Headline News

Oy Vey, I'm starting to get overwhelmed, here. Gingrich lost by a LANDSLIDE to Romney in Florida, thank God, but Santorum and Paul are still in the loop. Please, please, please can we have Santorum drop this charade?

No. We can't. Santorum's too valuable to the GOP: if Gingrich can't pass muster in the next few states to hold primaries, then they'll need SOMEone who stands a chance of beating Romney. And, as we all know, Paul is the least favored candidate by the ole boy crowd.

Enough of politics. It's giving me a headache, keeping me up late at night...

Apple is coming up with a scheme to destroy textbook publishing. It's about TIME! I mean, it takes a certain amount of time between the release of a new technology (iPads and tablet PC's) and its being embraced by the mainstream. Even so, you'd think universities would have adopted eTextbooks as a standard by now! Regardless of the lag, this confirms my theory: that print media is dead - and for a good reason. Interactive textbooks can make the difference between a generation totally turned off to education and a generation that, through higher education, changes the very face of this planet. This I believe, and have believed in for some time now.

According to this report, only 5% of Americans account for half of all health care spending. In the broader context of our economy, that seems to signal that Obamacare was directed at a rather small constituency... and that you and I should not have to give up our hard-earned wealth just so these people (most of whom are aged 65 or older) can get a free ride. "A full day's work for a full day's wage." - Margaret Thatcher

That's all the news for tonight. If you want more... read the Times.




Not.

The men who stare at Polls

Oh God, I swear I wouldn't do it. I SWORE it wouldn't come to this.

I'm actually paying attention to the polls. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this reporter has turned into a politics junkie. It could be worse... he could have BEEN a politician. At any rate, Mitt Romney's floating high in Florida, though according to the Real Clear Politics average, Gingrich is leading with 33.7% and Romney's a close second with 33% going into the primary. Looking at the national RCP poll, Romney is leading with 29.5% and Gingrich weighs in with 23% - Paul and Santorum each hold 14%.

WHY am I becoming so emotionally involved in this race? Nothing new under the sun... if you believe the pundits... but something HAS changed. There's something to FIGHT for, now - that or I just got older; every few weeks, I see myself getting more and more interested in politics. In the democratic process. But it's either that or go jonesing for some other form of entertainment.

Not much entertainment to be found elsewhere. Television shows are still awful, good movies are few and far between, and there hasn't been an 'innovation' in music since Dubstep stumbled drunkenly onto the party scene. And it's not like LMFAO is anything but a one-trick pony.. right?

Not to be a downer or anything, but for now, i'm sticking with politics. At least until they start making us LEARN again in college.

- Selah.

Changing Tides in the Sea of Politics

Newt Gingrich won South Carolina two nights ago, taking 40% of the vote while Romney took 28% and Santorum scraped by with 17%. It seems that the voting public is sane after all, and with such a stunning loss in ground, it seems likely that Santorum will bow out entirely within the next few weeks. Maybe he and Paul both, though I think Paul is likely to hang on to the bitter end.

Candidate-titans like Romney and Gingrich can duke it out all they want, but at the RNC they will need to court either Santorum or Paul - or both- if they want to win the nomination. Money may change hands, but more likely than not, Paul and Santorum would be able to secure policy deals from their more popular candidates in exchange for the delegates they've accrued so far. Good news for Paul - and for the rest of America; that policy deal could mean the difference between more deficit spending and a round of much-needed budget cuts and streamlining of government... in other words, a downsizing of government.

It takes 1,140 delegates to win the nomination at the Republican National Convention. Looking at the remaining candidates, it seems extremely likely that Newt Gingrich is going to win. For one, Romney's public image took a BATTERING from ads attacking his tenure at Bain capital. Why is his former CEO-status so controversial? Because Bain capital's style of doing business involved laying off as many workers, and downsizing companies as much as possible, in order to turn a profit. There's nothing wrong with that, on the face of it, but America needs someone who's more of a people-person. a leader. And Gingrich is the most qualified candidate to do that job.

There's another element to this controversy, which I have highlighted before: Romney doesn't DO politics. He openly disdains the way that Washington works, and sees the machinations of the Federal Government as frivolous. "Nothing wrong with politics", he has said more than once during this campaign, "Just not what Washington needs right now." We won't stand a rat's chance in hell of fixing our economy with a president who doesn't know how to interface with people on an individual level. Social skills, what Romney deems 'politics', are the most important thing that a President can have... otherwise we'll face four more years of the same godforsaken mess.

