We are no more moral than Europe, but our tremendous wealth and our comparative geographic isolation save us from suffering any immediate consequences of our moral follies. However active the institutions of religion may be in our national life, there is no trace of ethical motive in our national conduct. To the world we appear, what we really are, a fabulously wealthy nation, intent upon producing more wealth and seemingly oblivious to the consequences which unrestrained lust of power and lust of gain must inevitably have on both personal morality and international harmony.

...

The physical sciences armed nature -- the nature in us -- and lured us into a state where physical comfort is confused with true happiness and tempted us to indulge our lust for power at the expense of our desire for spiritual peace. We imagine we can escape life’s moral problems merely because machines have enlarged our bodies, sublimated our physical forces and given us a sense of mastery. The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self-mastery. So a generation of men is being bred who in their youth subsist on physical thrills, in their maturity glory in physical power and in their old age desire nothing more than physical comfort.

Labels: quotation

"Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good."

Often we give up on pursuing good things because they are not perfect solutions. The problem is, we have to start somewhere and sometimes taking the first step, however imperfect it may be, is the important part.

Labels: phrases

So we got a lightweight weather station. The clock-like display inside shows the humidity and temperature outside and makes a prediction of the weather for the next 12 hours. I keep watching for snow. I've see it twice show snow, only to change to rain a couple hours later as the temperature changes.

I'm desperate for some snow.

I have a vision of taking Emma outside in her new snow suit and making a snowman while a fire burns in the ring I built in the backyard.

I arrived at my polling station at 5am today to help set up a tent for the Blue Ridge Democrats and pass out sample ballots to the early birds standing in line. By the time poll opened at 6am, the line wrapped around the building and dog-eared back into the parking lot. Inside, the Round Hill poll was extremely organized. They made a number of changes from past elections. The divided the alphabet into 5 groups. After they verified my identity, they passed me a ticket that entitled me to a ballot after standing in a second line. The process worked. Even with the line at its longest, it only took people about 30 minutes to vote. By 8am, you could walk straight in, vote, and come back out in less than 5 minutes.

From there everything was easy--I'd already made up my mind. I even paused a moment as I filled in a oval next to Obama's name--partly to make certain I had the right oval, partly to reflect on what an historic vote this is.

If you're an eligible voter, please make sure to get out and vote today.

Labels: loudoun county, politics, round hill

I'm not a big fan of Frank Wolf on national politics, but I do believe he has contributed a lot to this region. That said, I will not be voting for him in November. A couple Feder campaign workers stuck a camera in Wolf's face and attempted an ad-hoc interview. It was clear to me that they were hoping to get a rise out of him and tarnish his public image when an elderly Wolf staffer whacked the cameraman in the leg with his cane. It's the same tactic the paparazzi uses on Tom Cruise when they need a little money. The Feder staffers claim,

"I was merely trying to engage him in a dialogue that might disengage him from his disrespectful behavior, as well as try to determine if I could help him get an answer to his questions."

Here's the video. You be the judge. I'm sure the alleged victims are not complaining about the attention they've received.

Labels: politics

Yesterday was truly historic for Loudoun County. The Democratic nominee for President, Barack Obama, visited us at Ida Lee Park in Leesburg. It's the latest sign that Virginia may turn blue in a presidential election for the first time since 1964. I know from my experience canvassing, phone banking, and writing a LOE (letter to the editor) that there are a lot of Loudouners working extremely hard for Obama. Some are independent, non-Democrats, like me.

The gates opened at 3:00pm, but Amy called me at work at 1:00pm to tell me loads of people were already arriving. I took my place at the end of a very long line about 2:50pm and a more than an hour later made it through security and toward the stage. Along the way, I met a lovely lady and her daughter, both from Lovettsville, and a gentleman from Arlington who saw Obama's acceptance speech in Denver. Volunteers were making constant pleas for people to join the campaign. Hawkers had buttons, shirts, bumper stickers, and rally towels for sale. The entire scene had the feeling of a sporting event reminiscent of the good old days at RFK stadium in DC.

