Woo Hoo!

Well, it was over a lot sooner than I expected.  But that’s ok, because I’m happy with the outcome and I’m happy not to be staying up till the wee hours of the morning.

I was off by 2, maybe 3 states.  I gave Colorado, Virginia and Florida to Romney.  Florida is still undecided, but the other to went to Obama.

But at least I was more down-to-earth than those 5 GOP enthusiasts that predicted a Romney landslide.

And NO, I’m not going to wait up to see where Florida falls, I can wait until I wake up later today to find that out.

President Obama endorses Same-Sex Marriage.

Up until today I was absolutely sure that Obama would get re-elected.

The Bible-belt has serious problems with a Mormon as president, and I could see that opinion giving a decent block of the South to Obama.

But now they will have to decide between a Mormon and a Same-Sex Marriage lover.  I can only imagine the internal struggles going on inside them.

Do you think I’m right or not?  I’m curious to know if I missed an angle and welcome any rational opinion on this.  Please limit comments to how this will help/hinder either Obama or Romney.

I do not want to debate the merits of same-sex marriage here, I have my opinion and you have yours and we’ll probably never change each other’s minds.  I simply want to ask:

Do you think this will make Obama’s
re-election stronger or less likely?

Please discuss.

This is it folks.

Election day 2008. An unprecedented number of people are expected to vote today, at 30% of the registered voters taking advantage of early voting, we've already beat the average off-year voter turnout. Good for us.
I want to wish the best to all the election volunteers that are going to have a long day today - thank you for your help and time.
I also want to wish the best of luck to the following candidates;

• Barack Obama
• Connie Anderson (Granite School Board)
• Dan Lofgren (Granite School Board)
• Janet Cannon (State School Board)
• John Rendall (running against Chris Buttars)
• The guy I voted for that is running against Randy Horiuchi.
• and good luck to everybody else.
  

Jimmy Carter in 2008?

John McCain just gave me another reason to vote for Barack Obama. Of course McCain thinks it's a reason to vote against Obama, for him it might be, not so for me. Saturday's Tribune included the article: McCain talking point: Obama is new Carter. Republican says his rival is 'dusting off the old, failed' policies of the former president. First of all, 'failed' policies does not mean bad policies, it just means that the powers that be were too beholden to special interests that they would not allow the president to implement them. Think about it, where would we be now if we had listened to Jimmy Carter? The national debt was some 900 billion and he was telling us that we could not leave this debt for our children, that is was our duty to tighten our belts and do something about it. Now it's 9 trillion, and climbing rapidly. (Carter considered a debt that was 35% of our GNP outrageous, while now it's 65% of the GNP). President Carter wanted to inact policies that would wean us from dependence on foreign oil, he understood how detrimental it is to our country. Tax incentives for solar heating, for both conversions and new construction, as with incentives for research into other alternative fuel sources. McCain's boogyman, which is his big argument about Obama, is a tax on windfall profits for big oil. Carter tried it and got shot down (figuratively) and Obama is now proposing it. Frankly, I think it's a good way of increasing tax revenue and driving the American public further away from their dependence on foreign oil.

The 1980 Election was my first presidential election. I'd been interested in politics since watching the Watergate investigations, so I had paid attention during the Carter administration. I remember 3 main themes of Jimmy Carter's domestic policies:

1. The federal debt was out of control and had to be eliminated.
2. We needed to wean ourselves from our dependence on foreign oil
3. It won't be easy, in fact it might hurt, but if we ALL pitch in and do what we can we can fix these problems.

Things weren't perfect, I'm not saying that. Inflation was high, gas prices were high (hmmm, something familiar there?) and we were rebuilding a country that had been ripped apart by Watergate. But we were respected (different from being feared) worldwide and we had a president that was willing to face serious problems head on rather than burying them under "feel good" short term fixes. I hope Obama is the Jimmy Carter of 2008. God bless him if he is, and us if we have the brains to listen to him.