Thursday, October 30, 2008

Upcoming Posts.

Over the next week or so I plan to start getting back to blogging on a regular basis. Here are a few things I'm thinking about blogging about.

-I am taking a paid holiday from work next Wednesday and will post my post-mortem on the election. This will most likely be several posts to include: my analysis of the numbers and what they mean, the key turning points of the campaign, and most likely separate posts about how Obama won and how McCain lost.

-After the election is over, and I'm no longer fixated on the horse-race aspect, I'll probably find myself moving a little closer to the center. The campaign season (I think do to the competition factor) seems to push people a little further to the poles, and I have been no exception.

- I am going to continue to pretend that they are not having a college football season this year.

-I'm working on a post about the difference between fairness and equality, how the two are not the same and in certain instances can be antithetical to each other.

-I'm planning to post pics of my new AK-47. If Obama follows through with his plan to bring back the "assault weapons" ban, I hope to sell it at some point in the future for a tidy profit.

-I'm looking for some kind of widget that will show a tally of how much money I've saved, how much I've prolonged my life, etc. since I quit smoking 2 weeks ago.

-I intend to write about my political journey over the past year or two, how I went from far right to center to inching leftward to moving back to somewhere a little right of center.

-I'm going to try to right about things that aren't overtly political, but that piss me off about our "post-adulthood" society in general.

-If McCain wins I will be insufferable and you should consider yourself lucky you don't have to be around me. If Obama wins, I will take credit for predicting it in the very first post I wrote on this blog in either late December or early January.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Debate BINGO II

I'm doing this in a little different format this time. I've got 12 phrases or words from each candidate, and will pick 16 of them to put on one card. (these may be any combination 8-8, 12-4, etc.) So here is my list.

Obama:
-"Failed policies of the last 8 years"
-"Al Qaeda"
-"Renewable energy"
-"Regulation"
-"Tax on health care benefits"
- "Government that works for you."
- "Middle-class"
- "$250,000"
-"Scare tactics"
-"Hope"
-"Working Americans"
-"Warren Buffett"

McCain:
-"Judgment"
-"Reach across the aisle"
-"Petraeus"
-"Liberal"
-"Corruption"
-"Reform"
-"Fannie Mae"
-"Ronald Reagan"
-"KGB"
-"Earmark"
-"Capital Gains"
-"Ebay" (I just have a feeling about this one.)

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

My Debate BINGO cards.

This is something I'm going to do to keep myself entertained during tomorrow's Presidential debate. The momentum all seems to be headed in Senator Obama's direction. I'm about 75% sure he'll win at this point, barring something good happening economically for a change or McCain being able to jump-start his campaign again. This doesn't look like it will happen given the recent focus on Bill Ayers, a strategy which seems very likely to back-fire. I'm also sure there will be nothing new revealed to me about either candidate. (I've listened to them, researched their voting records, read all of their books, etc.) I've decided to keep the debate interesting by playing debate-BINGO. So I've made a card for 16 of each candidate's most overused phrases and will check off a square each time they say one. I'm interested to see who fills their card first.

These are McCain's:
1)"maverick"- This one was used up a long time ago.
2)"naive"- I will count it if he says "naivete" as well.
3) "surge"- This one of course will only count if used with regard to Iraq.
4) "General Petraus"
5) "clean coal"- I'm going to confess here. I have no idea what the difference is.
6)"voted against funding the troops"- This one won't have to be word for word. If the first three are used, but with some other term for our armed forces, I'll still count it.
7) "reached across the aisle"- I like it when he uses this phrase because I can always hear teeth grinding to the right of me.
8) "on the job training"- Because he doesn't need it, and the other guy probably does, get it?
9) "country first"
10) "earmark"- I'm actually going to do a word-count on this one.
11) "nuclear"- How cool is it to actually have a Republican candidate that can pronounce this word? It's been a while.
12) "reform"- Another one I will be keeping a word-count on.
13) "my friends"- I kind of like this one actually. Makes him seem like a really bad-ass version of Mr. Rogers.
14)"liberal"- People on the right say this word with as much scorn as people on the left say the word "oil".
15) "experience"- Hey, why not? If you look at the last 50 years, the less experienced guy hardly ever wins .
16) "second highest corporate tax rate in the world" -Did you know the United States has... well, I guess you do now.


Now for Obama.
1) "change"- This one was so obvious I almost left it out. I will do a word count on this one, only counting it if it appears more than 5 times.
2) "hard-working Americans"- This is my current least favorite political cliche'. It has replaced the terms "middle-class" and "working poor" which actually, you know, meant something.
3) "failed policies of the last 8 years"-This is the phrase that will most likely carry him to the big 270. I will also be keeping a word-count on this one
4) "tough diplomacy"- This one is so vague as to be absolutely meaningless, but people seem to be buying it. I see saying that you'll "use diplomacy" to solve the Iran crisis as being about as helpful as saying you'll "use economics" to solve the mortgage crisis.
5) "from the bottom up"
6) "3rd term"- No need to re-invent the wheel here, just keep running against Bush.
7) "top 1%" -An evil group of people, aside from Hollywood celebrities and Warren Buffett.
8) "green jobs" - We will also accept "5 million new jobs". Hey why not promise 10 million? or 100 million? People who believe government creates wealth, rather than just moving it around will probably be even more impressed.
9) "ethics reform"- At which point I will laugh. A searchable database to see all the ways our money is being pissed away? How did the Republic survive so long without this guy?
10) "Dick Lugar"
11) "hurting"- as in "people are hurting" or "hard-working Americans are hurting"
12) "corporate greed"
13) "regulation"- I will only accept this if it is specifically referring to the mortgage/financial crisis.
14) "NATO allies"- A cooler sounding way of saying "Europe".
15) "tax cuts"
16) and no list would be complete without the obligatory "opposed this war from the beginning"

Ultimately, this winds up being one election where I feel sorry for the winner. I also want to throw in a plug here for Bob's new blog, it looks promising so far.