Friday, September 5, 2008

Clarification on the Yellow Tie

If you had looked closely, Ash, the tie was not yellow, it was gold.  Instead of thinking of it as a yellow-bellied yellow tie, maybe we can look at it as "Power Gold" tie.  It did complement his hair nicely!!

(heehee...by the way, I know how much the yellow tie bothers you, so you know I couldn't pass this one up)

Also, we should probably give credit where credit is due.  The yellow tie rant actually came from a very near and dear (and sometimes over-zealous) friend.  When I talked to Ashley about it to get his take, I expected him to tell me my dear friend was a bit off the deep end for being so offended; but, of course, he agreed fully, and was even angrier than she.  

RNC Thoughts

A few thoughts about the festivities last night...

Cindy McCain-
I was very unimpressed by Cindy McCain's delivery. She was very robotic and clearly had no place on the stage. It also seemed like she made one of two mistakes. She either practiced too much, leading to a planned feel, or practiced too little and over-compensated. In either case, she had no extemporaneous, conversational feel. A speaker can survive, and even thrive without that feel; Obama is a great orator who always sounds like he's talking at you and not to you. Mrs. McCain needed that feel, though.
I don't think it was a mistake for the RNC to have her speak, however. I did not realize how amazing her story is. Strangely, she has a good portion of the qualifications Barack Obama does. They both have the same community organization experience. The content of her speech was worth the poor delivery of somebody not used to such a pressure-packed environment. Sure, liberal blogo-wackos and the erroneous Main Stream Media will pcik her apart. The independent voters saw her for her content, and they probably wouldn't appreciate another woman being ripped apart.

Protestors-
The protestors at the convention were both disrespectful and unintelligent. Did they really think they would make a valid point? Would an independent voter see that and suddenly understand? My guess is that a handful might, but most would be turned off to it. I would love to hear from some independent voters to hear what effect the protestors had. My gut says these protestors hurt their cause.
More importantly, it was disrespectful. There is a place for protestors. Protest peacefully outside the arena. That means no bags of urine, no pulling dumpsters into the street, no attacking buses of delegates or (worst)cub scouts preparing to show the colors, and no going inside. Funny how all these things reared their heads at the RNC, but none showed up at the DNC. Some may say the libs have more to protest, and that may be so in their minds. Nonetheless, most conservatives are too respectful to partake in such de-evolution. (Whip it!)

John McCain-
I was impressed by his speech, but one ironic thing got to me. A conversation Susie and I had about candidates for office gave us the idea to start this blog. That conversation? A candidate who wore a yellow tie to an appearance was wrong. I showed my clear frustration that anyone would avoid a red, white, or blue tie. Show some respect to your country.
I almost laughed when I saw McCain in a yellow tie. Come on! You fought for your country, and that's great. It's changed my mind to vote for you. You should not, however, let some stylist pick a yellow-bellied yellow tie for you.

Then again, McCain wears a flag pin and stands for the pledge of allegiance.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Are Family Failings Fair Game?

Hello all readers who've decided to jump on our bandwagon while its still stopped. When we get moving, jumping on will be a whole lot more difficult. Don't worry...Susie's already on so we don't have to worry about the smallest York getting hurt.

We're excited to share our opinions with you and, in turn, hear what you have to say. We'll be discussing a lot of topics. One day, we'll even take our Aggies/Longhorns debate public, even if it means you see how divided our family is. We're gonna save that for a downtime, though. For now, we have an exciting presidential race to cover.

As I watch Rudy Guliani speak at the Republican National Convention, there is an elephant in the room. Rudy is doing a great job shining light on John McCain's patriotism, a patriotism he proved enduring torture overseas during war. He's shining light on Barack Obama's lackluster political background. Guliani's shining a whole lot of light, but the darkness of biased left-wing cynicism is pretty overwhelming.

That darkness has created a gorilla sitting in the corner; Sarah Palin's family history is casting a shadow. The question of what effect her husband's DUI, her daughter's unwed pregnancy, or her children's needs should have on her standing is interesting. I think we need to answer a more basic question, though. Should her family history, or any candidate's, be put under the microscope in the first place?

Obama has answered no. I don't trust his answer, though. He's got plenty to hide for himself. My answer is yes, and that goes beyond partisan leaning. A candidate's family history is incredibly telling. Family tells of a person's ethics; ethics created by, most assuredly, family. It also shows how a candidate deals with crisis, and it forces candidates to put their money where their mouth is. Family history is an important part of a candidate's qualifications, but it should be used like any powerful weapon; with responsibility. Family history must come with no assumptions, focused solely on the candidate, and in equal portions.

Family history shows a persons ethical composition. Ask any psychologist where a person's values come from. They will tell you that values are created through careful (or sometimes uncareful in the case of our inner cities) nurturing by a child's guardians. A person's elder relatives do the majority of work in creating a person's values. Furthermore, those values, after being slightly modified and enhanced, get passed on. Looking to a candidates children shows which values they have passed on. Perhaps a candidate disagrees with their parents; it shows in how they raise their child.

