If Obama Can Do It

It looks like the next president will be a Democrat. I'm pretty much OK with that. The parties are so polarized now that we really need to change colors once in a while so that one administration can check and repair the excesses of the previous administration.

In case you haven't noticed, Obama is a pretty liberal guy. The problem with liberals, is that most of what they want, if it were that easy, would have been done a long time ago. It's much easier for conservatives. Most of what they want is to remove restraints from the rich which is pretty easy to do. Liberals however have to try and figure out a way to make their big ideas work and often that's not so easy.

For instance: Bill Clinton ran for president on the promise of national health care, and he spent the first few years of his presidency trying to get national health care, but in the end, there were so many obstacles and so many challenges to the idea that he eventually had to give it up.

All of those problems with making national health care will be waiting for Obama once he takes office. Problems like that tend to stick around. We could use national health care though, if they can figure out how to make it work.

Jimmy Carter ran on a platform of peace in the middle east, but by the time he was done, Anwar Sedat was dead and our embassy in Iran was under siege. Obama has similar goals, lets hope he has better luck.

Carter also wanted to improve housing for the poor and working class. It's pretty hard to be against that idea. After twenty years though, his plan for improving housing evolved into the sub-prime mortgage disaster. It was a great goal, we were just on the wrong path for getting there.

Lyndon Johnson ran on the idea of a "war on poverty". Who could be against such an idea? It's not like somebody was going to come out and say they were for poverty.

Forty-five years later, a lot of people blame Johnson for creating a near-permanent welfare class that's almost impossible to evolve out of. It took another Democrat, Bill Clinton to go in and roll back a lot of what Johnson tried to do.

One of Obama's plans is to re-strengthen the unions. He says we were a better country when the unions were strong. That may be so, but I don't know how you're going to strengthen the unions without bringing back manufacturing and I don't see how you're going to bring back manufacturing without weakening the unions. So, if Obama wants to bring back the unions, I'm all for it, I just don't see how he's going to do it.

I hope it doesn't sound like I'm bagging on the liberals needlessly. What they want to do, we need as a nation. It's just that they face a lot more obstacles to their goals than just the opposition party.

There's only one way to achieve these goals though, and that's to keep trying, from administration to administration, through the years until we eventually do get what we need.

Some of the efforts towards these goals will be misguided though, and in four years or eight or twelve, we'll elect a republican president to roll back Obama's mistakes, just like Obama will roll back the mistakes of George Bush.

That's how our system works. Checks and balances. It's the promise of Democracy and we'll rock along toward the future, even if it is three steps forward and two steps back sometimes.

The Natural Cycle

There has been bad news about the economy lately and, in times like these, many people are worried and afraid. Don't be too afraid though, a lot of what we're going through is natural. We've been through it many times in the past and we always came back stronger.

The economy behaves like a living thing because it is made up of millions of living things and like any living thing, it goes through cycles of expansion and contraction.

Contraction is a disturbing process, but everything I read tells me we are doing the right things to come back form this strong and healthy.

We'd like to think the economy would grow forever and on the news and among economists we tend to call an economy that grows from one quarter to the next "good" but one that doesn't grow or declines "bad".

That's not a very practical way to think of a living thing though. All living things have times when they must pull back to mend wounds and correct mistakes and prepare for the next cycle of growth.

We made mistakes with the housing market and sub-prime mortgages and now our economy needs to pull back to mend wounds and correct mistakes. This is natural and nothing to be afraid of. You could even say it was a necessary thing.

Even in declining times, living things always seek a means to grow and thrive, so will our economy. Even now, people all across the nation are making plans to grow again. We will come back stronger and better than before. We always have.

Have faith in God and nature and believe in each other and we'll come through this healthy and strong.

I hate Voter Registration Drives

I hate voter registration drives.

To be perfectly honest, if you have to go out like a door-to-door salesman and harass people into registering to vote, then I'd kind of rather those people didn't vote.

It smacks of the days when Richard J. Daley had teams going out to register drunks and dead people in Chicago.

Everything should be done to protect people's right to vote, but if they're not going to actually take the steps to do it of their own accord, I say just leave them out. They don't deserve to vote.

Years ago, I actually did this for the Democratic party. Here's how it went.

Knock, Knock, Knock

ME: Hello sir, we're out registering people to vote so you can exercise your precious right to determine your future. Brave men and women fought and died to give you this right. Do you have a few minutes to fill out these forms?

UN-REGISTERED VOTER: Yeah dude, just leave the papers and I'll do it later, I'm watching People's Court now though.

