What a week… one more day.

I haven’t posted lately cause I’ve been hyper busy. This week the newspaper has been larger than normal every day. With the election coming up on Tuesday all the political ads have been making the newspaper down right huge. That means a lot more work for me. Tomorrow will be the biggest newspaper I’ve ever put together. It’ll be 28 pages. That’s 12 pages longer than our normal Friday paper. (Friday papers are put together on Thursday, my life is a day ahead… always.)

Today’s paper (which comes out tomorrow) came together pretty easily so I actually managed to get out at a normal time tonight. That was nice because I haven’t gotten to spend much time with Jess this week. When I don’t get home until after 10 and she goes to bed by 11, that doesn’t give us much quality time.

I finished reading A Million Little Pieces last night. You know, the big lie by James Frey about being a drug addict. I don’t really know what parts were lies but it was a pretty good read. It helped to go into it knowing it wasn’t true so I didn’ty end up shocked when I found out like most of the people that read it when it first came out. The writing style was a bit wack and really a pain to read as a copyeditor, but I managed to put that aside enough to appreciate the good story he managed to tell.

My parents keep trying to convince me that Obama is a bad choice. I still disagree and I look forward to casting my vote Tuesday. If he doesn’t win, we’re going to have to move to Canada… I don’t think I can handle a McCain presidency. I REALLY can’t handle a Palin presidency. Given the polls and Obama’s lead in a lot of places, if he doesn’t win I’m going to be seriously suspicious of what went down in the election.

I’ve been working a lot this week on my annual Christmas list. It’s just about done. I should be able to wrap it up tomorrow which is good since mom is expecting it by Friday. It’s pretty sweet if I do say so myself. Once I get it into my mom’s hands I may put photos of it up online. I love Christmas.

The Lakers have started 2-0 and absolutely slaughtering both the Trail Blazers and the Clippers. Their dominance is helping make up for the fact that the Cowboys are struggling hardcore.

Other than that, I’m just working. And sleeping. Mostly working though.

School research

I’m learning something somewhat surprising (though not totally unexpected). Getting a Masters degree online is expensive! I’ve also learned that it’s hard to find programs. Not every school offers their masters programs online. Actually, it would seem, very few of them do.

I’ve currently found three programs that seem like they’d be interesting/good for me. The one I like the most is from George Washington University. Of course, it’s also the most expensive I’ve found so far. $40k for the full program. That’s a lot of money. The least expensive one so far is from Walden University, a totally virtual university. $27k for that one. Expensive but a whole car less than GWU. The downside is the program isn’t as interesting based on what I see of their course catalog. Also, it’s hard to argue with GWU’s reputation. The third school I’ve found is New England College. I don’t know what their tuition costs are yet (got an email in to them) and their program looks pretty good. The other bonus here would be they don’t require the GRE. I don’t really want to take that again.

Here are the three programs…

George Washington

Walden University

New England College

Haven’t exactly figured out how we’re going to pay for all this but first I want to decide which program I’m most interested in. After that I can start working on the application process as well as the financial aid bit. A masters degree should pay for itself in the long run but I need to make sure I choose the program best suited for me and the one that will ensure success once I’ve completed the program. I can’t afford to have a worthless degree, both on a financial level and a personal level.

Be smarter than that

With the election mere weeks away, Jess and I keep getting forwards from “concerned” folks trying to enlighten us on the evils of Obama. He’s muslim, he doesn’t love America, he’s racist… seriously, there’s an email for just about everything. In every instance, a 30 second search online reveals that these emails are false.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that it’s all one sided. I know there are emails floating around the net about John McCain, but it just seems so prevalent from Republican side of the spectrum. I don’t even know why people keep forwarding them. Many of them have been debunked in the mainstream media and some even Fox News admits are foolish. Do people really just believe anything that comes to them in an email? I’m highly suspicious of any forward sent to my inbox. I immediately head over to snopes.com to check them out if I can’t tell immediately that they’re fake.

For those hopefully learning from this post, if snopes doesn’t turn up anything, cut out a large portion of any sentance in the email and search it in google. You’ll find plenty of responses by doing that. This is the same process many teachers use to see if students are plagiarising they’re papers. It works really well and you can usually find commentary on the forwarded email, usually a bunch of people asking if it’s true and others explaining why it’s not.

I haven’t seen one forward that was actually true. Seriously… not one. I’m pretty much always the person responding saying, “this is false, here’s the proof.”

