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The Republican Race Takes Some Weird Turns

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Last week’s Republican Presidential debate and the entrance of Fred Thompson into the race seems to have reshaped the landscape for the nomination, or at least that’s what the latest CBS/New York Times polling data suggests. I don’t think that the hard liberal bend on both of these entities plays into these particular numbers, so no feedback about that please. Additionally, those of you who know me know that I am 110% against these “scientific” polls because the truth is that there’s nothing scientific about them. That’s a handy little diddy I picked up in graduate school…of course the professor disagreed, but he had his ideology to push, too!

In any event, the news reports about McCain having a good debate are right on the money. The CBS poll shows him up a few points to 18% of Republican primary voters. This may seem like a small drop in the bucket compared to the front-runners, but for McCain, this is big news. He almost doubled his support by going back to what brought him to the Presidential dance in 2000 – straight talk about every issue. It’s a nice change from some of the blabbering that you can hear in primary debates.

On the other hand, Romney came in at just 14% support, which is not par for this course. Usually, Romney gets a few more percentage points on his side after each debate because he has what some people call the “Presidential look,” whatever that means.

The biggest news in the CBS poll is Thompson jumping to 22% of the primary voters supporting his bid for the Presidency. This is huge because Giuliani is only at 27% in this poll. The difference between these two numbers will likely fall in the “scientific” margin of error (don’t even get me started). Huckabee doesn’t register on the CBS poll, which is a shame because if you look at RealClearPolitics.com’s averages over time you see that he has enjoyed a burst of support in the last few months going from 0% to 4.5%.

That’s huge for Huckabee, though it won’t get him the nomination. At this point, it’s way too early to call a clear winner on the Republican side of race. For example, the Rasmussen poll shows Thompson is actually in the lead in this race.

On Being an Adjunct Political Science Professor

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This week marked my first week back in the university classroom. The difference this time around, though, is that now I’m serving as a humble Adjunct Professor and not a student. I’m only teaching one class called American National Government and I’ve only been at it for one week so far, but I really like teaching!

I am attempting to make this class a combination of all the good things that I experienced as an undergraduate. The class is not writing intensive as there are only a total of 11 total pages to be written throughout the semester (yes, they are double-spaced). It is a lecture-based course and I plan on fully utilizing the internet and PowerPoint presentations in order to bring the information to the students. Last night I had my first class where I taught using a PowerPoint presentation and I think the students enjoyed it (no one fell asleep!).

Believe it or not, one of the most surprising parts of teaching is evaluating the textbooks that we use in class. Given the speed in which I was asked to fill this role, I was not able to totally evaluate the texts that are required for the course. The main textbook (which costs a whopping $100!) has poor definitions of conservative and liberal, casting each in a light that is not entirely fair to either party. The second assigned book contains nothing but selections of various political readings and it’s great – definitely something I will keep in the syllabus for the next time I teach this course. Yes – I’m done with the first of fourteen weeks of teaching for this semester and I’m already thinking about the next time I teach this course!

In any event, the students all seem like great folks and we’ve had some good questions come out of the presentations so far. This is a job assignment that I’m glad I took up when the offer was made. I think I’m going to have a lot of fun teaching these kids about our government and all of its inner workings! Obviously for reasons of employment and privacy, I can’t say too much about the course other than what’s in this post, but if something occurs that is able to be put out there in the public domain, I’ll be sure to post something up.

Bored with Presidential Candidates

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Now I may be the only one, but I am completely bored with the crop of Democratic and Republican candidates. If I have to look at John Edwards’ smarmy, sneaky mug one more time, I’m going to flip out. And I can’t stand to watch John McCain struggle through a campaign that has nothing of the luster of his 2000 attempt.

Giuliani is alright with me, but I just know that something big will pop up and be a disaster for him (not sure what yet). And – as many far-left liberal bloggers correctly point out – Clinton is just out for more power for herself and her legacy. Now THAT is scary…

I’m still not quite sure what the big deal is about Obama. The only policy stances that he’s taken are that he’ll raise taxes and he’d consider invading Pakistan if the situation called for it. Both of these are wildly unpopular stances and yet he still gets cheers from audiences around the nation. Makes no sense. And you might as well lump Fred Thompson in this category, too. What does he stand for that makes him so popular?

