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Absolute power.

Well, OK then. Faith restored, bal­ance forth­com­ing, etc. etc. For the record, I don’t think 2007 promises a geyser of ponies on every lawn, but maybe it serves as a wake-up call.

Noth­ing demon­strates my state of mind bet­ter than my vote in the Michi­gan governor’s race. Sel­dom have I pulled a lever with less enthu­si­asm than I did for Jen­nifer Granholm yes­ter­day. As I explained ear­lier in the fall, there is only one issue of con­cern to Michi­ga­ni­ans, and likely will be for some time: Eco­nomic devel­op­ment. This state is going through a parox­ysm of agony over the drain­ing of good-paying man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs, jobs that are likely never com­ing back. The time is long, long over­due for every busi­ness leader and pol­icy maker in the state to be think­ing cre­atively about how we diver­sify our state’s econ­omy so that we aren’t so depen­dent on one sec­tor. I don’t expect gov­ern­ment to fix the prob­lem, but I expect it to be part of the solu­tion. I expect pub­lic office hold­ers to be pay­ing attention.

Granholm’s “plan” for eco­nomic recov­ery hasn’t done squat so far and likely won’t in the future. Dick DeVos spent $40 mil­lion of his own money to point this out; for months and months, he’s been adver­tis­ing on tele­vi­sion, point­ing this out. She was wide-open and vulnerable.

How­ever.

DeVos didn’t have much of a plan of his own, other than the usual: Tax cuts tax cuts tax cuts. He had no clear answer for how he was going to rec­on­cile these cuts with polit­i­cal real­ity in Michi­gan — what do we cut else­where? Mum­ble mum­ble. Still, he was only point­ing out the obvi­ous, and for much of the sum­mer and into the cam­paign he had a handy lead over Granholm, until she started her own adver­tis­ing, and his lead shrank to noth­ing more or less overnight.

And the next words out of his mouth were: Intel­li­gent design.

I was appalled. Rarely have I felt so insulted as a voter. It was flag-burning and Willie Hor­ton all over again.

DeVos advo­cated Michi­gan school­child­ren be taught ID in sci­ence class. Now. By my reck­on­ing we’ve already fought this bat­tle twice, once on the local level (Penn­syl­va­nia) and once on the state (Kansas), and both times the issue was a stun­ning defeat for the pro-ID camp. Pre­sum­ably DeVos is not so dumb that he thinks he could just slide this one by the peo­ple of Michi­gan, and knows that even if he could push it through the state board of edu­ca­tion, it would lead to yet another months-long, out­ra­geously expen­sive and ulti­mately point­less court bat­tle. Recall, again, that we’re in a one-state reces­sion here, unem­ploy­ment above 7 per­cent, and Job One is con­vinc­ing the employ­ers of the 21st cen­tury that Michi­gan will be a good place to do busi­ness, with its pri­or­i­ties straight and its work­force well-educated and ready.

Isn’t that just what we don’t need? The third rerun of the Scopes mon­key trial? National ridicule, cable-news hot air, the Dis­cov­ery Insti­tute poobahs tes­ti­fy­ing again about their “alter­na­tive” theory?

You’d think.

So you have to fig­ure DeVos knows this, too. If he believes God made the world accord­ing to his design, that’s his busi­ness. He can’t pos­si­bly think Michigan’s mon­key trial would be the third-time charm. And he knows that, in a state as blue/purple as this one, his chances of tak­ing the idea very far are pretty low. So what was he really say­ing when he said, “Let’s teach ID in sci­ence class”? Just this:

Psst, reli­gious right. I’m just like you!

