I always knew I bled blue...

While Kiddo was taking one of her extra-long showers (a girl after her mama's heart, I tell you), I was bopping around the interwebz, catching up on blogs I read and that I'd missed with yesterday's sick day. (I'm a total Luddite - I don't have any sort of blog reader/subscriber/follower/list thingy. Which one should I do? Heck, I can't even figure out Google Analytics for tracking my minuscule stats; this is why I'm freaking out with Sitemeter being temporarily down. But I digress....) On my dear friend Lylah's blog, I read a great post in which she gives a link to a site called On the Issues. I clicked over and the word "quiz" immediately caught my eye. (I'm just that kinda girl - total sucker for a quiz. It really doesn't help any with my Facebook addiction. I go "Oh look, Andy just did a quiz on 80s TV shows - let me give that a try..." and half an hour later, there I sit. But again, I digress...) Needless to say, I clicked on the VoteMatch Quiz and chose my answers.

It really came as no surprise to me that my results indicated that by their measure, my political philosophy is Hard-Core Liberal:

Yep, that's me - I bleed blue. I've been called a "bleeding heart liberal" in my day - and not always meant in a complimentary way, either, and I know that my views (which, naturally, are the right views, right?) don't always line up with the majority. Heck, they don't even line up with most of my family - I was the first person in my immediate family to register as a Democrat and I swear my parents, while not outright disowning me, were sorely disappointed. And Hubby? Well, let's just say he is not cut from the same cloth as me, though he was more liberal back when we first met. Case in point - less than a month before our wedding, we were reading the Sunday paper and the magazine supplement had a quiz called "How Liberal or Conservative Are You?" Like I said, I can't resist a quiz, so I grabbed a pen and did it. When I finished, I handed it to Hubby (then still Hubby-to-Be) and had him answer it, while I looked over his shoulder and tsk-tsked his every answer. It's been almost 14 years since that quiz, but I do recall that on a scale of 1-50, with 50 being most conservative, I scored a 13 and Hubby scored a 31. They had little faces along the bottom of the scale, and I was right between Hil and Bill on the liberal end of things, whereas I believe Hubby was hovering near Pat Buchanan and Bob Dole. Yeah, I married him anyway... He is socially more liberal, which is really at the heart of it for me anyhow. As the VoteMatch results said, a high "personal" score (which they rate as over 60 - I was a 92) means that I "believe in tolerance for different people and lifestyles" and that is where Hubby is likewise more liberal. Fiscally, he may be more conservative, but at least he believes in the things I hold dear, like equal rights for everyone, even if his philosophy on things like government spending and the privatization of Social Security differs from mine.

So, yeah, the election's coming up, and I'm all out for Obama (in case the button in the sidebar didn't give that away already). (Interestingly enough, the VoteMatch results said my best candidate match would be Hillary Clinton at 65% with Barack Obama close behind at 60%. I still voted for Obama in the primary...) As usual, Hubby and I will likely cancel each other's votes out, since we've rarely voted for the same candidate over the years. I think it is still much more important to vote than not to vote, though. I have a friend who is the same age as me, and who has never even registered to vote. Every year at election time, I've chided him about this, and every year, his response has been that when a major election is decided by one vote, he'll register the next day. I just don't get that. Agree with me, disagree with me, vote for a Republican, Democrat or other, but sheesh, exercise your right to VOTE!

(By the by, this will likely be one of very few political posts ever on my blog. I'm not a "scream it from the rooftops" kind of a girl when it comes to politics - though I do have an Obama bumper sticker on my car - and this blog is my cyber-rooftop. I'd rather save my screaming for things like ranting at school bureaucracies, obsessing about my ridiculous hair and dreaming of meeting George Clooney... Also, if being married to a conservative Republican isn't proof enough for you that I'm an open-minded kinda gal, I welcome anyone here, even if your political views don't align with mine. Just please, if you are a US resident and are able to vote, do so on November 4th, okay?)