the thesis that socially conservative positions have cost Republicans more votes than they’ve won."

But I don't think he's right when he insists that Democrats are more likeable because they are easier to identify in terms of a "brand-name":

"According to my father, my great-grandmother was a straight-ticket Democratic voter her whole adult life because she emerged from the Great Depression with the feeling that “Democrats care about people.” That is brand-name voting. Many of my friends are also brand-name voters, and some for the same reason as my great-grandmother. Others think in stereotypes about who conservatives are (corporate fat cats; backwoods yokels) or what values they hold (“They love war”; “They hate gay people”)."

I agree, but I think that sort of assumption is rampant on the Republican side, and to even higher degrees. "They want handouts", "they love terrorists," "they're hippies," "they're Godless"...I could go on and on about the branding that Democrats have experienced.

And this is the most ridiculous part:

"[The reason why conservatives apparently suck at branding is] because many of our arguments require a higher level of abstraction than the corresponding liberal positions. The case for the welfare state is very simple, and rests on the idea that those with more should help those with less. There is a comparably simple libertarian response based on the idea of property rights. And then there are sophisticated arguments that welfarist policies distort incentives in a way that often ends up hurting the people they are meant to help. For that, there is no good bumper sticker."

Are you KIDDING ME? Are you saying that the conservative argument against government aid can't be boiled down to "What's mine is mine" in the same way? Well, obviously it can, and it WAS, as John McCain showed us in that commercial where he alternated pictures of Obama with negative slogans ("spread the wealth", "higher taxes") with pictures of McCain and positive slogans ("keep what's yours", "for workin' Joes").

Bumper stickers aren't the problem, pal— y'all have enough of those. I agree that the real problem isn't that conservative positions are unappealing to voters, but I think the way that they're expressed is. And this is because oftentimes, the way they're expressed is CRAZY.

Americans may be conservative, but they're mostly not stupid. When a politician blithely asserts that Adam and Eve were real people who rode dinosaurs ten thousand years ago, people get pretty freaked out, even if they agree with him/her on a host of other positions. I know there are lots of average Americans who are uncomfortable with gay marriage, but when they see the Westboro Baptist Church standing outside funerals holding signs that say "GOD HATES FAGS," they're instantly made even more uncomfortable— and become even more so when they discover that most of those folks are Republicans. And when anti-abortion folks go to the polls, I'll bet they want to be thinking about dead babies, not obscure Bible quotes.

I think conservatives just don't realize how mean-spirited and CRAZY their message had become since the early 1990s. I would never vote for a Republican unless that Republican was Olympia Snowe, because I'm a raging liberal; but I personally know a lot of Republicans in Ohio who have given up voting altogether, because they’re ashamed of the nastiness and ignorance that has taken over the conservative movement. And keep in mind, several of these Republicans are from my CHURCH, so the conservative movement’s embrace of evangelical beliefs has even frightened away conservative Christians.

Conservatives: get it together if you want to really have a chance in the next election. I want you to, because it’s so much more fun when there are people with whom I can argue! :P

Prop 8: The Musical

Anewphilosophy — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:40:42 GMT

Want to see the funniest video of the week? Check out the star-studded Prop 8: The Musical!

My favorite part of the video is Jack Black being Jesus, but that's second only to Neil Patrick Harris singing, "gay marriage will save the economy!" and Allison Janney as a mean-spirited gay-hater.

You'll laugh, you'll cry...well, actually, you'll only cry if you laugh so hard that you cry. But it's a funny video, and there are lots more videos there about why Prop 8 is a bundle of crap.

Tiny Feminists of the World: Unite!

Anewphilosophy — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:20:01 GMT

Feminism isn't just for grown-ups anymore.

I was exactly like this as a child, although not so much into sports, as I wasn't naturally athletic and I tended to dislike things that involved the possibility that I could lose at something.

And is anyone else curious about the fact that the video is sponsored by Barbie? I mean, when I was younger, Barbie seemed like the ultimate symbol of anti-feminism, but now, when put beside more modern dolls like Bratz, Barbie seems positively empowered. I mean, yes, she's anatomically impossible and wears only high heels, but hey, at least she had a few careers— there was Doctor Barbie, there was Teacher Barbie, I even think there was a Barbie with a business suit of some kind. Those Bratz dolls are not only offensively snotty-looking, they're also pretty shallow, eh? All they do is go to the mall and fish for boyfriends and talk on little tiny plastic cell phones.

