a new president
a new technique

so looks like we've finally got a new president-elect. dubya has succeeded in his quest to stop the recount of florida votes. i'm actually not too worried--i think it'll be four years of the nation/world laughing at him for misstatements and general stupidity, but not too much damage done. it's really too bad, though, that he will get to appoint new supreme court justices.

speaking of the supreme court, they have to know how much this 5-4, politically (apparently) motivated decision is going to hurt their credibility. we've been through a decade where our collective faith in the president (scandal scandal scandal) and the congress (could they be be a little more partisan?) has declined. through it all, i think most americans harbored a faith in the judicial system, especially the supreme court; judges were not as easily swayed by politics, and made their rulings based on what they thought was for the good of the country. that faith, i think, is gone. i think that any non-unanimous decision now made by that court is going to be suspect. i suppose this country has seen much worse, and will make it through.

as everyone has been saying, this election has been a fabulous civics lesson for us all. we all know, now, the hows and whys of the electoral college. we are aware of the benefits and pitfalls of our system for electing officials. we may decide that our system has problems, and now have the will and the knowledge to fix them. it could end up being a good thing. more standardization in the voting procedure. more awareness that every vote counts. more knowledge of the effects of third parties. [i'm a fan of the russian system for running elections, which includes a run-off election between the top two candidates if no one gets a majority of the popular vote in the first election. this means that people can vote for the person they want to, even if that person is from a minor party and has no hope of winning. they can vote their concience without fear of wasting their vote. because, they will get a second chance to vote for the "lesser of two evils" in the second round. i wish we could institute that system in the u.s.]

speaking of third parties, have you noticed that there has not been a word about ralph nader since election day? heh heh. he said, pre-election, that he didn't care if his presence on the ballot lost the election for gore. he said that it was more important that the democrats wake up and realize that they no longer represent the left-most portion of the electorate, than for gore to win. in the post-election mess, however, everyone's forgotten about nader. in fact, yesterday on npr i heard someone say that the democrats are thinking of ways to attract more rural white men to their party--perhaps by rethinking their position on gun control a little bit. softening just a touch. that's just the opposite of what nader wanted. and goes to illustrate the need for multiple parties (and thus a run-off election system as outlined above). it will never be the case that two parties can adequately represent the political opinions of america. nader wanted the democrats to move back toward the left. he and his followers noted that voters on the far left were not represented by the democrats (hence the raison d'etre for the green party) and that if they lost this election, it was because they were failing to represent those people. what he failed to mention, however, and what what illustrated by the npr comment, is that if the democrats move their platform toward the left, they will be failing to represent some of the voters who are more central, and who now vote democratic. with a two party system, there's just no winning.

a new technique i'm going to be trying to control my appetite, and hopefully drop 20 pounds: keeping a copy of the victoria's secret catalog nearby, and when i get the urge to have a cookie i'll look in it and remember that i want to look like that. or rather, as much like that as my body will let me. at least good enough to be willing to wear lacy underwear in front of someone else. we'll see how this works...