No Gloating?

I have been a very good wife for the last 24 hours or so; I haven't gloated a bit. It hasn't been easy. Were the positions reversed, I know the Engineer would gloat, he enjoys it so. All I've said is, "We saw how your guy did for eight years, let's see how my guy does."

But he doesn't read this blog, so...

Barack Obama Won! WooHoo!!!

Civic Duty - Done

As I was passing by the county building today, I decided that the parking lot didn't look too congested, so I pulled on in and did my civic duty. It took about 25 minutes, but I figure that's an improvement over what the wait would probably be next Tuesday.

This is the second time I've early voted. The first time was just a wee bit more involved. I had to go into the country clerk's office, get an application form, fill it out with proof that I would be traveling (plane ticket copies) and take it back in with picture ID, then wait a couple of weeks for approval.

Times have changed. This year in Utah, they're begging people to come one in -- Vote Early, Vote Often. Hmmm... Maybe I added that second bit myself, not that I'm the originator of it, just a copy cat.

Somehow it seems rather poetic that I voted on Halloween, when nothing is as it appears...

Oh, by the way, BOO!

'Tis The Season... For Politics

Is it just me, or has this presidential race gone on forever?

and ever...

and ever...

I don't put bumper stickers on my car, signs in my yard or wear buttons proclaiming my party affiliation, but today I browsed the web for political T-shirts that tell a story.

Right now, I can really understand the forlorn hope expressed by this one:
But if we didn't vote, would we ever get here? This one says it for the Engineer. He's got the hots for Palin, I think because he's heard she's a good, beer drinking, oilman's friend. Plus he knows it annoys me. So I'd go with this shirt for that ticket. What do you mean, "Politically incorrect"? What's so correct about politics in the first place?

This one pretty much encapsulates how I feel about the current election.
Wonder if I wore this one if anyone would court me and give me monetary encouragement to vote for their candidate? But, when you get right down to it, this one says it all.Despite my cynicism, on November 4th, you'll find me down at my precinct, canceling out the Engineer's vote.

Political Propaganda - From Mom

Sigh. I love my parents, but we are at political antipodes. They sit on the extreme right in most things and I'm pretty far left. The only places we agree is that the government should be fiscally responsible - of course, we disagree on exactly what that entails - and that most politicians are lying scoundrels (well, duh, most of 'em are lawyers.)

I try my best not to talk politics with them, but they seem to firmly believe that they can cure my blind wrong headedness by telling me "The Facts." Mom sent me some very enlightening true facts about Obama today.

This one was in a purported thank you letter from an OPEC minister:

Finally, thank you for allowing us to nominate one of our own for president of the United States! We have donated millions to the election fund of Barack Obama-a man who is anti-American, anti-military, anti-Christian, and anti-white. Obama will be the ideal president for us, and we will donate billions more, if necessary to get him elected. When Obama is your president, we will decimate your military, open your borders to the people of Islam, set up terrorist groups in all of your cities, build mosques throughout your land, and begin the conversion of American people to Islam. In a short time, you will be working for us!



Geeze o' pete. I would think an educated person like my Mom would be embarrassed to pass that along. It's fear mongering without a single concern for reality. It's so outlandish it's in pretty much the same catagory as the Sock Obama to me.




I thought this one was scarier because it was more realistic, thus more likely to be taken as the truth:

This is something you should be aware of so you don't get blind sided.

Proposed changes in taxes after 2008 General Election:

CAPITAL GAINS TAX

MCCAIN
0% on home sales up to $500,000 per home (couples). McCain does not propose any change in existing home sales income tax.

OBAMA
28% on profit from ALL home sales

and so on and so on, finally coming to the conclusion that taxes would double under an Obama presidency.

So I did a little fact checking and ended up at the Annenberg Foundation's political fact checking web site on this page. It pretty much corroborated and condensed what I had found elsewhere.

http://www.factcheck.org/ seems like a darn fine, unbiased, site to me. I think I will be referring to it frequently between now and November.

Wish Mom would check her facts before she sends stuff along.

I'll bet she'd would love this little toy too.

(Image from the Hillary Nutcracker Official Site.)

The Unmentionables

Sex, religion, politics and money: these are the things that a Proper Southern Lady cannot talk about in public. Thank God I'm not a Proper Southern Lady.

Some of these topics were more unmentionable than others in my childhood home. Sex was never discussed, nor was money, both topics were totally taboo. To this day, I have no idea how much money either of my parents made and firmly believe that my siblings and I were immaculate conceptions.

Religion and politics were simple subjects with the basics assumed. When I was a child, there were three major religions: Protestant, my family's religion; Jewish, lots of smart people were Jewish; Catholic, they had too many babies. There were three immutable premisses about politics: Republicans were good, Democrats were bad; evil Communists were trying to take over the world.

I'm sure that my parents are quite baffled by the way their eldest daughter turned out. I'm a flaming, bleeding heart, tree hugging, whale kissing (right on their blubbery lips), but fiscally conservative, liberal agnostic who thinks sex is one of the most hilarious things going. For some reason the strictures on discussing money did take. I'm not comfortable discussing personal finances to this day, it's none of anybody's business but the individual's. Public money is fair game, however, and dang the way those idiots in Washington spend my tax dollars!

It's time to step out of the comfort zone and blog on these forbidden subjects. I just need to figure out what order to take them in...

1. Money -- the one I'm least comfortable with.
2. Politics -- the most annoying one.
3. Religion -- the scariest, most confusing one.
4. Sex -- the fun one!

Blog you later, alligator.