Maybe it’s the debater and natural skeptic in me, but I just don’t understand why people don’t look into this stuff before they forward it to everyone in their address book. In this day and age it’s so easy to verify claims people make. I don’t know why you wouldn’t take a few minutes to see if what you’re about to tell someone else is actually true. It can only help your credibility if you can back up what you’re saying.

Now here’s where I get tougher… Despite many forwarded email claims, Obama proclaims to be a Christian. I happen to believe him. Whether he truly is or not can only be known by God Himself. For those that still think he’s Muslim, suppose for a moment that he IS a Christian and you’re sending out emails saying he’s not. You’re spreading gossip that is nothing but lies. Do you think God would be happy about you doing that? You don’t know what is in Obama’s heart in terms of his faith. Neither do I. So leave his faith out of your arguments to not vote for him.

Let’s be honest here, if you’re on the right side of the political spectrum, there are plenty of reasons to vote against Obama based on his stances on various policies. You don’t need to spread rumors and lies that exist only to prey upon people’s fears. I know it’s a tried and true Karl Rove play, but as Christians, I like to think we should be above that. Unfortunately, it seems the church is more interested in furthering the reach of these false claims than it is in finding the truth and treating each other with respect and dignity.

The email forwards filled with fear mongering are disheartening to me. The only thing worse in my mind is that some people are so eager to believe them that they don’t look into them further.

Time to hit the books I think

For a long time I’ve considered going back to school to get my masters. The hesitation has always been that with a masters in comm., just about the only thing I could do with it would be teach. While I’m definitely interested in teaching, I’m just not sure that’s ALL I want to do. I’ve always been interested in law and I’ve also always been interested in politics.

I’ve also always felt that I’m meant for so much more than what I’ve done so far. I feel like I could be having a far greater impact. This political season has really gotten me motivated to be more involved in the political process and to take my ideas/beliefs and get something done.

For that reason I’ve been considering going back to school. The problem is that I can’t really GO to school so anything I do has to be offered as an online degree. Distance learning like. So far the best thing I’ve found has been a masters in political management from George Washington University. I’m still researching everything though, trying to find the best option and decide if I am actually going to do it. I think I am though.

So I’m looking at Public Policy and Political Management as degree options. With either of those I could still go into teaching at some point if that’s what I ultimately decide to do. They would also give me solid credentials for public relations and lobbying too. So I could have options in other career fields should the need arise. Seems to me that going this route rather than communication would be better from an options standpoint.

More than anything though, I just need to feel like I’m moving forward in life and work isn’t doing that for me. The newspaper industry as a whole isn’t doing well and my gut feeling is, the industry as we know it won’t survive a whole lot longer. Every newspaper in the country is losing money and laying people off at alarming rates. While I enjoy the work, I just don’t see a real solid future in what I’m doing now. I’m thinking I’d be better off getting an advanced degree and moving on. The job I have is perfect for that because it allows me to have mornings off to work on things like school. Plus I’d have all day Fridays to myself to get homework and papers done.

So there ya have it… I think it might be time for me to be a student one more time.

ha ha!!!

That’s pretty funny.

Snow in the forecast

It might snow tomorrow (Friday) and there’s a good chance it’ll snow Saturday. I’m so excited. Even though ski season is still more than a month away here, it’s getting closer and the weather is turning into my favorite time of year. I love the cold, crisp feeling of winter. Nothing beats it.

I’ve just got to get my back better soon so I can get back in the gym and get my out of shape body in condition for the start of the season. It’s mostly better but not all the way yet and I can’t afford another setback at this point. It’s too close to the season and I don’t intend to be skipping any skiing… so if I don’t get it better now it may not get better before spring.

I love snow. God should make more of it. Lots more.

Sorry mom…

Despite my mom’s request for no more politics… I have to comment. I mean, I’ve been very involved in this election since the primaries first got under way. I have always had pretty strong convictions about how I think things should be and have, for many years, contemplated a life in public office. I still think about that and am actually beginning to pursue that.

I watched the debates tonight… of course. One of the problems I’m having with McCain, aside from disagreeing with most of his policies, is his inconsistent stance on government involvement. He has a long history of being for deregulation. He’s against universal health care because “government would mess things up.” Then tonight, during the debate, he proposes his new policy plan that says the government will buy up mortgages and refinance them so people can pay them… Sounds good I guess but if government would mess things up in health care, why would they do well in mortgage ownership?

For years he said we need to deregulate… but now he’s for regulating Wall Street. That’s because he can’t say anything else I guess but it underscores his inconsistency on government involvement in the marketplace. There were several times that he kept going back and forth and if it weren’t so late I’d remember the specifics. He just seems to say what people want to hear. Does he stand for more government involvement in our lives or less? At least with Obama you know it’s more. Agree with it or not at least he’s consistent. With McCain you just don’t know.

