Good question (refering to the title of the blog)

Lots of things. Two inch pine tree was found in a guy's lung. An artist implanted his own DNA into Petunias. The Minnesota Wild fired their GM. The Obama administration unveiled memos from the Bush era that give instructions sounding awfully close to torture. Gay marriage was legalized in Iowa. And I'm going to Ireland. Yes, lots of things going on, but I'm rather short on time.

It's over! Well, actually not yet.

Image from: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/13/minnesota-court-declares-franken-leading-vote-getter-senate-race/

State judges officially declared Al Franken the winner of the highly contested/way too long senate race. However, Norm Colman can appeal the ruling and he says he is going to. So Minnesota probably won't have a second senator in place for a while yet. I'm getting rather tired of the whole thing, it has been a very long, very bitter campaign. I'd think that they would finally decide it has gone on long enough and call it quits. But then again, both Franken and Colman have spent a large amount of money, time, and effort on this seat. If either of them gives up and they are giving up on a senator's salary, cameras and press people, and the chance to help decide in which direction the nation will move. Perhaps those things are too appealing and alluring to give up, and so the battle will continue as long as there is the slightest chance that Colman can win back the seat.

Goodbye shoe

The Iraqi reporter who threw a shoe at former president Bush goes on trial soon for assaulting or insulting a . . . I forget the exact term, but basically 'a important guy'. The same reporter also has at least one sculpture created in his honor.

Image from: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/photogalleries/week-in-news-pictures-116/photo5.html

Though in this case, the statue is being removed from the orphanage property. Reason: because the orphanage is government run and it should not display any political leaning.

Impeached

So Rod Blagojevich was finally impeached by the Illinois state senate with the vote of 59-0. Hm, can't say I'm terribly surprised.

It seems strange that he can keep on saying that he's innocent of all crimes. I wonder, is he lying, or does he really think that he's innocent? I mean, does he seriously think that he's done nothing wrong as he keeps insisting? That would be really weird. But I could see how it could come about if he has a huge, ginormous ego and thinks that he can't possibly do anything wrong.

That would have to be a really, really big head.

If I were a member of the Illinois government, I would be very happy that this trial is now over.

Overnight Change?

I feel sort of strange. What, there're no elections coming up in a month or two? What? The Presidential Election is over?

Yes.

Barack Obama and his administration are already working on how to solve the nation's many problems. But just because they've started doesn't mean all problems will magically vanish overnight. If he had some sort of magic problem-vanishing power, he'd've been elected by a landslide. No, he's human and so are the people who work with him. So that means, it'll take a while before the promised change spreads across the country. It would be foolish to get mad at the new administration just because the economy did not leap out of its slump the minute Obama was sworn in as president. Things will take time.

The world has sped up, with credit cards and internet shopping, people are used to instant gratification. Slow down world, enjoy the breeze, and glory in the sunset.

The Inauguration of the 44th President

Barack Obama is now the 44th President of the United States of America. He was sworn in around 11:00 o'clock Central Time.

Lol, right now we're watching him sign his name on some documents and the CNN people are complimenting his penmanship.

Previous to the compliments on penmanship, both Joe Biden and Barack Obama were sworn in, and Obama gave his speech. It was a more, let's say, harder speech than I've heard him give before. There were a couple moments when he got very, hmm, not really passionate, but sort of. Stern but passionate? Well, his voice got louder anyway.

As always, I really liked watching the people in the crowd. It was funny watching their reactions to the speakers.
At the start of the National Anthem, Joe Biden was taking pictures for one of Obama's daughters.
During the speech of one of the reverends, there was one guy sitting behind Obama whose eyebrow was jumping up and down.
After Obama's speech, one of the reporters was saying how she saw people crying and hugging each other, then they went to a shot of a scowling woman before quickly switching to a scene of cheering crowds.

Yeah, it's an exciting day, but you've got to find humor in everything.

Senators or lack thereof

Roland Burris is the new senator for Illinois. After he was selected by soon-to-be-impeached governor Rod Blagojevich there was controversy about whether he should be allowed to serve as senator or not. However, after much argument, a statement from the senate majority leader and assistant majority leader stated that Burris, "is now the senator-designate from Illinois and as such will be accorded all the rights and privileges of a senator-elect."

So now Illinois knows who its two senators are going to be, unlike some other state *cough* *minnesota* *cough*

I can see why some people would be reluctant to appoint Burris because of the man who nominated him. Blagojevich was accused of trying to sell the seat to the highest bidder, who knows, perhaps Burris was that highest bidder. In Burris's defense, he could also just be the person the governor decided to appoint. He has had a low profile career so far, and he's a democrat (as is the governor) so why not?

