Four more years of incompetence and abuse of privilege. Good job, Detroit. (It feels like we just went through this in '04...)

Detroitblog predicted how this might happen in yesterday's post. I expect to Rob to offer a post-election assessment after his blood comes down from boil.... though that may take a while.

Also in today's paper: Poll finds 33% of Detroiters want to leave.

This town breeds cynicism like cancer sometimes.

In other election news: my hamlet of Ferndale Michigan, directly adjacent to Detroit, has passed a proposal allowing medicinal use of marijuana, while neighboring Oak Park voted against allowing alcohol sales by the glass. The former is getting a lot of media attention, but has limited real world implications (other than the likelyhood of the neighborhood smelling like hippies,) but the latter is quite significant and unfortunate for one small business:

In Oak Park, voters shot down the proposal, which would have allowed businesses that made 50% of their profits from food sales to sell alcohol. The issue came up last year after the city acquired a portion of Royal Oak Township through a land-and tax-sharing agreement that had businesses with liquor licenses, including a karaoke bar, Royal Kubo, on Greenfield south of I-696. This vote means that Royal Kubo, the only business that still had a license before the election, will lose its liquor license.

Owner Armand Santos said he was surprised by the vote and now plans to move his business to another city.

"Karaoke without alcohol -- it doesn't go hand-in-hand," he said.

"We lost everything. We lost our livelihood."