Are you kidding me? That guy should never vote. Ever.

The Crossroads with Abraham

We stand at a crossroads, some four thousand years from the day a man named Abraham gave up everything to follow a nameless god.

We don't know the exact date, of course. We don't even know if the story is true. Abraham isn't recorded by any other historian and he left no artifacts.

What we do know, is that this story, this tradition spawned three of the greatest cultures yet known to man: the Jews, the Gentile Christians, and the Muslims.

At this crossroads, many of us blindly reach back into the past in an attempt to refute the present, but many others question whether the tradition is even worth keeping any longer--if any faith is worth keeping any longer.

I propose a third path, one which preserves the wisdom of our ancestors, but recognizes their humanity and imperfection. A path which incorporates and embraces science and history and new learning--even when it conflicts with the ancient texts. God gave us the capacity to learn. It's foolish not to embrace it.

Further, I propose a reunification of all the children of Abraham.

A reunification that can only begin by setting aside the false prophesy of the apocalypse. We can only come together and live together if we abandon the fear that God will destroy the world and only by coming together and living together can we hope to prevent destroying the world ourselves.

If we don't do this, then the instinct for self-preservation will take over and more people will abandon their faith in order to survive and avoid any self imposed apocalypse.

Faith can be the future, but only if we recognize that it is human and imperfect and forgive ourselves for the mistakes of the past.

National Abortion Amendment

We require an amendment to the constitution describing precisely our national abortion policy.

Currently, we have left the issue up to the courts to decide, but that is insufficient. It's beyond the scope and design of the court to make these decisions.

Likewise, the issue is too sensitive and contains too many human rights' issues to govern on a state-to-state basis.

The reason we don't already have a constitutional amendment on abortion is because both extremes know they don't have the votes to get everything they want out of an amendment so they're satisfied trying to manipulate the courts instead.

This is not good government. The onus of good government is that we consciously decide what we think is best and right and proceed with it, not allowing ourselves to be controlled by special interest groups of either extreme.

The obvious solution is a compromise between both extremes.

Here is what I propose: A normal pregnancy can be divided into three trimesters.

For the first trimester: allow no state to enact a law that prohibits or limits a woman's right to a safe abortion for any reason. This way, the state doesn't force anyone to be pregnant who doesn't wish to be. Women may decide to abort and the state has no say in their decision.

There is some pressure for women to make their decision quickly, but that pressure exists anyway. This also prohibits states from trying to eliminate abortions by putting unreasonable restrictions on abortion providers.

For the second trimester: abortions are only allowed on the recommendation of a licensed physician based only on the mother's physical health. This addresses those cases where abortion is more of an issue of health than one of choice--and it puts the decision in the hand of those we entrust to make those health decisions in other matters.

At this stage, we begin to give the fetus some human rights, but the focus remains on the health of the mother if not her preferences. There will be some physicians who "rubber stamp" all abortion requests, but medical ethics is really more an issue of peer evaluation and licensing than one of statutory law.

For the third trimester: every effort must be made to deliver the fetus alive. No state may allow an abortion during this period unless proscribed by both a physician and a judge.

During the third trimester, the fetus has a growing chance of surviving premature birth, therefore the full focus of the law is on the civil rights of the fetus.

Certainly there is room for discussion on each of these stages, but with my proposal, neither side gets everything they want but we get everything we need to know we did our best to govern wisely.

Pick your Targets

A lot of times, it just doesn't pay to go after your political opponents on anything other than policy.

Remember, back in the day, when the Republicans used to go after Bill Clinton on everything they could think of? Remember how, no matter what, they never really could "get him" on anything?

There even came a time when the republicans had enough evidence to impeach Clinton, but then they couldn't get the votes to convict him, even though he had gone on national television and basically said "yeah, I did it".

Boy those were the days, huh? The Republicans looked like belligerent jerks, Clinton looked like a victim and MTV called Monica Lewenski the most powerful young person in America.

Even today, Ken Starr wanders around his garden in a dirty bathrobe saying: "I had him! He was soooo close! I had him!"

The Democrats are already getting dangerously close to this with Sarah Palin and they've only been aware of her existence for two weeks.

Although they hate her, Palin's popularity is growing by leaps and bounds. But what about all the crazy stuff she's done?

Let's look a the craziest thing she's accused of and follow it through logically. I mean this business of her supposedly saying she's the mother of her daughter's baby.

Let's suppose for a minute that it really is true, and the Democrats have absolute proof. What's she really guilty of? Was somebody hurt? somebody cheated?

