The big day

Here in New York, the sky is clear, the air crisp, the leaves turning. It is a perfect day for voting or really just about anything you might do mid fall.

The kind of day I want to vote for Obama and then go upstate and pick apples for the last time this year. BUT...I must go to work in a few so the apple picking is out.

I've never been one of those people with a continual sense of being an American. I have it, to be sure, that sense of pride in the country I was born to and live in. I feel it at certain times in especially strong ways. July 4th is an obvious one. Martin Luther King day is another.

But Election Day...that's the one that just makes me beam. Even when it looks bad for my candidate or days like today when I am wavering between confidence and fear. I do truly dread a McCain/Palin administration. Not only because of my political philosophy, but because I think Sarah Palin is a dangerous human being and that McCain's picking her indicates a very very serious lack of judgment on his part.

But I digress.

Election Day is when I walk down the street with extra verve in my step. I live in a nation where every 4 years we have the right to control the course of our nation. We send messages to our leaders. Often the message isn't heeded. But its true that in other nations they don't even have that.

We've come a long way, we have a long way to go. There's still shenanigans on both sides, though mostly on the Republican end in the last 20 years. But I believe, deeply in my heart, that we are still a beacon for many in the world. We have faltered of late, but its not TOO late. We can stand up again, we can be proud of what we stand for. In Florida alone they estimate that 85% of eligible voters will show up today. Florida alone. Something like that just makes me beam all the more. Showing up to vote is not only a right in this country, it is an obligation in my less than humble opinion.

Twice we blew it. We voted for an Administration that has no care or respect for the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, all the while whining about "activist Supreme Court Justices" and supporting "Originalists", a ridiculous and intellectually lazy pseudo philosophy.

We do seem to be waking up though.

In my neighborhood they expect to have to keep the polls open later than the 9pm appointed time (NYS allows this for up to an hour after official closing).

Clearly I hope to finish the night with the promise of an Obama administration and I fear the opposite, but I will remain proud to be a citizen of the United States of America either way and I'll fight like hell for 2012.