I don't know. It's very likely that Burris is just another politician who happened to be caught in the media's net and everything is getting jumbled out of porportion.

These days it seems like the senate is getting more attention than the president, or the president-elect. I wish them luck, they'll need it.

Ah, there's a catch

The final results from the senate recount are in. Franken has 225 more votes than Coleman. But wait! That doesn't mean he won. It sounds like he won, because whoever gets more votes wins right? But apparently Coleman has gone to court and filed a lawsuit to contest the results. Franken can't take up office while there is a lawsuit about his appointment so Minnesota is still with only one senator.

Yeesh.

Personally, I think it's a good thing senate terms are six years long or else whoever is finally appointed won't have any time to actually do anything in Washington.

But I thought . . . ?

It seems strange that the governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich can still name his choice to fill the vacated senate seat of Barack Obama, even after he has been accused of trying to sell that same seat to the highest bidder. Today he named his pick for the seat, Roland Burris, the first black politician to win statewide office in Illinois with a cautious approach to politics and a background in banking.

It's sort of strange that the guy arrested for trying to make a profit off the senate seat can still decide who will fill it.

Innocent until proven guilty huh?

By the way. . .

Images from: http://senatus.wordpress.com/2008/12/12/minnesota-canvassing-board-meets-for-key-decisions-in-senate-recount/
http://hidates.com/i/6-1.gif

Minnesota still doesn't have its second senator. Today Franken pulled ahead in the recount, not that its final because he's ahead by only a hundred or so votes and the Coleman campaign has challenged hundreds of ballots.

Perhaps it is time to start thinking about flipping a coin?

A Person of Importance

Picture from: http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/personoftheyear

Barack Obama was named Time Person of the Year for 2008. I can't really say I was surprised. There was so much publicity about him during the election season, he made some historic breakthroughs during his campaign, and his story is very compelling.
His election was exciting and uplifting for the country. Hopefully he can survive his first days in office dealing with two wars, global warming, and the economic slide.

Recount over, Still no winner

We still don't know whom Minnesota's second senator will be. Norm Coleman or Al Franken? And the elections were like what, a whole month ago. The problem is that the race is SO close. During this month, there has been a ballot recount, where volunteers go through all the ballots by hand and count them. (sort of strange because human counting has a greater margin of error than a machine) The outcome should be solved by the recount right? Well not when both campaigns are challenging the authenticity of any ballot that goes to their opponent. To make things harder, an envelope containing about 135 uncounted ballots has disappeared and nobody can find it. Normally, 135 votes wouldn't make a huge difference, when the margin between candidates is usually thousands of votes. But when the recount started Coleman was only leading Franken by roughly 215 votes. Yes, a rather smaller margin than normal.

The thing is, that during the campaign, these two candidates were really, really nasty to each other. There was a lot of accusations, negative adds, mud throwing, etc. Because of all this, the third party candidate Dean Barkley got a higher percentage of the vote than he would normally. However, it was still not enough for him to win. Most people probably didn't vote for him because they were afraid that if they did, the other major party candidate would win.

It seems sort of bad, but no matter who wins this recount and the senate seat, more than half of Minnesotans will be unhappy.

I'm not sure I would be happy with any of the candidates from this election (senate only). It really was a very negative campaign season and that was not pleasant. None of the candidates stuck out as being very original or having especially good ideas. (Besides how best to smear their opponent that is)

I guess we can only wait and see how the recount turns out. Hopefully we'll know before the new senators are supposed to be sworn in on Jan. 6th.

New Puppy in the White House

There's been a lot of talk recently about what kind of dog the Obama family is going to get. ^_^
I think it's sort of cute. It is certainly a lot easier listening than all the negative campaigning. I do not miss that stuff one bit.

On the other hand, the Coleman, Franken race for the Minnesota senate is still going on. They are going to start a recount some time soon and they might not decide on the victor until December. :s

Oh well. . .

By the way, it is now snowing.

Suspense!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's election night!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My parents voted for Barack Obama this morning. Right now he is leading in the electoral college votes 207-135 over John McCain. CNN has projected Obama to win Pennsylvania and Ohio, even though only like a fraction of the votes have been counted. It's sort of weird that they can project for Obama to win when actually no votes have been counted. They're basing their predictions on exit polls.

We're also watching Indecision 2008 by John Stewart and Stephen Colbert (I think I spelled the names right but I'm not sure). It's really funny :)

Ahh the suspense is killing me.

I'll let you know the results tomorrow, or later tonight if we find out.

