13 - Go Out and Vote!

It is officially election day. I had hoped to do a few more entries then I ever got around to doing, but I guess its to late now. I hope everyone who has ever glanced at this votes, assuming you are old enough of course.

I have a silly little polling story before the election comes and goes. I was called for some silly survey this weekend, I think it was on Friday afternoon. Now a lot of the questions were more about California specific measures, but they did ask about the presidential campaigns at the beginning and asked me a question I really had to think about.

First they asked those ones like, “do you plan on voting,” and I said I was absolutely sure I would be. Then they asked me for whom I was going to vote for, I told them Barack Obama. The somewhat hard question was “Is that more a vote for the Obama-Biden ticket or a vote against the McCain-Palin ticket?”

This question gave me pause, but I decided to say, “a vote for Obama.” I said this because I had been planning to vote for Obama since the primaries. Or rather, I had been hoping I would get to vote for him. However the closer we came to election day the more I have been disgusted by the McCain campaign, Sarah Palin of course being the biggest problem I had.

That poll probably doesn’t mean all that much considering I live in California, and I’m sure the questions about prop 4 and 8 and 12 were much more interesting to them, but I can’t help but continue to question that one answer I gave them. Perhaps I really was voting for Obama before, but now I think I really am voting against McCain.

That is it for tonight. GO VOTE!

12 - Racism Rant

So yesterday the NY Times had an article about 2 men with hopes of killing Obama being arrested. You can read the full article here.

This is some scary shit right here. Yeah the article says they didn’t really have a plan and their ability to actually do it is questionable, but the fact is they wanted to do it. This is much more disturbing then the yelling at the republican rallies because it shows that some of those people seriously want him dead. Of course, that is not to mention they hoped to kill children at a predominantly African-American school.

I do believe this moment in America is a major step in the right direction towards ending racism, but its still just a step. Racism will probably never die, I mean truly die. So long as something is different between people there will be some kind of negative attitude about those differences. It can be skin color, culture, religion, anything really.

What needs to happen is people need to understand that all people being created equal does necessitate that everyone is the same. To say that in understanding this racism will die is not realistic. However if people understand this then any racism that exists will be minor, like crossing the street so as to not walk as close to a small group of Asians or African-Americans or whatever. That kind of racism will never completely die but it doesn’t hurt anyone either, it doesn’t try to make anyone subhuman, and in fact it could arguably be instinctual to a degree.

The desires to kill, or enslave is where the problem is. I really hope that should Obama be elected he can institute all the plans he has said he has for the white house. When the American people discover how much his policies help them, perhaps that will be the real turning point towards ending the extremes of racism in our country. Because just electing Obama won’t change racism in America, it will just show how much of the country has already changed.

11 - Freudian Slip?

So I’m always hearing those things about how some big mess up ruined whatever person’s chances to win the election. All those speculations are pretty far-fetched in my opinion, but this dailyshow segment had a very funny ending.

10 - Colin Powell and Socialism

So the big news over the weekend was obviously Colin Powell endorsing Barack Obama. This really could be the end for McCain. Not that he will stop trying or anything, but realistically this could be it.

Colin Powell was the Secretary of State for the Bush white house. This is a man who has played a big part in republican politics. With him endorsing Obama, I think, a real shift in votes will swing Obama’s way. All those arguments being used to say Obama isn’t ready are pretty much null from this, because if Colin Powell thinks he is ready then why should anyone really doubt it?

This week has had lots of other little things happen though. My favorite being that the republicans, the ones who are so good about “reaching across party lines” and “country first” and all that shit, have begun to start calling all those heavy democratic areas of the country “un-American.” Those areas aren’t the “Real America,” they are just the America that was attacked on September 11th.



This week seems to be more about Barack Obama and the “socialism” he wants to bring to America while in office. This is actually very interesting to me because I have sometimes considered myself a sudo-socialist. I generally agree with many of the socialistic ideas, I just wouldn’t take them quite to the extreme that I think socialism might actually be associated with.