And that, finally, was enough for me to say, uh-uh. Because if there’s one group of peo­ple I have, finally, heard quite enough from, it’s those guys. Enough cul­ture war­ring, please. You see what hap­pens to the art of polit­i­cal com­pro­mise when you deal with extrem­ists; you say, “OK, look, no one feels totally hunky-dory about abor­tion. So let’s sit down together and see what we can do about it.” And their reply is, “There is no com­pro­mise. My posi­tion is the only moral one avail­able, but while we’ve got you, be advised: Our next fun issue will be to make it per­fectly legal for your phar­ma­cist to insert his own pious mor­al­iz­ing into your rela­tion­ship with your doc­tor, and make you drive 100 miles to get birth-control pills.”

The Schi­avo case was hideous enough — the gov­er­nor of Florida and U.S. Con­gress pok­ing their noses into one family’s agony, not to men­tion the spec­ta­cle of Catholic priests going on talk shows to insin­u­ate Michael Schi­avo beat his wife into a coma and now wants to fin­ish the job. As though this pathetic woman with her brain turn­ing slowly to pud­ding was about to wake up one day and say, “Don’t let him fin­ish the job.”

But sup­pose there was hope for Terri Schi­avo, and it lay in stem-cell research. Those same lying priests would have said it was bet­ter for her to spend her life flick­ing her unsee­ing eyes across the walls of her nurs­ing home than for one 16-cell blas­to­cyst to be used for sci­ence. Because to do so would be just like Dr. Mengele’s exper­i­ments on twins, don’t you know.

So farewell to those folks, too. Bye, Rick San­to­rum; dogs every­where appre­ci­ate your inter­est in their wel­fare, but alas. (Yes, I know: Bob Casey is pro-life, too. But he’s not Rick San­to­rum. An improvement.)

And then, finally, there’s the war. Already the airy argu­ments are begin­ning. Sniffed HTML war­rior James Lileks: “…per­haps it’s pos­si­ble for a coun­try to win a war with apolo­gies and inves­ti­ga­tions.” Uh-huh. Funny. Of course, it wasn’t pos­si­ble for us to win the war with Don­ald Rums­feld in charge, either, WHICH WAS THE POINT, AFTER ALL. I could accept the war, opposed to it as I am, if I thought it were being run com­pe­tently, but it’s the Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina of for­eign pol­icy, and instead of account­abil­ity, what we get from the Bush admin­is­tra­tion is: Heck­uva job, Brownie! We need more sol­diers; what we should be hear­ing from the 101st Fight­ing Key­board­ers is why the frat-house row at Dart­mouth isn’t empty, because all the patri­otic young Repub­li­cans have marched off to fight in this war they believe so fer­vently in. But we don’t hear that. We don’t hear much at all, other than, “I guess we’re going to cut and run now.”

Cut­ting and run­ning makes more sense, at this point, than more wasted Amer­i­can lives. Unless we could put Rummy in body armor and put him on the tur­ret gun of a Humvee, patrolling Tikrit.

So that’s the mood of one voter, today. I’m not exult­ing over the GOP shel­lack­ing, but I am pleased to see they’ve learned about pen­du­lums and what they do. This was a cor­rec­tive, and it was long overdue.

Posted on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 at 9:34 am
in Current events.

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35 responses to
“Absolute power.”

  1. Bob said on November 8th, 2006 at 10:27 am

    Dis­ap­point­ing out­come locally, but I’m not sur­prised. I’ve got­ten quite accus­tomed to my favored can­di­dates los­ing, and when they win it’s quite a sense of elation.

    I used to think that I should move to a place where the val­ues of the over­all demo­graphic more closely resem­ble my own, but even­tu­ally I came to the real­iza­tion that it wouldn’t change my life, or any­one else’s, all that much. I just had to learn to man­age my need for affir­ma­tion and for feel­ing in control.

    Stay­ing in one of the red­dest parts of one of the red­dest states, I man­age to find sat­is­fac­tion and ful­fill­ment in occa­sion­ally annoy­ing the peo­ple whose val­ues I con­tra­dict, and once in a great while I actu­ally can actu­ally raise one or two people’s aware­ness of issues/viewpoints they had never before con­tem­plated. Had I moved to a place like San Fran­cisco or Los Ange­les or even Chicago, I might have been assim­i­lated into the intro­verted, self-absorbed gay micro­cosm and never been heard from again, part of the abstract, face­less “other” the (self-) right­eous rail against.

