Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Politics and Davi

This will be a bifurcated post. The first part will be about politics, and the second part will be about Heather helping me with a project for a class.



I am loving reading the news these days. I am disturbed by it too. I am loving seeing the reign of incompetence and idiocy that has been Republican rule come to an end, and I am loving watching the conservative movement implode. Certainly there are some good-guy smart conservatives out there (Andrew Sullivan is my first stop for political news every day), and I think that we NEED conservatives. But not populist social conservative ninnies. The bad guys are losing. It's sad to see John McCain's wagon hitched to a sinking ship, but he knew the risks.

If you are a Burkean conservative (a moderate-liberal pragmatist), or a thoughtful libertarian (meaning not an ideologue or a resentful old white man), then you have a reasonable point of view. Chances are, if you are one of those two types of conservatives, you want the GOP to blow itself up as much as I do. It's been a strangely satisfying sight.

Like watching any grotesque thing in its death spasms, this has not been pretty. The deregulated credit system is going haywire, sending the world into a recession. The planet is warming up. Racists and idiots are marching around accusing the next duly elected president of the United States of being a terrorist. Sarah Palin is...well...she keeps talking. But it looks like we might have legal abortions, social security, diplomacy, progressive income taxes, and freedom of speech for a while longer. Hell, we might get gay marriage and electric cars too. (I'm being hyperbolic. I'm not THAT optimistic...)

Anyway, its about time Americans got beyond prejudice and stupidity enough to quit electing Republicans. Too bad it took a major economic crisis, several hundred thousand deaths, and the erosion of civil liberties to get them there.

Anyway, I'm super happy that Obama looks like he's gonna win.



In more immediate news, Heather is helping me with a pain-in-the-ass project that involves manipulating a bunch of data on spreadsheets. I am smart enough to think of stuff to look for, but not good enough with the tools or experience enough with data manipulation to do very much of this for myself. The result of this is that she is being my little assistant. (Heather here: more like little savior. Give credit where credit is due. I saved your butt with my biology-major knowledge of Excel!)

I'm buying her lots of meals this week. (Heather: Yum Yum!)

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