Anyways, I digress. What I enjoyed about this video the most is that the featured girl really DOES know what feminism means. Adults have twisted and perverted the word to mean something mean-spirited, but this girl seems to have done her homework and found that feminism simply means "the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes...organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests." (Thanks, Merriam-Webster! And while we're talking about M-W, did you know that they have declared "bailout" to be the 2008 Word of the Year?)

Ruby doesn't see feminists as man-haters or as paranoid name-callers. Ruby sees feminists as having diverse and expansive roles. When listing her top careers, she lists "writer" and "doctor" right beside "pop star" and "mommy". She knows that feminism is the reason she— and I— can dare to dream endlessly about what we'll be when we grow up, even though fifty years ago girls were permitted only a handful of such dreams.

It's refreshing to see that each successive generation is a little more open, a little bit more accepting, than the one before it.

Thoughts on the Auto Industry Bailout

Anewphilosophy — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:02:03 GMT

Some reflections on the question of whether we should bail out the automakers...

Okay, you know how I hate financial irresponsibility. I hate when people live outside their means, when they purchase expensive homes and cars and then act surprised when they're expected to pay for it all in the end. I hate these characteristics even more intensely when they are to be found in businesses; if you can't afford to run your company, you shouldn't be taking bonuses and nice all-expenses-paid trips to Hawaii.

So in principle, I'm opposed to bailing out anyone— Wall Street, the banks, people who took out stupid, risky mortgages, and the automakers.

But the problem is, I don't think this is a decision that can be made based on the fact that I am responsible and auto industry CEOs aren't. I mean, I'm from the Rust Belt, so hating GM is in my blood. But I think we have to think about the workers.

I live in Youngstown, OH, a city with a population of about 70,000. And guess what? We're poor. About 1/4 of our people (and 40% of our children) live below the poverty line. CNN once calculated which cities in the US have the lowest median incomes, and guess who finished dead last (and by "a large margin")? Y-town.

And right now, our largest employer— the largest employer in all of Northeastern Ohio, in fact— is General Motors. The GM Lordstown Assembly Plant employs more than 7,000 people in our area, and is basically the linchpin of our economy.

Now, no one close to me works at GM (my dad's a professor, my mom's a middle school teacher, and my husband is a machine operator at an aluminum factory), but I know that if GM were to go under, we'd be seeing HUGE unemployment numbers here. We'd be up to Depression-era levels of unemployment, people. Maybe worse.

So as much as it irritates me to have to bail out any company when I'm sure their higher-ups don't deserve it, I have to remember the little guys, the employees who have been working hard to turn out good cars and who didn't have anything to do with any financial mismanagement or poor planning.

I agree with Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama when he says that rewarding companies for mismanagement is wrong. But I also think punishing employees for something over which they never had any control is equally wrong, and since there are 3.8 million GM workers who might be facing unemployment, I think worrying about them is much more important.

And if GM files for Chapter 11, even if they don't lay every single person off, that would mean a drastic decrease in employee benefits. Do we really want 3.8 million more people with no health insurance, or with insufficient coverage? Do we really want to see people who have worked their whole lives on an assembly line take massive pay cuts, lose benefits and employee rights, all because the economy is crapping out?

Yes, we need STRINGENT regulations to come with the bailout— there ought to be set terms, set conditions, and real punishments for not following through with what is asked. But we can't just sit here and do nothing. We can't just let people lose everything they have.

I'm willing to write my tax check to help these folks out. I'm hoping there are folks out there who'd be willing to do the same for me. So sue me— I'm a sucker for the idea that, deep down, we all might be nicer than we know.

Presidential Trivia

Anewphilosophy — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:58:28 GMT

Usually I'm not into celebrity-style political trivia, but this stuff is just too good to pass up. Observe this piece from the Telegraph: The 50 facts you might not know about Barack Obama.

My favorites? I love that he's left-handed, and that he has read every single Harry Potter book! Also, who had any idea that he could speak Spanish?!

