a patriot's weapon of choice...

Dear media:

I am well aware that tomorrow's inauguration is a huge deal and quite a news-worthy event, to say the least.  However, it is being broadcast and advertised as if it were the literal second coming of Jesus.  While I agree that the inauguration IS something which should be covered by all major outlets, I would appreciate it if you would please remember that almost HALF of all Americans did NOT want to see Obama take this office.  It's not like he won 99% of the popular vote or anything.  So instead of acting like this is something that the entire country got together and unanimously agreed upon, PLEASE just treat it like you would any other presidential inauguration.

Dear everyone who is attending the inaurguration (that the local news feels compelled to feature on a daily basis):

I have been to an inauguration before, as well as an inaugural ball.  While it is a pretty exciting event, it's not something that's going to change your life, I swear.  And to those of you who were able to score tickets to the swearing in, trust me, that doesn't mean a whole lot.  That just gets you on the other side of the ropes.  That doesn't mean you can see or hear any better than the people who are crowding around outside of the ropes.  In fact, you'll be lucky to even be able to fight your way through the crowd to GET to the inside of the ropes.  That ticket is not magic.  Again, trust me, I speak from experience.

Having said that, if we do have work tomorrow (Weather Channel is calling for 4 inches of snow, and in NC, that is HUGE), I will be wearing all black.  Oh, and all the news channels say that one day we'll be asked where we were when Obama was inaugurated?  I'll be able to say that I was sitting in my cubicle hard at work, because we can't all be on welfare.

That last sentence was a joke, for all you Obama-humor impaired on my friend's list ;)

Having been feeling particularly down on myself lately with no obvious reason, I felt a strange vindication this morning while listening to Neal Boortz.  A listener called the show with the intention of explaining to Boortz how sometimes government assistance is a necessity, and cited his daughter as an example.  An otherwise “good” girl, his daughter, a single mother, was trying to get government assistance in finding a place to live.  The basis of the argument was that sometimes bad things happen to good people, and that’s why the government is there to help.

Rather than confess to the man that he’d seen the error of his ways, Boortz admonished him for assuming that hard-working Americans should be forced to pay for his daughter’s mistakes.  Oh no, the man countered, she was actually married when she had the child, but the guy turned out to be a drug addict.  And that’s not a mistake?  It was a rather light-hearted conversation, considering the subject matter, but Neal basically wrapped up his argument that this girl’s hardships are more the responsibility of her and her family (i.e., the caller) than the rest of America.

Then, making a statement that I have often thought but never repeated aloud, Boortz addressed the failures of the American family to teach responsibility to their children.  Why stress the importance of responsibility, he argued, when the government is always there to catch you whenever you make mistakes?  Why worry about having a child that you can’t afford when you can count on government to supplement you housing, food, and health costs?

At that time, my text message alarm went off, and there was a text from Matt: “Boortz is on a roll about gov subsidized house… making some great comments.”  I responded that I was also listening, and commented that whenever I try to make similar arguments, I get called “heartless”.  To which he resopnded, “It’s the truth.”

I started to think about my views and how irritated I’ve been lately, especially while listening to talk radio.  Boortz is the only conservative show I can pick up during the day – the morning guys are both fairly liberal (although admittedly a little more common sense about it than most radio liberals), and the afternoon guy has me screaming at the radio on almost a daily basis.  And while is was bad during the election, that was to be expected, and was almost welcome as a way for me to hear the other side of the issues.  But for the past few days, a great deal of air time has been given to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and perhaps that is what has pushed me over the edge.

The afternoon guy, Alan Handleman, basically specializes in pathos.  Everyday he talks about the conflict, and every day he does it from the standpoint of “is this right?”  Perhaps he’s not that bad, since he doesn’t really have much of a spine, but his callers whole-heartedly answer that emotional appeal and call in to scream about how Israelis, completely unprovoked, are bombing hospitals and schools.

Earlier this week --  Monday, I think, -- he had a weapons expert on the show who happened to be pro-Israel.  Throughout the entire show, I don’t think I heard one pro-Israel caller, but there was certainly a plethora of pro-Palestinian callers, all students of the emotional argument.  Almost all were young, likely students, and amost all argued that the land which currently makes up the physical state of Israel rightly belonged to the Palestinians prior to 1948, and because it was unfairly taken from them, they had the right to threaten and harm Israeli citizens.  It didn’t matter what calm, intelligent argument he provided to them – his responses were always met with emotional pleas to end the senseless bombings, but only the ones being done to Palestinians.  One particularly fun caller insisted on screaming that the Israelis were “occupying” Palestine, and insisted that the only way for the conflict to end would be for Israel to “end the occupation” – basically admitting, through her very argument, that it is not the Israelis who refuse to stop the conflict.

