Place Your Bets, Ladies and Gentlemen, Place Your Bets ...

Oregon, being a progressive state in the main, and as blue as teenage boy's balls during a slow dance near the end of the prom, we have a vote-by-mail system. You get your ballot. You read the voter's pamphlet, you see who is for the measures and against them, pick your candidate, and mark your choices in the privacy of your own home.

We usually get a bunch of measures, local, country, and state. We have some professional ne'er-do-wells here who spend all their time gathering signatures to put ballots on the tickets. (Some measures are, of course, valid and necessary. Many are repressive and mean-spirited. There is one local fellow, name of Sizemore, who always manages to get two or three measures validated enough to make the cut. A recent letter to the editor of the newspaper in Portland had a wonderful line in it about how people didn't give the guy enough credit -- his name on a measure was very useful -- like the skull-and-crossbones on a bottle of poison, the letter said. If he is fer it, I can guarantee you I am agin it.)

What this mail stuff means is that we get to vote early. I filled out my ballot today, and will either mail or drop it off tomorrow, and my vote in this election will be done.

What I would like to see is a swing back to the left for a bit. A Democratic President and House and Senate in the United States, so that we can maybe get a few of our civil liberties back -- getting a little less of Big Brother in our libraries and book stores, and off the unseen phone extension and email would be refreshing. Stopping the stupid fucking war. National health insurance for our poor folks. Maybe balancing out a few key judges and making the rich folks pay more of their share of taxes. Staving off international bankruptcy, like that.

If Obama wins, I'm not naive enough to believe that he's the cure for all that ails us, but he will, I believe, at least make the attempt to treat the causes. Better than blowing smoke, flashing mirrors, and hoping that voodoo economics and jingositic Imperialism will do the trick. They've been trying that for the last eight years and if it hasn't worked by now, it ain't gonna.

The D's will almost certainly want some payback for what the R's did when the Current Occupant and his party swaggered into power. That's to be expected and, I think, understandable. I hope they won't do too much of it -- the country is in deep shit and needs everybody to lend a hand to get us out. A little slap across the face, maybe two or three, and then move on.

I hope that, come Wednesday morning early November, that, soundly defeated, John McCain goes back to Arizona, and Sarah Palin goes back to her igloo, and that the day will dawn a little brighter over the country. Even just a little would be better.

I've done my part to make that happen. Be sure and do yours.