AHA! Figured out the magic words to use with UPS customer service: "Is there someone else I can speak to who might have that information?" That got me a supervisor who is telling me he has the local office on the other line. I still have no coffee table, but I somehow feel closer. He's "going to see" if they can deliver it tomorrow. Of course, I had shit to do tomorrow! But whatever. I'm starting to think God doesn't want me to have a new coffee table. (The last one I bought didn't fit in my mother's car and I had to return it on the spot.)

Oh, I can come pick it up at your center tomorrow? No I can't, you fuckers! Someone's supposed to call me back.

Also, white women are obviously the worst.

Not verified with statistical evidence, but just observation. The Hispanic vote in S Florida has a wide South as well as Latin American origin. There has been a shift from conservative Republican to Progressive Democrat. A lot of it is generational. Catholic pro-life anti-communism very conservative in both social and economic issues ruled when I first moved here 30 some years ago. Now the Hispanic population is as mixed on social and economic issues as the rest of our population. The Immigration policy is yet another matter. Not even policy so much as perceived bigotry. Do I vote for them that wish my parents never came here or those that embrace diversification.

My polls are not based on a huge sampling, but my routine encounters with fellow Floridians has shown a dramatic shift in political affiliation. They also had to endure a change from Republican governors like Jeb and Charlie with sensible views on Immagration to our current sorry excuse for a governor who may have personally driven a number of citizens away from the Republican Party.

I don't know if this is the case in other states.

Also, white women are obviously the worst.

C’mon, it’s not like they’re white men.

Indeed, as a proportion of the total, more white women voted for Romney on Tuesday than voted for George W. Bush, in 2004, or for John McCain, in 2008.

That makes me really sad.

Oh, the kinds of trouble he will get when he has an amazon acct.

Yeah, that has occurred to me.

Poor noodle got so wound up about having to call me that he ended up in the nurse's office feeling queasy and in need of a lie down.

Here's a NY Times article that talks about the Latino vote and why it was up this year [link]

One of the interesting things it mentions is

In many states, Latinos did not wait for either the Democratic or the Republican campaigns to come to them. Instead they mounted coordinated voter registration and education efforts, giving them a degree of independence as a voting bloc and creating popular networks that they said they planned to mobilize again to bring pressure on the White House and Congress.

And Salon had this interesting number 80% of Mormons voted for Bush, but only 78% voted for Romney

The bigotry is a big part of it. If you are non-white it is hard to miss the huge open bigotry and even hatred of non-whites within the Republican party. When a lot of Republicans went beyond opposing Sonia Maria Sotomayor on policy grounds for the Supreme Court and called her a "lightweight" and pretended that she got ahead because of the huge advantages that come with being born poor and brown skinned, what exactly they were saying was pretty obvious. The Republican leadership forgot that "dogwhistle" is a metaphor, and that in point of fact when they use coded racism, people of color actually can break that code. I mean if you suffer racism regularly, you probably get pretty good at spotting it.