Airline tickets are hideously expensive on short notice, so I decided to drive from DE to SD. It's a hideously long drive. After joining the recently laid off I couldn't see paying over $1500 to visit my mother. I just feel burnt out, today. I may never do it again.
Some observations:
When you're not talking politics, people are generally good wherever you go. Exception; truck drivers hug the left lane markers when you pass them. There are a LOT of trucks on 70/80/90 in the evening, and more double and triple trailers (mostly UPS and FedEx) than I'd ever have guessed.
Chicago is huge. It has some weird kind of gravity; As you approach it traffic speeds up. I'd go 100 miles out of my way to avoid driving through Chicago. Unfortunately, I'd need to drive 200 miles out of my way.
I-95 is truly amazing. I know it connects 5 of the biggest cities in the world, but even given that the traffic is unbelievable. Do these people work?
There is no shortage of country-western and fundie nutbag christianist FM channels in IN and OH. I didn't bother to check AM, but I'm betting the de facto leader of the GOP (Limbaugh), Hannity, Ingraham, and O'Reilly have plenty of AM airtime. Air America Radio just went off the air.
While I was driving the SCOTUS handed down one of the most damaging rulings ever. In the history of the US. I haven't read it. It may have been decided correctly. It may not have been decided correctly. It doesn't matter because it's over. Our government is now up for sale to the highest bidder and you and I don't have that much money. The chamber of commerce's message is now going to be heard unhindered. Alan Grayson said it well; will our congress-critters now wear corporate logos, like NASCAR drivers?
Is it true that "conservatives" understand the value of the SCOTUS more than "liberals" do? We argue over nuances when "we're in power" (ha, what a joke, a GOP minority has thwarted "change" at every turn). Conservatives just keep electing reactionary monsters.
The minority won in Mass. Martha Coakley ran a shitty campaign, but more importantly the racists, the corporatists, the "tax cuts uber alles" radicals, and the anti-choice constitution haters are pissed. They're out of power, and they're pissed. Which means they're more motivated to get to the polls than "liberals" and "progressives" who feel like they've been sold out at every turn.
Not for the first time, health care reform is dead. Even if it passes it's so pathetic that no one will view it as a "victory". Obama's been in office for a year, now, and no one is seeing that "change" that we were promised. We still operate a prison at Gitmo. We're still in Iraq and Afghanistan. The feds are still listening to our phone calls. We're deeply in debt and China and Japan are running on empty so we're running out of places to borrow more petrodollars. There's no end in sight to our dependence on oil.
Our corporate-owned congressmen and women will continue to send our best young men and women off to die in wars in the middle east, probably for the rest of my life.
Geebus, I take a week off and look what happens. If you thought the Bush years were dark, wait until after the mid-terms. Obama will be a one-termer, viewed more like Carter than anyone else. We'll wander the wilderness for another generation, all because we can't elect anyone who will stand for what we believe in.