I'm tired of elections

I can't wait till Tuesday. In CA we have a really horrible special election. Mind you we've had an election in 2003, 2004, this one, and we have two more in 2006. I'm burnt out and it kinda makes nervous because I'm actually interested in this stuff and I wonder if people who are not are also sick of elections. Ahnold threatened to bust out more awful propositions for, at least i'm assuming, the 2006 primaries. Just had to vent, haha.

aren't the celeb sightings fun? (just/kidding) After all, I heard that Warren Beatty and Annette tried to crash one of Arrnuld's fundraisers or something and the guards wouldn't let them in! OMG! LOL!

He's so Bush-like. He can't go anywhere w/o being protested and he insists on having handpicked audiences for his "townhall" meetings. He's such a bastard.

he is (darn, no arrrnuld emotion!)

Such a huge waste of space, and a laughingstock.

but I think its way too easy to recall someone and I fear that if we recall Arnold and get a Dem, the Repugs will find a way to recall the Democrat and we'll have a vicious cycle. Also, I don't want another election, haha

I hate him so, though!

Did you see the photos of Warren Beatty going up against his staff! Wonderful!

haha. Nobody likes Arnold. I know there's like thirty percent or whatever but I personally don't know anyone who likes him.

I guess the good people of CA didn't get exactly what they expected with that one, did they?
On second thought, I live in PA, so I have no room to criticize.

At least your Governor likes the state he's Governor of. Our Gov hates us. He goes out of his way to go around the country and ridicule the people who were dumb enough to elect him Gov.in the first place. (Thank goodness fo my Sens. They are balm to the soul after Romney.)

Maybe so but our state hates him! Bwahahahahahahaha. Bastid.

Now everybody hates him. It's Democrats who elected him since we run the state but now his support with Dems is at like 1%.

2003 was a bad year for us. First of all the state caught on fire, second of all we got that douchebag for a governor. Dark, dark year

He snookered everyone. People actually voted for him because he's Arhnold.

I've ever seen and I've lived here since 1972. Even my small town's town council race has become nasty beyond belief - you know things are in the gutter when the Republican in that race is accusing the Democrat of voting self interest because he voted agains covering the artifical turf on a soccer field (a wasteful Republican expense) and leafletting all the homes saying that the Democrat walks his dog into the park and that may cause the turf (on the soccer field - there is none in the areas the dogs play) may be hurt.

The governor's race is beyond dirty. It may still be ok, Dean was at 6 locations Saturday, and Obama was in several places today. So the Senate Democrats are really giving Corzine support.

And I understand Corzine has a nice lead over the other guy. Good for him!

and we are having the nastiest campaign season for mayor and town commissioners I can ever remember. Basically it boils down to developers who don't even live in town, fronting candidates to do their bidding for them so they can wreck the environment and develop the hell out of the island. (It's all about the money, people.) They are trying to unseat the incumbents who want to keep some integrity about how the town and island develop. To make matters worse, one of the incumbent candidates had a heart attack and died last week. Just awful. She's still on the ballot - I'm hoping beyond hope that she wins.

We did have a celebrity sighting though. Andy Griffith (yes, Sheriff Taylor) lives on the island and he was the main speaker for a rally a couple of nights ago in support of the incumbent candidates. He's going to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom this week by the way. I know he's proud of that, but I'm sure he would rather receive it from John Kerry because Andy is a major Democrat and he made a nice donation to the Kerry campaign last year (as per Newsmeat).

If anyone read all of that, sorry to bore you. Like GRLMGC, I just needed to vent. It's not only been nasty on DU for the past few weeks, but in real life too!

Come Tuesday, it'll all be over. Hopefully, it'll turn out well for all of us.

Oh, and its going to rain on Tuesday. Sucks for us,hahaha.

It's his initiatives you're voting on, right?

From the Midwest perspective, it's hard to imagine how this guy got elected. But yeah, it's the celebrity thing, and I think he was riding on the "national security" coattails of the repubs in Washington. Strong Alpha-male, blah, blah, blah. People who voted for him were disconnected from their brains!! Now they are all crashing and burning and being exposed for what they really are.

It's the same thing with Reagan: how did he manage to become president, anyway? A Hollywood actor. Sigh. Shows what money can do, I guess. The repubs who put Arnold in place are getting what they deserve. Here's to a long Dem majority in California!

I'm concerned about the rain, at least in Santa Barbara. Hopefully it won't affect Los Angeles because a bigger number of Dem voters probably comes from there since its bigger than San Francisco. Some people will find any excuse not to vote. This is important though. The idea of Arnold getting anymore power is scary.

