When McCain announced Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, I, along with millions of Americans, was shocked. After Obama’s choice of Biden, there was nothing but rumors for six straight days regarding who McCain will or should pick. Moreover, few if any of these rumors involved Palin who until now has been rather unknown for citizens outside of the state of Alaska.
To say the least, Palin was a masterful choice for McCain’s running mate. Is Palin my favorite politician? No. Are there other potential vice presidents I personally might have preferred? Yes. However, in terms of a political strategy in an attempt to capture the White House, I honestly do not think McCain could have chosen better. Palin is articulate, charismatic and she seems to share the country first at all costs philosophy that has gotten McCain where he is. You may not agree with all of her views, but she certainly is not stupid and her introduction speech was excellent. This is a progressive reformer who I can back. Also, McCain picking her has not only maintained his maverick unorthodox self, but also showed the public that voting Republican will also change the make-up of Washington by electing the first woman as Vice President. Choosing Palin was a smart choice for letting Obama knows that completely overlooking Hillary was a mistake. Obama’s biggest claim is that he represents the people in that he is a break away from “Carl Rove” politics and he was the self-made man representing some of the poorest in Chicago. However, to some extend Palin represents Americans in an even greater way that a lot of American families can relate too, especially the most hardworking of them all. Palin is conservative a mother of five who characterizes herself as your typical “hockey mom.” She also has a young child with down syndrome as well as a son who is a soldier in Iraq so she really knows what it is like to be a hardworking mother. I really do think this will encourage McCain to get some of the “soccer mom” vote that he wouldn’t have got otherwise. To be honest, I really do think that a lot of Democrats will vote McCain in November, who definitely would not have voted for a Romney or Huckabee candidacy.
The choice of Palin not only encourages bipartisan support, but it definitely helps unite conservatives. Name one Republican figure that hard-line conservatives can legitimately be happy with, while still allowing McCain to preserve his maverick image. To be honest, I really can’t name anyone outside of Palin. McCain has a lot of buddies, some of who I really like including independent Joe Lieberman; however, you as well as I know that this pick would have been political suicide for capturing the conservative base. Palin has a strong conservative philosophy also representing religious family values.
At the same time Mitt Romney seemed like the obvious choice for McCain, and I feel that most people who are unhappy with McCain’s choice of Palin are the people upset the Romney didn’t get picked. However, Romney would have been an awful pick in several ways.
First, had McCain picked Romney, he would have had to somehow resolve all of the banter that was going on during the race to the White House including the name calling. I even believe the word “pig” was used at one point. To see the vehement disagreement just YouTube the “Republican Debate Ronald Reagan Library.” Secondly, Romney is your traditional Republican, there really is not anything that truly makes him stand out from your old-fashioned hard-line conservative. Choosing Romney would signal a regression to the past Washington which is exactly what both Obama and McCain are trying to avoid. Politics as usual seems to clearly be the opposite of what voters want.
As I have mentioned before. Obama’s primary message which is “change we can believe in” is really lost with a McCain candidacy and even more so now that McCain has chosen Palin, a “soccer mom” outside of Washington beaurocratics. Yes, this was a true maverick choice, yet still a Republican choice. Palin is a progressive Replublican with a soaring approval rate. Nonetheless, I really like how perfectly the New York Times put it:
“Yet if he disregarded more conventional prospects, like former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, it might be that Ms. Palin was still the fallback from a more audacious decision that Mr. McCain ultimately eschewed.”
Politics has gotten interesting and the playing field is getting much tougher than I thought possible.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Playing Cards with a Political Twist
PoliticallyWild.com has unleashed a humorous and innovative form of playing cards called Politically WILD! Playing Cards. Forget the mundane deck of playing cards, now you can get a full version of playing cards that feature political figures. Each numbered card features the face of a political celebrity with the body of the animal. Above each image there is a brief description of the animal of the politician’s body. These descriptions can often be quite comical. For example, for Ann Coulter is a pink flamingo in the eight of hearts and above her image the description reads: Pink Flamingo: Bird having very long legs and neck. Additionally, beneath the image of each politician there is a funny comment. The royalty cards (Jack, Queen and King) are extremely original because they each feature a hot-button political issue with a witty comment. Even cooler is that you submit your own ideas for each card by posting a comment on the Politically Wild Blog at http://blog.politicallywild.com/.
There are two different types of decks a Democrat Deck and a Republican Deck. As it would appear, the Democrat Deck caters towards the Democrat Party and the Republican Deck caters to the Republican Party. The aces of the Democrat Deck advocate support for Barack Obama and the aces of the Republican Deck feature McCain. For just $15.98 you get two decks. You can elect to purchase two Democrat Decks, two Republican Decks or one of each. If you are interested in politics and enjoy some witty political humor, you will love these new political playing cards which are very pertinent to the current political arena.