However what really interests me about this is not so much the attacks themself but the McCain economic plan. McCain says we should take an axe to spending plans, or have a spending freeze because “raising taxes and government spending” won’t get us out of the problem. Now, I am crazy or something? I could have sworn it was some socialistic policies to spread the wealth around and some massive government spending that got America out of the Great Depression.

And just for laughs, it seems the old McCain actually would have agreed with Obama’s plans.

9 - Debate Number 3

Well the third debate was last week. I watched it last week but here we are with me procrastinating with my response once again. Although, part of me feels it isn’t needed. It was a debate full of more of the same.

What I found most amusing however, was some of the things McCain said. Yeah big surprise huh? What I mean for example is when he said “my campaign is about getting this economy back on track,” even though Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, or his predecessor Alan Greenspan were not mentioned once. Or when he said he didn’t care about a washed up old terrorist (Ayers) only to start spouting about how America needs to know absolutely everything about Obama’s relationship to him. Not to mention that he continued this attack right after Obama explained everything about the relationship right there.

I am willing to admit that McCain did a better job, at least for the first half or so of the debate, then he did in the other 2. But this was definitely not going to save his campaign. And with exactly 2 weeks before election day, I am feeling hopeful that the lesser of the evils will be elected.

8 - "Kill Him" Again...

Well, McCain’s campaign doesn’t seem to be getting better about the people yelling scary things at their rallies. Sarah Palin went to Scranton today for a rally where a man yelled “kill him” once again. Although she wasn’t the one on stage at the time.

Chris Hackett addressed the increasingly feisty crowd as they await the arrival of Gov. Palin.

Each time the Republican candidate for the seat in the 10th Congressional District mentioned Barack Obama the crowd booed loudly.

One man screamed "kill him!"

Supporters have been noted shouting “kill him,” “terrorist,” “off with his head” and other equally incendiary terms about Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. Others have directly suggested Mr. Obama is a Muslim, which he is not, or a traitor. Some comments even drew rebuke from Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

Other than the lone man, there were no other such outbursts.

From The Times Tribune.

Its looking like I am going to be wrong about that turning point thing...

7 - McCain Draws the Line (and debate #2)

Well I was pleasantly surprised that the general consensus about the VP debate was not how I predicted. Perhaps I should trust the media a little more then I have in the past. Of course the McCain campaign started getting extremely ugly after that leading up to the second presidential debate.

I must admit that I expected some serious attacks from McCain. The whole debate seemed much less passionate then it seemed like it should have. I also don’t know why it was said that McCain was so great at the town hall style debates. Obama seemed just as good as McCain, in fact, McCain seemed more uncomfortable to me.

Just a few days ago however, McCain did something that really spoke out to me. I am not swayed in my voting preference but I feel like McCain really isn’t the bad guy he has been coming off as. After almost a full week of rallies with supporters yelling things like, “kill him” and “he’s a terrorist,” McCain drew the line.



Seeing him do that, even with his crowd beginning to boo him for saying it, makes me respect him. I don’t agree with him on the political issues, but I do respect him as a human being. Seeing this explains a lot in the debates to me also. It seems to me that McCain wouldn’t look Obama in the eye, or say any of mudslinging comments because he was, on a personal level, unhappy with the way his campaign was being conducted.

And frankly, with the economic problems we had over the week, he should be ashamed of the way his campaign was being run. This election cannot be about who seems like a more likable person. The problems we are facing are to great, this election must be about the issues, the issues that affect everyone on a day to day basis.

I think this week may have been a turning point in the overall campaign for both parties. And I think it will be a good one. This coming week, and the debate especially, we will see if I am right.

6 - Vice Presidential Debate

Well the vice presidential debate is over so here are my reactions to it. In short, Joe did better, I still don’t like Palin. I feel this way mostly because Palin didn’t answer questions. However, considering how terrible she did in her interviews this was a very nice performance for her. I think that most of the media and possibly some “swing” voters will find this debate to be a draw because of that.

