I told myself that I wasn’t going to blog about politics anymore, but this isn’t about politics, it’s about history. There is so much that I want to say, I don’t even know where to begin. I’m going to do this list style, because if I try and write it all out in paragraphs, it will just be one big stream of consciousness mess.
Tuesday night was the most amazing night ever. I’m not sure I will ever experience anything like it again. I consider myself a fairly moderate guy, but I don’t like George W. Bush at all. I am embarrassed to have him as my president. I also can’t stand the political style of today’s republican party. The fear mongering, the smear campaigns, the ideological bullshit… I find it all deeply offensive. Barack Obama is the polar opposite of all of the crazy in the last 8 years. To see such an impressive candidate elected, who has eloquence, style, and intellect, and who just happens to be the first black president… It’s overwhelming. Completely and totally overwhelming.
I took the day off and volunteered to canvass in north St. Louis county on Tuesday to help get out the vote for Obama. I was a little apprehensive about it. I had never volunteered for a political campaign before, and the idea of going door to door didn’t really appeal to me. I knew this election was important though, and I knew that just voting for Obama wasn’t enough. When I heard that north St. Louis county needed volunteers, I decided to give it a shot. It turned out to be a great experience. The neighborhoods I was in were strong Obama neighborhoods. Some people even honked and cheered for me. I don’t know if we really made much of a difference, but it made the day much more meaningful to me, and that was well worth the effort. Also, I walked for nearly 8 hours, and 3 days later, my legs are still a little sore.
As much as I want to brag about the fact that I took a day off and canvassed for Obama, I am humbled by volunteers like Jaelithe (and countless others) who have been volunteering for months and have given hours and hours of their time to help elect Obama. The entire world owes them a big thank you. Seriously. Thank You.
Going to the huge Obama rally under the arch and canvassing on election day were great experiences for me. I spend most of my life surrounded by fairly conservative republicans. I went to college in Nebraska and I work in fairly conservative industry. Don’t get me wrong, I love Nebraska and I love my coworkers, but it’s nice to be around other people that, for the most part, see things the way I do. I regret not volunteering more for Obama, maybe in 4 years. All of this has me thinking that I should look for something to volunteer for now. It doesn’t have to be political, but it would be nice if it was related to democratic causes. Any ideas?
As great as election day was, there were still some disappointments. Missouri is still red, albeit barely red. California passed prop 8. Why can’t we just get over the whole gay thing? 86% of Missouri voted to make english the official language. 86%, seriously? And worst of all, apparently the rest of St. Louis county does not love the MetroLink nearly as much as I do. Whoever voted against the MetroLink funding is hear by forbidden from complaining about gas prices.
I almost want to apologize for posting something so political. I do tend to be liberal, especially on social issues, but ultimately I believe the optimal solution to any issue is a balance between liberal and conservative principals. My issues with the Republican party are not so much issues with conservatism as they are with the style of conservatism embraced by today’s Republicans. I sincerely hope that one outcome of this election is a better republican party. A few republicans are suggesting that it was a mistake for their party to nominate a moderate like John McCain and that they should have stood stronger behind Sarah Palin. I think this is way off target. If you are a republican, you can be conservative without pandering to the extreme elements of your party, and you can be conservative without resorting to the politics of fear. You can be conservative without being crazy. For the love of our country, please do so.
Okay, enough politics. I have a new empire red KitchenAid mixer! and I’m going to make pumpkin cookies this weekend! and I’m going to blog about it! Are you excited?!? You should be.
Hello, this is the post where I blog about the same thing that everybody else has already blogged about. I would have posted this sooner, but I went out and bought one of the new MacBooks. I’ve been spending all my time importing stuff from my PC to the MacBook. I might blog about the whole switching to Mac thing someday, but not today. I will say that my MacBook is pretty, and I do like pretty. Also, this is the first blog post I have written on the MacBook, and the first post I have written on my couch in my living room. Let me know if you can tell the difference.
