Don't Bring Me Down

Now that the election is over the blame games starts. In fact, it started before the actual vote. So, why did the Republicans do so badly. A major part was the economy, but it was not all of the problem. The economy gave John McCain an uphill battle to fight, but I feel he could still have won. Why do I say that? Well, as a social Democrat and economic Republican, I might have voted for John McCain if he did a few things differently. The most important of which was for him to be himself.

So, what are the things that made me strongly go for Barack Obama. First off, John McCain changed from the person he was eight years ago. I was hoping he only changed to get the nomination, but events indicated otherwise. Then, he went and picked Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin might be a good candidate sometime in the future, but she obviously just was not ready. She energized the Republican base, but she turned off independants and conservative Democrats. When John McCain's VP choice was announced, I told my wife that he just gave the election to the Demacrats.

Why did I think that? For the most part, it meant to me that John McCain had really changed from what he was in 2000. That John McCain would have not picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. It meant I could not really trust him to be that common sense maverick that he had been for so many year.

There were other things that bothered me later on, but the Palin pick was a big one. I won't spend to much time on other things that just reinforced my belief that John McCain was different. John McCain did not handle the economic meltdown well. This includes his "the fundementals are sound" comments and his handling of the bailout. The final straw was when he stopped talking about real issues and just started talking about how bad a person his opponent was.

Overall, John McCain might have won if he only was himself. Sarah Palin was only a symptom of that problem.

White Wedding

Does it really matter if there might, or might not, be a white wedding in the future of the Palin family. Actually, yes it does matter.

I don't care that Sarah Palin's daughter is pregnant out of wedlock and at the age of 17. Even if she conceived at the age of 16, the pregnancy is not the real issue. Nor is the issue that she is keeping the child, something I strongly support, or even that Sarah Palin does not advocate sex education and the use of birth control. The issue is everything going on in Sarah Palin's family and how Sarah Palin's family is not the priority in her life.

Sarah Palin was flying around the country until the day before her youngest child was born. I am not a doctor, but when my wife was pregnant, we were told not to do any air travel or long road trips in the last trimester. I am sure that she got similar advice. Did the travel cause her child to have down syndrome? Obviously not. Could it have cause additional complications, maybe. It was more important to personally go to a meeting then sending the lieutenant Governor and staying home. Something I am sure everyone would have understood.

Another problem I have with Sarah Palin's actions after the birth of her last child is that she actually took the VP nomination. Sarah Palin has a special needs child which, if she is elected, she will probably only see the baby occasionally at best.

It just shows that Sarah Palin puts politics over family. Is that a bad thing? I don't really have an answer except that I would have made a different decision. In my life, I left a higher paying job for a job at about half the pay to be available to my family more of the time, and I did not have the family issues that Sarah Palin does. Add to this the fact that Sarah Palin puts herself out there as a social conservative "family values" politician.

On keys issues Sarah Palin is as right as they come. Sarah Palin is for teaching "intelligent design (creationism)" in schools and for not giving adequate health care to 47 million people. I could go on, but it I don't want to dilute this post.

I will finish up by saying that Sarah Palin should have gracefully declined the McCain offer. Sarah Palin would have accomplished to important things by doing so. First, Sarah Palin would have proven that should was willing to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. Secondly, Sarah Palin could have continued doing the needed service of cleaning up politics in Alaska. Although, I guess Sarah Palin had shown her ambitious side when she left the simple job of Mayor to become Governor.

Maybe if Sarah Palin stayed the Mayor of a small town, with about 50 public servants under her control, her daughter would have been able to have a white wedding.

Rough Sex

I just want to start out by saying that I am not promoting rough sex of any kind. I do not think that there is any justification for hitting, or hurting, someone else outside of self preservation. It is just that I see it as something that is in line with something Ann Coulter would say. If you look at some her quotes below, you will understand why I feel this way;

• "If I'm going to say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."
• "I was going to have a few comments about John Edwards but you have to go into rehab if you use the word faggot." --at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference
• "I'm more of a man than any liberal."
• "We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee. That's just a joke, for you in the media."
• "Liberals love America like O.J. loved Nicole."
• "We need to execute people like (John Walker Lindh) in order to physically intimidate liberals."
• "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity."

