I'm Baaaack

Holy moley, I've been gone for quite some time. I have been transitioning to a new job, attending family events, and I've been trying to keep my family from killing each other as we get closer to the winter break. So far, I'm sucking wind on the last one, but everything else is going well.

It seems we have a little catching up to do:

Election Predictions

Let's get the gloating out of the way. My predictions were pretty damn good. (Even a stopped watch is right twice a day, right?) I nailed the Senate races and my predictions for the House were mighty close. I'm still bummed about Tammy Duckworth losing, but hey, you can't win them all.

Iraq

It's a quagmire. What else is there to say? Good men and women are dying for no good reason and the President and his lackeys have no clear exit strategy. That means those people, Americans and Iraqis, will continue to die. And it is the President's fault. Honestly, I wonder how he can sleep at night.

Obama

Wow, I haven't seen this much hype around Christmas time since Cabbage Patch Dolls. But the question I have is this: Is it that people are so enamored of Barrack Obama that they are willing to woo him into running or is it that people are so desperate for change that they just want the anti-Bush. I think it's the second and they seem to have made a good choice. Here is the side by side comparison:

Race : Bush=White; Obama=Man of color

Politics: Bush=Conservative; Obama=Moderate

Iraq: Bush=Started War; Obama=Opposed War from Beginning

Speaking Ability: Bush=Bumbling Butcher of English; Obama=Exceptionally Well-Spoken

Previous Employment: Bush=Oil Executive; Obama=Non-profit Aiding Inner-City Poor

Intelligence: Bush=Barely Survived Yale; Obama=Columbia and Harvard Law

I could go on, but you get the point. Obama is the anti-Bush, but is that enough? Does his lack of experience and his funny name come back to bite him? Can he survive the primary season with enough credibility intact to survive the Republican money machine? I just don't know.

Foley

The ethics investigation is over and those involved were found to have ignored their responsibility to protect the Congressional pages from a sexual predator. A Congressional sexual predator. A pederast who they knew to be stalking teenage boys. But apparently, indifference to the well-being of teenagers under their care isn't a punishable offense. I knew that labor laws didn't apply to congressional staff and I knew that smoking bans and the like never applied to Capitol Hill, but I didn't know that promoting the sexual harassment of minors fell in that same bucket.

I guess the Republicans can count on the sexual deviant vote next cycle. I wonder how the religious right feels about that...oh yeah, I keep forgetting, it's often the same lobby.