We Need a Change

I'm ready for the election to be over so I can find something new to obsess about. Tomorrow is voting day (if you haven't voted early).

If you would like to see an energy policy that includes cap-and-trade and serious efforts at alternative energy, along with renewed and expanded domestic energy production, vote for Michael Skelly for the 7th Congressional District of Texas. If you'd like a Congressman who supports transit in his region and doesn't block it at every turn, vote for Skelly.

If you want a Senator who will actually be able to do something for Texas and not be an irrelevance, vote for Rick Noriega. If you would like to see someone representing us who understands soldiers and veterans and their needs, and who is not merely a bloody-minded rah-rah boy for endless war, vote Noriega.

If you are ashamed that the U.S. has embraced torture as one of its tools of statecraft, vote for Barack Obama. If you want an end to the protracted and pointless war in Iraq, vote for Obama. If you want someone who will deal with the U.S.'s economic problems boldly and will abjure the failed and bankrupt policies of the last eight years, vote for Obama. If you prefer a competent government that actually does what it is supposed to do, instead of an incompetent government run by people who hate the very notion of service to the public good, vote for Obama.

Previously, I would never recommend voting straight Democratic. But this time around, I think all those not-terribly-ideological Republicans running for judge or Justice of the Peace or dog catcher need to recognize that they are hitched to a party characterized by radicalism and corruption, the party of Tom DeLay, George Bush, Chuck Rosenthal, and Sarah Palin. They choose to remain in this party and run beneath this party's standard, and therefore do not deserve your vote. Not this time. Vote Democratic.