Eclectic views from the fringe

The Sark Economic Bailout Plan

2008-09-24T12:45:00.001-06:00

I've been away for a while as some have suspected :) But I felt compelled to get this up at the request of some folks in a land far far away.

The administration is proposing $700,000,000,000 (thats what billiions looks like, or $2500 per every man, woman, and child in the U.S.) bailout of the Wall Street companies that hold the significant portion of CDS (credit default swaps) the little pieces of paper of sub-prime mortgages that the Investment banks have been trading with each other at ever decreasing value until they are nearly worthless, thus the inability to use them as collateral for future business operation or other loans.

What does this actually do? It provides a place (a Resolution Trust type entity) for these Wall Street banks to essentially dump suspect mortgage paper and get them written off the books (which will actually have to be written off causing significant losses) and free up generally acceptable mortgage backed securities (the non sub-prime) paper to be used as normal collateral for inter bank loans. The dumped "bad" mortgage paper is still "bad" and suseptable to mortgage defaults and foreclosures, but the big Investment banks are relatively unscathed, and we the working tax payers get stuck with the bill eventually. I say eventually, because the governement right now is not even concerned about any of the massively growing national debt, and this just adds to it.

Ok, the Investment banks get clear balance sheets, they can use normal mortgage loan paper as collateral, the government and us get stuck with $700,000,000,000 in suspect loans that people can still fall into foreclosure on, and the tax payers get the bill.

Now let's think about this from a what went wrong perspective. Banks gave out loans to people who probably couldn't afford them in the long run, but kept pushing for average and below average earning americans to keep buying houses and the more the banks pushed the requirements lower, the more risky financially capable americans bought into the hype and tried to buy their piece of the american dream. The banks and all their accountants, auditors, and executives should have known better. The Americans who over extended themselves should have known better, but let's face it, the average american doesn't have a CPA degree, or nearly the financial acuem that the banks should have had watching over things. If the people with the financial acuem and fancy banking related degrees thought it was ok, why wouldn't the average Jane and Joe out there trying to finally be able to buy a house of their own?

Now what to do. And this is where the Sark bailout plan comes into play.

Take the $700,000,000,000 and PAYOFF those risky mortgages to some degree at the home owner level, say mortgages of $250,00 or less. 50cents on the dollar, or some scaling so that the amount owed by the individuals put their overall financial state more in line with the 33% of gross income rule. Bring the amount of the loan principle down to the proper level, so that the mortgage becomes no longer "sub-prime". Do that with the money and we do more than just save the bacon of the Wall Street big shots, but we actually strengthen the underlying American Economy, by freeing up available consumer spending to nearly the same amount of money. The Wall Street investment banks now have the majority of their CDS converted to "normal" mortgage paper, easily used as normal loan collateral, there isn't nearly as much "bad" paper that needs to be dumped to some "Resolution Trust", and laid on the heads of the ever increasingly burdened tax payer. And the very sluggish underlying economy gets an immediate inflow of non home equity disposible income from consumers which drives 2/3rds of the economy.

ADDENDUM:
Available for PRIMARY home mortgages only

All renegotiated mortgages would be required to have PMI insurance.

At time of resale or refinancing of a "renegotiated" mortgage, the reduction in principle amount must be repaid to the Government

NO Home Equity loans could be made to homeowners of a "renegotiated" mortgage property.

The Sark plan is called "Trickle Up" Economics. And personally, I think it does a better job of solving more than just the one problem of some serious Wall Street Gambling that Tax Payers Anonymous have to end up footing the bill for.

Dogs at play #1

2008-06-21T23:38:00.003-06:00

Dealing with government care issues.

2008-06-18T06:10:00.000-06:00

Working with government social services programs for the elderly will absolutely drive you nuts. I’m in the process of trying to get my 71 year old mother who has lung cancer approved for Medicaid the last couple of weeks, and I can tell you from personal experience that it can be a nightmare. There is no “single point” of contact that you can get to work with you to navigate the myriad of paperwork trails, working with LTC facilities, insurance companies, and other myriad of government and private groups to get something accomplished.

Somehow, everyone automatically thinks that the “family” can deal with all this paperwork, interviews, and endless meetings to get things done, when in fact the “family” is typically in a situation that they are barely able to deal with the mental and physical aspects of taking care of a elderly family member in need.

So if any of you out there are currently in this position as well, or perhaps you will need to be in the future, my heart felt sympathies go out to you. My only words of encouragement is “keep plugging away at the walls”, and “good luck”. It is a mentally stressful and physically draining experience to have to go through, and anyone forced into the position of dealing with a serious illness of a family member needs comfort and support as well as the family member that is ill. Often, I have found, that the agencies, both private and government, that you have to deal with, forget what the supporting family members are going through, and act as if they are intentionally forcing them to perform 3 ring circus acts to get anything meaningful accomplished.

Obama puts web site to work for flood relief

2008-06-15T03:18:00.003-06:00

I've been a little busy the last few days, and haven't been able to post as frequently as I would like, but I wanted to pass on this information about what Obama is trying to do for the flood victims in the midwest.

Obama has dedicated the main page of his presidential campaign website and is sending emails out to his supporters asking for direct support for the flood victims.

Obama site

Let the economy positions begin

2008-06-10T18:11:00.003-06:00

Seems Obama and McCain are both out expounding on their economic plans. Looks like they are going to be doing the rounds over the next couple weeks positioning their stands on the economy. While neither has the "official" title of nominee of their party, the general campaign seems to be gearing up pretty quickly and looks to be substantially different than previous elections.

Time gives a broad brush look at Obama's economic proposals, and CNN does a little comparison shopping between the two.

I can't remember the last time there were two candidates that differed so significantly on such a broad range of issues. Looking forward to watching the debating both in debates and in the point counter point press releases.

Where is that gas tax holiday Sen McCain?

2008-06-05T14:07:00.002-06:00

I've looked all over the congressional record and I can't find your proposed gas tax holiday bill anywhere to be found? Please tell us this wasn't a campaign stunt. Of course a week after Memorial day that $30 savings we were going to get is getting smaller and smaller each day.

The Dem race is over, but Clinton still swinging?

2008-06-03T22:00:00.002-06:00

I listened to the speeches given tonight by Clinton and Obama. I was listening to McCain's speech and dozed off... sorry.

But I have been thinking about the situation in the Democratic party and the impression that Clinton left with her speech, and what it could mean as far as VP positioning, and party unity. And one of the things that struck me was the tone and temperment of the Clinton speech which I thought was still confrontational to a large degree, and still beating the "I'm the more electable candidate" drum, on a night when Obama had actually passed the required number of delegates to claim the nomination in no uncertain terms.

There has been a lot of talk about Clinton floating the idea that she would be open to being VP, and doing her utmost to help unify the party. My sense is that she probably flushed any possibility of her being on the ticket away with her speech tonight. She is continuing to drive her electablity as the primary candidate. She through the primaries has tried to paint Obama as weak and inexperienced, and basically checked off all the chips she has on the table as leverage to be taken as the VP.

However, by continually painting Obama as weak, and effectively listing the reasons he HAS to pick her as VP she is putting him in a box where he has no choice but to select someone else. After her speech tonight, to select her as his running mate, will provide credence to her assertion that he is a weaker candidate by giving into the pressure of the nomination losing candidate. To take her on the ticket now as an apparent appeasment to political pressure, he would automatically lose any credibility of being able to stand up to foreign leaders. Some one on CNN said as much in their assessment, that if he can't stand up to the Clinton pressure, how can he stand up to foreign leaders.

Unfortunately, I think Clinton passed on a unique opportunity to gracefully exit the race with dignity, and recognize the historic significance of an African-American winning the nomination of a major political party for the first time, and strongly start building party unity, but focused still on why she is the better candidate.

My view is that Obama has no choice now, but to go elsewhere for a VP candidate.

Blitzer preaching the "dream ticket" again

2008-06-02T13:32:00.002-06:00

Wolf Blitzer of CNN is once again dreaming of the “dream ticket”. Mr Blitzer has been beating this drum ever since the last Democratic debate that he moderated between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I’ve never quite understood his almost insatiable campaigning for this particular scenario, but I’m pretty sure that it is purely wishful thinking on his part.

The original hoopla over the “dream ticket” of Clinton and Obama being on the same Democratic party ticket started with his last question of that debate, and he hasn’t let it die for more than a couple of days in the intervening time. More and more of the DNC members, specifically Pelosi have stated quite frankly that the possibility of a Clinton/Obama or Obama/Clinton ticket is probably not even a remote possibility. And quite frankly, from a objective political view, it benefits neither Obama, Clinton, or the Democrats in a November general election.

While I give Blitzer leave to voice his opinions and possible wishes, I think the media needs to reflect on exactly what it’s role is in our national debates and elections. I firmly think that Blitzer should stick to the proper role of reporting and analyzing election news, instead of trying to beat a drum to try and direct an outcome, that most political observers see as a non-starter.

Stick to reporting Wolf, that is what you are paid for.

Bush Slam Dance

2008-06-01T13:28:00.002-06:00

There is no crying in Baseball... ok maybe

2008-05-30T23:09:00.003-06:00

There may be no crying in baseball, but the Rockies are trying to make it almost impossible not to anymore. On a nice day at Wrigley Field, the Rockies managed to surrender an 8 run lead to end up losing 10-9. Jeff Baker's 4 doubles couldn't even stave off another total implosion by the pitching staff on a day when the bats finally started to warm up.

Considering the expectations after their near miraculous 21 of 22 run at the end of last season to get to the World Series, and the signing of nearly all of the core players to multi-year contracts, this year's Rockies are looking more like a AAA team than defending NL champions.

Someone hand me a hankie.. I feel like crying a bit.

Let's talk FL and MI come the 31st

2008-05-29T04:09:00.001-06:00

The DNC rules committee will meet on the 31st to figure out what the heck to do with the Michigan and Florida delegation seating.

While we wait.. let's look at this from the two candidate's perspective.

Obama: There is absolutely no reason for him to want to compromise to get either delegation seated. There is no advantage in it for him in terms of the nomination. If the roles were reversed, and Clinton was ahead, and Obama had won MI and FL, does anyone think for a moment that she would be howling at the moon to count those votes and get the delegates seated, if they in anyway had a possibility of providing Obama with a reason to take it to the convention? I think not.

Clinton: Getting MI and FL seates as voted (with Obama off the MI ballot, and no campaigning in FL), is the only sliver of hope left for Clinton to even get close enough (getting both seated still won't let her overtake Obama), to make the "popular vote" argument to the super delegates. But if she can get them seated relatively close to how the original voting allocated, it opens the door for her slightly to take this thing to the convention for a floor fight which is something the DNC definately doesn't want to see happen. It would practically cripple the Democrats afterwards. If Obama was behind and had won MI and FL, I'm sure we would be seeing the very same arguments from him to get them seated, and Clinton would be fighting tooth and nail to scale back their impact.

So basically what we have here, is the person in front, having no logical reason to compromise, will probably have to. The person behind, absolutely needing them seated in their entirety, probably not willing to compromise, but will probably have to.

In the end we will probably see the GOP theory at work, seating half of them or some such percentage. Clinton will draw a little closer, but not close enough to catch up in the delegates count, the super delegates will weigh in after June 3rd at about a 50 50 split, and Obama still ends up the nominee, but Clinton will have fought the great fight, and be positioned to go at it again in 4 years should Obama not win in November.

The results of the 31st meeting should at least provide some additonal entertainment Because the Obama supporters won't like the outcome, and the Clinton supporters won't like the outcome, and we will be able to see both sides ridicule and spit at each other from afar until the convention in August

Eight walks, 3 base running outs... OMG!

2008-05-29T02:28:00.002-06:00

The Rockies season has turned into the season from hell. With half the starting lineup on the DL, and a rookie pitcher that walked eight.... that is right he walked eight batters, and three base running outs, the Rockies lost 6-1 to Philly last night.

During their historic 21 of 22 run at the end of last season, they couldn't do anything wrong. Now they can't seem to do anything right. They can't hit, they can't pitch, and who would have thought it, they can't run.

In probably the biggest understatement of the year, "We're not even worried about where we are now," manager Clint Hurdle said. "We need to play better. We need to focus in our own backyard. We've got improvement to be made in every area. Unfortunately, we've earned the position we're in."

All I can say is DUH?

We drive less, but gas keeps going up? I smell a Rat

2008-05-26T21:29:00.003-06:00

According a CNN article, the Department of Transportation, figures for MARCH.. that is MARCH, not April or May... but MARCH, we saw the steepest decline in driving in the US ever recorded. We drove nearly 11 Billion (thats a B) miles less in March of this year than last year, a 4.3 percent decrease, yet gas prices continued to rise over that period, and fuel stockpiles decreased.

Can someone explain what the heck is going on here? Last time I took an economics class, decreasing demand was supposed to mean increasing supply, not the inverse. And decreasing demand, should be leading to decreasing prices, not the inverse.

I'm begining to smell a rat in the barnyard here folks.

Time to become a novelist?

2008-05-25T11:31:00.002-06:00

I’ve been mulling the idea of becoming a novelist. After all I’m retired, and hate gardening, and the political campaigns will only be able to keep me interested until November. I’ve always been a voracious reader, and I liked to write short stories as a teenager, and well into my twenties. I’ve always been a J.R.R. Tolkien fan and there have been some miserable attempts to put out novels that attempted the same broad narrative approach to myth-fantasy.

Since this blog is more an exercise in spouting my intermittent thoughts into the internet void, putting down my love of fantasy and myth into a novel form has always intrigued me. Besides I’ll never make any money with this blog since there are way too many political oriented blogs out there, and no one really clicks on those somewhat annoying Google ads. :)

While I would never convince anyone that I was the next Tolkien, I do feel like I have a well rounded imagination that lends itself to the broad scope myth-fantasy creation that Tolkien made so engrossing. And as I said I don’t really have anything else to keep me busy, I might as well jump into the water, so to speak, and see if I can swim. After all if J.K. Rowlings can start out as an unknown author with a unique idea, and a willingness to stick to the proposition, I think I can.

We will see what happens.

Attacks on Clinton's RFK comments asinine

2008-05-24T11:18:00.002-06:00

Well we have finally reached a point in the Democratic nomination race where any statement by either of the candidates is ripped apart and spun in such a way to make it the most disgusting thing ever imaginable. Most of you who have read my blog know that I am an Obama supporter, and am not at all enthralled with the idea of Hillary Clinton getting the nomination, both on personal faults, and her stands on some of the issues.

With that said, I have to say the uproar over her recent comments about the RFK assassination is about as bogus as anything I’ve seen yet in these campaigns. The pundits and the bloggers would have you believe that she is somehow implying that she is staying in with the hope that Obama might befall the same fate as RFK, and making it out to be some heinous implication that it is one of the reasons she is staying in the race.

After reading her comments to the particular editorial board, how anyone can come to the conclusion that she is somehow awaiting Obama’s assassination is totally asinine. Her merely pointing out that previous Democratic nomination races have not been resolved before the middle of June, and turning it into some menacing meaning, shows the vitriol course that the media, the bloggers, and the political forum morons will go to try and twist any comment from a candidate into a blustering support for their candidate at the expense of any responsible judgment.

With the general election season gearing up to start, the viciousness of the media, and the campaign surrogates, can only be expected to increase to a more idiotic fever pitch. Anyone who needs to twist every comment made by a candidate into some sinister plan, is once again feeding on the propaganda of fear that has been the hallmark of the current administration, and should be viewed with proper scrutiny and cynicism.

When an election is decided by the pure unadulterated misdirection, and fear mongering of the media, the pundits, and the campaign surrogates, we all lose the view of facts. Be wary of falling for the despicable reporting of ALL of today’s media, both televised, and through the internet. Be cynical of their purpose and their agenda in reporting anything stated by any of the candidates.

The best defense for America is an intelligently cynical and informed electorate, who is unwilling to take the spoon fed pulp being fed up by today’s so called news sources. Research stands for yourself, make your own decisions. Only with those premises as our guide can we the true electorate make our impact on the direction of the country, and take back our government, and make it once again responsive to our needs.

More primaries and more damage to the Democrats

2008-05-20T22:53:00.000-06:00

I’m watching the results from the Oregon primary come in, and it looks like Obama will win Oregon, while Clinton won another lopsided win in Kentucky tonight. I’m thinking about one of the most talked about, but less really focused on aspects of the exit polling from both West Virginia and Kentucky, and a somewhat disturbing bit of statistics keep coming back to what we have been hearing Clinton pound on for the last few weeks since Pennsylvania. She has sharpened her rhetoric that “working class whites” are voting for her, as a mantra to the super delegates that she is a more viable candidate against McCain in a general election. Her continual beating of the racial drum may have started to resonate with some of her constituency, and in doing so may be irreparably damaging the Democratic party in the process.

In Pennsylvania, 12% of the white voters that said that race was important to them, Clinton got 76% of the vote from that segment. In West Virginia, after campaigning for weeks that “white blue collar workers” were voting for her instead of Obama, 21% of white voters who said that race was important to them, Clinton got an overwhelming 84% of their vote. Now again in Kentucky, after another week of the same “white blue collar workers” are voting for her instead of Obama stumping, 18% of the white voters that said that race was important to them, Clinton got an even larger 88% of their vote. Not only has race shown to be a major factor in the campaign now, but it seems that Clinton has started to increase the wedge effect of race within her own voting constituency.

In the mean time to shore up her other core support base, Clinton has come out blasting the media for not showing the same concern over the sexist aspects of the campaign as they have been the race aspect. However, in the exit polling, on average, gender has no where near the direct block of voter impact that the growing percentage of whites who consider race to be an important part of their decision making is.

The Democratic party was always a loose coalition of factions, purporting to be the champions of the minorities, Blacks, Hispanics, Women, and the less affluent components of the American electorate. But what has happened during the Democratic nomination campaign, is that the party has fairly split itself along what can now be primarily viewed as racial lines, with Blacks voting for Obama, and blue collar whites voting for Clinton, and to a degree each voting block uses race as one of their major decision points.

Whether Clinton drops out of the race before the convention or not, is probably a moot point now. The damage to the Democrats may be irreparable, and to a large degree the fault for that has to lay firmly on Hillary Clinton’s side of the playing field. Her husband’s ill conceived words after the South Carolina primary, pretty much wrenched the traditional Black vote that she had counted on and drove it to Obama. Her recent, and continual beating of the “white blue collar workers vote for me” mantra over the last three or four weeks, has effectively driven an inescapable wedge between that Democratic group and Obama, that may not be able to be repaired.

Any way you slice it, and the Democratic pundits keep proclaiming that the Democrats will rally around the nominee, there may have been terrible damage done to the Democratic party base, that will probably not heal by November. And should the Democrats lose in November, the damage may be terminal to the party going forward.

Supporting Mark Udall for US Senate from CO

2008-05-19T22:06:00.002-06:00

I've pretty much decided to support Mark Udall in his run for the US Senate seat from Colorado this November. While his congressional voting record of voting across party lines at a little under 5% is not what I would consider bipartisan, getting another Democrat into congress to break the GOP log jam is more important. Since I'm supporting Obama for president, trying to give him the majority in the congress that will be needed to get some things changed is a top priority for me. Plus I am so tired of the GOP political machine and it's campaigns of fear and division, that a clear message needs to be sent.

I haven't looked at the house seat yet, but will be doing that over the next week or so.

As for the State level houses, and the local elections, there is still a lot of investigation to do, but I doubt it will be quite as straight forward as the first two.

All I ask of anyone, is if you are going to vote.... get yourself informed, and make a decision based on verifiable information, instead of the innuendo, and garbage that the current political machines consider valid campaigning these days.

Bush manages to unify Democrats

2008-05-16T13:38:00.000-06:00

In one masterful stroke, President Bush found probably the only way to unite the possibly fractured Democratic Party. Attack both the party and the possible Presidential nominee of the party from half way across the globe, and rationalize them being similar to those who appeased Adolf Hitler prior to WWII.