It's a fun list of facts, even if few of them are politically relevant. Plus, I like anything that humanizes politicians— after all, they're mostly not bad people, and I actually think that a good number of them enter politics in order to make a difference in the world. Why else would someone put themselves through the hell that is a political campaign?

HEE!

Anewphilosophy — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:08:41 GMT

I know I've already posted once in this section today, but this is just too funny to keep to myself.

Damn...maybe I should become an important player in either one of the two major parties. I've always wanted to take a cruise. :P

This Is Not Okay

Anewphilosophy — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:19:10 GMT

I was interested to see this article from the New York Times detailing how the South may be losing a lot of its political clout as it drifts culturally further and further away from the rest of the country. After all, it used to be that Democrats running for president had to have a Southerner on the ticket to calm the reactionary fears of Alabamans and Georgians.

Well, Barack Obama of Chicago and Joe Biden of Scranton just won a race against John McCain of Phoenix and Sarah Palin of Wasilla. Did you hear a Southern location anywhere in that last sentence? Nope.

Towards the end of the article, though, some more disturbing stuff began to emerge. Turns out that the places that voted most Republican in the South 1) tended to do so based on racial conservatism, and 2) tended to be poorer, less educated, and more isolated than their less Republican counterparts.

Take a look at what some of the people interviewed said:

Don Dollar, the administrative assistant at City Hall, said bitterly that anyone not upset with Mr. Obama’s victory should seek religious forgiveness.

“This is a community that’s supposed to be filled with a bunch of Christian folks,” he said. “If they’re not disappointed, they need to be at the altar.”

Customers of Bill Pennington, a barber whose downtown shop is decorated with hunting and fishing trophies, were “scared because they heard he had a Muslim background,” Mr. Pennington said over the country music on the radio. “Over and over again I heard that.”

All right, guys. It's okay that we disagree in this country. It's okay to have an intelligent, well thought out opinion that differs from the status quo. That's fine. What's NOT okay is blatant, pathetic intolerance and ignorance. We live in the 21st century, in one of the most advanced countries in the world; it is NOT OKAY that there are people who still believe that Christianity means hating people who are different from yourself, and that having a different religious faith than the majority of the country is somehow dangerous or disgusting.

This is unacceptable. These people need help, and fast. We need to increase educational aid to these places NOW, and we need to ensure that these folks get the economic help they need. I can't believe that there are still places in this country that are so isolated and underdeveloped that they become little pockets of such hurtful, hateful sorts of attitudes.

Let's help the South, yo!

Election Analysis and What's Next

Anewphilosophy — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:06:54 GMT

Right now there are approximately two bazillion talking heads on television offering their analyses of why the election went the way it did. The election of Obama wasn't that surprising, but the landslide victory he won was, and I think that's why we're all so eager to figure out what went wrong for McCain. I now offer my own analysis of why Senator Obama won, and at the end I'll discuss what should be next for both Republicans and Democrats as we move into this new phase of our nation's history.

First off, I think it's important to remember what exactly has happened here. We just elected a multiracial man named Barack Hussein Obama who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, attended Harvard Law School, and worked as a grassroots community organizer. He won a race against a respected war hero and formerly moderate Republican who had as his running mate an ex-beauty queen who loves guns and becomes increasingly adorable when cornered. And Obama won, not by barely scraping by or by eking out a tiny majority of the electoral college, but by an electoral vote count of 349 to 163 [NOTE: at the time of this article's publication, North Carolina and Missouri were still uncalled by CNN.com; with nearly all precincts reporting, Obama is ahead in NC and McCain is ahead in Missouri].

Also, it's important to note that this win was achieved, not on the backs of Baby Boomers or the elderly, but through outreach to groups that have traditionally been considered unreliable in terms of get-out-the-vote efforts— minorities, women, and young people.

So this election wasn't typical in any way, and it's interesting to see how things played out this year, but we can't really apply all of the lessons we've learned in 2008 to every other subsequent election cycle.

That said, I've grouped my analysis of why Sen. John McCain lost into two groups of factors: situational factors (which result from the political and emotional situation of the country) and McCain campaign mistakes (which reflect what the campaign could have done better to encourage a Republican victory).