Why am I here again? Oh yeah, I went to the Obama Rally on Saturday. It was amazing. You can see me in the picture above. I am the guy in the dark gray jacket, 117 rows from the top, 65 people from the right. I think it’s one of the better pictures of me.
I debated for a long time whether or not to go to the rally. I had never been to a political rally before, and I didn’t really have anybody to go with. Still, I knew that I liked Obama, and I knew that this could be a historic event. So I got up early on Saturday and drove to the nearest MetroLink station. The MetroLink station wasn’t too crowded, but there were Obama supporters there already. There was an elderly couple, a group of women, and a young family. The young family had a young daughter that kept asking questions about Obama. That was cute. The train wasn’t too crowded when I got on, but within two stations it was, and by the time we made it downtown, it was packed. After I got off the train, I started walking towards the end of the line, it was a LONG line.
After standing in line, I didn’t think I was going to get in. Once the area close to the stage was full though, they let everyone in without going through security, and that made the line move a lot faster. I ended up at the top of the hill, not a bad view once I knew where to look. This is what I saw. I wish you could see the arch in the picture. It was awesome to look up and see the huge arch above a huge crowd of people.
The next picture is Obama right after coming on stage. He is wearing a white shirt and is below and to the left of the spotlights.
This is a cropped version of the picture above. It’s easier to see Obama this way.
This is the picture above zoomed in on Obama. I had to do this, so that I would know that I was actually looking at Obama, and that I even managed to take a picture of him.
Hey look, even Jesus supports Obama. I love taking pictures of slightly crazy religious people. Although to be fair, this guy seemed pretty nice. Right behind him were other protesters with pictures of aborted fetuses. I prefer patriotic Jesus dude.
This is a picture of people leaving the rally with the arch in the background.
Here is the line of people waiting to get back on the MetroLink. I hung out downtown for few hours hoping that the MetroLink would clear up, it didn’t work. If you look close, there is a guy playing the saxophone. I love street musicians.
The picture below is Laclede’s Landing a hour or so after the rally. Downtown was filled with Obama supporters long after the rally was over. It was cool. The energy just kind of hung around.
I’m so glad that I went to the rally. It is definitely something I will remember for a long time. It’s hard for me to put into words what the atmosphere was like. What I remember most is the people. It was an incredibly diverse group, different races, religions, sexual orientation, style of dress, etc.. They were all there. For some reason, I feel a million times more comfortable in a diverse group people. This does not really make sense, because I’m just your average boring straight white guy. I think it’s mostly because I’m a pretty independent guy. It’s important for me to feel free to be my own person. When everybody around me is the same, I feel pressured to conform or something. This is also why I like to shop at the Target in the city.
I knew that I was going to vote for Obama long before this rally, so it’s not like it swayed my vote or anything. I will say that I feel more invested in this election now. Before the rally, I wanted Barack Obama to win, but it was just a personal thing. Now I want Obama to win for all of the people in that crowd. While I like Obama a lot, to many people in that crowd, Obama means more than I can imagine. Now I want this election for them. I agree with Colin Powell. Obama is a transformational figure. He is electrifying. He definitely has style, but he also has the depth and substance to back it up. You don’t see that often in this life, I hope we don’t miss out on the opportunity to see it for the next four years.
I’ve been thinking about politics a lot lately. I don’t know why, it must have been something I saw on TV or heard on the radio. Oh wait, that’s right, it the ONLY thing I’ve seen on TV or heard on the radio lately. I love politics though. I once heard John McCain say that politics is a collegiate sport. He was so right. I get the same feeling watching the conventions and debates as I do watching Husker football. This is going to be a messy blog post, because my political identity is a complicated and messy thing. Here is the short version:
I am supporting Barack Obama for President of the Unites States, because to do otherwise would go against every fiber of my being.