With the excessive amount of stupid rhetoric that comes out of Ann Coulter's mouth it always surprises me that anyone buys her books, watches her on television, or cares what she says. When I did a brief informal poll I found out something surprising, both my liberal and conservative friends think she is crazy.

So I tired to figure out why she has an audience and I came up with this hypothesis. I call my theory the "Ann Coulter Rough Sex Syndrome" and it is very simple. I will start out by saying that Ann Coulter's prime audience is the white male. Ann makes so many blatantly antagonistic, confrontational, insulting comments that many liberals and conservatives just want to smack her. Add this to an attractive figure you get to the rough sex hypothesis. If you smacked her once for each stupid thing she said, you would still have years of smacks left after a years worth of newlywed, rough, sex. I am not saying she deserves to be smacked, but she might.

I'm In Love With My Car

I am in love with my car. In this case it is a Ford Escape Hybrid. I will point out that I was in love with my car long before gas prices, in my area, hit around $4.19 a gallon. When I got the Escape it was not to save money. With the amount of driving I do and the price of gas at the time, it would have taken 10+ years to make back the extra cost. The reason I bought it was due to not wanting to send any more money to other parts of the world if I don't have to. The less oil imported the better. Reduce carbon footprint was a distant second. On a side note, due to several reasons I could not get a smaller hybrid. The Escape was the best alternative that fit my needs.

Why are gas prices so high? It is really not a true supply and demand. Enough oil reaches the market to satisfy need. World capacity for producing oil is adequate. I do admit that if demand declined the price would most likely go down, but today's price has a huge "political" premium.

One example of why It is not a supply and demand issues is the refinery shut down of previous years. Oil needs to be refined to be used. When a hurricane hit and damaged US refineries the supply and demand model would have the price of oil go down while the price of refined products, like gasoline, would go up. That did not happen. Oil went up while refined product prices barely moved.

Now to contradict myself. Demand is affecting price in that oil is not a renewable resource. The countries, and companies, that produce oil see an end to their cash cow. These entities have figured out how to squeeze every last cent of profits from their ever reducing oil supply. So why is this happening now? Simply, the US is no longer the only thing that support the world economy. At one time, if the US economy slumped, the world economy slumped. As this current downturn has shown, the rest of the world can survive an economic slump in the US. So when will prices stop rising? Only when the market can not bare the cost.

There is good in all this. At a certain point the high cost of oil makes it more economically viable to invest in other sources of energy. As the largest economy and a capitalist society, we need this to drive the innovation that must occur. Doing it now, when we still have a decade before real supply issues occur, will help protect our economy and subsequently our way of life.

So am I saying that we should on conserve since it won't really help? No, we should for both economic and ecological reasons. The longer we can put off the real shortage of oil will give us more time to have converted over our oil needs to something else.

So what are my plans, besides driving a hybrid. Mostly the typical stuff; Drive less, buy local products, buy product that have less plastic (which is made from oil), reuse items when possible, etc. In the long run I plan to get solar power for my house and my next car will probably be an electric car. The car won't car if the power came from my solar power, a nuclear power plant, a "clean" coal power plant, or a current oil based plant.

Jesus is just Alright

The other night my wife and I had some long time friends over for dinner. The conversation hit religion and the talk of evolution came up. I will have to admit that my ignorance of the Catholic religion quickly came to light. Particularly concerning evolution I was way off base. I have always assumed that Catholics did not believe in evolution. I was quickly corrected and informed that not only do they believe in evolution, they are "pro" science.

Okay, so now I am confused. Catholics believe that when they take, if that is the right term, it is (or becomes) the actual body of Christ, but they are good with science for everything else. More or less I am told. So, the baptist don't believe that it is the body of Christ, but do believe that there is no such thing as evolution. Yes, I am told again. I bring this up only to point out that I assumed to many things about Catholicism, which I did not even realize

I want to point out that I have a four year degree in Bio-chemistry from a academically sound college and believe in evolution. I also believe that science has not killed god. With everything it proves, it does not disprove god.

Back to our conversation. We continue that Catholicism does not really require that you believe everything anyway and that the Catholic Church is not as rigid as I thought it was. Wow, I like that since it is similar to my reform Judism.