Amy had Emma just a few rows back directly in front of the podium, close enough to read the buttons of people on stage. I was a little further back with a good view of the podium, but a tremendous view of the field that filled to capacity and beyond. I've never seen a crowd that big, especially in Loudoun. And to think that all these people showed up with less than two days of notice is simply astounding. Crowd estimates run from 10,000 to 30,000.

Labels: great moment, loudoun county, politics

I wrote this to the Purcellville Gazette regarding a column in the 9/12/2008 issue.

In his "It Seems to Me" column, Joseph LaFiandra did his readers a disservice by suggesting Senator Obama is doing the bidding of terrorists. This country faces a serious decision in November about our country's direction for health care, the economy, energy, and our military's role in interminable wars. It is time newspapers big and small began to analyze the candidates for their positions rather than generate so much smoke.

LaFiandra rehashed Stanley Kurtz's allegations that there must be a smoking gun strongly linking Obama to Weather Underground radicalism through Bill Ayers in documentation for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, to which Kurtz was denied access. Kurtz later did get access to the files and reached that anticlimatic conclusion that Bill Ayers was part of five-person working group that approved Obama's entrance into the organizations board. No big deal here.

And what of Ayers. When he was a radical activist in the 1960s, Obama was a child. Now Ayers is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago with interests in social justice and educational reform. He is not shy about sharing his opinion and has written many books. No secrets here.

Perhaps we should focus our attention on Obama's ideas for change--his plans to invest in early childhood education, recruit new teachers, and make math and science a national priority. Whether your readers agree with his ideas is one matter. Whether they are allowed a clear picture of them is the important part.

Labels: politics

The single biggest trait that draws me to Obama is his genuine understanding of the issues and his ability to articulate them. He is able to speak to us like a country of adults. He understands and can explain the true complexity of the issues we face. This is something very few politicians do, especially when they rise to the level of party nominee.

When it comes to foreign policy, a president must have a clear guiding light and principles to stand on. McCain, given his long experience with foreign affairs, paradoxically is short on ideas for engaging the international community or in any way deviating from the Bush administration's policies. Even his clearest principle of opposing torture had become shades of gray in the last year as he moved closer to Bush's veto of legislation that would require the CIA to follow the Army Field Manual.

Obama concentrated in International Relations while at Columbia University and it shows. He has a better grasp of the foreign policy issues this country faces. We are at a point where we need to rediscover diplomacy and rebuild alliances that are cracking and keep open communications with our adversaries. McCain, on the other hand, see a UN that is useful, but prefers a vague "league of democracies."

While McCain stubbornly refuses, like Bush, to engage in direct diplomacy with Iran, which is a basic indication that he would prioritize military solutions over the hard fought diplomacy to avoid war. Obama, meanwhile, understands the complexities Iran presents but also knows that resolving them cannot happen without dialogue. If we are concerned enough by Iran to consider war, then we must be level headed enough to talk to them.

Ultimately, judgement matters more than experience. I believe that Obama has both, and certainly his judgement exceeds McCain's.

I encourage everyone to take a look at these issues closely and come to their own conclusions. Here is a primer for what I see as major issues:

Labels: foreign policy, politics

Emma had her first birthday on Saturday. We celebrated with a three-day camp out at the Watermelon Park Fest near Berryville, VA. Every night, the had a solid lineup of bluegrass and folk bands at the main stage, which is right in front of the Shenandoah River. My favorites acts were:

• The Carolina Chocolate Drops:I'd never heard them before. They brought the house down. I highly recommend their Heritage album.
  
• The Woodshedders: This is our family band. Emma fell in love with them when she was about 9 months old...listens to them in the car all the time. I love them because they bring back old sounds like Django Reinhardt that I've always love. Being a big jazz lover, it's hard not to like them. Check out their Yardbird CD.
  