Speaking of Which, the State of the Union address is tomorrow night at 9pm EST. You can catch it here, and I'll do a running commentary on the speech. For once, I'm going to try and deliver it as-is: simple note-taking, with analysis later.

Another one bit the dust

The Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, announced today that he would drop out of the 2012 presidential race and endorse Newt Gingrich. Sarah Palin endorsed Gingrich recently, saying that "If she were in South Carolina on Saturday, she would vote for Gingrich."

Hard-right conservatives are scared that big, bad Mitt Romney will be unstoppable in winning the GOP nomination, and they're rallying around Gingrich as their last best hope. Couple that with the fact that Gingrich is losing ground to Paul in the polls, to the point where Ron Paul is tied for second with Gingrich in the GOP race, and you have the best political drama this country has seen to date.

Let's weigh the probabilities of each candidate, then, starting from the bottom of the scrap heap. Rick Santorum's surge in public opinion hasn't lasted, and he's not likely to go far in South Carolina. He may beat Gingrich on account of his stance on social issues (the man wants to ban the use of contraceptives in America and effectively repeal Roe V. Wade), but he's a dark horse candidate. If he won the GOP nomination, he would lose to Obama by a landslide. America isn't in the mood for social politics - it wants a President who will help fix our debt problem.

Oh, wait, what debt problem? We don't have a debt problem - BUSH gave it to us, and Obama has been saddled with the blame. Just because he spend five trillion more dollars than the gov't budget had doesn't mean we have a debt problem. And who cares that the house voted against another debt ceiling raise? It's not like that vote meant anything; the debt ceiling will go up as high as it has to. Unless, of course, we go bankrupt.

You have forty-six million Americans now living on food stamps, up from thirty-two million just five years ago. Not only is that an unacceptable record for any President - it means that out of three hundred million people living in this country, one in SIX don't have enough money to eat - even many of those who DO have jobs.

But going back to the race, Gingrich is as likely to win the nomination as Rick Santorum. They're unsexy candidates whose popular appeal is too small to make the cut - so we're down to Ron Paul and Mitt Romney in this race. Then you have these attacks on Romney for his time at Bain Capital... as if being a businessman makes you evil.

Hey. Maybe Ron Paul DOES have a shot. But either way, it's good to see that voting Americans are still using their heads when choosing their leaders. Maybe our republic will make it out of this mess intact. I hope so - for our sake and for those who come after us.

On SOPA

My friends, it has come to the end of the line. You and I no longer live in the country of our fathers and grandfathers, rather, we live in the country created after September 11, 2001.

Our rights to privacy, free speech and due process were systematically destroyed by the patriot act. Subsequent legislation was passed to close any loopholes - such that merely telling others about actions or ideas that the government disapproves of is considered a felony. Just typing the wrong words on the internet can get you on multiple federal watchlists, if not the no-fly list. I would not be surprised if you or I were on at least one watchlist today.

It comes to a heel with SOPA and PIPA. If this bill passes, you could be prosecuted in court just for sharing the wrong Youtube video with a friend. Why? Because it gives media companies the right to shut down any website, whether it's based abroad or in the U.S., on the SUSPICION of copyright infringement.

Talk about presuming someone guilty until proven innocent. If you care about this at all, please sign this petition. Exercise your right TO petition - as long as you still have it.

Till next time.

Forever Odd: A Book Review

It's hard for me to judge whether or not "Forever Odd" is a good work; there are lots of good things about it, but there are also lots of awful things. The New York Times called it "...upright, amusing and sometimes withering, especially when thinking about the state of contemporary popular culture." Of course they would. The Times book critics tend to praise mediocre writings that support their disapproval of all things modern.  The first fifty pages of "Forever Odd" are littered with soliloquys and descriptive phrases that do nothing to bring the story to life - much less move the plot forward. I considered throwing this book away in disgust, but "Odd Thomas", the first book in the series, made for a good graphic novel.

