USA! USA! USA!

Just wanted to mention again that I am jazzed for the Olympics. That is all. Carry on.

Shameless Self-Promotion

No, that is not what I am going to rant about. Rather, it is what I am about to do.

Not promoting myself, per se, but rather promoting what I do.

This blog is all about adoption. Just because it is an 8 letter word, doesn't mean it is a bad as two 4 letter words put together. Why are people so afraid of it?

Dana and I were watching TV last night, and Dana was jumping between two programs. One of them was the Baby Borrowers: Lessons Learned. It was like After the Catch from Discovery Channel, but without the good editing or wit.

Anyway, Dana has been following this show off and on. The premise is they take a bunch of teenage couples and throw them into parenting situations with babies of different ages, from newborns to teenagers, and even the elderly. The whole idea is that, once they see what raising a kid is like, they will be less likely to have one of their own until they are ready.

My jury is still out about the soundness of the idea, but whatever. The thing that I noticed about this whole program, which centered on the concept of teen pregnancy, was that adoption was mentioned only once, and it came out in the same sentence as abortion. It was like this: "When you found out that you were pregnant, did you ever think of other options, like adoption or abortion?"

Give me a break! Adoption is giving a child the best of all possible worlds. Abortion is giving a child no world at all. How are these two things similar?

Alright, I know I am biased, since I am an adoption worker, but it makes me sick that this whole television program about teen pregnancy did not mention adoption more often. It was like it is a foregone conclusion that a pregnant teenager has to keep her baby, even if it is the very worst thing for her and her child. I will never ever understand that thinking. A teenager who is having sex is being irresponsible. Keeping the child is just one further irresponsible thing.

Many people will not agree with me, and I understand that. Many people think a teenage mother should have to raise her child so that she learns to deal with the consequences of her actions. But isn't putting an entire human life at risk a bit of a hefty price for an object lesson? I think it is.

The reality of adoption is that the young girls and young women who place their children for adoption are being infinitely more responsible and less selfish than the majority of girls who keep their babies. Those who place are using the love they feel for their child to motivate them to give the child the kind of home it deserves, where the child can grow into its ultimate potential. Placing a child for adoption is the single hardest thing that any of the birthmoms I have worked with have ever done. Yet they do it in the best interests of the child. Where is the selfishness in that? The mothers are involved in finding a good, strong family for their baby. Where is the irresponsibility in that?

The world I guess just does not understand adoption. Either that, or most of the world is too selfish to see the world through the eyes of a birth-mom. Once the baby is born, the story is no longer about the mom. Mom can fend for herself. When the baby is born, the story has to be about what is best for the child.

One other argument is that single moms can be great moms. Absolutely. However, before you make that argument against adoption again, ask yourself two questions: If I could go back in time and be raised by a single mother, would I want to? and If I had a child right now, would I ever, ever give it to a 16 year old girl to raise? If you answer no to either of those questions, then you, like me, are probably a bigger fan of adoption than you thought you were.

It took me a while before I truly saw the beauty and power of adoption. Now that I know, I wish the whole world knew. Most of all, I wish that the miracle of adoption would never again be mentioned in the same sentence as the tragedy of abortion.

No, my Blog Template is Not a Statement About My Politics

. . . but I am going green. Or greenER. Lets call it yellow.

So I was just reading over some of my last posts (vanity, you know) and I realized something - white print on a black background looks cool at first, but after a while it starts messing with your eyes. As I tend to be long-winded (or long-blogged), this really started to bug the crap out of me after one or two entries.

So, this is a thanks to people for putting up with the harsh (albeit awesome-looking) color scheme without complaining. Hopefully the new duds will be easier on the eyes.

And because I feel a lot like ranting today, here's a two-fer. Umm. . . lets pick: Yuppy Greenness.

Its a term I invented myself. 5 seconds ago. Let me explain - no, no, there is too much. Let me sum up: Yuppy Greens are people who like to pretend they are green, but are unwilling to change their lifestyle in significant ways. These are the housewives who drive 20 miles in their Ford Monstrosity, V8, 400 horsepower land-mover, while drinking over-priced imported coffee in a disposable cup, to buy the cute little, popular, curly 'eco-friendly' compact flourescent light bulbs at Wal-Mart, and who then go home and proceed to leave the lights on in every room in the house all night because it helps them feel safe.