    I’m grat­i­fied that the Repub­li­cans have lost con­trol of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Per­haps the change will force them to rec­og­nize the lia­bil­ity of the pros­ti­tiu­tion of their party to the reli­gious extrem­ists’ agenda. They may even­tu­ally return to prag­matic con­ser­vatism, if they can throw off the yoke they have sub­jected them­selves to over the past sev­eral years. The change may also give the Democ­rats a chance to demon­strate that they can gov­ern respon­si­bly, and prove that Nancy Pelosi doesn’t really intend to make same-sex mar­riage mandatory.

    I’m very con­cerned, though, that the Democ­rats will blow their oppor­tu­nity. They have an uncanny knack for cre­at­ing humil­i­at­ing defeat out of can’t-lose cir­cum­stances, and Democ­rats appar­ently aren’t teflon-coated the way Repub­li­cans seem to be.

  2. Dwight the Troubled Teen said on November 8th, 2006 at 10:35 am

    “I’m not exult­ing over the GOP shellacking”

    “These are not the droids you’re look­ing for.”

  3. Judith said on November 8th, 2006 at 10:44 am

    Won­der­ful com­men­tary – wish you were still writ­ing here in Ft. Wayne. You were right that it would be a light­ning bolt if Mark Souder would be defeated. So it is bit­ter­sweet to see the D’s vic­to­ries that will hope­fully change the course of our country’s poli­cies, while acknowl­edg­ing that in this dis­trict many vot­ers did not com­pare the two men, but in fear voted against Nancy Pelosi and the pos­si­bil­ity that a D agenda would be dev­ast­ing for many rea­sons only they can under­stand.
    Bob is right that the D’s may blow it – how we need more reps like Lee Hamil­ton who worked with those on both sides of the aisle. Whe have the knowl­edge and power in the US to work with allies to solve prob­lems if we can get away from tun­nel vision.

  4. brian stouder said on November 8th, 2006 at 11:01 am

    I came across a term in a bio of Walt Dis­ney that I really liked — ‘para­noid populism’ — wherein the empha­sis is on the fears and prej­u­dices of the lit­tle guy, as opposed to ‘clas­sic pop­ulism’ wherein the inter­ests of the Lit­tle Guy are cham­pi­oned against the big pow­ers and interests.

    The GOP’s paranoid-populist ‘base’ strat­egy got whipped, which is a good thing.

    I pre­dict the Dems will be dis­ci­plined, eschew­ing an orgy of ‘pay­back’ (ala the mid-90’s GOP con­gress) in favor of sub­stan­tial leg­is­la­tion and governance.…because a HUGE elec­tion is next up — with no incum­bents run­ning for the pres­i­dency, and a great chance to either take the sen­ate or else solid­ify the nar­row con­trol of the upper house that they just won.

    In three years peo­ple may well look back on how it was in 2005, just after Kat­rina petered out, and (with gen­uine wonder)ask “how did we ever let things get to THAT point?”

  5. Danny said on November 8th, 2006 at 11:04 am

    Folks, though I would con­sider myself a reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tive, I also real­ize we live in a plu­ral­is­tic, sec­u­lar soci­ety. I agree with many of the points made by Nancy made. I’m am soooo not inter­ested in pub­lic schools teach­ing “alter­na­tives” to evo­lu­tion and lead­ing kids in morn­ing prayers. It would be enough for me if they would just leave off insin­u­at­ing that evo­lu­tion is the only pos­si­ble truth (snidely scoff­ing at other philoso­phies) and demand­ing that ele­men­tary school kids need to be taught the whole spec­trum of adult sexuality.

    Unfor­tu­nately, the GOP, in their agres­sive pan­der­ing to some in the the reli­gious right (prob­a­bly the hyp­ocrits), has messed every­thing up and pissed every­one off.

