2000-12-14 - 21:33:02

On the internal soundtrack: "When I'm Sixty-Four", Beatles.

Is it over?

Really?

I feel like I used to when my final exams ended in college. All that cramming, lack of sleep, stress, and then all of a sudden, they're over. It's hard to relax right away.

I don't think I'll be completely convinced until someone's sworn in on January 20th. After all, we need only a few defectors in the electoral college to get a Gore presidency.

Aside from that, I thought Gore's speech last night was wonderful. MIL said that if he'd given a speech like that earlier, he might have won. I thought so too. I was also pleased that Bush was gracious and didn't smirk.

I still hear pundits and the folks calling into CSPAN calling for an abolition of the electoral college. Quite often, these people have no other explanation for their opinion other than "it's arcane, outdated, irrelevant". I'd like a better explanation. It does seem disturbing that winner of the popular vote is not the winner of the election, but only until you understand why the electoral college is in place.

I suppose it could be argued that in today's increasingly homogeneous world, each state doesn't need to have its own voice. That could be an argument for the abolition of the electoral college. But I don't think this country is quite homogeneous enough, yet. There's a big gap, sometimes, among people in different parts of the country, and the electoral college is there to capture that difference.

The best explanation I've heard for why the college is important went something like this:

People in a particular geographical area often have similar political concerns. A group of 300 people stuffed into high rises in a single a city block is going to have a lot more in common with each other, in terms of political issues they care about, than they would with 100 people scattered over several square miles.

City folks, for example, might less likely to be interested in protecting gun rights than country folks, who really do use them for hunting and self-defense. I'm not talking about the stereotypical tobacco-chewing inbred idiot you might have in mind, either. Take my husband's best friend, a CAD drafter, father of a 4-year-old girl, married to a nurse who has her own business placing other nurses. He was raised in the Santa Cruz, and happened to move into the hills outside San Diego. They have a fair amount of land and are pretty isolated there, and there are wild animals around constantly, plus the occasional hermit wacko. So he bought a gun. Some kind of rifle, I think. Back in Santa Cruz he never even thought about owning a gun.

Knowing that life can differ so much between the two places, do 300 people on the same city block really have a voice that is worth more than the 100 scattered over several square miles in the rural area?

Put another way, imagine you have 300 people stuffed into expensive condos on a single city block. Meanwhile, in very rural area, scattered over several miles, you've got 100 descendents of sharecroppers living in poverty. Should those rich folks in the city have a larger voice than the struggling folks in the country, just by virtue of there being more of them?

These are very simplistic examples. But they do illustrate the idea that it is important to take more into account than a simple majority.

So, I am the laziest person alive and can't seem to get my cars inspected on time. The karmic boomerang (a phrased trademarked by Rob) hit me hard today.

I was getting stopped at EVERY SINGLE TRAFFIC LIGHT today, so when I got to one particular intersection with a gas station on the corner, and saw there was no line for inspection, I played a little game.

"If the light turns red, I'll get the POS inspected."

Of course it turned red.

The people at this place were INCREDIBLY nice. Very friendly folks, very nice. I was amazed.

That was the good part.

The guy takes forEVer inspecting, and finally comes along and says,

"You got a bulb out in the rear, your emergency brake needs adjustment, and all four ball joints need to be replaced."

I told him to reject the car and give me an estimate for the repairs. The light and the emergency brake were reasonable, but those ball joints, christ! The total was SEVEN HUNDRED SEVENTY-SIX DOLLARS!

That's like 1/3 or more of what the car's worth!

Now, we can have the folks at our regular shop look at it, I guess, and see if they think it's necessary and how much it'll cost, but jeez!

I suppose it's reasonable given that we haven't put any money into the car for over a year, if I recall correctly. We had some work done back when we still lived in Arlington, about 15 months ago. Unusual (for me, anyway) not to have to do work on a used car for a whole year.

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