To the point of this post, just because you don't agree, understand, like, or whatever about a particular stance of one religion or another does not mean you can make sweeping generalizations. I guess I knew that about my religion, since I grew up with it, I just did not put in the effort with other religions. At least up until now.

We are the Champions

We are the Champions my friends, that is what I hear from the democratic candidates and I agree with them. Two landmark candidates are STILL vying for the democratic nomination for President and each is a champion. I have mentioned before that I am a Hillary supporter and think that, for many reasons, she would make a better President right now. That does not mean that I don't think Barack Obama would make as good of a President several years from now. With that said, I think it is time for Hillary to write her concession speech to have it ready. If Hillary can not show a major win that starts narrowing the gap between her and Barack she needs to start thinking about the party.

I believe that Hillary knows that she would be an exceptional President at a time when it needs one. The problem is risk assessment. Unless she can make it a legitimate contest, where it is almost neck and neck, she has to start thinking about the damage to the party, and Barack. It is not that I think that any negative that the Clinton campaign brings up about Barack is a bad thing. Actually I would rather have it out now so there are no surprises later. It is that the campaign needs to start focusing on McCain. Every week and every dollar is important.

Back to why I like Hillary over Barack. One reason is that even with the "bad blood" between them if Hillary won I, and most political analysts, would be surprised if Hillary did not ask Barack to be her running mate. Most people would agree that if it was the other way around we would be surprised if Barack ask Hillary. I wish it would happen for the good of the party and the good of the nation.

I'm A Believer

I want to start out by saying I am, for the most part, a Clinton supporter. If the election was held today between McCain, Clinton and Obama I would vote for Hillary. I have to admit that I would not be upset with any of the three as the winner, unless they choose a stupid running mate (Romney, Huckabee, etc.).

Why Hillary? I like a populist. I think that a President should represent the people and not assume that they were elected because everyone agrees with everything they believe in (ie. Bush). I also think that Hillary is the most likely to compromise when needed to get something done. I thought this about McCain, but his pandering to the right has made me doubt this. Barack seems the least likely to since his message seems to say he will work with everyone as long as they see it his way. I think Barack would make a good President, but I see him as a conceited person who thinks he is smarter then those around him. From his response to little things like Hillary's suggestions that he could be her running mate if she was the Democratic candidate.

Enough with the background and on to the meat. I want to talk about the "race" speech by Barack. I don't want to go into the speech itself too much. I just want to make a prediction. By the time of the Presidential election, the speech will be a positive. On the news channels they keep saying it was a great speech but politically unwise. I think that once people sit back and get over the shock of a frank speech about race they will appreciate the courage needed to make that speech at the time he made it. Don't get me wrong, I think that the comments by Barack's wife and his pastor have hurt him, and maybe to a point that can not be recovered from, but his race speech helped. Even if Barack does not become the next President, he has already done something good for this country.

Spirit in the Sky

I want to start off by saying I am not sure I believe in G-d. I happen to be a Reform Jew who attends services regularly and I get involved in many events for my temple and the community at large.

If I am not sure I believe in G-d then why do I go to temple? The answer is simple, most religions offer much more then just a faith based system of worship. Reform Judaism, like many other religions, provides me with a process of looking back on my week and/year to see if did the best I could to make the world better. This is a good exercise whether or not you believe in G-d.

On one occasion that I mentioned my uncertainty with there being a G-d I was told "then you don't believe that abortion is wrong". I tried to get the reasoning behind this assumption, but it came down to typical opinion that if you don't believe in G-d then you don't believe life is special. Not only do I disagree with this, I actually believe the opposite.

If there is a G-d, heaven, hell, etc. then an aborted baby's soul would be embraced by a loving G-d. On the other hand, if there is no G-d and death is an end to that life. To me that makes the latter more of a tragedy then the former.

So does this mean I am against abortion. Simple answer is yes, but I am still pro-choice. For many reasons, which I don't want to go into on this post, a woman should have the right to control their own body.

So, what is the point of this post? Religion does not make you someone who values life or even a good person. Religion can give you some tools to help you make yourself a good person. With that said, I just want to mention that many of the "most" moral people I know do not believe in G-d.

Ramble on

My blogspot will cover many topics concerning many areas of my life. One day I will talk religion and then the next day I will rant on the economy. Hope you find his blog, when I get going, something to talk about.