Schadenfreude To All

It's early, and of course the vote can be stolen. In hopeful belief that - even if it is stolen for now - this election will bring an end, one way or another, to the dark side, I am celebrating

I offer for your delectation several items in today's Dallas Morning News, which endorsed McCain to continue eight years of disaster. The front page has an article on keeping the faith should you find yourself on some undefined losing side today. Federal Reserve Chief of Dallas Fisher withdraws his ongoing prediction that we should guard against inflation, not recession. And in foods, an item on what is best to guard against the bad effects of stress. Can you forgive me for my title now?

Move on. "Look forward to football season," advises the Austin filmmaker, whose first movie was a high-school project profiling Red Sox fans, called A Penchant for Pain.

This has been a historic election – not only in which candidates survived but also in the passion generated by their supporters and how fervently they want, more than anything else, for their team to win.

The derision and division that has marked the race has been more vitriolic, shredding relationships and testing families.

So whoever wins as president, John McCain or Barack Obama, nearly half the country is going end up in a dispirited funk, a loser in one of most the impassioned political battles in modern times.

How, then, to deal with the fallout?

"My preferred coping method will be to lift my chin, focus on the state and local races that went my way, and smile ... all the way through a pitcher of margaritas," said an only half-kidding Sarah Cleveland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, which has lost more than a few fights here in recent years.

That's one way to do it, say life coaches, writers and psychologists offering post-election tips.

Then there's us with the big, big smiles. Enjoy such news as that the wingers were paying people to be volunteers, (sort of like our Iraqi volunteer militias whose pay is now being reduced by the government of al Maliki).

Four employees hired by a temporary staffing agency to encourage absentee voting for Republican presidential candidate John McCain say they were instructed to tell people they were GOP volunteers.

Kevin Kennedy, director of the state's Government Accountability Board, said he received complaints that the workers were told to mislead voters into believing they were volunteers. The complaints have been forwarded to local district attorneys, he said, but it's unclear whether the alleged deception would be a crime.

The employees told The Associated Press on Monday they were hired by Allstaff Labor Group to go door to door in the Milwaukee suburbs locating McCain supporters and distributing absentee ballot request forms. Allstaff recruited them under a contract with a consulting firm hired by the Republican Party of Wisconsin to run its absentee ballot program.

The workers claim they were told to say they were GOP volunteers even though they were getting paid $10 an hour. They were required to sign agreements stating they would not publicly discuss their work but said they decided to speak out because they were angry they had not been paid for the last few days. They claim they are owed between $200 and $300.

Forgive me my enjoyment, but I am busy doing the Happy Dance.

I tend to be optimistic, blame my naturally high seretonin level, but if nothing else we can at least be glad that eight years of suffering provides complete proof of what the right wing has to offer. Only the depraved can wish for it to continue. For them, there's the Dallas Morning News.

And yogurt.