I'm really cynical too. I feel like so much of what people think is just "me me me" and "mine mine mine." You don't get my money. You don't get the same rights I have. You don't get anything I have, because I deserve it and you don't.

I'm pretty sure my next door neighbor voted for Obama. *waves at amyth* Once outside my little liberal enclave there are an awful lot of Romney signs. Eh, Silver projects that Obama will take it without NC. Still, it was nice to be in an allegedly blue state for a while.

The last several election cycles have made me very cynical about human intelligence.

H.L. Mencken said that "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

In non-election, non-pie news, there was a great piece on the World about a 40 year old realtor who is filling in as a practice goalie during the NHL lockout: [link] No transcript, but a surprisingly charming interview.

K is sad about the lack of hockey.

and there are also lots of people with different priorities who are making different choices based on the best information they have.

Well their priorities are wrong and they should feel bad. They should wake up the day after they voted, and think, "What the fuck was I thinking? I don't hate women. Why did I do that? Jesus, I suck." And then they should feel queasy all day and have a restless sleep for two weeks, getting haggard and red-eyed. And when they try to tell their friends that they were sorry they should face scorn! "Too fucking late now, man! Too fucking late." And they should not be invited to parties and sit alone at home trying to play Halo but nobody wants to play with them. Because of the shunning and the scorn.

I feel like that, too, Dana, but then people will open up veins and stuff for the red cross when there's a disaster. It's a strange dissonance.

Money is tight for me, but it's going to cost me like, one chinese take-out dinner a year to pay for better schools. WTF? I'll eat a bowl of cereal for better schools. And I can say that for people, and they'll start going mealy mouthed about how the teacher unions are at fault and so DONT TOUCH MY LO MEIN. But then that same person will start going nuts to ship the canned goods off to Staten Island. I scratch my head and wonder.

Money is tight for me, but it's going to cost me like, one chinese take-out dinner a year to pay for better schools. WTF? I'll eat a bowl of cereal for better schools

But also, all the parents who are voting against it... do they not realize that an extra 15 furlough days means your kid will get out in April and you'll be responsible for child care for that kid? After all for some parents school is just free child care.

sit alone at home trying to play Halo but nobody wants to play with them.

That's a campaign tactic that's sorely underused: "Vote Yes on Issue 783, or play Skyrim alone forever!"

I also don't really want to talk about this, but I'm not at peace

Oh, I am really not at peace about decisions that some of my family makes. My stepmom voted for Prop 8. I've talked myself sick since and she says she'd vote differently now but she's probably voting for Romney. She'll say she loves me but she (edit:legislatively) basically hates my life and who I might want to marry.

As really untraditional as her life has been, she'll vote for "traditional" and screw my choices up until we sit and talk for hours after the fact. Then she'll say that she had no idea it was a human rights issue and she just wanted the concept of a traditional marriage.

She was pregnant unmarried at 16 and then pregnant again at 22 with a different father. Never married to either. I am not slagging her. I think she's usually an amazing person. Her vote just so fails to deal with her life or mine.

Sort of aspirational voting.

Oh, absolutely. Vote for the tax bracket you hope to be in. I am boggled that there are people who don't even consider that this is happening.

That's a campaign tactic that's sorely underused: "Vote Yes on Issue 783, or play Skyrim alone forever!"

I'd have a little more leverage for my shame and scorn platform if I actually got online and played video games. So I could scorn people.