Like we need another SSM diary, but this is starting to really tee me off.  A Southern Unitarian-Universalist is generally about the most laid-back person you can meet, but get one mad enough, and we'll go Julia Sugarbaker on your ass.

CG's diary on gender parity in office holders got me thinking.  We've collectively talked a lot about office holders, political power (or lack thereof) through representation, etc.  But I don't think it is enough to say "there should be more female candidates" and leave it at that.

Why aren't there more female candidates?  What is it that makes people decide to run for office?  If one considers the genders to be two subgroups of the population, what motivating and demotivating factors to officeholders occur more often in one subgroup than the other?

I've been pretty fed up with the Human Rights Campaign (hereafter HRC) for a while now.  If you are unfamiliar with them, or what exactly they are (since the name is, well, rather vague), the HRC is the largest GLBT Rights advocacy/lobbying group in the U.S.  And, frankly, they've been incredibly ineffective over the years.  As Rachel Maddow has repeated over the years, "Human Rights Campaign?  Really?  We're so marginalized that we can't even say who we are in our title?"

Seen in that light, the milquetoast efforts to 'not offend anyone' from the offical No on 8 folks is totally unsurprising.  So it its inefficacy.

Which makes me really excited about The Impact and what it accomplished over the weekend.  I'd really like to the The Impact's energies directed towards pressuring Congress and the Adminstration to repeal, at the very least, the portion of DOMA that restricts the Federal Government from recognizing gay couples.

Keith Olbermann gave a special comment tonight regard Prop 8.  Really, it's about more than Prop 8, it is about common humanity.  I was rather impressed.

Around 11:00 PM EST last night, my heart mended with the announcement that Barack Obama is the President-Elect of the United States of America.  Later on that night, and this morning, bits of heart broke again with the rout over marriage equality in FL, AZ, and CA.

I grew up and currently live in Massachusetts, back after a few years living in red states.  Housing, employment, and public access discrimination based on same-sex orientation has been illegal here since the last 1980s.  I have attended many weddings here of friends in the past few years, and hope to someday attend my own.  Contrary to what social conservatives would have you believe, Provincetown has not fallen into the ocean.  There have been no plagues of locusts.

On the contrary, Massachusetts is in the bottom five states for divorces.  In the bottom five for teenage pregnancy.  In the top five for educational test scores.  One of the highest per capita incomes.

Speaking only for myself, I need a serious mental health break at this point.  This time tomorrow, hopefully we'll know for sure, one way or the other.

With that, I present a musical interlude to take us into Election Day. "One Day More," as performed by Ultimate Improv.

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Hope is the new black.

Not a long diary, but any stretch, but one that's been on my mind:

I owe a huge apology to Hilary Clinton.  And to a large percentage of her primary supporters.

I debated back and forth about posting this here.  It is something that I wrote for my personal blog.  I work as an accountant, and a lot of my friends were asking me what they should about their banking.

In the end, I decided to post it here.  If anything, deposit insurance is a great example of how progressive politics can be implemented in a way that minimizes individual risk through an efficient governmental structure.  And it has proven to be a bedrock of our financial system, which is arguably one of the most robust in the history of the world.

Without further ado, "Deposit Insurance 101:"

FDIC Insurance.  FDIC insurance covers the deposits accounts of member commerical banks, as well as savings and loans.  All FDIC-insurance is per bank, not per account.  So the combined total of all covered accounts at a given bank count towards the limits.  Member institutions guarantee covered accounts up to $100,000 per depositor for most covered accounts.  IRAs are covered separately up to $150,000 per depositor.