I like Romney only because he seems to represent the most down-to-earth ideals that I’ve heard yet. But even Romney is missing something – maybe a good Vice Presidential candidate.

As for the rest of the crew – I’ve got no particular feelings on any of them other than that I can’t stand Dodd, Kucinich, or Biden. Hunter, Paul, and Tancredo mean nothing to me (or any other voters out there). Brownback and Huckabee seem like they’ll be good Secretaries in the Cabinet at some point, but they’re not US President material in my view. If I missed any other candidates, oh well – they’re not worth remembering!

The Minnesota Bridge Collapse

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What a disaster this thing is, huh? Who would have thunk that a bridge would collapse during rush hour? Worse yet – the startling revelation that most of the bridges in the United States are “structurally deficient” is horrible!

Here is a situation that should have no political strings attached to it (although some lunatics swear that the bridge collapsing is President Bush’s fault). Our Congress needs to act – now – to repair the nation’s bridges and to ensure the safety of our highways.

One of the things that makes me sick about the highway system is that the government will swear up and down that using the highway system is a privilege that we can opt not to use or that can be taken away (ask anyone who has had their license suspended). Well, if this is a privilege, then why are our taxes (which we cannot opt out of) not used to fix the damn things like they’re supposed to? It’s disgusting.

Movie Review: An Inconvenient Truth

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The other night I had the opportunity to watch Al Gore’s award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth in a downloaded format. I’ll be honest – even though I don’t like Al Gore too much, I thought that he did a great job narrating this documentary and teaching the “lesson” of the documentary. Now, whether or not I agree 100% with his message is another story that we’ll get to in a minute. But in terms of whether or not this documentary should have won the Oscar? Oh yeah – it was a job well done by all involved.

The documentary is basically Al Gore giving a lecture with some interesting charts and graphs on a huge projection screen. This is intermingled with scenes from Al’s research and his 2000 campaign for the United States Presidency. Okay, this is the first area where I’ll take issue with Gore – it seemed at times that he included an unnecessary political commentary (specifically about his loss in 2000). Listen, we know that he doesn’t like President Bush and we know that while he won the national popular vote, he actually lost the Florida vote by a mere 543 and that’s all he needed to win the election.

If Al Gore was sitting next to me, I’d say something like, “Bro, you lost the election. Get over it.” Contrary to popular extremist belief, there was no foul play and FOX News didn’t somehow make President Bush win the election (in fact, the truth is they hurt his chances at winning by releasing information about his drunk driving record the weekend before the election). But I know the extremists don’t want facts to get in the way of a good anti-Bush story, so we’ll leave that where it lies…

Back to the documentary – I liked the message that Al Gore presented towards the end of the film. He essentially said, “Hey, we goofed up and we heated up the earth. But all is not lost – we CAN do something about it and YOU can do something about it. This is what you can do…” and then he proceeds to list out a bunch of things that we can do as a worldwide community, a nation, and individuals to change the earth’s climate. Some far-right or anti-Gore thinkers stop at this point and complain about the science and how Al Gore is lying about certain facts and that he exaggerates other facts. Well, I admit that it sounds more like he is telling a story that he just so happens to have science to fit as opposed to letting the science tell a story, but I guess I just neglect to see a problem with his methods.

In other words, most of what he is saying is true, even if it’s not to the extreme that he presents it as. You can’t lie or exaggerate basic facts like, “the earth’s atmosphere is made up of chemicals A and B.” Comments like that are just comments on scientifically proven facts. Now, can he exaggerate when he says that New York City will be under water in a few decades? Sure. That’s probably a bit much and I don’t believe that enough research has been done on enough variable-based situations to prove that we’ll be losing the wealthiest island in the world by 2050. But is the overall message worth over-inflating a point like this?

Well, yeah.

Is it so bad that people start to conserve more energy? Isn’t that a good thing? In fact, this is a nonpartisan issue. Republicans, Democrats, and Independents can all agree that energy efficiency is something that we all need to be concerned about, whether you define that efficiency as better gas mileage, creating less carbon emissions, or recycling. This is an issue that everyone can – and does – get behind.

So do I think you should go out and get a copy of this movie? Sure, I’d recommend watching it. Maybe I wouldn’t put this in the “must buy” column and I probably wouldn’t put it in the “see at all costs” column, but it was a good documentary. Job well done by Al Gore…now if he could just get over the fact that he lost in 2000, he might be less despicable!