It’s Just Justin

McCain’s Dangerous Choice

MoveOn.org -

Yesterday was John McCain’s 72nd birthday. If elected, he’d be the oldest president ever inaugurated. And after months of slamming Barack Obama for “inexperience,” here’s who John McCain has chosen to be one heartbeat away from the presidency: a right-wing religious conservative with no foreign policy experience, who until recently was mayor of a town of 9,000 people.

Huh?

Who is Sarah Palin? Here’s some basic background:

She was elected Alaska’s governor a little over a year and a half ago. Her previous office was mayor of Wasilla, a small town outside Anchorage. She has no foreign policy experience.1
Palin is strongly anti-choice, opposing abortion even in the case of rape or incest.2
She supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in 2000. 3
Palin thinks creationism should be taught in public schools.4
She’s doesn’t think humans are the cause of climate change.5
She’s solidly in line with John McCain’s “Big Oil first” energy policy. She’s pushed hard for more oil drilling and says renewables won’t be ready for years. She also sued the Bush administration for listing polar bears as an endangered species—she was worried it would interfere with more oil drilling in Alaska.6
How closely did John McCain vet this choice? He met Sarah Palin once at a meeting. They spoke a second time, last Sunday, when he called her about being vice-president. Then he offered her the position.7
This is information the American people need to see. Please take a moment to forward this email to your friends and family.

We also asked Alaska MoveOn members what the rest of us should know about their governor. The response was striking. Here’s a sample:

She is really just a mayor from a small town outside Anchorage who has been a governor for only 1.5 years, and has ZERO national and international experience. I shudder to think that she could be the person taking that 3AM call on the White House hotline, and the one who could potentially be charged with leading the US in the volatile international scene that exists today. —Rose M., Fairbanks, AK

She is VERY, VERY conservative, and far from perfect. She’s a hunter and fisherwoman, but votes against the environment again and again. She ran on ethics reform, but is currently under investigation for several charges involving hiring and firing of state officials. She has NO experience beyond Alaska. —Christine B., Denali Park, AK

As an Alaskan and a feminist, I am beyond words at this announcement. Palin is not a feminist, and she is not the reformer she claims to be. —Karen L., Anchorage, AK

Alaskans, collectively, are just as stunned as the rest of the nation. She is doing well running our State, but is totally inexperienced on the national level, and very much unequipped to run the nation, if it came to that. She is as far right as one can get, which has already been communicated on the news. In our office of thirty employees (dems, republicans, and nonpartisans), not one person feels she is ready for the V.P. position.—Sherry C., Anchorage, AK

She’s vehemently anti-choice and doesn’t care about protecting our natural resources, even though she has worked as a fisherman. McCain chose her to pick up the Hillary voters, but Palin is no Hillary. —Marina L., Juneau, AK

I think she’s far too inexperienced to be in this position. I’m all for a woman in the White House, but not one who hasn’t done anything to deserve it. There are far many other women who have worked their way up and have much more experience that would have been better choices. This is a patronizing decision on John McCain’s part- and insulting to females everywhere that he would assume he’ll get our vote by putting “A Woman” in that position.—Jennifer M., Anchorage, AK

So Governor Palin is a staunch anti-choice religious conservative. She’s a global warming denier who shares John McCain’s commitment to Big Oil. And she’s dramatically inexperienced.

In picking Sarah Palin, John McCain has made the religious right very happy. And he’s made a very dangerous decision for our country.

In the next few days, many Americans will be wondering what McCain’s vice-presidential choice means. Please pass this information along to your friends and family.

Thanks for all you do.

–Ilyse, Noah, Justin, Karin and the rest of the team

Sources:

1. “Sarah Palin,” Wikipedia, Accessed August 29, 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin
2. “McCain Selects Anti-Choice Sarah Palin as Running Mate,” NARAL Pro-Choice America, August 29, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17515&id=13661-9894224-id1Qbcx&t=1
3. “Sarah Palin, Buchananite,” The Nation, August 29, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17736&id=13661-9894224-id1Qbcx&t=2
4. “‘Creation science’ enters the race,” Anchorage Daily News, October 27, 2006
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17737&id=13661-9894224-id1Qbcx&t=3
5. “Palin buys climate denial PR spin—ignores science,” Huffington Post, August 29, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17517&id=13661-9894224-id1Qbcx&t=4
6. “McCain VP Pick Completes Shift to Bush Energy Policy,” Sierra Club, August 29, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17518&id=13661-9894224-id1Qbcx&t=5
“Choice of Palin Promises Failed Energy Policies of the Past,” League of Conservation Voters, August 29, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17519&id=13661-9894224-id1Qbcx&t=6
“Protecting polar bears gets in way of drilling for oil, says governor,” The Times of London, May 23, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17520&id=13661-9894224-id1Qbcx&t=7
7 “McCain met Palin once before yesterday,” MSNBC, August 29, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=21119&id=13661-9894224-id1Qbcx&t=8

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PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. This email was sent to Justin Scott on August 30, 2008. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. To remove yourself from this list, click here.

