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Pending a new amendment to the constitution to lower the age limit for the president, I think I’ve found a new candidate to vote for… Paris Hilton! Check out this video… ’cause it’s hot.

My friend Michelle just sent me a question that I thought would make an interesting blog post. Her question:

If we went to the moon in 1969, why aren’t we going now? NASA first says money, then says it’s radiation that cannot be flown through. Did the radiation become more dangerous? can radiation grow? I say no to both and guess money. And then I say why isn’t there money? And then I say we spent it all on useless wars. Do you have an opinion on this? We discussed this at work, and it was the most intellectually challenging discussion I have ever had here.

Yes, yes I do have an opinion on this. First let me say that I am not aware of any statements that NASA has made regarding not going back to the Moon because of radiation. This sounds more like Moon Hoax propaganda. However, the Sun’s radiation does increase, but by such a small amount that over even 40 years it would be hard to measure. Even over the last 2000 years, the Sun’s output has remained virtually stable, only varying by about 0.1%. Only on the scale of millions of years would we notice the increase. In about one billion years, the Earth will be so hot that life as we know it will not be able to exist.

The real reason we aren’t going back to the Moon is an almost complete lack of public interest or political will. The Apollo project was cancelled due to the lack of political and public support. That support began to wane almost the instant Neil Armstrong’s foot was placed on the Moon. It hasn’t returned. Politicians these days lack any real vision for the future and spend most of their time pandering to the electorate on social issues and having their palms greased in smokey back rooms.

I think the biggest problem is that Americans are just plain lazy. Kennedy said:

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…

I think a lot of people miss that last part. Doing hard things keeps us challenged and keeps us innovating, but we haven’t done anything hard in a long time, probably since the Moon landings. Nothing we have done since has matched that and we haven’t even really attempted to do anything special.

So what now? Personally, I think the United States is done. Unless something big happens in the next few years to really motivate us as a people, we will recede into history just as our European forbearers have. Our time as the world’s leader is over and that task has been handed off. So good luck to India and China. I see them as dominating the next 100 years of progress and history.

Check out this link to the Pew Research Center’s Pew News IQ test. It asks you twelve questions about current events and shows you your score as well as how you rank according to demographics. I answered all twelve correctly and scored in the 97th percentile. The test was fairly easy in my opinion, especially since it was multiple choice. But despite that, most people did fairly poorly. Even the most casual news watcher or reader should be able to get all of these. I guess that means people just don’t keep up with the news.

While I was once a crazy Texas thousandaire, Texas is also known for producing an abnormally high amount of billionaires who think they can save the country. The two that come to mind immediately are H. Ross Perot and T. Boone Pickens. Hmm, come to think of it, they also only use an initial for their first names. How does J. Neal Bales sound? Anyway, back to the story.

T. Boone Pickens has a new website called PickensPlan (as seen on TV!) that outlines his concept for a new US energy strategy. He thinks all natural gas power generation should be replaced with wind energy and the natural gas savings can then be used to power our automobiles and reduce our need for foreign oil. He freely admits that his plan is not a permanent solution and is merely a bridge to whatever comes next. He also stresses the importance of good leadership to get the plan working. He says it would only take ten years, but with little or no infrastructure for natural gas powered autos, his plan might take longer than he thinks without significant help in the form of tax breaks and government vouchers.

H. Ross Perot has a new website too called Perot Charts. Be sure to check out the creepy and poorly scripted video on the front page. It’s a virtual love fest coming from some anonymous guy that Perot chose to “run” this project. I think we know who’s really in charge. The site is basically just a giant slideshow of Perot’s famous charts which have been updated for the 21st century. He doesn’t really have a plan or anything, just a bunch of charts and a lot of moxy. Go get ‘em Ross!

Watch this film and ask yourself how this could ever end? Warning: there are images of men, women, and children who have been shot or hit with shrapnel in this video. Don’t look away though, look right at it and see it for what it really is.

UPDATE: The video is gone, but just remember that there is more than one side to every story.

Unlike when I voted for these guys, I finally managed to vote for a presidential candidate that won something. Barack Obama has won the Democratic party’s nomination! I’m pretty excited that he won and I’m also glad that Senator Clinton is backing down gracefully and not trying to fight it out to the bitter end.

I’ll be voting for him in November even though I don’t really think he has a snowball’s chance in hell of winning in Tennessee. There are three types of people here that won’t vote for him and they sadly make up a large number of people in this state. Some people won’t vote for him because he is brown (i.e. they’re racist assholes). Some people won’t vote for him because they think he’s Muslim (i.e. they’re ignorant assholes). And the last group are Republicans (i.e. easily led sheeple that are afraid a teenager who isn’t ready for motherhood will have an abortion or that a gay person might be happy somewhere or that kids might learn some science).

However, I do have some reason to be optimistic. Harold Ford Jr., a black Democrat from Memphis, only lost to Bob Corker by three percentage points in the 2006 Senatorial race. This despite racially charged ads that were run by the Corker campaign and also despite the fact that he has some notoriously corrupt family members.

So there is some hope and that’s part of what Obama’s campaign is about. Hope that people and things will change for the better. If you’d like to see things change for the better, donate to the campaign and be sure to vote for Barack in November!

Blowback is a concept that most people today cannot understand. I linked to the Wikipedia article on the topic, but the first line sums it up.

Blowback is a term used in espionage to describe the unintended consequences of covert operations. Blowback typically appears random and without cause, because the public is unaware of the secret operations that provoked it.

Examples of blowback are the 9/11 attacks, the 7/7 bombings, the Iran hostage crisis, and the Soviet-Cuba alliance.

At this point I’m sure the Republicans in the crowd are doing their best Rudy Giuliani impersonation and demanding that I take it back, but I won’t be doing that. Blowback is real and when we start messing with other people’s countries, they are going to start messing with ours. Now I’m not saying that terrorists are justified in what they do, but I understand the reasons they do it and understand that part of the blame sits squarely on our shoulders. That’s right boys and girls, the United States isn’t the glorious force of good you’ve been led to believe it to be. We’ve got blood on our greedy little hands, just like everyone else.

There’s an old axiom that says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” While we can’t always live by this rule, it’s a good rule to follow whenever we can. If we followed this rule, blowback wouldn’t exist in our foreign relations or our personals lives. So do what you can to prevent blowback.

Here’s a nice video that sums up the common myths about my favorite presidential candidate Barack Obama.

THIS is why I support Obama:

Actually, can I vote for this kid?

I went and voted today. In fact I went out of my way to vote (about 250 miles round trip). I’m currently living in a hotel in Nashville that I moved into a few weeks ago. However, I am still registered to vote in Huntingdon, TN. Thus a long and exhausting trip. If your state has a primary today I urge you to go out and get your vote on.

When I returned to my hotel room I decided to check the news and came upon this story:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2008/020408_election_cancelled.htm

Normally I dismiss anything that has to do with Alex Jones since he’s a complete nut job, but I got to thinking about the scenario mentioned in the article. What if the President did suspend the elections and tried to remain in office? It all comes down to where do we draw the line. I ask myself that a lot and I think this situation is where it happens. I could not allow that sort of thing to happen without fighting back. Such blatant disregard for everything this country stands for could not be ignored.

So what is your breaking point?