Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

I'm a huge fan of Barack Obama. However, the Nobel Peace Prize he has been awarded is very inappropriate. My roommate is of the opinion that it's more of a "premature" award, but things that are "premature" are "inappropriate" too.

I do believe that one day he will deserve it in the near future, but it seems kind of silly to award such a high award to someone who hasn't even been in a position of international influence for a year yet.

I can understand that Obama's whole message to the world is a lot like what the Nobel Prize Committee believes in, so they felt he deserved it. However, I am guessing there should be some other people out there who should be on the short list, who have been working at prize worthy causes for a little bit longer.

Obama has handled this situation about as well as possible. He too agreed that he didn't think he deserved the award. He still chose to accept the award as a call to action, though. This way he doesn't disrespect the award by turning it down, but he doesn't claim to be the savior of the world or anything.

I hope he manages to accomplish enough in his career to be worthy of the prize.

Kanye West = "Jackass"

By now, I'm sure you've heard about Kanye West's little stunt that ruined Taylor Swift's award speech at the Video Music Awards. The best thing to come of this, however, is President Obama calling Kanye West a "jackass."

I love it when high ranking political figures show their human side. I cheered for Dubya when he showed nice reflexes in dodging the shoes thrown at him. I'm glad Barack Obama was willing to react like a normal person to Kanye West being a jackass.

People Are Way Too Outraged About Obama's Speech To Students

Conservative parents fearing some mysterious socialist propaganda in Obama's upcoming speech to students are pretty much hypocritical and paranoid. Where have they been protecting our schools from propaganda all these years? They should be protesting the religious bits in our pledge of allegiance. Talk about brainwashing! That "under God" line is intended to be recited by all students daily?

Let's get that daily, religious brainwashing stuff out of our classrooms first before we worry about keeping the president from encouraging kids to stay in school in a speech that has not even happened again and will not be repeated daily in classrooms. Everyone should fight for freedom of religion and separation of church and state.

These rabid anti-Obama people are completely irrational hypocrites.

Birthers

This BBC opinion piece captures a lot of why I'm so annoyed at the idiocy the "Birther" movement shows about Americans. Barack Obama's citizenship is as proven of a fact as any other president's birth has been proven. People who are clinging to the notion that he might not be a citizen need to stop being morons.

Obama And Wiretapping

I'm a huge fan of Barack Obama. However, I do not like how he has adopted and potentially gone a step farther than even the Bush administration did with the federal government's right to wiretap. This is a very major cause for concern and I hope he rethinks this position.

Newsweek's "Secrets of the 2008 Campaign"

Newsweek did an amazing seven-part series of articles looking behind the scenes of John McCain's and Barack Obama's campaigns.

1. "How He Did It"
2. "Back From The Dead"
3. "The Long Siege"
4. "Going Into Battle"
5. "Center Stage"
6. "The Great Debates"
7. "The Final Days"

Lame Ducks

This whole lull period between an election and the newly elected officials taking office has such a strange atmosphere. In general, there's a bit of a feeling that the important stuff will be what happens at the beginning of next year. I suppose that our government never moves all that quickly, but it's like molasses solidifying now.

The last week since Barack Obama won the next presidency has been wonderful. Americans have regained some standing overseas. There's almost a sense of eagerness and anticipation to see what Obama will do to fix everybody's problems. Obama may have the most powerful office in the land, but he's not omnipotent. I hope people realize that our problems will take time to fix and Congress needs to cooperate.

Alas, though, crunch is starting at work again this coming week, so I'll be absorbed into day to day matters again.

President-Elect Barack Obama

This has been an amazing election and I'm glad Barack Obama will be our next president. I hope John McCain goes back to being the John McCain of 2000 instead of selling out to the far right in order to secure their votes.

The difference in what the two tickets inspire was strongly evident in their speeches tonight. John McCain's crowd contained the negative, divisive elements of our country. They boo-ed Barack Obama and even Sarah Palin. Barack Obama's party cheered and was genuinely supportive of Obama's message of unity.

I really can't help feeling like we have just witnessed a major turning point in American history. This man can inspire us like very few leaders have been able to.

Another Big Endorsement

In the last week, we've seen Barack Obama pick up the endorsement of influential Republicans such as Colin Powell and Scott McClellan. Now the Anchorage Daily News has written up a very nice article explaining why they endorse Barack Obama. Yes, Anchorage is the biggest city in Sarah Palin's home state, meaning that's the biggest newspaper in Alaska.

Bush's former secretary of state, Bush's former press secretary, and Alaska's biggest newspaper make quite an impressive list of endorsements for Obama.

FiveThirtyEight has McCain's chances of winning at under 5% again. This does not mean Democrats should get complacent. It means by continuing to push hard, Obama will likely win.

Incompetence, Perceiving It, And Politics

I love the field of psychology. It gives so much insight into the way people around us behave on a daily basis. I stumbled across and article discussing the relationship between incompetence, the ability to perceive incompetence and how it applies to politics.