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Tags: Alaska, Anchorage Alaska, Barack Obama, Email, John McCain, MoveOn.org, NARAL Pro-Choice America, Politics, Sarah Palin, United States, Wasilla, White House, WTF?

This is What You Do

When you are stuck in Columbia Missouri with nothing to do but walk around town with your camera.

This picture actually is kinda cool, I shot it in pure day light but set my aperture to as tight as it would go and had a fast shutter, turned the wight balance to incandescent and let the fluorescent light in a parking garage light me up.  I turned out looking really green and evil.  Love it.  Pretty cool too cause it was so bright in there, you’d never know!

Nothing exciting, but that’s exactly the point.  Columbia is lame-oh, when you don’t have friend who are also technically jobless and have so much time to just walk around town haha.

I need a photography buddy in Columbia so we can be stupid dorks about photography, art photography, whatever.  I had that in California and wow, how awesome.  These days I hardly even do photoshoots or even just go out and take pictures, that’s a shame as I love doing it so much.

Hopefully I will spend some of my time on this impromptu vacation taking pics and exploring new tips, tricks and techniques.

Tags: Arts, Arts and Entertainment, Business, California, Columbia, Columbia Missouri, Fine art photography, Friends, Houston, Photography, Texas, United States

Shaun Chapman at MobLogic.TV

Not only is this guy incrediby sexy (physically and intellectually), he has a great mission.  Check him out on Moblogic.tv

Seriously, he is gorgeous and I smell at least a little bit of homo in him hehe.  But for reals, visit his initiative, VoteSolar and let’s make some change.

The current state of energy in America and the world is just terrible.  There are really easy ways that we can do this and there is really no reason we haven’t already.  What happened to Americans leading the way through innovation and showing the rest of the world what we are made of.

Look what is happening with China, yeah, besides the Olympics.

Tags: 2008 Summer Olympics, America, Asia, Beijing, Business, China, Energy, Environment, Hot, Just My Nerdiness, MobLogic.tv, Money, Oil, Olympic Games, People's Republic of China, Politics, Sexy, United States, Video

Travel Woes

I have always loved to travel.  Being able to put out a couple hundred dollars and travel across the country is awesome to me, and I’ve done it more than many people my age.  I have been flying since I was a little child from my yearly voyage to California, to trips to Europe, the Caribbean and Hawaii, to more continental trips to Missouri, Texas, Washington DC, Florida, Massachusetts, Georgia, Arizona, Tennessee…

I’ve been to pretty much every state, take the Dakotas, Montana, Alaska and Maine.

Today was the first time I’ve really been a prissy little bitch while traveling.

The plan was that I would take the MoExpress shuttle to St. Louis, fly to Baltimore/Washington International, have dinner with my best friend of all time Landon during my four hour layover and then finish my flight to Raleigh North Carolina where I would meet my grandmother and then head to our hotel to prepare for our presentation tomorrow night.

Well, I did take MoExpress.  I sat next to a guy stuffing his face full of McDonalds and taking up a good portion of my seat doing it.  Behind me there was a guy eating a ten piece fried chicken bucket with biscuits and gravy.  Oh, don’t forget the woman who some how managed to get actual movie theater popcorn at 10:30 in the morning.  Not a small bag, we are talking the refillable plastic bucket.  Finally there was the kid who had two trays of Chinese food, which he ate solo.

Missouri is  sloppy state.

We arrive at the airport as scheduled at 12:30pm, I went through security without any trouble and declared sanctuary.

Too soon.

My flight is delayed 30 minutes.  I decided to take this extra time and explore the airport terminal.  To my surprise, the E terminal now connected to the D terminal, and so on all the way to A.  This is a new thing.  Southwest’s terminal has always sat as it’s own with no connection to the other terminals beyond using a shuttle.

I walk, and walk, and walk.  There are half mile markers through the terminal.  I guess the city of Saint Louis is trying to remove the negative health stigma attached to the state?

I walk all the way to terminal A, find nothing too exciting and head back to terminal E.

At The Great American Bagel and Bakery I order a veggie sandwich on an asiago bagel.

“That’ll be an extra $0.99 you know”

“Yes I understand that”

“What do you want again?  Turkey?”

“Veggie on asiago”

“Oh, yeah.  The asiago is an extra $0.99”

“Yes, that’s what I hear”

“What would you like on it?”