Yuppy Greens are the bane of actual greens, who are taking pains to reduce their carbon footprint, shop with cloth shopping bags, separate their own recyclables, and once in a rare while actually go out and enjoy the environment. Yuppy Greens have made eco-conscious behavior a trend. The latest fad, like skinny pants. Their hearts aren't in it, but they like 'seeming' to be green.

The cold hard truth is that Americans don't want to be green. We don't like to ride our bicycles. Bikes are for junior high kids. We don't even like driving scooters or small cars. We like big, powerful things. We don't do terribly well in the planning department, because everything has been 'convenienced' so that we don't have to think ahead. We don't have to bring bags to the store, because the store has bags for us. We don't have to bring refillable mugs, because the store has cups for us. We don't have to use anything durable and reusable, because a disposable one will be provided for us.

Going green in a meaningful way will mean a complete shift in the way we think about our world, most importantly the way we think about our usage of energy. The wastefullness that is stuck in my craw right now has to do with the inefficiency of cars. Cars are horribly wasteful, even hybrids and electric cars. Here is what I mean -

My car weighs 4435 pounds empty. I weigh in at roughly 230, depending on if I am hungry or not. When I am in the car, the whole package weighs 4665. So, when I am driving around, using up .037 gallons per mile, the weight of the vehicle is only 5% me. Only 5 percent! That makes me want to hit Elmo! (OK, so a lot of things make me want to hit Elmo, including Elmo himself, but that is another rant)

So lets do a little math here. Recently I am paying $4 a gallon for gas. Ok, so 5% of that $4 goes to moving me. That works out to be roughly 20 cents a gallon is spent on MYSELF, while $3.80 is spent on MY CAR. I am paying 19 times more to move the thing that should be moving me than I am paying to move myself! That is so backwards!

Sure, the 2 tons of steel keep me safe. That is the usual argument used. Safety. Well, I don't buy it. If all the cars out their weigh, lets say, 400 pounds, like a typical ATV. Well, if I only have less than 1000 pounds of vehicle and driver careening my way, I don't need 2 tons of steel to keep me safe, then, do I? No. I need more along the line of - hey! - 400 pounds of steel!

Its the same phenomenon of two people running into each-other. If they are both going full steam, they will wipe out and scrape their knees or whatever. However, since their bodies are roughly similar in mass, they don't do any terrible damage to one-another. They mostly bounce off each-other since the transfer of energy is so close to even.

Alright, so we should be able to transfer that same concept to vehicles, right? If we all drove light cars, there would be no extra safety concern. Crashes would still be lethal as a function of velocity, but no more than they are right now.

OK, so what I am getting at here is I want a light-weight, stable, elementally protected people mover that does not out-weigh me by more than 2 tons. I would go for one that just outweighed me by 100%. How cool would that be: a car that I would dead-lift. I would be all over that. "Hey honey, could you hold the car up while I change the tire?" That would be sweet!

I know people are working on this exact idea, but I never hear about it unless I go looking for it. I hear all about the Honda Metropolitan, which gets over 100 mpg. But its a scooter, and I can't drive it over 30 mph. I want a stable, climate controlled vehicle that has four wheels and is not a death-trap at high speeds. Most of all, I want to pay to move myself around, not pay to move my self-mover around.

Olympics and Other Strenuous Nonsense

OK, so the Olympics are coming up. I am very excited. I was a volunteer at the 2002 winter olympics, and it kinda got in my blood. Plus, America wins the medal count every time, so I have good reason to be optimistic.

The fact that the Olympics, or the 'Limpics' as I call them (Sometimes just 'Limpees' for short) are in China this go-round just makes things that much more interesting. By interesting I mean rant-worthy.

Cut to the rant: I am somewhat more familliar with the vagaries of communism than your average American. I happen to be married to a recovering communist. Due to this familiarity, I have come to learn that a communist government is a system that exists virtually exclusively to perpetuate itself, at the cost of its own people. Now, as I re-read what I just wrote, I realise that this could basically describe any political system, but communism perpetuates itself at an especially high cost to the prosperity and liberties of its people, and then keeps its people from complaining about the cost. In my book, a system that disallows dissidence is a weak system. The ability to abide dissent is proof of an internally strong, justified government.

What does this have to do with the Limpees? Well, China is trying to play its whole Two Systems foolery to the full-out extent. They invite the whole world to come and play, then they get angry when the world wants to play according to its own rules. You can't seriously invite American atheletes into China and expect them to stop thinking like Americans, can you?

