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So my predictions weren’t too bad.

Presidency: Obama by 188 electoral votes! (vs. 100)

Senate: Dems gain 5 or 6? (vs. 6)

House: Dems gain 18-25 (vs. 25)

Now let’s hope Obama truly leads and doesn’t cave to Reid and Pelosi’s agendas…

I voted.  And I’ve deliberately kept the TV off any channel likely to be analyzing the election or announing results.  It’s not been easy (I watched other, pre-recorded stuff, or did some work).  I will catch the result in the morning!

My predictions:

Presidency: Obama by 100 electoral votes.

Senate: Dems gain 6

House: Dems gain 25

Pretty much just guesses…

9/11/01 showed the world the worst and the best in humanity.

RIP to the victims and heroes who didn’t survive.

Thank you to everyone who has worked to heal the physical and mental scars, and to get those who share an ideology with those who committed the acts.

We didn’t capture Bin Laden ‘dead or alive’, but I still think he’s dead.  Good.

I recently saw Bjorn Lomborg interviewed about ‘global warming’ and his views on what we should do seemed about the most practical and effective imaginable.  Instead of the shrill, slick, non-scientific, and dishonest ‘marketing’ by people like Al Gore, Lomborg looks at the effectiveness of solutions proposed by others.  For example, he says if all the goals of the Kyoto treaty were met (no chance, but ok), the world would still only delay the predicted effects of ‘global warming’ by a year or so!  So Al Gore and cohorts want to cripple the global economy to delay global warming by a year?  Ok Bjorn, now you’ve got my attention.

He goes on to say that efforts to save arctic ice will likely save 1 polar bear a year, a popular cause among environmentalists.  He said humans SHOOT 400 polar bears a year, so maybe stopping that would be more effective!

His new book “Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming” will be available in August, and I’ve pre-ordered it.  Finally a cool head on a hot subject!

Despite all the great minds involved in the campaign such as James Carville, Terry McAuliffe, Harold Ickes, and both Clintons (see the rest here), their Achilles heel did them in. And what was that? Arrogance!

Their original plan appears to have been:

1. Raise a bunch of money from a few rich donors
2. Make speeches carefully worded to pander to voters without saying anything substantive that might be used against her
3. Put an organization in place to go after the big primaries, and ignore those annoying little caucus states for the most part
4. Be so far ahead after ‘Super Tuesday’ (Feb 5, 2008, a day that will live in infamy) that money will continue to roll in for the general election and coast to the nomination and crowning!

So what went wrong? Well everything really! Obama won the first ‘event’, a caucus, in Iowa. I’m sure the Clinton team thought “pfft, it’s a caucus, big deal, and we only just lost (well, ok, third), and we’ll be ahead shortly, stay the course”. She wins New Hampshire and they must feel like they’re back on track (remember ‘comeback kid’ in 1991?). February 5 comes along, and she doesn’t get the big lead. Money is POURING into the Obama campaign and the organizations are getting put together in EVERY state. Maybe they realized team Clinton had ignored the caucuses and went after those. Edwards doesn’t drop out which probably hurt Clinton further.

After a string of losses in caucuses and small state primaries, despite winning some HUGE STATES (CA, NY, PA, TX sorta, etc.), she still found herself behind, but the strategy had STILL NOT CHANGED except perhaps by highlighting her ‘experience’ over Obama’s message of ‘change’. ‘Experience’ came across as “more of the same” and “old”. Meanwhile Obama got a GIGANTIC push from Oprah Winfrey. “He is the one” she said, over and over. The crowd went nuts. Even I got goosebumps.

After it was already too late, her stump speeches began to get more specific, less boring, and less condescending and self-congratulatory. After agreeing that the results in Florida and Michigan, two HUGE and IMPORTANT states, wouldn’t count because they moved their primaries before Super Tuesday, team Clinton THEN decides they want to fight for them. Everyone saw through this as typical Clinton old school spin. But it was too late. Despite Obama scandals and distractions, he would not be denied. CNN, NBC, MSNBC, most bloggers, and idealistic twenty somethings had already fallen madly in love with him.

And then there’s Bill. The ex-President who is loved by so many as the creator of peace and prosperity in the 90’s. Well he quickly reminded people he has a temper and a mean streak too, and, like Hillary, is astoundingly arrogant. He did his wife NO FAVORS in this campaign, and without question cost her a ton of votes.

Other nails in the coffin were Hillary and Bill’s ‘flubs’, probably the most notable was her claiming to have landed in Bosnia under sniper fire when video showed she was greeted casually by smiling children with flowers! Unfairly or not, I think in people’s minds this might have subconsciously become linked to Bill’s “I did not have sex with that woman…” finger wagging bold faced lie. So she faced a credibility gap too.