Values as an argument, though, may seem weak. This justification for looking into family life is both obvious and abstract; we have no dna evidence to look at that lays out a person's values. There are other worthy arguments, though.

One subject that keeps coming up is the infamous "3 am call." Which candidate do you want fielding a call at three in the morning about a terrorist attack or other crisis? The answer probably lies in which candidate has already dealt with disaster. There is no more depressing a disaster than one that involves family. Be it a stroke, a car accident, or a daughter stealing a chair from a high school basketball game (ask about that story and I'll tell you in the comments), a person's ability to deal with crisis is most challenged during family turmoil.

And we can read a candidate's honesty best through family, as well. Sarah Palin is a great example. She was beligerently pro-life for years before being pregnant with her last child. When she found out the child would have Down Syndrome, she was forced to evaluate her beliefs. By not wavering, she showed both what she believes and how firmy she holds to that belief. When dealing with family, no person, including candidates for public office, can give lip-service to an ideal without such superficiality damaging the child. A candidate's family calls their bluff on certain important positions and values. Someone who claims to be tough on crime cannot be lenient with their children.

It is a gray issue, but these arguments are among others that make me believe a person's family history is a valid and powerful tool. I make this argument with some preconditions (Don't tell Barack). Family history is important, powerful, necessary...and dangerous.

A person's family background must be examined without assumptions. It is an assumption that Sarah Palin must have no issue with pre-marital sex or unwed pregnancy because her daughter is partaking in both. How assinine is that assumption? Our older brother passed away from illegal drug overdose, so does that mean our firmly Christian parents snort lines each night before bed? I think not. Assumptions are dangerous and unintelligent.

A person's family background must be examined with focus. Barack Obama's family history cannot remain hidden and relatively unknown, but his relatives have not asked to be persecuted. A candidate's family must not be destroyed, nor should they be put on a pearly platform. When a candidate's family history is investigated, it is only fair that the investigation focus on how the candidate is involved.

Finally, family history is equally important to all candidates. It takes only kindergarten knowledge to understand that we need to share. No candidate should be skewered as Sarah Palin is right now with no focus on other candidates.

Unfortunately, we cannot trust our media to follow these simple rules. To a biased media, kindergarten concepts are too difficult. Fairness is unnecessary to CNN and MSNBC does not understand how dangerous assumptions are. Thus, if you can't say something nice, don't say anything. The biased media should maintain the safety of candidates' families by ignoring them.
The meaning of family history is another debate. We could go on and on about Barack Obama's broken family. We could point out how wrong the media is in regard to Sarah Palin's family. McCain and Biden could even yield ample subject matter. Maybe I'll touch on that in my response. For now, though, it is important to justify that those ramblings are valid.

As a side note: how did Trig Palin sleep through his mother's speech? Cute. Just cute.

Susie's Response:
Howdy all. I'll start by setting expectations. This smallest (yet oldest sibling) is not near as eloquent (wordy) or as detailed as my baby brother. Between juggling work and being a single mother of a teenager, I just don't have the time to devote to research that my nerdy brother has. What I do have to offer is the point of view of a woman who has spent 10+ years raising an incredible daughter and worrying about what our elected officials will do to improve (or not) the quality of life for my children and grandchildren.


As for the Aggie/Longhorn debate, I think my brother is just afraid to touch me on that one-he knows he has no chance. I think he is hiding behind the political race to cover his butt.
As will often happen, I agree with my brother that ALL candidates' families should be put under a microscope; BUT, it is not the mistakes the family makes that are important in deciding whether the candidate is qualified to lead our country (or be second in command). It is the response of the candidate to the problems that is important. As McCain put it in his speech introducing Palin, she is a woman who, "Stands up for what's right and doesn't let anyone tell her when to sit down." (NO ONE puts baby in a corner). It would be easy for Palin to speak out about any "embarrassment" or disappointment she might have in her daughter regarding a "teen pregnancy" (is 17 really a teen pregnancy?) in order to appease those criticizing her. Rather, she is facing it like a true woman, and supporting her daughter (and the father), and even bringing them to the forefront of the Republican Convention proceedings.

Not that Palin needs to be any stronger than what she is (she'll even blow the whistle on those in her own party when corruption abounds), but, as our family can attest to, family turmoil often (if handled properly) leads to a stronger family. I do believe my brother took our family as an example a bit too far in speaking of assumptions. Rather than saying that having a son who died of a drug overdose might imply to some that our firmly Christian parents snort lines before bed each night, he probably should have stated that it does not mean that our parents in any way encouraged or "looked the other way" on his drug use (or were poor parents because of it). Regardless, our family did handle the situation without feeling like we had to hide it from people, because we knew people were smart enough to realize that it was not a reflection on our parents' upbringing or beliefs.

As for Trig Palin sleeping...he's used to going everywhere with his mother, and I'm sure she gets crowds fired up quite often.


