Oh, well, since my daughter insists that because she blogged today, I must, I will.

To the best of my knowledge, the oldest living member of my family is my mother’s older brother, Bud, who lives in Virginia. He called to tell my Mom a story about my grandfather.

Back when, Mississippi had a poll tax of $2.00. It was meant to keep out the riff raff, especially the “colored” riff raff.

But, my grandfather was quite poor. He was a plumber (Andy and not Joe) and had a passell of kids. He didn’t have the $2.00 to be able to vote.

So, he made an arrangement. He worked an entire day for the county commissioners to earn $2.00 so he could vote.

After that, he never missed a vote.

Bud recalled that people would pass “Pop” in the streets of Laurel, MS, and ask if he “voted right”. He always said yes, but he told his oldest son that as long as you voted, you voted “right”.

Today, I voted about 10 a.m. and the line was fairly long, maybe 100 people. There was a very high number for that early in the day for my precinct, 1488 was my number and most presidential election years, I would vote at 10 a.m. and be about 450, so about 3X “normal” turnout. I saw many more younger voters than normally. I saw that my mother had voted before I got there, which is pretty much the norm, and I dutifully cancelled out her vote as is also pretty much the norm.

Tonight, I’ll join a group of my friends at an election watch party. Pretty unusual — normally, I’m about the only one politically motivated enough to stay up just to watch election returns, even among the high educated, issue oriented crowd I run with.

Whatever the outcome tonight, it would please me if 130 million Americans went to the polls, a greatly enlarged electorate from 4 years ago.

If you don’t vote, don’t bitch — you didn’t earn the right.

God Bless America.

We really are the land of the free, a beacon to the world.

I hope we act like it today.

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First, Gov. Palin:

Then, here’s Obama’s reaction to the news that Vice President Cheney endorsed McCain in Wyoming:

I’d like to congratulate Senator McCain on this endorsement because he really earned it. That endorsement didn’t come easy. Senator McCain had to vote 90 percent of the time with George Bush and Dick Cheney to get it. He served as Washington’s biggest cheerleader for going to war in Iraq, and supports economic policies that are no different from the last eight years. So Senator McCain worked hard to get Dick Cheney’s support.
But here’s my question for you, Colorado: do you think Dick Cheney is delighted to support John McCain because he thinks John McCain’s going to bring change? Do you think John McCain and Dick Cheney have been talking about how to shake things up, and get rid of the lobbyists and the old boys club in Washington?

Colorado, we know better. After all, it was just a few days ago that Senator McCain said that he and President Bush share a “common philosophy.” And we know that when it comes to foreign policy, John McCain and Dick Cheney share a common philosophy that thinks that empty bluster from Washington will fix all of our problems, and a war without end in Iraq is the way to defeat Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda terrorists who are in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

So George Bush may be in an undisclosed location, but Dick Cheney’s out there on the campaign trail because he’d be delighted to pass the baton to John McCain. He knows that with John McCain you get a twofer: George Bush’s economic policy and Dick Cheney’s foreign policy — but that’s a risk we cannot afford to take.

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John Zogby, not generally regarded as the world’s best pollster by any means, says of his tracking poll that on Friday McCain outpolled Obama by a point for the first time in a long time. Drudge trumpets this news and it has the conservatives and the McCain campaign fired up. McCain’s pollster released an internal poll and said it showed the Republican closing fast and hard and that the race was far closer than public polling indicated. In the past two elections, Bush and Karl Rove used evangelical support the last weekend before the election to move up two-three points almost overnight Sunday through Tuesday. It ain’t over ’til it’s over.

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My daughter has posted some Halloween snapshots of her children at Mom-A-Tron. RebL is such a charming writer and my grandkids are the cuuuuu-test ever.

In other grandchild news, my sister at MindOverMary posts about her cute and costumed love.

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Sen. McCain has taken to calling Sen. Obama a “socialist”.

Ike didn’t call Adalai Stephenson that, and Ike was around when “Tailgunner Joe” McCarthy was waving around his list of communists in the State Department.

Dick Nixon, who was on the House Un-American Activities Committee and prosecuted/persecuted Hollywood leftists never called George McGovern a socialist.

Nor did Nixon accuse McGovern of “palling around with terrorists”, even though that was the time that Bill Ayers and his wife were actually exploding bombs and the South Dakota senator was presumably in league with every dirty hippy and weed smoker in the country (me included).

Back when Ronald Reagan was head of the actor’s union, he testified before Nixon’s committee and accused a bunch of “blacklisted” writers and directors of being members of the communist party. But Reagan used no such language to describe President Carter or Walter Mondale.

I started this year believing that John Sidney McCain, the senator from Arizona, was an honorable man. I now believe that he has run the most foul campaign of my lifetime. I can no longer see him as honorable.

Today, Republican House leader John Boehner said Sen. Obama’s “present” votes in the Illinois Senate were “chickenshit.” Whatever one may think of those 130 votes, is this the kind of language we think permissable by public figures during a political campaign? Our sitting vice president told a sitting U.S. senator to “go fuck yourself”.

And the GOP pretends to be the party of “family values”.

The POLITE conservatives on the internet think nothing of calling the Democratic nominee a “baby killer.” Is this what passes for political disagreement these days?

I hope all those warmongering fascists poured out of colostomy bags are ashamed of themselves.

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The New York Times has a look at the “new landscape of infidelity” that I found interesting and thought I’d pass along.

Women, in particular younger women, are catching up to men in their rate of adultery. Or, maybe they’re just more likely to admit it, the researchers say.

I’ve written here in the past that I thought that adultery was like a lot of crimes we find familiar from murder mysteries and television shows: it takes motive, means and opportunity. Women have always, I believe, had the same motive and means for infidelity that men have; however, being at home with the kids all day every day sort of reduces the opportunity. However, since 1986 and the advent of the internet, and particularly since we’ve obtained “instant messaging” and cellphone texting and Match.com (much less “Big Penis dot com”, right, Nina?), the opportunities for stay at home moms and other women to stray have increased. Thus, the rates of (reported) female adultery rises.

From the very last sentence of the report comes this tidbit that sort of tickled my fancy:

And married men and women also appear to have the most active sex lives, reporting sex with their spouse 58 times a year, a little more than once a week.

“We’ve looked at that as good news,” Dr. Robinson said.

One final note: Ladies, if you really want to get laid, wear red!

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The Anchorage Daily News endorses Obama.