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[Thad]

Frankly I'm surprised it's as close as it is.  Goddard's the longshot here, not her.

(I DO find it amusing that she supports prop 111; wish she'd make it retroactive.)

[Brentai]

See, with a nearly competent Democratic party, I'd be thrilled to see her elected.  Absolutely elated.  I would start drawing up plans to give her and I am Not a Witch the most publicity any elected official has ever received.  Let her talk as muuuuuuch as she wants.  MAKE her talk.  Make that drooling hag the thing people think about when they think about conservatives.

But no mostly she's just going to quietly fuck up a backwater state that a couple of my friends for some reason insist on living in.

[Brentai]

Though I guess we already got Sarah Palin, and she wasn't much help.

[Bal]

See, the problem with that is that Jan Brewer is going to be our fucking Governor, which means nothing to anybody but the poor, benighted citizens of Arizona. Maybe if Gabriel Giffords loses it will become part of the overall "tea party can't get anything done" movement about to happen in Washington, but I don't want that either, because I live in her district.

[Shinra]

I don't know what it is with people in this part of the country, this entire southwest region here. Most of the electorate just seems to eat crazy fed straight to them with a spoon, even when all the logic in the world is staring them right in the face.

Had a conversation with another driver when I first started here at Papa Johns about taxes; it went like this-

Me: "Man, I can't believe how high our taxes are in this state. I pay more income tax in Oklahoma than I ever did in Michigan, and our sales tax is twice as high, but the roads suck, we're 49th in education, and our social programs stink. If I'm going to pay this much in taxes, I'd like to see something done with it."
Him: "Yeah, it's all those fucking people living on welfare and collecting unemployment, they think, he's working so I shouldn't have to work."
Me: "You know, I could understand that argument normally, but this state hardly pays out anything in social programs, my wife gets social security and her case worker couldn't qualify for food stamps or any kind of income assistance despite being a single mother making 900 dollars a month from her job."
Him: "Yeah, I know what you mean, I had this guy I worked with for a while who got laid off, and 90 days after being laid off he still didn't have a job, and there's no excuse for that, I mean I'm paying, blah blah, obama etc"

Paraphrasing, but not exaggerating - I'm serious, he just blew through everything I was saying to rant off the party line about how welfare is stealing from taxpayer pockets. In some parts of Oklahoma, we pay a 12% sales tax, our only good roads in the entire state are our turnpikes (which were supposed to cease being toll roads 8 years ago when they finished paying for themselves, but that never ended up getting done) which we pay a ridiculous amount to use, and income and property taxes are ridiculous, and yet we have nothing here. In a state where reasonable, sane people lived, people would be demanding accountability, people would want to know where the fuck all of this money was going. It's a southwest thing, I guess. The only thing more important than religion here is whether or not we're going to run out them damn mexicans. Expect crazy from us.

[Mongrel]

Though I guess we already got Sarah Palin, and she wasn't much help.

Well, fortunately no board members live in her state.

[Bal]

Gabrielle Giffords wins! Yay! So does Jan Brewer, oh shit.

[Royal☭]

I wonder how that whole Prop 106 thing is going to go down.

[Bal]

It passed, but it won't be tested for awhile I suspect.

[Pacobird]

You can't keep a good moustache down.



In other news, a guy I went to law school with got poleaxed by John McCain in the Senate race.  Following Rodney's political "career" so far has actually given me some perspective on how party machines work and why they are so successful. You throw the neophytes in to races they can't win to start out and see how they do, and the ones who actually do pretty well end up running against vulnerable candidates a few years down the line.  Third party candidates without that system of pseudo-apprenticeship, to say nothing of money, don't stand a goddamn chance.

[Thad]

Election link for those who don't know what the hell a 106 is.

It passed, but it won't be tested for awhile I suspect.

Well, we're already suing the federal government.  106 is a money sink; we're going to lose a shit-ton of money defending it and the courts are going to say sorry, commerce clause.

107, the anti-affirmative action one, is probably going to cost us too.

Nice to see 109 didn't pass, at least.  That was the one where they tried to get us to give up our right to ballot initiatives concerning hunting and fishing.  One of the guys in the "for" section actually spent several paragraphs basically saying "You're too incompetent to vote for things; please give up your rights and let the grownups handle it."

110's too close to call, which is odd because it seemed to have pretty broad bipartisan support -- everyone from Chamber of Commerce to Sierra Club -- and I don't recall any arguments "against" in the packet.

Lieutenant Governor fails, which, blah, I don't have strong feelings one way or another about it, but it sure would have been nice not to have Brewer as governor.

112's a dead heat.  What the fuck was 112 again?  Oh, pushing the signature deadline to earlier in the year.  I don't like it; more advantages toward people who already have a well-organized machine.

113, the anti-union one passes.  Disappointing but not surprising.

Medical marijuana still too close to call.

Oh hey, we didn't completely defund the land conservation fund.  And holy shit, it failed by FIFTY POINTS.  This is the single surest sign that there's some shred of sanity left in this state.

Didn't defund early childhood development, either; failed by 40.  Okay, I'm feeling a LITTLE better about this election.

District 7's too close to call but Grijalva's up just a bit.  That would be the surest repudiation of 1070 we've had.

Anyway, blah.  No further comment.

[Ted Belmont]

So it turns out the immigration law was basically written by private prison lobbyists.

See thread title.

[Thad]

Goddard tried to run on the private prisons issue.  He could have done a better job.  But even if he had, this just wasn't his year.

I expect the private prison scandal to build quickly in the coming years -- did you guys hear about the inmates who escaped and killed somebody? -- but it's not there yet.  And it's not going to make a difference in terms of public approval of SB1070.

[Thad]

President of Arizona Senate: "I don't make the law, I enforce the law."

[Mongrel]

"AN I'M DE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH!"

[Catloaf]

Well no wonder he sucks at his job.  He thinks he's a police officer.  Which just reinforces his racism.

[Brentai]

So uh is he going to stop making laws then?  That's fine with me.

[Royal☭]

Arizona has finally lots its shit

Fountain Hills apparently cares way too much about who is collecting their garbage.

[Shinra]

The green police will arrest you for not recycling. Are you fucking kidding me?

Jesus christ, look at what Fox News has done to our country. These people were, no doubt, always fucking crazy, but having a major news network encouraging them to say the stupid fucking shit brewing in their head (HE'LL PAINT THE WHITE HOUSE BLACK HURRRR MUSLIM HURRR BONE THROUGH THE NOSE WITCH DOCTOR OBAMACARE) is just really making us look like a nation of morons.

"It seems counterintuitive, but in order for this proposal to pass, I believe I had to downplay the benefits of recycling," she said. "When ideology prevents rational discussion of a really pretty mundane topic, trash, there is no perspective. Everything is suspect, which paralyzes us."

You know, there's honestly some pretty good arguments to be made against recycling (at least in terms of cost to overall benefit and how much space we actually have to dump our trash) but we're talking about putting a little square bin next to your garbage can that you don't even have to fucking use. On top of all of that, cutting themselves down to a single trash hauling company is probably saving the city hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, that they probably really need to save because republican leadership in Arizona makes sure that nobody has the funding they need because hurr durr taxes.

[Bal]

I think the bigger issue here is, who fucking cares who picks up the god damned trash? Unless the whole operation is mobbed up or something, who gives a flying fuck? Honestly? So long as I can take the bin out to the curb once a week and someone makes it empty, I don't fucking care who that guy is.