Now for a bit more of the long answer stuff. I’m just going to start out with the whole, not answering questions thing. Now, don’t misunderstand, Joe Biden did a little question dodging stuff as well as both presidential candidates did in the first debate, but nothing to the extent that Palin did. I think it was about 20 minutes in, during the question about deregulation of the banks and who should be at fault for the crisis, that Palin said something I couldn’t believe. Here is what she is responding to for some context to:

BIDEN: The charge is absolutely not true. Barack Obama did not vote to raise taxes. The vote she's referring to, John McCain voted the exact same way. It was a budget procedural vote. John McCain voted the same way. It did not raise taxes. Number two, using the standard that the governor uses, John McCain voted 477 times to raise taxes. It's a bogus standard it but if you notice, Gwen, the governor did not answer the question about deregulation, did not answer the question of defending John McCain about not going along with the deregulation, letting Wall Street run wild. He did support deregulation almost across the board. That's why we got into so much trouble.

IFILL: Would you like to have an opportunity to answer that before we move on?

PALIN: I'm still on the tax thing because I want to correct you on that again. And I want to let you know what I did as a mayor and as a governor. And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also. As mayor, every year I was in office I did reduce taxes. I eliminated personal property taxes and eliminated small business inventory taxes and as governor we suspended our state fuel tax. We did all of those things knowing that that is how our economy would be heated up. Now, as for John McCain's adherence to rules and regulations and pushing for even harder and tougher regulations, that is another thing that he is known for though. Look at the tobacco industry. Look at campaign finance reform.

I put what I thought was so amazing in italics. When called out about not answering the question she pretty much said, “I’m not going to answer the questions asked in this debate.” There are the lies in that block of text about how McCain pushed for regulation even though he is a big deregulation conservative, but I was expecting shit like that. To just flat out not answer the question and say you aren’t is ridiculous.

Of course she made other mistakes, mostly in stuff involving Iraq. Like saying “And with the surge that has worked we're now down to presurge numbers in Iraq.” Which is wrong, they have brought some troops back since the surge but we still have a larger number of soldiers there then before the surge happened. And “You guys opposed the surge. The surge worked. Barack Obama still can't admit the surge works.” Which is also wrong, something like 2 or 3 weeks ago Obama admit that the surge had worked beyond what could have been anticipated.

However the other big point in the debate was about them, and about the role of vice president. It was about the job of being vice president and how they felt about Dick Cheney’s interpretation of what the vice president is. You know what, I’m just going to put the direct transcript of what was said during that part here.

IFILL: Governor, you mentioned a moment ago the constitution might give the vice president more power than it has in the past. Do you believe as Vice President Cheney does, that the Executive Branch does not hold complete sway over the office of the vice presidency, that it is also a member of the Legislative Branch?

PALIN: Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president's agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we'll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation. And it is my executive experience that is partly to be attributed to my pick as V.P. with McCain, not only as a governor, but earlier on as a mayor, as an oil and gas regulator, as a business owner. It is those years of experience on an executive level that will be put to good use in the White House also.

IFILL: Vice President Cheney's interpretation of the vice presidency?

BIDEN: Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.

And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.

The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he's part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous.

Damn right Joe Biden. This was the real turning point for me. This question is when I truly felt that Joe Biden was the solid winner of this debate. The constitution is what this country is founded on. And there is NOTHING more patriotic then defending the what the constitution says, and following its directions on what each job is and how each section of the government is run.

Ok I’m done with the debate, but I do have one last thing I want to mention. This senate vote on the bailout bill thing that happened. Now see, things involving money are supposed to originate in the congress, and the congress voted down the last bailout bill and hasn’t voted on this one. So what the hell just happened? Why did the senate vote on any kind of legislation involving this money stuff? Does the constitution say that it must originate in the congress? Well hopefully I can find some answers to that stuff soon. That is all for tonight though.

