Last year, because we were in a job that had us always on the road, Richard and I signed up for permanent absentee voter status. Then we promptly forgot all about it and it's a good thing Richard figured it out eventually because when they sent us our absentee ballots for this ridiculous farce of a recall election California is staggering through, I nearly threw them out, thinking they were only the sample ballots I'm so used to receiving.

Luckily this did not happen and the ballots have been sitting safely on the kitchen counter. The booklet of all the candidate statements, however, has been living in Richard's car because for amusement, while we would drive somewhere, I occasionally open it at random and read one of the statements from the myriad list of crackpots who are running for governor. I cannot seem to choose which one is my favorite, since currently it is a toss-up between the loony who said that if we vote for him, the seventh seal of Armageddon would be broken, or the guy who gave as the reason to vote for him "I breathe." Which frankly, when you stop and think about it, makes perfect sense, since if you look at the list of candidates, breathing and a pulse is apparently the only qualification required to run.

If you caught my little snarky comment above, it should not surprise you in the slightest to know that I voted against the recall. I think it is a ridiculous waste of time and money and am extremely disappointed that there wasn't a proposal included on the ballot that would allow us all to line up and smack the imbecile (that would be Darrell Issa, for those of you playing along at home) who was so convinced he could actually *buy* this election that he dragged the rest of the state down into the gutter with him, repeatedly upside the head. And don't even get me started on the sheer inexperience of one of our main contendors for governor – Arnold Schwarzenegger – a man who refuses to answer any questions without getting time to script his answers in advance, and whose sole thought for how he is going to 'fix' California is to go in and 'cut spending' without once offering any suggestions for how this might possibly be handled. Apparently the legislature will be so bowled over by his inability to keep his hands off anything female they'll just jump right to it and play along.

Right now all I want is for this recall to fail. I want it to go away; to slink back into the cesspool of shame from whence it came. I could care less about the qualifications of whoever is the governor, if only because it doesn't take much rational thought to figure out that the national recession and the Dot Bomb is more responsible for the current state of California's debt than anything a mere governor could do – especially since the rest of the legislature cannot stop the party-line back-biting and bickering long enough to pass a budget on time.

I want this recall to fail, because if it succeeds, it sets up a dangerous precedent that is going to make a nightmare of politics in our future. Disagree with the person in charge? Find someone willing to spend a chunk of change, and get a recall on the ballot, allowing an extreme minority to vote in the successor. Why worry about how much money this is going to cost the counties to run this special election each time? Who cares that that money had to be taken out of the budgets for essential public services that are already strapped to their limits? Lets just throw a million-dollar tantrum and pretend that will make it all better.

When the laughter over this idiocy is over, this state - and the rest of the country - is going to have to live with the results. And I'm not sure that anyone is ready, if this recall succeeds and we elect ourselves a "Governator", to handle the fallout from what those results could be.