  6. John said on November 8th, 2006 at 11:17 am

    I feel vin­di­cated in a bit­ter­sweet way. I’m 44, but I have a num­ber of friends who are in their mid or early 30s. They are all die-hard lib­er­als and were edg­ing out on the ledge look­ing down at the traf­fic two years ago. Some were talk­ing about mov­ing to Canada. I remem­ber think­ing, “this too shall pass.” And I remem­ber also think­ing, “I am offi­cially old.” What I knew and they didn’t was that we were just as depressed — well, almost as depressed — when Rea­gan was Pres­i­dent. I remem­ber look­ing at peo­ple like Jerry Fal­weel and James Watts and think­ing we were doomed. But the pen­du­lum swung. And as I looked at the wreck­age after 2004 I hon­estly felt that the tip­ping point was close. Now it’s here. And it feels good. I just hope the Dems don’t mess it up. Because the other sink­ing feel­ing I have is this: Any Repub­li­can you can think of is smarter than W. And he beat us twice. So we bet­ter bring our A game.

  7. Joe Kobiela said on November 8th, 2006 at 11:42 am

    So what is the Dems Plan???
    Through the whole elec­tion all I heard was Bush is stu­pid lets tax the wealthy. Now that you have your vic­tory what are you going to do??? As for why arn’t the frat houses empty, the last time I checked, now cor­rect me if I am wrong The Army is a vol­un­teer army, I think that means you do not have to go unless you sign up. I also would argue that the major­ity of our armed forces are well schooled. I know my niece and her hus­band both have mas­ter degee’s and are lif­ers. As for Busch being dumb, his grades were bet­ter than Kerry’s and he flew a very com­plex high per­for­mance jet fighter. Just because you may not speak the kings eng­lish does not make you dumb. Look gang unem­ploy­ment is 4.4 the mar­ket is up and intrust rates are down. there is more money com­ing into the Tre­suary now then ever, low taxes are GOOD, high taxes are BAD, You all won but lets see how things look in 2yrs before we go giv­ing saint hood to the dems.
    Please excuse the spelling, I am just a dumb fac­tory worker and should be in Iraq acord­ing to Mr Kerry, Because I am un edu­cated. Although I can fly a jet
    Cheers from still Repub­li­can Auburn In
    Joe

  8. Danny said on November 8th, 2006 at 11:46 am

    Amen, Joe!

  9. ashley said on November 8th, 2006 at 12:26 pm

    Well,

    Liv­ing in New Orleans, I had a dif­fer­ent set of pri­or­i­ties than Amer­i­cans did for this elec­tion. Here’s a 3:11 video that explains what I was look­ing for out of this fed­eral admin­is­tra­tion, and did not get.

    Kat­rina and the fail­ure of the fed­er­ally built and main­tained lev­ees were my lit­mus test. The GOP failed.

    And Joe, unfor­tu­nately for all of us, the days of the GOP being fis­cally respon­si­ble are gone; and the days of the Dems being the party of social pro­grams are gone. Per­haps the neo­cons will be expunged from the GOP due to this elec­tion, and we will once again see a true con­ser­v­a­tive party. Per­haps also, we’ll see a plan from the Dems.

  10. brian stouder said on November 8th, 2006 at 12:50 pm

    Leav­ing specifics aside just for today, it is exhil­a­rat­ing to see the “ins” get pitched out on their ear, yes?

    Life is short enough to jus­tify a smile and to hell with the details for a day or two, eh?

