First wahoo of the night was that Elizabeth Warren was elected. (Is it too early to ask her to run for president next go round?)
Second wahoo is that Chellie Pingree is still my Representative (though as noted, I wanted her to be my Senator. On that subject, the Conservatives' attempt at electing a Republican to the Senate, via a sustained ratfucking campaign with the objective of splitting the vote, failed.)
Third wahoo of the night would be that after that fuck up in 2009 marriage equality has now been legalized in Maine. Also, at the same time I learned that those people in that other congressional district had not given Romney their vote. (Maine allocates votes thus: Two votes to the statewide winner, one vote each to the winner of each congressional district, of which there are two.)
Fourth wahoo of the night, Obama won.
-
Both of Maine's house seats stayed in Democratic hands and it's looking like gains were made in the House and Senate, but not enough in the House to flip it so we can probably expect at least two more years of Obama being constantly opposed even when he says, "The Republicans had a good idea, let's pass that."
On the other hand, the clearly stated objective of the Republican Party, House and Senate, for the past two years has been to make sure that Obama doesn't get a second term. He just did get one. They need a new objective. It'd be nice if they decided for an objective of doing their jobs, representing the constituents, and doing what's best for the country. I wouldn't count on it though.
In Maine, with calls left to be made, it looks like if present leans are maintained the State House and State Senate will go into Democratic hands. The Governor, a national embarrassment (at least I haven't heard of him going international yet) wasn't up for reelection yet, so he stays.
I feel like this is an enormous opportunity for some republicans to be the people who get stuff done, who agree with the president and the Dems that we need to move forward on jobs and energy (and energy jobs!) and education (and education jobs! and energy education!), and put their own stamp on it and become hugely popular nationally simply for being willing to get some shit done like fucking adults.
ReplyDeleteWhich is not to disparage children. If my six-year -old were in Congress, you can bet there would be some projects underway. And I'm sure the same goes for Romney's grandkids. Kids love to build things and fix things and set off on the adventure that is the future. We could take some pointers from them.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Kids with intelligent advisers running congress could, at the very least, fix our jobs problem.
DeleteChild: Let's build three story playgrounds everywhere.
Adviser: Define everywhere.
Child: Three in every town.
Adviser: Do you have any idea how much manpower-
Child: Girl power.
Adviser: Person power *beat* that would take? We'd need designers, construction workers, we'd need to manufacture the parts, we'd safety inspectors, we'd need testing.
Child: So?
Adviser: So we'd have to pay all of those people.
Child: Then pay them.
Adviser: And there aren't enough people with appropriate training.
Child: Then train them.
Adviser: And that costs money too.
Child: Then raise the money.
Adviser: But to do that we'd need to raise taxes.
Child: Then raise them.
Adviser: But that would hurt people who aren't rich.
Child: Then only raise them for rich people.
Adviser: But the current tax brackets include not quite rich people and rich people in the same group so we can't.
Child: Then have more brackets. Have like... *tries to think of a big number* a hundred.
Adviser: But that might make it more complicated for people to do their taxes.
Child: Then help people do their taxes.
Adviser: But to do that we'd have to hire even more people.
Child: Then hire them!
Adviser: Ok.
Jobs problem solved. Tax problem solved. The IRS is suddenly the people who find deductions for you so they become the good guys in many people's eyes because they can say, "Now in theory you'd have to pay X (big number) but I found you all these deductions so now you only have to pay Y (much smaller number)."
And all it cost us was some unnecessary playgrounds.
Or, for a different issue:
Adviser: The roads, bridges and dams are broken and/or damaged.
Child: Then fix them.
Adviser: Will do.
Infrastructure problems solved, probably a big chunk of the jobs problem as well for at least a while, which should kickstart the economy so there will be more job openings when there's no more infrastructure left to fix.
And I left out an earlier thought:
DeleteChild: I wanna go to Mars.
Adviser: To do that we'd need to increase funding to NASA and probably invent some new technologies.
Child: Then do it.
Think of how much stuff is based on technology created for the moon program. Then again, getting to Mars might not create as much new technology, pretty sure we already have the tech to get there, just not the funding or the will.
So how about this:
Adviser: Diabetes is costing us a lot of money and hurting a lot of people.
Child: Then cure it.
Adviser: That would require us to fund medical research across the country probably for years on end and make it a national priority on the level of the space program of the 1960s.
Child: So?
Adviser: So... um... I'm on it.
-
But we should still increase funding to NASA.
I like this solution.
DeleteWe do not yet have the tech to do a manned Mars mission. We know how to get the rocket there, but 2+ years in zero g, we don't know how to deal with that; and there are problems with the life support too. (You can't pack everything, you have to recycle: and the Biosphere projects show we aren't quite there yet on recycling. One fungus can gum up the whole project, and then there you are, halfway to Mars....) So we could learn a heck of a lot by trying.
ReplyDelete