Bev's Odd Thoughts

Random thoughts:

If I want to visit the Wild West, why do I have to travel east?

Who decided that if you put something as vile-tasting as a raw olive in poison like lye, you could get something delicious enough to serve at Thanksgiving dinner?

Where is it written that vomiting must be into a toilet? Why not a sink, which is decidedly more pleasant to lean over (and easier to clean!)

Why do most politicians run on a platform that includes improving education, yet when budget time comes around, schools are the first budgets to get cut?

What is it with men’s suits? They sit down and unbutton the coat, they stand up and button the coat, they sit back down again and unbutton the coat. Talk show hosts are the perfect example. They must button and unbutton a dozen times a show. Is it so unacceptable for a man to stand for 10 seconds with a coat unbuttoned?

These are the kinds of imponderables that I've been pondering in these days leading up to the mid-term elections, because it's more pleasant to think about things like that than the voting to take place in a few hours.  Tonight I found myself so depressed at everything I was hearing on the news that I was actually fighting tears.

I have been depressed for many elections ... too many of them ... but never as much as I have with this election.  Everyone is predicting a Republican sweep, giving the Republicans control of both the House and the Senate.

In pre-election jubilation, Republicans are all over the networks planning what they will do, unimpeded  by Democratic opposition.  The guys who met on the night of the Obama inauguration in 2008 and agreed to prevent him from passing anything whatsoever are now planning the kinds of bills they will pass when they get all the power.

There are guys like this positively gleeful at the prospects.

If there is something positive that one can say about Congress these days it's that they are wiping away the black mark over the so-called "do nothing Congress" of the 1940s, during Harry Truman's administration.  The big scandal there was that the 80th Congress passed only 906 bills over a two-year period.

In comparison, the 112th Congress has passed a grand total of 196 bills over a two-year period (of course they still have a couple of months left to go).

And all of this because the Republicans held up almost every single item that came up for a vote, even bills that they themselves originated.

With all of this, Americans are still predicted to oust Democrats and install Republicans.  The Republicans who want to control women's bodies, who are against a living wage for low income citizens, who want to overturn Obamacare, who want to restore traditional marriage.  It makes me cry to think of what will happen if the predictions come true.  I have never in my 71 years been so depressed about this country as I am tonight.  Even the Bushes did not make me feel as depressed as I am right now.

The only good to come out of this election is that finally the negative campaign ads of Doug Ose and Ami Berra (two candidates for the House that I can't even vote for because I'm not in their district) will finally be finished.   Their attacks against each other have dominated the airwaves on seemingly every single television channel I watch for at least the past month, if not longer.

For that I will celebrate.

But I suspect that is all I will be celebrating when the results are tallied.