Obviously, that is precisely what China is doing. Check out just this one story, for example: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/beijing/2008-08-06-cheek-visa-revoked_N.htm

For those of you too hurried or lazy to read the article, the gyst is this: Joey Cheek, a winter olympian, was going to go to China to support his warmer-climate-cohorts, but the Chinese denied him a visa. Why? Because he is a cofounder of the ideological group Team Darfur, which is a group of 100+ olympians who have declared their support for Darfur and, by extension, their opposition to the Sudanese government. Well, China doesn't like this, since they are buddy-buddy with Sudan (that's were they get their oil. Why does everyone go stupid for oil? Oil is the devil's blood, me thinks). So the Chinese government turns around and denies Joey a visa to even enter their country. Give me a break. If they would have just let him in he would not have made such a stink and would have likely gone mostly un-noticed, but now he is showing up in major publications, such as this blog and USA Today.

Anyway, I love what the US Olympic team turned around and did on the same day as Joey was denied his visa. They named Lopez Lomong the banner carrier, who himself is a Darfur refugee! Take THAT communist censorship! There is no way the Chinese would risk the embarassment (then again, they might. . .) of shipping our FLAG BEARER home, so this man, this living, breathing proof of the attrocities going on in Darfur, is going to be on billions of televisions as he walks beneath the Stars and Stripes in opening and closing ceremonies. I am laughing myself to the hiccups over here! I love poetic justice like this. Nowhere like the Olympics do countries get such an open stage to express themselves. It is completely sweet that China is not getting its way in trying to make this a non-issue. Bravo to the US Olympic team for picking a man who represents so well what America is (or should be) about - a place where people are free to pursue their dreams regardless of their background, and where they can speak their minds without fear of reprisals.

I predicted months ago that the Chinese Olympics would be fraught with protests, especially people protesting Chinese foreign policies like the annexation of Tibet and the friendly relationship with Sudan. With all of the world tuning in, how could the strong passions of so many people possibly NOT be expressed. I hope everything goes peacefully and that the games are a success, but I also hope they are a failure. I hope they are a failure for Communist China's attempt to invite the world to honor them, but in turn to dishonor the world by disallowing the world's oppinions.

Sorry, China. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh S***!

OK, so I know you must have seen this video. Also all over the place. I actually really like it, and I was touched by it. Not like I cried or anything. . . that was just alergies.



Its a good video, no? Touching and all of that. Good tear-jerker stuff for shows like The View and The Today Show.

Well, this video has got me thinking. You know that somewhere in the vast expanses of human stupidity, somebody is watching that video and thinking to themselves: Yeah! I think I should get a wild predatory animal and raise it, too! Then I could be a YouTube all-star!

Yeah, umm: no. I predict that in 5 years we are going to be seeing a whole new set of YouTube videos with titles like: Grizzly Bear Loves Previous Owners. . . To Death. or maybe: Pets Gone Wild: Cougar Maims Couple.

I am sorry to be so pessimistic, but that is just the way people are. Someone is going to see this video, remember a childhood dream they had of owning their very own Bengal Tiger, and they are going to go on the black market and buy one. After a few years of fun, the cute fuzzy tiger will start eating neighborhood dogs, and they will have to release it to the wild. Then, remembering Christian the Friendly Lion, they are going to head back to the wilds of Burma, and trek through the jungle for a few days trying to find their long-lost friend. When they finally find him, they are going to just stand there while he approaches, maybe slap their thighs and say "come here, boy!" or something else in baby-talk, until the tiger gets right up to them, gives them a look that is a mix of expressions between "are you nuts" and "I wonder if you taste like chicken" then takes a lazy swat at them, killing them instantly, then carrying them off to a tree to be eaten as a midnight snack.

I mean seriously folks, these are WILD animals. You never know what a big cat is going to do. You never even know what a siamese cat is going to do, for that matter. Don't we remember Siegfried and Roy? That tiger just got excited and almost killed the only master it had ever known, and had never hunted a day in its life.

I think these two guys are very lucky. Lucky to have had such a wonderful experience raising a lion cub, but most of all, lucky to be alive after finding Christian again.

I think I will stick to dogs. And rabbits.

Back from the Dead

So here I am again, brought back from blogger death by the only two things that could have resurrected me: an actual request from an actual reader, and the fact that I have something I am proud to post.

Second things first: you have probably seen this already, since it is everywhere right now, but just in case you have not, take a look at the new Jib Jab video:

Send a JibJab Sendables® eCard Today!

I laughed my can off! The only thing that even gets close to the farcical nature of the presidential election is a farcical video. This one is a keeper. Loved it.

