Tuesday, November 2, 2010

VOTE!

GET OUT AND VOTE. Vote like your life depends upon it, because it does. Even if you've found the Administration up to this point disappointing, vote. IF you are outraged at corporate ownership of our system, vote. If you are pissed off at craven Democrats in Congress, vote. Because the tea party radicals and Republican nay-sayers have no interest in governing, only in campaigning, and it will assuredly be worse if they get in. The other side will NOT listen to us at all. They speak only for destruction. We have to vote in the Democrats, and then hold their feet to the fire!

4 comments:

JCF said...

Vote . . . AND celebrate the World Series win of the San Francisco Giants!

(Had to spam-bomb FOJ w/ my gloat-astic reveling, too! ;-D)

it's margaret said...

I did! We're done here --polls closed.

dr.primrose said...

One of the most depressing election results was the removal of three Iowa Supreme Court justices who voted in favor of marriage for same-sex couples, which the New York Times writes about here.

This was the result of huge amounts of out-of-state money being thrown against the justices, who were completely unfunded:

"The most sustained effort to oust judges in this election cycle was in Iowa, where out-of-state organizations opposed to gay marriage, including the National Organization for Marriage and the American Family Association, poured money into the removal campaign. Judges face no opponents in retention elections and simply need to win more yes votes than no votes to go on to another eight-year term. In Iowa, the three ousted justices did not raise campaign money, and they only made public appearances defending themselves toward the end of the election.

"Each of the three justices — Marsha K. Ternus, the chief justice; Michael J. Streit; and David L. Baker — received about 45 percent of the vote, making this the first time members of the state’s high court had been rejected by voters. The 71 lower court judges on the ballot all easily won re-election."

As the article notes, this will have no effect on the Iowa Supreme Court's ruling. But there's a serious concern that this sort of thing will have a demonstrable effect on judges' willingness to protect the rights of minority groups.

California has a similar electoral system. One of the justices who voted in favor of marriage for same-sex couples was on the ballot for an up-or-down vote but there didn't appear any kind of campaign against him on this issue, or anything else for that matter.

IT said...

The bad guys made it very clear they want to intimidate future judicial decisions. They are simply bullies.