Apparently, Bush and Congress have fixed every problem in America. Why else would Henry Waxman be asking the Attorney General to pursue purgery charges against Roger Clemens. Must be nothing else to do.

I didn’t watch the debate last night, but I might listen to it on POTUS 08 on XM Radio today. I’ve read a number of articles and blogs about it and they all come to roughly the same conclusion. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton did equally well in the debate, but that really is a loss for Hillary because she needed to really win big to change his momentum. This may or may not be true and we won’t have the answer until late on March 4th, but it does underscore a problem she has been having: She is much better in speeches than in the face to face debates. Her tough talk from this weekend didn’t materialize in the debate, and I wonder if the constantly changing tone is making her seem less consistent on some issues than she really is.

I think it’s fair to say, also, that her campaign has not been run real well. She has focused on things that have been meaningless and it’s hurt her in the debates. For example, when she tried out the line “change you can Xerox”, not only did she get booed, Obama was able to basically slam that back in her face and make her look petty. Why did she try to link Obama to Farrakhan? Does she actually think he’s a militant anti-semite? How about bringing up his associations with homophobic men of the cloth? She has yet to pounce on that, and I can only wonder if it’s because she has similar associations within her church. Bringing up the Saturday Night Live skit from last week (which was legitimately funny and somewhat spot on) last night brought her boos again. I don’t think it was because she was wrong to bring that up, but because it sounded so out of place, like she was just wanting to bring that up, without proper context.

So I don’t know what her campaign is thinking or what advice she’s been given. I do think her skill as a campaigner has been grossly exaggerated. She’s run two campaigns, one where she was running in a state that is two to one Democratic against an unknown Rick Lazio, and the other against an even bigger unknown (I don’t even remember who it was now). She’s never had to run a tough campaign (and for the record Obama’s run against Alan Keyes could never be called difficult or challenging), and I think it’s starting to show that she doesn’t have the people she needs right now.

The other possibility, is that she’s more like Gore than she is like her husband. Most people who like Al Gore, say he is bright, knowledgeable on all the issues, intellectually curious….and an awful candidate. I won’t say she is as bad as Gore, but it’s starting to become clear to me that she is the type of politician who loves to get immersed in an issue, explore all the options, and develop a policy, but not really engage with constituents. While I don’t agree with her conclusions for the most part, those are all good qualities for a senator. Since 1900 there have only been two sitting senators elected President: Warren Harding and JFK. There are reasons for this. What makes a good senator doesn’t necessarily mean you will make a good presidential candidate. This election will mark the first sitting senator elected in the last 48 years (unless you’re a RonPaulTard and think Ron Paul will be president).

I normally don’t care about celebrity news but this clip of Sylvia Browne being so wildly off concerning Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony is priceless:

Click here if you can’t see the video

Found this video on the Skepchick Blog.

In a New York Times article today, recent studies have shown that the fastest growing “religious” group is Unaffiliated. This group includes people who could still be religious but don’t want to be part of church, to people like Richard Dawkins, and then to people like me, who think God is an asinine concept. These people aren’t necessarily agnostic or atheist, but once they and their descendants are out of the Godbag factory, you’d have to think (hope) more atheists are coming! Oh to live to see the day with just 25% atheism!

Ralph Nader has announced yet another run for the presidency of the United States. As in 2004, he’s made some overtures to the Green Party, but fell short of fully embracing the party. The Green Party, though, will be instrumental in getting Nader on as many state ballots as possible. If you are a Nader supporter (and I’m not), you must wonder, where has he been the last four years? I’m not sure, because I don’t really care about Ralph Nader, but in some quick scans of weekend news stories, I can’t find any reference to any groundwork for a serious run at the presidency. If he is so serious about running as a third party candidate and changing Washington, you’d have to think he’d start sooner.

Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy in January 2007, Barack Obama in February 2007, and John McCain has essentially been running for president since 2004. They’re all running within the two party system and they still had to dedicate at least two years to their campaigns. Can Ralph Nader really be serious if he thinks he can just swoop in eight months before the election, with virtually no infrastructure, and be a serious candidate? Even if you agree with him about the problems with a two party system (and I actually do agree with him on that point), his method of challenging the system is weak and pathetic. This has got to be a vanity run for him, so he can put “Five Time Presidential Candidate” on his tombstone. I’ll bet that Ron Paul will get more write-in votes than Ralph Nader in the election.

Ralph Nader is over seventy years old now, and probably has had any real effect on policy in over twenty years. He loves to bash on corporate greed, but he himself is a multi-millionaire who has mutual funds flush with shares in “evil” corporations. I know he claims to live off a small percentage of his income, while donating the rest to various charities, but he’s never releases his tax returns, so we don’t know for sure. I’m not calling him an outright hypocrite, and I never fault anyone for wanting to make a buck, but it makes his rhetoric on “evil” corporations sound a little more hollow when you realize he depends on corporate earnings to fund his lifestyle.

I think based on the lack of groundwork, his understanding of the modern campaign is limited. Ron Paul, douchebag extraordinaire, who is also over seventy years, has had a working internet presence for at least a year. His cult-like followers have raised more money that Ralph Nader ever will, all without corporate money. I hate to keep bringing up Ron Paul, but the two are very similar in that they rail against a lot of the same things, have no shot at the presidency, they are both running for vanity, I would never vote for either of them, and they are both old white men.