Situational Factors

Everyone is saying it, but I just can't echo it enough: it's the economy, stupid. Voters often tend to punish the party in power when the economy goes south, and therefore this year it would have been extremely difficult for ANY Republican to win the White House. Couple America's tendency to blame the sitting president for economic woes with its nearly automatic association of economic recovery with the party of Franklin Roosevelt, and you've got yourself a pretty toxic environment for anyone favoring the Bush tax cuts.

Of course, I also think the war was pretty important here, as well. While McCain garnered some favor for his support of the surge, he couldn't hide from the fact that we're currently mired in two unpopular wars that the Republican Party started. People wanted to give the other party a chance to fix the war back in 2006, and when it became apparent that they needed more support to end the war, people were willing to give it.

And then there was the elephant in the room: our lame-duck president, whose approval ratings basically show that only his immediate family has any faith in him anymore. It wasn’t just Bush's policies that irritated the American people; it was his attitude, his insistence that his opinions came from God and he didn't need to listen to anyone else. Very few people agree 100% with everything George Bush believes, so even moderates found his refusal to listen to their concerns (on the environment, on the war, on looking for bin Laden) frustrating. And the fact is that McCain, even though I think he personally dislikes the president and rather resents him for the smear tactics that torpedoed the 2000 McCain primary campaign, cozied up to Our Dear Leader when he began to have presidential aspirations for 2008. I remember thinking in 2005, "Why is McCain so buddy-buddy with the president? I thought they didn't like each other."

But I don't think we can see Obama's victory as merely an inevitable reaction against Republican policies or a general search for stability in a time of economic and political turmoil. I genuinely believe that some of the choices McCain's camp made after the primaries hurt him, particularly with regard to the consistency of his image.

Campaign Gaffes

Throughout the campaign, McCain's aides confused voters and presented conflicting images of the candidate: McCain is moderate...but no, he's hard-line conservative! Experience is important...but not for Sarah Palin! McCain wants to retain the Bush tax cuts...but he also wants to help your family! McCain wants to freeze spending...but keep the war going!

The most obvious mistake the campaign made was suspending activity during the financial crisis. It made McCain, who had been trying to cultivate his "maverick" image, look like a political insider playing election games, and it made his claims of wisdom and experience inconsistent with the poor judgment and impatience he displayed by suspending his campaign.

But to me, nothing epitomized the campaign's inconsistency like the choice of Sarah Palin as VP. First of all, it made McCain look old, and of course Palin wasn't vetted properly, so it made McCain's campaign look foolish and bumbling. But it also solidified McCain's move to the right, a move that anyone could have told him was foolhardy. The reason the Republican Party chose him in the primaries was his moderate stances and his appeal to independent voters; if they wanted a scary conservative they would have chosen Mike Huckabee, for goodness sakes. McCain should have pretended to be conservative during the convention in order to shore up support from evangelicals, then sprinted back to the center. Instead, Palin signaled that he was moving right, which I don't think was ultimately his fault (I think the blame for this rests on Republican Party higher-ups), but which I think he ought to have halted.

Because here's the real truth, guys: you can't appeal to evangelicals and moderates equally, because moderates are smart and know that evangelicals are CRAZY. Moderates don't like rapid change, but they don't bear gay people any particular ill will. They don't like abortion, but they don't want women to die or be forced to bear children they'll resent. They think America should defend itself, but they don't think it ought to bomb Iran.

Moderate Republicans and moderate conservatives are NOT evangelical or hard-line conservatives, and there is no way to make them compatible. The email rumors of Obama's supposed Muslim sympathies would have been just stupid enough to gain evangelical support anyways— and by "support", I mean to get out the evangelical vote, since few evangelicals would actually support a Democrat even if that Democrat was Jesus Christ, so the worst they could have done was stay home and not vote at all. McCain should have relied on evangelical fear and bigotry to insure that he got their votes, and concentrated on appealing to sane moderates. Instead he tried hard to "shore up the conservative base", and that cost him the votes of a lot of working-class and middle-class moderates, particularly in Ohio.

What's Next?

So where do we go from here? First, I'd like to address Republicans:

Guys, don't sulk. It could have been worse. And this will cheer you up: yeah, we control Congress and the presidency, but remember, there are THREE branches of our federal government, and the third, the judiciary, is totally under your control. You've got a hard-line conservative majority in the Supreme Court, and that isn't reliant on popular support at all. And since most of the really old guys on the Court already died during Bush's presidency, we Democrats might not even get to appoint anyone at ALL.

