Uncategorized

What do Joe Miller and bedbugs have in common?

America’s bedbug invasion has rapidly spread from New York City to Alaska. I can’t help but be suspicious as to how these critters have suddenly staged such a dramatic recurrence in our lives. Perhaps some mad scientist decided than rather than eliminate us all with some super Ebola virus released into a crowded subway station, he’d just ick us to death with bedbugs.

I find myself reluctant to go to a movie or stay in a hotel or take a plane trip for fear there will be bedbugs around who will follow me home. It only makes sense given that every other critter in need seems to eventually set up residence in my living room. But dogs and birds aren’t annoying. Bedbugs are. So they should go away and leave us alone.

And speaking of things that are annoying and should go away and leave us alone, I have only two words – Joe Miller.  His campaign spokesperson is apparently still making statements about being “cautiously optimistic” over their chance of winning. I want to reach out and warn that poor soul not to drink any more orange Kool-Aid. Because clearly someone has accidentally dropped some drug into their drink that makes up seem down and down seem up and a loss look like a cautious win.

If the Miller campaign had any sound basis for most of their objections to the outcome of the recent Senate campaign, aside from the fact that their guy lost, I have yet to hear it. What I do hear is a lot of whining and bemoaning of the fact that the Alaskan electorate saw Joe for what he was and voted accordingly. They voted for a write in candidate in what I can only hope is a good sign for the future of politics in America.

Just to make it perfectly clear to those Constitutional scholars who have never actually read the Constitution, nowhere in the document is America declared a two party country. So there is no constitutional requirement that the only people we elect are running as Democrats or Republicans. And given that I have reached a point where I just throw my hands up in despair at the sniping, hatred and nastiness that those two parties now routinely indulge in while American jobs are devastated, the middle class becomes a threatened species and our economy goes belly up, I would love to see write-in candidates win more and more seats and enter government beholden to no hoary, encrusted party of the past.

I realize that Lisa Murkowski is not the outside, write-in candidate of my dreams. She’s a Republican and when she returns to DC will automatically be enfolded into that party’s body politic. But she is a hopeful sign that write in candidates can mount a credible campaign and win. In fact, I would have a lot more respect for the Tea Party had they taken that tact in the recent elections and entered DC un-beholden to the established power of any party. As much as we might dream they will go there as outside independents who will change the system, the fact that they ran as Republicans instantly makes them a part of the very system against which they railed.

It now appears as though Miller is trying to disenfranchise voters through lawsuits since he will not be in a position to repeal the 17th Amendment. I suspect Joe is about to get the same result his buddy Dan Fagan got when he tried to subvert the process he so loudly proclaims is sacred. The only difference is that Joe’s suspension from public life will last a lot longer.

So, just to be sure Miller and his campaign personnel have this straight, aliens did not come down and magically change all the votes that had really been cast for him. And black op helicopters from the UN didn’t secretly drop ineligible voters in voting booths to vote for Lisa. And no one hired villagers across the state to forge handwritten votes for his opponent. Joe Miller lost because when voters had a chance to really get to know him, they decided to elect someone else. It’s that simple.

So get over it. And for goodness sake, get a clean batch of Kool-Aid.