Tonight, Laura and I rolled down to the fire house to exercise our civic duty. We walked in saw a few people in line and the usual women working the polling station. They are very nice people. Usually, I wake them all up with my humor. Yeah, I’m the tall redhead.

I went first…signed my name in the book and pulled the big red handle. Then, I made my vote and pulled the handle in the other direction. Laura was right behind me. She did her thing and walked out of the booth. We made a bit of small talk with the ladies and left. What a fun thing to do.

Unfortunately, for Laura or me, we canceled out each others vote.

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Reusable cloth shopping bags, like this one at a Superquinn grocery checkout in Dublin, have replaced those stretchy, crinkly plastic shopping bags, which are subject to a 33-cent tax per bag. Ireland introduces 33 cent plastic bag tax. 94% drop within weeks.

Yahoo needs Microsoft’s help

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The Nation: MoveOn Endorses Obama

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In this case, John Edwards was being referred to as the Kingmaker. I think they were saying that he is going to inadvertently help Hillary Clinton get the Democratic nomination. Ummm, kind of like Ross Perot helped Bill Clinton get elected president…twice. Hmmmm, genious. Only this time, I think it is nothing more that John Edwards’ ego that is doing all the work. You have to admit, the guy likes to hear himself talk.

Kingmaker or no kingmaker, I love politics. I was telling Laura last night that the political season is like my football or baseball (or whatever you are into) season. The only thing is that the political season seems to be lasting for an awful long time this time ’round.

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If you didn’t hear about it, the Dow dropped around 300 points yesterday. Actually, the market has been sucking all week. Since yesterday, this is all the news in the news. It is beginning to make me wonder if it is actually the media that is making things worse.

I kind of know the way things work over at Wall Street. After all, I did answer one out of the six questions on my finance final in grad school and managed to pull off a B- in the class. I am not saying I even answered it correctly. That’s not bad. Anyway, the way things are supposed to work is by using plenty of data to make buying and selling decisions. I am sure this actually is the way things work most of the time, but day to day trading is heavily influenced by the media. I mean, perhaps if they didn’t talk about the flames at the bottom of the endless pit of doom so much, there wouldn’t be so many drops in the market. It’s almost like the trading floor is blasting CNN over some loudspeakers. The reason I am saying this is because I happen to listen to CNN all day as I work. I must’ve heard the same story about the impending mess of the economy about fifteen times today. Then of course, our President, George W. Bush, had to come on the gool ol’ television to promote a economic stimulation plan. I ain’t sure what another whoppingly huge $300 rebate check is going to do.

I must confess, when I was listing to our President, George W. Bush, I did agree whole-heartedly that we should cut taxes. I would like a flat tax, just like Mike Huckabee is proposing. I don’t care if these brilliant politicians can’t figure out how it is going to work…they are the ones who got us in the tax mess in the first place. I believe that if we weren’t shelling out 33% of our earnings to pay for wars and $4000 toilet seats, perhaps there would be some sort of restraint. I apologize, I got off track there.

All I am trying to say is that I think television, radio, the internet and everything else out there gets everyone so damn paranoid that they hide like a pearl in a clam’s mouth. Well, that’s not good.

Ok, bye.

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I have to say, some of it was interesting. They touched on some good issues, such as the war and fiscal policy. I was slightly pleased at that. They also touched on some really annoying things. The problem was that the candidates seemed to be trying to “out conservative” each other.

In the beginning, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney got in a little (way overblown) tussle about illegal immigration. While the topic is legitimate, I am not sure how having a few unknown illegals doing some landscaping for you affects your judgement as president. Well, I suppose it all matters in Republican debates. There were a few ridiculously idiotic questions, such as, “Do you believe in every single word of the Bible?” and “What does the Confederate Flag mean to you?” I have to admit that I am disappointed that I will never get those few minutes of my life back. I guess I have to blame CNN for letting those questions through.

So people, there you have it. While the earth’s temperature steadily climbs, glaciers melt and wars rage, American television is asking potential presidential candidates whether or not they believe in every word of the Bible, verbatim.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot a really good one…”How many guns do you own and what kind are they?” Now that one was fabulous, just fabulous. What intellectual and stimulating conversation. I think even the candidates were rolling their eyes at that one.

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We sat down to start eating dinner when Laura got up to see if she could find which channel the debate was on. For some reason, we couldn’t seem to locate it. I hopped up and walked into the other room to do some research online. I discovered that the debate was going to be aired on CNN. I went back into the living room to find CNN on the TV. Again, I couldn’t find the debate, nor CNN for that matter. Hmmmm…

We finished up dinner and I visited CNN.com to get some more information. I discovered that I could watch the debate live online, right there at CNN.com. I was thinking to myself…”Yeah right, like it’s going to come in smoothly, without breaking up to buffer ever few seconds.” I clicked the player, downloaded the plugin for Firefox and off I went.

I couldn’t believe it. There I was, sitting at my computer two hours later watching them finish up the debate. About half way through, I noticed that I could enlarge the player window to fit the entire twenty two inches on my monitor. It was like watching a television. Everything was smooth and there were no commercials. During the times the commercials were airing on the television, they flipped over to live coverage of the debate on the CNN.com channel. It was so cool.

I guess things are changing quickly. By the way, Hillary did much better and was quite impressive.

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Visit this website to see a short slideshow of the President visiting injured vets. I think you’ll agree with many other people’s sentiments.

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Anyway, after I looked through that website, which seems to be run by decent folk, I hopped over to Digg to see today’s news. Well, wouldn’t you know it, the first article was, “Ron Paul To Break One-Day Internet Fundraising Record.” Now, that is pretty neat. I guess the whole correlation between politics and money doesn’t hold water? As far as I know, Ron Paul is at the bottom of every national poll, among Republicans. Why the heck isn’t this guy climbing?

As far as Dennis Kucinich is concerned, even though I love the guy, I know why he is at the bottom as well. I guess the people of this country have really gotten used to the same old politics. It also seems like good ‘ol Dennis is only using the campaign to talk about his issues, which is fine with me. Al Sharpton has been doing that for years.

Opinions?

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