No one could respond directly to this guy’s very good points.  A few tried to accuse him of lying, but they couldn’t back up their own assertations.  This is the crux of the emotional argument: ignore what is either common sense or general knowledge, and appeal to the emotions.  The occupation girl, while annoying, certainly tugged on the heartstrings as she sobbed about seeing children injured and killed by Israeli missiles.  The Arab man who told of his family being forced to leave their home in Palestine decades ago added a personal element, and no one who was listening could argue that what happened to his family was horrible and unfathomable – but does it justify today’s bombings by Hamas?

Perhaps that is what I couldn’t get over.  With these kinds of arguments, there is little discussion over justification, aside from “fairness”.  When it was mentioned that Hamas had begun the fighting, people argued that it wasn’t fair for Israel to fight back, because Gaza doesn’t have a military, or an equitable amount of manpower.  When arguing the virtues of communism, there is often a general assumption that anyone who becomes wealthy in a capitalist society has done so by cheating.  Almost every liberal point of view that I can think of appeals to the emotions.

And this brings my back to my original concern, that odd pang that I feel whenever I tell someone that I am a conservative, or proudly capitalist, or when I find myself agreeing voraciously with an essay by Ayn Rand.  Am I heartless?

Am I competely off base here?  I’m actually not trying to start anything… really just curious to see if anyone else felt the same way.

 All I want for Christmas is for the Panthers to win this game tonight against the Giants.

Oh, and a trip to the Super Bowl too.

Thanks.

The Michigan lottery is up to $146 million.

Just thought you guys might be interested in seeing how the majority of hard-working Americans attempt to finance their "bail out".

Oh, also, the michigan.gov website crashed my computer.  FAIL.  Someone throw a few billion to the IT people there in the Michigan government.

My, but it has been a while.

I'll go ahead and apologize in advance for any typos. I (ironically) broke my "W" key a couple of weeks ago, and while it still works, it takes some effort to use, and sometimes it gets skipped over.

So... how bout that election?

I guess to say that I was surprised about anything would be false. I knew, whether I admitted it or not, that any Republican candidate would have an uphill battle to fight this year. But I really let myself get my hopes up about the North Carolina gubernatorial race. After all of the debates, the interviews, and the endorsements, I was just sure that anyone who had been paying attention to the candidates -- not the parties -- would be voting for Pat McCrory.

I was almost right. Madeline Shoemaker, the grassroots coordinator for the McCrory campaign did the math and found out that McCrory received 1,115,861 votes from non-straight ticket voters, whereas Beverly Perdue only received 857,546. Perdue, who distanced herself as much as possible from Barack Obama during the campaign should be falling all over herself to thank him for that win.

I've always been against straight-ticket voting. This is not something that I am suddenly against this year because of this particular election. I have never voted straight-ticket, and I have never suggested that anyone vote straight-ticket. It encourages uninformed voting, which is something else that I am very much against.

There's no doubt that there was a lot of that going on during this election. Every polling place I went to had Obama workers handing out little yellow cards with instructions on "How the vote for change". Step one was to vote for Barack Obama, step two was to vote straight ticket Democrat, and step three was to vote for a list of liberal judges (as those races are "non-partisan").

Voting straight-ticket Democrat in North Carolina is NOT voting fo change at the state level. Our Democratic governors have done a great job over the years of running our state into the ground. Pat McCrory was change.

The presidential election was Obama's before he even won the primary. Whichever candidate had won the Democratic primary was going to be our next president. We can thank George W. Bush and the rest of the big-government Republicans for that one. As much as I hate to admit it when the far-right is right, the Obama victory should (theoretically) promote change in the Republican Party. The idea of another Ronald Reagan isn't that exciting, but perhaps it's time for a Barry Goldwater?

Likewise, I was going to be happy regardless of who won our Senate race. Elizabeth Dole deserved to lose. Sure, she was going to be another GOP vote in the Senate, but she was nothing more than an opportunist when it came to running in North Carolina. Kay Hagan's victory will give the NC GOP a chance to put a real North Carolinian up against her in 2014.

But Pat McCrory was a victim of bad Republicans and uninformed voting. He ran a positive campaign about the issues, and North Carolinians showed that it pays to go negative (or hire Andy Griffith). I was at the election night party in Charlotte, and aside from the actual act of conceding itself, the most heartbreaking aspect was in Pat McCrory's concession speech when he brought up his positive campaign and appeared to realize, in front of our very eyes, that perhaps refusing to run attack ads had hurt him.

I know that at times I fall back on the Republican cliche attack system (such as the "Respect your president?" sign from the last post), but in all honesty I'm not that person. There are much more important things in politics than party politics. I want North Carolina and the United States to move forward and succeed -- I would never want for things to go horribly wrong just so the person from the other party will look bad or be impeached/voted out of office. I believe that both Barack Obama and Bev Perdue have our country's best interests in mind, which is why they worked so hard to get elected. We simply have different ideas of how to move our country/state forward.