5 - Debate #1

So I just watched (most of) the first debate between McCain and Obama. I’m almost sad McCain went though, I honestly thought it would be super funny if Obama was the only one who went and it ended up just being Jim Lahrer talking to Obama. But whatever, I’m going to start off with that silly “Who won?” question.

So, Who won? Well in all honesty no one did, because the debates don’t really work that way and the election is the only real part of this entire process that can have a “winner.” However I can speculate about who did better, blah blah blah. This debate was quite interesting in that department too. There is always talk about how watching it on TV and just hearing the voices on the radio can change the general consensus, and just before watching it I had someone tell me they felt McCain had sounded better from what they heard on the radio. Now having watched it I disagree, however I can understand why it may of sounded like McCain was doing better, particularly after hearing just which part that person had heard on the radio.

So, I don’t really follow boxing, but I remember seeing some classic match up with a famous guy coming out of retirement to fight another guy in some super crazy match up. Now the older boxer was kind over the hill, so what he ended up doing was dodging around, not really throwing many punches for most of every round, but with 10 seconds left his trainer would signal to him, and he would do an all out flurry for 10 seconds. Now this being the last thing the judges would see of every round they would score him a little higher because “oh man he was really railing on that guy” or whatever. McCain in this debate seemed to be doing that kind of thing a little, only instead of punches, he was saying complete bullshit.

It kind went like this; Lead question about an issue, mild talking, signal that they needed to move on to the next question, McCain spouting a ton of shit that wasn’t true and NOT stopping, Obama not getting to correct the lies. Right towards the end of the debate McCain did this and Obama was saying, “that is not true I need to correct him on this,” and then while Obama was actually being given the chance to respond McCain just started talking again without shutting up until the moderator stopped them both and asked the next question. Obama was extremely professional during McCain talking, and McCain was just a total asshole.

Now, hearing this on the radio I can see it sounding like McCain was doing better, he was getting the last words in on every question. But watching the debate, seeing Jim trying to stop them both and having McCain just keep talking, watching McCain cut Obama off like a total asshole, and seeing McCain doing a rather forced and uncomfortable looking smile, gave the impression that McCain knew he was being rude and was doing it because he knows he is the weaker candidate.

There was one thing that McCain said in the whole debate that really was strong though. During a question about Iraq, Obama talked about how we never should have gone in, and McCain brought up that the next president isn’t going to be dealing with what should have happened but what is going to happen. That was the one thing that really did show McCain stronger. But Obama also was able to argue that his judgement, because of his views on the war in the past, are why we can trust that he will make the better decisions in the future. And I think that is where he is right, and why he still came off as the stronger candidate in the debate.

4 - Sarah Pain (yes pain)

So today Sarah Palin met with some foreign leaders and the McCain campaign tried to stop the media from getting any access to it. They attempt to stop freedom of the press, given to us in the first amendment. The media revolted and they gave in, obviously, but the fact that they would even try to stop the press in horrible.

I’m sure that Mrs. Palin isn’t the one really doing all of this of course, so I can’t exactly hate her for it. However that doesn’t mean I don’t hate her. In fact, I think it is about time to go into everything I hate about her. For a quick list; lies, radical religious views, stands on issues.

Lets start with the lies. As I mentioned in my previous blog, her whole thing about the “bridge to no where” is a flat out lie. She was FOR the bridge. That isn’t all though, there is this stupid little thing about her firing some chef because tax payers shouldn’t be paying for that or something. Of course, she didn’t actually fire the lady, she just hired her under a different job title. And of course her jet that she sold on e-bay, only, she didn’t sell it on e-bay. She actually tried to sell it on e-bay a few times and no one would buy it so they sold it offline and used an aircraft broker to help.

Ok, radical religious views time. This lady is crazy religious, and said that it is God's will to have a pipeline built in Alaska.