Go to www.politicallywild.com today and get your own deck of Politically Wild! Playing Cards.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
And What Change is that Mr. Obama?
“No more Carl Rove politics.” “Change you can believe in.” Sound familiar? If you have been following American Politics it should appear to follow pretty closely to the whole image of Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama. From Obama, we have heard the same old cheesy lines over and over again regarding how he represents change…but then again, doesn’t everybody? This message might have worked against a Mit Romney “I love America as it is” type of candidate, but against McCain simply claiming some ideological benefit is not going to do anything but start to make people question whether Obama is merely composed of false hopes. The problem with Obama is he does not stand for anything. He is the type of person that will outright avoid the loaded political questions, whereas McCain is very upfront on where he stands. Sure, McCain has made some mild flipped flops on issues such as tax cuts, but at least he will express his views in terms of policies. On the other hand, who knows where Obama stands. All we can assume is that he will take a very liberal platform.
A few weeks ago somebody asked Obama what individuals can do to help the oil crisis and Obama mentioned that people can inflate their tires to the appropriate dimensions and immediately the McCain campaign made a mockery of such a thing. McCain and his followers decided to pass out air gauges that said “Obama’s Energy Policy.” Once Obama caught word of this, Obama tried to do a two for one: he denied that his energy policy was to inflate tires as well as defended inflating tires. This approach may have actually worked if he actually detailed in his speech what his energy policy consisted of, but instead he avoided the policy issues all together. Obama tried to retaliate and made fun of the Republicans stating: “It’s like Republicans take pride in being ignorant.” Congratulations Obama, I am not a Republican and you still may have just lost my vote. Obama is very charismatic and a pleasure to listen to which makes him a widely followed candidate, however, he needs to find out what type of campaign he wants to run and he needs to choose fast. If Obama is going to make a mockery of the opposing candidate he is likely going to lose a lot of support particularly among the moderate swing voters who are key to win the election. Obama may lose the hard-line Republicans regardless, but McCain has a maverick appeal that may give him added support among moderates. These are the votes Obama needs to fight for, not simply joke around with some buddies who are going to vote for you anyway. You do that and you may have just lose the key to the White House.
Obama must begin to mention his specific goals as opposed to his general goals. We all know the generics, but how exactly is he going to change America? As of now Obama seems little more than a big mouth. As the old adage goes, “you can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?” This is the ultimate question that most people would like to at least get some indication of before going to the polling booths.
A few weeks ago somebody asked Obama what individuals can do to help the oil crisis and Obama mentioned that people can inflate their tires to the appropriate dimensions and immediately the McCain campaign made a mockery of such a thing. McCain and his followers decided to pass out air gauges that said “Obama’s Energy Policy.” Once Obama caught word of this, Obama tried to do a two for one: he denied that his energy policy was to inflate tires as well as defended inflating tires. This approach may have actually worked if he actually detailed in his speech what his energy policy consisted of, but instead he avoided the policy issues all together. Obama tried to retaliate and made fun of the Republicans stating: “It’s like Republicans take pride in being ignorant.” Congratulations Obama, I am not a Republican and you still may have just lost my vote. Obama is very charismatic and a pleasure to listen to which makes him a widely followed candidate, however, he needs to find out what type of campaign he wants to run and he needs to choose fast. If Obama is going to make a mockery of the opposing candidate he is likely going to lose a lot of support particularly among the moderate swing voters who are key to win the election. Obama may lose the hard-line Republicans regardless, but McCain has a maverick appeal that may give him added support among moderates. These are the votes Obama needs to fight for, not simply joke around with some buddies who are going to vote for you anyway. You do that and you may have just lose the key to the White House.
Obama must begin to mention his specific goals as opposed to his general goals. We all know the generics, but how exactly is he going to change America? As of now Obama seems little more than a big mouth. As the old adage goes, “you can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?” This is the ultimate question that most people would like to at least get some indication of before going to the polling booths.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
The Biofuel Question
I have done tons of research on biofuel and have encountered some very interesting information. No matter how much research I conduct, I will not be awarded any fancy PhD or anything; however, I definitely feel very informed in this subject. Heck, I have even composed a file of roughly seventy pages that outline different areas of biofuel technology.
