Yesterday I had the distinct honor of attending an exciting rally for Senator Barack Obama in Grand Rapids, MI.  Myself and a friend tracked across the state from the Detroit area in hopes of catching a glimpse of the man, and we made out pretty well.  The breaking news that Senator Edwards was going to endorse Obama at this very meeting, we never knew about that.  I first learned from overhearing an older lady's conversation over the phone behind me.  My friend and I were extremely excited at this revelation and even more excited to see Senators Edwards and Obama together at last.  The following is a series of pictures with some narration taken from in and around the Van Ander Arena in beautiful Grand Rapids, Michigan.

127 Views | 2 Replies

Cognitive dissonance has become one of my famous phrases of late, because it very aptly describes the kind of arguments I'm getting from conservatives in defending Bush and their own conservative viewpoint.  Simply put, cognitive dissonance is willful ignorance.  The wiki article puts it a bit more eloquently: "In simple terms, it can be the filtering of information that conflicts with what one already believes, in an effort to ignore that information and reinforce one's beliefs."

Am I calling conservatives liars?  Not exactly.  Conservatives honestly believe they've got it all figured out, and the fact that reality refuses to conform to their belief just means they're being sabotaged by us damned liberals.  They're closing their eyes, plugging their ears and yelling "lalalalalala!  I can't hear you!" so they don't have to acknowledge any facts that refute their beliefs.

A classic case of cognitive dissonance involves my mother.  Shortly after I left home, a schism occurred in my family wherein my father was forced to choose between the family of his birth and his wife.  From what my brother related to me, my mother was on the phone with my aunt (father's sister) when my younger cousin A apparently...

137 Views | 3 Replies

In a April 22nd interview with (the suddenly Clinton-friendly) ABC's Good Morning America, Senator Hillary Clinton dropped the following line about her future Iran policy, if elected president:

I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.

It's getting harder and harder to remember exactly which party Clinton is running for.  It's getting harder and harder to remember exactly which country Clinton is looking to represent.  Later replies from the Clinton campaign hint that Iran is merely getting the treatment they dish to Israel (as the President of Iran has said on multiple occasions he'd be happy if the name 'Israel' were wiped off the map) - but at best that just signifies that not only is she willing to drop to the saber-rattling level of Senator John McCain (who's running in that -other- party, by the way) to garner votes (in a primary!), but she's ready to drop to the level of President Ahmadinejad himself, going saber rattle for saber rattle, if necessary.

In the meantime, people now have the unique opportunity in American history to vote for someone who actively advocates committing genocide!  It was something not on the table in either of Bush's elections in...

140 Views | 0 Replies

There was a time when talking politics was talking about the issues.  More taxes or less?  More regulation or less?  Are we on the right track or not?  Most importantly, how do we fix what we perceive as wrong?

But since the Reagan Administration, and particularly since the rise of Fox News, politics has become less about the issues and more about personalities.  George Bush is a man people would like to have a beer with.  Gore is cold and robotic.  McCain is an honorable man of the people.  Obama is elitist.  Edwards is obsessed with his hair.  Y'know what?  I don't give a damn how much Edwards pays for his haircut or how well Obama bowls.  I want to know what they propose to turn this nation back into a place I'm proud to call home.  Because for the past seven years, I've been ashamed to call myself American.

People are starting to wake up to the fact that the media has been treating politics like a reality television show.  We want to know when our troops are coming home.  We want to know how we're going to fix our insanely expensive health care system.  We want to hear solutions to our energy problems.  But instead we get news that Obama's inability to bowl makes him elitist, Clinton's propensity for getting teary makes her unelectable and McCain throws a good party.

If you dig, and I mean really dig...

288 Views | 7 Replies

The price of everything continues to tick higher.  The prolonged increase in the price of fuel has finally begun to have its severe ramifications on the rest of the economy, incrementally driving up prices for goods, services, and food.  Coupled with the continued downward slide in the U.S. dollar and there is no denying it: inflation in all of its ugliness is here, and won't be going anywhere for some time to come.