That pretty much sums it up. They rest of this blog post is going to be me trying to document the evolution of my political identity over time. I don’t recommend reading any more of this post, it might drive you insane. Still here? Alright, here we go…
Jimmy Carter was the President when I was born. I don’t remember anything about Jimmy Carter, in fact the only real memories I have of Jimmy Carter are from Clinton’s presidency. I do remember Ronald Regan though. Ronald Regan was my hero. I lived in the United States, he was President of the United States, and therefore I loved him. It was weird, because for the first 11 years of my life, Ronald Regan was the only President I had known. I knew there had been other Presidents, but in my mind, Ronald Regan was THE President of the United States.
I don’t remember much about the 1984 elections. I remember that Walter Mondale had chosen a female running mate, but as far as I was concerned, Ronald Regan was the President, and therefore there was no need to have a silly election. I also remember Mary Lou Retton at the 1984 Olympics. In fact, when I think of the 1984 elections, I almost instantly think of Mary Lou Retton. Weird, but true.
I do remember the 1988 elections. What I remember most is that I did not like Michael Dukakis. It was bad enough that Regan wasn’t going to be President anymore. Why on earth would we want anyone other than Regan’s Vice President to be President? I remember that I was on a baseball trip with my Dad, and we were in Boston to see the Red Sox play. As we were walking through Boston, I made the comment “I hope we don’t run in to Dukakis” many times. I seriously thought it was possible that we would run into Dukakis, and he would be all like “Wanna have lunch”, and I would refuse that invitation, because he was not Regan’s Vice President and therefore he was not my friend.
The 1992 elections were the first elections that I really paid any serious attention too. You know, beyond deciding who was my friend and who wasn’t. At first, I was all for George Bush. I remember that my Grandma was mad at George Bush because of the high crime rate in D.C. This seemed utterly rediculous to me, because well, it was utterly rediculous. In response, I took to chanting “Vote for Bush, Vote for Bush” whenever my Grandma was around. Somewhere out there is a VHS videotape of me chanting “Vote for Bush”. If you find it, please destroy it. Not long after this, I started to pay attention to what the candidates were saying, and I decided that Bush wasn’t my man. Okay, here comes one of the most painful and embarrassing things for me to admit: If I could have voted in 1992, I would have voted for Ross Perot. Why? He had pie charts. I f***ing love pie charts. Someday I will write a blog post containing a bunch of charts that I have made throughout my life, and you will love it. Graphical representations of information for the win baby! Woooooo!
Moving on…
I voted for the first time in 1996, and I voted for Bill Clinton. At this point I was a pretty solid democrat. I was in college at the time, and one of my fraternity brothers was a big republican, he was president of the college republicans and I think he even went to the republican national convention that year. It was fun arguing politics with him. Today he is a gay man living in Chicago with his partner. It’s always the conservatives.
In 2000, I voted for Al Gore. George Bush was far too socially conservative for my taste. I also remember being disappointed that the republicans didn’t nominate John McCain. To me, the fact that the republican party nominated someone like George Bush over someone like John McCain speaks volumes about the priorities and mentality of the republican party. At the time I was still okay with George Bush. I knew we didn’t see eye to eye on many issues, but I figured that he would still be a good president. I was totally wrong about that.
The 2004 elections were a little difficult for me. I felt like you had two choices, you could be a Michael Moore democrat or you believed that George Bush was second only to Jesus. I wasn’t feeling either one of these options, but ultimately, I was much more comfortable with John Kerry than I was with George Bush, so I voted for Kerry.
Which brings us to today, 2008, and the election between Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. Who is Palin’s running mate again? Oh yeah, John McCain. I admit that I have great respect for John McCain, and deep down inside, I think we see eye to eye on many issues. Unfortunately, John McCain is on the wrong team, and his pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate makes this abundantly clear. The fact of the matter is, a vote for John McCain isn’t just a vote for John McCain, it is also a vote for the republican party and a vote for Sarah Palin. This is not a vote I am willing to make.
I am a big fan of Barack Obama. I wasn’t completely sold on Obama at first, but he had me with his “A More Perfect Union” speech. After 8 years of Bush, it would be nice to have an articulate President. A President that looks at reality as it is and tries to find the best path forward, rather than a President who adheres to an ideology in spite of reality. So I guess it’s pretty obvious by now, I’m voting for Barack Obama in 2008.
