The red pill or the blue pill

Tomorrow is Election Day in the United States. All the seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs, along with one-third of the Senate, about two-thirds of governor seats and scores of offices on the state, city and local levels. Along with the people on the ballot, there are dozens of voter initiatives or levies of some sort hoping you'll show them some love.

I'm no political expert, and I'm not about to play on this blog, but the scuttlebutt in the political message boards I like to haunt is that there are going to be some very close races after all. Whatever bounce the Democrats may have had after their suicide pact with Bush over Iraq last month, it feels like it’s evaporating. Maybe it's GOP spin, but it looks grim if the soothsayers are right.

One answer might be in the money divide. Roughly speaking, the Republicans raised less than $300 million, compared to the less than $140 million raised by Democrats. You can feel your mind boggle at all the money being flushed down the crap hole in this orderly popularity contest called democracy here.

The money glut could be from Team Bush eager to win control of Congress, or it could be that this is the last major campaign season before the meager (some would argue toothless) campaign finance reforms kick in. Either way you look at it, this has been one expensive campaign cycle, a final blow out of cash-gluttony on attack ads starring a president gallivanting across a nation freely and telling people how much we are at war, and how he needs the right people in office to help him with this war.

Of course, one could argue that if this war was so important, the president would not risk traipsing across the country. If this war was so hot on the burner, bullets would be firing instead of waiting for the apologists and toadies to fully populate the Congress.

Oh dear God, I bet Bush danced capers in his cowboy boots when Wellstone went to his great reward.

But that's neither here nor there now. Tomorrow, Americans attempt democracy once again. In this honest season of autumn, we voters will confine ourselves in rickety tin booths and make our selection, fingers crossed on if the vote counts or if some pre-programmed democracy sniper is waiting to spoil the ballot.

Either way, there's a special place in hell for anyone who votes against funding a library.

In case you have any questions about voting rights or anything related about being a minority shareholder in this crazy quilt of a nation, the good folks at MoveOn.org can help. I got this missive from them in my e-mail box today.


First, you need to know where to vote on Tuesday. In most cases, your town office or county clerk can tell you where to go. We've compiled information on where and how to vote in several key states (Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Texas) at the end of this message. Many newspapers also publish a list of local polling places. If you don't know where to vote, please take a minute to check, or make a note to call your town or county office on Monday.

Second, it's important to be prepared in case anything goes wrong on Election Day. Here's a national hotline set up by the Voting Rights Institute for you to use if you have trouble at the polls, or if you believe your voting rights are being violated: 1-866-VOTE-411 (1-866-868-3411)

Third, it's important to know your rights as a voter. For each of 20 key states, People for the American Way has researched and compiled a Voter's Bill of Rights, describing in plain language exactly what your rights are at the polls. If you live in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, or Wisconsin, there is a Voter's Bill of Rights for your state at http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=6523

In those same states, People for the American Way has also set up another hotline to resolve Election Day problems, at: 1-866-OUR-VOTE(1-866-687-8683)


Re-reading the e-mail, I'm deflated that it has come to this: Being alerted of your voting rights. I remember when I first voted back in 1992 it wasn't like this. I lived in Houston and remember walking into the city council office to vote. I had no concern about having my vote screwed up or thrown out. I just mark who I liked, removed the voting slip, and dropped it in the box. The friendly old lady with the silver bouffant smiled and gave me an "I vote" sticker for my shirt. Leaving the air-conditioned (in November) office, I went home and watched some Southern governor dope-slap some geezer king off the throne. A Fleetwood Mac song played incessantly and we suddenly had a first lady that wasn't about being some demure 1950s house slave in an apron.

Fast forward eight years and the idiot son of the mediocre geezer king has come for revenge in some half-boiled, road-kill stew version of "Hamlet," set stubbornly in a drawl and leaving a corrosive oil slick wherever he went. He should have been defeated handily, but that giant sucking sound you heard during the last call of the millennium came from CEOs draining their checkbooks to make sure their concubine was placed securely on the throne...no matter the price.

And surely, just as there was once peace and prosperity, the ghosts and manservants of the senile not-yet-dead king of the 80s returned to drag us all into deficits, prejudice, enemies and fear. We were going to be told 2 + 2 equals greed being good and if you only saw 4, there were some rats that wanted to chew your ear. Laws didn't matter and the only friends that mattered where ones who didn't mind if we tracked mud all over their house, cursed at their mom and flung their toys out the window without punishment. They were right, damnit, because the Good Book and bad bookkeeping told them so, and if the big G wasn't going to punish them with a bolt of lightning, then what they did had to be approved under Divine Right.

And all the women wore aprons and smiled Xanax smiles, even though the children drank until they puked. All the minorities working under the idiot king never spoke up. All the men screamed warwarwar, despite never carrying their nation's banner into previous battles. No...they had other priorities (look under "Gulf War Success").

But you have to forgive them, I suppose...working so hard to prop up a fool who obviously isn't running the show. I think that, deep down, the king knows he's illegitimate, winning an election on a technicality while losing the popular vote for more than 500,000. Like in the past, he was aided by cronies of his geezer king father...and, really, what's another hand out, this time coming from his princely brother in Florida and five people in black robes in Washington D.C.

And since then, since First Amendment Zones, since pre-emptive peace through war, since burning bridges and deepening the moat, since the relentless butchering of his native tongue and the defunding of thousands of their hard-fought rights to vote, it's all changed. America didn't change on Sept. 11, 2001. It shifted like polluted blood, all chunky, foul, unwanted and lethal, in that December of 2000.

I suppose the moral of the story is: When the loser wins under shadowy circumstances, watch out because anything goes.

As for me, I'll vote when I head home tomorrow. And then, after dinner, I'll sit on the couch and watch election coverage by "The Daily Show" in between bouts of "Morrowind" on my rented Xbox. I'll either see the Democrats get new life pumped into them.

Or I'll watch GOP devour everything in their path.

And if option two happens, I'll reach over and begin to pack my things for Canada.