Nano Day 3 -- 915

Yes, it's a pretty pitiful count, but I was completely distracted and overwhelmed by sadness at the outcome of yesterday's election.

People have the right in this country to vote for whomever they choose, and that is one of the positive things about the system. Any other positive things will probably become significantly less positive over the next four years. George W. and Co. have been handed the country on a silver platter. They will do whatever they possibly can to reap the greatest reward for themselves and their cronies during this second term, because they no longer have to worry about a re-election bid and they have a congress more securely on their side and more conservative in its slant.

Pro-life and anti-same-sex groups and churches got out the vote and they will be expecting to call in favors once the government changes hands in January. America is supposedly a country to be looked up to and followed, the greatest nation in the world? How can that be when so many intelligent people are willing to put people into office who want to legislate women's reproductive rights and demonize gay and lesbian people for falling in love with someone of their own gender.

Morality should guide your own sense of what is right and wrong, and put it in a context of the greater good. It seems to me that people who voted using abortion or same-sex marriage as the number one issue stopped at the first point, without bothering to consider the second at all.

I hope that we as a country manage to come through with our rights, whether they be reproductive, civil, or any of the rest, intact, but I have to admit that I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime, I'm hoping that I can find a way to ride it out without becoming completely discouraged by the regressive tendencies of my fellow citizens and their choice of public servant that this election has laid bare.

I am happy that Kerry carried Pennsylvania, despite the absurd number of visits by the president in recent months, and I am excited that Barack Obama will have a chance to use his voice of dissent in an increasingly conservative congress. I wish him luck.

No knitting, too depressed. Pizza and Sex in the City instead -- the most apolitical content we could find for our viewing pleasure this evening.