"On Second Thought" for Nov. 11, 2012

• For many months, politicians held off on the big decisions, saying voters would decide the nation’s direction on Election Day. What they didn’t count on was voters deciding to keep things as they are. Apparently, hope is stronger than change.
• Billions of dollars were spent on campaigns that basically didn’t change a thing. That’s like spending a fortune on a college education, only to be handed your high school diploma again at the end.
• Election officials in Florida, otherwise known as camera hogs, must have been disappointed when the presidential race was decided without them.
• Ballots in Florida contained 11 proposed constitutional amendments, one of which was about 700 words long. By Friday it still wasn’t clear which candidate won, possibly because people were still standing in line to vote. Rumor has it officials were hoping to combine films from 2012 and 2000 to create a pilot for a new reality TV show.
• Chef Gordon Ramsay could star as the Florida secretary of state. As the weekly episodes progress, he would eliminate both incompetent election judges and spoiled ballots. At the end of the season, viewers finally would learn which candidates gets Florida’s electoral votes — in the 2000 election.
• If only Franz Kafka still were alive, student’s one day would have to read “The Castle,” “The Trial” and “The Florida Voting Booth.”
• Election Day always ends with a ray of hope, as one candidate concedes and offers to support the other and the winner graciously thanks the loser. If only talk radio hosts could adopt a similar tradition.
• President Obama’s victory speech was so touching that it took almost 24 hours for him and Republican leaders to again dig in their heels over the looming “fiscal cliff.”
• It says something about the nation’s lack of confidence in the future when it voted to keep the same people in power and two states decided to also make marijuana legal.
• If negative advertising is really so effective, why don’t companies make commercials that scream at viewers for being idiots if they buy something else?
• A driver in Kaysville last week got angry at another driver, forced her to stop, got out and looked ready to do violence. That’s when the other driver, who happened to be a police officer in an unmarked car, turned on the hidden police lights. This is what is known as a fantasy come true.