All that said, I think McCain did a pretty decent job in the town hall format. He’s better than Obama at connecting with people on a personal level at times, mainly with people he has something in common with. (The Petty Chief was a good example) Unfortunately, he was weak on substance for a lot of answers and my impression was that Obama gave better answers overall. More detailed and specific. McCain’s answers tended to be vague.

For example, “Fixing Social Security is easy.” Really? He says he knows what to do and that it’s been done before. If it’s so easy, TELL ME WHAT IT IS! If I had to guess it’s privatizing it… but he probably doesn’t want to say that given the crapper the stock market is in. Whatever his answer to it is, I wish he’d actually said what it is rather than just saying it’s easy and I know what to do.

I think it was a close debate. I think Obama wins if for no other reason than McCain was expected to do well and didn’t put any kind of distance between himself and Obama. Without some game changing gaffe by Obama or bombshell from McCain, the race continues as it has been going, which is for Obama.

Are you kidding me?

It’s been a while since I posted. I’ve been dealing with some back problems and the power cable for my laptop died an untimely death. My back is on the mend however and I had to post something.

I watched the VP debates tonight. I know that Republicans will watch that debate and say Palin did well and held her own… but I couldn’t disagree more. She is clearly unprepared to be President should that call come.

I watched in absolute amazement as she continually avoided questions and went back to her talking points. The question would be on the bail out and she’d talk about Iraq. Then they’d get to Iraq and she’d talk about drilling. She rarely addressed the question that was posed to her.

Worse, Biden knew McCain’s record better than she did. He knew it inside and out and she knew what she’d been told. It was obvious to me, a person with a strong background in both debate and public speaking, on topics that she was uncomfortable on. She was essentially reading from a script, it was just memorized. Those moments came when she was less animated than usual and just stared straight ahead. When she was comfortable with a topic she did better… but those topics were few and far between.

I’m looking foward to seeing how her ardent supporter James Dobson reacts to her support of gay couples having the same rights as heterosexual couples. I bet he nearly exploded when she said that. I was kind of shocked myself. I’m sure the McCain camp will release a statement correcting her statement at some point in the next 24 hours.

Palin never could respond to some of the tough questions Biden put to her. On more than one occassion it appeared that Palin was thankful the moderator said they needed to move on because she didn’t have an answer. More than once Palin had long pauses before finding her answer. She wasn’t being thoughtful and measuring her response… she was SEARCHING for her response. She didn’t know the answer and needed a moment to come up with something to say. If she could have had a Twix she totally would have.

I will grant she did better than expected after her miserable failings of the past couple weeks… most notably her interview with Katie Couric that led some Republicans to call for her to resign from the ticket. (That would have sunk McCain for sure) To me though, doing better than looking like a total idiot isn’t enough to qualify you for the job. I could have done better in the debate tonight than she did. It bothers me that I’m more familiar with the majority of those topics than she is and that I could have formed more cogent answers. And that’s without a week of “debate camp” at one of McCain’s houses.

The early polls are already saying Biden was the decisive “winner” of the debate. To me that was obvious. He gave strong, infoormed answers. She talked in vague generalities and continuously fell back on her talking points, not to mention some of the familiar lines she’s been using throughout the campaign. I’m surprised we didn’t hear her talk about a pit bull and lipstick again.

She was terribly inconsistent with her answers too. One minute she’d be talking about how we need more regulation to prevent things like the bailout. The next she was talking about how government is not the answer and we need less government control. You can’t have more regulation and less government control. Regulation is, by definition, government interference in the market. This also rolled into the challenge Biden made that McCain wants to deregulate insurance like Wall Street was deregulated. She never had an answer to that. She was given a list of talking points, coached on those, and stuck to those topics only.

More than ever I think this was a poor choice by McCain for a VP candidate. My guess is that he told his staff he wanted a pro-life woman and to go find someone. They found Palin and he said OK. She was clearly not carefully vetted. She’s ill informed about many of the problems the nation is facing. She doesn’t understand foreign policy and she clearly doesn’t understand the economy.

I just don’t understand how Palin can make someone feel comfortable. I will grant that she’s got potential as a politician, but she’s just not ready for that high of an office. If that’s what she looks like after a full week of debate prep, she’s not even close to being ready to be in such a prominent role.

Biden on the other hand, looked every bit the VP. Solid performance.