The very last thing Democrats want is to force Palin to have to go on television and say "yeah, I did it---and I did it to help my daughter and my grandchild".

If she does that, then the Democrats will look like the biggest heels in the world. They successfully outed a mother protecting her child. It could even create a wave that pushes Mccain-Palin into office.

Nevermind that it's kind of creepy because Bree on Desperate Housewives tried to do the same thing. Stick to discussions of policy and everything will be fine, but if democrats keep pushing it on all this bullshit stuff with Palin, it could really backfire.

Is this how mothers should act?

I should probably shut-up about this, but those gentle-folk over at MADD piss me off so I'm writing about it, again.

Back in elementary school, we all learned there were two ways to pass a law. The first was by representation: we elect a guy by democratic means and he goes to a thing called a "congress" where they vote by democratic means and make laws. Pretty straight forward, there's no problem there.

The second way to pass a law is by direct action: we put an issue on a ballot and we each vote "yay" or "nay" and the law passes or it doesn't. Again, very straight forward, no problem.

We actually have two chances to do this. First at the state level, then again at the federal level. That's how it's supposed to work. That's called Democracy and that's how it actually does work for everybody, except Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

There actually is no national drinking age, because it's a state issue. MADD couldn't get the job done that way though. They couldn't get even conservative, anti-drinking states like Mississippi to raise their drinking age by accepted, democratic means...so MADD came up with another plan.

Hold on there big fella, are you saying that MADD consciously circumvented our beloved democratic process to get their law passed? You win or lose! Fair is Fair, Right? NOBODY gets around the process, not even the communists! ...And yet, that's exactly what MADD did.

Unable to get their law passed at the state level, and unwilling to accept defeat, MADD made a deal in congress where lawmakers made it mandatory that any state who wished to receive federal highway funds, MUST raise their state drinking age to twenty-one. Otherwise, they would be federally mandated to maintain their interstate highways without the benefit of federal funding.

See--that way, federal lawmakers aren't directly responsible for the law. They pass the buck on down to the state level. At the state level, lawmakers were obliged to change the law, but could avoid taking responsibility for it by blaming the federal highway fund mandate.

In other words, nobody faced this issue directly and voted yes or no in a way we the people could hold them responsible for it. MADD crapped all over our beloved constitution and democratic ideal so they could have their way--is this how mothers should act? Only if you use the word "mother" immediately followed by the word "fucker".

Recently, The Amethyst Initiative lost two of its original signers due to pressure from MADD. When I say pressure, I mean real pressure. Signers of the initiative report getting hundreds of MADD sponsored emails, demanding they change their position. Laura Dean-Mooney, the president of MADD sent out untold thousands of printed letters and email asking parents to withdraw their children from colleges where the dean or chancelor signed the Amethyst Initiative.

The good news is, our side lost two members, but gained fifteen. The count now stands at one hundred twenty-three signers of the Amethyst Initiative and about a zillion people cheering them on. Including me. Go TEAM!

Limited Vocabulary

Recently, I wrote a piece entitled "Astronaut Punches Asshole". A reader emailed back, that they liked the article, but did I have to use that word?

Short answer: yes I had to use that word. For a number of reasons.

For one thing: it sounds cool. It has rhythm. Both words begin with A and S, you get the idea.

Secondly: the person being punched was indeed an asshole. Read the article and you'll know why.

Thirdly: I swear like a sailor. It's my style. When I was a kid, people said if you used the kind of words I used, it indicated a limited vocabulary. That's not actually true. I have an unusually broad vocabulary; I just happen to enjoy using dirty words.

I don't use the F-Bomb much, as I think it's overused, but "Ass" and related words are pretty high on my list though, including: Ass-hole, Ass-hat, Ass-munch, Ass-face, Ass-wipe and many more.

Does this mean my blog isn't fit for children? Are you kidding? By the age of eight, most children use language far worse than anything you'll see here. Being honest with them about the use of these words is just one way of showing them a little respect. Besides, there are far worse things than teaching a child to call an asshole an asshole.

Ignore the Polls: Obama Wins

Normally political polls are valuable and accurate because Republicans and Democrats are equally likely to actually get out and vote when the polls open.

In that way, whatever opinions they give to pollsters before the election are just about equally likely to turn into real votes when the time comes.

That's normally, but the 2008 presidential election is far from normal because Barak Obama is half black.

