Tuesday's Elections

Interesting how pumped people are about an election cycle that normally only gets noticed by those that have enough free time to be aware of it - namely, the retirement community. It seems that this time, an election day that would consider itself lucky to have 15% of the electorate come out and vote could have as much as 75% of the electorate vote, with each voter, regardless of party affiliation, mad as a white hornet.

There's a vote for the Wisconsin supreme court coming up. Kloppenburg v. Prosser. Now, I don't know what's scarier: The fact that justices are selected by the common ignorant lemmings who make up the electorate, or the fact that the alternative would be for those justices to be selected by the partisan nation-dividers we laughably call politicians. Personally I'm not inclined to allow politics to decide supreme court positions. I want five moderates on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. I want nine moderates on the United States Supreme Court. I want all moderates in every Supreme Court and every other court, for that matter. And I want nothing but a pool of moderates to choose from in every justice's selection process, whether it's as insane as letting everyday people pick a judge, or as slovenly as permitting a three-ring circus of legislators to vet a judicial selectee.

That being the case, I like Kloppenburg's campaign calling for a moderate voice in the court system and ending political partisanship. Whether she really believes it or not, it's about damned time somebody said it! The fact that her opponent, Prosser, is not echoing those same words is proof enough that he oughtn't to be taken seriously as a candidate. Instead, he attacks her on her experience, as if her lack of experience somehow trumps his negatives in that regard.

Remember back when Walker was elected? No, of course not. According to the numbers, you probably didn't even vote. And not long after that, back on February 8, there was another election you didn't vote in, which selected Kloppenburg and Prosser as the two finalists. Essentially, they all won because they got the approval of partisan morons - the only ones who seem to care. Then, by the end of February into March, Scott Walker happened, and everybody suddenly cared about the elections they should have voted in. Maybe if more people had gotten off their asses to vote, we'd be talking about Governor Barrett. We might also have two supreme court candidates who 1.) have more judicial experience and 2.) aren't so damned politically polarized.

You snooze you loose. You snooze on election day, we all loose.

We have two candidates for Milwaukee County Executive. Either one, graciously, is bound to be better than Scott Walker was. (And remember, Walker won primarily because people at the time were pissed off over excessive retirement benefits doled out by Tom Ament. Funny how the pendulum can swing the other way on the same issue, isn't it?)

On the one hand, we have a candidate whose nose is clean, but whose politics are dirty. And partisan. Technically, the County Exec is supposed to be a non-partisan position, but Jeff Stone is a Tea Party candidate, and everybody knows it. His political attack ads are more charged than a Japanese nuclear meltdown. On the other hand, we have another candidate whose politics are clean, but whose nose is practically covered in carbon-black. Chris Abele's dirty laundry has been aired out so thoroughly that I half expect Willie Mayes to come back from the dead and do an Oxy-Clean commercial using it.

I'm very close to advocating a complete ban on all political ads on television or radio, in spite of the free speech consequences.

I once voted for an ultra-conservative named Scott Walker for County Exec years ago, on the grounds that a county-level government position simply isn't one where conservative extremism can have an opportunity to manifest itself. While that's essentially true, it seems that a county position can be an adequate staging ground for enacting extremist positions later on. As such, I'm not inclined to think of county government as too small for a partisan candidate to matter anymore. I'm not making that mistake again. Regardless, I'm more willing to vote for the happy philanthropist over the grim sourpuss, even if the politics were reversed.

Besides, Abele once threw a firecracker at Attorney Michael Hupy. If having the balls to throw explosives at lawyers isn't worth my vote, what the hell is? Maybe next time he'll light a firecracker under some high-priced lawyer's ass.

So, here's hoping that the Tea-Partiers go home losers tomorrow. We could all use a break.

Eric