I Voted!

Up until last Friday, I was a registered Republican. In Utah, to participate in the Republican Primary, you must be registered with that party. To participate in the Democratic Primary, you must be either a registered Democrat or unaffiliated. Another quirk of the system here is that the winner of the Republican primary gets the votes of all of the Republican delegates from the state. The winner of the Democratic primary, on the other hand, only gets a portion of the delegates' votes (assuming that there are other candidates that received at least 15% of the primary vote.) This is a big part of the reason why the Republican candidates have largely ignored Utah and the Democrats are running TV ads in the state (for the first time ever according to ksl.com)

I like Mitt Romney. I'm not sure if he's my #1 candidate or not. He's going to win in Utah, no problem (He received 90% of the Republican Mormon vote in Nevada, and I expect the numbers will be similar here - and remember, most Utah Republicans are Mormon). He is my favorite candidate for a strong economy (see Massachusetts and the 2002 Winter Olympics) and Health care reform (once again, see Massachusetts). I would vote for him for these reasons, but not because he's a Mormon. While many of the people here profess that they aren't voting for him just because he's a Mormon, I don't believe all of them. I'd like to believe that he's getting the votes solely on his record and positions (which he changes more often than I think is reasonable - we call it "pandering to the crowd"...) and not on his beliefs. I guess its only fair though, he's losing out on a lot of votes because he IS Mormon, so maybe people should also vote for him because he IS Mormon. Like I said though, he's got Utah in the bag (I wasn't really planning on going off on Mitt here, maybe I'll give the lowdown on what I think about the rest of the candidates in another post - before Super Tuesday of course).

With all of that in mind, last Friday I made the trek to the County Clerk's office. Up until January 18, 2008 I had been a registered Republican in the state of Utah (and I even volunteered at the State Republican Convention in 2003). I stopped by the Clerk's office to change my party affiliation. I wanted my vote to matter. The odds are fairly good that our next President will be Democrat (thanks to President Bush for Iraq, ballooning the deficit and tax cuts for the rich) and the race between the top three Democrats is shaping up to be a close one. I wanted my vote to go towards a candidate that could use it and that would appreciate it more.

So I voted for Barack Obama. Now there will be no waiting in line at the polls and no more waffling on who to vote for, because the deed is done (and I still got a sticker that I am saving to wear on February 5th. I don't know if I would ever vote if they didn't give you the sticker. Although I do miss the old stickers with the flag on them...).

Election Day

I've probably already beaten the dead voucher horse more than I ever should have, so I'm going to make my election day post a little different (see Alison's post from yesterday if you'd like a bit of a voucher recap). In a nutshell, I look forward to voting for a new President in a year from now (now I didn't say anything about President Bush...). As I've thought about this and tried to learn a bit about the candidates, I've felt a bit overwhelmed because of how many rich folk have decided to try their hand at the Presidency.

I went out searching for websites that would match me up with the candidates whose views most closely match my own. I found a couple of different ones that helped me in this endeavor. All of these sites ask you to rate your opinion on key issues and to also assign an importance to them. Using this information, they attempt to match you up with the candidate whose views are nearest to your own. I would urge any other voter who is unsure, as I was, about who to support to take a look at whose views match your own. You may be surprised...

The first site that I visited was a website for Minnesota's Public Radio. The candidates returned from this site were not too surprising to me. I've always been impressed with Mike Huckabee. He seems to be a good role model for children (and for fat people). I was also not surprised to see Barack Obama and John McCain near the top. I didn't appreciate Tom Tancredo showing up so near to the top though. I think he's a bit of a one-issue nut.
The next site that I visited was vajoe.com. I didn't like the way that they profiled the issues as much but I was looking for a variety of recommendations to look for any consistency. As you can see, my top match was Senator Joseph Biden (but Hillary Clinton and John Edwards were both in the top 4). Once again Mike Huckabee and Barack Obame showed up near the top. I don't want to be a supporter of a candidate because they are the most popular or because they appeal incredibly well to a specific demographic (see Mitt Romney/Mormons).
The last (and probably tied with the MPR site for my favorite) site that I visited was selectsmart.com. The questions on this site were very specific and sometimes a little tougher to answer. Once again, Joseph Biden found himself right near the top of my list. Looks like I'll have to try and learn a bit more about him.
It's too bad that Stephen Colbert wasn't listed as a candidate choice on these websites. I think that we would have been a match made in heaven.

***Sidenote: I went through the belief system selector on selectsmart.com curious to find out what religion they would recommend to me. Imagine my surprise (pleasantly surprised, of course) when I matched up 100% with my own chosen religion. Now for everybody else, this is a good quiz to take to see whether or not you actually know your religion's doctrine (or believe everything that your religion professes to teach). If you do, then you should obviously also get 100% rating with your chosen religion.

The State of the Union

Although the State of the Union Address was 2 days ago, I just finished watching it. I was in class during the speech and I had to watch it in bits and pieces. For anybody that missed it, I would recomment watching, listening or reading to it here.

I actually thought that the speech was very well delivered and written. Aside from the lists of unobtainable goals (isn't that the theme of every State of the Union address?), there were a few parts of the speech that stood out to me.

