Some Exciting Matchups Yesterday.

Yesterday, the Coaches v. Cancer Classic opened the college basketball season. No word on who won, but I hear the crowd in attendance was solidly in favor of the coaches. In honor of basketball, and all the other, lesser, sports, here are the results of the elections yesterday, or at least the ones I can comment on:

(side note: election days always make me feel so helpless, because I only count as one vote -- I can't control the hundreds or thousands of other people who are out there cancelling me out. The results are totally out of my hands, and yet if I don't vote I have Paris Hilton and Diddy on my case telling me to Vote or Die and that I don't have the right to complain about the government since I didn't care enough to participate in its selection. It's like I have all the responsibility but have no way to get any of the results. Wait -- it's really more like being the Queen of England, where you have the responsibility to do all these things but all of them are meaningless.)

Institution of Texas Marriage 76, Mandatory Belief in "Whatever" 24.
Yes, the so-called "gay marriage ban" passed overwhelmingly in Texas. I'm not going to comment any further (due to my standing policy of not commenting on the issue of homosexuality and all its various tenets) except to say that the score was not terribly unexpected.

Sanity 55, Usury 45
For some reason they put on the Texas ballot a provision to allow the legislature to amend usury laws (laws that regulate the maximum interest rate on loans -- which should be way lower, btw) for "commercial loans," which typically are used for businesses or development. The 45% who voted for this probably either own stock in banks and credit card companies, or just misunderstood the proposal. Thankfully Usury lost even though its biggest booster, President Bush, is from Texas. The man just loves that Usury, and thinks America needs more.

White Settlement 92, West Settlement 8
In a shocking upset, the white people banded together and all voted to keep the historic but uncomfortable name of their town, keeping it the laughingstock we all know it should be. I'd like to personally thank the people who voted against the name change, but there's to many of them. I guess I'll just have to mock the 219 people who voted for it. And as always, it's good to be white.

Weak Mayor in Dallas 53, Strong Mayor in Dallas 47
In a close game, the current "Weak Mayor" setup outlasted the upstart "Strong Mayor" proposal with a barrage of threes from the "minority backcourt" in the final minute. Poor Strong Mayor. This is their second loss in as many elections, and they may just end up disbanding after this. Seems to me Dallas will want a weak mayor as long as the sea hag is still in office.

Intelligent Design 1, The Forces that Would Seek to Destroy It 1
Someday I will write at length about Intelligent Design and all the issues surrounding it. For example, every single report I've ever seen on the issue has misrepresented something about it. If yesterday's elections, Kansas (the state, not the band) voted to approve "science standards that cast doubt on the theory of evolution." I supposed that's an accurate but very general overview of what happened. Then the reporter quotes "critics:"

Critics of the new language charged that it was an attempt to inject God and creationism into public schools in violation of the separation of church and state.

Of course they do. You see, we're no longer able to distinguish an actual argument from an invalid card being played. I blame the OJ trial. The quote brings up two seperate issues: Are they trying to "inject" God and creationism into public schools, and is what they're doing a violation of church and state? These are complicated issues, but are never covered or questioned. They are just left there. The reporter's got to be objective (and I certainly don't think the story is terribly biased), but we've learned nothing. No wonder blogs are getting so popular -- they can go in-depth in a hurry in ways news outlets can't.

In other news, a district out east voted all these pro-ID republicans out of their school board and voted a bunch of anti-ID democrats in. There must be a lot of avid Arrested Development watchers out in that district. "Oh, no! They mocked us with their 'Jury's still out on science' comment!" "Science must be set in stone!" "Scientists can never be biased or wrong!" "Godless evolution is a proven fact. In fact, I just evolved into a different species last week." "Oat bran cures cancer!" "Brontosauruses existed!" "Us being genetically similar to animals proves that evolution happened!" "Questioning established science will make us look bad!" "Let's try something new -- lets just not think about or discuss the issue, because those really really smart (and biased) people have settled it in their minds, so that's good enough for us!" "Yay, we're cool with the writers of Arrested Development again!"

AD writers, I bet you thought you slipped that one past me. Well, I notice all. Try being less stupid next time. Hey, where did this font come from?