A biofuel is a form of alternative energy that is grown from crops and can be used in place of fossil fuels. Because biofuels are essentially grown from the ground, they are considered to be a renewable resource. The United States federal government currently provides several incentives for industries to produce biofuels. In fact, the diesel fuel at your typical gas station is a blend of both petroleum diesel and biodiesel. Biodiesel is a biofuel because it is made from vegetable oil that goes through a transestrification process. But it is not just diesel engines that use biofuel. Unleaded gasoline is typically mixed with ethanol. These blends some of which have been governmentally mandated, have tried to reduce our oil dependency; however, they nearly scrape the surface of the problem.
For one, straight vegetable oil as a biofuel has been prohibited by the federal government. The Environmental Protection Agency through the Clean Air Act has established standards that make it illegal to fuel your vehicle off straight vegetable oil (SVO). However, many Americans use SVO illegally and several citizens from other countries have used SVO quite successfully. Several tests have been conducted in Japan which indicate that Straight Vegetable Oil is a environmentally healthy form of fuel…and what’s more it is practically free. Restaurants dump millions of gallons of vegetable oil into landfills which can further harm the environment. When vegetable oil is discarded, it is often referred to as waste vegetable oil. As a result, most restaurants will happily give you their waste vegetable oil free of charge.
Before I go any further it must be said that straight vegetable oil is not the easiest of biofuels to use. While any diesel engine can technically use vegetable oil, it is strongly discouraged. Unlike biodiesel, vegetable oil risks gumming up engines causing permanent corrosive damage when placed directly into engines. However, there is a way around this. Diesel engines can be equipped with a separate engine such as a greasecar kit that allows diesel vehicles to successfully run of straight vegetable oil. These kits are typically not very expensive and prevent any problems of losing engine life.
Probably the biggest advantage of vegetable oil is that vegetable oil reduces global warming because they run off of the closed carbon cycle. This means that the vegetable oils will emit simply what has already been absorbed by the plants. On the other hand, fossil fuels emit dormant carbon dioxide causing a net gain in carbon dioxide.
After looking at both the numerous advantages as well as the disadvantages of biofuels, I have come to the conclusion that biofuels provide an excellent source of energy for America.
Is biofuel a silver bullet to solve the energy crisis? Probably not. Nonetheless, if biofuel can at least minimize the burden Americans place on fossil fuels, why should we neglect to pursue additional biofuels?
A biofuel is a form of alternative energy that is grown from crops and can be used in place of fossil fuels. Because biofuels are essentially grown from the ground, they are considered to be a renewable resource. The United States federal government currently provides several incentives for industries to produce biofuels. In fact, the diesel fuel at your typical gas station is a blend of both petroleum diesel and biodiesel. Biodiesel is a biofuel because it is made from vegetable oil that goes through a transestrification process. But it is not just diesel engines that use biofuel. Unleaded gasoline is typically mixed with ethanol. These blends some of which have been governmentally mandated, have tried to reduce our oil dependency; however, they nearly scrape the surface of the problem.
For one, straight vegetable oil as a biofuel has been prohibited by the federal government. The Environmental Protection Agency through the Clean Air Act has established standards that make it illegal to fuel your vehicle off straight vegetable oil (SVO). However, many Americans use SVO illegally and several citizens from other countries have used SVO quite successfully. Several tests have been conducted in Japan which indicate that Straight Vegetable Oil is a environmentally healthy form of fuel…and what’s more it is practically free. Restaurants dump millions of gallons of vegetable oil into landfills which can further harm the environment. When vegetable oil is discarded, it is often referred to as waste vegetable oil. As a result, most restaurants will happily give you their waste vegetable oil free of charge.
Before I go any further it must be said that straight vegetable oil is not the easiest of biofuels to use. While any diesel engine can technically use vegetable oil, it is strongly discouraged. Unlike biodiesel, vegetable oil risks gumming up engines causing permanent corrosive damage when placed directly into engines. However, there is a way around this. Diesel engines can be equipped with a separate engine such as a greasecar kit that allows diesel vehicles to successfully run of straight vegetable oil. These kits are typically not very expensive and prevent any problems of losing engine life.
Probably the biggest advantage of vegetable oil is that vegetable oil reduces global warming because they run off of the closed carbon cycle. This means that the vegetable oils will emit simply what has already been absorbed by the plants. On the other hand, fossil fuels emit dormant carbon dioxide causing a net gain in carbon dioxide.
After looking at both the numerous advantages as well as the disadvantages of biofuels, I have come to the conclusion that biofuels provide an excellent source of energy for America.
Is biofuel a silver bullet to solve the energy crisis? Probably not. Nonetheless, if biofuel can at least minimize the burden Americans place on fossil fuels, why should we neglect to pursue additional biofuels?
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