The violent and colorful retorts of Senator Biden, Clinton, and Obama blasting Bush for his comments before the Israeli Knesset proved once again what a unifying force Bush has become for the Democratic Party. And if Bush hadn’t done enough to give the Democrats something to unite around, Senator McCain helped himself to some of the Bush legacy by jumping on board for much of the same type of attack.

In one single afternoon, Bush managed to get Hillary Clinton to defend Barack Obama, something that hasn’t happened in over three months. And Senator McCain managed to once again link himself to the most unpopular president in modern history by jumping on the “appeasement” bandwagon started by Bush. You just couldn’t make up a scenario that would present a more unified target for the Democrats at a time when McCain has tried to significantly distance himself from Bush.

An election that exposes our nations racial divides

2008-05-16T06:40:00.002-06:00

If you happen to be a person that believes that racial hatred is dead in America, this presidential election will be a shocking revelation to you. As a baby boomer who grew up in the south west and then later living in Colorado, the kind of blatant racial hatred that you read about in other places in the country was always a far off thing to me, and something I tended to see as isolated problems. For some reason I had made myself believe that ingrained racial hatreds were somehow a thing of the past, and that we as Americans had progressed beyond using the color of one’s skin as a measure of their ability to contribute to the country.

I was mistaken. If one thing has been highlighted for me in this presidential election, it is that there is still a serious, and deep, racial divide within the country. I have spent a lot of time over the last few months participating in political forums of different kinds, and one thing that seems to be a constant, is that there are still some blacks and some whites that can not or will not move past the color of other people when making decisions about who they will associate with, who they will support, and who they will talk to, and who they won’t.

Simply view the postings on many of the political forums going on these days, and you will be swamped by the racial rants both for and against Obama. Most of the posters in these forums who are decidedly against his candidacy for president, can not give issue related reasons, without eventually, falling into the same old diatribes of him being a Muslim, his association with his former pastor, his writing that he feels more comfortable with his black heritage than his white. Eventually, any discussion about Obama in these forums degenerates into insults, and racial slurs.

The underlying racial tone of this election is not just seen in the popular forums either. The Washington post did an article depicting what some of the Obama volunteers have had to endure on the ground soliciting support for their candidate, and it was wholly disgusting that at this time in our history, that we as a nation are still consumed with racial hatred.

If there is one thing that I hope comes of this election, whether Obama is the nominee, or even eventually our president, is that his campaign will have made America finally look at it’s self in the mirror and force it to recognize that we are not the paragons of virtue that we announce ourselves to be to the rest of the world. We have a very long ways to go, but perhaps we are in the process of taking another great step in moving past the long standing racial divides within our society.

I for one hope it is the case.

GOP to HQ... We have a problem

2008-05-13T21:27:00.002-06:00

On March 9th a little-known Democrat named Bill Foster won a special election for the seat formerly held by former GOP house speaker Dennis Hastert over Republican Jim Oberweis. Hastert had held the GOP seat in the house for 20 years. McCain had personally endorsed Oberweis, while Obama endorsed and cut a TV ad for Foster.

On May 3rd a Democrat won a special congressional election in Baton Rouge Louisiana taking a seat the GOP had held since 1974. Democrat Don Cazayoux defeated Republican Woody Jenkins for the seat opened up when Republican Richard Baker a 20 year incumbent resigned. Cazayoux was attacked in ads that painted him as a supporter of Barack Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. This was second special election for a long time GOP seat where negative campaigning from the RNC tried to force negative association with the Democratic candidate with Obama and the Rev Wright. In both cases the negative attack ads failed to secure a GOP win in a historically GOP congressional district.

While the rest of the nation was focused on the West Virginia Democratic presidential primary on May 13th, another special election was unfolding in Mississippi. And at this time CNN has projected that Democrat Travis Childers will defeat Republican Greg Davis in a GOP seat held since 1994. For the third time in as many special elections the RNC threw the book and a ton of money into this election. There were major negative ads run against Childers again linking him to aspects of Reverend Wright through the national picture of association with Barack Obama. Both the National Republican Congressional Committee and the conservative group Freedom Watch spent heavily on television commercials that linked Childers to Obama. While Obama had not endorsed Childers, it was obvious that the RNC thought such a linkage was going to be an effective campaign strategy leading up to the November elections. If that was their thoughts, they may be rethinking it now after three straight special election defeats.

If the GOP does not seem concerned about a national thrashing in November, they might want to start worrying a little bit more, as seats traditionally considered safe for the Republicans in the general election, may not be as safe as they once thought. A second repercussion of these three special elections, could be that the current conventional wisdom of the historic Red and Blue states may be a whole lot more Purple than the GOP, and even Hillary Clinton and the Democrats may be thinking.

Does the strict Red vs Blue state plans still work?

2008-05-12T09:27:00.001-06:00

I’m beginning to wonder if the strict Red vs Blue state breakdown of states in a general election still follows the mapping that both major political parties have laid out. One of the possible benefits to the Democrats is that their primary race has brought both major candidates to states that normally would not have had a Democrat campaign in either in the primaries or the general election simply because they would be a foregone GOP state.

There are roughly twelve “swing” states that the previous winner in the previous two elections won by less than 5% of the vote. All of these states have been campaigned in by the Democrats and significant voter registrations have taken place due to the intense excitement of the Democratic nomination race. These states may be more in play in this election cycle than at any time in the past five elections.

As an Independent, I have the luxury of setting back from the overall fray and watching the intricacies of the developing race with a little bit more objectivity than the normal political party adhering voter.

One of the main things I will be watching come November, is the impact of the “swing” states, and even some of the more traditional GOP states as they come in on election night to see if the Red vs Blue slate has changed in it’s dynamics.

It should be a heck of a show regardless.

Clinton goes Nuclear on Race card

2008-05-09T10:20:00.001-06:00

I have long held to the belief that once the Clinton political machine got backed into a corner, that something would be said that would finally show Senator Clinton to be a politician that would say or do anything to get elected. Yesterday it finally happened.

Yesterday in a USA Today interview she pretty much dismissed Obama’s ability to be elected president as he would have a hard time winning support from white Americans.

Interview excerpt:
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.
/end excerpt

Does anyone remember the off the cuff remarks of Bill Clinton’s after the South Carolina primary where he implied that Obama’s win was similar to that of Jessie Jackson previously? Doesn’t sound like such a mis-interpretation now.

Clinton has continuously run a more negative campaign. As the math kept developing into a nearly impossible path to the nomination for her, it was only a matter of time before the vindictive political shrew came out into the open.

In a country founded with a born sin of slavery, a civil war to expunge slavery, and a national movement for civil rights to force equal treatment, the idea that a presidential candidate at this juncture would resort to the obvious and misguided statement that a Black candidate can’t win white support is beyond stupid.

I had said in my previous post after the primaries on May 6th that Clinton was essentially a “Dead candidate walking”. After yesterday, I can only hope that I am correct. Unfortunately, for the Democrats, Clinton may have just put a dagger through the heart of their chance to take both houses and the presidency. She may have divided the Democrat party irrevocably.

Oh and Hillary, if you read this? I’m a White American that not only supports Obama, but will vote for him come November.

Dead Candidate walking

2008-05-07T04:07:00.001-06:00

On a night when Hillary Clinton needed in her words a “game changing event” she failed to see it materialize. Barack Obama claimed the North Carolina primary with a convincing 14% win, and narrowly lost the Indiana primary by 2%. The more important fact of the May 6th primaries was that Clinton’s closing of the pledged delegate lead of Obama by 12 with her win in Pennsylvania was completely wiped out by Obama’s 16 pledged delegate difference in North Carolina.

At a time when Obama should have been at his weakest in this long Democratic party nomination race. With Obama on the defensive after the Reverend Wright debacle, the “Bittergate” stumble, Hillary Clinton needed to win both Indiana and North Carolina primaries to significantly close on Obama and continue her case before those undeclared super delegates, and it did not materialize.

What becomes an even more increasing problem for Clinton going forward is the issue of money. After PA, her campaign saw a dramatic $10 million dollars in donations over night immediately following her win there. I seriously doubt there will be that kind of “money bounce” after the results of yesterday. Her campaign is increasingly in financial straights, and is developing an ever increasing debt as she attempts to stay in the race with Obama.

I doubt that Clinton will quit the race until the DNC meets to decide the fate of Michigan and Florida delegates on May 31st. But even adding those contest results into the mix only decreases Obama’s lead, not pass him. I suspect that the trickle of super delegates lining up for support of the candidates to begin to turn into a faster flowing river, and I don’t think that will bode well for Clinton.

There is a dead candidate walking and her name is Hillary Clinton, she just can’t or won’t admit it.

Someone teach Clinton and McCain some economics please

2008-05-05T23:06:00.002-06:00

Ok folks pay attention. I’m going to be discussing one of those subjects that made your eyes glaze over, and your head ache in high school and college….. Economics.

In the final days of the run up to the Indiana and North Carolina primaries we have three candidates slugging it out over a supposedly simple idea of removing the $0.184 federal gas tax for the upcoming three months of the summer. What surprises me more than anything about the entire discussion is how the two candidates favoring this “gas tax holiday”, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton, seem to be under the impression that a vast majority of us voters have less understanding of simple economic theory then what little they appear to have.

First let’s look at John McCain’s proposal. Just drop the federal gas tax, and don’t do anything else except promise to put the estimated $8.5 BILLION dollars in lost revenue for the Federal Highway Trust, back in from the general fund. I thought there were supposed to be fiscal conservatives in the GOP? So McCain wants to tack on another $8.5 billion dollars on to the already nearly $10 trillion national debt. If we calculate the additional interest payments on the additional $8.5 B, we are adding an additional $255 million dollars at just a 3.0% interest rate (pretty cheap interest eh?). From a economic principle viewpoint, this is not an incredibly sound idea. The US dollar is already falling in value against world currencies with our increasing debt and foreign debt ownership, that it may be impossible to ever have a “strong dollar” monetary policy again. And what does a weak dollar do to us average working Joes and Janes that the gas tax holiday is supposed to give some relief? It makes every barrel of imported oil more expensive when paid in US dollars. Now here is where a little economics come in. If the raw materials (imported oil) cost more to acquire (due to falling US dollar value), the end product costs more to purchase. So not only does the tax holiday put us farther in the hole with the national debt, but will likely end up actually causing an increase in imported oil. There are times when I really believe that John McCain was telling the truth when he said he didn’t understand the economy.

Now let’s look at Hillary Clinton’s proposal. Drop the federal gas tax, but put a “windfall profits” tax on the oil companies so that they pay the tax instead of you and me. So first off the process of taking the federal gas tax money from gasoline suppliers and depositing directly into the FHT will have to be replaced by some system of applying a “profit” tax on oil companies, collecting it, and then making sure that it gets into the FHT. So theoretically, we get that $0.184 off at the pump, but oil companies know that uncle Sam is going to be coming around to get it later from them, so to ensure that their shareholders aren’t getting shorted (after all, corporations really only answer to their shareholders), quickly pass on all or most of the gas tax back to their customers, which eventually ends up right back on the pump saving us absolutely nothing. Meanwhile everyday Joes and Janes thinking they are going to get a little more gas for the money, start driving more than they planned, and demand goes up. Now this is where we get back into economic theory again. If you have an already short supply product which is driving prices up do to over demand, and you increase the demand, the price continues to go UP. So not only are the oil companies making us pay the gas tax by passing their additional tax cost on to us consumers, the increase in demand simply continues the rapid push of prices upwards, making it worse than it was before.

But even with all this fundamental economic reasoning for the gas tax holiday being a really dumb idea, the problem becomes even bigger at the end of the three months when there hasn’t been any decrease in demand, the tax has been passed on to us anyways, and we have increased our national debt by $8.5 B. At the end of the three months, what then? Who is going to be the one to tell the American people, “well we gave you a break, it didn’t really help much, but we are sorry, we have to add the gas tax back in at the pump now”? Does anyone honestly think that during an election campaign for president that either Clinton or McCain are going to be willing to ADD the $0.184 back into the mix prior to the election?

I think not.

Now I’m concerned that neither McCain, nor Clinton, know anything about the economy. The only one of the three current candidates that seem to have this whole idea figured out right, and is against it, is the one that supported a similar idea in Illinois, until they found out it didn’t work. And they say he has no experience? At least he learned from previous attempts at this gas tax holiday hocus pocus.

End of April Rockies perspective... Ugggg

2008-05-01T18:48:00.000-06:00

Ugggg. About the only phrase I can come up with to convey my view of the Rockies after the first month of the season.

After getting to the world series last year, and giving out some hefty contracts to most all of the regular players, the Rockies have pretty much come out of the gate and fallen flat on their collective faces. With a team BA of only .248, and a combined team ERA of 4.47, the Rockies have looked a whole lot more like the team at the start of last season (and in some cases worse), than the team during the playoffs.

Only two regular position players are batting over .300. The pitching hasn’t been much better with only Aaron Cook of the starting pitchers has a ERA under 4.0. And the team has managed through 28 games, to get 2… 2 Sacrifice Flys.

Now they have injuries and demotions going on that do not bode well for the next couple of months. One of the leaders of the team, SS Tulowitzky is now out for a couple of months with a hip injury. One of the starting rotation, Morales, has been demoted to AAA, to work out a myriad of problems, and the rest of the team looks to be in a permanent funk.

While you can’t win a division in April, you can sure dig yourself a pretty big hole to climb back out of in April. While the Rockies are floundering 9 games out of first place in the NL West, the Arizona Diamondbacks are scorching hot with the best record in MLB.

The Rockies need to figure out how to do the fundamentals soon, or Arizona could conceivably run away with the division before the all star break. The team will have to do with without their premier short stop, and a collection of utility infielders at second base.
I never give up rooting for the home team, but damn, a little encouragement from the team right now going into May would sure be helpful.

The Internet generation and the Election of 2008

2008-04-29T22:26:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking about this for a couple of weeks now. There is something fundamentally different between the election in 2004 and the one now. It is the broad integrated use of the internet to disseminate any and all information whether factual or not about every candidate. This phenomenon was not as prevalent just 4 years ago.

Now, almost every single day, there are Youtube snippets, blog postings, news blog postings, internet polling, political forums, facebook, craigslist, and upteen thousand "political" web sites with various political agendas and leanings.

McCain, Clinton, and Obama have been dissected, probed, prodded, examined, and xrayed by every single media type and political angle that this growing internet minded election can think of. If it wasn't for the internet explosion of information, would we even care about the documents appearing out of thin air that Clinton couldn't find? Would we even care or even remotely believe that McCain could possibly be a Manchurian Candidate possibility? Would we ever have heard or seen any candidates pastor's sermons?

Would FDR have been elected if the national press had presented his affliction with polio in the same manner as they do every blemish of candidates today? Would JFK have been elected if his indiscretions and “lack of experience” been chronicled on every blog, political forum, and media outlet in the country?

Can any candidate actually survive this kind of magnified scrutiny that can in a second disseminate every possible aspect of a candidates life to millions of people who then put their own perspective and pass it on to millions more?

Regardless of which candidate you may be supporting in this election, imagine what the next election may be like when even new and improved vetting (and I use that word loosely) avenues are around, and every piece of news, whether accurate or not is instantly downloaded to those cool video glasses with the little monitor that everyone will be wearing in 2012.

Can any candidate actually survive this kind of election? Could any of us survive that kind of scrutiny?

Earmarks need to be ended permanently

2008-04-24T17:45:00.000-06:00

Earmarks are generally regarded as specific funding requests by a member of congress to be directed to a home state or district project or organization. These requests are generally outside of specific government agency funding requests and the federal government agency whose appropriation bill the earmark is included in has no authorization or control over the expenditure. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense (www.taxpayer.net) the current FY08 appropriations contain just a hair over $18 billion dollars in totaling $14.8 billion in sponsored congressional requests, and another $3.5 billion dollars in earmarks that had no congressional sponsor identified.

Earmarks are seldom added to an appropriations bill while it is being constructed, but rather during the conference phase where the two houses of the congress get together to work out differences between the two house’s respective legislation. And in this conference phase is where the real “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” of our current political environment comes into play. This is where the seniority of a congress member comes into play, since the more senior a member of congress is, the more likely he or she is going to get their little pet project funding into a piece of legislation, because their support is needed either to support another piece of legislation, or their weight and support for an earmark for a lesser senior member of congress is desired to ensure that earmark gets included.

Much has been made this election year on earmarking by congress, particularly by Senator McCain, who had zero earmarks associated with the FY 08 appropriations, according to TCS, while Senator Clinton had $342.4 million, and Senator Obama had $98.6. Many projects or organizations funded through earmarks are truly worthwhile causes and do bring jobs, funding, and needed projects to the individual state or precinct. The problem with earmarks is that Citizens against Government Waste estimates that 98 percent of earmarks are added during the conference phase, and are not voted on by the full membership of either house as a stand alone appropriation. This behind the scenes back scratching between members of congress puts the rest of the members of congress in the situation of having to vote for critical federal funding legislation as a whole containing the earmarks. If a member decides to vote against a funding bill due to particular earmarks, they risk suffering the backlash from fellow house members, senators, and constituents for holding up needed government appropriations.

Each of the individual earmarks in and of themselves may not seem like a lot of money, but a couple million here and a couple hundred thousand there, multiplied by a little over eleven thousand individual items, and you start talking about real money. The need to remove the ability to insert earmarks into needed pieces of legislation is becoming more and more imperative, at a time when we are running such large deficits, and funding two external wars. If a particular project or organization’s funding is important enough to take a portion of everyone’s tax dollars, then it is important enough to stand alone as an appropriation line item and be subjected to full congress scrutiny as the spending bills are constructed. The time to eliminate earmarks from the federal budget process has come.

Clinton wins PA, Democrats sink more into quicksand

2008-04-22T21:02:00.001-06:00

If the trend to this point continues, Hillary Clinton will win Pennsylvania by an 8 to 10 percent margin over Barack Obama. By winning the state, she does get to chalk up another “big” state win, but will probably fail to put any significant dent into Obama’s pledged delegate lead, and will probably only cut 200,000 out of his 700,000 or so popular vote lead.

While keeping her nomination race alive, it continues to complicate the problems with the Democrat party going into the general election in November whether she or Obama wins the nomination. The super delegates have not completely jumped into the fray and are likely to still end up holding the final trump cards on who gets the nomination in the end.

But the continued split personality of the Democratic party, should be causing some concern for the DNC as it starts thinking of some of the bigger issues that are going to be critical for it in the general election. Many people tend to focus only on the issues of the presidential election, but it is really only a single spoke in what the DNC has to focus on if it wants to break the traditional log jam in congress going forward and get the “super majority” that Pelosi and Reid want to take into the next congress.

If Obama wins, will the stalwart blue collar workers, and over age 65 Democrats of Clinton’s coalition close ranks and support an Obama run. If Clinton wins, will the large African-American, more educated, and youth coalition that he has forged close ranks and support a Clinton run. Neither of these questions can objectively be answered while the nomination race is still continuing.

Outside of the presidential race, the DNC wants to focus on a number of even more important strategies, and a cohesive Democratic party will be absolutely critical to achieve their goals.

If the DNC wants to get a “super majority” in congress they need a presidential candidate that can keep both of these very diverse coalitions together and pull in congressional races on the coat tail, and use the significant increase of registered Democrats to win state victories for the next level down Senate and House races.

In 2010 there will be a national round of reapportioned. To attempt to re-establish a solid Democrat party base across the US instead of the famous Red and Blue state division, they will need both coalitions to help take control of a majority of the State houses and Senates, which will be making the decisions on how districts are reapportioned.

In the next 8 years there is a possibility of 2 Supreme court justices needing to be appointed by the next president. If the DNC hopes to have a Democrat in the White House they will need the entire Democratic party working and driving together to ensure a victory over John McCain in November.

There is a more imperative need for the Democrats than the Republicans to vastly change the political landscape from the state houses, to the congress, and the white house if they are going to be able to overturn what has been a fairly consistent Republican control of congress and the state houses.

The longer this nomination race continues, and particularly if both candidates continue the last two weeks slide into the negative personalized attacks against each other to the point that party can not heal itself without losing half of the total coalition, the Republicans will take not only the White House, but the congress, and the state houses.