    Like in that scene from Pat­ton — where George C Scott says

    http://​www​.imdb​.com/​t​i​t​l​e​/​t​t​0​0​6​6​2​0​6​/​quotes

    For over a thou­sand years, Roman con­querors return­ing from the wars enjoyed the honor of a tri­umph — a tumul­tuous parade. In the pro­ces­sion came trum­peters and musi­cians and strange ani­mals from the con­quered ter­ri­to­ries, together with carts laden with trea­sure and cap­tured arma­ments. The con­queror rode in a tri­umphal char­iot, the dazed pris­on­ers walk­ing in chains before him. Some­times his chil­dren, robed in white, stood with him in the char­iot, or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the con­queror, hold­ing a golden crown, and whis­per­ing in his ear a warn­ing: that all glory is fleeting.

    enjoy!

  11. Dorothy said on November 8th, 2006 at 2:14 pm

    Just got a CNN break­ing news e-mail that Rums­field is step­ping down.

  12. nancy said on November 8th, 2006 at 2:21 pm

    The ter­ror­ists have won!

  13. Danny said on November 8th, 2006 at 2:47 pm

    Well, Nancy. We will see. A friend at work told me he was watch­ing Al-Jazerra and that there was a lot of video of cel­e­bra­tions relat­ing to the out­come of the election.

  14. John said on November 8th, 2006 at 3:19 pm

    Joe’s post sim­ply can­not go unremarked-upon. I will accept the fact that Bush flew a com­pli­cated jet fighter if Joe will accept the fact that, when the day came for the future commander-in-chief’s com­bat phys­i­cal, he sim­ply didn’t show up. The word for this is cow­ardice. He sup­ported the war and lots of kids his age, many of whom didn’t, were dying in it. But they weren’t rich sons of con­gress­men. W wanted to go to the Har­vard Busi­ness School. So he did. And no mat­ter what Karl Rove’s swift-boat hatchet men said, Kerry vol­un­teered for com­bat ser­vice, turned his very uncom­pli­cated boat around under enemy fire and pulled a fel­low sol­dier out of the water. That a chck­en­hawk like Bush could sully the rep­u­ta­tion of a dec­o­rated vet­eran is one of the most bizarre and shame­ful episodes in the his­tory of Pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics.
    As for whether our Pres­i­dent is dumb, I’m not one of those who say that, even though I think it. Bet­ter to run through the litany of his fail­ures. But I will point Joe to Bob Woodward’s “State of Denial,” which I just fin­ished. (And remem­ber, Woodward’s other Bush books have been flat­ter­ing.) There is a scene in which retired Leut. Gen­eral Jay Gar­ner, tapped to han­dle post-war Iraq, sits in the Oval Office, tells the Pres­i­dent there is not an ade­quate plan in place, there are not enough troops com­mit­ted to the job and that sev­eral of the things Bush and Rums­feld were expect­ing him to do he would sim­ply not be able to do. He also told them that it was cru­cial to the post-war effort that the Iraqi army be imme­di­ately put to work secur­ing and rebuild­ing the coun­try. Gar­ner essen­tially told them their post-war plan, to the extent that they had one, was sig­nif­i­cantly flawed. Bush’s only responses were these:
    “Just a minute,” the Pres­i­dent inter­rupted. “Where are you from?“
    “Florida, sir.“
    “Why do you talk like that?“
    “Because I was born and raised on a ranch in Florida. My Daddy was a rancher.“
    “You’re in.” the Pres­i­dent said.

    And as Gar­ner was leav­ing, awk­wardly, after there were no ques­tions when he’d expected a bar­rage of them, the Pres­i­dent said this:
    “Kick ass Jay.”

    When I think of the lives have been lost because of this man’s incom­pe­tence, and the for­eign pol­icy prob­lems were are going to have for decades .… I’ll stop now and enjoy the Demo­c­ra­tic victory.

    Sorry for the long post.

  15. a different Connie said on November 8th, 2006 at 4:00 pm

    Wow, great post. The old, angry, polit­i­cal Nancy is back. (And I mean that in a good way.)