Sticking with it, then, Odd finds his best friend kidnapped by a superstitious, psychopathic phone-sex worker who intends to use her hostage as blackmail: she wants Odd to conjure ghosts for her. Odd Thomas, however, is no medium: he can only see ghosts - not conjure them. He uses his "psychic magnetism" to track down the crazy hooker and her thugs to a casino in the Mojave desert. It's a good story; once the narrator stops talking about his "burden" of having "supernatural powers", which prevents him from reading, socializing and apparently being anything more than a shut-in, the action picks up pretty quickly... and promptly breaks down at the end into philosophical musings about life and death - especially death.

I get it; Dean Koontz is still upset about his wife's death. But the architecture of the book is like a mash-up between the author's diary and half of an action novel that he submitted to editors just to meet deadlines. I spent a good day reading this, and it's quite the page-turner; for serious readers, though, it ranks no higher than pulp fiction. If I ever met Koontz in person, I would advise him to get some SERIOUS therapy before picking up the pen again, and that before starting ANOTHER novel-length monologue, he should learn the first rule of good fiction writing: show, don't tell.

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Huntsman has left the room

And so they were five. John Huntsman, former governor of Utah,
formally announced his decision to abandon the GOP presidential race
today, backing Mitt Romney as the candidate he hopes will beat Obama.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/huntsman-says-hes-quitting-g-o-p-race/

Strange... I'd thought that surely Perry would drop out sooner than
Huntsman. Then again, Perry is a psychotic war-hawk (read: Ideologue)
whereas Huntsman is reasonably sane. Remember this, ladies and
gentlemen, power corrupts; absolute power corrupts, absolutely.

On that note, the debt ceiling is about to be raised again. In the
name of all that the Democratic party holds sacred; amen. To be fair,
both sides are to blame for our debt problem - but Obama has put us
$4.6 trillion deeper into debt during his tenure than we needed to be.

This in one morning's brief of the headlines. For my part, it's high
time I stopped staying up all hours of the night playing videogames...
it appears I have traded one fixation for another. And yes, it is fun,
and often harmless, but until my grades have substantially improved,
I'll devote my off-hours to more productive pursuits: studying,
reading, and writing like a king-hell speed freak. (RIP Hunter S.
Thompson)

The New Hampshire Primaries Are Up

Not to shut the barn door after the animals are out, but here are the results, with 68% of precincts in New Hampshire reporting:

Mitt Romney: 38%
Ron Paul: 23.5%
Jon Huntsman: 16.8%
Newt Gingrich: 9.8%
Rick Santorum: 9.7%
Rick Perry: 0.7%
Michele Bachmann: 0.1%

The people of New Hampshire who voted today were clearly paying attention to Saturday's debates. I'm going to post my own impressions of the debaters below, with scores that correspond to their general speaking skills:


Romney: 8.5/10 I smell a rat with this guy, and until I'm proven otherwise, this man is dead to me politically. However, he was the best public speaker on stage on Saturday night. He spoke with consistent confidence, backed up his arguments with sources and statistics, and was every inch the consummate leader as he gave opponents his trademark "That's nice, but I'm better than you" smile. He set the tone for the debate by going after Obama's handling of the economy, and then cited his tenure as head of Bain Capital as creating 100,000+ jobs. Whether or not that's true, I think he's going to lose the campaign - even if he wins the Republican nomination - because of this nasty narcissism he picked up while Governing and CEO'ing.

Paul: 6.5/10: I love the man to death, but he came across as more of a reactionary during the debates than a leader. Also, some of his attacks on other candidates seemed to be on shaky grounds - BUT he could stand his ground when others attacked him. He has a sharp mind and a sharper tongue. It's going to be interesting, watching how he performs in South Carolina.

Huntsman: 3/10: Sorry, but he's boring. Harped on about his record this, his record that, without even raising his voice ONCE in the first thirty minutes of the debate.

Gingrich: 5/10: Boring fucker.

Santorum: 6/10: he stood his ground when Paul accused him of being corrupt, and he was very confident about his platform, his record in office, and his beliefs. The downside is... he looks too much like Joel Osteen, that slimy televangelist.

 Osteen.

Santorum.

I know. It was deeply unsettling for me to realize that. That aside, he sought to disassociate himself from the pack by attacking the others for being "too Washington" or "too Wall Street". That's just lowball, and any candidate who does that automatically loses points in my book. You have to PROVE that you're better than them in order to win anything for that kind of attack.