Will Ralph Nader be a “spoiler”? Nah, he will get so few votes, he won’t matter, but even if he did, who cares. As far as I am aware, it is up to candidates to convince people to vote for them, not cut quid pro quo deals with voters to ensure they keep power. So let Ralph Nader run, if it will stroke his ego. I just can’t take him serious though.

Because I am neither a Democrat or Republican, and since I moved to Missouri not even technically a Libertarian, I get asked who I will be voting for in this year’s election. The truth is, I have not decided who I will vote for. However, I’d thought I’d list some basic thoughts on requirements I would like in a candidate:

It’s clear to me from the recent Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act that federal and state governments are completely unable to legislate this issue in any non-religious way. There is no such thing as a “partial-birth abortion”, it’s just a term that pro-life groups invented to create an emotional response from people otherwise on the fence about the issue. The government, state or federal, has no business making medical decisions for women and/or doctors. I will only vote for a candidate who believes the same.

There is no logical reason to be against gay marriage, and as long as the federal government chooses to give tax benefits to married couples, we should be making gay marriage a national issue. The state issue seems like a weak issue to me. It’s funny that anti-gay marriage people love to tout how important marriage is to a society for all of history, and yet they want to make it just a state issue. Seems like the same approach used before Brown v. Board of Education.

If you don’t believe in the theory of evolution, you are either too uneducated, too dumb, or too lacking in critical thinking skills to be President. Period.

We already have a bazillion gun control laws on the books, and they rarely help. We don’t need any more.

Let me post a little of what the author of the first amendment said about church-state separation:

Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In the strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment, applicable to a provision for a religious worship for the Constituent as well as of the representative Body, approved by the majority, and conducted by Ministers of religion paid by the entire nation?

Too often right-wing Christians invent this narrative that the Founding Fathers intended a melding of government and religion. I think this quote pretty much puts that myth to rest, if James Madison himself considered government chaplains to be a violation. I myself have waffled on this particular case, and now I see what the correct answer surely is.

It is in the realm of possibility I suppose that our government is running in top efficiency and there is no dollar being wasted, but I doubt it. Until a candidate promises to audit and streamline government to the same level you would expect a business to be, I can’t justify raising taxes on anyone. Furthermore, don’t just cut taxes without cleaning up the books first as well. That’s almost as bad as raising them, if we continue to run deficits.

I differ with many libertarians in that I see a definite federal role in the environment. If one state is polluting the air, we all breathe it. The environment knows no state borders. That being said, we need to formulate policies based on sound science, not political action groups. In some cases that means corporations won’t always get what they want and environmental groups won’t always get what they want. For example, corporations need to be monitored closely for pollution, and they won’t like that. Environmental groups hate cloning and GM crops, but they’re dead wrong when it comes down to the science. So in short, scientists in, lobbyists out.

The climate is changing, and we’re partially responsible. While I personally doubt our ability to predict the actual changes, I don’t think it’s any reason to keep polluting. See answer on environment.

There should be no limitations on any non-public broadcast, and the fines should be drastically reduced for public broadcasts. The internet should be completely free of government regulation of speech.

I’m not sure how what the best way for the government to manage the energy policy of this country is. However, there is no doubt in my mind that it is an issue of national security. I don’t want the federal government to be regulating the power industry itself, but perhaps we need to dedicate more money for research. Wars have been, are being, and will be fought for natural resources used for energy.

We should legalize all drugs. Period.

I’m not sure the best way to deal with Iraq is just to leave and let the people fend for themselves, but our rebuilding effort over there has been horrific. I think we need a President who is looking to be free and clear of Iraq within ten years, with troop levels close to nil in two years. More focus needs to be on corruption connected to the rebuilding effort.

I’m against a federalized program of health care or health insurance. I think this needs to be done state by state for efficiency purposes. I’m not taking the position of “screw the sick”, but I don’t think the federal government (certainly as it runs now) can adequately provide healthcare. Individual states need to work on developing their own solutions instead of waiting for the federal government to swoop in and fix everything.

The John McCain plan (pre nomination McCain) is the one I would support. There is no gain in rounding up illegal aliens and shipping them out. An actual border fence is just a dumb idea. Let’s create a worker’s visa program, let them come, give them a chance to get integrated, and welcome them. I don’t care if they are brown, black, red or green. They obviously want to work hard to support their families, and that’s a quality we should invite into this country.

The federal government is too big. We have so many duplicated departments that waste resources. We have a Pentagon who can’t track its inventory. We spend money on programs that have no demonstrable effect, but because they are warm and fuzzy sounding, we continue to fund them. We rarely keep track of where money goes, and programs are almost never cut for lack of success. On the contrary, most government programs that fail claim its due to lack of funds, so we give them more money. When they keep failing they ask for handouts.

We have dumb subsidies for businesses. Why are we paying money to shrimp farmers? If they can’t make money on their own, who cares. Let the industry die. The worst that can happen is the industry collapses and we stop overfishing. Stop subsidizing oil companies, farmers, steel workers, shrimp farmers, and god knows what else.

This amendment is one of the most powerful amendments. It extends the Bill of Rights to the states and guarantees equal protection under the law. It’s one of the greatest amendments ever passed, and any candidate who doesn’t see this, doesn’t deserve my vote.

Well, that’s it for now, I will maybe expand upon each one of these at a later time.