Well we seem to go in cycles. In the year 1999, everyone was worried that the
world would collapse because of Y2K bugs.

Power Plants were going to fail, stop lights would stop working, entire
communication networks would go down, and there would be mass riots in the
streets. Now we seem to be  saying the same things about the upcoming election.

Overly long lines in early voting, predictions of mass voter turnout on election
day causing 5 hour waits, electronic voting that would misread the finger
touches and go to the opposite party, and large amounts of voter fraud. Toss in
a little voter challenges by on-the-street lawyers for both parties and we have
the makings of a press
orgy  , er, I meant to say catastrophe.

All you have to do is look at any news site or blog, and there are literally
thousands of people screaming about how bad it is going to be. No one is
actually saying “hey, we seem to have this covered, we should be ok”. Standing
in line to vote isn’t anything new. I can only recall one time where I walked up
to vote and was less then 3 deep in line to cast my ballot. That was the
election between Bill Clinton and the first Bush. At that point, I had decided
to go early, so I was there at 7 am, and there were only a couple people in
front of me. I waited about 5 minutes, cast my ballot, and left.

I don’t recall hearing about any major problems then. Although, it is fairly
safe to say that news for the masses via the internet was not even around at
that time. Now it is everywhere, and anywhere. Internet, radio, tv and cell
phones are such an invasive thing these days, that it is almost impossible to go
10 minutes without having contact with one of the mediums. And those mediums are
awash with just how bad this is going to be.

In one state, there are already mass complaints of electronic voting machines,
touch screens, not reading people’s input correctly. In this case, democratic
voters are claiming that their votes are switching to the republican party.
Ironically, that agency running the show is headed by a republican, and they are
saying it is an anamoly. Obviously, this won’t look right.

Elsewhere, long lines are causing the retirees to say that they can’t wait that
long to stand in line, so they are being forced to not vote. These folks are
claiming to be republicans and they are being unjustly punished by the wait.

While it is fairly safe to say there will be problems, it is much safer to say
there will be way overblown reports of things that are glitches, and not really
the end of the world. Both sides will be tossing blame at anything and
everything hoping to see what will stick. Both sides will be filing lawsuits,
and both sides will be demanding recounts.

The only thing that would stop it would be an absolute landslide of the popular
vote. That means that one candidate would have to nail at least 60% of the
popular vote so that the other side will gracefully deliver their concession
speech.

Naturally, that is not likely to happen this time. Ironically, that same
smothering amount of information is almost a battle cry for both sides to get
out and vote. The only question this time is swing votes, since that seems to be
the deciding factor for this election. Previously, as little as 10 years ago,
people were simply not that in tune with what was going on. This election has
electrified both parties to a peak that hasn’t been seen before.

That being said, while there will be huge cries of fraud on both sides, the
actual panic of long lines, and faulty machines, and understaffed poll locations
is starting to sound very much like 1999.

This year, I did something unusual. I requested an absentee ballot. Will it get
counted?

The obvious answer is yes, but boy would it suck.

 Society today simply can’t handle a movie with that kind of humor. Think of this, an older man sits in an airplane cockpit with a young boy on his lap. He asks the boy “Joey, have you ever been in a men’s locker room?”, or “Joey, do you like gladiator movies?”. Think of how much outrage there would be about these perverted questions.

Or how about Dakota Fanning making a comment about “I like my coffee like I like my men.” That probably wouldn’t go over very well. I won’t even go into “Stewedess, I speak jive.”

No, in today’s pc society, there is no room for movies like this anymore. The closest we get is things like “Meet the Spartans”. Having not seen that, I can only guess that it is along the same lines as some of the other crap movies that attempt the comedy of old but fall way short.

Looks like I picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue.

As my father puts it, a Yellow-Dog-Democrat is a democratic voter who is true to the party. No matter who is on the Democratic ticket, you vote for them. In the off-chance that the democrats have run out of possibilities, they put a Yellow Labrador on the ticket. Every democrat that is a TRUE democrat, will vote for yellow-dog. Even if the dog shits on the carpet while accepting the nomination.

So here I sit wondering what would make the “killer” democratic ticket. Why you may ask? Because even though I tend to think republican, I don’t think that the republicans have proven themselves to be worthy of my vote this time around. We saw a lot of rhetoric about what they would do if they held “All” the power. Well for 2 years they did, and what did we get? Not a whole lot.

So now we have the tables turned. The Democrats actually hold the power of the congress. Are they getting anything done that deserves my vote? Nope. So why would I vote for a democratic presidential candidate?

Here is why: The balance of power. If you look back at history in general you will find that when there are HUGE hot button issues, the balance of power is always balanced. So the hot button issue of the day is the war. The president wants it, the dems don’t. The republican congress is keeping themselves VERY noncomital because it is bad mojo to speak against their leader, but also good for public image to speak against him. That makes it bad for them to go either way.

So what does that do to the balance of power? You will see that if you look at history, when you have a democratic president, you tend to get a republican controlled congress. Result: gridlock. When you have a republican president, you have a democratically controlled congress. Result: gridlock. The only time change will occur is if you have an incompetant boob as president and the people come out in droves to balance the power. They did this time, by putting the democrats in almost 60% control of the congress. Enough to hold votes up, but not enough to overturn presidential vetoes.

Welcome to the wonderful world of political gridlock.

So yeah, I am ostracized from political conversations because I don’t vote for old yeller. This year though, I will be watching to see what old yeller drags in from the field. Hope it’s not another dead raccoon.