Bringing the blog back

It has been well over a year since my last blog post and well over a year since I had something to say I thought some folks might be interested in reading.

I've decided to start blogging again in the wake of the 2006 election. During that election I work for the Nebraska Democratic Party as one of the folks overseeing some offices in central Nebraska. Following the election a number of people began criticizing what they perceived as failures of the Nebraska Democratic Party's election efforts. Most of those folks are wrong. Most of those folks never set foot in a NDP campaign office and have no basis for their criticism outside of personal speculation and wild rumor.

In my mind, the current discussion among Nebraska Democrats lacks sufficient academic sophistication to learn from the results of the 2006 election and prepare for the 2008 election.

I do not claim to have all of the answers or be right all of the time. I am going to use this blog to couple my "real-world" experiences during the campaign with my academic background in Political Science and Communication. I'm going to cover a lot of ground on this blog: everything from analyzing the 2006 election to discussing what county parties and activists can do to increase our success in the 2008 election cycle. Your comments are welcome and encouraged - but make sure they offer something to the conversation and are not aimed a just criticizing.

Stay tuned...

Better than Television

The best show in town returned to UNK's campus Monday and Tuesday of this week. By all accounts Monday's show was nothing uncommon from the previous semesters I've been at UNK. Here is how the show goes: some preacher shows up and starts reading passages from the Old Testament - as a group of students gather he twists the text around and starts making inflammatory statements. This provokes some students in to arguing with him; the spectacle grows from there.

In contrast to Monday's show, Tuesday's show was different. It started off like the day before with the preacher down by the Nebraskan Student Union. I passed a growing group of students on my way to class at 10 am. By the time I got out of class at 11 am the show had moved up to the fountain, with an even larger group of student. At some point in time Public Safety determined the preacher was causing too many problems and moved him out of the central area of the campus. Leaving campus briefly, the preacher went for reinforcements and banners. Returning to UNK the two started spewing twice the intolerance of before.

Normally, I just pass by these gatherings, but on Tuesday the professor let us out of class early so I walked over with a few friends to listen in. Some of the more interesting things heard:

• Women belong in the kitchen - The ladies standing around were told to leave UNK and return to the kitchen.
• If you go to the weight room you are going to hell - One of my friends was told he was going to hell because he works out. According to the preacher he only goes to the weight room so he can fornicate more.
• Wearing jewelry makes you a heathen.
• Frat boys are the corrupting force of the devil.
  

We were also treated to a demonstration on the ways to women should sit and how guys should not walk. Homosexuality, alcohol, and promiscuity were also covered in great detail.

What I found most interesting about this whole thing was apparently God doesn't do forgiveness - he only hands out one way tickets to hell. That's not what I learned at my church.

The road back to Kearney

See more photos click here.

After the Storm

As the forecast calls for another round of sever storms tonight, Hastings is still recovering from last Wednesday's hail storm. Our house got three inches of rain in an hour and a half, along with two inches of hail. Our basement has always leaked when it rains, so we keep our cardboard boxes on shelves; unfortunately, the rain filled our basement window wells (to about 3.5 inches) then the hail came and shattered out the windows letting a waterfall of muddy water into the basement and all over our storage shelves. Needless to say it was a fun night of basement flood control. Flooding our basement and cracking our basement windows was not enough damage to satisfy this storm. Three more storm windows and my car's rear window were also destroyed. Oddly enough, the glass balls on our antique lightning rods survived the hail. My car suffered about $4,500 of hail damage, not including the three inches of rain that got in my back window soaking my seats and damaging my rear speakers. The insurance company is looking at the car tomorrow and they will likely total it out.

Hastings Public Schools cancelled classes for K-8 on Thursday and K-12 on Friday to repair the storm damage. I spent Thursday with my brother raking leaves out of the yard. We estimate we cleaned up about 150 gallons of wet leaves on Thursday.

I can't seem to get my photo's of the storm to load to this blog, but if you click here you will get the to website that has them.

The end approaches...

I have re-learned an important lesson about procrastination again this past week, however, like an amnesia patient I'm sure I will forget what I have learned about not putting papers off until the last minute.

This past week was marked by writing about 45 pages of research for four of my classes' final papers. I got clever this time and based all of my papers around issue framing so I only had to write one lit review and recycle it three times. My first paper was for my Drug War Policy class. This paper examined possible theories for state action. The paper focused on LB 234 (passed in 1999) which removed an ex-felon's right to vote in the state of Nebraska. I examined the theories of state autonomy, pluralism, agenda setting, and political elite framing to see if one theory best explained why the state acted on LB 234. The paper I wrote for my Speech Communication cap-stone course was really a glorified lit review. This paper examined two models of opinion change caused by issue framing. Finally, the last big paper I had to do was for my General Semantics class. This paper was an inter-disciplinary study that applied five General Semantics techniques to deconstruct issue framing. I am planning on revising this paper over the summer and submitting it to et cetera, a General Semantics journal, for publication in the fall. I had a small music paper due for my MUS 100 class that reviewed the historical accuracy of Shaffer's Amadeus to the real life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

With all of my papers behind me, I can take some time to relax, study for finals, and look for a summer job.