Kilgore basically said Kaine would spare Hitler's life, because Kaine is against the death penalty in an ad here. I mean, can we please get through an election without conjuring up Nazis or Communists?

And in my district (Fedup -- are you in the 84th?), I know for a fact that the Republican is in bed with Pat Robertson and is way out of the mainstream for even moderates. But . . . the Dem candidate has gone so negative on him (calling him a jellyfish for having no backbone) which is a major turnoff to me. Yes, I'll still vote for her, but not as enthusiastically as before she decided to go negative. Oh yeah, and I met the Repub and I know he is an okay guy -- his politics are just all wrong -- and I kind of feel bad when the Dem uses a really bad picture of him and oversimplifies some issues. It's kind of a downer when you know you would have trouble defending her in an argument. Still, she's awesome on the environment and hopefully she wouldn't introduce kooky abortion bills like so many do here in VA. Oh yeah, one more gripe -- in her pamphlet she says she stands for "conservative Democratic values". I mean WTF is that? You can be "common sense values" or something like that, but last time I looked the Dem party is the liberal party (with lots of Centrists included) and the Republican party is the conservative party (with lots of radical right wingers - religious and neocon). Kaine's alright (he did awesome in the debate), but he badmouthed Kerry about windsurfing earlier this year which pissed me off to no end.

And I haven't BEGUN to start complaining about the nonstop automated calls we are inundated with. People stopping by at the house -- that's okay, but the robot calls are SO annoying, that I often just don't answer the phone.

A couple of years back, Ahnold was promoting his T3 film in Europe so he was on my husband's German TV being interviewed. And it was in German, which was kind of fun to hear! I lived in Germany so I can speak and understand German a little, and I noticed quite early that Ahnold sounded just as funny in German as English. It ends up he comes from a rednecky part of Austria and still talks like one. Of course, German speaking people get a kick out of him being governor and all, but the guy can't speak Hochdeutsch (proper German) worth a damn!

He speaks an Austrian German that is comparable to our American hillbilly-type twangs. They really really look down on him.

More dirty tricks from the repubs. They have put out a "Democrat and Progressive" guide and sent it to voters, with Kilgore's picture on it! Notice how they say "Democrat" rather than "Democratic"!

It's on MyDD: http://hugo-estrada.mydd.com/

in the mail. Ok so it is Russ Potts who is mailing this out, he is the Independent , but is really a Republican who is also running for Gov. Now the picture of Kaine does have the paid for by Virginia republicans and Kilgore. This is really :crazy: Republican tricks written all over it.

I got a pamphlet that looks like it's from Kilgore about abortion until you look at the bottom in tiny print that it's paid for by Kaine. Today I got a better abortion pamphlet, explaining that Roe v. Wade may be overturned leaving the issue to states, and Kilgore will put women in jail. I tell you, it's cynical to think, and horrible for single women, but if Roe v.Wade is overturned, well then, I think a LOT of single women who never voted before are going to wake up and start voting, thereby getting more Dems elected. Of course, we'll be back to the stone age, so maybe I would rather we get our votes a different way . . .

One reason I did not help in this campaign and I was ready to, was the way that Kaine has dissed JK. Damn it we are Democrats and guess what if JK was president today Kaine would be falling all over him, I'll stop there before I really go off.

My mailbox is filled everyday with Iaquinto and Kilgore stuff. Iaquinto may be a nice guy, but he is still on the wrong side. You know people yell if you don't fight and yell when you do fight back. I myself agree with you Beachmom I don't like all the negative. But if you remember last year we had an Iraqi war veteran running David Ashe who ran a wonderful campaign, and he was called every name in the book, yeah, they wave that support our troops but when that certain member of the troops is a Dem, somehow that support goes out the window. The day before the election last year I went to a rally at the Hilton in Norfolk with all the top Dems from the Governor on down and the mood was very optimistic, and the numbers looked very good and these were the inside numbers, not just for JK but for Ashe too, they felt a victory. But as we know the answer was different the next day. I will never forget that and how the numbers were so far off in the end will always gnaw at me.

Conservative values, I would also like to know what that means, the only conservative value I share is to balance the budget, but even that is more liberal value today. I do have her sign in my yard because a very nice young black woman came to my door and asked if I would like one and I said sure, I live in a very military neighborhood, she was so appreciative that I would do that, she was not having much luck that day, so I gave her a hug and said NGU. I still have David Ashe's sign in my garage and that will go up in my yard as soon as he announces he is running again. I have not had any Kaine people come to my door. I did have Iaquinto people, but I guess once they saw my Kerry stickers on my car in the driveway they were afraid to knock and just left the info in the door.