One of the main marketing points the Republican Party has been playing on is how the Democrats are "elitist." They push for candidates similar to George W. Bush, who are very incompetent by any objective measures that I can conceive of.

The article discusses how the most incompetent people overestimate their own skills the most and underestimate the skills of others the most. This applies perfectly to Sarah Palin. Her attitude of "my way is the right way" shows this basic tendency to not realize her own shortcomings and to believe that other people's way is wrong.

The article also discusses how the most competent people accurately estimate their own skills but somewhat overestimate the skills of others. This applies perfectly to Barack Obama. He has the attitude that he can work with others because he believes they they are capable of coming to an agreement with each other.

When given the choice of these two types of mindsets, I think it's pretty clear which mindset I would prefer leading our country.

I would have liked to have drawn a comparison between Barack Obama and John McCain, however, I don't think John McCain is nearly as incompetent as Sarah Palin (aside from him choosing Palin as his running mate). The comparison with Palin is still important, however, because there is a very legitimate chance that Sarah Palin might become president if John McCain is elected, given his age and history of cancer.

What A Crazy Election

(no blog posts on most of the stuff that's been going on since I've been pretty busy with work and other things. e.g. I upgraded my computer's motherboard, cpu, ram, and video card, which ate up a bunch of time reinstalling stuff)

Even after all the crazy things that have happened so far, I do believe that this is the first American Presidential election where the endorsement of terrorist groups has come into play.

Al Qaeda supporters back John McCain as the choice more favorable to their goals.

At the moment, though, Five Thirty Eight has Obama with a significant lead, so if all goes well, Al Qaeda will be disappointed.

Presidential Debate 1 - Lie Tally

We won't get into the stupid drama of McCain trying to chicken out of the first debate to try to prevent the inept Palin from having to debate Biden in the Vice Presidential debate. However, the Presidential debate did happen as planned and it was intense. Both politicians made a few misstatements and downright lies.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/factchecking_debate_no_1.html

Here's the scorecard: Downright lies are worth 2 points, misstatements are worth 1 point. It's a little subjective what is a downright lie, but here we go.

Kissinger and preconditions: McCain: 2.
Downright lie because Kissinger was quoted as saying exactly what Obama said he was.

Obama and raising taxes in the past on people who make $42000 a year: Obama: 2, McCain: 1.
Obama lied about voting on the bill. McCain however, still overall made a misstatement in that that wasn't the full story of the bill.

Troop withdrawal timetables: McCain: 1.
He mischaracterized the statement by the general as being specifically critical about Obama's plan.

Earmarks increasing: McCain: 2.
Flat out lie since it's the opposite of the truth.

Bear study: McCain: 2.
If it's so bad, why did McCain not attempt to remove the specific $3 million dollar to study bears from the bill.

Iraqi surplus: Obama: 1.
Obama's number was off by like 30%. He's right there's a surplus though.

Buying foreign oil: McCain: 1.
His number is off by like 40%

Obama's tax cut: Obama: 1.
His plan would lower taxes for 95% of families with children. Only 81% overall.

Employers taxed for healthcare: Obama: 1.
Employees themselves pay the tax, which, sounds even worse to me.

Obama's universal healthcare: McCain: 2.
McCain totally mischaracterizes Obama's plan as taking away people's right to choose.

McCain on Eisenhower: McCain: 1.
Misremembered the quote.

Obama on troop withdrawals: Obama: 1.
Has been quoted saying differently. Maybe he's softened his stance?

Obama and Iran: McCain: 2
Flat out lie about Obama's stance.

McCain on Russia and Georgia: McCain: 1
McCain may disagree with Obama, but it's not fair to say Obama's naive when that's the White House's stance as well.

McCain on Boeing: McCain: 1
McCain's motivations were not exactly clear in this.

McCain on Obama and nuclear waste: McCain: 2
Flat out lie on Obama's stance.

McCain's stance on alternative energy: Obama: 1, McCain: 2
Obama exaggerated how many times McCain voted against alternative energy. However, McCain flat out lied that he had never opposed it.

Obama's Senate subcommittee: McCain: 1
He implies that Obama should have had hearings when in fact it wasn't Obama's job to.

McCain on Reagan and Lebanon: McCain: 1
He didn't actually vote before sending troops.

Final Score:
McCain: 22 falsehood points (or roughly equivalent to 11 outright lies)
Obama: 7 falsehood points (or roughly equivalent to 3.5 outright lies)

We have the Republicans, as expected, outlying the Democrats by 3:1.

Economists Comparing Obama vs McCain

Scott Adams conducted a survey of 500 economists to try to figure out which presidential candidate would be better for the economy. The interpretation of the results is obviously subject to a lot of subjective calls, but take a look yourself.

