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Last weekend I took my first trip to South Florida, spending the weekend with one of my good friends in Miami. I went to go swim in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, and get myself a nice little sunburn, and also check out all the touristy spots on South Beach. I also managed to get into a South Beach nightclub for free, AND get free drinks for an hour. As a guy. In Miami.
Of course after that first hour it was $11 for a small drink, which was more like what I was expecting. The whole clubbing scene down there is so ridiculous with the lines and lists and wristbands and promoters, but it was a lot of fun. We also went to a cool rock and roll art exhibit, had some amazing pizza at a place called Pizza Rustica, had some really good dessert sushi (sweet rice, nuetella, and banana, wrapped up in a thin crepe), and did a lot of walking around.
And speaking of flying to places, there's a good reason I usually fly Southwest, and that's because I don't have to pay ridiculous amounts of fees to check a bag. This page is a good summary of what it costs to fly.
Ever wondered why the snooze alarm is 9 minutes? I used to never use it, but now I'm addicted to hitting it several times every morning.
And on to the fun political stuff! I'll kick it off by what at first I thought was a Onion article, but nope, it's an actual Washington Post piece that asks "Is Obama too skinny?" To quote: "In a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability?". See, this is why we can't have nice things.
But oh wait, it actually *IS* an Onion piece, that aired a few months ago, mocking politicians for going after the "fat" vote. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Speaking of the Onion, here's another "news report" on how young people are apathetic to office politics.
Even the Republican National Committee is getting in on creating what at first glance you would think would have to be fake, but no, oh no, it's an actual ad attacking Obama's trip to Germany. Just ignore the amateur Youtube production values, the premise of the ad is that it's a bad thing that other countries are actually getting excited about the thought of a president who understands diplomacy and foreign relations. Or when the Prime Minister of Iraq agrees with your plan to get us out of Iraq. Which McCain doesn't even have an end game for Iraq, it's just the status quo until we "win", but of course winning is never really defined, nor when if at all this would take place. And while pulling out will be messy and probably take longer than the 16 months that Obama has planned, he's at least got the goal of getting us out of that mess as best as possible.
Now some of the ads that the McCain camp is throwing out there though are slightly better, but far less accurate. For instance the ad implying that Obama picked working out in a gym over visiting wounded troops in Germany, which every single person who did any research at all into the incident verifies is a complete lie. Even the Post started their story on this ad with "For four days, Sen. John McCain and his allies have accused Sen. Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true."
I had hoped that McCain it would at least be semi-civil, but ever since he hired on Karl Rove's buddies to run his campaign, it's gone downhill from there as this columnist points out.
Another example is McCain's ad about taxing electricity, which is also a complete and utter distortion of the truth. And he knows it. But yet he continues the new strategy of not saying why someone should vote for him, but instead tries to make America scared of Obama. Back in 2000 I did respect him for being the "mavrick" that the adoring media called him, and not always toeing the Republican party line. But in the last 8 years he's done 180's on pretty much every single one of his "mavrick" positions, and sold his campaign soul to try and squeak out some more votes via negative ads. I had high hopes for a respectable general campaign, but wow it got really nasty really early.
I do have to give the McCain campaign credit for being smart in running the ads though. All it takes is a few small and cheap ad buys in a few markets, and then the media will pick it
up and play it for free during prime-time news broadcasts. Make an inflammatory and false ad, pay for a dozen advertising slots in a local market, and then get shown on national network news hundreds of times!
Here's a very simple and to the point brouchure created by the AFL to hand out to people who refuse to believe that Obama is a Christian. I'm still amazed at how many people believe the most ridiculous things (he has no birth certificate!!111 for example), but I suppose I really shouldn't be. A functioning democracy needs an informed public to really work, and it's kind of terrifying the things that people believe that have absolutely no basis in reality, that could be fixed with just a little common sense or research. Instead it's more on what people "feel" is true, or what to believe is true, rather than what is actually true, and that is exactly what the McCain campaign is trying to support.
One of those "truths" is the truth that off shore drilling won't do a thing any time soon to affect gas prices, and even 10 years from now when there is peak production, the gains will be a few cents per gallon at most. To quote the official government report:
The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017.... Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.
But yet a full 51% of people don't realize this, and think it would drop gas prices by next year. The sad fact of the matter is that there is no quick fix solution to energy prices. It takes investment and time, the kinds of things we should have been doing for years. But when gas is under a $1 a gallon, no one really takes it seriously. There is no looking to the future to see that this can't possibly last, both by politicians and by the public. It's just human nature, but that doesn't mean we have to keep perpetuating our mistakes by going after quick fixes that don't fix anything and just endanger our seas.
Finally, remember that trip to Italy I took a few months ago? Well I met a girl over there. She was an American doing study abroad for a semester, and we met while eating gelato during my last night in Rome before leaving for Florence the next day. We ended up wandering around the deserted streets all night, and stayed in contact after I got back to the states thanks Skype. She then came to visit a few times over the summer once her semester ended, and it's been going really really well since!
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