Election Day!

How many of you voted? Did you read the individual party platforms, or are you just wingin' it? Did you swallow the rhetoric whole, or did you take time to chew, separating propoganda from content?
I voted. I voted early, as a matter of fact. This week is our annual moose hunt, so I wanted to make my vote count.
I do not want a Conservative majority, which really tempted me to vote strategically. But doing so pisses me off. I want to vote for the party that best captures my imagination, offers a solid framework of economic strategy, and realizes our entire freakin' economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mother Earth.
So, first I looked for the Conservative party platform. I had heard Harper lambasting Stephane Dion's Green Shift, then I heard him deriding Layton's "New Strong" approach, and I heard he tried to pull Elizabeth May's pigtails and called her out to fight him in the schoolyard. So...I thought the Conservatives must have a strong plan for the nation. I cut them some slack last election, as no one expected them to be in for more that 6 months. I figured they'd have their ducks in a row and have something meaty to say. I mean, this is the party that finally had the decency to make a public apology for the atrocity of the residential schools
I found the Conservative platform, and had to speed read it, as it wasn't released until about a week ago. And I found pap and pablum and patented nostrums for the corporate rich. Yawn...same old same old same old crap. I know that being "C"onservative means putting the brakes on progress, thumpin' the ol' family values drum, and tugging on our bigotry. But puh-leeeze...! Jeez Louise!!! What a pile of crap. The people who still haven't connected "lower taxes" with "fewer services" will lap it up..as per usual. But there was nothing for me there.
So I checked out the Green Shift and the NDP platforms. Hmmm...some meat there, but completely based on a strong economy with resource exports continuing unabated. Please Google "stock market" and "economic storm" to see why I don't expect there to BE a cookie jar to pull from...add our current economic issues to the pilfering of the coffers that Conservative policy allowed, and we're not sittin' as pretty as we were 6 months ago.
So...what does that leave me? Bloc Quebecois? Whose mandate it is to break up the nation...hmmm...even if there was a Bloc candidate who had the guts to run in an Ontario riding, I couldn't do it, even if many of their social policies ring true.
Heritage, Marxist-Leninist, etc? Well, I may dress up for Hallowe'en, but I don't want a freak show for the other 364 days a year, if you catch my drift.
So, that leaves Green. And when I read their policy platform, I was struck by the rare thought, "Here's a political party that speaks to my socially liberal viewpoints and is fiscally sound...and...and...makes freakin' sense!"
Any party that swears to keep their nose out of my bedroom, deal with drugs as a health issue vs a prison-recruitment exercise, and plans for the long-term vs for the next election and fuzzy blue sweater, catches my eye. The more I read, the more I really believe they have the moxy to shape up to a real political power. And THAT, children, is why my grandfather is spinning in his grave, my grandmother will have an apopolectic fit (she's tries to throw one once a week, so I won't dissapoint!), and why I can tuck my children in without a guilty conscience.
So...did YOU vote?