Discolor Online

So I haven't had a lot of time to blog but I figure if I'm putting in 18 hour days I can allow myself a little blog time without feeling too guilty.

After work today I finally got started on my attic ladder project. I made the family eat leftovers (even poor Chris, who is feeling sick)and worked on the installation of the attic ladder (including lengthening the attic entrance, installing the actual ladder, hand sawing the plywood "door" (which I had to build myself as it wasn't included in the ladder package), and cleaning up my mess. I wasn't able to get the "door" installed because it got to be midnight and Kate needed to go to sleep (fair enough!) do the rest will have to wait until tomorrow but after that I should have both a functional ladder and a functional and weather-proofed "door" to my attic. There's a lot of unfinished space up there but luckily for us the builder left an 8 x 10 space with proper flooring at least so we can get started.

Anyway....

While I was working I could hear the TV on and kept hearing political news. I find the state of politics either baffling or enraging at the moment. How the hell did we get from Obama's comments to" Joe the Plumber" (that icon of virtue) to "Obama is a Socialist" who wants to steal your money and "redistribute" it to "the poor" (which means those undeserving brown-skinned welfare queens)? I mean, seriously, can you spare 5 minutes and LISTEN to Obama's actual response before jumping on the "OMG, he's a COMMIE" bandwagon?

Meanwhile Washington State ballots have been delivered to all of us "absentee" (aka Vote By Mail) voters and I've filled in everything but a couple of initiatives and King County Amendments which I haven't researched properly yet. For me, for all intents and purposes, the election is over. I've blackened the circles for my choice for President on down. My mind is made up, my alliances are determined. Even so, I'm still thinking politics for the next week. There are campaigns I've been following that I don't have a vote in but would like to see turn just the same. A few of those have to do with Washington state or Minnesota (land that I love).

In Washington, I've been following the Darcy Burner (with her Computer Science degree from Harvard, with an Economic minor... how perfect for our region?!) since the last election cycle where she lost a close race to douchebag Dave Reichert who played up his Green River Killer capture credentials (and, apparently, he played up his "degree" from Concordia) to win a tight race last time around. I'm all about getting Darcy Burner into Congress even though I can't vote for her directly. I've contributed to her campaign a few times now and I sincerely hope she wins this time. All of Washington will be better off under her representation.

I also have to admit that I have a strange attraction to the Minnesota races. My Scandinavian heart belongs to Minnesota even if I don't live there anymore. I was SO PROUD of Paul Wellstone(from my high school home town of Northfield whose denizens are featured in many of Paul's early ads), whose first speech on the floor of the Senate was against the First Iraq War. Minnesota is often painted as this provincial backwater, a place where people know about cows and fishing, perhaps mining or corn, but not a whole lot else. Bah, I say! Minnesota gives us the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party which "has its roots in third-party protest movements" as the DFL site says. Minnesotans not only gave us Paul Wellstone, but Keith Ellison (the first Muslim elected to Congress), Governor and former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura, and, most embarrassingly Michelle Bachman. Minnesotans shouldn't be counted out! I'm watching the Bachman and Ellison re-election campaigns (and seriously pulling for El Tinklenberg). Minnesota could also give us Ashwin Madia, son of Indian immigrants who went to the University of Minnesota, NYU Law School, and served as a United States Marine in Iraq.

I've now pushed myself to a 20-hour day that included manual labor (and I've got the sore muscles and bruises to prove it) so I'm going to wrap this up but I'll go to sleep tonight hoping that next week will finally see an end to our long, dark Bush/Cheney-fueled nightmare. Help us out, won't you?

Labels: politics