Elephant Balloons

We went to the Anne Arundel County Fair on Saturday night. Azalea pretty much touched all of the livestock there was to touch, including a few of the blue ribbon winning goats, sheep and cows. All four of us also went on the ferris wheel, and it took all the strength I could muster to keep Desi from wriggling out of my arms and climbing out of the car. Dang, that was scary. We also tried to put Desi in a little car ride with Azalea, but he (as usual) Houdini-ed his way out of the seat belt thingie and stood up in the seat just as the ride started. Luckily, Craig quickly reached over the fence and grabbed him out of the car just as they got going. Okay, so maybe putting Desi on carnival rides isn't a good idea right now. But he did so well at the Rehoboth Beach Amusement Park...

It was also a politically disheartening evening. There was an Anne Arundel Republicans booth and an Anne Arundel Democrats booth. I stopped briefly at the Dems booth to meet Dr. Jim Corwin, one of the guys who is running against Wayne Gilchrest. He seemed very personable and enthusiastic, but was clearly disappointed when I told him I wasn't a registered Democrat (I'm an I).

Both of the booths had stickers and informational flyers, and the Repubs had elephant balloons for the kiddies. Anyway, the Fair was positively filled with people sporting Ehrlich stickers and carrying those darn elephant balloons. I saw only two other people at the whole Fair who had Dem stickers on (and one of them didn't look like she was old enough to vote). It was depressing.

I guess the Dems at the booth got depressed, too, because they had closed up their booth and left by 10 p.m. or so while the Repubs were still there going strong until closing time. (The Dems also ran out of balloons by the time we got there -- I'm hoping it's because so many people took them, but I think the reality is that they didn't bring enough.) Man, I really wanted to bust all of those elephant balloons. Craig started getting annoyed with me because I was so worked up over all of this. But it wasn't just the elephants.

There was also a Confederate Flag paraphernalia booth and tons of people walking around with the Confederate flag on their shirts, on bandanas, etc. I saw one confederate t-shirt that said, "If you're offended by this shirt, you need a history lesson." I really wanted to approach that kid (bucktoothed pimply teenager type) and ask him to give me a history lesson to see how he would justify it. Next time I see that shirt, I'm going to ask the wearer to edumacate me.

Afterwards, I wrote a bummer of an email to my local Moveon group members, telling them about the whole sad experience. If we have any hope of getting rid of Bobby "Ignore the Chesapeake" Ehrlich, keeping Michael "Empty Suit" Steele out of the Senate, or even replacing Wayne "He's been there too long" Gilchrest, we are going to have to bust our bums.