Polls today show Obama, the democrat, and McCain, the republican, more or less neck-and-neck in votes. That's not unusual, Americans have a sort of yin and yang thing going on as far as considering themselves conservative or liberal and the two forces are just about equally divided.

Although I consider myself a liberal, I also think it's good we're equally divided on these issues because both sides are just about equally likely to be right and just about equally likely to be wrong and with both sides just about equally popular, we have a fair chance that both sides will correct the other's mistakes, while preserving the things they do right.

I suspect Obama will win the November election by a landslide because I can't imagine any black American who is able not getting out to vote for him, and their sheer numbers will overwhelm the republicans who will probably vote at about the same rate as they always do.

Black people have had a pretty tough time in these United States over the last three hundred years, and Barak Obama's candidacy represents a watershed change in all that. So much so, that even if they're not liberal like Obama, I just don't know what to think about a black person who doesn't physically get out and pull the lever to elect him.

That being said, I like John McCain a lot. I supported McCain long before I'd ever heard of Barak Obama, but, lets face it, McCain isn't the most popular guy among the rank-and-file republicans and I just can't see them being all that motivated to stand in line and vote for him.

No matter what the polls say, it's who actually stands in line to pull the lever that decides elections, and in November that will be Obama.

Homos

When I was a kid, in the third grade, I heard somebody call somebody else a "homo".

I had no idea what that was. My best friend, Timmy, was also the smartest guy I knew so I asked him. Timmy said, "a homo is kind of like a retard, except they put their finger up their butt."

That didn't make a lot of sense to me, but it didn't sound like anything any reasonable person would do or want to be so I decided it was best to avoid homos.

It would be another three years before I learned that a "homo" was actually a "homosexual", and they weren't like retards with their finger up their butt, but rather they were people with a sexual interest in people of their own gender.

They may not put their finger up their butt, but I heard they did put gerbils up their butt so it still made sense to me that it would be best to avoid these people.

It would be another ten years before I learned that homosexuals were actually fairly nice people and there wasn't any good reason to avoid them--in fact, several people I already knew and liked were homosexuals.

I tell this story because it's so easy for people, especially children, to form wrong perceptions of other people based on really bad data.

I have no idea when is the right age for adults to talk to children about these things, but rest assured that they are talking about it amongst themselves long before you might think is appropriate--and they're getting it all wrong.

I also can't help but think about the kids, who, sometime in adolescence, begin to realize that they themselves might be attracted to people of the same gender, but decide to keep it hidden or even deny it to themselves because of the crazy things they hear the other kids say.

It was hard enough going through adolescence and the teen-age years as a straight person, I can only imagine how hard it is for kids who are gay.

Adults get it wrong too. I have a friend, who years ago was fired from his job as an incredibly popular high-school teacher for being gay.

This sent a pretty clear message to his straight students that, no matter how much you like this guy, he still has to go because he's gay.

It sent an even clearer message to his students who were gay themselves that no matter how successful you are, and no matter how popular you are, there's no room for you here if you're gay.

Now, you may not like homosexuals or the so-called "gay agenda", but keep in mind that it's just not that simple and what you do or say can really hurt kids who are already having a hard time adjusting to the world.

When I was young, I said a lot of pretty hurtful things about homosexuals, absolutely oblivious as to whether or not my words hurt anybody. If any of my readers were one of those people I hurt, forgive me. I was working from really bad data.

Sympathy for the Jews and Arabs

I've always had some sympathy for the Palestinian Arabs.

After World War I, Europeans had good news and bad news for the Palestinians. The good news was that we freed them from the oppressive Ottoman Empire. The Bad news was that the Jews were returning by the million.

How would we in the U.S. have responded if one day, millions of Native Americans showed up on our doorstep, with both the intention of taking their land back, but also the means to do it?

Displaced European Americans, crowded into concentration camps in Canada and Mexico would surely plot their revenge, including a fair amount of terrorism against the returned natives. Governments in Mexico, Canada and European countries would be tempted to support the terrorists as local sympathies go to refugees.

That would never happen, of course. Unlike the Jews, displaced Native Americans didn't flourish in foreign countries to return centuries later, much stronger than when they left.

If I were a Palestinian Arab, I would probably be a big time terrorist.

I have sympathies for the Jews too.

After nearly two thousand years in exile from their homeland, they survive as a unified culture. That's never happened in the recorded history of man. It gives some credence to the idea that they just might be God's chosen people.

It happened, in part, because they passed down the hope of returning to their homeland from generation to generation. The Jews were prepared to survive in exile by their much shorter exile in Babylon before the first century C.E.