This is in my opinion a “do or die” election for the Democrats, and from my view from outside, they are playing with their own future under the sword of Damocles. It is a fine line they are now walking, and given the penchant for political parties to fail to see reality, they are more likely to blow the perfect opportunity than they are to seize it.

How ever it turns out… I’ll still be on the couch with the popcorn and beer, watching it all unfold in November.

Clinton voted to allow gun confiscation during disasters?

2008-04-18T23:16:00.003-06:00

With all the hoopla about Obama’s “bitter” remarks and the discussion around gun-control, an interesting sidelight that hasn’t been touched on is a little known amendment voted on in July 2006. The amendment S.Amdt.4615 to H.R.5441 was “To prohibit the confiscation of a firearm during an emergency or major disaster if the possession of such firearm is not prohibited under Federal or State law”. The vote count was 84 YEAs and only 16 NAYs.

What surprised me was you would think that based on the perception of Obama being a “radical” gun control freak after the uproar following those PA statements, that he should have been one of the NAYs, while Annie Oakley Clinton being taught by her Grandfather to shoot out behind the barn would have been one of the YEAs.

But oh contraire.

Clinton actually voted against prohibiting the confiscation, while Obama voted for the prohibition. Now this might seem like an issue of little importance… but try and tell that to the good folks of New Orleans who by decree of the Mayor had all those “legal” firearms in N.O. confiscated after the disaster of Katrina, and have yet to be completely returned to their rightful owners.

Not surprisingly John McCain was also one of the 84 YEAs that put a halt to a really ridiculous idea.

Now if I was an anti gun control Democrat, I might be thinking “Who’s really on my side if during a major disaster I most likely might actually need this here shot gun?"

Still no knockout by Clinton in the latest debate

2008-04-17T06:29:00.000-06:00

On Wednesday night we had the latest in what seems the continuing plethora of Democratic Nominee debates between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in Pennsylvania.

While nothing new or ground breaking was discussed, other than spending the first half of the debate having Obama asked to respond to every innocuous innuendo, rumor, past association, and phrasing of words. The first half of the debate had to seem to Senator Obama as a planned and executed ambush, with set up questions allowing Senator Clinton ample time to dig into each one with what seemed like a Rovian relish. What was an interesting development was the question to Clinton regarding the “Bosnian Sniper Fire” mis-speak, and Obama’s high road take of not shooting back at Clinton over it, as she had been more than willing to do to the same type of questions to Obama.

Both candidates promised to not raise taxes on the middle class (what ever income that level means anymore). And both gave assurances that they would quickly move to remove combat troops from Iraq.

Both candidates responded to the questioning with articulate and measured tones, and both took their opportunities to take pot shots at the GOP presumptive nominee Senator John McCain.

With this being the 21st debate in this continuing, and seemingly never ending series of debates, there was little new substance, and little more separation between the two on core issues. Whether this has an impact on the upcoming Pennsylvania primary next Tuesday, we’ll have to wait and see. But if Senator Clinton was hoping to use the forum to reverse the rapidly closing Obama in Pennsylvania polls and his increasing lead in national polls, a knockout was required, and it failed to materialize.

I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!

2008-04-11T09:10:00.001-06:00

Time and again, our elected officials are proving that they have no concept of what “providing for the common defense, and promote the general Welfare, secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” means anymore.

We have a government establishment hell bent on doing everything to weaken our ability to defend ourselves with totally irrational concepts of preemptive military action. I have yet to talk to anyone who feels or disagrees with our decision to invade Afghanistan to pursue Al Qaeda and remove the government responsible for supporting the group which was responsible for the largest loss of American lives on US soil by an enemy since Pearl Harbor. But our leaders could not stop there. Instead of completing our task and bringing the culprits to justice, our elected officials either deliberately mislead us, or fabricated the need to invade Iraq to preempt their development of WMDs. Now we have our military in both Afghanistan and Iraq with ever changing objectives and a military that is stretched beyond a sustainable level. At the same time the current administration intensifies the saber rattling at the prospect of a nuclear Iran with growing influence in the region due to our destabilizing actions in Iraq. If some rogue faction was to now actually attack us, we would be without any viable military resources to confront the threat.

We have a government establishment more concerned about propping up support for greed induced meltdowns of companies that propagated close to pyramid schemes of fabricated assets built on sub-prime mortgage paper that was built on predatory lending practices. To further show their support of the financially stressed home owners facing foreclosure, the senate has proposed a bill that would give a $7,000 tax credit to people who buy a home that have been foreclosed, or have had foreclosure filings, which does absolutely nothing for the people actually being foreclosed on, except make it more likely they will lose their home more quickly. The senate bill also gives $25 billion in tax breaks for homebuilders who so over built homes that there was almost no way they could ever possibly sell them. Again our government proposes saving the businesses that primarily drove the crisis while leaving the actual distressed homeowners out in the cold. The only general welfare they seem concerned about is the corporations that have done more to create our current recession than the constituency of American tax payers and homeowners that are left to fend for ourselves.

We have a government that is unwilling to make any positive step to secure our borders and really manage the growing problem of illegal immigration. We have officials asking not to enforce our own laws on immigration because it is bad for business. There is an assault on our American IT workers to have their jobs either supplanted with cheap foreign workers, or having their jobs outright moved to offshore cheap labor markets. Two bills were introduced recently after Bill Gates visited Washington to bemoan the lack of world class employees in the US. The first bill introduced by Representative Lamar Smith would retroactively increase the 2008 H-1B visa cap to 195,000, as well as set that level for fiscal year 2009. The second bill authored by Gabrielle Giffords the same week would increase the cap to 130,000 a year from it’s current cap of 65,000. This blind obedience to Corporate pandering is increasing the pressure on the US middle class by moving the very jobs that we are supposed to be depending on to take us into the future to foreign employees. Even the IEEE-USA pointed out that the decrease in unemployed U.S. high-tech professionals dropped sharply after the reinstatement of the H-1B visa cap to 65,000 in 2004 from 195,000 in 2003. So exactly where is the concern for the welfare of the American people in all this?

Again, and again, our elected officials choose to pander to the corporate CEOs who’s primary objective is their own self interest and corporate greed, without any consideration to the impact to the American worker and tax payer. As Americans it is time for us to fire our dysfunctional and inept employees. We need to examine the records and stands of every political office seeker, and ensure that we vote for a change of our elected officials across the local, state, and federal level to elect people that have the best interests of the American people as their focus. We need to send a message that political business as usual is no longer acceptable. We need to elect officials that are truly concerned and understand the meaning of “providing for the common defense, and promote the general Welfare, secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”

We need to use our votes to tell our government that “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”.

Another GAO report.. more of the same Government Waste

2008-04-09T06:24:00.002-06:00

Another year, another GAO report ( AP ), more of the same government waste is found. It seems it never ends, or in any case, ever gets better. Every year there seems to be a GAO report or audit that finds that there is continually an issue with government employees wasting tax payer dollars. This time instead of $400 hammers, we are paying for online dating services, steaks and crab, tailor made suits, and my favorite, “women’s lingerie” for “use during jungle training by trainees of a drug enforcement program in Ecuador.” You just know those thongs were much more comfortable in that jungle heat.

To me it isn’t that the GAO found “questionable” expenses, or “some” lack of department controls of expenditures, it is the fact that year after year it continues to pop up as a problem.

Many Americans are struggling to hold on to their homes, afford gas to get to their jobs, and pay their taxes, only to find that time and time again government oversight of expenses are wasting vast amounts of those hard earned dollars. It speaks to the attitude of long standing practices as Senator Norm Coleman stated “Too many government employees have viewed purchase cards as their personal line of credit”. And I agree with his sentiment that “When money that is intended to pay for critical infrastructure, education, and homeland security is instead being spent on iPods, lingerie and socializing, we must immediately remedy the problem.”

But the bigger and more systemic problem is that it will simply die down, only to re-surface with the next GAO report. As is the trend in these situations Senator Carl Levin stated “Although internal controls over government credit cards have improved we still have a long way to go…”, and that seems to be the consistent response.

Our government leaders wonder why there is such cynicism in the American public toward government. All they have to do is look at how they have managed the hard earned money that is given them by that public to get a clue.

Full GAO report can be found here

Thank God Baseball season is 162 games long

2008-04-06T19:57:00.004-06:00

Six games into the season, and I'm already hearing folks starting to talk like the Rockies (1-5) season is over, and looking for Broncos tickets :)

If your favorite football team started out 1-5 I could see the dispair.
If your favorite Basketball team started out 1-5 there would be reason for concern.
If your favorite Hockey team started out 1-5 (well I'm having a hard time with this one because all hockey is, is boxing on skates :) )

But let's get real. Baseball season is a 162 game grind. It is meant to average out the slumps, and the streaks so that "on average" the best teams get to the playoffs.

Maybe the problem is with our penchant for instant gratification, that we groan so much at each loss, and get so euphoric at each win.

Baseball season is a long and winding road. Six games means little, if anything in the longer scope of the season. Now if the Rockies are still sub .500 at the end of April... I "might" start worrying a little bit :)

Why I am supporting Obama

2008-04-05T02:44:00.002-06:00

The following was distilled from my postings on a political forum where I went into depth on why I am supporting Obama.

Let me start off by saying, I'm not a Democrat, I am however a former Republican, so I have a bit of a luxury in looking at the Democratic presidential nomination race with a little bit of a different slant. And my view at this point and my gut tells me that Obama is likely to end up the Democratic presidential nominee, and eventual general election winner. And I'll even tell you why I think that.

In the debates on January 5th in Manchester, Hillary Clinton while on the attack against Obama made the following statement attacking his ability to actually make change happen, "As beautifully presented, as passionately presented as they are, words are not action," Clinton said. This one small view into the differences between the two main Democratic candidates is what my gut tells me will make Obama the winner.

There is something, and you can't put your finger on it, that comes across and grabs you when Barack Obama speaks. And the major problem for Hillary Clinton is that she doesn't recognize that words, presented with passion, and commitment can indeed lead to action. Now I'm not going to sit here and say that I believe every thing that Barack Obama is promising in his speeches, but I can't deny that I "hope" that he means what he says.

Over the last forty some odd years there have not been any Democratic candidates that could remind me of the connections that JFK, and RFK had with the youth of America. What I sense, and feel is starting to happen, is that a growing number of young people disenchanted with the status quo of the nearly last half century of politics, feel that in Obama is a real chance to try a different path.For us baby boomers, who can remember back to the JFK and RFK era, at least to me, there is the same ability to appeal to the "better nature" of Americans, and move that to the front of the platform.

When Obama refuses to make folks pay a penalty for not buying health care when they can't afford it, and Clinton bangs him for it, the attack only strengthens his position. What Hillary has forgotten is, people don't buy health insurance now because they can't afford it. To argue that you have to penalize people already in financial straights with a monetary penalty for not buying something you are dictating they have to buy, when they couldn't afford it in the first place, shows a serious disconnect with common people.

And in the end the reason will be because despite what Hillary Clinton believes, beautifully presented and passionately delivered words CAN move people to incredible actions and change. Just ask the millions of 1960s youth who were moved to action by the beautifully presented and passionately delivered words of a couple of earlier Democrats.

To a degree for me, this isn’t an election between Democrats and Republicans as much as it is a repudiation of “traditional” politics. Both Clinton and McCain are products of the same extreme political machinations that have seen our national and state governments locked up into statues of partisan bickering inaction. And whether or not Obama can fulfill my hopes of moving past this morass, I don’t know, but I do know that not voting for him almost certainly ensures the current “traditional” political environment remains intact. And to me that is no longer an acceptable outcome.

Do I agree with Obama on all the issues? Not at all. In fact I disagree with him on gun control, funding of the UN poverty initiatives with US taxes, and I disagree with his priorities on immigration.

Where I do heavily agree with Obama on the issues is on Health care, Foreign policy, the Economy, and on Education.

In the final analysis, for me at this point, it is a choice between continuing the status quo process of political bickering dead lock, or move to a state where bridges are built across our political divides to ensure a working government that is responding to it’s constituents. One thing in addition, that Obama has driven me to do is to take “serious” looks at the State and Local political candidates, and look for the same qualities of bipartisan gridlock and look to remove those obstacles in the coming election as well. But I am only one voter. My only “hope” is that more people are interested in moving past the same hurdles that I see, and are willing to take a serious chance for changing the landscape.

As I said there are specific areas that I disagree with Obama on some of his stands.

First: Gun Control
I firmly do not believe in legislative gun control. There is more than enough statistical evidence both here in the US and particularly in the UK that proves that gun control does NOT reduce gun related crimes. And in fact the data from the UK strongly indicates that it has exactly the opposite effect.

Second: US tax to support UN poverty initiatives
Until we have our own house in order, and have effectively delt with the growing disparity between income classes here in the US, and specifically done something to reduce the poverty level here at home, I don't think we should be going anywhere with US tax dollars to deal with other country's poverty problems.

Third: Priorities on immigration
I do not agree with the priorities Obama has on dealing with the massive illegal immigration problem. I am steadfastly in favor of securing our border and ports as the most important factor in dealing with illegal immigration. Once that is completed, and we can actually control our flow of incoming immigrants, then I am willing to discuss the issues of what to do with those already here.

Another area where I am not in lock step with Obama on is his energy program. While I agree with his proposals for moving quicker on renewable energy sources, and higher CAFE standards, I also think these things will take time, and in the meantime, we need to be more proactive in opening more components of our own oil/nat gas reserves to drilling in order to bridge the gap until more renewable energy resources come on line.

I've covered some of the issues that I disagree with Obama on, and on the flip side there are issues that I STRONGLY agree with Obama on.

First: Economy
His stands on the negotiation, implementation, and ENFORCEMENT of Fair trade agreements, is in these times of "outsourcing" is critical in my view of ensuring that American workers are not put in a disadvantage while operating in a global economy. I believe in Fair Trade, not Free Trade. To date our practice of negotiating open trade agreements have only benefited the countries we have signed them with while not enforcing the fair trade aspects. I also agree with his stands on Labor Unions, and supporting both their right to unionize, battleing against the efforts such as the NLRB's rulings that professional workers such as nurses are not protected by federal labor laws. I also agree with the raising of the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation. I also support his stands on addressing predatory Credit Card practices.

Second: Foreign Policy
He is the only one of the remaining three candidates that stood firmly against our invasion of Iraq. Many have said he was lucky, but it is something that the "proof" provided by the administration provided that I myself did not find significant enough to go to war over, and take our priorities from the Afghanistan theater, and the pursuit of the Al Qaeda leaders who directly assaulted us. I also believe that our current foreign policy stand of not talking with countries we have differences continues to put us in a unmanageable position of either not partaking in ANY diplomacy, or using military force to enforce our will. I also agree with his stand that we need to strengthen and expand the military so that it remains the most effective military force. Many people argue that because he is a Democrat that he will gut the military, but there has never been a statement or implied indication that he would do anything other work to improve and strengthen the military.

Third: Health Care
I firmly believe that affordable and effective Health Care is a "right" that every American deserves. The current market driven method of dispensing health care to Americans has done little to ensure affordable health care, but has instead put the profits of the corporations ahead of human care needs. Health care providers continue to increase costs, more and more limits on health care coverage, while focusing on profits. The reason I side with Obama instead of Clinton on this issue is because Obama's focus is on reducing costs and making health insurance affordable, where Clinton continues to focus on the "mandatory" implementation of health insurance. As I said in the original post the idea of penalizing families for not buying health insurance when they simply can't afford it in the first place, with financial penalties is showing a disconnection from the underlying problem.

Fourth: Education
Our education system is the foundation that the rest of our country is built on. His plans to reform NCLB by actually making the money that was promised available, rather than just making a law and leaving it unfunded. But primarily I support his initiatives to support and reward the ones who make the decision to Teach our youth. For too long the focus has been on institutions, programs, buildings, while the plight of our Teachers has been ignored. If we are going to effectively educate our next generations, we need to put the resources, funding, and rewards in place to bring more, and qualified teachers into the system, and then make sure they are rewarded for doing what is a critical job.

Freedom of the Press under attack?

2008-04-03T23:26:00.002-06:00

“Attorney General Michael Mukasey and three other top Bush administration officials are weighing in against legislation that would allow reporters to protect the identities of confidential sources who provide sensitive, sometimes embarrassing information about the government.” (CNN article)

One of the foundations of journalism is the confidentiality of sources. And with the administration weighing in on a bill that would specifically safe guard that foundation, we move one step closer to another loss of Constitutional freedoms for the sake of perceived national security needs.

If we allow the growing trend of “contempt of court” punishments for journalists who refuse to divulge confidential sources, we put at stake the very foundation of a free and unfettered press intended to investigate, and inform the public.

To note just of a few of the most dramatic modern examples of reporters breaking stories with confidential sources that may not have been broken otherwise: David Halberstam's critical reporting from Vietnam; publication of The Pentagon Papers; Woodward and Bernstein's revelations about the Watergate break-in; details of the Iran-Contra scandal; the existence of secret CIA interrogation centers; and the recent revelations of extralegal spying by the National Security Agency.

By not protecting the right of a journalist to protect their sources, the likelihood of anyone in government to provide information, knowing that they can easily be exposed with simple “contempt of court” decisions, seems to me, extremely reduced.

One of the arguments used in opposition to the proposed bill, “In a separate letter, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the nation would be more vulnerable to "adversaries' counterintelligence efforts to recruit" those shielded by the bill.” Is Mr Gates implying that if the shield law is passed, that it then becomes “open season” to the recruitment of journalists by foreign intelligence agencies? I think we are placing a very low perception of the patriotism of our journalists if we agree with that view.

“Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the bill would erect roadblocks to gathering information "from anyone who can claim to be a journalist, including bloggers" and Internet service providers.” This was particularly disturbing, since DHS with the enactment of the Patriot Act has been given almost carte blanc to investigate anyone deemed a possible “domestic terrorist”, which in recent disclosures have indicated that the FBI even broke those rules when performing investigations.

The more disturbing trend of the arguments by the administration against the shield law, is once again the mantra of “national security” which has been used as a bludgeon against American rights and civil liberties to facilitate broad, intrusive, and secret government actions aimed at our own nation’s citizens.

If we allow the defeat of this shield law by the administration, could we be allowing ourselves to gag the one institution that is primarily our only means of being informed of government misbehavior, and improper conduct? If journalists can not uncover corruption in government because sources won’t come forward, without the guarantee of confidentiality, how will we the people be able to watch and be informed of the actions of our government?

Bernanke finally admits that there is a recession risk?

2008-04-02T22:41:00.002-06:00

Bernanke speaking before a congressional committee ( CNN article ) said he wasn't yet prepared to declare that the economy has fallen into a recession. But later stated "It now appears likely that real gross domestic product will not grow much, if at all, over the first half of 2008 and could even contract slightly," Now if that, coupled with a total melt down in the mortgage/housing market, sky rocketing fuel prices, and his acknowledgement that he expects further rises in unemployment, I have no better definition of what a recession is.

We have the president continuing with his head in the sand mantra that the economy is strong, and the Fed bailing out or capitulating to Wall Street in providing cheap loans, while the US dollar continues to plummet, homeowners bear the brunt of the mortgage crisis, middle class Americans are pummeled with increasing unemployment, and higher and higher fuel costs.

If there was ever a point in time where Americans can look at the statements of our elected and appointed officials, and wonder what planet they live on, now is that time.

Finally, something other than Politics

2008-04-02T02:41:00.003-06:00

Yesterday, one of my favorite passions got underway again, and it is not the political bickering between Obama, Clinton, and McCain. Even though I had to wait an extra day due to heavy rain in St Louis, the Rockies 2008 opening season game is now official.

Baseball, despite all the steroids scandals of last year, continues to take one back to their youth, and times when the world wasn't such a scary place to live in. There is something about watching your favorite team pitching, hitting, and catching, that if you squint just right, you can see yourself back when you were in your teens, doing the same thing in the vacant lot down the street.