When I started this post, I wanted to try and describe my political identity, but it’s hard. On the surface, I have always voted democrat, but I don’t consider myself a democrat as much as I consider myself a non-republican. When I think of the republicans, this is what I think of:
The Religious Right
Irrational Homophobia and Related Policies
Abstinence Only Sex Education
Anti Stem Cell Research Policies
Fear Based Politics
The Whole Terri Schiavo Thing
A lot of other stuff that just seems completely nuts to me
I realize that there is a lot more to the republican party than the issues above, but the republicans lack of judgment on social issues makes me question their judgment in every other area. To me, the republicans seem to be a party of ideology first, everything else second. This isn’t to say that the republican ideology is always wrong, it’s just that they never stop to think about whether or not it is right or wrong.
Regardless of what I just said about the republicans, I don’t feel liberal. On social issues, I am fairly liberal, but in other areas there are times when a conservative approach is better, and there are times when a liberal approach is better. I like balance. There are many issues that I disagree with the democrats on, but ultimately the democratic party is a more balanced and rational party than the republican party, and until that changes, I will be voting democrat.
So I was having lunch at my desk today and reading CNN.com. This is what I do most days, eat at my desk and read CNN. I’m a wild and crazy guy. Anyways, I read this article about the Amethyst Initiative. The Amethyst Initiative is a group of chancellors and presidents from United States universities and colleges that have signed a statement asking for debate on the 21 year-old drinking age. The Amethyst Initiative believes that the 21 year-old drinking age is not working and that it is creating a culture of binge drinking on college campuses.
All I can say is: Amen. This has been a pet issue of mine since I was a freshman in college (13 years ago, yeah, I’m old). A little background: I went to a small liberal arts college in small town in Nebraska. Doane College in Crete, Nebraska to be exact. Doane had about 1,000 students and most students lived on campus all 4 years. I loved it, everyone knew everyone, and there was this great sense of community. It was the best 4 years of my life. While I was at Doane, there was a fairly liberal drinking policy. Students who were 21 or older could have alcohol in their rooms and we could have parties on campus. Technically you were supposed to be 21 to drink, but as you would expect, this was frequently violated.
I had my first beer at Doane in the Spring of 1996 on the 4th floor of Smith Hall at the end of my fraternities Hell Week. It was okay. I wasn’t a big drinker then, and I’m not now. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a cold beer at a baseball game or visiting a winery every now and then, but I’ve never been drawn to alcohol they way some people are. Even though I wasn’t a big drinker, I always thought Doane’s alcohol policy was exactly as it should be. With most students living on campus throughout their 4 years of college, Doane had a great sense of community. The alcohol policy was a big part of that. It is hard to ask the average 21 or 22 year-old college student to live on campus if he or she can’t drink on campus. Doane’s alcohol policy also limited the temptation for students to go off campus to drink, which I am sure prevented a significant amount drunk driving.
There was a lot of underage drinking at Doane, but I never really saw it as an issue. If you put a group of 18-22 year-olds together, the 18-20 year olds are going to drink just as much as the 21-22 year olds. I’m struggling with how to say this, but if something is going to happen, right or wrong, it is best to let it happen out in the open. When you push groups and activities underground, things go bad. When I think of my time at Doane, the first thing I think of is the sense of community. In that community, there were heavy drinkers (I lived with a few ), moderate drinkers, and people who barely or never drank. We were all one community though, and within that community there was accountability and people to fall back on when you made a mistake. If someone got too drunk and out of control, there was always a sober person available to deal with it. If you got too drunk, made an ass of yourself, and didn’t remember it the next day, someone would remind you and then remind you again later.
If Doane did not have a liberal alcohol policy, I think the community that I loved so much would have been split into pieces. Students who choose to drink would do it secretly on campus, or worse, off campus. Not only that, they would have done so surrounded by nothing but other drunk people, which would only encourage more drinking, which would lead to all kinds of crazy. On the other hand, the students who didn’t choose to drink would spend every weekend night watching rented movies in the dorm lobby, and today they would have really crappy stories to tell about their college days.