2nd Presidential Debate

I'm watching the re-run of the second presidential debate right now. It's sort of interesting watching the debate right after listening to the experts, news people, random people, undecided voters, and everybody else debate the debate on the post debate discussions.

We're on the second question now. It's from Oliver Clark, he asked about the bailout, what does it actually do?

McCain is talking about how he left his campaign suspended and went to Washington to make sure that tax payers were covered, and how Fanny May and Freddy Mac made lots of risky loans with encouragement from Obama and his 'cronies' or friends. This rescue package means that they will stabilize the market, they'll buy up the bad mortgages. Ect. . .

Obama is talking about how the credit market is failing and how companies can't get loans at the moment. They will have to cut jobs and stuff because they can't get enough money through loans. That's why they had to take action and set up the bailout. The biggest factor in the economy problem was the deregulation. Obama is saying how he wrote to people in Washington and said they had to deal with it and nothing happened while McCain said they should keep deregulating.

Blah blah blah. . . the candidates were just asked if they thought if the economy would get worse before it got better but neither of them are answering. They just go off into their speeches that they've said a hundred times before. . .

Somebody just asked something along the lines of "Why should we trust you with our money?"

Obama is going off on a Bush-was-really-bad speech. Now he's talking about making investments in college, independent energy, and stuff.

McCain, ". . .The system in Washington is broken. . ." and then he starts boasting about his bipartisan record, and saying how Obama doesn't have a good record. He's saying how he has a good record while Obama voted for earmarks, and extravagant spending, and stuff. wow, he mentioned energy independence too. But then he said offshore drilling, and nuclear energy.

The moderator just reminded them to keep on track with time. And the next question is what will be your order in terms of priorities for Health Care, Energy Independence, and Entitlements.

McCain is answering first and he says he will work on all three at the same time. Then some more classic lines. But he's pretty sure he can do all three at once, and he said we have to do all of them at once.

Obama said we (as a country) have to prioritize just like a family has too. Energy has to be at the top of the list he said because not only do high gas prices hurt the average person, it is also a security problem because some of the money going towards foreign oil is going to countries who aren't friendly towards the U.S. Next Obama said was Health Care. Now he's going back at McCain about the earmark thing. Throw mud, throw mud. . . .

As president what sacrifices will you ask the American people to make?

McCain: we will have to eliminate some programs. Defense spending is one example. "I believe we have to eliminate the earmarks." Spending is going to be cut, he recommends a spending freeze except for veterans programs.

Obama: "A lot of you remember the tragedy of 9/11..." how the country was able to come together. There is going to be the need for each person to think of how they use energy. Including offshore drilling?? (Not sure I like that) Obama said that each of us should start thinking about how we use energy. Make cars, business more energy efficient. Young people are eager to be involved. Military family families shouldn't bear the full burden of the country.

The debate is going on. I'm not really hearing anything new. Townhall is an interesting format. The candidates have chairs on the stage but when they talk, they usually get up and walk around talking to various members of the silent audience. It's definitely different from them just standing behind a lecturn.

Btw, McCain keeps saying "my friends" it's sort of getting on my nerves. And just so my critisism is spread around, Obama's tie loks sort of strange. Is it supposed to be blue, gray or purple? I can't tell.

It's getting late, I'm going to keep watching but I'm getting really sleepy. . . .

Politics and Problems

If you watched the Colbert Report on Oct. 1st you'll know what this picture is about

Image from: http://brandstrategy.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/campbells-soup-i-1968-print-c10089337-1.jpg

The Senate voted on their version of the bailout plan yesterday. As expected it passed. Not only passed but passed by a margin of 74 to 25 and both senators from MN voted for the bailout. There are a bunch of 'sweeteners' added on to the bill to make it more appealing for the house and general public. Sort of a interesting idea. It's like large scale bribery. Anyway. . . the house is going to vote on the bill again tomorrow. It is yet to be determined if the revisions made by the senate will make the bill more appealing to the house.

Speaking of which. I was watching part of the Colbert Report for the first time. It was ridiculously funny. The theme of the day was reporting on the future. How McCain's campaign had released an add saying he won the first presidential debate before the debate actually took place. And various other things like that. I must admit that whoever came up with comedy was a genius.