The first thing that I liked was President Bush's call to end 'earmarks'. These are "little" projects that Senators and Representatives tack onto a bill after it has passed committee. We all benefit from them, but it is simply a slick way for a representative to get something nice done for their constituencies. This is a huge reason that the budget has spiraled wildly out of control. It is possibly my biggest pet peeve with Washington. This is one of the few truly 'obtainable' goals outlined by Bush.

President Bush quoted Luke 12:48 "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required;" With that he talked about helping stop the spread of Aids, and poverty in Africa. He has mentioned this in speeches past and I have no idea if anything has ever come from it but it certainly is a worthy cause and one that I am willing to support.

Probably the biggest 'unobtainable' goal by President Bush was to curb our nation's oil usage by 20% within a decade. I certainly believe that the technology is there, but I do not believe that this country is willing to make the financial sacrifices needed to actually obtain this goal. I will still hope and wish it were true though.

President Bush was very respectful of the first woman speaker (Nancy Pelosi) and I think that she is always very respectful to the President - although we all know she hates him.

My favorite part of the speech was when President Bush introduced "heroes" of our "decent honourable country." He introduced Wesley Autry who is now commonly known as the "Subway hero" (Not Subway restaurant - that's Jared, this refers to the NYC Subway). In short, a man fell on the tracks, having a seizure, when a train was coming and Mr. Autry jumped down and help him down as the train rolled over them both. What an amazing, quick-thinking guy.

Bush also introduced Dikembe Mutombo and others (including the founder of Baby Einstein, not a hero, but obviously a big donater to the Bush campaign...).

Aside from the problematic failure of the Iraq war, which he also discussed, the speech made many good points - He'll ceratinly learn to compromise during the next 2 years or nothing will get done.

Bush and Iraq

President Bush gave a speech tonite about a change of strategy in Iraq. 'Stay the Course' has thankfully been placed behind us now. If you didn't get a chance to hear his speech, take a minute to read the transcript here. Here is what I thought of the speech.

First of all, I was glad to see him take the blame for the mistakes in Iraq. He said: "Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me."

I don't know whether or not I support the deployment of more troops to Iraq or not. I would much prefer the troops to be coming home. If I knew that more troops would really help bring peace to a country that has had sectarian struggles for hundreds of years then I would be all for the deployment. As it stands...

I hope that this war will end quickly. I hope that someday I will find out what the 'real' reason was for Bush starting the war in Iraq. Was it WMDs, Saddam, oil, al-qaeda, to redeem his father, to show the democrats who's boss, to be a hero or any number of other reasons. I don't believe that we have heard the real reason for the war from the administration.

5 Reasons I'm 'not sad' the Democrats have Control of the House and Senate

The democrats have now taken over the house and the senate. They have 51-49 in the senate and a little larger majority in the house. They do not have enough votes to override a veto by President Bush. In my opinion this is a good thing. It will now force them to make a few compromises and I sincerely hope that they will work together a little more to get things done. Here are 5 reasons that a democratic congress will be good under our republican president:

1. Donald Rumsfield will resign and there will be inquiries into pre-war intel and whether or not it was misused (Woohoo! Don Rumsfield resigned the day after the elections. He knew the people had spoken. I'm really not sure why Bush didn't let him resign earlier...).

2. The minimum wage will be raised from it's current $5.15 an hour. It's been $5.15 for more than a decade now I believe. When I was in high school, I was making this minimum wage. During that same time tuition at the U has increased more than 85%. Do you see a problem here? Chris Cannon obviously doesn't believe this because he said "Nobody in Utah is on minimum wage. If they are they need to go back to school or down to the local McDonald's and get a better job." I would never have voted for somebody so out of touch with his constituents. For the record, I know people making the minimum wage - and they obviously can't afford to go back to school because tuition is increasing many times faster than inflation and their pay rate.

3. Stem-cell research. I am of the opinion that "life does not begin in a petri dish." I believe you can be anti-abortion and pro stem-cell research.

4. A more balanced budget. President Bush inherited the largest budget surplus in the history of the US. It did not last long under his policies of "fiscal responsibility." It probably isn't too good for the economy down the road with as much borrowing as we do. I won't be sad to see tax cuts repealed that were given to the rich and the large 'republican-friendly' corporations.

5. More qualified candidates. With a democrat majority, Bush will have to appoint candidates that are actually qualified for the position. Start with the nomination of John Bolton. He is a UN basher and has never been on good terms with the UN. Bush wants him to be the United States Ambassador to the UN. That will put a really good face on United States diplomacy at the United Nations...

I think that I could find more reasons - but you get the picture. Maybe we've 'Stayed the Course' for a little longer than we should have.

We won! We won! We won!

Yesterday was election day and for the democrats it was very successful. They regained control of the House and are on the brink of controlling the Senate (It's 50-49 right now for the democrats with one race still too close to call). This will make for an interesting 2 years. Bush will certainly have to learn how to compromise to get anything done. He's made a good start by inviting Nancy Pelosi (majority leader) and other leading democrats to either lunch of coffee on Thursday and Friday.

Local elections were not so exciting. I think that I voted about 60% Republican and 40% Democrat. Here are the results of the race that I was most interested in though

As you can see Judge Lewis was not retained. This is a very good thing. If you doubt this then please reread my post from November 6. I love elections. I especially love them when there are changes that will require those in power to move out of their comfort zones in order to make something happen.