  16. brian stouder said on November 8th, 2006 at 4:22 pm

    I con­fess — hear­ing all the cry­ing, whin­ing, and flatly dis­hon­est inter­pre­ta­tions waft­ing across the office from the likes of Uncle Rush and local talk-radio lip flap­per Pat White strike me as par­tic­u­larly (and some­what oddly).…..satisfying! (all the ver­bal gym­nas­tics and apolo­gias are sorta like the Kama Sutra of polit­i­cal denial)

  17. mary said on November 8th, 2006 at 5:17 pm

    It’s a big day. Rumsfeld’s leav­ing, Brit­ney kicked out Kevin, Santorum’s look­ing for work, and I got a fax from a nurse recruiter named Joseph Butta­fuoco.
    It’s all good.

  18. Jeff said on November 8th, 2006 at 5:22 pm

    As Danny and i hope to show by our com­ments (heck, by our pres­ence here), reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives aren’t all that mono­lithic. We’re a fairly frac­tured con­glom­er­ate with only a few issues of com­mon con­sen­sus, and no lead­ers to speak of, other than a reflex­ive respect for Billy Gra­ham. Most of the clergy i have con­tact with have been “Hag­gard? Who is he?” the last few weeks, and have long car­ried a heavy load of sus­pi­cion about Dobson’s desire to be our pied piper.

    Ohio still has a big reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tive base, and they voted for a non-attending for­mer min­is­ter over the red meat con­ser­v­a­tive — i sus­pect there’s more racism than sin­cere pol­icy analy­sis in many R’s who voted against Black­well, but they also voted in a num­ber of D’s for House seats and even shrugged at state wide seats (help­ing Nancy’s friend Judge Brun­ner over the top, too), but voted for the state audi­tor can­di­date who fore­grounded her CPA cre­den­tials over party.

    We’re party ori­ented, but not party com­mit­ted. Quite a few of us are pro-civil union, which annoys our puta­tive lead­ers, even as we vote against expand­ing the def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage; we are pro-fiscal man­age­ment even if it loses us bridges to nowhere in our own dis­tricts, but voted for a min­i­mum wage amend­ment hold­ing our noses about the con­si­ti­tu­tional skank­i­ness of how it would be implemented.

    Our self-proclaimed lead­ers (think Rod *coff* Parsely *coff*) thought we would hold our noses and vote R, instead, show­ing how well those shep­herds know their flocks.

    Any­how, there are few gen­er­al­iza­tions that hold across reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives, Intel­li­gent Design being a great exam­ple. Most of “us” think it is prima facie silly, let alone wrong for schools and sci­ence class­rooms. But the idea that we’ll vote for any old creationist-anti-gay gas­bag should be well and truly buried by this elec­tion, i would hope.

    In Grace & Peace,
    Jeff

  19. ashley said on November 8th, 2006 at 5:24 pm

    Oh, and Hastert will not seek a lead­er­ship posi­tion in the minor­ity party.

    It looks like a lot of Hastert could be bulldozed…unlike New Orleans.

  20. Danny said on November 8th, 2006 at 5:33 pm

    It looks like a lot of Hastert could be bulldozed…unlike New Orleans.

    Hoy crap, Ash­ley. You ARE a quote machine. That was brilliant!

    Jeff, your com­ments above are very, very well put and much appreciated.

  21. Candy Schultz said on November 8th, 2006 at 6:18 pm

    I really hated vot­ing for Granholm also but had no choice. I have issues with her han­dling of the “shoot first” bill. I do think there is a lot more blame to be laid at the feet of the auto indus­try. They have known for thirty years that oil would be an issue and they have pretty much ignored it. As for the results of yes­ter­days elec­tion, I am cau­tiously opti­mistic. If Bill Clin­ton were Pres­i­dent I would relax. The rest of them have a long way to go to con­vince me they can stand up and lead.