If things really are better off four years from now, I will be the first to admit it. I want to see economic growth, but not at the expense of our country's brightest minds. I will not blindly support a Republican in 2012 simply for the fact that he or she is a Republican. I will look at who I feel will continue to move our country in the right direction. If Bev Perdue is the better candidate, then she will be able to count on my support. Let's face it, if the gubernatorial election had come down to Perdue vs. Fred Smith (McCrory's major opponent in the primary), I very likely would have voted for Libertarian Mike Munger.

I will respect Barack Obama as my president, and I will respect Bev Perdue as my governor. But I will also be watching them closely to make sure that they are not taking advantage of their positions -- just as I do with any leader, regardless of their party.

And you best believe I'll be leading the revolution if ever one is necessary.


NCpoliticalnerd.com

I'm still alive, don't worry.

I need to somehow get these McCain and McCrory stickers off of my computer.  Before the election, it was kinda cool to have stranger comment on my laptop's decorations.  Now, not so cool.

Like this crazy old woman that's talking to me right now about praying for America.  wtf.

Obviously, neither one of my guys won.  I didn't expect McCain to win, but the McCrory loss left me stunned.  I want to write more about that later.

Also, I cleaned my keyboard this week and now the "W" key doesn't work too well.  Won't go back on all the way.  I guess it's a good thing Bush is almost done.

Dole accuses senatorial challenger Hagan of being "godless"

For those of you that don't live in NC, let me give you a quick play-by-play of what's been going on here in our very close Senate race:

State Senator Kay Hagan -- "I'm going to run against Elizabeth Dole.  Even though I'm a well-known moderate in the NC Senate, I'm going to pander to the extreme Left for support and let Senator Chuck Schumer fund all of my attack ads against Elizabeth Dole.

US Senator Elizabeth Dole -- Whatev.  No one knows you.  Fail.

Hagan -- No one should vote for Dole because she's from Kansas, not North Carolina.  You North Carolinians are too stupid to have realized that six years ago when you first elected her.

Dole -- Wtf.  Kay Hagan is Big Oil.

Hagan -- Nuh uh.  Dole is Big Oil.

Dole -- Hagan raised taxes and single-handedly caused the economic crisis.

Hagan -- Dole is BFF with George W. Bush.

Dole -- Hagan is BFF with athiests.

Hagan -- OMG WTF!!!!!!111  I <3 God!  Cease and desist!

Dole's lawyers -- Nope.

Hagan -- Sued, bitches.

-------------

Was it a low blow for Dole to infer that Hagan is an athiest?  Maybe.  But why is it any more "offensive" to claim that about someone than to claim that your opponent takes money from "Big Oil"?  If they are all half-truths, why does one okay but another gets a lawsuit?

You know what the REAL deal is?  This deal with Hagan taking contributions from the Godless Americans PAC happened almost two months ago, and Dole held onto the info until less than a week before Election Day.  Hagan had to think quick to make herself look golden, so she feigned being extremely offended, to the point of filing a lawsuit.  That way, not only does she get national attention, but she "proves" to everyone that she loves God SO MUCH that she is willing to go to court over him.

And before you go assuming that I'm just another stupid Republican, Kay Hagan totally had my support up until about a month ago.  You can ask any of my Republican friends, they were quite disappointed in my lack of support for Liddy.

Dear Professors Jovanovic and Poulos,

I'm so glad to see that you felt the need to sign the petition of Communication Studies professors at politicalcommunication.info which accuses McCain of sinking to racist tactics to attack Obama.  I'm glad to know that, although the McCain campaign had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the racist photos you posted on your site, you felt the need to associate with a site that would completely attribute such things to the McCain campaign.  That completely makes sense, especially since you state on your site that "The purposeful dissemination of messages that a communicator knows to be false and inflammatory is unethical."  Good call on that one.

As you are both professors at UNCG, I assume that 2 years ago when a good portion of the student body was accusing me of being racist because of my disdain for Angela Davis, you also took it upon yourself to stand up for me, as it was clear that those accusations were false and were meant to deceive people who had not actually ever read my column or knew anything about the circumstances.  I also assume that, had a petition been sent to your office which chastised the people who called me such hateful names, you would have gladly signed it to show your support of my right to criticize the political beliefs of someone with whom I disagree regardless of the color of their skin.

Yeah.  Right.

Anyway, thanks again for your input into this election.  Communications professors are some of the most important people in the world, and I value your opinion so much more than I would value my own, if I had one, of course.

Melissa

Just a few moments ago, I visited dictionary.com to look up the current definition of a word that has been highly contested over the last few weeks.  The result was just so awesome that i had to do a screen capture.  Check out the advertisement than popped up on the side of the screen, as well as the word that I was researching:


(click on the picture to enlarge)

Classic!  I got far too much amusement out of that little picture :)