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Tomorrow is April 15th, tax day. And in case you’ve missed it, republicans, flat taxers, gold fetishists, racists, defense nuts and other extreme conservatives are planning to host tea parties tomorrow. Tea parties? Yep. Protests, harkening back to the days of the Boston Tea Party when proto-American patriots dumped tea into Boston harbor to protest taxation without representation. Tomorrow’s tea parties appear to be a bit less principaled. Some protestors are objecting to the Bush tax cuts on the top 2% expiring in 2010… as they were scheduled to do by republican law makers. Some protestors seem to object to having lost the election in 2008. Others object to bailouts of home owners… or is it bailouts of banks… or is it bailouts that don’t help their bottom line? Some seem to object to having a black president. Others are Ron Paulites who seek to restore the gold standard?! ...

I wasn’t originally going to write about the Michael Gerson piece from the other week where he talks about the “hidden virtues” of a recession. Leaving aside the irony of a relatively well off speech writer for George W. Bush telling us how the recession caused by his boss’s policies will be good for us, I just assumed that the idea of a virtuous recession was self-obviously wrong and wouldn’t be taken seriously. But since then, I’ve heard other people, even more liberal people, make the same arguments. In several of those cases, the argument is that a recession will help (force?) Americans to lead simpler lives, to save more and to focus on what is really important. I’m offended by that sentiment because, while I have often thought, and said, that people need to focus on what’s important and that they should save more, there is a huge difference between doing so as a choice and being forced into it due to scarcity. ...

Can anyone please explain to me, what the hell is John Boener doing on my TV and in my newspapers talking about the stimulus plan? For 8 years, we liberal types were told that “elections had consequences” and that we should STFU and clap louder. Fine, now that republicans have been repudiated in a full election cycle, suffering major losses in both 2006 and 2008 after running on the same policies that they now advocate will save us from the mess that their policies got us into, will they please STFU? ...

Okay, commenting on global finance is really not my usual shtick, but I’ve got to agree with Barry Ritholtz that there’s something odd in this NY Times article on China’s role in the U.S. housing bubble. The article describes Ben Bernanke’s 2005 theory that a savings “glut” is driving up the demand for American to borrow from foreign countries. The article extends the theory to suggest that the financial mess that we are currently in the middle of was, essentially, caused by the Chinese. ...

I wonder if the N&O would print this? Dear Editors, I have read with some alarm your recent stories describing a dramatic change to our way of life. Specifically, I refer to those stories of our poor benighted multi-millionaires and billionaires who are having to downgrade their lifestyle in response to the crash of the financial markets and the banking industry. As we all know, what has made America great over the past 30 years is the increasing increasing income inequality whereby those at the top of the income ladder make an ever increasing amount of money while the median income has stagnated. Without these top income earners, all motivation and striving goes out of our populous; leaving us a nation of whiners. And yet, every day, we hear stories of high powered financiers, who had been making millions each year, now contemplating the need to sell that third vacation home in order to make ends meet. ...

Two weeks ago as Obama won a resounding victory both in the country as a whole and even more decisively in California, Californians also passed Proposition 8. Prop 8 was an amendment to the California constitution that defined marriage as an institution between one man and one woman. With the passage of Prop 8, 18,000 couples had their legal marriages dissolved. Supporters of Proposition 8 claim that the act was necessary to help defend the traditional institution of marriage. Specifically, they looked to the Bible and its condemnation of homosexuality. They claimed that recognizing homosexual marriage undermined the biblical concept of marriage. ...

Still not official from the Election Board, but the AP has canvased all of the counties and found that there aren’t enough provisional ballots for McCain to overcome Obama’s 13000+ vote lead.

My mother tells a story about my first day in first grade (and sadly, I’m more likely to remember stories of my childhood than the actual childhood). I go off to school, probably all 70s style - plaid pants, mop haircut, etc., and when I come home she asks me about school. In particular, how did I like my new teacher (Mrs. Smith?)? I told my mom that she would like the teacher, that Mrs. Smith was just like her. ...

Polls just closed on the West coast. With that, everyone calls Washington, Oregon and California for Obama - Obama wins! And I’m heading to bed. I would still like to see who wins NC. It looks like it’ll be close, but we should know in the morning. If I’m doing really good, I might stay up for a McCain concession. We’ll see.

I headed over to the polling place to vote this morning. As of 8:30am or so, there were no lines at our precinct. But then, that’s not too surprising for a small precinct in a non-populous county. Chronological observations: There were a fair number of cars parked at the polling place. I took one of only about 4 or 5 free spots The Obama people were prepared for the rain - they had decent sized open sided tents set up to stand under while handing out literature and talking to voters There were about 10-15 people voting when I arrived The elections officials were prepared for crowds. Instead of the usual split of the alphabet into 3 or 4 lines, I think there were 6. They also seemed to have extra help on hand, including some high school students. The folks handing out the ballots mentioned that polling had been steady so far. When I left around 8:45/8:50, I was only the 161st voter :-) I suspect that across NC, things will be similar. We had such a huge number of people cast ballots early (some 35-40% of all registered voters) that I would imagine we won’t have too many problems with lines, etc. ...