I mean, sure, I have nothing against religion, I have nothing against people praying for things, etc. But to say that it is "God's Will" is just ridiculous. I already think its ridiculous to think that the bible is perfect and all the stuff in it is God’s words, especially considering how much of the stuff people admit is interpretation. So to say that something like building a pipeline is God’s Will is crazy, you just can’t know, and there is nothing in the bible even slightly hinting at the fact that God could will such things. She even goes on to say, in that video I linked up there, that our government is sending our army on a task from God. Now I’m no Christian but aren’t Christians supposed to be against war? And killing? And all that other shit our military is doing?

Alright and lastly her stance on issues. This is the real kicker for me. To put it simply, she is just like McCain on everything except a few issues, and on those issues she is only more extreme then McCain. She is against abortion of any kind for any reason; rape, incest, serious health problem, TOO BAD. She for all the policies that got us into this economic depression America is in now. She is against a timeline to bring out soldiers home from Iraq. She is for privatizing social security. She is, and this is one of the most amazing things, AGAINST equal pay for equal work for women.

Somehow people like her though. I read an article the other night at www.salon.com, that was about peoples opinions on voting with Palin in the mix.
“Some former supporters of Hillary Clinton expressed excitement about Palin -- but gender was secondary. To them, she seems a fresher, more maverick, more populist agent of change now than Obama (who has endured media scrutiny, including revelations and rumors about his past, for more than a year and a half). Although some don't share Palin's far-right positions on social issues, or weren't fully aware of them, they were willing to overlook that.”
When I read that I wanted to puke. Sarah Palin is the polar opposite of Hillary Clinton. What the fuck is wrong with people? If I like granny smith apples and I hate oranges, but I can only choose between fuji apples and oranges, WHY THE FUCK WOULD I PICK THE ORANGE?!?!

3 - RNC Week

Ok finally getting to this; the Republican National Convention. I must admit, I really didn’t watch much of this one. After watching so much of the DNC I didn’t really feel like boring myself again in addition to hating what they would be saying even more.

However, before I get to the convention itself a little story got hushed up quite a bit. Namely, our government acting a bit more like a police state then they would ever like you to know. Arresting people in St. Paul before the convention started with claims that these would be protesters were suspected to do criminal things, rather then practicing their constitutional right to protesting. Read more about it here.

So for the first 2 nights I have pretty much no idea who spoke. I think our current president might have spoke Tuesday night but I could be wrong on that. So what I did was pay more attention to the daily show and their coverage of how ridiculous everything happening there was. And everyone should really see this clip involving the "unbiased media."



So then Wednesday night was Sarah Palin’s big speech, full of... inaccuracies. The biggest one being her, “I said thanks but no thanks to the bridge to nowhere,” line. Something used in a way to sound like she saved tax payers tons of money. But that wasn’t what happened, and it seems she finally admit to that fact during her interview with Charlie Gibson this week. Although she still isn’t admitting to the difference in what she is saying on her campaign and what actually happened. The short story is she was all for the project and then when it was apparent that the project wouldn’t be able to succeed she still took the federal money and then started lying about what happened on her campaign trail for vice president. For a little more depth on the issue click here.

Needless to say, I'm not a fan of Sarah Palin, but I’m thinking I might write a whole blog dedicated to her at some point. Anyway, I’m not a fan of John McCain either. Unsurprisingly for some of the same reasons, although mostly because I pay some amount of attention to this stuff and he is NOT a candidate of change. No matter what he said on the last night of the RNC. A night that was, to my amusement, the openning of the football season. Apperently this gave them a bigger audience for McCain's speech. Although, considering some of the mistakes they made, that is probably not a good thing.



That is it for tonight. From here on out my entries are going to be on whatever inspires me to write about.

2 - DNC Week

Now I should have started doing all this a while ago. So, I’m going to play a little catch up. Starting with the Democratic National Convention. This was the first national convention of I had ever attempted to watch.