Sleazy Politics

In the last few weeks, the presidential race has become absolute garbage in terms of content. Ever since the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate, the Republican campaign has devolved into outright lies and complete avoidance of issues.

Please, I urge everybody to pay attention to sites like: FactCheck.org

Both sides have made exaggerated or false claims, but McCain and Palin lately have been so full of lies that it's ridiculous:

Palin on Alaskan energy production - Supposedly she knows a lot about energy? Yet it clearly does not occur to her that there are other forms of energy but oil. I wonder what her stance on alternative energy must be.
McCain lying about Palin on earmarks - She keeps claiming she was against earmarks, against the "Bridge to Nowhere" but those are outright lies.
Palin on holy war - She believes our war in the Middle East is a religious cause? Just like the good old Bush "crusade" comment.

Palin's ignorance of what the"Bush Doctrine" is - She's all for war but she doesn't even know what Bush's reason for getting us into war was?
Palin on getting us into war against Russia - Sure, we may be fighting a war in Afghanistan and Iraq, but why not tackle a former superpower as well? I'm not afraid of nuclear war!

McCain lying about Obama's vote in favor of a bill to educate children in an attempt to prevent sexual molestation - McCain must be pro child sexual predator then? Maybe he's courting their votes.

What's the truth about Palin? She's a religious right wing extremist. That's how she's won over the extreme right wing votes.

Palin wanting creationism taught in schools - She believes her religion has a place in public schools. I don't see her pushing for evolution to be taught in religious schools. Or for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism to be taught in schools since that is another view on creationism.

Palin is anti-choice - It's really great that she doesn't believe in abortion and practices what she preaches, however she's in favor of taking away women's rights.

Palin abuses her governorship to attempt to pressure an official to fire a state trooper that was in a child custody battle with her sister. Then fires him when he doesn't.

Palin abuses her governorship to fire a librarian who refused to censor books according to Palin's whim.

This list goes on and on. And the worst part is that the Republican Party is gaining ground. What is wrong with all you Republicans out there who support them?

Sarah Palin

John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate is rather disturbing to me. This lady is pretty much a crazy religious nut and will be one small step from the presidency, given McCain's seemingly frail health.

She's ignorant of the history of the Pledge of Allegiance. She's extremely anti-abortion, however at least she practices what she preaches given that her 17 year old daughter is having a baby soon and she herself chose to give birth to an unborn baby diagnosed with Down Syndrome. I mean, I give her credit for standing firm in her belief on the issue, but really, is it morally right for a parent to give birth to a child who will suffer his whole life because of an incurable disease that you knew about ahead of time? The religious nuts will say "life is sacred" and all sorts of things, but really, an early stage, unborn fetus is not a fully functional organism according to scientific definitions.

I dunno, I'm pretty sure the religious nuts were already going to vote for McCain, so I hope this helps push the more moderate (read: sane) voters toward Obama's side.

McCain's Terrible Speech

John McCain gave a terrible speech in response to Obama. Like really terrible. Terrible to the point that news reporters were laughing at it and it really would have been better if he hadn't given it. He sounds so weak and pitiful. I don't know how anybody can vote for this guy.

Barack Obama Wins the Democratic Nomination

I was pretty sure it was coming, but Obama has finally won the Democratic nomination. I'm looking forward to real general election campaigning now against McCain. Obama is seriously, the most interesting presidential candidate we've had within my lifetime. Hopefully he can bring about the change that he often talks about. That glimmer of hope he brings is exactly why he's so popular with us younger voters.

Barack Obama's Amazing Speech

Today, Barack Obama delivered one of the most amazing speeches of recent years. I highly recommend listening to it or watching it. He does an awesome job of boiling down why there are still racial tensions in our country and asks us to try to find common ground to move forward. If everyone in the country would listen to this speech and think about what it meant, there would be a lot more progress in general. The people of our country really do need to unite to move forward.

Political Compass

I remember stumbling across http://www.politicalcompass.org/ a while back and finding it to be a very interesting site. They attempt to add one more axis to the usual "right" and left" labels that are used in politics. They achieve fairly interesting results. I recommend taking their test to figure out where your political leanings are just to get a good idea.

This is a graph of their results for the current crop of presidential candidates.
http://www.politicalcompass.org/usprimaries2008

Who Should You Vote For In 2008

This is a nice little flash app that lets you answer some questions and then matches you to which political candidate answered the most closely to how you answered. My one beef with it is that it only goes for 100% matches. There are some questions where there were several appealing choices, so really I could go for a candidate that chose any of them.

Anyways, surprisingly, Barack Obama came out as third closest for me (due to the lack of gray support). Instead, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich were closer matches.

However, the best part about this app is not their matching system. It's that if you hover your mouse over each of the questions, it will show you a quote expressing each candidate's stand on that issue. Thus this thing provides a very convenient way to do some quick research on the candidates you're considering.