You can't blame the Jews for wanting to return to Judea. Always an outsider and often persecuted, life in permanent exile is no walk in the park.

If I were a Jew I would probably be a big time Zionist.

It doesn't help that Jews, Christians and Muslims all hold as a key element of their religious culture that one day, God himself will put one of them in charge of Jerusalem and condemn the other two to hell.

It's amazing to me that this small spot of land, smaller than the state of Mississippi, would spawn three huge cultures. I have to believe that there is some superior force guiding the destiny of men. Perhaps that force intends that Jews, Christians and Muslims learn to live in peace and use that peace as a structure to build a true, world-wide peace.

Paranoid Theory 415: Sex Sells

Embarrassment Can Help Your Career.
Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton were both pretty, but remarkably talentless blonds headed for obscurity. If The Love Boat were still on the air they would have been guests long ago. But then, "leaked", "private" sex tapes rocketed them to super-star status with both their names in the top ten-percent of all-time Internet search terms.

People have long suspected that one or both starlets were secretly in on the release of the tapes in hopes of just this effect. Even if these two weren't involved, it's not hard to suspect this might not be a bad idea for those willing to do anything to promote themselves.

Disney Dollars
Nobody spends more time and effort developing their intellectual properties than the corporate sharks at Walt Disney Inc.

Currently, Disney's current hottest properties are High School Musical and Hanna Montana. Teeny Bopper stardom is short-lived though, so it's not hard to suspect that Disney might be very interested in discovering the next step to protect these cash cows.

Recently, Vanessa Anne Hudgens, one of the stars of High School Musical, had nude photos of herself leaked to the internet, making her name one of Google's hottest new search terms. Soon afterwards, photographs of Hanna Montana star Miley Cyrus' naked back were huge news, even making it as a "hot topic" on ABC's (a Disney Company) The View.

One Plus One Equals....
Cyrus is fifteen, Hudgens is eighteen. Now, I'm not saying that Walt Disney Inc. intentionally leaked scandalous photographs of these young stars to promote their careers, but there are millions of dollars at stake here and corporate slime-balls being what they are, you have to admit it's a possibility, no matter how sleazy.

If you're still not convinced, consider this: Britney Spears was once a Disney product before her hit song, Baby Hit Me One More Time went through the roof on the heels of its sexy MTV video.

All this might just be unfortunate coincidence, but you have to admit; as conspiracy theories go, this is a heck of a lot more likely than Newt Gingrich blowing up the Twin Towers
.

Same-Sex Marriage and the Law

This same sex marriage thing is a no-brainer.

There are social and religious issues surrounding this subject but the only one we can decide with any stability is legal issues. It really is a legal issue, not a religious one, and as a legal issue there can be only one answer--to make homosexual and heterosexual marriages legally equal.

In our culture we define marriage as a mutually agreed on union of two people and only two people. No outside person can intrude into this union so my marriage is different from every other marriage as they are different from each other. Each one is a unique and isolated case with no tangible impact on any other marriage.

It would be different if homosexuals wanted to horn into other marriages or force people to enter same-sex marriages but they don't. They want to form their own mutually agreed upon marriages, completely separate from every other marriage.

The question of whether homosexuality is a sin is moot in this argument. In our country sin and law are completely separate as described by the the constitution. For instance: there is no law regarding keeping the sabbath or worshiping idols, both of which are listed in the ten commandments. If we were going to incorporate sin into law you'd think these would be first on the list.

We can and do allow religious groups to make their own determinations about marriage independent of the law. For instance: catholics don't recognize legal divorces. If a divorced person gets remarried but doesn't have their first marriage annulled, then the Catholic church doesn't recognize their new marriage, but it has no impact on the legal status of the marriage.

This could be a model for same-sex marriages. Some religious groups would recognize them and some wouldn't based on their own interpretation, but before the law they would be the same as all other marriages.

There is also the constitutional issue of equal protection to consider. If the state doesn't recognize same-sex marriages then how can they say they offer equal protection to homosexuals?

Trying to decide issues of law based on the concept of sin is a very slippery slope and one our founders provided us an escape from by separating church and state.

There are social repercussions to this legal issue but the social concept of marriage and family were experiencing huge changes long before we brought the issue of homosexuality into it.

We passed the point of no return a long time ago when circumstances made it possible for women to survive without marriage. Marriage used to be a matter of survival, now it's a matter of choice and the only question is how we define it in the future, and like-it-or-not, that future includes the social, and more importantly, legal rights of homosexuals.