Now the race is on and here comes Pride up the backstretch

My State Senate is a circus. Now I know most state legislatures are asylums to some extent, but Albany sets the bar higher than most. Two Democrats switched sides and tilted the balance of power to the GOP in a bid to stop gay marriage. Now the Democrats have locked the Senate and refuse to open the doors. Seriously, they won't give up the keys. They are demanding that the courts invalidate majority rule. They are investigating the turncoats - one of whom is SO going to rue the day he ever made this play. They are basically acting like three year-olds who have lost their binky and making Norm Coleman look good by comparison.

Regardless of how you feel about the ratonale behind the change, the reaction has been worse on every level. Not that I expect the more parisan of my friends to admit that.

This is wy we need term-limits nationwide at every level. Politics should not be a career. It should be a part time vocation. Amend the Constitution. When people stop seeing public office as a career, maybe they will go back to actually trying to serve the public during their tenure in office. 12 years is the very longest anyone should be in any office save for the Supreme Court. At the local level it ought to be 6 or 8 years and definitely 6 in the US House. 8 for the Pres. and 12 for the Senate. We should also hve a much more streamlined recall process by which to oust corrupt politicians. The powers that be need to recognize that th people are finally getting fed up with their bullshit.

The lesson of 2006 - despite claims that it was a referendum on Bush or the War or the GOP - was that corruption will eventually turn off the voters so much that they will either vote the bums out or at the very least sit on their hands and allow their opponents to win. But the folks on both sides of the aisle at every level saw Obama win by promising to clean things up and change the system - no matter that it was all a sham allowing him to be a Rorshach test for the country. The lesson they learned is that people are even dumber than they look. Unfortunately fo them, the public does not have an endless appetite for lies and they will not have the same fawning press as the Messiah did.

We are the change indeed.