I was busy doing school stuff for the opening day and Michelle Obama’s speech. So I watched it in full on the internet later that night, or perhaps the next day. Although I found her quite a fine speaker, engaging and easy to listen to, I didn’t feel like there was much worth listening to. Of course the point of her speech wasn’t to tell people about issues or anything I wanted to hear, it was saying “Hey look we are Americans with American values.” Great, fine, next day please.

Now I was home for day 2 and tried to watch a lot of the live DNC feed. After the first 45 minutes or so I realized I really didn’t need to watch all 4 or whatever hours of it. Just person after person saying pretty much the exact same thing with a few different words and a slightly different accent. I wanted to see the Hillary speech though, so I made sure to tune back in closer to when she was supposed to speak.

From the get go, I did not like Hillary Clinton. During the beginnings of the primaries I found myself sickened by her. Something about the way she spoke. It was slow, made me feel like she thought her audience was a bunch of children. And as the months grew longer and it came down to just her and Obama, I found just about everything she said to grow increasingly atrocious.
I was one of those people afraid of what she might do up on that stage during the DNC. But once she got up there and started speaking my mind was soothed. She didn’t say or do anything to draw support away from Obama. She didn’t alienate her supporters. She did exactly what I had wished for months before.

Day 3, school once again making me miss the live broadcasts of Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. And once again I watched both speeches later on with the help of youtube. Bill was a great speaker as always and I trust his charisma campaigning for Obama in the general election will be very nice to have. As for Joe Biden, he gave a good speech. He attacked McCain without overstepping the line the Obama Campaign is refusing to cross. I must say though, having Obama come out as a surprise afterwards, although exciting, made me forget a lot of what Biden had said.

The final day at the different location. I wanted to badly to watch that one live. But alas, my job got in the way that night. But when I got home I watched Obama speak to the impressively large crowd. He outlined many of the things he wants to accomplish. I’m sure much of it won’t really get done, but when Obama speaks he sounds sincere. He sounds like he really is wearing his “American Hat.”

But of course, with Friday came the announcement of Sarah Palin. I was driving and listening to NPR and heard about it. At first I just heard the name and thought, “Wait hold on, did they say Sarah? A Woman?” As the voices continued to elaborate much of my hope from the night before was coated with a sickening bile that the GOP really pulled something like that. My mind instantly assumed the attempt at disgruntled Hillary voters. I’m happier now knowing that was a slightly lesser reason for the pick though.

That is it for tonight though. Next time I’ll get on about the RNC and much more of my Palin opinions.

1 - Who and What

Alright! I starting this late but that is to be expected of me. On top of that, this is not about me or my bad habits. Its about politics! And what a year for politics it is, eh?

So to start off lets take a little look at who I am politically. I am officially a member of the Green Party, but I don't really know much about them other then pro-environment. So, to be somewhat accurate without a party affiliation, here is my “political compass” results from that silly online test:
CLICK HERE!
So as you can see, I am a young “liberal, left" male. I am for the right to choose in terms of abortion, I am for homosexual’s right to marriage, I am for taxes that increase based on wealth, etc.

Of course some issues aren’t quite so black and white. For example, I am all for equality in the workplace and all that, however, I also feel like if women are to get all the same everything as men it must include EVERYTHING, like the draft. I know, I know, the chances that the draft would every be reinstated is so amazingly slim its hardly worth mentioning. But as a male, you are required to sign up for it anyway, and I just feel like women should also be forced to sign that little paper and possibly forced to goto war just like the men. I am for TOTAL equality.

Now that we are, at least somewhat, clear on who I am, it is time to ask what should I do?

Well that is a much harder question. Especially with my somewhat apathetic approach to politics. Don’t misunderstand, I am politically active. I’ve only missed one voting opportunity since turning 18. I listen to NPR and watch the daily show, I have gone to protests and put on bumper stickers, I have many opinions from the normative to the empirical questions involving various issues, and I am often willing to speak about politics at just about any time. I just don’t actively go out seeking people to debate with, or involve myself as a volunteer with my candidate of choice or anything.

Should I though? I do not know. And for tonight I shall leave it at that.