You may not make as much money as those professional players you are watching on the big screen, but you can close your eyes, listen to the commentary, and almost see yourself standing at the plate in the top of the 9th with the bases loaded, 2 out, and the game tied 1-1. Watching baseball, for all it's player's faults, the mega money, the occasional scandals, still takes one back to their youth, where the world was safer, the air was a bit cleaner, the sun shone just a bit brighter, and your very first girl friend cheered you on from the stands.

There isn't anything complex about baseball. You pitch the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball. All the complexities of modern life fades away into the simplicity of the game, and you can forget the report due to the boss next week on the 3rd variable derivatives of the sub-prime mortgage lending practices.

Baseball is a game, a simple game, a game of our youth. A game that can keep us young in spirit, and heart, if we just close our eyes, and imagine.

Oh by the way... The Rockies beat the Cardinals 2-1. One game down 161 games to go. :)

Michelle Obama undergrad thesis on racial divide racist?

2008-03-31T22:48:00.004-06:00

I got into a rather heated debate on the Comcast political forums today about whether Michelle Obama's undergraduate thesis in 1985 on racial divide was racist or not. The article "Michelle Obama thesis was on racial divide" provides the thesis in 4 parts ( Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 ), as it was provided by the Obama campaign on request of the article authors.

What I found interesting in reading the thesis was that there really wasn't anything either implied or overtly racist in either it's premise or in its data presentation or analysis, but that people on the Comcast forums would rant that it was racist simply because it was a discussion of racial perspectives.

It is interesting to view the absolute venom and hatred that can be thrown at someone for a racial subject thesis when it becomes obvious that the ones ranting so hard that it is in fact racist, have never even read the composition.

The entire underlying racial tension associated with the presidential run by Barack Obama, from the youtube cut and past clips of Reverend Wright's sermons, to the "typical white woman" thrashing from Obama's speech on Race, to even going back to 1985 to missinterpreting an undergraduate thesis of his wife, to a large degree, provides ample proof that the racial divide within America is still strong.

Whether or not you as an individual think there is a reason for different views on the racial situation in America or not, it is undeniable that across the country, that there is ample evidence that the discussion of race, whether in a speech or a 1985 undergraduate thesis by a 20 year old, is still a prickly subject that ferments the lowest propagation of hatred and distrust that we still have a long way to get past as a country.

Whether Obama wins the presidential nomination or not, I hope that the underlying and repressed subject of race relations within our country can finally have a full, and objective vetting as a necessary subject that we must confront.

A little time off

2008-03-02T11:23:00.002-07:00

I'm going to be taking a little time off from the blog for the next week or so. Unfortunately, I have a serious family illness that needs quite a bit of attention. I do plan on posting as I get time, but it obviously isn't going to be the kind of frequency that I have been doing.

I want to thank the loyal readers who have been dropping by and leaving comments, and appreciate the emails I've gotten.

As Arnold always says "I'll Be Back" :)

Union leaders fiscally irresponsible when paying for political advertizing

2008-02-29T05:51:00.001-07:00

As a long time union member, there was always one thing large unions did that completely irritated and annoyed me. Spending my dues, that should be going to improve union health, pension, and individual training programs and benefits on political advertising for candidates that the union leadership feels compelled to support.

I was reading a CNN article on how Hillary Clinton had raised $35 million dollars for her campaign in February, when I came across this little piece at the bottom.

“The Service Employees International Union began spending $1.4 million in ads in support of Obama in Ohio and Texas. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union was spending nearly $200,000 in ads in Ohio.”

Now as far as I’m concerned there is nothing that a union should be spending the hard earned union dues of it’s membership on other than benefits and programs to support the members that pay the dues that are being spent.

If Obama can raise $32 million dollars for his campaign in January, and Clinton can raise $35 million dollars in February, they are more than capable of paying for their own advertising. If the Union leadership wants to support a particular candidate because they are pro-union then they can volunteer their time, or ask membership to volunteer their time in the myriad of things every political campaign needs bodies to help do.

But to me the spending of union funds on political advertising is tantamount to fiscal irresponsibility on the part of the union leadership. And if it could be outlawed I would fully support it.

Life of a Small State in Politics

2008-02-28T05:39:00.000-07:00

Still no Knockout for Clinton in Debate

2008-02-27T05:50:00.004-07:00

Another debate (that is 20 for those of you counting) in the Democratic nominee process, and as in the last one in Texas, Hillary Clinton failed to KO Barack Obama. In some respects, the KO could have come from the surging Obama who has narrowed polling gaps in Ohio, and even taken the lead in some polls in Texas. Both of the upcoming state primaries are almost do or die for Clinton.

Clinton came out swinging, and Obama came out counter punching. As was evident in the last debate Obama is getting much more comfortable with the debates, and did not let Clinton rattle him with the accusations about questionable campaign tactics and supposidly misleading mailers.

As usual Clinton was strongest on the Health Care subject, but from that point on it seemed Obama had the upper hand or stayed even. With the Texas and Ohio primaries coming up on March 4th, and Clinton needing to win both to keep her campaign viable, it appears the sands in the hour glass is starting to run out. Obama has closed to within 6 points of Clinton in Ohio after being down 19, and has even taken a small lead in the Texas polls.

March 5th we should get one of two decisions. Either Clinton is done, or we go on to Pennsylvania for round 21 :)

Nader gets on the horse again

2008-02-24T08:58:00.004-07:00

Well it is another presidential election cycle, and what election for president would be complete without Ralph Nader (CNN) throwing his hat into the ring once more for a drive to irrelevancy. Rather than trying to prove his mettle during the normal primary season, he continued his penchant for late timing theatrics by announcing his presidency campaign last night on Meet the Press.

If Ron Paul was the symbol of non attention in the party primaries so far, Ralph Nader has decided to pick up the mantle for the general election. In his time, Nader was the consummate consumer advocate, and probably did more than anyone alive to promote safety of consumers over corporate greed. However, as he enters his fourth straight presidential campaign, almost everyone is agreed (except Nader), that his best and most influential times are well behind him.

Many in the Democratic party are still upset that they think he cost Al Gore the election in 2000 in a close race by derailing that small percentage of Democrat votes in Florida that could have made the difference between Gore and Bush being elected.

At 74, and after four miserable attempts at running before (5 if you count that write in campaign), you really have to wonder if Ralph is doing this for anything other than pure ego anymore. If you go to his website at you can get a list of what he has put “on the table”. Of course “open up the Presidential debates” would be one of his first priorities since he isn’t likely got get many invitations. And you have to like his “Impeach Bush/Cheney” position. And I’m not quite sure what “Work to end corporate personhood” even means.

If he thinks that political consultants “have really messed up Hillary Clinton’s campaign”, you have to wonder what brilliant political consultants came up with his plan to run for president once again. Obviously not the sharpest tacks in the box if you ask me.
If nothing else, it will give us political junkies something to analyze and talk about when the race between the GOP and Democrat nominees hit some slow spots

A couple days off to revive the brain cells

2008-02-24T07:35:00.002-07:00

Been taking a few days off from posting to revive the old brain cells. Not a lot really going on as we kind of mark time before the March 4th primaries.

I'm really concentrating on what is currently going on in the Rockies spring training right now as everyone has finally reported to camp. :) The battle for 2nd base should be interesting, and the bull pen looks pretty strong again. I was really glad to see the front office step up and get some of these great young players signed to longer term contracts. This year the expectations are going to be a lot higher, and should be great to watch.

Clinton fails to knock out Obama in Debate

2008-02-21T21:48:00.000-07:00

With Obama beginning to overtake or close the gap between himself and Clinton in both Ohio and Texas, two absolute MUST wins for Clinton, there was an expectation that she really needed to score a knockout during the debate in Texas tonight.

If that was the need, then from where I sat watching, Clinton failed to score. Clinton had her best moments during the discussion on healthcare where she is obviously the strongest, but seriously failed to make strong distinctions between the two in the rest of the issues. She had plenty of opportunities to speak to the substantive differences between her and Obama, but failed to take advantage of the openings, or was simply unable to exploit them.

To a large degree there was absolutely nothing new exposed in the positions of either candidate, and anyone expecting Clinton to change strategy to attempt to blunt the Obama momentum came away with nothing to hang on.

As far as how I saw Obama perform in the debate, he seemed much more relaxed, and in control of the discussions on substance and rhetoric. Remembering back to the early debates, where Clinton seemed dominant, and Obama looked like the novice, I was stricken by how much more composed Obama is now and Clinton seemed the more tentative. From my comfy chair perspective, Obama had his best debate of all of them, and it came when he could benefit from his performance the most.

The biggest plus for me in the debate was the fact that Wolf Blitzer was not moderating it.

Another flameout for Clinton and Huckabee

2008-02-20T00:02:00.003-07:00

An interesting thing happened to Hillary Clinton on the road to the Democratic party nomination. After taking a substantial lead in delegates after Super Tuesday on February 5th, she forgot that there was still an election going on, and failed to try and win every state, as opposed to the big states. In Wisconsin, a state that should have been tailor made for Hillary Clinton to win, no major African-American block of voters to write off as voting for Obama because of race, losing even larger sections of her major constituencies in terms of demographics as well. Obama over the weeks since February 5th has consistently improved in white male voters, white female voters, age category voters (except for 65+), lower income level voters. Wisconsin was an absolute “no excuses” loss for Clinton, except that she didn’t campaign as hard as Obama, and she continued to use the same speech that has not been resonating with voters for some time now.

There is a consistent theme that Hillary Clinton has been using as her foil against Obama, and that is her experience is greater than his. What Clinton has failed to realize, and what I believe the McCain camp is also failing to realize, is that there is a growing segment of the American people that are tired of the experience in Washington D.C. continuing to be polarizing and stagnant. Another point that I think both Clinton and McCain are missing, is that there is a growing segment of the American people are tired of being told that they must be fearful of every shadow that is propagated by our politicians to get us to vote for them, and Obama’s theme of hope and broad support resonates with those who are looking for more change than just switching which party holds the White House.

There is still a ways to go in this campaign and there is a real possibility that Hillary Clinton could win the nomination in the end. But something she has been promoting is change, to win the nomination, she will have to change her message, if she can’t change her message to better resonate with the voters, she won’t ever get the chance to change things from within the White House.

On the Republican side, McCain easily defeated Mike Huckabee in Wisconsin and Washington, further extending his delegate lead and clearly establishing himself as the Republican nominee. The exit polling still shows McCain having trouble bringing core conservatives to his camp. The only reason I can imagine that Mike Huckabee is still running is that he really doesn’t have anything to do at the moment.

A time and need for change and what it means to me

2008-02-16T09:19:00.001-07:00

I have spent a lot of time recently getting my fixes of the political landscape. With the current election progressing the way it is, how could a political junkie not get a daily fix? I get a lot of news from CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and local news channels to that I feel that I get at least a smattering of varying perspectives and coverage. I also spend a lot of time discussing politics with folks on the various political discussion forums. A lot of the discussions center around the two extreme perspectives of the political spectrum, and these discussions along with the news has given me a much different view of politics and our government from what I had when I was 20, 30, 40, or even 50. One of the things that I have become concerned about most recently, is the absolute polarization of the country between the far left and the far right. If you visit any of the large political discussion forums you continually see the folks squaring off between the ultra conservatives, and the ultra liberal factions. What I have found is that neither side willing to compromise on their perspectives essentially settling nothing, much like our current situation in the national government.

We have a tremendous number of things that need to be fixed in this country, and we have gotten nothing but continual doses of fear and doom from the conservative side, and nothing but continual finger pointing and failure to take responsibility from the liberal side. But neither extreme is willing to move toward the other to compromise to actually accomplish anything meaningful, resulting in continual grid lock and stalling, and failing to fix any of our major problems.

On the issue of Iraq there is a great majority of the American people that believe that we were led down the terror path to war in Iraq with no understanding of what it was going to require to extricate ourselves, and were convinced of the need for war, on faulty, and to be honest, exaggerated intelligence that under more strenuous examination could have kept us from this unwarranted predicament in the first place. While 20/20 hindsight is always perfect, even in the initial discussions of the need for invasion, there were only tenuous and highly suspect links between Al-Qaeda and Iraq. There was insufficient proof of WMDs even in the most cursory review of the UN inspector reports. But the Administration pushed the buttons of fear and national security for force a resolution that they obviously wanted, but drastically took our attention from where it was most required in the tracking and capture or killing of the actual 9/11 supporting terrorists in Afghanistan. Democrats not wanting to look weak followed the Administration lead and toed the line to save face rather than stand and require substantial verifiable proof before agreeing to authorize the use of force in Iraq. Both sides failed us, the Administration by jumping into a second front that was never required, and the Congress by not doing their duty to require reasonable proof before authorizing. Now we are in two wars, with no real plan to extricate ourselves other than providing occupation forces for the foreseeable future, while we continue to put the Afghanistan front on a back burner and allow the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to reinvigorate, and grow stronger in that area. And the deficit continues to grow at an alarming rate with no plan on how to pay for it other than printing more green backs. This two front war on terrorism has created a situation that is intolerable at best, and unsustainable at worst. In the mean time the conservatives dig in, and the liberals dig in, and our young military people continue to die, and spend increasingly longer tours in a place we should have never gone.

On the issue of Illegal immigration, the vast majority of American people believe that something has to be done to control and manage the inflow of illegal immigrants through our boarders. The current estimate is that there are 12 million or more illegal immigrants in the U.S. and the number is growing. The current administration tried to negotiate a comprehensive immigration reform program with congress, only to be torpedoed by the two extremes of the political spectrum. The conservatives demanded securing the borders first and then deportation of the illegal immigrants already in the country. The liberals demanded some form of realistic approach to allow the current illegal immigrants a path to citizenship and a focus on securing the borders. The conservatives pounded on the fear buttons again, blaming the immigration issue for the down turn in the economic prospects and threw the fear of terrorist infiltration through our unsecured borders for the need for a wall and a big one first. The liberals having felt fooled by the Administration on Iraq, failed to believe that the threat from terrorist infiltration was as severe as advertised, and focused more on the plight of the immigrants and wanted to make the road to citizenship as painless as possible. Consequently nothing actually got achieved, neither the securing of the border, or a realistic plan on dealing with the 12 million people in our country illegally. Again the two extremes focused on not giving in to the other side so that they could claim being “right”, and the rest of us suffer the consequences of no progress on either front simply because the two extremes can’t compromise.

Our corporate tax structure and individual tax laws are so archaic and unmanageable that no one from either side of the political spectrum can figure out how to give middle and lower level income working people a tax break without giving tax breaks to the corporate raiders, and the financial elite who continually fund campaigns to ensure that they get first crack at the “appropriate” legislation. The passing of NAFTA has been a major contributor to the current economic problems, by providing incentives for American companies to move jobs and manufacturing outside the U.S. and drive lower the incomes of those few workers that remain. We have provided a bankruptcy law that protects the financial corporations who prey on low and middle income families with “zero” interest or down payment schemes to lure people into extending themselves farther financially than both they and the financial institutions know they can afford. Both conservatives and liberals have failed the middle class of America by pandering to the corporate and financial elite at the expense of the middle class, and they wonder why the 2/3 consumer driving portion of our economy can’t keep the ever expanding deficit and budget deficit afloat. More Americans are going to lose their homes due to mortgage company greed in throwing away responsible lending practices, in order to make the quick buck sale, and garner the up front fees. And when the housing market bubble caused by the rampant speculation brought on by this race for profit at the expense of reason, the government looks to support the financial institutions rather than finding a way to help the families that are not only losing their homes, but crippling their ability to afford the now sky rocketing rental rates. The conservatives don’t want to provide any solution that doesn’t bail out the corporate sharks who created this problem, and the liberals don’t want to provide any solution that doesn’t bail out the people who knowingly over extended themselves without thought of changing circumstances. So nothing meaningful gets resolved because the two sides can’t afford to move away from the ingrained extremes of their respective political poles.

Our national health care situation is now bordering on a crisis, yet neither side is willing to move to do anything other than talk about how sad it is that families can’t afford health insurance, and large health providers having a right to make ever increasing profits. Conservatives support the HMOs, and private institutions as the way to provide adequate health care, but fail to realize that profit and providing necessary expensive care do not coexist in the corporate world. Liberals support the government intervention in the provision of health care, either by single payer (i.e. government) or mandated health insurance purchases regardless of ability to pay. While the two sides bicker and fight with each other, millions of Americans are caught in a health care vice where insurance is unaffordable, and care is metered by the profit percentage. The elderly and retired of our country are increasingly forced to choose between barely being able to feed and house themselves, and affording the health care that is a natural consequence of aging.

We have required people to pay into a Social Security system their entire lives with the promise that the monies paid in would be there for them when they retired to provide a safety net. All the while both conservatives and liberals have without hesitation dipped into those funds to decrease spending gaps for bridges to nowhere, parks, and every other pet project of the politicians except for what it was intended for. We have provided corporate bankruptcy laws that make it cheaper to simply default on pension plans that were supposed to be the primary retirement means of middle America, and stolen from the Social Security funds so that there is no safety net remaining. Yet even something so obvious as the insolvency of Social Security and Medicaid can not stir the two sides from their implacable polarization to move to solve the problem, we remain at a bickering “they said”, “they said” war of words with no solution in sight while the elderly hope without reason that all the money they paid in during their working lives will be enough to keep a roof over their head, some food in the fridge, and some health insurance that will not force their family to have to declare bankruptcy to acquire.

We need a change in the political landscape. And the required change is not a swing from the conservative extreme to the liberal extreme. The change needed is a return to the principles of our original founding ideas of compromise for the good of the majority, rather than the myopic polarization of the radical extremes. We need a government concerned about the majority of working class Americans that provide the foundation and hard work that is the base of this great experiment in democracy. We can no longer afford the debilitating grid lock of extreme conservative, and extreme liberal bickering that provides nothing but stalemate. We can no longer afford to pander to the corporate and financial elite who take the labor of the middle class and then discard them. We can no longer afford the notion of ever increasing government expenditures without fiscal responsibility. We must have a political landscape that encourages compromise to actually solve the vast problems that we face. We must step away from the use of fear to remove individual freedoms so hard won centuries ago. It is time for our politicians to go back to work for us instead of themselves. Whether the leader of this change is a conservative, a moderate, or a liberal is of less importance than their willingness to drive compromise and movement to actually solve the problems of our country instead of encouraging stalemate due to radical ideological differences. The time to do away with the last 40 years of polarized political posturing is upon us. The time to step away from the politics as usual is painfully obvious. The question is do we have the intelligence and resolve to force such a change upon ourselves?

Obama, McCain get hat tricks on Potomac

2008-02-12T23:50:00.007-07:00

Well the Potomac primaries are over, and it looks like Barack Obama and John McCain are going to get the hat tricks out of it all.

A number of things stick out from these wins for the two candidates. McCain now is almost assured of getting the GOP nomination and has started to seriously craft his speeches towards the Democrat nominee who he seems to be thinking will be Obama at this point. On the Democrat side Obama has started to make inroads into what has been pretty strong Clinton demographics, and for the first time in the race when even including declared super delegates, Obama has taken a lead in delegates.

Regardless of what happens from this point out, John McCain is going to be the GOP nominee, it is just a matter of time before Mike Huckabee actually takes a math class and realizes it and steps aside.

On the Democrat side, the sweep of primaries and caucuses since Super Tuesday by Barack Obama, has pushed Hillary Clinton into a mini Rudy Giuliani strategy, essentially conceding contests until March 4th and putting her eggs in Ohio and Texas to be the stopping point of the growing Obama train. One thing coming out of the Maryland and Virginia voting that has to worry the Clinton camp, is that Obama has started to make inroads into Clinton traditional demographic areas such as lower earning democrats, women, older voters, and even Hispanic voters. If the polls in Wisconsin are any indication, Clinton’s Alamo stand in Texas and Ohio could fail as well. Just 5 days ago Clinton had a 50% to 41% lead over Obama in Wisconsin, and as of yesterday looked to be trailing Obama by 11%, a swing of 20 percentage points in less than a week.