“Well, what veggies do you have?” (they don’t show the makings of the sandwich which makes me a bit nervous)

Pointing to her right, “Look at “Condiments”

I look to her left, where I see “Condiments”.  Is lettuce a condiment?  Ok, I bite, “Lettuce, tomato, red onion, cucumber, peppers and light mayo”.

“Want cheese?”

“Yes, provolone”

“Alright, do you want any cheese?”

“Yes… provolone”

“Oh, yeah.”

It’s over $9.00 for this sandwich.  I hand her my debit card as a man walks up and says, “I need a large coffee”.

The register attendant cancels the transaction to process his coffee order.  Mind you, there is a line about ten deep behind me and this bloke walks up and cuts in front of us all, and she cancels my transaction for a $2.50 cup of coffee.

Then she picks up the phone, apparently “Char-ease” has called in sick, again.

“Oh no!  You tell Char-ease she can’t be calling in again.  She called in yesterday, no way, nuh uh.”

This continues, my transaction is processed.  I leave, unwrap my bagel and am met with one piece of lettuce, two anemic tomato slices and vinegar.  So that’s how the sandwich got so greasy, the oil and vinegar she poured all over it.  Did I order that?  No.

So I took apart the sandwich and treated it as a half side salad with stale asiago bread on the side.

Needless to say it wasn’t very good and it definitely wasn’t worth $9.00+.  I would have been better off getting the caesar salad from Wolfgang Puck for $8.99 in the other terminal.  Lesson learned.

I get to the gate, flight delayed another ten minutes.

Flight delayed another 30 minutes.

Flight has arrived… ?  Huh?  It was at least forty minutes away and now, magically, it is here. We board the flight.

We sit on the the runway 20 minutes.  We start to take off, we stop.  We sit on the runway 30 minutes.  We return to the gate where we deplane and I plug in my laptop to charge a bit more.

The air traffic controllers in Baltimore are saying there is at least another hour before we can take off so I get myself comfortable, cancel my plans with Landon and hop onto the internet.
Ten minutes later they are calling us back onto the plane.  So much for an hour, but I won’t complain.

We get back on the plane.  We sit on the runway.  We sit some more.  We finally take off.

During the entire thing, everyone kept a positive attitude, thank the lord.  I mean, I was pessimistic and bitchy and pissy but I made sure to keep that to myself.  The flight attendants were so nice, the pilot kept us up to date as best he could and gate workers did their best to keep us comfortable with the entire situation.

That is why I love Southwest Airlines.  They put customer service as a top priority and had this been another airline, I am certain there would have been some pretty vocal people on the plane.

I only wish they had Midwest Airline’s cookies.  Never ending supply of warm cookies would keep any Missourian happy, especially the ones I met today.  Holy shit.
UPDATE:

We have

Tags: Annoying, California, Crappy, Delayed, Pitchfork Music Festival, Rant, Southwest Airlines, St. Louis, St. Louis Missouri, Travel, Ugh, United States, Washington DC, Wolfgang Puck, WTF?

How I Celebrated my Independence

So yesterday was the fourth of July.  Or rather, it was the Fourth of July.  The day we celebrate our independence, here in America. Last year I was in Washington DC for the Fourth of July with best friend Landon.  We had a nearly missed the show, and in the capitol city, but it was a wonderful time.  This year was different, being in Missouri and not anywhere all that exciting.

We celebrate this by cooking out with friends and family, grilling some burgers and brats, enjoying the outdoor weather, drinking and setting off fireworks followed by watching a professional fireworks show later in the evening.

I accidentally didn’t do any of those things.  I had the intention of grilling out with Ryan at his work.  I had this idea that I’d hang out with my friend Beau and his guests for a Bar-B-Que.  I thought I’d pick up some sparklers for a photo I wanted to take.  I thought later I would go to Jefferson City or to Faruot Field and watch the fireworks show.

What happened was totally different but still a lot of fun.  I went to Harpo’s where I hung out with Colin, Kevin, Brittany, Ashley and a couple of other friendly people.  We had the idea of being on a roof equaling a great view of the fireworks.  Not so much.  The trees around the building blocked any site of the show.  But that was ok, we had our drinks and our conversation.  I had not seen Kevin in about a year so it was wonderful catching up with him. Plus, we totally matched.

Later we went to the trainwreck of a gay bar out here called, Arches and Columns.  I hear it used to be a real deal pub, and then it was a leather daddy bar and now it’s just a dive.  But always fun.

Bumped into more people I hadn’t seen in quite some time, had a drink, had a good time.  We hung out a bit more at Kevin’s before I went home and crashed.

Tags: America, Ashley, Brittany, Colin, Fireworks, Fourth of July, Gay, Going Out, Kevin, Landon, Pyrotechnics, United States, Washington DC