Things you see after voting- and during

Ah, yes, election night as I type here in Fort Wayne, where once again the supposedly solid Republican county's liberal eyesore tries to get shed of King, er, Mayor Tom Henry.  Not meaning to sound sexist- my tongue firmly in my cheek- after women failed twice to unseat him, we'll let a man do the job.  (Don't yell at me, I voted for the women!)  As I type, it appears unlikely;  King Tom has a sizable early lead, and in the more controversial City Clerk's race the Democrat is trailing but not badly.  For you out-of towners, the incumbent clerk was exposed on video just weeks ago for manhandling staffers to do election work for her hand-picked successor.  Soon later, she resigned the rest of her term for "health reasons."  Then a second video came out showing that the "hand picked successor" was a) unable to print a document without two people helping her, and b) was using a police database to find prospective "contributors" for her campaign.  She then resigned (this was LAST WEEK), but left her name on the ballot, where at this moment she trails by a mere 54-46% margin.  Thus proving that the sheeple in the city limits will ignore anything short of murder of a family member in order to vote for anything with a "-D" after their name.


Me?  I am not an idiot, and voted against both King Tom and the "hand picked" city crook, er clerk.  But am I an empty headed Republican sheeple myself?  No, there were two GOP candidates I bombed on.  One is dear ol' John Crawford.  He's the name behind the movement that put Fort Wayne's anti-smoking laws on the books a couple cycles back.  Now me, I'm no smoker, and really don't mind coming home from a night out not smelling like someone's ashtray.  I am just against the totalitarian way it was accomplished, and Crawford was the head of that list.  So that means I voted Democrat, right?  NO!  At the bottom of the list was a Libertarian, of all things!  So, I says to myself, what better way to d**k things up, yes?  And when I saw the last name of the candidate-  "Dyck"- it had to be done.

Currently, Tabitha Dyck has 760 of the 31,000-odd votes cast- 2%.  In contrast, the other 6 contenders (vote for three) have 800 votes between first and sixth.


And the one actual Democrat I did vote for is currently trailing 53-47%.

Thus, my candidate is trailing in all but one of six races.


But why should I be surprised?  After all, I was against Obamacare, and look how great it is?  Never mind that the first news story I saw when I got home was Congress demanding action from our esteemed President now that out of the 23 federally bankrolled, state run insurance co-ops set up under Obamacare, just under half (Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, New York, Nevada, Tennessee, Oregon, South Carolina and Utah ) have collapsed, ultimately pissing 24 billion bucks of federal taxes down the drain.  I was just wrong there, huh?


Or how about the second story I heard.  I don't believe such a thing as man-caused global warming.  But surely those "97% of scientists" (see the truth about that story in this MWN post) have to be telling the truth, right?  But the second story I saw was a NASA study that concluded that the Antarctic ice cap is growing, and making NEW ice...


“We’re essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica,” Jay Zwally, a glaciologist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and lead author of the study, which was published on Oct. 30 in the Journal of Glaciology, said in a statement.


“Our main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica – there, we see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas.”  Zwally said, adding that his team “measured small height changes over large areas, as well as the large changes observed over smaller areas.”

According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008. The mass gain from the thickening of East Antarctica remained steady from 1992 to 2008 at 200 billion tons per year, while the ice losses from the coastal regions of West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula increased by 65 billion tons per year.


Wow, one would almost conclude from that data that the planet has coping mechanisms far beyond the power of man to screw up forever.  But I'm probably just looking at that wrong.


So, go ahead, Ft Wayne!  Re-elect the guy who is pissing away hundreds of thousands of your bucks to out of state consultants when he could be farming such things out to businesses right here, not to mention the UNIVERSITIES that are supposed to be so much of Fort Wayne's future.  Put in a city clerk who will have to fill at least two staff positions to run the copying machine in her office.

MAYBE it doesn't make a difference.  Maybe, the ones I voted for are just as crooked as the ratbags winning.  But at least I voted for change- and not for the letter at the end of their name.


And as I finish, at least I have three winners now.