There. That makes you feel a little better, eh? And remember, you've still got a host of state legislatures and state supreme courts under your collective thumb.

Now, for 2012: want to know my honest opinion? Drop Sarah Palin like she's hot. That woman is crazy, and now everyone knows it. She's goofy and ignorant in a George Bush kind of way, and that's not going to be widely popular, even in 2012.

Want to go with a woman for a nominee? You could do worse than Olympia Snowe. She's moderate, she's got a heck of a personal story, and she's waaaaaay smart. If she became the Republican nominee, I'd honestly be hard-pressed to say for whom I would vote.

If it's youth you're looking for, Bobby Jindal might be your man. I dislike his politics, but he certainly is young, and definitely seems smarter and more capable than Palin. I wouldn't vote for him, but there are many who would.

To Democrats: we're celebrating now, and that's great, but later on down the road there will be temptation to view this as our moment for revenge. And we can't succumb to that temptation, because that's not what Obama's victory is about. We need to reject the Bush way of governing and start listening to and helping others.

Which is why our priorities, after we fix up the economy and get out of this dumb war, should be education and reducing poverty. These are things we all can get behind, regardless of party affiliation. Plus, it helps Republicans out (the South is one of the places most in need of education reform and poverty reduction, and those two initiatives will almost certainly cut down the abortion rate without resorting to messing with Roe v. Wade) and it helps Democrats out (who doesn't want their kids to go to better schools and see poor people get the help they need?).

And of course, we liberals still have a lot left to accomplish. California, Arizona, and Florida have just banned gay marriage, and Arkansas has been silly enough to prevent gay people from adopting children. Obama is going to be president, but we still have a long way to go before everyone is treated equally in America.

So let's do this thing, people!

Election Update 4

Anewphilosophy — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 04:52:42 GMT

It's 11:53 PM.

Sen. John McCain just gave a fabulous concession speech. My favorite part:

"In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving."

For a moment, there, we saw the old John McCain...the real John McCain.

EDIT: Okay, guys, I'm out. I got very little sleep last night, so I'm going to head to bed. Expect a very long, very detailed analysis of this election victory tomorrow!

And remember: yes we can, yes we will...yes we DID!

Election Update 3

Anewphilosophy — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 04:17:03 GMT

It is 11:15 PM.

CNN IS CALLING IT.

BARACK OBAMA IS PREDICTED TO BECOME THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

At last, I can sleep well tonight.

...

Well, I've got to stay awake to see what happened with Florida and Colorado, and I'd like to know what went down with Prop 8 in California. But still!

And Issue 5 passed (yay!) and Issue 6 failed (double yay!) and they gave the money to the bus system and I am happy.

So happy. So so happy.

I've waited eight years to feel this way. Tomorrow, we'll work on building America up together, on seeing if we can come together, Democrats and Republicans, to make things better for everyone.

Right now, though...right now, I just want to smile. Smile, and hope.

God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

Election Update 2

Anewphilosophy — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 03:42:43 GMT

It's 10:36 PM.

WOW. If current projections are correct (and that's obviously not locked up), it looks like almost every single state that I have ever considered home will have gone for Obama. That's Pennsylvania (where I lived from age 5-10), New Mexico (where I attended boarding school for two years), New York (where I went to college for 4 years), and, of course, the big O-H-I-O!

The only one of my "home states" that is still too close to call is Florida, where I was born. It'd be great if I could get the full set, though...so GO FLORIDA! YES WE CAN!

Election Update 1

Anewphilosophy — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 01:34:05 GMT

I'm going to be updating tonight in RED, so that I can really underscore the importance of the situation. :P

It's 8:25 PM. CNN has only projected a few really obvious states (Vermont, Kentucky), and Ohio— the most important state in this election for yours truly— is still too close to call.

I just wanted to point you toward a sweet article my friend Benjy from Vassar just wrote for the Huffington Post! He used to work for Talking Points Memo, and now he's doing Huffington stuff. It's funny and truthful, and I think you'll really enjoy it!

I Voted!

