In no particular order...
Health care
ENVIRONMENT
Iraq war
Economy
Education
Creating jobs
If this election is about the issues, Sen. Obama wins in a landslide.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
Hot Hot Heat
Busted. No, my night job as an exotic dancer in a gay night club called The Tool Box is still a tightly guarded secret. I mean the status of the central air unit in our house. As in, we need to buy a whole new one. Damn. Luckily, it's my folks' unit, I just use it. Or used to.
We don't realize how dependent most of us middle class and above people have become on our controlled indoor climates. Just ask the Dub. She grew up in a house that is constantly kept at 70 degrees. Any (READ: Normal) temperature above that makes her uncomfortable, even though she's equally sensitive to low temperatures. Come to think of it, I'm not sure she's ever not been too cold or too hot the whole time I've known her.
I don't mean to throw my dear, sweet future wife under the bus (okay, but I still did), but I think her situation illustrates how it is possible for us to lose touch with our normal, preset equilibrium. Take another issue I've been dealing with lately, lower back pain. Granted, I'm experiencing this pain because I'm working on my Olympic lifts, but anatomically, we're not built to sit down. Sitting down places undue stress on the hips and lower back. The natural idle position for bipeds like us is a squatting position, as in "your balls are showing."
On another note, now that classes have started back up, I'm adjusting well to yet again being the know-it-all go-getter in my classes, at least for the first few weeks. I do find it amazing how reluctant people in grad school are to step up and take leadership of projects. The fact that I'm being forced to be that guy is nothing short of appalling.
A little image to go with my last post...
We don't realize how dependent most of us middle class and above people have become on our controlled indoor climates. Just ask the Dub. She grew up in a house that is constantly kept at 70 degrees. Any (READ: Normal) temperature above that makes her uncomfortable, even though she's equally sensitive to low temperatures. Come to think of it, I'm not sure she's ever not been too cold or too hot the whole time I've known her.
I don't mean to throw my dear, sweet future wife under the bus (okay, but I still did), but I think her situation illustrates how it is possible for us to lose touch with our normal, preset equilibrium. Take another issue I've been dealing with lately, lower back pain. Granted, I'm experiencing this pain because I'm working on my Olympic lifts, but anatomically, we're not built to sit down. Sitting down places undue stress on the hips and lower back. The natural idle position for bipeds like us is a squatting position, as in "your balls are showing."
On another note, now that classes have started back up, I'm adjusting well to yet again being the know-it-all go-getter in my classes, at least for the first few weeks. I do find it amazing how reluctant people in grad school are to step up and take leadership of projects. The fact that I'm being forced to be that guy is nothing short of appalling.
A little image to go with my last post...
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Gag (order) Me With a Spoon
Off-limits. I get it; families are off limits. I get it; young people have sex. And I get it; teenage pregnancy shouldn't be touched with twelve 10-foot poles taped together end to end. Here's the thing. The Republican party has been in the business of telling families what to do for the past 15 years. The Republican party has been preaching abstinence only education for at least as long. The Republican party has a proud history of pulling out all of the stops when it comes to sleazy, inappropriate attacks. So forgive me if someone needs to call bullshit here, with all due respect to Sen. Obama's demand that the families stay completely off limits.
So Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), newly selected (and hardly vetted) Republican Vice Presidential candidate, has confirmed that her 17-year-old daughter is five months pregnant. Nice to see the abstinence-only education that Gov. Palin strongly endorses is working so well for her family. As a new Christmas gift for left-leaning voters throughout the country is left under our collective tree seemingly every morning, this little tidbit just boggles my mind. While Sen. McCain's aides promise that they conducted the most exhaustive research on Gov. Palin, I can't help but be skeptical in light of this development.
Methinks Sen. McCain had his heart set on BFF Sen. Joe Liberman or similarly moderate Tom Ridge, but since both are a little too moderate (if that even means anything), the senator from Arizona knew he had to pick the most medievally conservative candidate available to fire up the lukewarm socially conservative base. It also wouldn't hurt to make a splash and steal some of Sen. Obama's post-brilliant-speech thunder.
I've got two words and one gesture for Sen. McCain...
Of course, the problem is that all of the hype that this pick has generated has been confused at best and downright negative at worst. Sen. McCain himself claims to have known that Gov. Palin's daughter, Bristol, was pregnant before making the pick. Given how badly the conservative base needed to be courted, at least in the eyes of Sen. McCain, I really, really doubt that. I'm curious to see how the right shrugs this off. Of course, I shouldn't be surprised if they come out of this unscathed. I mean, this is an affluent white girl we're talking about.
Two more things...
1) Does anyone else find it disturbing that conservatives feel the need to commend Gov. Palin for not aborting her Down's Syndrome child?
2) The best speech of the convention wasn't Sen. Obama's, it was Sen. John Kerry's. Watch all of it, it's worth it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1yri5CXDZg
So Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), newly selected (and hardly vetted) Republican Vice Presidential candidate, has confirmed that her 17-year-old daughter is five months pregnant. Nice to see the abstinence-only education that Gov. Palin strongly endorses is working so well for her family. As a new Christmas gift for left-leaning voters throughout the country is left under our collective tree seemingly every morning, this little tidbit just boggles my mind. While Sen. McCain's aides promise that they conducted the most exhaustive research on Gov. Palin, I can't help but be skeptical in light of this development.
Methinks Sen. McCain had his heart set on BFF Sen. Joe Liberman or similarly moderate Tom Ridge, but since both are a little too moderate (if that even means anything), the senator from Arizona knew he had to pick the most medievally conservative candidate available to fire up the lukewarm socially conservative base. It also wouldn't hurt to make a splash and steal some of Sen. Obama's post-brilliant-speech thunder.
I've got two words and one gesture for Sen. McCain...
Of course, the problem is that all of the hype that this pick has generated has been confused at best and downright negative at worst. Sen. McCain himself claims to have known that Gov. Palin's daughter, Bristol, was pregnant before making the pick. Given how badly the conservative base needed to be courted, at least in the eyes of Sen. McCain, I really, really doubt that. I'm curious to see how the right shrugs this off. Of course, I shouldn't be surprised if they come out of this unscathed. I mean, this is an affluent white girl we're talking about.
Two more things...
1) Does anyone else find it disturbing that conservatives feel the need to commend Gov. Palin for not aborting her Down's Syndrome child?
2) The best speech of the convention wasn't Sen. Obama's, it was Sen. John Kerry's. Watch all of it, it's worth it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1yri5CXDZg
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
