Media Should Leave Jennifer Aniston Alone: She's Not on the Taxpayer Dime and Can Do What She Wants With Her Own Money

Fox News reported that actress Jennfier Aniston spent $50,000 on her hair during a recent PR stint for her new movie Marley & Me (an EXCELLENT movie), while average Americans are having to cut back.

I don't have an issue with someone spending their own money on their own stuff. She IS helping part of the economy.

If Uncle Sam were paying for it, I'd be pulling my own hair out, but that isn't the case at all. I think the media ought to give her a break and let her spend her money the way she wants to.

I wouldn't spend $50,000 on styling my hair, that's for sure, but if she wants to, more power to her.

Obama Wins; Definitely Not a Reagan Landslide, But More Than Enough to Beat McCain

Barack Obama made history, becoming the first African-American man to become President of the United States. It wasn't quite a Reagan-style landslide, but was still more than enough to put McCain away. Congratulations to the President-elect.

I'm more unhappy about Michigan's Prop 1 and 2 right now than I am about the race for the White House. I've been on record as not being happy with either candidate, but we have a new President, and without all the legal dramas of 2000. For that, I am grateful.

We'll see how President-elect Obama does. I'm looking forward to a lot of new source material in the next four years, especially if his Socialist views begin to take the shape of policy.

For now, he has a lot of work to do in order to straighten out the economy.

It Will Be Over Tomorrow; We Will Have a New President

As the rest of the country gets ready to vote starting in a little over eight hours from now, I still have mixed feelings on the candidates.

They are not the best that their respective parties have to offer, and we're going to be stuck with one of them for the next four years, assuming they stay healthy.

McCain has made too many compromises over his career to be called a real conservative. Obama is too young and inexperienced and is too far over to the left; he's going to be forced to move to the right in order to govern if he wins tomorrow.

I don't think that the polls are correct in their blowout predictions either.

They've gotten the last two Presidential elections wrong with their polling data, both before and during Election Day. The problem is that the media and the pollsters continually underestimate the turnout on the Republican side, while overestimating the Democratic turnout on Election Day. And they never seem to learn from their mistakes.

And when the polls do not match the election results, they start screaming about voter suppression and start looking for victims. They don't seem to understand that many people don't want to tell who they actually voted for. I'd tell a pollster that I wrote in Mickey Mouse, just to throw their numbers off. It's none of their business!

It'll be interesting to see if any coal states predicted to go to Obama flip to McCain. Very few of the networks carried the Obama/coal industry story.

I will be watching the results tomorrow night with great interest.

Democratic Convention Was All Giltz, No Substance: Temple of Obama Was Ridiculous

The Democrats sure know how to put on a glitzy party, that's for sure, but their convention was all glitz, and no substance. They failed to astonish anyone with bold new initiatives, and was nothing short of a full-scale victim pity party.

And there was Bill Clinton retelling old lies and rewriting history...again. All one has to do is look at the first quarter of 2001's growth rate to tell the story of record surpluses and economic growth: the economy grew backwards at a rate of -.49%. He handed off an economy with decreased GDP to George W. Bush. His surpluses were already on the way out the door while Clinton was still in office.

I wasn't impressed with the rhetoric. All I heard was "poor us, poor us." They delivered on the "why" but not on the "how" except in the most generic terms possible. "Obama has the experience to put people back to work!" How, exactly?

And the Temple of Obama thing on the last night was utterly ridiculous; it's cannon fodder for the opposition, who has already taken great advantage of how it looked, even before the One even appeared on the stage. And when he did take the stage, he announced nothing new, other than some new criticisms of McCain.

For all that trouble, Obama got a six point bounce in the polls, which is considered a moderate outcome. The candidate who gets the bigger bounce in the polls following the respective conventions usually wins the election. In 2004, Bush got a 15 point bounce, Kerry got a five point bounce. Kerry was also dealing (ineffectually) with the Swift Boat ads, which came on the heels of the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

I took more enjoyment out of watching MSNBC with it's on-air personality conflicts. THAT was more interesting watching than the Democratic Convention.

I wonder if the networks will monitor the GOP convention next week as closely as they did Obama's. I seriously doubt it. And I also wonder if the GOP convention will be as generic as the Democratic one was. We'll see.

NO to McCain-Lieberman: Conservatives WON'T Stand For It

There's a big rumor going around that John McCain has chosen independent Joe Lieberman as his running mate. I hope that this rumor is false; I know I'm not alone in saying that I wouldn't vote for this ticket, regardless of whether Obama is going to win it or not.

I like Joe Lieberman, but his voting record is straight-liberal, except in national security.

McCain needs to really choose carefully. His values-voters are hanging in the balance.

Joe Biden is Obama's Choice: Will Hillary's Voters Stand for This?

Joe Biden was announced as Obama's choice to be his running mate yesterday, and it's an interesting choice. I thought he'd go with Hillary Clinton to keep her voters from going over to John McCain on Election Day. I don't think they're going to go for this. There's a lot of grumbling going on.

It'll also be interesting to see if Obama's people can keep Senator Biden from going "off the reservation" and speaking his mind and getting into trouble again.

In any case, I'm not voting for the ticket. They're too far to the left for my taste.

If McCain Chooses a Pro-Choice VP, I Definitely Will Vote 3rd Party

Rumors have surfaced that John McCain is thinking about a pro-choice candidate. If he dares to go down that course, he will lose whatever Conservative support he's managed to cobble together in recent months.

I sure as hell won't vote for him if he does this. Right now there's a possibility that I might vote for him to stop Obama, but I will not vote for any pro-choice candidate on any level, under any circumstances.

He really needs to choose carefully and decide which base he wants to rely upon.

Tire Talk: Obama's Gas-Saving Strategy Will Cause People to Overinflate Their Tires if They Aren't Careful

I've been listening to the current political chatter about inflating our tires to save on gas; some people are going to inflate their tires to the maximum limit and have blowouts. Obama's making an error.

According to those in the know, he needs to add a disclaimer to his "advice" for saving fuel that the PSI printed on the side of the tire means that's the tire's maximum rating when the tires are hot. Air pressure increases as the tire heats up, so the secret is to inflate the tires to under the limit so that when the tire gets hot it doesn't go over the printed limit.

I'm no mechanic, but I've read enough to know that cold weather will drop the air pressure in tires, so more air might need to be added during winter months; in hot weather, the PSI will increase due to the heat so less air is needed.

It's amazing what becomes politicized in an election year. Tire pressure of all things...

No New Presidential Politics Posts Here for a While

I haven't been writing about either Obama or McCain or anything else over here as of late.

I am so turned off by both candidates that I have been staying away from commenting on the 2008 Presidential Election. As far as the election itself, it's a question of whether I vote for McCain, or vote for a worthy 3rd party candidate. If it looks like it's going to be very close, I won't waste my vote; stopping Obama is more important than my disillusionment with McCain.

I'm going with issues related to the current Administration and local politics for the time being, unless something really strange happens in the current campaign. Maybe after the conventions the choice will become clearer.

Obama vs. McCain: Ho-Hum

So it's to be Obama vs. McCain in the fall. Sounds pretty boring to me.

While I'm happy that one of this blog's stated objectives has been accomplished with Senator Clinton withdrawing from the race against Obama, what are we left with? An ultra-liberal against someone whose maverick credentials are giving conservatives heartburn.

I'm not going to make up my mind now, but I'm not happy about November. Looks like a lose-lose situation to me.