Here is something else I love, I have become a devoted fan:

I think this guy is a genius, not to mention the funniest man on the internet. I have not yet seen an episode that I could only watch once. Too funny.

OK, down to the gripe. Global Warming, please get out of the way of other problems we can change, if you don't mind.

Alright, some people are going to think I want the environment to die, or that I hate living things. Not at all. I happen to be a living thing. I don't dislike the environment at all (unless we are talking about the social environment of waiting in line for the bathroom at a major sports stadium). My problem is that Global Warming is hogging up nearly the whole political stage right now. This bothers me to no end. Why, do you ask? Alright, I'll tell you.

WE CAN'T DO A SINGLE THING ABOUT IT!! Of course we can all reduce our carbon footprints, use less fossil fuels, recycle more, eat more spinach, and give more hugs. Sure. But what we cannot do is remove the carbon we have already emitted. It is not the carbon of the future that is causing the problems of today. It is the carbon already in the air. In other words, if (big IF) global warming is a reality, then all we can do is try to reduce our future carbon output, and hold on for dear life while the repercussions of our past carbon output work their mischief in the atmosphere, bringing acid rain, rising ocean temperatures, shrinking ice caps and a new career for Al Gore.

We have no way of removing the emissions from the past from the atmosphere, and it seems to me that a lot is being done to explore alternative energy sources. So, aren't we doing exactly what we should be doing? Does it help anyone at all if the world pees its pants over something that has been in the process of building for 15o years? I can't see that it does.

Rather, I think global warming mania is a safe and popular topic for politicians to obscure the real problems of society that they could (and should) have addressed years ago. Social security? Bankrupt. Health Care? A luxury. Economy? Shot to crap. Security? Anyone's guess. Housing market? Abysmal. These are the things that politicians can fix, but as long as global warming hogs the spotlight, the suits on capital hill aren't feeling as much pressure to fix the societal ills they were hired to fix in the first place. 

What a sham! No wonder Republicans and Democrats, who can't even agree on the direction of up, both got on the band-wagon on this one. It keeps them both from having to actually come up with solutions to the problems that lie in their control. Instead, they just chant the Global Warming chant, pretend that ANYONE has a viable solution to this, and get away with driving the country into the ground and not doing anything to fix it. As long as they say the pretty global warming magic words, people are duped into thinking the politicos are actually doing something to help us.

Well I don't buy it. I don't buy the whole global warming premise in the first place. Humans just aren't that powerful. Two volcanic eruptions from the last decade put out more methane and carbonic compounds by mass into the atmosphere than all of humanity's pollution from all time, including the cooking fires of the cave men. Plus, methane has 4 times the green-house gas effect of carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide. No body talks about this crap, because it is heresy to the Church of Global Warming. In fact, I just read a study in Discover Magazine that states that the cattle in the world produce roughly as much methane gas as the cars in the world produce carbonic compounds. Hard to believe, but there are a lot of cows in the lonely places of the globe. So think of that - the cows produce as much methane as the cars produce CO2, and methane has 4 times the greenhouse effect as CO2. Doesn't that make cows to blame for the problem? Doesn't that make cows 4 times more detrimental to the environment than people?

I dunno what the solution is, but I know one thing - the first step to a solution is killing a whole bunch of those bovines. Steak, anyone?

Stupor Tuesday

The American political system is screwed up. Completely mental. Particularly the circus that is the Primary Election and especially today, which I call Stupor Tuesday. There are a few points about the American presidential election that have been especially annoying lately. Here they are:

1 - The fact that we have primary elections in the first place.

2- The incessant and tainted polling system that surrounds all of our elections.

3- The over-estimation of Presidential power 

4- Political Parties and false division.

Lets look at these points. I won't get into too much detail, since I am sure I could write a volume on each point, but I just want to explain why I am bothered so much by each of these individual things.

#1 - Why on earth do we need multiple pre-elections before an election? Personally, I think the whole idea is insulting. It is almost as if the establishment believes the American people are incapable of choosing between 3 or 4 people, so the political parties (in their magnanimity and selflessness) whittle down the choices to just two options. Heaven knows the choice between A or B is enormously simpler than the choice between A or B or C or D. Nobody in the general population can be trusted to be smart enough to pick a president from more than 2 choices!

