Election

Today my father-in-law challenged me to write down why I would vote for Barack Obama and also why I would not vote for John McCain. There is so much negative information out there about Obama that i'm not surprised that so many people don't where he actually stands on issues.

As a missionary we would tell people that if they wanted to learn about the church, they should ask us missionaries instead of reading anti material. In that same way I went to each candidate site and found unbiased material to compile these two lists.

Why I Will Vote For Barack Obama

Education
Merit pay for teachers as well as higher pay for all teachers. Education plan increase of 18 billion dollars over current funding.

Energy
Wants to invest in new technologies to ease our dependence on fossil fuels. Proposed a bill to make plug-in hybrids and electric cars more viable.

Health Care
Implement guaranteed eligibility of affordable health care for all Americans, reduce costs, and require employer contributions.

Abortion
"I think that most Americans recognize that this is a profoundly difficult issue for the women and families who make these decisions. They don't make them casually. And I trust women to make these decisions in conjunction with their doctors and their families and their clergy." - Barack Obama

Gay Marriage
He personally believes that marriage is defined as a religious bond between a man and a woman, but believes that decisions about the title of marriage should be left to the states.

Taxation & Budget
Wants to restore PAYGO which requires any increases of one area of the budget to be offset by decreases in another area, which stops deficit spending.

Immigration
Obama supports a guest worker program. Obama has said that he "will not support any bill that does not provide an earned (not amnesty) path to citizenship for the undocumented population."

Environment
Pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 by creating a market-based cap-and-trade system.

Foreign Policy
* "Bringing a responsible end" to the war in Iraq and refocusing on the broader region.
* "Building the first truly 21st century military and showing wisdom in how we deploy it."
* "Marshalling a global effort" to secure, destroy, and stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
* "Rebuild and construct the alliances and partnerships necessary to meet common challenges and confront common threats," including global warming.
* "Invest in our common humanity" through foreign aid and supporting the "pillars of a sustainable democracy – a strong legislature, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, a vibrant civil society, a free press, and an honest police force."

Darfur
Supports more assertive action to stop genocide in Darfur.

Afghanistan
Calls for more prominent role from European countries so that the United States and
Great Britain aren’t doing the “dirty work” alone.

Iran & South Korea
Will actually have dialogue with the leaders of these countries to encourage better relations.


Why I Will Not Vote For John McCain

Foreign Policy
“Rogue State Rollback” policy. Arm, train, and equip groups to overthrow governments in disagreement with McCain administration. (I believe this is immoral and a key reason why many nations hate Americans)

Iraq
More focused on the United States maintaining a role in Iraq instead of handing control over to Iraqis.

Free Trade
When McCain was asked, "Should trade agreements include provisions to address environmental concerns and to protect workers' rights?", he answered, "No."

Energy
In a June 2008 analysis of McCain's positions, the Los Angeles Times said that "the Arizona senator has swerved from one position to another over the years, taking often contradictory stances on the federal government's role in energy policy."

McCain has voted to reduce federal funds for renewable and solar energy. He opposed tax credits in 2001 and 2006 for companies that generate power from solar, wind, geothermal and ocean wave energy.

Until 2005 McCain voted at least 7 times against nuclear power. He now calls for 45 new nuclear power facilities.

Environment
McCain voted against funding restoration of the everglades. On June 4, 2008 McCain stated support for funding of restoration of the everglades.

Abortion
In 1999, McCain said, "I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to undergo illegal and dangerous operations." On February 18, 2007, however, McCain stated, "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned.”

Education
On July 29, 2007, McCain voted against increasing federal student loans and Pell Grants and expanding eligibility for financial aid.

Immigration
Supports amnesty for illegal immigrants. (which disregards those who came legally)

Veterans
McCain opposes expanding the GI bill to increase pay to our veterans.

Health
McCain currently receives just over $58,000 per year in disability pension. Anyone who is disabled enough to receive $58,000 per year cannot be healthy enough to be the leader of the free world.

No Lie.

And this is where my plane crash landed. It wants to escape so bad.

Ouch!

It's important to take pens out of your shirt pocket before cuddling.

Lots of Work

Working a lot isn't much fun at all. My current work schedule is as follows: Mondays I go to work at PCCI at 9:45am and leave at 2pm. I start working at Chrysalis at 3pm and work till Tuesday morning at 9am. At 10am I head back to PCCI and work till around 6:30 (give or take an hour depending on the day). This little Monday/Tuesday dance is repeated for Wednesday/Thursday. On Fridays I work at PCCI from 10am till 7:30pm (also give or take an hour or so).


Don't get me wrong, I love getting the pay checks. It's also nice to have the weekends off. Lately, though, i've just been so exhausted in my time off that all I do is lay on my living room floor as my body attempts to relax and I just think of how happy I am not to be working. Hmmm.... I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. I'm thining that i'll chat with my boss at PCCI the first of next week and see what I can do to not work so much. It's just killing me.