Should John Edwards come out and endorse Obama before March 4th (which I believe he will by the way), the pressure on the Clinton machine grows significantly. Many of the inroads in the Clinton demographics that Obama made in Maryland and Virginia were areas that Edwards was strongly contesting with Clinton.

The still lurking nightmare for the DNC is the distinct possibility that neither candidate will get to Denver in August with the 2,025 votes to clinch the nomination. Even if one of the candidates win every race to be decided between now and the convention by 60% to 40% margins they would not have the required delegates for a first ballot win.

Should this end up being the result, a real war at the convention over the Michigan and Florida delegates will erupt. Super delegates also look to play a huge part in the convention, much more than they had originally intended. The analysts are going to have fun trying to figure out what happens from here on out.

Potomac Primaries.. another Obama sweep?

2008-02-12T05:22:00.000-07:00

There are three primaries today, Virginia, Maryland, and District of Columbia. All indications are that Barack Obama will win all three, continuing his sweep from the weekend over Hillary Clinton. The expectation is that after these primaries Obama will over take Clinton in the total delegate count, even with the leanings of the Super Delegates counted in.

Since Super Tuesday Clinton has replaced her campaign manager and started the spin that expectations for today are not too high, while focusing on the upcoming prmaries in Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania. The real question will be can she stop the momentum that Obama obviously has developed and continues to build upon.

In the Republican race, it is just a matter of time and watching McCain slowly creep towards the nomination while fending off the pesky but still fighting Huckabee.

Two major Democrat endorsements out there are still being courted by Obama and Clinton camps, Al Gore and John Edwards. Frankly, I don't see Gore making an endorsement until there is a clear winner, but Edwards could seriously impact the race by endorsing either one. My money right now is on Edwards endorsing Obama, especially if he sweeps all three primaries today.

Obama sweeps.. Clinton cleans house

2008-02-11T05:26:00.000-07:00

Not even a week after splitting the delegates, with major wins on Super Tuesday, Barack Obama swept through the Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington, and Maine primaries and caucuses taking the lead over Hillary Clinton in “pledged” delegates. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was busy loaning her campaign $5 million dollars and replacing her campaign manager, in a sign that there are definite chinks in the Clinton campaign machine armor.

With Obama positioned to do well in Virginia, Maryland, and Potomac primaries on Tuesday, there is every possibility that after those contests, Obama could over take Clinton in not only “pledged” delegates, but in total delegates by the time they are over.

The minor facts that Clinton not only felt the need to loan her campaign $5 million dollars (wonder what the interest rate is on a thing like that), but decided to replace her campaign manager shows there are definite stress on the Clinton campaign machine. After being essentially declared the Democratic nominee long before a single caucus or primary was held, Clinton’s staff have to be wondering what the heck has gone wrong.

There is still a long ways to go now, and it is becoming ever more likely that neither of these candidates will have the 2,025 delegates to assure themselves a first ballot nomination win come August and the convention. The so called Super Delegates are going to start feeling a lot more heat as the race closes down on Denver in the summer.

Additionally, the DNC is going to get ever increasing heat from the Clinton camp to start doing something about the Michigan and Florida delegates, that were stripped, and that she won the primaries for. How the DNC decides to deal with this matter, may have a huge impact on the eventual party nominee, and could be a decision that fractures the party so bad that a John McCain win in November becomes a possibility

Huckabee throws a curve at McCain in KA and LA

2008-02-10T02:34:00.001-07:00

Apparently Republican conservative voters aren’t quite ready to line up behind the “presumptive” nominee John McCain quite yet. In a stunning win which surprised even Mike Huckabee, he won Kansas by nearly a 3-1 margin over McCain, and looks likely to squeak out a narrow win over McCain in Louisiana (Though since neither candidate won 50% of the vote, it is essentially a beauty contest with no delegates awarded, that will happen now in caucuses later). In both of those states conservatives consistently and overwhelmingly voted for Huckabee instead of McCain. The only bright spot on the evening for McCain may be the Washington Caucuses which were still too close to call at this writing, but McCain was leading.

The Louisiana and Kansas wins by Huckabee openly points to a severe weak spot in the McCain “message” as he attempts to move from “primary” mode to “nominee” mode in his campaigning the rest of the way. He has a serious problem with the conservative constituency of the Republican party, and as long as there is any alternative on the ballot with him (i.e. Huckabee), he will be hard pressed to sway them to rally to his standard.
While it is highly unlikely that Huckabee can actually win the GOP nomination at this late stage, he still has less delegates than Romney, his continued presence is a continual thorn (much like he was for Romney), in the side of the GOP to rally around McCain and get their focus on to the Democrats in a cohesive way that they would like.

The next day of the rest of the campaign

2008-02-09T08:30:00.000-07:00

The next leg of the Democrat and Republican nomination process starts today after the big hoopla of Super Tuesday, with the candidates trying to either solidify their positions or close narrow gaps with this weekend’s primaries and caucuses.

On the Republican side with the race down to just John McCain and Mike Huckabee, McCain will look to blunt Huckabee in Louisiana, and increase his lead with a win in Washington.

On the Democratic side, Obama will be attempting to close the delegate gap between himself and Hillary Clinton by winning in the caucuses in Nebraska, and Washington today and Maine tomorrow, formats where he has done very well, while keeping it close in Louisiana.

In additional developments new polling by CNN shows that Obama has a distinct advantage over McCain in a head to head match up 52% to 44%, and in a Time poll 48% to 41%. Clinton shows only a slight lead over McCain in a head to head match up with a 50% to 47% advantage in the CNN poll and a dead heat at 46% each in the Time poll. The main reason attributed to the poorer showing by Clinton is the always present “dislike” moniker.

Both parties are trying hard to get closure on their nominees with the GOP having a leg up with the “suspension” of Romney’s candidacy, but Huckabee vows to continue to be thorn in McCain’s side at least through this weekend.
The pace of the races slow down now after Super Duper Tuesday, but the stakes remain extremely high, and the expectation is a very close race on Democrat’s side, possibly going all the way to the convention, when some real fun would happen.

McCain starts the groveling

2008-02-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

With Mitt Romney now officially "suspending" his campaign ( I believe you get matching funds if you suspend instead of quit), John McCain will start the inevitable wooing of that ever so vocal conservative wing of the Republican Party, (CNN article) and apparently Romney himself. (CNN article )

After snubbing CPAC last year, McCain was almost obligated to speak before the conservative political action committee in an attempt to try and blunt any more damage by the remaining GOP contender, Mick Huckabee. (I really have a problem listing Ron Paul as a contender). McCain went before the CPAC this year to as he said "make my case". This was political speak, meaning that he was really going to need the conservative wing of the GOP party if he is to have any chance to win the general election in November.

As a bone to throw to the pack of conservatives, he has modified his "immigration" position to now include sealing the boarders as a prerequisite to any other methods of dealing with the huge immigration problem. The problem for McCain is what has gotten him this far in the GOP presidential race, is his more moderate positions on issues, and he will need to lean significantly to the right in order to sway the majority of conservatives in his party. A move that takes him away from the ideas and positions that got him to the front.

There is almost no possible way for Mike Huckabee to wrest the GOP nomination from McCain now, and almost no possible way for McCain to sway the majority of conservatives to his cause without alienating a portion of the people that voted for him so far in the primaries. A serious position between a rock and a hard place comes to mind when describing McCain’s dilemma.

The main questions now for the GOP are: Can the vocal conservative wing unite behind the "maverick" McCain? and, Can McCain stay moderate enough to win a general election? Both questions should be fun to watch get answered.

The idea of listening to Rush Limbaugh saying anything nice about McCain would be almost worth listening to his show :) Of course I'm not sure how the current GOP political "reporters" feel about Bush already coming out and calling for a rally around "keep a conservative in the White House" when he spoke to CPAC

Dems starting to worry about "brokered" convention

2008-02-08T06:30:00.000-07:00

Howard Dean the chairman of the DNC is already starting to talk about the possibility trying to avert a "brokered" convention, should neither of the two remaining candidates achieve the required 2,025 pledged delegates by August. (CNN article)

"But if we don't (have a nominee), then we're gonna have to get the candidates together and make some kind of arrangement, because I don't think we can afford to have a brokered convention. That would not be good news for either party."

Since Barack Obama has turned out to be a formidable challenge to Hillary Clinton, practically splitting the delegate count from Super Tuesday, the likelyhood that neither of the candidates will have the required delegates for a first ballot win has increased dramatically. Should this scenario unfold, the real decision makers on who would be the Democratic nominee falls to those oh so obscure Super Delegates, you know the big wigs, the party elite, the ones that have mostly sided with Hillary Clinton.

Should this race come down to 795 people of power within the Democratic Party deciding who the nominee is, it could spell disaster for the party in the General Election in November. One thing that has been evident in this campaign is the enthusiasm that Barack Obama has brought to the political stage, and the massive increase in voting in the Democratic Primaries and Caucuses.

If the DNC decides to do a back room deal to set up a Democratic ticket, I firmly believe that they will lose a lot of that enthusiasm that has been building and driving the two candidate campaigns thus far in the process, opening the door for a possible Republican win in November.

The DNC is pretty much in a no-win situation at the moment. They prematurely annointed Hillary Clinton as the party nominee before any primary had been held, and now they have a serious movement within the party to nominate Barack Obama. Which ever side they decide to take in this contest, they will more than likely irritate and possibly alienate the other.

I think this is why CNN (possibly at the behest of the DNC) has been so fervently pushing a Clinton/Obama ticket possibility. At almost every opportunity Wolf Blitzer, when discussing the current delegate and super delegate situation tries to infuse the "dream ticket" notion (CNN Political Ticker). It gets the DNC off the hook with their constituency, without having to make the tough decision.

One thing is certain. As this Democratic nominee process unfolds, it is going to get a lot hotter for the Super Delegates the longer it stays close. It should be fun to watch :)

Super Tuesday over.. Nothing really settled

2008-02-06T11:02:00.000-07:00

Well the big Super Duper Tuesday "national primary" is over, and it is time to sort through what it all means.

On the Democratic Party side, it basically means we continue on, nothing is really settled. Right now with ballots still to be counted in a number of states Clinton has 825 delegates, and Obama has 732 delegates. Not siginificantly different a gap than there was before all the hoopla. The big difference between the two remains the significant number of Superdelegates and particularly the DNC that have aligned with Clinton. So the two candidates soldier on.. and on... and on... I am becoming even more convinced that the Democrats are going to come here to Denver with neither candidate having the required number of delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot. The one actor in all this that is still lurking on the sidelines is Edwards. His endorsement of either of the other two could very well swing the nomination.

On the Republican side McCain obviously has pulled out a considerable lead with 615 delegates, to Romney's 268, and Huckabee's 169. Huckabee seems to be pretty much functioning as a split candidate for the hard core conservatives that can not make themselves vote for McCain. With Romney and Huckabee splitting the conservative vote, McCain seems to be destined to get the nomination through a long plodding process with neither of the other two having many "big" opportunities to close the gap. If the three continue in the current splits, McCain will end up with the big prize in the end.

This is still far from over on a number of fronts, so should give us plenty of entertainment at least on the Dems side up to and through the convention. For a political junkie like myself, there hasn't been anything like this in a long long time :)

Super Tuesday finally.. will it resolve anything?

2008-02-05T06:18:00.000-07:00

About the only thing I think that will be resolved after today's Super Tuesday voting, is that Mitt Romney invested $18M in a losing cause. I think Mike Huckabee will finally get the message that he doesn't have a snow ball chance in hades of winning outside of the South with his evangelical christian conservative base.

On the Democratic side I don't think we resolve much of anything. My projections on delegates based off the polls to date, show Obama closing the gap on Clinton, but neither one of them will even be half way to the 2,045 delegates needed to gain a first ballot nomination at the convention.

California, NY, Illinois, NJ, Mass, and Georgia are the big prizes in the Democratic primaries, with California's 441 delegates the biggest of the big. However, since the Dems use proportional vote allocation in the primaries even winning a state can cause you to lose in the delegates. After all is said and done, I still expect Obama and Clinton to be within 100 delegates of each other, and the campaign needing to go a whole lot farther than just today.

Regardless of who you are voting for this year, you can't deny the interest, and enthusiasm that the Democrats have infused into the election. In nearly every primary state to date, the Democrats have had record turn out compared to moderate if not lazy turn out for the Republicans.

It should be an interesting day all around, but don't expect to get a real handle on things until California comes in, and that could be late into the night. Those paper ballots are going to be a drag. )

For political junkies, it doesn't get any better than this.

1:10 PM: West Virgina gives it's 18 Republican Delegates to Mike Huckabee, guess you could call that drawing first blood :) What I don't understand about WV is they have 18 delegates tied to today's convention, but 9 tied to another state primary on May 13th, and of course the irresistable 3 unpledged RNC member delegates or Super delegates. So why have a caucus on Feb5th and then a Primary on May 13th? What was interesting is that the McCain supporters moved to Huckabee to block Romney winning. Ah the ole back room politics we have grown to watch and love :)

5:05PM: CNN has projected Obama the winner in Georgia on the Dems side with a close race on the GOP side. I'll never understand how they can call a race decided when they haven't even gotten 1% of the actual vote calculated.. But these talking heads are determined to be first :)

6:05PM: As soon as the East Coast states closed CNN projected Obama winning Illinois (surprise) and Clinton winning Oklahoma. They projected McCain to win NJ, CON, and Illinois, with Romney winning Massachusetts.

Well that is it for the evening up to the minute reporting :).. Going to sit back with the pop corn and comfy chair now and watch the rest.

One Super day down.. One to go

2008-02-04T06:29:00.001-07:00

Well the Super bowl is over, and the Giants pulled off an upset as big as any of the great upsets in Super bowl history. Now we move on to Super Tuesday, where two candidates will try and pull off their own super upsets.

John McCain coming back from his near death canadacy not just two months ago, will try and pull ahead from Mitt Romney, and place himself in the clear "front runner" position. Most of the signigicant polls show McCain growing his gap on Romney in major states, and this could spell the death knell for all the cash that Romney has put into his own campaign.

Barack Obama, on the Democrat side, has nearly erased all the pre primary lead that Hillary Clinton had when she was dubbed "inevitable", and has started to even out fund raise the NY Senator. While I don't think there will be any "front runner" established by Super Tuesday, Obama can clearly show that he has the pull to make a viable Democratic Nominee by staying close or pulling out a few more wins than Clinton. Neither will be any where close to the number of delegates needed to assure themselves of a first ballot win at the convention. And this race could easily work it's way to an open convention.

There will be some last minute dashes and stumps today and early tomorrow, but essentially, the minds are probably made up by the voters at this time, and all we can do is sit back and wait for the results.

Get the pop corn out and the comfy chair it should be a heck of an evening tomorrow :)

Preparing for Superbowl

2008-02-02T10:35:00.000-07:00

Well it is time for that time honored tradition of the Super Bowl party :)

Today it is out and about town to gather the necessary ingredients for a small get together of friends and family in preparation to gathering around the ole 65" big screen to watch the Patriots and Giants go at it tomorrow. And a little time to get out of the "political junkie" mindset :)

Time to gather the soda, the beer, the chips, the dips, the brats, the hot wings, the 1' samwiches, the meat plates, the cheese plates, and the extra chairs and tv trays.

So it is off to the stores to seek those ingredients that make just the right kind of group party :)

The behavior tax mentality comes back for more

2008-02-01T06:46:00.000-07:00

In probably one of the most bizarre modes of thinking I have seen yet for one of the many "behavior" taxes (cigarettes, alcohol, etc), New Mexico's idea to tax TVs and Video games probably ranks right up there with the weirdest. In this twist on the "if you aren't behaving in a manner that is healthy for you according to us" theme, New Mexico wants to nudge kids off the couch and out the door by taxing TVs and video games sold in New Mexico.

So when did the Sierra Club and State governments get the idea that video games were bad for us? When New Mexico started running out of funding for their outdoor programs. Of course the solution is to tax a group of people that are not apparently using the parks and recreation facilities rather than just raising fees. The continuing trend of taxing groups of people doing something completely different to fund some other group's pet project is beginning to get out of hand.

The video gaming industry, and those "couch potatoes" have driven much of the computer technology advancements of the recent decades. To suggest that video games is "the" major contributor to low test scores and obesity, just rings with moral and typically arrogant "we know what is good for you" mentalities.

I like and support many of the Sierra Club activities, but this is just going off the edge. If there isn't funding to support parks and recreation areas. Raise the fees till they are funded, leave the kids (and adults) quietly being couch potatoes, and not bothering anyone else alone. I can only imagine that soon we will start to see a movement to double the taxes on Twinkies and Ding Dongs to force obese people to reduce sweet intake.

Apparently, smokers were not the "last" of the behavior taxing targets... maybe your ox will be next to be gored by the behavior tax police.

The Dems debate, and we finally hear substance

2008-02-01T00:02:00.000-07:00

Tonight the Democrats held their last presidential primary debate prior to the Super Tuesday sweepstakes. For the first time, we got serious substantial discussion on the specifics of each of Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's plans for Health Care, Immigration, and Iraq. Whether you agree or disagree with them individually or together in their position on the issues, you at least got to hear them explain what it was they mean when they talk about them.

Overall, I thought the debate finally highlighted the substantive differences between these two candidates, rather than focusing on their gender, race, or spouses. And I as an Independent, welcomed the chance to view the two in that light.

I thought Hillary Clinton was at her strongest during the segment dealing with Health Care. It is obvious that she is passionate about Universal Healthcare, and her plan is detailed and presented in detail. Barack Obama, I thought suffered slightly arguing in an area that is obviously Clinton's strongest suit. Though he still was able to articulate not only what his plan meant, which is not too dissimilar to Clinton's but distinguish where he differed in the tactical implementation of the two plans. Where Clinton would mandate individual coverage, Obama would not mandate it. Does that mean that one plan is "Universal", and the other isn't? I think to a degree it is a matter of semantics.

When they talked about immigration, I thought both struggled on how to deal with it, and what impacts it has on the country's economy. This was obviously not the strongest position for Clinton, and something that was just as weak a subject for Obama. The issue of immigration reform, or enforcement is a complicated matter, and has ramifications across the economic and political landscape. And they both seemed hard pressed to define a position that clearly delineated themselves from each other.

When the discussion turned to Iraq, I felt that this was Obama's strongest area. While Clinton has consistently denounced the invasion of Iraq, she did vote for the joint resolution to provide Bush with the authority to go to war. Obama on the other hand played his strength by being one of the few that from the beginning declared that a war with Iraq was a strategic mistake, and one that should have never been undertaken. His ability to stand on his position against the war from the beginning continues to place Clinton in the position to defend her vote, a situation that she struggles with.

From a who won and who lost perspective, I thought that each got the opportunity, and quite clearly outlined their positions, and detailed their specific plans for implementation. I would say Clinton was the stronger on the Healthcare issues, they both were weak, but even on Immigration, and Obama was the stronger on the issue of Iraq.

Overall I would assess it a tie with both getting "A" grades for presenting and staying on subject of issues and specifics. The question is what does this do going into Super Tuesday? Frankly, I don't think anyone who had already made up their minds as to which one of the candidates they would vote for will change their minds based off of the debate. Both candidates made overt and calculated attempts to persuade John Edwards’s supporters to move to their camps, I don't think anyone knows, failing Edwards specifically endorsing one or the other, which way those voters will go. I don't think there were any telling "knock out" blows, but simply a clarification of what many of us already knew about each candidate.

The voting on Super Tuesday will tell us a lot about what position these two will be in as they drive to the convention, but it will be far from settled as to who will win the nomination, even after Tuesday. There is a long way to go yet, and the race continues to narrow between these two the longer it goes.

The two main areas of the exit polls on Tuesday I will particularly be examining is, where did the former Edwards voters go, and where in the country each candidate has staked out particular strength.

