Dearth and Taxes

From the news lately:

Tom Daschle just withdrew from being nominated for Health and Human Services Secretary over unpaid taxes.

Nancy Killefer withdrew her nomination as chief performance expert at the Office of Management and Budget, over tax troubles.

Caroline Kennedy withdrew from consideration for the NY senate seat over tax issues.

Timothy Geithner was appointed Treasury Secretary, despite his own problems with unpaid back taxes.

Really inspirational set of stories as I get my W2 in the mail and get ready to start doing taxes…
Am I the only one who gets the feeling that maybe all the rich people don’t actually pay taxes?

First prop 8 in California, now this…

Wow, first seemingly tolerant CA passes proposition 8 banning gay marriage, now Arkansas passes a proposition banning gay adoption. Not only that, but it also bans single people of any sexual orientation from adopting – what’s next, take away the kids of all single parents?

It sounds like even adoptions that have already gone through would be reversed by this – tearing apart already established families.

That such a mean and absurd proposition passed is terribly depressing. Of course, this is the backwards state that brought us Huckabee.

Sigh. Hopefully the UCLA will overturn it as they overturned a similar ban in the past.

Vote!

Went out and voted this morning. The polling place was a mile from my house, so I walked over, it was nice out and a refreshing walk.

Voting was busy, but quick. The slowest part was the old ladies checking people in and out, trying to find names on the register.

I was surprised to see so many choices on the ballot, with the two-party system, you kinds forget there are still other people running. It threw me at first, I didn’t recognize the first couple choices and thought they might be leading with a local office. But I found Obama at the bottom of the list. There were a lot of local offices where people were running unopposed. Wonder what would happen if there was someone running unopposed, but no one voted on that office – would they win by default?

Anyway, get out there and vote today! I don’t want to wake up tomorrow to the nightmarish words “vice-president Palin”!

Go, Obama!

I’ll probaby curl up on the couch tonight and watch the results roll in. The suspense!

I’ve got my fingers crossed.

The Name Game

Finally got around to something I’ve been putting off for a while… namely, getting a new Social Security Card with my updated name, which will allow me to get an updated Driver’s License.

Which times nicely, since my driver’s license is up for renewal next month. And I’ll probably need up-to-date ID to vote, and I definitely want to do that. Go, Obama!

Reminds me, the debate is tonight… maybe I’ll watch it in HD, so I can see if McCain got his money’s worth.

Oh, and on another unrelated note, I watched the new Knight Rider TV show, and it sets a new high-water-mark for awfulness. Horrible acting, unlikable characters, pointless special effects (the car uses an elaborate transformation to change into… a basically identical car), bad scripts, and just general badness. It’s not even enjoyably bad, which if you’re being generous you could say they were going for, it’s just bad bad.