Perry: 4/10: look, the guy is a sinking ship, and everyone knows it. Unless he wins S.C. by a miracle, LANDSLIDE victory, there's no way in hell he can win the nomination. The man is a liar, and a crook: the only jobs he created were with tax dollars that went into farm and oil subsidies, or some other industry where they didn't belong. He campaigned so hard in the early stages of this race that he ended up making himself look like bozo the clown - and he has paid dearly for it. If he wants to save what little political face he has, he'd better call it quits soon and let the real adults get back to work.

- Cameron Beaudreault

Results are out in Iowa

So Mitt Romney beat out Rick Santorum last night by an 8-vote margin, with each candidate taking home 25% of the vote, and Ron Paul coming in third with 20% of the votes. Bachmann bowed out of the race entirely, while Newt Gingrich came in fourth with 13% and Rick Perry came in fifth with 10% of the votes. So far so good: we had seven candidates for the Republican nomination going into last night, and now we have six. Presumably to be narrowed down to three in the next few weeks.

I've heard it said that the point of the Iowa caucus is to weed out the small-fry candidates... looks like that was the case with Bachmann. Rick Perry says he will stay in the race and attend the next Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire this Saturday. That's fine by me: he can try to redeem himself for all the gaffes he made in previous debates, or he can go down in a blaze of glory like someone we know from past elections.

The good news for all of the remaining candidates is that voters in New Hampshire and South Carolina aren't likely to take the electoral cues coming from Iowa: Perry can make a comeback, same as Gingrich, or Santorum or Paul could take the lead.


In all seriousness, though, it seems we've come down to the final three. Romney has proven himself as an electable man, and unlike Santorum or Paul, he has the GOP backing to pull it off. Yes, folks, according to the Boston Globe, former presidential hopeful John Mccain announced his endorsement for Mitt Romney today in New Hampshire. I cannot say i'm all that surprised, though it does put some pressure on the other candidates to find their celebrity backing.

I'm looking forward to the debate on Saturday, because not only will it help clarify who has a feasible, long-term plan to fix our economy, it will also give voters some insight on which candidates really care about their message. You don't want to vote for a candidate just because he can give a good speech; that's what got both Nixon and Obama elected into office, and both presidents promptly trashed America's international image.


I don't care who's the most 'electable' candidate. I care about which candidates are honest, trustworthy Americans who will uphold their office, and the duties that go with it, to the best of their abilities. I care about which candidate is going to take seriously their role as a public servant - not a politician. I need to re-emphasize that, because to my memory there hasn't been a single President since John F. Kennedy who cared about the public they served more than they cared about themselves. No... since the 1980's, it's been money-hungry politician after politician, each of whom thought that they could become a king. And to see any of today's candidates, especially Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, act like they're entitled to this job, is sickening.

Avoid anyone in this life who feels entitled to anything they have. Either they are right, and are incapable of earning what they have, or they're wrong, and their attitude will be their downfall.

On The World's Biggest Popularity Contest

What a strange race, this. And what a strange time. We’re finally out of Iraq - but still in Afghanistan. Our diplomatic relations with the Middle East are frayed from the Arab Spring. Most importantly, our country is on the verge of bankruptcy, and its credit rating has been duly downgraded. You’d think that this problem, which became clear as soon as the stock markets tanked in 2008, would be met by our elected leaders with a swift, simple, solution. Yeah, right.

With Obama’s first term coming to an end, the opposition now scrambles to find a challenger, and candidates have presented themselves en masse. Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum...

To me, these candidates are all “me-too” copycats of each other, with their platforms and their beliefs. Their campaigns definitely reflect this... their ads, their behavior during national televised debates, and their MASSIVE media coverage are all nitpicky attacks on each other. Yesterday’s USA Today article on the matter reads like a soap opera. Santorum called Paul’s candidacy “a sideshow,” saying the libertarian’s isolationist positions on foreign policy make it impossible for him to win the nomination. Gingrich scoffed at Romney as “a Massachusetts moderate” who has benefited from “dishonest” attack ads aired by his backers.

One candidate seems to stand out from the pack for many reasons. One reason is that he is subject to more attacks from his fellow republicans than any other. Another is that the media has deliberately ignored him, like they did Occupy Wall Street, throughout his campaign so far. In fact, almost all public scrutiny of Ron Paul appears to be based on the other candidates’ opinion of him, which is odd considering his not-so-tiny fan base. Oh well. Perhaps it’s better he remain a “fringe” candidate until the right moment.