Anewphilosophy — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:08:35 GMT

I meant to wait until 9 a.m. to vote today, since I didn't want to crowd the polls when I have all day to go and many other people need to go before work. But my dad woke me up at 7 a.m. with a text message saying that he and my mother went to vote at 6:30 a.m. and the lines were out the door, and then I was so excited about voting that I couldn't get back to sleep.

So I got up, fed the cat, brushed my hair, put on some clothes, and headed to Frank Ohl Middle School to vote.

The process was a little haphazard— I walked into the gym, where tables with numbers on them were set up all around in a big rectangle. When I asked what to do, I was directed to a small man with a blue binder, who opened it up and told me that Philosophy E. Walker of Austintown was to report to table 34. Having done so, I showed my photo ID and, just for good measure, my voting postcard and recent bank statement, as well. The lady at the table seemed impressed that I was so well prepared!

I was given a choice: I could use a voting machine, or I could fill out a paper ballot. I opted for a paper ballot, as I'm strongly suspicious of the voting machines— a friend of our family had a voting machine record his vote for Bush instead of Kerry in 2004, so I didn't want to get burned that way. The volunteers seems puzzled as to why a young whippersnapper like myself would be leery of the machines, but they shrugged and set me up at the paper ballot table, which I shared with five people, all over the age of 80, who all whined constantly about "newfangled computer contraptions." In fact, there was one elderly gentleman in a blue baseball cap at the end of the table who was either having an incredibly tough time deciding or was sliding into a coma, as he was staring at his ballot when I sat down and was still staring at it, having remained completely still the whole time, when I stood to leave.

My ballot, disappointingly, looked exactly like the absentee ballots have for all these years. I was hoping they'd be different somehow...sparkly and pink, maybe? :P However, I attacked my ballot with vim and vigor, carefully yet enthusiastically filling out each bubble with the Special Voting Pencil that the woman at the table had given me. When I was finished, I placed my ballot into an opaque folder, walked to the big ballot box, and slid the ballot out of the folder into the box with my own two hands. Apparently, Austintown is very much a fan of proper voting procedure, as they requested that I keep my ballot completely hidden in its folder as I stood from the table and walked to the ballot box.

When it was over, the woman at the table gave me my sticker! Here's a picture of my wearing my sticker (although you can't really read it because the camera takes a mirror-image photo):

Also, please note that I had not yet showered when this photo was taken, which accounts for my generally ratty appearance. Also, I have had about five hours of sleep today, so my eyes are a little puffy.

Then I skipped home singing blithely to myself, thereby clearly alarming several innocuous passersby who stared at me as though they felt I might be clinically insane. I was home for about ten minutes before Adam arrived, flushed and victorious, with news of his own voting experience. He'd gone right after he got off of work this morning, and he had seen his uncle there, and he'd had to pee so badly that he was happy he'd had a sheet to remind him of the issues he should vote "yes" on so that he could get out of line and into a bathroom ASAP.

He also asked the voting lady to give him a few extra stickers, and she did, so now I have a sticker on my jacket AND a sticker on my shirt! YAY!

If only I could drive...then I could get my free coffee from Starbucks.

Notice

Anewphilosophy — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 18:47:58 GMT

At the request of my family and my husband, I am going to be taking a leave of absence from my Politics section until Tuesday evening.

Yesterday I suffered no less than three hysterical panic attacks while reading news stories on CNN.com. Then last night I was awakened, sweating and tearful, from a dream wherein Condoleezza Rice was chasing me through the woods with a meat cleaver.

As a result, I am entering a No Politics period. I will not be checking or posting in this section for the next two days, although I will still be posting in my other sections. I will also not be reading or commenting on any other political posts here. I will not be visiting any news websites, watching any television news, or reading any political blogs. I will not be reading political stories in the newspaper, and my husband will change the channel whenever a political ad comes on. My father and mother are joining me in this political blackout, and will be following similar rules.

Tonight Adam is taking me out for a romantic dinner-and-a-movie date to ease my tension. There will be no discussion of politics. We will have dinner at Johnny's, where we had our first date, and then we will go see "Tropic Thunder" at the dollar theater.

I'll catch you guys on Tuesday evening, when I will once again be politicking it up. I'll be updating starting from about 3 or 4 in the afternoon and running up until the major networks call the election. I'll also be sharing my voting story, and I encourage all of you to share your stories with me!

Goodnight...and good luck.