On to Tuesday.. it should be an interesting evening, and a political junkies dream :)

2 Down and the GOP had a debate

2008-01-31T02:30:00.000-07:00

Two down and the race narrows:
As expected John Edwards has withdrawn from the presidential race, without throwing an endorsement to either of the remaining candidates. Also, as expected, Rudy Giuliani withdrew from the presidential race, throwing a hearty endorsement to his friend John McCain. A lot of the buzz has been on the Democratic side simply because Edwards did not endorse either Clinton or Obama. The talking heads are all a twitter trying to pronounce where his delegates will go, and who his supporters will vote for in the big Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses. Personally, I don't think, unless Edwards actually comes out and endorses either Clinton or Obama, that we will have a clue where his supporters will vote until the exit polls on the 5th are analyzed.

The GOP Debate:
The remaining four Republican candidates settled down in the Conservative holy shrine of the "Reagan Library" in California for a little debate. As much as Mike Huckabee, and Ron Paul would like to think they are viable candidates for the Republican nomination, it is clearly a race between John McCain and Mitt Romney. And as the two leaders took shot and counter shot at each other over issues of Iraq surge, Immigration, Energy independence and Economy, the heart of the matter was to prove to the Republican faithful who was the more "conservative". Neither McCain, or Romney said anything new from previous debates as far as their positions are concerned, but tried to phrase every answer into the "conservative" speak that will draw the core Republican base to them.

From where I sit, it appears that John McCain is starting to establish momentum since his Florida primary win, that could be the tipping point in his drive for the GOP nomination. Make no mistake it is very much still a close race, with Romney having still very deep pockets while McCain definitely needs strong fund raising.

Next up the Democrats debate tomorrow:
Tomorrow could be a very critical turning point in the Democratic nomination race with only Clinton and Obama being left to debate. A one on one debate between these two could be the deciding factor to propel one on to the nomination. I will definitely be having the pop corn and comfy chair ready to watch this one. :)

McCain wins FLA, Clinton sort of wins

2008-01-30T00:05:00.000-07:00

Last night we had the Florida Democratic and Republican primaries, one actually meant something while the other was essentially a beauty contest. In the high stakes “winner take all” Florida GOP primary, John McCain beat Mitt Romney 36% to 31%, with Rudy Giuliani showing a disappointing 15%, and Huckabee 14%. In the Florida Democratic beauty contest Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama 50% to 33%, with John Edwards coming in again a dismal third with 14%, garnering absolutely nobody any delegates whatsoever.

On the Republican side of the fence the poor showings by Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee essentially removes them from Republican nominee contention. Ron Paul after receiving a meager 3% of the votes in Florida is continuing a trend of looking like he has nothing better to do for the summer. Rudy Giuliani staked his entire campaign on winning Florida and his third place finish will most likely cause him to abandon his race for the nomination. Should that happen, I would fully expect that Giuliani will throw his endorsement to John McCain, causing significant pressure from the Romney side to convince Mike Huckabee to also dropped out, allowing Romney to garner more of the far right evangelical Christian vote which has eluded John McCain to a large degree. While John McCain may have the lead going into Super Tuesday, Mitt Romney still has considerable funds available to him to continue the fight. The problem for Mitt Romney is that the majority of the republican primaries and caucuses on February 5 are "winner take all" propositions with John McCain leading in the polls for the majority of them. If Rudy Giuliani throws his support to McCain and Huckabee continues his run all the way to the convention it would be highly probable that John McCain could have the nomination wrapped up if not on Super Tuesday shortly thereafter.

On the Democratic side of the fence, the win in Florida provides Hillary Clinton with a little good news in a week full of bad news. The punishment of the Florida democrats by the DNC for moving their primaries prior to February 5, and disallowing delegate representation, essentially gives Hillary Clinton a win in a beauty contest that was uncontested, and void of serious campaign organization. Additionally, approximately 400,000 votes had been received prior to Barack Obama’s win in South Carolina, and the subsequent endorsements by Ted, Caroline, and Patrick Kennedy. Again John Edwards came in a disappointing third with only 14% of the vote, and I would fully expect the Obama organization and its new support from Ted Kennedy and some Democratic Party leadership to begin to pressure Edwards to remove himself from the race in the belief that the anti-Hillary white democratic vote would then go to Obama. Even if Edwards stays in the race all the way to the convention in Denver, there is every expectation, and a strong possibility, that it will have to be a brokered convention with no clear nominee with sufficient delegates to win on the first ballot. With all of the Democratic primaries on Super Tuesday being proportional allocations, rather than winner take all, it is quite conceivable that should Hillary Clinton win the primaries in the majority of the states where she currently has a lead in the polls, she would not be able to acquire sufficient delegates prior to the convention to ensure a first vote nomination. I fully expect the pressure on Edwards to remove himself from the race to increase dramatically in the next few days and during the weekend leading up to the primaries on February 5th.

Interesting dynamics to keep in mind as we ramp up to Super Tuesday, is the expected endorsement of McCain by Giuliani, the increasing pressure on Mike Huckabee and John Edwards to drop out, and the decision by the two front runners of each party to mellow their personal attacking rhetoric at the debates on Wednesday and Thursday. I expect that the Democratic debate will be much more gentle and cordial than the last debate prior to South Carolina. I also expect the rancor of the last few days in the Republican campaign to decrease significantly as Mitt Romney and John McCain essentially square off against each other.

One trend that has remained consistent throughout this primary season has been the energizing of the Democratic Party, and the substantial increases in voter turnout compared to that of the Republicans. Even in a primary where the delegates did not count, the total number of Democratic votes was exceptionally large. This is a trend that started with Iowa and has continued through out the string of primaries, and is probably likely to continue throughout the rest of the primary season. Unless the Republicans can come to a decision on nominee quickly and start to develop a serious enthusiasm for a defined Republican ticket, the hopes for a Republican White House win in 2008 look exceedingly slim, regardless of who the Democratic nominee is.

Edited 11:54 AM 1/30/08:
As I had expected John Edwards dropped out of the race leaving the Democratic race a two horse race between Clinton and Obama. Where the Edwards supporters will go now, is the subject of much conjecture, but no true knowledge. I suspect we will no know the effect until after Super Tuesday.

Edited 4:42 PM 1/30:
As expected Rudy Giuliani withdrew from the Republican Presidential race firmly endorsing John McCain for the position.

Queen Hillary moves to save Florida Dems

2008-01-29T14:56:00.001-07:00

Wal-Mart .. the store that cares? Umm.. No.

2008-01-29T14:28:00.000-07:00

According to CNNmoney.com Wal-Mart announced that it will chop prices up to 30% to "keep its cash-strapped consumers excited about shopping". Wal-Mart's chief merchandising officer said, "We all know economic times are tough so our plan is to help with added savings throughout the year, focusing especially on what people want, when they need it,". Isn't that considerate of them?

What I found intriguing was that this benevolence is only good for this week, a coincidence that it is the week leading up to the Super Bowl. If the company is truly concerned about the plight of cash strapped consumers, why only a week worth of cost cutting? And why are they particularly focusing on items that are traditionally bought to go with the "big" game?

I don't think I am the only one that recognizes that this is nothing more than the ole "traffic generation" ploy to help with their own retail sales numbers, and has nothing to do with concern for us poor cash strapped consumers.

According to Melissa O'Brien the Wal-Mart spokeswoman, this month's week long (now how you have a a month a week long... ) additional price cuts are "the first of more to come". If you are a worker for Wal-Mart you just have to be asking if the up to 30% price reductions will have to come out of some of your compensation, creating more pressure on the cash strapped consumer.

Bush's Last Stand

2008-01-28T20:35:00.000-07:00

Is the Democratic Party ready for a "Black" nominee?

2008-01-27T16:18:00.001-07:00

I was interested to see what some of the political buzz was going to be after Barack Obama swept to his dominant win in the Democrat party South Carolina primary yesterday. So I spent most of the day surfing the web, visiting various political forums, reviewing the "talking heads" of the news organizations, to see what the lay of the land was in the Democratic Party.

On Sunday Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of JFK, wrote in an Opinion piece in the NY Times titled "A President Like My Father", that she was endorsing Obama. As well on Sunday the Associated Press reported that on Monday, Ted Kennedy will be also endorsing Obama. While not earth shattering, these endorsements still carry weight and importance within the Democratic party, both in fund raising and organizational implications.

But the real story isn't in the endorsements Obama is receiving, it is in the discussions that his win in SC has evoked. A cursory walk through the political forums, would lead you to believe that his win was a fluke of demographics rather than the broad win that it actually was. Even Bill Clinton compared Obama's win with that of Jessie Jackson in 1984 and 1988, to some implying that it was strictly a matter of getting the African-American vote, while not bothering to mention his own wins in SC during his presidential races in 1992 and 1996. A phrasing that may further add to African-American displeasure with Clinton campaign tactics. In a party that has prided itself on the vast support of minorities, both views of Obama's win seems disingenuous.

Which leads me back to my original question. At no time in the history of the Democratic party has there been a truly viable national African-American candidate for president. Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton were never true viable candidates, and they would probably admit as much if they took a serious look at their candidacies. After wins in predominantly white Iowa, and a dominant win across most of the significant segments of demographics in South Carolina, anyone would be hard pressed to say that Obama's candidacy is not viable. Will the Democratic hierarchy be able to put aside it's paternal perspective of it's minority voting base, and allow that base to speak for itself through the auspices of the party nominee? A lot of these questions will be dependent on how the Clinton campaign continues to be waged. It is well known that a majority of the Democratic leadership has been behind Hillary Clinton for some time, and a majority of the party organization is at her disposal.

Should Barack Obama be able to win sufficient delegates to win the nomination of the party come August in Denver, will the leadership be prepared to stop being the shepard of the "oppressed" masses, and be able to allow it to be led by the "children" of the party.

Obama Dominates Clinton and Edwards in SC

2008-01-26T20:19:00.000-07:00

Tonight in South Carolina, a state that Hillary Clinton led by double digits in the polls not two months ago, Barack Obama pulled out a sweeping, and dominating win in the Democratic primary. Obama did not win by a slim margin in a state that is considered to represent the Democratic party base with it's large African-American population, but it was a dominant 55% to 27% win over Clinton, across a broad spectrum of voter segments, the most dominant primary win by either candidate to date. John Edwards came in a disappointing third with only 18% of the vote from his home state.

Obama's win was not just an African-American voter supplied win, though according to CNN exit polls he did take around 80% of the African-American vote. But this was a win driven across the voting segment spectrum. Obama took 54% of both Male and Female votes. He took the majority of the votes across every age segment except 65 and over. He took the majority of votes regardless of what education level the voters were. He took the majority of votes regardless of what income range the voters were from. He had over 50% of the vote from people regardless of whether their most important issue was Iraq, Economy, or Health Care. And what I found most interesting was that he had nearly 50%, or more than 50%, of voters in the primary regardless of whether they identified themselves as Liberal, Moderate, or Conservative.

This was not a win on the back of just one segment of the voting spectrum. This was a complete win across almost every major definable voting segment within the state. It was complete, and it was dominating.

South Carolina has been defined as a state that represents the "base" of the Democratic party. If that is the case, then the win in SC speaks volumes about what the Democratic base is looking for. In a state that has voted Republican in the last 7 presidential elections Obama had more votes than both of the top two Republicans combined in their primary just last week.

We may have witnessed a defining moment in the 2008 Presidential election tonight.

Random musings number 3

2008-01-26T09:09:00.000-07:00

Magnanimous Clinton:
Now that it looks like Obama could win the South Carolina primary, Sen Hillary Clinton, has reversed course and is campaigning for the Michigan and Florida Democratic primary delegates to be seated at the convention in Denver. The fact that she was the only candidate on the Michigan ballot, and apparently leads in the polls against Obama in Florida by nearly 2-1 has nothing to do with it.

When the DNC originally penalized the Michigan and Florida Democrats for moving their primaries prior to where they had been dictated by the national committee, by stripping ALL delegate representation, Clinton firmly stood in favor of the decision except for removing her name from the Michigan ballot as had all the other main competitors.

Now she wants it to seem, that she is fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised delegates from those two states, when in fact it is nothing more than positioning to obtain delegates she originally didn't think mattered to her.

If one thing has become more and more apparent in this Democratic primary, is that the Clinton machine will do or say anything to get what they want, and right now they want to reverse course on a decision by the DNC that only benefits her, and covering her reversal with a well displayed smoke screen of "caring" for those poor Michigan and Florida Democrats, that just a few months ago, she had no need of.

Republicans blew it with tax rebate:
The Republican party blew all hope of energizing their older conservative base when putting the "Economic stimulus package" together and left out the huge portion of Social Security beneficiaries in getting part of the rebate pie. If the republicans has paid any kind of attention to the exit polling in the South Carolina primary, they would have noticed that 67% of the voters in the Republican primary were 49+ years of age, and 35% are 60 years of age or older. What they have done is allow the Democrats in the Senate to make significant inroads when they amend the proposed package to include Social Security beneficiaries in the package whether they paid taxes or not. As my 71 year old mother, on Social Security, said "Why would I vote for them again now? Apparently they don't give a crap about me anymore".

What the heck position is Bill Clinton running for?:
Bill Clinton is campaigning like there is a position in the next administration that he would be able to fill if his wife Hillary wins the election. I think Mitt Romney summed up my view on it when he said in the Republican debate, "The thought of Bill Clinton in the White House with nothing to do is just scary". :)

Someone fibrillate the Republicans please:
Watching the Republican debate on MSNBC the other night was a challenge to either stay awake, or keep from going into a coma. I can't remember the last time I saw this many Republicans patting each other on the back, and generally making nice nice with each other to the point of nausea. If anyone is looking at the voter turn out from the previous caucuses and primaries, have they noticed that the Democratic turnout is nearly 2-1 over the Republicans? Someone better start the CPR on the Republican party base or they will end up sleeping through the election.

Can New England Patriots play the media any better?:
You have to wonder if the media can get in any more of a frenzy about Tom Brady's ankle sprain. By not allowing the media to get a glimpse of him in practice or in the locker room, the Patriots have played the media like a cheap violin. If anyone, and I mean anyone thinks Tom Brady will not be playing in the Super Bowl, they would believe that there are really Martians alive and hiding from our two rovers.

Don't tell Southern Californians and Iraqis that there isn't something up with the global weather:
Snow in Southern California, and snow in Baghdad? Don't try and tell these folks there isn't something strange going on with global weather :)

After 2 years New Orleans Fire Houses still unrepaired

2008-01-24T17:11:00.000-07:00

I came across an article on CNN today detailing the work of "The Leary Fighrefighters Foundation" to rebuild and repair fire houses in New Orleans. New Orleans had 22 of 33 fire houses damaged during Katrina and it's aftermath, and the city and state had yet to aggressively move to rebuild any of the destroyed and damaged fire stations.

Dennis Leary the star of "Rescue Me" stated the reason for his foundation's involvement in the restoration work, "I gave up on ever hoping that politicians in this country -- local, state or federal -- would step in to help these guys,"

While Frigidaire is partnering with the Leary foundation, as far as I could determine from researching a number of NO sites, the $9.1Million in FEMA funds for infrastructure had yet to be spent by the local government to repair any of the sites. According to Edward Blakely, the czar of New Orleans recovery effort "Under city law," he said, "there has to be enough money in city coffers to pay for a project before construction starts." Blakely added, "funding projects has become a shell game of sorts since Katrina." What astonishes me even more is that New Orleans still after 2 years hasn't figured a way to either correct their city laws to allow proceeding faster, or are unwilling to do so.

To me this is another in a long line of political boundaries precluding relief monies getting to where they need to get to as soon as possible, and is one of the most egregious public oversight.

If you are reading this and are as disgusted at the response of our government bureaucracy to step up to the plate and want to donate to the Leary Foundation to aid in this undertaking feel free to visit DONATE TO THE NEW ORLEANS RESTORATION PROJECT and help.

Views on Random World Stuff

2008-01-22T21:47:00.000-07:00

Seems one of the largest petroleum exporters in the world can’t manage to get heating oil to remote villages. ( AP story) Apparently President Ahmadinejad of Iran would rather rant and rave at the West, than make sure that his own people have the required natural gas and heating oil to survive. A number of internal political reversals lately, have put even more pressure on the hard line politician. As referenced in the article as well, “… in local municipal elections a year ago, the president’s allies suffered a humiliating defeat after a majority of the seats were won by reformists and conservatives opposing Ahmadinejad.” After 64 deaths now attributed to lack of heat in one of the coldest winters in some time, maybe he should worry about taking care of his own before worrying about what the West is doing.

After watching the Democratic presidential primary debate yesterday I came across the following article by Frederik Pleitgen of CNN. ( CNN article) The article is an interview with the 25 year old niece of Benazir Bhutto who was killed while campaigning for political leadership in Pakistan. One of the particularly telling issues that she brought up was the detrimental effect of “dynastic” politics in Pakistan. After reading the article, I couldn’t help but think about some of our own current problems here with dynastic political leadership (Bush I, Bush II, B.Clinton, H.Clinton). Maybe we should take some of this young lady’s concerns about keeping political leadership in the family and not have any more of it ourselves.

Former Sen. Fred Thompson on Tuesday officially withdrew from the GOP primary race. (CNN article) While personally a likable and honorable politician, not to mention not a bad actor, his presidential hopes were pretty well doomed from the start. He never showed the fire or real desire to get his message (I’m still trying to figure out what it was) out in front of the electorate. In addition to being far too laid back in his campaign, he never really pushed the early caucus and primary campaigns and staked his campaign on the first southern state in South Carolina. It backfired miserably, and in one quick look, it is back to the ole acting career. I’m hoping Giuliani is paying attention, for his strategy is even more bold in waiting for Florida to keep his campaign going, which I doubt will have any more success than Thompson had.

After a precipitous fall on Friday and all the world markets taking nearly 5% falls or greater on Monday while the U.S. markets were on holiday, the Federal Reserve board stepped in before the markets opened this morning and cut two key interest rates by ¾ of a percentage point. (CNNMoney.com) This turns out to be the largest cut in the funds rate at one time in 24 years. The reasoning from the FED for this drastic cut was “Broader financial market conditions have continued to deteriorate and credit has tightened further for some businesses and households. Moreover, incoming information indicates a deepening of the housing contraction as well as some softening in labor markets.” Well…. DUH. I mean for heavens sake what numbers have they been watching that this wasn’t in evidence? While the market struggled back from it’s gap down opening of around 450 points on the DOW to settle at down 128.11, the real question is will it hold over the rest of the week, or will the FED be forced to introduce further cuts at their January 20th meeting.

Apparently the Democrats primary debate on Monday broke cable network ratings records. (CNN political ticker) While it was highly entertaining, it wasn’t much in the way of informative. But it did provide better body blows than ECW wrestling.

HEADLINE: FALSE STATEMENTS PRECEEDED WAR IN IRAQ (AP Story) This goes into the Well …. DUH category as well. If this news surprises anyone, all I have to say is where have you been hiding?

Finally a candidate that we can take at their word. (AP article) Ed Hamilton, 77, is challenging incumbent Mindy Williams for the GOP nomination for Kerr Country treasurer, and promises “I don’t plan to do the job, I won’t accept a paycheck”. Campaigning to ask for a referendum on a constitutional amendment that would allow counties to eliminate the treasurer positions. Combating arguments from the incumbent that the position provides accountability on the county’s spending, Hamilton says “check and balance” is “a euphemism for duplication of effort.” What I can’t figure out is why a Democrat isn’t running for such an important post?

And finally, for those wondering how Eclectic Views from the Fringe is doing financially, you will be glad to know that I have exceeded my expectations and have garnered a whopping $0.65 so far in ad revenue. If I keep this up, I will be able to be in the same tax bracket as Al Gore has achieved in going from a net worth of $1Million to $100Million in the short time he has been blogging about Global Warming in no time. Obviously his ads are much cooler than mine :)

The Dems had a brawl.. er debate last night

2008-01-22T09:20:00.000-07:00

An interesting thing happened last night. The Democrats held a debate and a street fight broke out.

From the very beginning of the debate starting with the second question of the night posed by Suzanne Maleaux who asked Obama, “She (Hillary Clinton) says that the new programs that she proposes she essentially can pay for. She says that you have failed in that regard in the tune of some $50 billion worth of new programs that you cannot account for. How do you respond to that charge?” You could tell it was going to be one of those kinds of nights. Not only did the two front running candidates punch and counter punch, but it seemed to me that CNN moderators were more than happy to egg the encounters on to the point of nearly ignoring Edwards entirely, who’s first substantive interaction was “What I want to say first is, are there three people in this debate, not two?”