Since college, I have always felt that the drinking age should be 19. 18 is okay too, but I like 19 because almost everyone in college is 19 or over, and few high school students are over 18. I also think it should be an unspoken rule that 18 year-olds on college campuses can drink. Whatever the drinking age is, it is going to be arbitrary. It’s not like there is a magic age at which you are suddenly responsible enough to drink, and if there is, it is probably closer to 35 than 21. I say pick the drinking age that is the most natural for our society, and I think that age is 19 (maybe 18).
This is probably where I should end this blog post, but I read a few more articles on the Amethyst Initiative, and some of them sent me off into an internal rant that prevented me from getting any real work done this afternoon. I found this blog post by Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune to be particularly irritating. You should read the whole thing, but here is an excerpt:
College-age people who favor the change might ask themselves: If the drinking age is lowered, whose funeral will I be attending as a result?
Seriously? Are you kidding me? This is a completely ridiculous thing to say. A lot of the criticism of the Amethyst Initiative seems to be based on the idea that a higher drinking age reduces drunk driving deaths. This is an old argument that gets applied to everything from alcohol, to cigarettes, to trans-fats and high fructose corn syrup. Ever hear of a little thing called personal responsibility? No? Hmm… Look it up. I do not doubt that that a higher drinking age lowers drunk driving deaths, but an even higher drinking age would lower them even more. Prohibiting alcohol all together would lower deaths even further. I wonder if that has ever been tried? Hmm… A rational person would say that we need to balance personal freedoms with the cost of those freedoms to society. I highly doubt that a 21 year-old drinking age strikes that balance any better than an 18 or 19 year-old drinking age.
The current 21 year-old drinking age is about as effective at preventing drunk driving as abstinence only sex ed is at preventing teen pregnancy and STDs. That means it’s not very effective. Rather than trying to prevent underage drinking, why don’t we put those efforts towards encouraging people to drink responsibly and holding them accountable when they do not. One good step in this direction is to lower the drinking age and allow college communities to exist in open and safe environments where young people can find their way into this crazy crazy world.
This was impressive. I’m not used to a politician being so… what’s the word… honest? straight forward? Whatever it is, I like it. He didn’t spin anything. He didn’t downplay anything. He didn’t try to distance himself from anything. He didn’t over simplify anything. He provided an accurate, educated, and honest analysis of the situation and his feelings about it. This is such a refreshing change from the current administration, that I’m stunned. Maybe I’m just caught up in the moment, and maybe I won’t be as awe struck in a few days, but right now, it’s hard to imagine voting for anyone else.
Today I did something I have never done before. I voted for a republican: John McCain. I was debating weather or not to even vote in the primary, because I couldn’t decide between Hillary and Obama. Then I realized that I’d be fine with either Hillary or Obama, but McCain is really the only republican that I’m comfortable with. To be honest, I like John McCain a lot, even if I don’t agree with him on every issue. This is what I know about John McCain: Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter don’t like him, He has called Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell “Agents of Intolerance”., and He believes in evolution.
I know a lot more about John McCain, but if all I knew about a candidate was the three things above, I’d vote for him/her. That being said, McCain is more socially conservative that I’d like. When it comes down to the real election, I probably won’t vote for him, but I might.
), moderate drinkers, and people who barely or never drank. We were all one community though, and within that community there was accountability and people to fall back on when you made a mistake. If someone got too drunk and out of control, there was always a sober person available to deal with it. If you got too drunk, made an ass of yourself, and didn’t remember it the next day, someone would remind you and then remind you again later.
Today I did something I have never done before. I voted for a republican: John McCain. I was debating weather or not to even vote in the primary, because I couldn’t decide between Hillary and Obama. Then I realized that I’d be fine with either Hillary or Obama, but McCain is really the only republican that I’m comfortable with. To be honest, I like John McCain a lot, even if I don’t agree with him on every issue. This is what I know about John McCain: 
