Wednesday, June 13, 2012

The True North (Dakota)

By Sniffles

What an interesting primary day it was yesterday in.... North Dakota.

We cats kid you not. Now that the June 12 elections are history — and we're thrilled of course with the stomping that Ron Barber gave that teabagger for Gabby Giffords's House seat — we're most fascinated with three results that rolled in from the Peace Garden State.

North Dakota, you say? Really? A state where nobody lives, and where we think everybody outside of an Indian reservation is white? The state whose Senate seat the Democrats are in danger of losing because Byron Dorgan is tossing in the towel and, well, it's North Dakota?

Yep. And here's why. In just 24 hours, North Dakotans:

Rejected Measure 2, which would have ended all state property taxes. In fact, it went down in flames, with 78 percent voting no. We cats can only imagine that Flickertail Staters had no faith that, should the Missouri River overflow its banks, Sheldon Adelson would rush in a few billion for flood relief.

Scrapped Measure 3, an execrably worded proposal that purported to "protect religious freedom" but that was really a coded prohibition of — you guessed it — abortion. Again, this was not a close vote: 65 percent against, 35 percent in favor.

Instructed the University of North Dakota to retire its "Fighting Sioux" nickname, by a whopping 68 percent. (We cats hope that all such obsolete team names soon go into the proverbial dustbin. Cat-inspired monikers, though, are fine.)

Three enlightened votes in one day — wow! What is happening in Roughrider Country? We cats have no immediate answers. But since turnout was the biggest the state has enjoyed for more than 50 years, we'd like to think that the torch is being passed to a new generation of North Dakotans — and they're not people who look, think and live like Willard Mitt Romney.

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