And tonight is the Vice President's debate. There has been a lot of media hype about it. How Sarah Palin is going through a rough time, how Joe Biden is known for putting his foot in his mouth, etc. Everybody has a different idea of what the candidates should do to each other and behind it all the media people are gleefully dancing around stirring up any little fact they can find and inflating it to epic proportions.
I think it might be anticlimactic given all the attention being paid to it. These people are vice president candidates. They probably don't want to do anything that will reflect badly on their running mate (at least I hope they don't). They probably won't go out and do all sorts of risky things that could easily backfire. At least that's what I think, but I'm hardly an expert.
I will be watching tonight's debate though. If I'm not bored to tears in the first five minutes, I'll probably watch most of it. Hopefully I'll be entertained. Certainly the media will do their best to make this as entertaining as possible, even though that wasn't the original goal of debates.

Help! Bailout! Or Not. . .

To help the struggling stock market President Bush proposed a 700 billion dollar bailout plan. The government would inject lots of money into the market, buy the sub-prime loans that aren't really worth anything at the moment (but could be worth more in 20 or 30 years), and basically try to make sure the market didn't crash. It didn't work. The House of Representatives voted it out. Actually it was the House Republicans who didn't vote for the bailout. Bush, McCain, both party leaders in the house, and Obama were all supporting the bill, but all of the house is up for re-election in five weeks and the bailout is very controversial. If a house member seeking re-election or trying to move to the senate voted for the bill, their opponents would definitely use it against them in the election.

I'm not sure how I felt about the bailout. If the bailout happened the stock market would be a little more stable at least in the short term and there wouldn't be a sudden loss of jobs, loans, and stuff like that, but the bailout would be payed for in taxpayer money so taxes could go way up. However, the bailout was necessary because there is a lot of artificial value in the market right now and if the government bought the worthless mortgages that are giving the companies so much trouble, the government would be continuing to pay for things that weren't really worth all that much and the artificial value crisis would go on.
If there was no bailout, the stock market would crash (like it just did), people will loose jobs because companies don't have as much money so the cut back, it will be harder to get loans of any type, and all sorts of other things. But taxpayers wouldn't have to pay to rescue all the rich CEOs on Wall Street and once the market rebounded (it probably will eventually, sometime in the future) there would be no more artificial value of sub-prime mortgages.

I really didn't know what to think about the bailout. On one hand, I didn't like it because it seemed like it would give money to some already rich guys and make normal people pay for it. However, if there was no bailout there would be the job losses and stuff like that. It would be good to get rid of the artificial value in the market but getting rid of value, artificial or not, would mean that the market would go down. It seems like a very hard choice to make and I don't envy the politicians at all.

The house is meeting again on Thursday to talk about this again. People for the bailout will try and convince the other people to vote for it when they do a second vote. People against the bailout will try and convince their counter parts to join them. I'm sure all of them will have hard choice to make and there will be a lot of yelling and barbed speeches. I, however, am very glad I am not a member of congress. Hopefully I will get better at deciding about these hard issues by the time I can vote but for now, I have no idea what the best path would be.

A Debate over A Debate

The first official debate between the presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain was scheduled for this Friday (9/26/08). However John McCain announced that he wanted to suspend his campaign and go to Washington to work on the economic crisis, and he called for Obama to do the same. Obama however, said that he would show up at the debate site regardless and if McCain didn't show up he'd have a town hall meeting or do something by himself depending on what the moderators for the debate wanted. So he tossed the ball back onto McCain's side of the court and now people are waiting to see what McCain will say.

Today I also read an article in the Star Tribune about what high school debaters think of the presidential debates (at least these particular high school debaters).

"Our presidential debates are media events that are forums at best, with the candidates primarily seeking a sound bite that will play out on the news the next few days," said Chris McDonald, whose Eagan High debate program is a perennial state tournament powerhouse.

It does seem like the candidates say the same thing over and over again when you listen to them making speeches and talking to reporters. But then again, don't people ask them the same questions over and over again? So they couldn't really give different answers. But I do think that they have some set word for word answers that they give out in response to the questions.

High School debates differ from the presidential debates in having only one topic for the entire year. Well you could say that the question, "Who is the best person to be president of the United States?" is also one topic but it covers a wide range of subjects. For the 2008-2009 school year, the topic is alternative and/or renewable energy. Wayzate High coach Gail Sarff thinks that the kids know more about this particular subject than any of the candidates because they research the issue, argue one side of it in the first round of debates, then argue the other side during the second round.

I think having high school debate teams is a good idea. While it seems strange at first to have groups of people come together and argue with each other, I think it makes people more aware of both sides of any issue and more aware of issues in general. That being said, I'm not sure I would want to be on one. I'm not very happy arguing and I have trouble seeing how I would argue for a position I didn't hold myself. It seems strange to try and promote say off shore drilling if you didn't agree with it yourself.
That's where I think it would be really strange to be a lawyer and try to argue for your client even if you didn't really agree with them. Hopefully most lawyers try to get clients that they actually agree with. . .