Politicians, for as much as some may believe they really can change the world, can't do much of anything when it comes to the price of everything.  Short of price controls, which are very unlikely in this pro-business environment, there is nothing any politician can do tomorrow to lower the cost of anything that you pay for - especially the price of fuel.  Well, so long as all parties are being responsible about everything.  Flying in the face of that logic, however, we do have a Presidential election coming up this fall.  With that, we have gotten a woefully short sighted proposal designed to score political points while throwing the American people scraps and expecting them to embrace it as steak: a repeal of the federal gas tax.

John I don't know too much about economics McCain was the first out of the gate with this terrible...

160 Views | 0 Replies

...and with this map, we begin the long process to November 4th, election day.  I became politically aware in 2000, and I did follow the 2004 election quite closely, but as time has gone on my immersion in political news has grown, to the point where I believe I can subject myself to the posting of an electoral map of my own - and doing this many times between now and election day.  The plan is to do this bi-weekly (maybe monthly) for the time being, gradually increasing in frequency as we get to the convention and polls become more hot and heavy.  The data for this map is largely gleamed from a snapshot of Electoral-vote.com, with my own analysis.

This whole map is, of course, predicated on the notion that Hillary will not win the nomination - and without some titanic change of events that would potentially lead to civil war within the Democratic party, she's not going to win.  If anything, this map points to the impressive strength of Obama as he is currently running against a pack of Clintons and Senator McCain yet he's still...

299 Views | 2 Replies

What's wrong with this picture: Go to Google News and do a quick search for the term food riots.  You get (as of now) about 4,755 results.  The stories that appear, while some concern dire predictions about near future events, a majority of the stories are talking about situations developing right now.

A side effect of the steadily increasing price of oil has led to the desire for readily available biofuel, i.e. growing your own fuel (a-la Brazil).  This turns over land previously used to grow good old food to land used to grow food to be turned into fuel.  What is debatable is exactly how much growing capacity the world has to meet demand of food or fuel.  The inequalities in the world being as they are, there were starving people before this latest crisis began, but now their numbers being increased - driven by a sharp increase in the price of basic foods.  Debatable is whether the price increase is real (in which case we are screwed), just another speculator-driven bubble (which may explain oil), or a symptom of the U.S. Dollar's death dive (which probably explains oil).  What is not debatable is the effect that these increases are having on society in some third world nations, a crisis that is...

432 Views | 0 Replies

Coming on the heels of passing 4,000 dead U.S. soldiers in Iraq, any vague hopes that "The Surge" is working seem to be falling apart before our eyes.  What is being exposed is something very important to the American presence in Iraq: in the end, they have no control.

Shiite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr has decided to defy the American-backed government like he did before, and appears to be taking the leash off of the dog that is his Mehdi Army.  Gun battles are raging from Basra to Baghdad with threats to spread across the rest of the country.

Baghdad is under lock down:

Sadr has given the official go-ahead to start attacking the Iraqi Army and anyone supporting them, including the U.S....

432 Views | 0 Replies

There is nothing I can personally add to this.  This nightmare just won't stop.  Almost as amazing as the nightmare is the stubbornness of everyone who got us here.

2002 circa: "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties." - President Bush

2002 March xx: "Fuck Saddam, we're taking him out." - President Bush

2002 September 7: "From a marketing point of view, you don't roll out new products in August." - Andrew Card

2002 September 8: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." - NSA Adviser Rice

2002 December 21: "It's a slam-dunk case!" - CIA Director Tenet

2003 January 29: "British intelligence has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium...

700 Views | 4 Replies

There are thousands of sad stories around the country, thousands of people who are being punished for using what the Earth gives us naturally.  It costs over 45 billion dollars per year (as of 2005), it has helped put over one in every one-hundred Americans in jail, and then it leads to things like this:

Jayci Yaeger is a 10 year old in Nebraska, dying from cancer.  She perhaps has months to live.  She wants to see her father before she dies.  However since her father had the audacity to use drugs, he is treated as subhuman and the supposed sins of the father are visited upon the daughter.

976 Views | 2 Replies