Personal Dork Assistant

Vote

So I went to the polls (heck, it was only down the street) and did my part in turning California into a one-party state. All the electronic voting machines are fun and all, but I like punching holes in paper ballots, darn it. When I flipped on the TV, the results from the east didn't look very good, and it got worse from there as the Democrats lost every single toss-up Senate seat except South Dakota (by 500 votes or so). When the GOP candidate who never served in the military can beat a Vietnam vet who lost three limbs in action over the defense issue, that pretty much set the tone. It's depressing when Gray Davis ends up being the best news of the night. Even then, he ran such an ideologically bankrupt (but logistically brilliant) campaign that he torched any hopes of moving up to the national scene. Well, the folks should love the big tax cut that's coming, anyway.

Berkeley, of all places, had the most sensible vote of the night, when they rejected the Measure O requiring fair-trade coffee to be served at coffee shops. I'm not big on corporate lobbying, but if there's any corporate lobby that I might listen to, it's Peets, even if they have succumbed to the evils of flavored coffee.