What Does it Mean to be a Republican?

Behind party lines: what it means to be a Republican

by Jeff Horwich, Stephanie Curtis, Michael Caputo, Minnesota Public Radio, 

September 4, 2008

So, part 2 finally came out online. I had an excuse to sit around at my desk and make wire dragons while listening to the fascinating debate and taking occasional notes. They started the show with each of the people they were interviewing saying a word about what they thought the republican party was about. Justice. Freedom. Accountability. Principles. Restraint. Integrity. It sounds pretty reasonable. I can agree with all that.

The first 10 minutes or so was criticize the democrats time. While we were watching the democratic convention the newscasters were complaining that the democrats weren't attacking the republicans enough. There were none of those complains at the republican national convention and I don't think anybody listening to this program would complain along those lines either (unless they were a democrat). 

Some of the ideas that were stated:

• democrats are too controlling; they tell you what to eat, where to smoke, where to go to school, what to wear
• democrats put race labels on people and hold them back
• less individualism more state-ism

It was made very clear that the people speaking thought the government should stay out of the way. There was lots of talk about how government programs didn't really work and just took up a lot of money. One young man brought up the point that people should be more self reliant. In his opinion people shouldn't depend on the government to help them, they should go out and work hard for themselves. He said something like, if you depend on the government you stay stagnant and don't grow as a person. 

Another guy's idea was that it's more compassionate to teach people how to help themselves than to keep them down and just hand them checks. Several people made the connection between the government handing out checks to specific people and slavery. They said it was like keeping people enslaved to certain rules in return for money and such. 

One of them pointed out, and I definitely agree with him, that the two parties have very similar goals. They both want a country of rich, happy, smart people who can boast to the rest of the world about how great they are (ok, he only said that they have similar goals but I'm free to inject my own thoughts here right?). However, the democratic approach versus the republican approach to get to that goal, are very different. Very, very different. 

I think the common goal is a good one. And some points the republicans make have good common sense behind them. Likewise to some of the points the democrats make. So it's now time to bring out to cosmic mixing machine. Bzzzzztt. Hurray! The perfect politician! 

Facts on Both Parties:

• In the early 20th century the political animal was a eagle for the republicans and a rooster for the democrats (in Midwestern states at least)
• the republican party was created in 1854 to oppose the expansion of slavery into Kansas 
• the democratic party evolved from Anti-Federalist factions opposed to Alexander Hamilton in the early 1790s
• apparently the reason the democratic symbol is a donkey is because Andrew Jackson was labeled as a jackass by an opponent during intense mudslinging of the 1828 election
• Abraham Lincoln was the first republican president 

What does it mean to be a Democrat?

Driving home from music lessons I heard the last part of a program called "Behind Party Lines" on MPR. They were interviewing some delegates and volunteers on what it meant to be a Republican. It was interesting. I suppose I would call myself a Democrat but I try to keep an open mind and listen to what the Republicans are saying. I think Republicans do make some good points occasionally or at least what they say in their speeches sounds good. (of course that might just be what they're saying and not doing but I haven't researched enough to say yet)

So anyway, back to Behind Party Lines. I was listening to the last few minutes of part two, interviewing Republicans. It sounded interesting so when I got home I looked up part one, interviewing Democrats, online. The main question asked by the show's producers (Jeff Horwich, Micheal Caputo and Stephanie Curtis) to both parties was, "What does it mean to be a Democrat/Republican?" The interview focused on that question, not so much on the different issues, though plenty of issues came up in conversation.

The main points the democrats made were, being a democrat means:

• working for social justice
  
• speaking out for those who can't speak for themselves
• living your faith and political beliefs
• being a servant to those you have authority over
• freedom of religion

And the closing statement one of the delegates made was that "we can all agree to disagree" 

In my very limited knowledge and in very general terms, this is how I think of the democratic party's philosophy.

• Anti Iraq war
• More government sponsored programs
• Universal Health Care
• Higher taxes on higher income people, lower taxes on lower income people
• Pro Choice
• Stricter gun control

Like I said, this is a very, very rough and simple view and I will probably look back on this and cringe at my ignorance but this is what I know as of this moment. 

I'm going to listen to the full interview of the Republicans and hopefully get some good material. 

By the way, the third day of the republican national convention is taking place maybe a mile or two from my house. It's a very exciting time in politics right now.

Here's the link to the Behind Party Lines webpage if anybody's interested.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/08/28/behind_party_lines_democrat/?refid=0