Give me a break. If I went to a restaurant and the waiter told me to chose one side of the menu, I would laugh at him. If he then told me to narrow down my choices to just one dish from either side, I would likely get up and leave. If, however, the cooks got together and chose just two entrees to offer me, I would never have gone to that restaurant in the first place. That is precisely what the primary elections do. I think it is messed up. I am completely capable (as are almost all people) of looking at a menu and deciding what I want from a multiplicity of choices. I am also capable of looking at a multiplicity of candidates from all across the spectrum and choosing the one that I want. I do not need my options to be reduced to A or B. Often, the candidate that I like the most does not even win the primary, so I end up having to chose between 2 people I dislike equally, as in the election between George W. and Al Gore (or the Loser and the Snoozer, as I liked to call them). In that election I threw my vote away. I wrote Mickey Mouse on the ballot and voted for him. I had to, because the candidates I was actually excited about did not make it through the primary elections. That is fundamentally messed up, and we deserve better as a people.

 #2 Polls of any kind dealing with election results should be completely illegal. My apologies to Dan Jones and other pollsters, but I think you are damaging our democracy. Of course, inquiring minds want to know how an election is running over the course of a day. I get that. People are curious. However, that is not the only role that polls have. Over a race as protracted and complicated as a presidential campaign, public opinion changes over time. Polls that come out claim to merely reflect those changes, but in reality they influence opinion as much as they report it. I spoke once with Dan Jones himself (I took a Poly Sci class from him, and even worked for him for over a year) and he told me that he was concerned about that effect so much, that he once considered closing shop because of it. He was seriously concerned that he was influencing elections by telling people what the results were likely to be before the election was over.

When you are watching poll results, you have an interest in the election. If you have not yet voted (and maybe would not have voted) and you see that your candidate is performing poorly,  you are more likely to rush out and vote. That is one scenario. The other, more damaging one, is when you are completely in love with the policies and personality of a candidate, but that person is performing miserably in the polls. Because you think that person has no chance to win, you give your vote to someone else. However, if there were no polls, you would not have changed your vote. Repeat that process millions of times, and elections can end drastically differently. They would reflect what people actually wanted, rather than our human tendency to cheer for the winning team.

#3 The President writes no laws, votes on no laws, funds no laws, defends no laws, and amends no laws. The office has much power, and is in charge of the military, sure. However, the President can have all the policy wishes in the world he wants, and still not get anything done if Congress opposes him. Remember Bill Clinton? How many of his more liberal ideas were quashed by a conservative Congress? It happens all the time. Why then, when the President can only affect change with the cooperation of more than 300 individuals, do we care so much about Presidential policy stances? I think the only reason candidates evoke their policies is to draw a line in the sand, so that people can know where they stand, and what makes them different. I wish they would just say that, rather than making grand claims about what they will change when they get into office. Maybe this is a little thing, but I would much prefer a candidate who says "I think that global warming is a problem" over one that says "If elected, I will stop greenhouse emissions by 2008" because the first is an honest statement of belief, and the second is a vain promise that is nearly impossible to keep in the best of circumstances.

#4 I hate political parties. I think George Washington was right to oppose them at the very beginning, and I oppose them still today. We do not need them. They falsely divide the country between right and left, when most of us are somewhere in the middle. The parties exist for one thing only: gain power and keep power. They have no other motive. In order to keep power, they have to be enemies. If the parties were to merge, there would be no party at all, and people would vote for individuals based on merit. The parties don't want that. They want people to pick a side and stay loyal to that side, so that the sides stay strong. They are like superpowers: they are only defined by their enemy, and only required because the other exists. 

America is not really that divided. We are a fairly homogenous people when it comes to politics. We all like free speech, and pretty much are fond of our constitution. We like the free economy and the American dream. We like our cars, our unique style of living, and we like being Americans. You will not see a politician in America arguing for something that is blatantly un-American, such as abolishing the 1st amendment or taxation without representation. At least, that politician would never be taken seriously except for by radical whack-jobs. Instead, the parties draw lines down things that are less crucial, and more divisive, like abortion or same-sex-marriage. Either way that debate goes, America is still America. The parties only want us to feel like we have to pick a side. They want us to feel like something crucial is at stake if the other guys win. What a crock of crap. Even if the other guys win, in 10 years the power will shift back, and the dance will continue. Its a complete con. I think political parties should be unconstitutional. I think persons running for office should all share funding from a communal pool, along with whatever funds they are capable of raising themselves. I think that each election should be a contest of ideas vs. ideas, and not donkeys vs. elephants. We don't need the parties. They need us. I say we should toss them and never let them come back. That way, we might some day see a President who appeals to the largest majority in the country: the moderates. What a day that would be, when the President could be both conservative about family values, but Liberal about health care.