This summer reminds me of 2010, and the last US national election cycle. People are working on campaigns, and more importantly, contributing to political campaigns with dollar donations. That's reducing our share of consumers' expendable income.

This year, not only do we have a Presidential race on the ballot, but also various forms of Marriage amendments and related ballot initiatives. The whole Marriage campaign really has a lot of men and women working on campaign efforts, like we've not seen in regular political campaigns for local, county, state and federal elected offices. Much of that started at local Pride events in June.

Then, there were the East coast storms that left millions without electricity for days on end.