One thing that I have found out in the 2 and half years I have been involved in this wonderful world of politics, it is so damn ugly, and oh how I wish we could change it. I'll take weekly debates over all the ads anyday.

Beachmom, where do you vote at? I vote on Salem Road, you may be different than mine even though we don't live that far from each other.

He's a lot like JK -- he rushed to try to save a veteran who collapsed at a rally last year, giving him CPR and keeping him alive until the ambulance came (sadly, the man died later). Are you on his e-mail list? I am, and I received an e-mail from him a few months ago and he IS running next year in '06. Unlike many of you here, I haven't volunteered for a campaign yet, as I used to be an Independent, and then I've been busy having babies since * was first elected. But I am trying to think how I could help David Ashe next year. I just think he is someone of incredible character, but he was a little less experienced the first time around campaigning. I REALLY hope he can beat Thelma Drake next year, as she is the worst kind of Republican one can have -- completely in the pocket of Exxon Mobile, Halliburton, and Tom Delay (all 3 gave her PAC campaign money).

I was actually feeling bad for not volunteering to help Tim Kaine (I'm sure you also rec'd an e-mail from JK asking to volunteer), but for the same reason as you, I just couldn't get excited about Kaine, when he felt the need to put JK down. But, of course, in conversation I urge everyone to vote for him. Around here, I refer to Kaine as a Centrist, and Kilgore as too right wing for my taste.

Agreed on Iaquinto -- I know I could never vote for him -- he represents everything I'm against, but on the other hand, he's coming across classier than Supriya and that's unfortunate. I guess what bugs me is she's going negative on him about Oceana, and to me that's a very difficult issue, which she's trying to make black and white, which it's not. Instead, if she wanted to go negative, she could talk about how he won't fight for working people or the environment, but instead will only fight for the big corp. who prop him up. He's also a major anti-tax guy which means he thinks that the tax dollars of the rich are more important than, say, education.

I actually vote at the firehouse in the municipal courthouse area. It'll be a fun outing for me and the kids on Tues. I'm sure it'll be a low voter turnout since it's just a governor's race. Last year I had a bad experience at the polls. I went by myself early in the morning and there was a big line. I ended up next to an acquaintenance -- a lady I knew not really at all from my hair salon, who went on and on about how she hated Clinton???!!!??? I just said "uh huh, uh huh" because I didn't want to get into a fight a few feet in front of the polls, but what I really wanted to say was "well, if Clinton were on the ballot today, I would vote for him in a second, just like the other 2 times I did!!" Then as I approached the polls, the Republicans had a huge poster of the WTC, just unbelievably tasteless. I mean, using the deaths of 3000 people, to win a campaign right in front of the poll -- just disgusting!!!! But I felt like a total minority, being a Democrat (* won our precinct 60-40), so I couldn't make a scene even though I was seething by the time I walked in to vote. But then we have punch cards, so I had to concentrate to make sure I voted correctly. Good God, I hope I voted correctly. Okay, I will stop thinking about that now, and those damned punch cards . . .

I encourage everyone to vote for Kaine too, although I seeth underneath, I know we need to keep a Dem in office. I do agree Oceana is a very difficult issue, all kinds of opinions, the jet noise can be awful, but if Oceana leaves it will definitely hurt Virginia Beach economy in more ways than one. One of the reasons we stayed here in Virginia was for the benefits we receive from having military bases so close to us.

I will have to buzz over to Ashe's website, I thought I had signed up, but I guess I didn't. I met him the first time at a Kerry Meet-up, he was IMO too, much like JK. I also thought he ran a very positive campaign. I worked at my poll, and we could not set up any campaign signs etc. beyond 40 ft. from the door. The Repubs showed up and had their truck set up right at that line, where I just had voter info and info on David Ashe, they had a mini campaign headquarters set up. Yes Kerry loss in Virginia Beach, but he won in every other city known as Hampton roads. To bad VB is the largest city in the area.

Let me tell you a story about punch cards. My oldest son, who voted for the first time in 2000, a college educated person, told me after he voted how he did it. He goes yeah I punched out # 57, I said #57, what do you mean. He said that was the number next to Gore's name, I said yeah, but why did you need the #, if you put it in the slot it lines the name to the hole you punch. Then he said "what slot?" then I said OMG, I did not know he was completely unaware of how to cast his vote. I still think of him and that first vote everytime hanging chad is mentioned.