I just sat down on the couch and as luck would have it, I missed Barry Obama’s speech. I’m sure that over the next couple hours I will see most of it, but I wanted to write before I do see that. First, I saw an article that mentioned that Barack used to go by the name Barry. I like Barry Obama. Sounds like a guy I could sit down with, have a beer and play some Madden Football. Barack sounds forceful. It doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely. It’s been said that people vote for the person they’d most like to have a beer with. That’s a tough one. I’d probably want to have a beer with Barry. He’s cool. He’d be my wingman at the bar. Barack, on the other hand. He’d rather get a bottle of white wine and talk about foreign affairs. When hot chicks approached me (and they would), he’d ask them to leave because we were deep in conversation. Barry is your pal, but how many of us want our pal’s running the country?
So, I feel really torn about my next thought. I think it would be awesome to have a President that was a race other than caucasian. It is about time. This country needs to take a step forward and show that people of any race have the same opportunity as I do. Having a black President would be good for my children to see and I think he would present someone that all races could look up to and say “If Barack can be President, so can I”. To me, that’s awesome. Here’s the part I feel horrible about. The thought in my mind that someone will try to assassinate him because of his race. If that were to happen, I think it would set race relations back 50 years. It’s really sad that I think that way, but I have seen a lot of racism in my lifetime and they just arrested 3 men for apparently plotting to kill him because he is black. For all the good things in this country, the racism that still is allowed to exist is unforgiveable.
I have been watching bits and pieces of the DNC over the past couple days. As a Republican looking in, there appears to be a pretty obvious problem the Democrats are going to have to overcome if they want to win the campaign. Maybe the best way to explain is to compare it to the Republican Party. Die hard Republicans will vote Republican based on the values of the party, regardless of the candidate. Now that is obviously not 100% true, BUT it is the norm. Democrats do not seem to think that way. I am watching people at the DNC say that they wanted Hillary and they may not vote for Obama because he’s not Hillary. That helps my party of choice. I don’t hear Republicans say the same about Ron Paul.
The next issue I see in the party is the unwillingness of the Dems to get over The Kennedy’s and Clinton’s. The Democratic Party needs to move on from these Presidencies. While I certainly understand how you worship at the altar of Kennedy and Clinton, it is hurting your party. You cannot compare every candidate to Clinton or Kennedy, even if they are in fact a Clinton or Kennedy. John and Bobby Kennedy were exceptional men and leaders. Ted is not. Bill Clinton was a very personable leader who I thought did help bring this country together. Hillary is not Bill. By comparing all your candidates to these figures, you are doing yourselves a disservice. If you want to win the Presidency, you have to support your party. Hillary Clinton is A Democrat, she is not THE Democrat.
The funny thing is, for the first time I can remember, I have thought about voting against my party. After watching the DNC though, if Dems cannot get behind Obama, why should I?
Today I have mixed emotions over the Olympic Games coming to an end. Coverage out on my side of the coast just started up and I am watching volleyball. Of course I already know the outcome, but nothing much better is on right now. I enjoyed watching the Olympics on TV, but WHY could they not broadcast live on the West Coast? Start coverage at 5PM when it is broadcast on the East Coast. That would have allowed most of us to stay up and watch more of the games taking place. That would have meant better ratings as well. Right now, I am just wanting them to end. I pretty much knew the outcome of all the matches I was interested in before they were on out here anyway.
I hope the finale is as good as the opening, which in my opinion was just awesome.
Anyway, last night I decided to install Microsoft Silverlight 2.0. When it was done, my IE crashed. I brought it back up, but apparently it did not install, so once again I installed, once again IE crashed. I went to my control panel and error city. Apparently, my netsetup.cpl and firewall.cpl have become corrupted to the point that a system restore and a file restore from my workstation could not correct it. The laptop works for the most part, but this morning, I had to reboot several times as some .bat file in my temp kept crashing out. Also, my firewall was going apeshit. Oh, also some of my iTunes files became corrupted and they no longer play. When I treid backing up my files so I can rebuild Monday, several were failing a cyclic redundancy check. Nice. Thanks Microsoft for killing my music, thanks Apple for not allowing me to download the files that I paid for more than once. I really have to wonder why Silverlight would touch my netsetup, firewall and audio files. In fact it scares a bit.
Congratulations to the Chinese (even if you trotted out underage gymnasts) for winning the most gold medals, but I am proud that we won the most medals overall. So, I proudly present the following video from one of the greatest rock vocalists ever.