What a minute. What’s this word they keep tossing around about Ron Paul? A fringe candidate? -sigh- look, I keep myself as up-to-speed as possible on American politics, and Paul is no less than a prodigy of Ronald Reagan. His platform, his ideology, is identical to those outlined by Reagan in one of his most renowned speeches, “A Time for Choosing,” which was given in 1964 in support of Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign:

It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government."

This idea -- that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream-the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path.

Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, "What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power." But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.

Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we're always "against," never "for" anything.

We are for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we have accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem. However, we are against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments....

We are for aiding our allies by sharing our material blessings with nations which share our fundamental beliefs, but we are against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world.

We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him.... But we can not have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure....

The words in this speech are as relevant today as they were in 1964. We still face the issues of Social Security, of tax reform, of revamping our foreign policy, and of balancing the roles of the public and private sectors. Ron Paul believes, has consistently fought for, and now campaigns on these ideals. For that reason, he has my vote. Not because he’d make a perfect president - even Lincoln and Kennedy were far from perfect - but because he has a plan. His plan encompasses and outdoes those of every other candidate, and he doesn’t need to tear down his fellow candidates to sell his plan. It is simple, yet entirely feasible. I am going to register to vote as soon as I get back to New York, and I will keep my readers updated on the election as new developments unfold.   

On The Scuba Dive - 12/29/11

I didn't get a full eight hours last night, so I went through much of today half-awake. I don't know how it'd be  different fully awake, because the highlights would have been the same.

 After dressing and getting our gear together, Dad and I got off the boat and headed into Cockburn Town to meet with our dive group. Three Grand Turk Islanders were our master divers... they saved us newbies the trouble of hooking up our tanks and vests, so all we had to do was produce proof of competence (SCUBA certification) and fill out some paperwork before suiting up and heading to the dive site. Thank god... the last time I dived was four years ago. I didn't really reviewed the procedural stuff, but remembering all the dire warnings in the manual (breathe continuously or die... do a mandatory safety stop or die...) I was quite terrified of getting back in the water.

A good omen: a pod of dolphins started jumping out of the water in front of and around the boat as we made our way to the dive site. Once we were suited up, stepping off the boat and jumping into the water was like riding a bike. Breathe, swim, equalize your ears and keep your mask clear: when in doubt, follow the dive instructor.

 After a few minutes of this low-level panic, I reached the reef and started to relax a little and look around - hundreds, maybe thousands of fish - iridescent blue, green, and sometimes virile red or camouflage'd brown and black. Coral and god-knows-what-type of plants just chilling out on this reef that was so big, so expansive, that one tiny section of it formed an archway that six divers could easily swim through. When we DID pass through the tunnel, the other side was a sheer drop-off that seemed to go on and on forever. This was a little frightening at first, but we were slowly ascending up and around the reef to finish up our tour.

This mixture of fear and wonder etched the experience in my brain. It seems like each dive is like that... the second one was less frightful, and longer - I was breathing easier - but It, too, left its mark... I remember swimming next to my dad, my dive buddy, and watching one of our guides tickle a brown, 40-lb grouper (apparently nicknamed "Alexander") who lazily squirmed around their fingertips and seemingly laughed as he swam away from the group.

 I remember several different schools of fish, parrotfish, trumpetfish, clownfish and Dorys following us around, as if they were as curious of us as we were of them. Feeling that one-ness with nature... being so close to these creatures that you could reach out and touch them...THAT was happiness incarnate. Amplifying this was this feeling of utter freedom - being able to glide through the water with my fins, to hover above things, to be able to move exactly as if I were flying. I have flying dreams a lot, which some say is a subconscious desire for freedom.

Once the dive was over, I asked Roger, one of the guides, about his job as a dive master. He said that it's most peoples' dream job; you work in the sun, getting paid to do what you love... "lots of girls." So noted. He also told me that it wasn't that difficult to get certified as a master diver - most of the classes and paperwork involved can be done online. I think I'll look into that... It'd make for an interesting summer job. The only thing Roger had to say about that idea was; "just don't set up shop in Grand Turk. I don't want no competition from you."