One lesson (of many) I learned while living in New York is that money isn't everything. Yeah I know, it's cliche, but it's true. I came to find out that the average New Yorker has a different outlook on life than I did. Their view was to work as hard as you can every day at work so that you can rise to the top and be successful. I admire their determination, but I have a different outlook. I think we need to work hard and do what we need to do to be succesful at work for the purpose of supporting the rest of our lives. The ONLY reason i'm at work is to make all the time i'm not at work possible. I don't care if i'm successful in my job, as long as I think the rest of my life is succesful. It's just a means to an end. For this reason, having a family business would be pretty sweet. It takes away the worst part of work; being away from family.

Gas....

While watching the news this morning I noticed that the national average per gallon of gas rose a few more cents overnight. The current average price is $3.55 for regular and will probably raise a few more cents by the time i'm done typing this.

The price of gas has more than tripled in the eight years i've been driving. Why such an increase? Why now? I'm already broke as it is!

I googled the phrase "why are gas prices so high?" and met a bunch of different answers. Most seemed to be about one conspiracy theory or another. As much as aliens want to mess with us by driving up gas prices, I knew that most likely it was something more down to earth.

I then looked into the price of crude oil, since that's where we get gasoline and I ran into this little graph:


According to this graph oil prices per barrel are 5 times as high as they were when I started driving which tells me that even if oil prices level off we've still got some price hikes at the pump coming our way.

So what causes oil prices to rise? Greed seems to be on the top of everyone's list, but I don't really buy that. I searched around and found two pretty sound reasons oil prices have gone up so fast lately.

1. Short Supply. I guess my 7th grade science teacher was right after all. The world really WILL run out of oil some day... It turns out that they drill for oil in the places that are the cheapest and easiest to drill. There's more oil out there, but it's really expensive to get to. The more money they spend getting the oil, the more they charge when they sell it.
Most countries scaled back drilling oil wells almost 30 years ago when there was an overproduction of oil which caused oil prices to drop by half. Now we're feeling the effects of that scale back.
Also, with political unrest in Venezuela, Africa, and Iraq, getting oil from these critical regions is a lot tougher than it used to be.

2. The Weak Dollar. Oil is traded in US$. As the worth of the dollar plummets, everything that is traded in dollars becomes more expensive. For example: In 2000, when oil was $25 per barrel, you could buy a barrel for 30 euros. Currently, with oil at around $115 per barrel, you can get a barrel for about 73 euros. That is an increase of $90 (345%) per barrel, but only an increase of 43 euros (143%). If the dollar were as strong as the euro, we would probably be looking at gas prices of around $2.25 per gallon, which I would take in a second after seeing today's $3.55 price tag.

I Can't Wait..... Literally

I think there are a few different kind of patience. There's the kind of patience you show by sitting through a boring class. There's the kind you use when someone asks you a million questions in a row. These types of patience are obviously beneficial to mankind. It allows us to be productive and not kill each other so much. But then there's another kind of patience: the patience demanded of us to wait until December 25th to open our Christmas presents. I don't like this kind of patience.
My mom used to wrap my Christmas presents in multiple layers with notes on each layer which read "I know today isn't Christmas! STOP UNWRAPPING THIS PRESENT!" She knew me well.
Jill, my wife, and I are going to have a baby in September. The ultrasound where we can find out whether it's a boy or a girl is coming up in a few weeks. We always told each other that we weren't going to find out what it was. We wanted to be surprised....
I don't think i'm gonna make it another six months.
To make it worse, i'm taking a child development class right now. It's enough to feed my anxiety for the rest of the week.

Meetings

How many meetings does the world need?

Well, judging by the effectiveness of the meetings i've attended, zero. I am actually currently sitting in a meeting. My typing is working to my advantage, I think. It looks like i'm writing down notes. Looking around I see two people actually paying attention, which includes the person speaking. What are we going to get out of this meeting besides anxiety? A whole bunch of papers that i'll leave in my car for a few weeks and then throw away as part of my bi-annually car cleaning. *Speaking of which, the weather is getting nice outside. That means it's about car cleaning season.*

I'm of the persuasion that we, as Americans, are over-meetinged. We live in a technological world full of technology-whatnots, and how do we utilize this ingenuity? By using technology to communicate to each other the times and places which we should meet to communicate to each other....

While in high school I stumbled upon this great little website called quickdot.com. If wonders exist, it was a wonder. You could add these little boxes on your quickdot page wherein you would have little instant message sessions. They weren't so much instant messages, more like little message boards. So on one page you could see all your "quickdot" conversations at once. Simple, convenient, and many more adjectives of the like. You could even add group quickdots. We had a group of about thirty friends where we would all chat about whatever we felt like for the day. The best part was, just like any other message board, you didn't have to be on at the same time. You could log in any time during the day and see what everyone else had said and add your two cents.

Now that's a meeting I could get behind. Every time I saw a post from "that guy" who always had something to say but never seemed to have a point, i'd just skip it instead of sitting for ten minutes mentally repeating "we don't care, we're hungry, stop talking!"


*DISCLAIMER* quickdot.com went offline in 2001 despite my attempts to tell the world about it.