• The Dan Tyminski Band
  
• Larry Keel & Natural Bridge
  
• Furnace Mountain

If you've never been to the festival, you'll find it's well-organized and mostly family friendly. The concert area is completely safe for kids. Security guards unobtrusively patrol the area to keep in check folks who started drinking a little too early in the day. The campground is where you have to take special care with your children. We arrived early and setup camp along a coveted river spot on Tuesday night (festival started Thursday). By Thursday, all the spaces around us were filled and we thought things would work out fine since there were a number of families around us. For the most part, we were right. Problem is we had a small tent city set up right next to us with a number of folks in their early 20s. That group had some children along, but that didn't seem to curtail tons of profanity and excessive drinking.

I'm certainly no saint or tea-totaller, but hard partying until 5:00am is not what I want my child around. Nor do I want to have to explain conversations about sex, drugs, and the long list of profanities. Fortunately, Emma is 1, so she didn't understand what they were talking about. In fact, she slept solid through the night.

When I stepped out for a late night trek to the bathroom, the rest of the campground was quiet with scattering sounds of picking sessions. We just so happened to be in the rowdiest section.

That said, I'm determined not to end on the downbeat. The festival volunteers and campground staff (especially Caroline) were awesome. Combine that with great music and we'll be back again next year, albeit in the quieter sections along the road and among the older set who own RVs, trailers, motor homes, etc... 

Labels: local, music, reviews

In many respects Sarah Palin was what an anemic McCain campaign needed. She breathed life into not just the campaign, but McCain himself. She helped to draw the dividing line between red people and blue people and energize the same old debate Republicans love to have even if it does nothing to help this country. She has the scrappy personality that many right-leaning voters tend to adore.

We must remember one thing: Sarah Palin as President.

John McCain is 72 and a cancer survivor. Life expectancy for Americans is 78.8. There is a very real possibility that McCain could encounter a health problem that would require Palin to take control. This simple fact means that Palin should undergo more scrutiny.

If media pundits are right an only personality matters in presidential campaigns, then read no further. Otherwise, please consider some basic points.

First, my basic complaints.

1. She has zero foreign policy experience and very little knowledge of the most pressing international issues. She didn't even have a passport until 2007.
2. McCain promotes her as a tax cutter but Alaska has no income or sales tax.
3. Palin takes credit for refusing the "Bridge to Nowhere" but Alaska received every penny, only the funds were used for other, more sensible projects. By the time she refused it, the bridge project was already dead. She is quick to forget that she originally supported the bridge.
4. She believes creationism should be taught in schools.
5. She believes global warming is not man-made. In an interview for the conservative magazine Newsmax she said, "A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made."
6. She supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge even though McCain prefers the lesser evil of offshore drilling. Neither will make a dent the underlying problems of this country's emerging energy crisis.

Now here's what really bothers me...

Anyone can take positions on issues. Far fewer people fully understand the positions, the origins, the contexts, and their limits and conditions. Sarah Palin can repeat McCain's simplistic position on how to fix health care. The problem is she doesn't understand the position enough to know when it has been overtaken by circumstances, when the position needs to change. For Palin, positions are more like dogma...something that gets repeated over and over even if it turns out to be false. She simply doesn't know enough to know when she's wrong. Sarah Palin is a remedial version of Bush.

Contrast this with Obama and the problem with Palin is stark. Obama time and again shows his command of the issues, the nuances, and the challenges to implementing effective policy for those issues. He has firm mastery over the challenges and solutions when it comes to the domestic issues of economy, health care, and energy. In foreign policy, he has shown himself to be a quick study and a good judge of the next steps. If Obama does have a perceived weakness here (I don't think so), Joe Biden more than makes up for it.

Remember this: Experience on a résumé matters less than what the person really, truly knows and understands. Palin knows little and understands little. (Obama knows and understands and can even explain his positions and plans.) Palin simply parrots the well-worn Republican buzz phrases from the last 8 years.

As an independent voter, I think it's about time we started calling out ignorance when we see it.

Labels: politics