The LDS Church and Proposition 8

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints gave 20 million dollars to the vote yes on 8 campaign. This proposition passed 52-48 in California, taking away the right to marry that had only recently been declared universal by the California courts. I would be angry anyway at the passage of this constitutional amendment, as I am at the other states who passed it, and as I was, although not at all surprised, when my beloved Virginia passed such an amendment in 2006. However, what makes this even more than usually horrendous to me are two things: first that it happened in California, where I would instinctively have expected it to pass, and second is the involvement of the LDS church in the campaign.

The church gets a significant portion of its income from tithing its members (ie requiring that members give a tenth of their income to the church). The church chose to take 20 million dollars and give it to preventing people who love each other from being able to marry. Not to treating AIDS, finding a cure for cancer, feeding starving people around the world, or even building churches or missionary work. What possible goal could the prevention of gay marriages serve for the church? Do they really think it's going to somehow draw people into the church or better them as people? Christ's commandment is to love thy neighbor as thyself. I don't even really understand opposing gay marriage, because there is no way in which it negatively affects anyone, but I certainly don't understand a CHURCH whose money should be used to promote general welfare and spirituality giving 20 million dollars to this. I feel like Rachel Maddow - I need someone to talk me down. Any offers? I want them stripped of their tax exempt status. I want to boycott them. I even want to boycott all businesses owned by Mormons until they stop paying tithing.

Kick. Him. Out.

So there's actually some kind of debate about whether we should let Lieberman stay in our caucus? Seriously? The man stood with McCain, and therefore also on behalf of the Republican party, in one of the dirtiest campaigns in history. He argues that it was a principled stand - that he was rising above party - but what that means is that his principles are that the Democrats are the wrong people to lead the country. Kick. him. out. Take away his chairmanship. We don't need him, and we don't want him. We probably haven't won the 60 seats, but even if we had, Lieberman would not matter. We will be the majority party, and Lieberman will still vote however the hell he wants to on cloture. ALL the Republicans can do to stop us on measures where the Democrats are unified is to filibuster. If Lieberman is so "principled," he will not base his votes on these issues on partisan politics, but on what he thinks is best for the country, no matter what party's caucus he joins. He was never going to be on our side anyway. We can work with him on specific votes, but he is NOT a Democrat, and should not be treated like one. He has no leverage. The further right he moves, the less likely he is to win reelection in 2012 anyway. Just, kick him out.

Unbelievable

We won. Perriello even appears to have won. I suppose we also won in 2006, and that was huge and wonderful, and in many ways unexpected. However, this feels incredible. I know that Obama and the massive Democratic majority in the House and the insufficient Democratic majority in the Senate will not be able to accomplish everything they'll set out to, they won't solve every problem, and I won't agree with them on everything they try to do. I know that there is a long way to go to fix all of the problems our country is facing, whether caused by Bush's disastrous Presidency or due to some other cause. However, there is now hope, and there will be change. Our country is now on the road to recovery.

Perriello vs. Goode

This race is beyond going down to the wire at this point. According to the State Board of Elections site, Tom Perriello leads bigoted, corrupt incumbent Virgil Goode by 52 votes. CNN has it at Perriello +80. I don't know why there is a discrepancy. This race was not expected to be this close, and Tom was certainly not expected to be ahead. I hope it stays this way.

I don't really understand what happened with the Danville voting machines, but it seems likely to me that the vote totals we're getting from there right now are not correct, simply because Obama did not outperform Tom in the rest of the district, and Tom VASTLY outperformed Al Weed's 2006 numbers, or it wouldn't be this close - and apparently the new numbers there closely match the numbers from that race, or so I've read. Nobody really seems to know what's going on with that. I think, however, that the canvassing of votes is expected to be complete tomorrow, including the adjudication and counting of provisional ballots. Absentees are supposed to have been counted already, but I don't know what effect McCain's lawsuit regarding military absentee ballots might have on this race.

I'm being driven somewhat crazy by the lack of information available about what is going on. I'm SO far beyond thrilled that Obama won, and I'm as curious as anyone else about the cabinet appointments and staff appointments and so forth, but this is a pretty big story, in my opinion, and even the local papers and blogs don't seem to know what's going on. What's more is that OpenLeft's posts are all calling Perriello the winner, as though it's decided, when it clearly won't be certain for some time.

It'll be interesting to me to see Goode calling for a recount once it's time assuming Tom stays in the lead. He just seems like exactly the type to call those asking for recounts in any other race sore losers and so forth. I suppose there's no chance he wouldn't ask for a recount if he's down in the original count, and I also don't think there's anything wrong with calling for a recount, especially if there is any reason to believe there have been any sort of irregularities. I assume, however, that the BOE is being incredibly careful in this race, since it's coming down to such an incredibly, unbelievably small margin.