  22. Joe Kobiela said on November 8th, 2006 at 7:21 pm

    I enjoy a lit­tle back and forth, its good, but after read­ing the above post the ques­tion still stands, What is your plan???
    As for W’s mil­i­tary, remem­ber at the time he was fly­ing, his job was to inter­cept and shoot down soviet bombers com­ing in to our air­space, remem­ber this was con­sid­ered a very seri­ous threat. As for not fin­ish­ing his com­mit­ment, I think you should ask Dan Rathers about that. He seems to have some time on his hands since,he was fired over the FALSE doc­u­ments about Bushes mil­i­tary ser­vice.
    I also think Wood­word would write what­ever will sell.
    The next 2 yrs should be fun.
    Joe

  23. mary said on November 8th, 2006 at 7:42 pm

    What hap­pened to Dan Rather does not mean that Bush fin­ished his mil­i­tary ser­vice. It means that Dan Rather had a sloppy researcher.
    I don’t remem­ber the seri­ous threats of Soviet Bombers invad­ing Texas air­space via Mex­ico in the late six­ties and early sev­en­ties. I remem­ber peo­ple who were con­nected going into national guard units to avoid being drafted and sent to Viet Nam. That I remem­ber very clearly.

  24. Jim in Fla said on November 8th, 2006 at 8:36 pm

    Ok. The “mil­i­tary doc­u­ments” were false. Agreed.

    Bush still has never explained why he lost his pilot certification.

  25. Jim said on November 8th, 2006 at 9:00 pm

    I don’t under­stand why so many Repub­li­cans think jump­ing off a cliff is bet­ter than doing noth­ing at all. This is the most incom­pe­tent and cor­rupt admin­is­tra­tion of my life­time. And it has got­ten to the point where even the Repub­li­cans don’t deny it, they sim­ply say, “So? What’s your plan? You have some­thing bet­ter than our cor­rup­tion and incompetence?”

  26. Mona said on November 8th, 2006 at 11:37 pm

    I agree with much of what you write about the elec­tion. How­ever, may I remind you that Gov­er­nor Granholm has been work­ing with a Repub­li­can Leg­is­la­ture the last four years? I know many Repub­li­cans who voted for her because of their dis­gust with the Leg­is­la­ture. Also, she inher­ited a real finan­cial mess from Engler and the auto indus­try was floun­der­ing before she took office.
    Let us be fair and see how she gov­erns with at least the Michi­gan House going Democratic.

  27. Marcia said on November 9th, 2006 at 10:33 am

    Jeff, great post, although I dis­agree that racism played much of a part in Blackwell’s defeat. I posted why I didn’t vote for him here.

    I stopped by your blog – nice, but you should allow comments.

    Ash­ley, quote machine, you rule.

  28. Marcia said on November 9th, 2006 at 1:09 pm

    Oops, Nancy, did I get that Steve Rose col­umn from you ini­tially? If so, I’m sorry; you can remove the com­ment above if you would like.

  29. DebM said on November 9th, 2006 at 1:34 pm

    This photo says it all. San­to­rum fam­ily. While I have pity for any­one in this much distress..you just have to see the fact that this MUST be the Rep­bli­can Addams Fam­ily. Note the match­ing dresses of the doll and the daugh­ter as well as…oh you’ll see.

    http://​www​.post​-gazette​.com/​i​m​a​g​e​s​4​/​2​0​0​6​1​0​8​r​r​_​s​a​n​t​o​r​u​m​_​c​o​n​c​e​d​e​P​J​_​5​80.jpg

  30. nancy said on November 9th, 2006 at 2:11 pm

    Price­less.

  31. Marcia said on November 9th, 2006 at 2:35 pm

    Oh, dear.

    Hey, that reminds me, does any­one want to see the Dug­gars sing?

    You know you do.

  32. ashley said on November 9th, 2006 at 4:44 pm

    MY EYES!!! MY EYES!!!

  33. mary said on November 9th, 2006 at 9:19 pm

    I feel so guilty for lov­ing that photo.

  34. Laura said on November 10th, 2006 at 12:28 am

    Mar­cia, Black­well lost because he is a whack job.

  35. Marcia said on November 10th, 2006 at 7:55 am

    Laura, that, too.

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