And so today she finally conceded. Ms. “Inevitable” barely smiled. She wanted the speech to be historic, but it was still painful for her to deliver. She now clearly wants the VP spot, and I currently think it WOULD help Obama win the Presidency, BUT once he’d won it, then he’d have to put up with Hillary AND Bill for 4 or 8 years, a prospect he is no doubt thinking about.

It’s incredible that she and her oh so talented team blew this perfect opportunity. It just shows… you never know.

I have conflicted feelings about this. On the one hand I am glad she lost as I don’t like the calculating, cynical, manipulative, poll-driven way the Clintons operate. On the other hand, I’m sure this loss is very painful for Hillary Clinton and I feel bad for her. I do believe she was treated VERY poorly by the media.

With all this talk of oil and energy, I decided to look at the Department of Energy web site to see what it claims to be doing.

Loads of good sounding info, but I decided to go to the budget, as that’s where things usually reveal themselves (follow the money…).

I had no idea how much money the DoE spends, but for ‘09 they’ve requested $25 BILLION. Now I’m sure govt lovers and Bush haters will come right out and say “that’s cheaper than Iraq in a week” or whatever, but ignoring that bogus comparison, how much is $25 BILLION?

Well if there’s 300 million men, women, and children in this country, that equates to about $83 EACH, a year.

So, are you happy, that you, your relatives, friends, children, everyone, is paying $83 a year for this fine organization?

Their budget “highlights” document is 113 pages. Yikes.

It says they need that money to “address the growing demand for affordable, clean and reliable energy; preserve our national security; and enable scientific breakthroughs that could have significant impacts on our quality of life and the health of the American people.” Yeah, right. But what do they actually DO?

This is their mission/strategy page: http://www.doe.gov/about/index.htm

On their strategic plan page it says:

By implementing DOE’s Strategic Plan, we are enhancing America’s energy security and sustaining our economic vitality.

EPIC FAIL! Oil is what, $139 today????

So I looked under achievements and awards to see what we might all be getting for $83 a year.

What’s this? Part of their funding went to the human genome project. What has that got to do with energy?

So then I find that their ‘researchers’ helped with research on Climate Change that lead to the IPCC winning the ‘07 Nobel Peace Prize. And this is about energy and not weather HOW? This research was done at Oak Ridge National Labs in Tennessee which has 4200 people and is entirely funded by DoE. Facts about ORNL.

Your tax dollars at work folks.

Sooner or later I guess this topic was going to get mentioned here.

U.S. gas prices have doubled and more in the past couple of years.  It must be hurting millions of people directly (getting to and from work or school for example), and hurting many businesses too, which must deliver things and have things delivered to them and so they must raise prices on everything in turn to make up for it.  It seems the U.S. government has totally distorted how it reports inflation because gasoline and food prices alone are skyrocketing.  Maybe the drop in house prices is counteracting that some!

The politicians are arguing over causes and remedies, but while they do NOTHING, quietly, millions of people are driving a little less, maybe trading in the old clunker or big SUV for something much more efficient, sales of hybrids have skyrocketed, and the American people are being very sensible about all this.

We’ve all heard it’s ‘greedy oil companies’ that are the cause but that really isn’t the case - they process crude oil and refine it, etc., and pass along the costs they must pay.  Now global demand for oil and gasoline has been climbing and is projected to climb a great deal more as prosperity increases in China and India in particular, as they hold almost half the world’s population!  U.S. gasoline consumption has not increased significantly in decades.  Increasing overall demand puts upward pressure on prices if supply is not increased. Read the rest of this entry »

I no longer care whether Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or John McCain wins the November election.  I don’t think any of them is really inspiring or going to make much of a difference in this global economy.  And if more significant terrorism occurs, all the campaign promises will go out of the window anyway.

I’m still wading through “Dreams of my father” by Barack Obama, a dreary, depressing book so far.

Maybe it will get more interesting when the Obama/Clinton battle is officially over and the McCain vs. Dem. debates occur.

Rolling Stone Magazine has published a great article endorsing Barack Obama for President. While I don’t agree with everything the article’s author, Jann Wenner, has written, or everything Barack Obama says for that matter, Barack Obama is very compelling, seems to be the real deal, and this article lays it out very nicely.

The article also lays out nicely why Hillary Clinton’s “skills” and her campaign are so lacking. Despite her, her husband, and surrounding team having just about all the credentials and contacts anyone could dream of, they have almost succeeded in snatching defeat from a certain victory.

The Rolling Stone piece also mentions Barack Obama’s semi-autobiographical book, Dreams from My Father, which I just ordered from Amazon.com.

Read the rest of this entry »

Regardless of the resulting delegate counts, team Clinton will spin the results that Hillary is back, in charge, and ‘inevitable’.

It was a great day for her, and with a very strong win in Ohio, it seems likely she will win the next big prize, Pennsylvania, especially since governor Rendell has endorsed here.

What does this mean? Read the rest of this entry »