Buyer's remorse

Ever buy a new car when all you really needed was an oil change?

I know, it's irksome.

And a tad spendy, particularly when the new ride is a lemon.

Across the country, there are numerous examples of buyers expressing remorse over the choices they made.

Teabaggers took credit for returning Republicans to power last November. They railed about the national debt, but what they really wanted was no government at all. They'll get their wish beginning tomorrow when the government will likely partially shut down due to the teabagging tenet of "no compromise."

That's fitting because the government shutdown may scuttle, among more important things, some commemorations of the Civil War, which began 150 years ago this month when the South refused to compromise. Funny how the South is now a Republican repository of racist teabaggers. Any moderate GOPers out there a tad remorseful about your teabagging wing?

In Wisconsin, the good cheeseheads in America's dairyland voted in a new governor because they thought he sounded reasonable and could solve all of their upper Midwest problems. One big problem, though, is that he is a reactionary in a progressive state. He stripped unions of most of their collective bargaining rights while also slashing pay and benefits. Wisconsinites bowed their cheeseheads in remorse.

On Tuesday, though, they thought they got some revenge by barely voting in a liberal justice to the state supreme court. She had lost by 30 percentage points in the primary for this supposedly non-partisan post. But, you knew this was coming, one county clerk "found" thousands of votes for the incumbent to give him the victory. How convenient. In a another rebuke to the Republican governor, citizens voted in a Democrat to his old post.

And, here in little Bend, Oregon, our longtime District Attorney was voted out of office in favor a former, hothead prosecutor in the D.A.'s office.

Well, the hothead fired a bunch of prosecutors for forming a union and they're now suing him and the county. Also, the new D.A. got so paranoid that he tried to convene a grand jury to investigate possible leaks of private information from his office. In fact, the new D.A. became so unhinged that he wanted to move his offices because he feared more leaks. This new guy quickly demonstrated that the old D.A. was actually the better man for the job.

So, the next time we need an oil change, it's best to get an oil change.