How Mormon's will Spend their Easter Weekend.

"More than 100,000 Church members, friends and invited guests are expected to attend the 180^th Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Millions more will watch or listen to conference proceedings via television, radio, satellite and Internet broadcasts. Five sessions of the conference will be held Saturday and Sunday, 3–4 April 2010, in the Conference Center in Salt Lake City, Utah."



For a detailed broadcast schedule see www.bonneville.info. Audio and video streams via the Internet can be found at www.lds.org/broadcast. It will also be broadcast live on BYU Television. For more additional information on availability in your area, rebroadcasts and live Internet streaming visit www.byutv.org.

It has taken months of preparation by nearly 800 dedicated workers to delivery of conference worldwide in 92 languages to millions of viewers and listeners world wide.

"Foreign language interpretation began in 1961 beneath the Tabernacle on Temple Square. Initially general conference was interpreted in four languages. Today there are 58 translation booths located inside the Conference Center, including a large control room with Tieline technology that continues to expand the reach of the Church’s foreign language capabilities."

What it takes to get a President in the Classroom

Here is what Obama needs set up to talk to a few school children:



Here's What Bush needed to talk to a few school children:



I wonder what the reason for the differences are? Maybe it has something to do with the kind of books Obama likes to read:

LDS Church reasserts it's Political Neutrality while encouraging activism.

The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently issued a letter . . . encouraged Latter-day Saints to attend their local precinct caucus meetings.

In doing so the Church has also reasserted it's stance on being politically neutral:

"The Church does not:

• Endorse, promote or oppose political parties, candidates or platforms.
• Allow its church buildings, membership lists or other resources to be used for partisan political purposes.
• Attempt to direct its members as to which candidate or party they should give their votes to. This policy applies whether or not a candidate for office is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
• Attempt to direct or dictate to a government leader.

The Church does:

• Encourage its members to play a role as responsible citizens in their communities, including becoming informed about issues and voting in elections.
• Expect its members to engage in the political process in an informed and civil manner, respecting the fact that members of the Church come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences and may have differences of opinion in partisan political matters.
• Request candidates for office not to imply that their candidacy or platforms are endorsed by the Church.
• Reserve the right as an institution to address, in a nonpartisan way, issues that it believes have significant community or moral consequences or that directly affect the interests of the Church."

On a somewhat related topic the LDS Church is also encouraging it's U.S. Members to "participate in the 2010 United States Census", sighting that "The Church also uses census data for planning purposes."

Texas Libertarian Party influences local non-partisan elections

On March 2nd, Texas Independence Day, the Texas Libertarian Party sent out a call to try "to build [their] team by electing local non-partisan candidates to office in the May 8th elections."

It's not clear to how helping to elect non-partisan candidates will help a political party "build their team", but it's certainly interesting to note that they may have a better chance at influencing such election since less then 10% of registered voters typically participate in such elections.  Of course the whole purpose of being non-partisan is to keep powerful political parties from influencing otherwise resource restrained local candidates (such restrictions might even be helpful for partisan candidates).
I'm also curious to know how they can get away with supporting such elections when they are clearly a political party and these are non-partisan elections.  It would seem that the funding is actually coming from a private source that is tied to the Libertarian Party, but technically not Libertarian funds.  It seems like a bit of a loop hole they are using to get away with putting their own into an unfair advantage over the true will of the locals. Certainly those on the city counsel have a much more direct impact on the people they represent then our national and state officials, and yet they tend to have the poorest voter turn out of any elected official.
There would certainly be a much larger turn out if these elections were held on odd years in November to con-inside with other non-partisan elections, as some states do, but that's not the way it's done in Texas.  For most people I think it gets annoying as they feel they are constantly engaged in voting and trying to keep up with it all; instead of spending a week or two each year looking exclusively at the October campaigns, as most voters only do every other year.

Preparing for the primary elections in Collin County Texas.

The early voting numbers in Texas have been reported to be twice what they were in 2006, but what tomorrow will bring is still a big unknown.  One thing is certain, that a lot of new voters are heading to the polls.
Personally I will not be participating. Why? Because in my research I found myself really only wanting to vote for two people; unfortunately one of them is a Democrat and one of them is a Republican.  What is an independent to do?
While I've found myself really disinterested with any of the Republican candidates for Governor (thanks to all the mud slinging and crazy talk about promising to do things the Governor has no authority over), especially after finding a seemingly more knowledgeable and down to earth choice within the Democrats.  However, for my voting precinct, there's not much else to choose from on the Democratic side of the isle as most of their races go uncontested or unfilled.  As for the rest of the Republicans, there's plenty to choose from, but what I'm most interested in, is to see who's going remove long standing Representative Hall (pretending to be a conservative while bragging about all the pork he has sent to Texas).  Unfortunately I fear with such a wide variety of choices, the vote against Hall will likely be split too many ways; hopefully, at best, resulting in a run off vote.
I'm going to hope for the best and know that if nothing else I've still got the Libertarian convention coming up, as well as the Constitution party that will be going out in full force to get their name on the ballot.  Of course both of them must first wait until the primary elections are over, as anyone participating in the primaries will then be bared from participating with any other party in any way.

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Collin County Elections Ballots and polling locations are available on-line to preview.