While there will be arguments that Obama started the confrontational jabbing in the debate, in all fairness, it was pretty well a set up with the way the question was posed, and directed. However, it appeared obvious to me during the more confrontational episodes, that it was clearly Hillary Clinton on the attack against Obama, in what appeared not so much an effort get clarification of positions, but keep Obama on the defense, answering accusations rather than being able to put any message out.

The one person that probably benefited the most was Edwards. While not getting much chance to really talk during the debate, he was able in what few times he was able to, show much more passion, and poise than he had in previous debates. This was probably without a doubt the best debate of the series so far for Edwards. Unfortunately, the simple fact that the CNN moderators continually let Clinton and Obama claim the floor for their personal attacks and counter attacks, basically relegated Edwards to the spare wheel in the debate.

My assessment is that Obama did what he had to do to fend off the constant accusations, and misrepresentation of his positions, and statements both leading up to the debate since Iowa, and during the debate. Edwards when opportunity presented itself, spoke eloquently and precisely, and showed a passion in his delivery that had been lacking. Clinton on the other hand continued the sniping and character bashing attacks that have been part and parcel of her campaign ever since Iowa. And the audience, and probably a good portion watching at home were becoming both tired of it, and resentful of the continuation of it. I seriously think Clinton positioned herself to lose SC in the upcoming primary when she declared “… I was fighting against those ideas (Reagan) when you were practicing law and representing your contributor, Rasco, in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago.” The loud chorus of boos that followed that statement obviously did not sit well with the predominantly African-American audience, and to me at least showed that there is some serious Rove like tendencies in campaigning from the Clinton camp.

If Clinton loses the SC primary come Saturday, I think the negativity that she continues to display in the personal confrontations with Obama, will be the ultimate reason. If Edwards shows well at even a 2nd place finish in SC, I think his stock rising from this debate will be the reason people will be taking a second look at him. I don’t think Obama either gained ground or lost ground based on his own performance in the debate, and is still positioned well to take the primary and tighten the race with Clinton going into the big Super Tsunami Tuesday on February 5th.

One last personal note on the CNN moderators and their questioning. What in the hell were they thinking when posing a question to Obama from Joe Johns, “The Nobel Prize-winning African-American author, Toni Morrison, famously observed about Bill Clinton. “This is our first black president, blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime.” Do you think Bill Clinton was our first black president?” That has got to be the dumbest question I’ve ever heard asked by a moderator in these debates. First, Obama is campaigning against Hillary Clinton, and some would say Bill Clinton as well. Secondly, it is an absolutely asinine set up that to a large degree is a lose/lose proposition for Obama regardless of what his answer is.

In the over all grading of the moderation of the debate I firmly give CNN a big fat unequivocal “F”.

Obama fighting two front battle against Clintons

2008-01-20T20:43:00.000-07:00

Over the last couple of Democratic primary events, the NH primary and the Nevada caucus, it has become increasingly apparent that former president Bill Clinton is taking a far more direct role in the campaign of his wife Hillary against Barack Obama. Frequently, Hillary plays the "nice" (do we remember the near to tears in NH) part of campaign duo, while Bill plays the "nasty" (Obama's campaign of hope is a "fairy tale") campaign member. Obviously Bill's intention from June not to do significant campaigning for Hillary (Washingtonpost.com interview), where he said "I don't expect to do a lot of this this year and I don't think it's helpful. I want people to get to know Hillary.", has been abandoned for a much more aggressive role.

I can not recall any previous election where a Former President exercised so much influence in a party's nomination race. But then there has never been a Former President who was the husband of a running candidate. The question for Obama is this: Does he have to take on in public debate not only Hillary, but a former president to defeat her for the Democratic nomination? The answer at this point appears to be an unequivocal YES.

The thing that concerns me is that the Democrats seem to be buying the Hillary (you like me you really really like me) shtick while viewing Bill's negative assaults and tantrums in support of his wife (NY Times Article) as just Bill being Bill. When in fact they are obviously a concerted effort that is part and parcel to the entire Hillary Clinton campaign plan.

Previous Former Presidents have for the most part stayed out of the party process to determine a nominee, and saving their campaign capital for the general election in support of their parties chosen candidate. This time, Bill appears to be the house "junk yard dog" set loose at every opportunity to attack any of the other Democrat candidates when ever they appear to be threatening Hillary's position as Democratic standard bearer.

While I doubt there will be any reigning in of Bill during the remainder of the campaign (after all he loves the limelight so), one has to wonder if Obama can overcome such an obvious double barrelled shotgun campaign.

Should Barack Obama survive and win the Democratic nomination in Denver, he will have overcome a campaign handicap that no Democrat or Republican has ever had to face before in winning their party's nomination. Not only will he have beaten a politically shrewed and experienced campaigner in Hillary Clinton, but also have beaten a heavily active former President who still carries significant control over the Democrat party machine, in the same campaign.

If Obama wins the nomination, the Republicans will be hard pressed to test his campaigning metal any more than it will be tested during the race for the nomination.

Another primary, another dash of GOP confusion

2008-01-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

The South Carolina primary solved nothing as far as the GOP race is concerned except for the "Custer's last stand" expected demise of Fred Thompson's "last stand" in South Carolina. McCain took the primary with 33% of the vote, Huckabee was second with 30%, Thompson a distant third with 16%, and Romney who pretty much gave up on SC fourth with 15%. Fred Thompson had stated all along that his strategy was to bypass the earlier caucuses and primaries and focus on winning SC. Obviously a bad tactic after last nights results. Not only did he not come close to winning, but during the campaign he has failed miserably at defining what his campaign stands for. By not participating in the earlier GOP primary events, he has not honed his message (what ever that may be) with the electorate to the extent McCain, Huckabee, and Romney have.

By fairly well conceding SC to McCain and Huckabee, Romney looks to take his high spending campaign to Florida. By doing so, he has left the door open even wider for McCain and Huckabee in my opinion.

As I look to Florida, I expect the same results for Giuliani as Thompson had in SC. Too late to the game, and an undefined message that separates him from the top three. About the only thing to come out of Florida is a more compressed trio of candidates with no clear leader going into Super Tuesday on February 5th.

While the GOP hopes that Super Tuesday will provide them with a clear leader, I am far from convinced. The likely hood of the GOP going to their convention without a clear cut nominee looks to provide immense entertainment to the political junkies like me, but do little to shore up the lagging Republican enthusiasm for the race so far.

The political landscape viewed from the fringe

2008-01-18T03:41:00.000-07:00

After many months of proclaiming that the economy is "strong", suddenly Congress, the President, and the Fed Chief are all scrambling to pull together a "stimulus" package of tax rebates to fend off the up coming (if not already here) economic recession. As is typical with our elected officials they are about a year behind the times in planning. Any tax rebates will not have an impact on anyone until 2009, and by that time the housing debacle will be well over 2 and 1/2 years old, and any recession will be a year old. If this wasn't an election year, I imagine we would still be getting the "economy is strong" blather from Washington.

Does the idea of "President Huckabee" scare anyone else but me? In his South Carolina campaigning he has again re-iterated his support for constitutional amendments banning abortion and same-sex marriages. It is not his support for those constitutional amendments that scare me as much as his purported reasoning for them saying that allowing same-sex marriages will lead to -- "I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal." www.beliefnet.com interview The fact that we have a serious presidential contender so far embedded with the evangelical right that the separation of church and state looks to be in serious jeopardy should he win scares me.

After several days of bickering over the issue of race in the spats between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the founder of BET Bob Johnson, who made veiled comments about Obama's teenage drug use, has finally come out and apologized (CNN article). Of course before the apology Clinton fully supported Johnson's remarks but now when asked if his comments were out of line says "Yes, they were. And he has said that." Amazing how a couple of days can cause 180 degree turn around in a politician's interpretation of what is said when sitting right next to someone. When asked immediately after his original comments Clinton saw nothing wrong with them, now he was "out of line".

An interesting division within the African-American voting "block" has started to unfold, particularly as it relates to the support of the Democratic presidential candidates. Clinton has pretty much garnered the support of the "traditional" leadership, while Obama seems to be garnering much broader support from the next generation of African-American voters. One of the startling things that came out of the Michigan Democratic beauty contest masquerading as a primary was that 68% of the African-American identified voters opted for "Uncommitted" rather than Clinton, a statistic that could spell trouble for Clinton as the race moves closer to Super Tuesday on February 5th.

So let us have an open convention in both parties this year. An unlikely scenario just a month ago when the political experts were expounding the clear winners of the inevitable nominations of Clinton and Romney. Now after a few caucuses and primaries the political landscape suggests there is a more than 50/50 chance that the Republican convention could be held with no one having enough delegates to achieve the nomination on the first ballot, and the Democrats look to be going into Denver with a possible split between the two front runners putting the balance of power in Edward's hands. On the Republican side, with separate victors in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Michigan, and possibly yet different winners in South Carolina and Florida, the Republicans could end up so split delegate wise that the possibility of a "compromise" candidate coming out of the convention is a real possibility.

The one thing that is certain about this election, is that there is nothing certain about it. Each week brings out new and interesting items for the political junkie, and the race to the end will, if nothing else, prove better entertainment than the thousands of "reality" shows on the networks. There is no way you can script what is happening this year, and it should be a wild and entertaining show. Time to pop another bag of popcorn in the microwave and get comfy in the recliner to watch the show.

Arrogant DNC disenfranchises Michigan and Florida Democrats

2008-01-16T01:39:00.000-07:00

If I was a Democrat in Michigan or Florida at this point, I think I would be looking at the general election in November a bit differently than my fellow Democrats in the rest of the country.

Last night Michigan held a Democratic presidential primary, and Hillary Clinton defeated “Uncommitted” by just under 100,000 votes, and received “zero” delegates from Michigan. You read that right. Michigan will be sending zero accredited delegates voted on by the registered Democrats in Michigan to the Democratic Convention in Denver this year. These phantom delegates from Michigan are soon to be joined by the non-delegates from Florida on the 29th of January.

You have read the above correct. Democrats from Michigan and Florida will have zip, nada, none, zero input into the selection of the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. In probably one of the most arrogant acts of disenfranchising it’s own party voters, the Democratic National Committee has seen fit to strip both Michigan and Florida of delegate representation for having the audacity of the state legislatures of those states moving their primaries to dates before the big shindig on February 5th. The Republican National Committee has reduced the number of delegates from each state by half, but did not take the completely arrogant step of totally disenfranchising two entire state party faithful.

So the Democrats in Michigan and Florida are being punished because those particular State legislatures (you know the properly elected officials of the people), dared move their primaries (both Republican and Democrat) to a date before February 5th. In effect the Michigan and Florida Democratic primaries are nothing more than glorified beauty pageants being paid for by state government funds (after all who do you think pays for primary elections?). If I was a Democrat, in either Michigan or Florida, I might be thinking of being a little spiteful come general election time in November and just stay home, or even worse, vote for some wacky Independent candidate.

But hey, the Democrats have the General election sowed up and won’t need the electoral votes from Michigan and Florida to put their candidate over the top and into the White House.

But should the November general election turn out to be close, and disenfranchised Democrats from Michigan and Florida from the primaries, not get out and vote, and the Republicans pull out those states, we may very likely be looking back at this singularly arrogant step by the DNC as the reason for the loss.

As I like to say.. American Democracy in action is always entertaining.. you can't possibly make this stuff up.

And if any of the non-delegates need a place to stay in Denver come convention time, give me a shout I think I have a spare room available.

Is it time for a new political party?

2008-01-15T06:09:00.000-07:00

Sitting here thinking about the Michigan Primary about to happen today, and a thought occurred to me that what the country needs is an end to the bipartisan chasm that has been created in the country by both the Republican and Democratic parties. Both parties over the last 50 years have migrated so much farther and farther to the extremes of the left and right, that the moderate, middle of the spectrum voter really has no political party that they can identify with.

What we need is a Moderate Party. A party that identifies and takes as it's own the problems of the middle. A party that isn't chained to the extreme evangelical right, or the liberal social program bound left. A party that worries about the majority of the country, the middle class, the ones getting up at 5:00 AM to go to work in the mill, the waitress, the department store worker, the small business owner.

It is time we had a party that was more worried about the majority of americans, than they are about the far extremes in political ideology. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans can any longer carry the banner for the middle. Both are so inextricably tied to their politicaly extreme segments, that they no longer can see the middle of the political spectrum.

We need a new political revolution, that carries the banner of the moderate majority of America. It is time we abandoned the extreme polar bickering that has been the mantra of the Democrats and Republicans, and replace it with a moderate, cooperative middle that can actually remember what it is to work 10 hour days, 6 days a week, to support their family, provide child care, to barely save for retirement, the basic backbone population that the country has built its economic, and moral base upon.

It is time we replaced the failing Democratic and Republican parities with something that resembles what America is, and that has the same aspirations, and goals.

It is time for a change alright, but a change that neither current party is able to achieve.

A good weekend of Pro Football

2008-01-14T06:20:00.000-07:00

The weekend provided some prime pro football viewing for just about everyone. While I'm not an avid pro football fan, I have to admit to a facination with New England's run on a totally perfect season, and the rejuvination of Farve this year.

New England:
The Patriots just looked machine like in thier win. Jacksonville forced the Pats to stay short, and Brady simply took what was there and marched. Overall the Pats put together another strong and complete game to go to 17-0.

Green Bay:
Is it just me or is Farve having the best season of his career this year? He looked like a kid out there in the snow playing school ground football, and having a blast in the snow. It seemed that the harder it snowed the better Green Bay played, and pretty much ran away with the game in the second half. It was nice to see grown men having fun playing a game for a change.

San Diego:
Even without their top running back and their starting quarterback, they were able to knock off the Colts. The two teams seariously beat each other up during the game, and you have to think this does not bode well for SD going into New England next weekend. The Colts looked sluggish, and uninspired, and the Chargers took advantage of them both defensively and offensively.

NY Giants:
The Giants didn't look any sharper than the Cowboys until it counted in the second half, where the Cowbowys offensive line became a sieve. A lot of people were pointing the finger at Romo having another "big" game collapse, but the blame if anyone deserves it is the Cowboys offensive line. The Giants on the other hand took what the Cowboys gave them and squeeked out a win to keep at least one Manning in the playoff hunt.

My picks for this weekend? New England over San Diego and Green Bay over the Giants.

Random musings number 2

2008-01-12T10:16:00.000-07:00

I've been focusing on the Political front a bit heavily lately, after all some of the stuff that goes on in this campaign you just can't make up. But, I've decided to make a regular ritual to get back to some of my more random, and non political musings, so here we go.

When the virtual merges with reality:
I was a bit taken aback when I came across a CNN feed for news from Second Life, the virtual world of alternate personal avatars. Apparently you can get the news that is news worthy on the goings on in your virtual life at SL I-Reports on CNN.com. What surprised me is the articles on the "Banking" crisis. Just what I need in a virtual world, more "real" money problems. The only thing I didn't see in the news articles to make it truly news worthy was some article on the virtual Britiny Spears.

CES and what I really want for xmas:
There have been a lot of new gizmo's reported on out of CES across the news and the blogs, but the one thing that struck me as a must have for my entertainment fantasy room was the 150" HDTV, now I just have to convince the wife that we need to knock down the living room wall to get it into the house.

Let's play it one more time:
Apparently a scoring error in the Dec 19th Atlanta Hawks vs Miami Heat game, where Shaquile O'Neal was erroneously tagged as fouling out, has caused the NBA to call for a redo of the last 51.9 seconds. So the Atlanta fans kind of get a twofer on March 8th when the two teams play again in Atlanta. Though I'm thinking there are probably a lot better 51.9 second periods of NBA basketball I would rather see.

Missing it by "" that much:
Apparently the large asteroid that was originally touted to have a 1 in 25 chance of hitting Mars, has now been calculated to miss the red planet by anywhere between 2480 and 16000 miles. Darn is all I can say. While the whole astrophysics population was busily preparing their "doomsday" articles to tell us how much danger we are in (remember the hoopla after Shoemaker-Levy-9 struck Jupiter), we seem to have gone into a "oh well" mode since it is just going to be a near miss. I guess we have to wait for one to strike the moon full force before we really start to get our act together on something that has global implications.

Blogging and money making:
Trying to explain to the wife why I'm blogging when I've only made a grand total of $0.38 since starting is losing it's luster. Apparently, she thinks getting a "real" job would be more practical.

Someone woke Fred Thompson up:
Ok I can't bypass a little political assessment. Apparently someone woke Fred Thompson up and told him there was a Republican nomination race going on. After lounging pretty much on the sidelines during the Iowa and NH caucus and primaries, Fred actually started questioning the other candidates positions during the debates in South Carolina. As for the effect of this sudden awakening, I'm thinking he should probably just go back to snoozing.

Obviously new film material is hard to come by:
It is bad enough that we are subjected to trilogies, third time remakes of 1940's movies, and re-hashes of old Charlton Heston movies, but have we sunk so low in the movie business that the best we can come up with is just bringing back old Stallone "Rambo" movies in re-release? I mean what is next? Re-releases of Halloween 1-34? And the movie moguls can't understand why their product attendance has been dropping over the years.

Ok that is it for this week. Hopefully, you enjoyed my little travels around the fringe.

What does the Kerry endorsement of Obama mean?

2008-01-11T09:35:00.000-07:00

Well for one thing, Mr Edwards chances to achieve the Democratic nomination just took a big slap. I mean if you can't even get endorsed by your former running mate, who can you get endorsed by?

The main thing I think this endorsement does is offset a bit of the Clinton mystique in the Democratic party against Barack Obama. Kerry is still very popular within the democratic party, and can bring significant resources to the Obama campaign. Whether that happens or not is still to be seen, although it is rumored that Kerry's 3 million e-mail list is about to get a message from Obama.

For all intents and purposes, what the endorsement does is absolutely narrow the Democratic primary race down to Clinton and Obama, with Edwards relegated to running for VP again. If Edwards can't pull out a victory in South Carolina or Florida (if he lasts that long), I would expect him to finally hang up the guns, and move to the sidelines.

What did New Hampshire tell us?

2008-01-08T23:25:00.000-07:00

Well it took all of 14 minutes for CNN to project John McCain the Republican primary winner in New Hampshire. It took most of the remainder of the night to finally declare Hillary Rodham Clinton the winner over Barack Obama, while CNN easily projected John Edwards to finish third in the Democratic primary within about five minutes.

A number of interesting things played out over the course of the evening as the results of the primary unfolded. The Republicans still have a very crowded field with many of the lower tier candidates still having their main focus on the later primaries in South Carolina and Florida. While McCain may have won the primary in New Hampshire to establish “Mac is back”, Romney finished second again, as in Iowa, with Huckabee falling back to the second tier candidates after his win in Iowa. Giuliani and Thompson have yet to really put on an effective campaign in either of the first two primaries.

A major surprise to some and what should be disconcerting to the Republicans at this point, is the significant increase in the number of voters in the Democratic primary compared to previous years, while the number of Republican voters actually decreased. While Kerry took New Hampshire by 1.4% over Bush in 2004, it is significant to note that the second place finisher in the Democratic primary will have more votes than the winner of the Republican primary.

On the Democratic side it appears to me that unless Edwards pulls out a clear win in either South Carolina or Florida, he may be only running a campaign for vice president, leaving the real race to Clinton and Obama.

So is LSU really #1?

2008-01-08T03:40:00.000-07:00

Well the BCS bowl season is over and LSU pretty handily beat OSU in the "BCS Championship" game played in the Sugar bowl on Monday 38 to 24. In the final AP poll, LSU was 1st with 60 first place votes with Georgia, USC, Missouri, OSU, WVU, and Kansas rounding out the top 7 spots, so there will be no "split" championship this year.

However, what we ended up with was 6 teams with 2 losses, and a one loss team in the top 7 spots and only two of those teams had played another team in the group. So how can anyone rightfully say that LSU is the "real" #1?

