For my 37th birthday I've received the re-election of Dubya to the White House.

People complain about it if their birthdays are near Christmas. I know, my Mom's is, and while she's never said a word, I'm pretty sure it's a pisser to have everyone assume you want all your present-giving days lumped together that way.

My sister's birthday is September 10th. No, it's not that day, the one that along with December 7th lives in infamy, but it's close enough, dontcha think?

Mine falls on, or near, every 4 years, the presidential elections.

Does this suck, you ask?

Kinda.

This year it's today, The Day After, November 3. As I write this Kerry's not conceding Ohio yet, but Dubya's pretty sure he's done won the whole dang thing anyhoo. Republicans will now control, from the Senate and Congressional results I've seen, every damned thing in sight.

Now, don't get me wrong...if we were only talking about criminal justice, taxes, the right to bear arms, (even though I bear none, I appreciate the right,) and a number of other things that escape me at the moment, I'd pretty much look, smell, and sound like a republican. I do believe that history does seem to bear out the old saw that whenever a Dem is in the White House the economy improves, people have more nasty sex, and the crime rate goes up, but it's Republican hawkishness that helped keep the communist wolf at bay from Stalin's day till the late 80's, with the exception of JFK's face-off with Khruschev in an October now long past. When Dubya entered the White House four years ago, I cashed that pay-off he sent through the IRS with a smile. Even when he was Governor of Texas and sent ole Karla Faye Tucker to Jesus, where she surely must have wanted to be after her death-row conversion to the same, I kind of thought I liked the guy. (Karla Faye, if you don't know, was a confessed axe murderess who once said that hacking one of her victims to death gave her an orgasm.)

But here's what sucks: in this election, more than 10 states - I'm a sure a commenter could give me the exact number - passed "marriage" acts, affirming that marriage is between a man and a woman. With the advent of more republicans in congress and Dubya's re-election, plus the opportunity the president will have now to finally get some more of his taliban - oops, I mean judicial candidates - on the Supreme Court, I'm pretty sure Roe v. Wade is going to be in some sort of trouble. Pointy-headed intellectualism, which for all it's obnoxiousness nonetheless produces Original Thoughts often enough to merit respect, is going to become about as popular as it was with Pol Pot - you know, the Cambodian dictator who issued pogroms on people wearing glasses, basically anyone who even smelled like an intellectual.