Terri Schiavo, "Conservatives," and the Media

The final weeks of Terri Schiavo's life and legal proceedings have captured the attention of the nation. This life and death struggle (literally) has not only seen over a decade of litigation, but it has also witnessed a historic Congressional intervention, droves of protestors, and for ever moment there has been a TV camera to capture the event.

This is becoming absurd.

On Tuesday night Fox News stationed a live TV crew at the Supreme Court so they could bring their viewers a live picture of the building as the Court received the Schiavo documents. Upon the Supreme Courts decision not to get involved in the case, Gov. Jeb Bush sought to gain legal custody of Schiavo. When that attempt failed protest leaders called on Gov. Bush to seize Terri Schiavo with the same force that was used to take Elian Gonzalez away from his family in the US. Showing a remarkable grasp of his job and duty, Gov. Bush stated he would not violate the court's order, according to a CBS News report. How sick is our democracy when conservatives take their victory in the 2004 election to mean they can have their elected officials violate court orders they disagree with?

But that is not only example of Republicans milking this event for every PR penny it is worth. Republicans in Congress quickly passed legislation kicking the Schiavo case into the 11th Circuit Court. Before, during, and after the legislation passed, Congressional Republicans were spending as much time with the media as possible. President Bush, in a move that was sure to win him brownie points with his loyal base, cut his vacation short to rush back to Washington and sign the legislation into law. When a tsunami hit countries in the Indian ocean causing billions of dollars in damage and thousands upon thousands of casualties US government reacted to the crisis with the speed of a snail, but one family's crisis in Florida is enough to get the government to respond with the speed of Superman on steroids, amazing.

This vast amount of media attention is fueling a worth while national debate. What is unfortunate, is this seems to be the only debate that is going on in the public eye. Where is the media attention for the Social Security conversation we need to be having as a nation? Where is the media attention for the men and women of our armed forces serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other areas around the world? Why are our leaders focusing on this issue when we have a growing national debt and a failing Medicare and Medicaid system? The world rushed aid (and news crews) to the disaster stricken areas affected by the tsunami, but the media attention was short lived. To date, billions of dollars are needed to rebuild lives, villages, countries that were destroyed in that horrific natural disaster.

We need to refocus on what is really important and our elected leaders need to confront the pressing issues facing our nation and the world. Terri Schiavo's fate will impact the lives of those around her. The fate of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and our decisions on domestic and international policies will have an affect on a much larger group of people for a much greater amount of time. The majority of Americans voted for a Republican leadership, I think it is high time the Republicans start providing some meaningful leadership on issues that matter.

Nutty Professor

This semester I am enrolled in Music 100 (Music Appreciation); I thought this was going to be a boring class, I was wrong. For the first few weeks we would come in and the professor (Dr. Cook) would lecture for 75 minutes on the topic for the day, but recently the professor has started class with a 30 minute lecture on the way the world really is. Let me bring you up to speed...

Here is what I have learned so far:

• The Russians are experimenting with viruses they can shoot into the upper atmosphere to rain down on the United States
• The Russians want to bring down the Dollar and replace it with the Euro.
• We invaded Iraq because that country had switched from the Dollar to the Euro.
• OPEC wants to change the world over to the Euro so the US will become a poor country like Mexico
• South Korea has 2 billion dollars and will sell them all off flooding the money market and making the dollar worthless.
  
• We are not allied with the British because we like them or because we speak the same language or because we have a similar history, we are allied with them because following the American Revolutionary war our country was greatly in dept to the Bank of England and the Bank of England has forced us into an alliance with that country.
• The Federal Reserve is a private company that is controlled by the Rothschild family; the Federal Reserve does not work for the interest of US citizens.
• US President Kennedy tried to abolish the Federal Reserve Board and was assassinated because of his attempt to do so.
  
• The Russians caused the tsunami.
• The Russians are using atomic energy to warn the worlds oceans to disrupt the US economy.
• Alan Greenspan is working against American interests.

That is the short version, he had a long complex theory that wove all of those points together. I took this class thinking I was going to learn about music, I had no idea I was also going to get a crash course in crack house conspiracy theories.

My First Blog...

Well, once again, having given in to the power of peer pressure I am starting my own blog. For along time I have wondered why anyone would post their personal life on the internet for all to read; for that reason I have resisted getting a blog. However, with the high school debate season having ended, I find myself with slightly more free time on my hands-time I can use to blog. So I guess I'll give blogging a try. I'll try to keep my political opinions from dominating this blog, but I offer no promises.

Stay tuned.