According to some reports the BCS will evaluate a plus one format when they meet in April ( ESPN report ). But either of the currently discussed methods of plus one plans would have left out USC and Georga from the proposed seeded 4 team playoffs.

The biggest sticking point in all of this is as usual the Rose Bowl folks. Unless somehow they are convinced to move to support some type of playoff format, any plan is probably still born. The Rose bowl folks are determined to keep what they consider the preeminent position and ties with the Pac-10 and Big 10 conferences, and anything that they view as undermining that position will just not fly. What they fail to realize is that to the majority of college football fans, the Rose Bowl isn't the "Grandaddy" of the bowls anymore, and hasn't been for some time.

Opponents to a "real" playoff system in Div-I typically use the "too many games" argument to argue against additional games in the season. I prefer to look at "too long between games" for teams like OSU who last played on NOVEMBER 17th, as a perfect reason to go to a playoff format. Teams sitting around for nearly 2 months between their final regular season game and a "championship" game is simply foolish. The rhythm, the routine, the normalcy that regular game playing gives a team is totally lost with that kind of a break in routine.

Congratulations to LSU, but I'm pretty sure fans and players from Kansas, USC, and Georga have a just as equal and legitimate reason to say "We're #1".

Will Hillary's super delegates start to defect if Obama wins NH?

2008-01-07T07:26:00.000-07:00

With one day to go before the NH primary, and Barack Obama seeming to be pulling away a bit from Clinton in the NH polls, one question occurred to me to ask.

A lot of the delegate lead that Clinton now holds over Obama in the Democratic primary race is based on the super delegate commitments that she holds. So let us speculate that Obama pulls out a NH primary win for a moment. Do the Democratic big wigs (committee chairmen, state party chairmen, etc), start to re-evaluate their commitments to Clinton?

I would not be surprised at all to start to see a bit of erosion in the super delegate commitments to Clinton, should Obama pull out a significant win in NH.

But time will tell. Mean while, I'm getting the popcorn out to watch the show.

Why I think Obama will win the Democratic Nomination

2008-01-06T20:29:00.000-07:00

Let me start off by saying, I'm not a Democrat, so I have a bit of a luxury in looking at the Democratic presidential nomination race with a little bit of objectivity. And my view from the fringe at this point and my gut tells me that Obama is likely to end up the Democratic presidential nominee. And I'll even tell you why I think that.

In the debates on January 5th in Manchester, Hillary Clinton while on the attack against Obama made the following statement attacking his ability to actually make change happen, "As beautifully presented, as passionately presented as they are, words are not action," Clinton said. This one small view into the differences between the two main Democratic candidates is what my gut tells me will make Obama the winner.

There is something, and you can't put your finger on it, that comes across and grabs you when Barack Obama speaks. And the major problem for Hillary Clinton is that she doesn't recognize that words, presented with passion, and commitment can indeed lead to action. Now I'm not going to sit here and say that I believe every thing that Barack Obama is promising in his speeches, but I can't deny that I "hope" that he means what he says.

Over the last forty some odd years there have not been any Democratic candidates that could remind me of the connections that JFK, and RFK had with the youth of America. What I sense, and feel is starting to happen, is that a growing number of young people disenchanted with the status quo of the nearly last half century of politics, feel that in Obama is a real chance to try a different path.

For us baby boomers, who can remember back to the JFK and RFK era, at least to me, there is the same ability to appeal to the "better nature" of Americans, and move that to the front of the platform. When Obama refuses to make folks pay a penalty for not buying health care when they can't afford it, and Clinton bangs him for it, the attack only strengthens his position. What Hillary has forgotten is, people don't buy health insurance now because they can't afford it. To argue that you have to penalize people already in financial straights with a monetary penalty for not buying something you are dictating they have to buy, when they couldn't afford it in the first place, shows a serious disconnect with common people.

If Barack Obama pulls out a New Hampshire primary win, my prediction is that you will start to see some serious closing of ranks behind him. When I talk about "closing of ranks" I'm not talking about the Democratic political big wigs (who mostly already threw their support to Clinton), I'm talking about the common every day working Democrat and Independent closing behind him.

And in the end the reason will be because despite what Hillary Rodham Clinton believes, beautifully presented and passionately delivered words CAN move people to incredible actions and change. Just ask the millions of 1960s youth who were moved to action by the beautifully presented and passionately delivered words of a couple of earlier Democrats.

Ramblings from the Fringe

2008-01-06T09:51:00.001-07:00

Well it took all of what 3 days into the new year for the "Britney" news to push aside an upcoming presidential election into the background? And you have to ask yourself.. in a mentally critical situation, would one of the people you confide in, expecting to keep your conversations confidential be Dr Phil? I don't think he got out of the revolving doors before he started spilling the beans.

Speaking of politics, seems Hillary has decided to show a bit of her true personality in New Hampshire after coming in third in Iowa. Seems the "working on likability" aspect she was so strong on in Iowa is out the window, with pointed attacks on Obama, Edwards, and just about anyone else. Guess you can only take the high ground when you are perceived to be in front :)

On the Economic front, it appears president Bush is trying to figure out a "stimulus" package to be delivered to the masses by the state of the union message towards the end of the month. Here is a question, if the economy is strong, as the president keeps saying, why do we need a stimulus package?

I looked in the mail and didn't receive my invitation to the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. Guess I'm not what they consider an important enough "technology blogger" :) I can't fathom why they aren't opening the show to the public. Guess we will have to wait and get the scoop from the "real" experts.

I've had to slow down the number of posts I make to the blog by the way. Apparently if you post too frequently (which appears to be around 3 or more a day), the fine folks at Google spam blog monitoring flags you as a spam blogger, and locks your editing ability until a "real" person looks at the blog to verify it as non spam.

Here is a needed invention idea. When you have four dogs, and 2 weeks of snow covering the ground, you need a machine or do hicky that will locate and clean up the undesired remnants of having four dogs doing what they do do.

And the 2008 Presidential Horse Race is off and running

2008-01-04T01:31:00.000-07:00

Well the Iowa caucuses are done finally, after spending over $40 million dollars on the state between all the candidates. And the clear cut winners according to CNN election center was Obama for the Democrats and Huckabee for the Republicans.

What the experts will be telling us now is that on the Democratic side it is a 2 horse race between Obama and Clinton, they seem to forget that Clinton finished 3rd behind Edwards. And on the Republican side they will be announcing that the Huckabee win was a fluke and the real test for the Republicans is the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.

I'm always amazed at how the large news organizations try to "finalize" the entire election after the first primary :).

This presidential election should be more entertaining than the last two ever hoped to be even with all the "chad" counting. Time to get out the popcorn and find a nice comfy chair to relax in and watch the show.

Why are there NO Garth Brooks songs on ITunes?

2008-01-02T19:18:00.000-07:00

I went to ITunes and was looking to download a couple of particular songs since the CD with them went missing into the same place as the single socks from the dryer apparently, and I was astounded that there are NO Garth Brooks songs on ITunes. Sorry just a little rant since I get most of my single music for my play lists from there.

So you want to develop your own MMOG?

2008-01-02T15:19:00.000-07:00

As a avid online gamer, having played nearly every major on-line release since Everquest 1, I was to say the least intrigued when I came across Multiverse .

Produced by former Netscape developers, and able to be licensed by novice and production game developers alike, there could be an explosion of home-made MMOGs soon to hit the internet.

There seems to be still a number of issues which they haven't posted answers about, but overall, if you got the hankering to make a game, or even a world for that matter, it seems you may have your hidden desire realized.

I haven't signed up for downloading the development kit yet, but may in the near future (writing a fantasy book could use a little visual game world to play in :) )

I'll definately keep an eye on this to see where it goes.

So what have the two BCS bowls so far told us?

2008-01-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

That USC is a very good team and just as deserving as LSU or OSU to be in the Championship game. That Georga is probably playing the best football in the country at the end of the season and is just as equally deserving to be in the Championship game. However, it did point out that all undefeated records (Hawaii) are not created equal.

Can we just institute a championship playoff for the top tier NCAA division like all the others and get this silly BCS experiment over with?

The price of Democracy

2008-01-01T19:35:00.000-07:00

I took time out from watching all the college football games today and while reading some news came across an article ( CNN article ) saying that Iowa's voters have been bombarded with nearly $40 million dollars worth of advertising leading up to the caucus. You have got to be kidding me? $40 million dollars (with an M) for one state?

I don't care if you are Republican, Democrat, Independent, or Martian Extremest... If it takes $40 million dollars to get your message out to one state, you need to get a better message.

The problem with today's politicians is that they are so concerned about putting together a "targeted" message to so many small segregated constituencies, that they couldn't put together a broad "Let's do what is right for the majority" message if their lives depended on it.

There are times during elections that I miss the original Pat Paulsen candidacy.. at least he was funny.

My favorite things from 2007

2007-12-31T19:07:00.001-07:00

Sitting here thinking about the new year with a few hours to go here in Colorado, I started thinking about the great things that happened during 2007. A lot of people tend to keep their focus forward in time, and take too little time to savor or relish those things in the past that have made them happy. So in that vein... here is my list of things that I enjoyed the most in 2007 not necessarily in any ranked order.

Being able to watch my first World Series Game in person (thank you Rockies).
Being able to finally read "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" while I am still able to read big thick books and feel like a child again (thanks JK Rowling)
Being able to watch a truly breathtaking series that combined History and Drama in HBO's Rome season 2 (too bad they said it cost too much to make and let the set catch fire and burn so there won't be a season 3).
Finding out that the world of Middle-earth would continue to be brought to the screen courtesy of Peter Jackson (thank you Mr Jackson and New Line for settling your differences from all us J.R.R. Tolkien fans)
And finally, another year of health and happiness with the family

See you all Next Year :)

New Year Resolutions I can keep

2007-12-31T14:39:00.000-07:00

I've decided to go with some New Year resolutions I'm pretty sure I can keep.

I will watch college football all day on January 1st
I will not drink myself into a drunken stupor on December 31st ( the first game starts at 9:00 AM and I need to be ready)
Regardless of how my wife's hair looks after coming back from the salon I will always say "Looks great Honey" (and then promptly recluse myself to the garage).
I will sell the exercise equipment in the basement so that I don't make any stupid resolutions next year about getting into shape (that is how I ended up with it down there in the first place from last year).
I will not call my wife's car (a Mitsubishi Eclipse) a roller skate anymore (not sure why it irritates her so much).
I will buy two new pairs of jeans so I have the required 4 pair without holes in them somewhere (I actually do this every year but I just hate shopping so much that I have to will myself out to do it).
I promise to go with my wife one time shopping at the mall (as long as one of the places she is shopping at during the trip is Victoria's Secret).
I will continue to NEVER watch "Frank TV" after being assaulted with the promos during the TBS broadcasts of the MLB playoffs every 30 seconds.

I was thinking of some more to put down, but figure the longer the list is.. the less likely it is that I will succeed :)

Hope everyone has a happy and safe New Years.

We've Taken the Outsourcing Thing Way Too Far

2007-12-31T00:04:00.000-07:00

After reading this "Giving birth becomes the latest job oursourced to India", I think we have finally started to take the whole "Outsourcing" idea just a little too far. I wonder if we can get them to set up a "Vent at your husband" in-bound call center operation over there?

Pro athletes don't play for pride.. or do they?

2007-12-30T09:14:00.000-07:00

I will admit that I am not a pro sports fan (ok I admit to being an avid Rockies fan), but as a general rule I typically don't watch pro football. Last night was a change, and an abnormally interesting one at that. I turned on the Patriots vs Giants game fully expecting to see both teams rest the majority of their starters in a game that had absolutely no playoff implications, and instead was provided a game that showed in some unique instances, pro football is played for pride and pride alone.

While there were three NFL records set (most TD passes, most TD receptions, most regular season points scored), the game was really about pride in a "team" accomplishment instead of the usual "me. me. me" pro athlete attitude.

Both teams played their starters, and from the beginning you could sense that both sides were playing with an emotion that is typically reserved for college sports where million dollar pay days are not the norm. The game was entertaining, and hard fought from the beginning to the end. And although the Patriots maintained their perfect regular season record and finished with at 38 to 35 win and a 16-0 regular season record, what impressed me was the way the game was played by both sides.

It was a joy to watch, and even more enjoyable to see for one of the few times that pro athletes and organizations can put forth their absolute best performance for just a game of no "real" significance. The fans in the stands in NY got their tickets worth, the fans watching the game on the networks got to see history made in a well played and energetic game.

The biggest thing that will be remembered about this game was that the multi-million dollar athletes that have been bashed for only playing for the money, and concerned about their own personal performance, played for pride, and it showed.

A game that had no significance at all in the playoff situation, was probably one of most entertaining games of the season. Congratulations to the players of the Giants and Patriots alike, you have given hope to a typically apathetic pro sports fan.

The politics of humanism

2007-12-30T08:39:00.000-07:00

I came across an article about the juvenile corrections system in Missouri, AP Story and the thing that struck me besides the success rate of the system in keeping young offenders from re-entering the corrections system, was that from 1983 when the overhaul of the system was started, it has been supported by both conservatives and liberals in Missouri. This isn't a conservative or a liberal issue, but a human issue, and it is extraordinary to see politicians from both sides agree to put aside their normally prickly opposing views and do what is "right" for a change.

In a country that can never seem to put aside it's polarized political posturing to do something that works and is truly good for people other than their own self interest supporting PACs, it is both refreshing and unusual to see this coming together to support a plan that is not the "normal" way, and to stick with it through the years to provide a solid and documented successful way to deal with juvenile offenders.

This is just one example of what can actually be done when our political system works as it was intended by our founding fathers. A country for the people, by the people, rather than a few political avatars posturing and preening for the cameras in order to get the next sound bite, or criticize another politician to make their own visceral worth higher.

We need politicians that are more interested in developing programs and getting them enacted that honestly benefit the majority of people in the country, rather than select and narrow special interest groups. We need to have politics of humanism, rather than Republican and Democratic agendas.

If a sticky and very serious problematic situation as the one in Missouri can resolved, and proved to work when the base human need is the focus instead of the politics of what "sounds good" at the moment, then there is hope for us as a country to do so in other even more important areas of need. We need the same focus on the human need for programs such as health care, old age, and yes even foreign policy, and trade relations. Only when this happens will we see the true strength of our country displayed, and the true benefits of our representative system bestowed on the greater populous.

I only hope it comes sooner than too late.

Enough with the male enhancement and ED comercials already

2007-12-29T11:18:00.000-07:00

It has gotten so bad that you can't watch any show anymore without one or the other of these types of commercials coming on. If someone wants to REALLY help men out, come out with a pill that we can take that will actually help us understand what women are really thinking, because after thousands of years of evolution we men still don't have a clue.

Programing decisions that make you go HUH?

2007-12-29T10:41:00.000-07:00

This has been bothering me for a while since my favorite network is the SciFi channel.. but will someone please explain how in the world someone thought mostly science fiction aficionados would find ECW wrestling entertaining?

Ok so the NFL decided that to piss off the Cable and Satellite Companies that they have been having a terrible disagreement over showing the NFL channel, that they would show them by letting two broadcast network channels show the game? Those NFL folks do realize that most people that have cable or satellite, usually get their network broadcasts over these content suppliers right? (Edit:12/30/07..) Well you have to give the NFL credit.. they pretty much complained about the intrangency of the large cable networks through the whole game.. maybe not as silly a decision as originally thought :)

Doesn't Congress have better things to do than talk Baseball?

2007-12-28T07:53:00.000-07:00

While the two committees of congress, The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform”, and “The House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection” prepare to take up the mantle of removing performance enhancing drugs from Major League Baseball after the first of the year, a couple of questions had occurred to me.

First: Isn’t there more pressing things for our congressmen to be focusing on instead of determining if multi-million dollar super stars are poking themselves with needles to get even larger multi-million dollar salaries from the MLB owners? I mean, shouldn't the force and political clout of the US congress be focused on things like, a wide spread drug problem plaguing the entire country? Or maybe they should put their weight behind figuring out how to help the millions of homeowners losing their homes because they can’t afford loans given to them simply because some mortgage broker decided he needed another patsy to help pay for that Mercedes he just bought, and didn’t care whether he/she was placing a family at risk of having to file bankruptcy and lose their belongings. Or maybe they should put their focus on how to extricate our troops overseas from a situation that looks for all intents and purposes to be a never ending police force action to keep radical extremists from whacking each other by blowing themselves up.

Secondly: While the attempt to get to the bottom of the PEDs issue in Major League Baseball is admirable (it does provide headlines), better questions that congress can actually do something about might be to look at how Dentists and Aging clinic Doctors are able to blithely prescribe HGH or Steroids to any Tom, Dick, or Harry personal trainer for no apparent medical purpose. The record books of Major League Baseball are almost for ever tarnished due to the widespread use of PEDs, but maybe our elected representatives should be focusing on how to halt the apparently easy acquisition and distribution of such things instead of talking to Selig and Fehr, who couldn’t agree as to whether the sun rose in the east or west, if they were held at gunpoint.

The Mitchell report pretty much laid out the problems of PEDs in baseball over the last 20 years or so, and provided some pretty specific recommendations on what needed to be done to reduce the use of those drugs in baseball going forward.

Our elected representatives have much more pressing and broader impacting items they should be focusing on, instead of making themselves some headlines by shaking their indignant fingers at a bunch of over paid, and pampered multi-millionaires.

Stop the Screen Logo madness

2007-12-27T17:07:00.000-07:00

Once again I am fed up with the continual "network logo" being displayed on nearly every network, cable channel, and satellite channel during the presentation of a show. Do these network big wigs think so little of our intelligence that they think we can't remember what bleeding network our favorite shows are on? Yet that is not the worst of it anymore.

It used to be just the little innocuous little logo down in the bottom right corner of the screen, (except on a 65" HDTV, that little logo is about 6" high and wide) but now they are inundating us with the torture of the bottom screen pop up advertisements during our favorite shows, (which takes up nearly 1/4 of the bottom of the screen and totally wipes out any subtitles) to blithely inform us of the new monster hit miniseries or other up coming show that they are sure we would miss if they didn't blast us with the full width of the screen messages, while we are trying to watch our favorite shows (Does anyone not know that "Frank TV" is on TBS after watching the MLB playoffs?).

One of my favorite channels (starts with "sci" and ends with "fi") has progressed with their on screen pop up advertising and logo placement to the point of annoying my wife so far as to quit watching some shows and actually doing housework during the usual "together" TV time now.

We must band together and end this totalitarian invasion into our living rooms.. write your congressman... (like that would help).... write the network.... (yeah ok that isn't going to do it either).... WAIT!!!! write the FCC!!! (I did that, and they politely told me to find another way to vent my dissatisfaction, but they did recommend that if the logo is burned into my HDTV I should write the manufacturer).

I guess I'll have to wait for the next technological breakthrough in time sliding viewing enjoyment.. the logo remover :)

What is in a name

2007-12-27T17:04:00.000-07:00

Does anyone besides me find the phrase "President Huckabee" just a bit strange?

Fanaticism is a Scourge

2007-12-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

I was preparing to make my first post to my newly created Blog when I happened to hear on CNN about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. Again, in this troubled world, a fanatic of some philosophy, political view, religious belief, etc., has taken it upon themselves to murder someone, and a large number of innocents, either to prove themselves worthy, or to silence a different view.

I have never understood, nor will I probably ever understand, the deep seated desire to silence some opposing view, faction, or what ever it is one disagrees with, through terrible violence. I am old enough to remember the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King Jr, and Bobby Kennedy. I vividly remember the horror of Oklahoma City, and 9/11. And now the assassination of Bhutto, all acts of violence that I will probably never understand.

The only question I can ask is when will we as a species evolve (this by itself has fanatical implications) to the point where violence on this magnitude is no longer considered an option to express an opinion or support a political or religious view, and enlightened discourse, and meaningful dialogue becomes the meat of expressing our differences.

When will we reach that point in time where the Scourge of Fanaticism and it's inherent violence is removed from our daily discourse? I for one can only hope that it is soon.