Ashley's Response:
Every now and then this little LED in my head goes off and a series of random quotes will pop into my head. I should give it a name like a "quote-flow" or "Roberto." You just set Roberto a-blinking, Suze.

I really like this concept that we can look to a family's trials and, more importantly, their response to get an idea of how qualified a candidate might be. To establish some frame of reference, a few of Roberto's quotes come to mind…

Nietschze- "What does not kill us only makes us stronger."
This is a mantra our family has taken to. A family that deals with trials correctly should come out of those trials stronger. A family, therefore, that emerges from trials weakened must not have handled trials correctly. Is that a black-mark on their gene pool? No. It simply means that either they may not be ready for a 9/11-type crisis or they had better have learned their lesson.
(BTW, my favorite shirt ever involved Neitschze. On the front it said "God is dead. -Neitschze" On the back, "Neitschze is dead. -God")

Einstein, Franklin, China, or anonymous- "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result."
So some hardships are acceptable. Too many, especially trails stemming from the same mistakes over and over again, may show an inability to learn from mistakes. Be you liberal (Iraq) or conservative (killing babies), you probably know the consequences of making the same "mistake" over and over again.

Welch- "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"
I do think it is important to judge a candidate's ability to know decency. For instance, "they cling to their guns and their religion" is to decency what of-age gymnasts are to China.

I could keep going, but I'll stop there so as to appease the almighty rule of 3. I do have some questions for you, Susie.

1) Is it possible to observe the mistakes of the family while preserving those members of the family who had no choice to enter the campaign?

2) Do we, as newly-anointed bloggers, have a responsibility to explore families in the fair way we have laid out, or should we refrain due to the Main Stream Media's inability to follow suit?

I leave you with the last word. Cherish it; this blog may be the only place you get it from me. (You know I jest.)

Susie's Response:
Nice choice on the quotes, Lil' Brother. And to answer your questions:

1) I believe we are, in fact, by what we are doing ourselves, testing this question. We have brought members of our family into this, our first blog, in a very personal way-and we didn't give them a choice. We may get an answer to this one very soon-as soon as Mom reads this. Her response can give us some insight into this issue, and I'm not certain we want to hear the answer (or yelling, if it comes to it).

2) As newly (and self) anointed bloggers, I believe it is up to us to define how we handle things. But, you can be sure, as the people we are and the people we were brought up to be, the decision will not be made due to Main Stream Media. The decision will be made by looking to God and our own sense of what is right and what is wrong. As far as Obama goes, I don't think we even need to delve into his family-he gives enough ammunition on his own.

Jest all you want, but you know when I want the last word, IT IS MINE!!!

Community Organizing: It's legit, yo!

A lot was made last night of Barack Obama's extensive experience as a community organizer. Some of the best jabs from Sarah Palin, Rudy Guliani, and the cast ripped into this experience, which he uses as a backbone to his candidacy.

We should be fair to Obama, though, and take a look into what he's doing. After all, two wrongs don't make a right, so let's take the high road. Here are some links to help you understand what exactly the job entailed.

Wikipedia-
Here is the wikipedia definition of "Community Organizer." Kids, don't use wikipedia as a source on your next report. It can be valuable to give a little background information, though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_organizing

From what I read, a couple things pop out to me:
1) The people organized have self-interest. Not much in the way of opposition if you're organizing people with self-interest.
2) It's helping people...with an agenda. I only wish this blog was established so I could read a statement from Obama saying such implications prove Wikipedia is biased.

Salary Data-
I figured I'd check and see if "Community Organizer" was a valid job description. Also, numbers never hurt.
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm

Two job titles come close to Community Organizer. One is 11-9151, Social and Community Service Managers. The other is 21-1099, Community and Social Service Specialists, All Others.

Option 1 can't be it, as a Social and Community Service Manager implies no agenda. Thus, Barack Obama's official position was other. Not totally substantive, but interesting nonetheless.

I compare it to the garbage man who calls himself a sanitation engineer.

Specific Information-
Let's check in with a liberal source for a clearer definition of what he did.
http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/09/why-do-republic.html

I'm not sure whether Landauer thinks he's making some valid points, but it doesn't matter. The details are what is important. More to come after the last link.

Huffington Nonsense-
Because lunacy can be fun to read:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/04/shorter-rnc-day-three-dea_n_123798.html

In the usual liberal style, we see the effects of the logical fallacy. Extra points to the reader who identifies which fallacy it is. How ridiculous to assume that discounting community organizing's credibility in a presidential election is eliminating all of it's worth to society.

Herein lies the crux of the matter; Obama's experience as a Community Organizer is great. he did a wonderful job. Three things are in question, though. Let's go through the questions.

1) Is it applicable?
Obama could have had a wonderful few years as the best salesman down at the local ice cream shop. It's a valuable job, as we all need our delicious ice cream, but it's simply not relevant. The opposite would be some sort of actual executive experience, like being a governor. Community Organization lies somewhere between, despite Obama's campaign telling you otherwise.

2) Does it show ability?
To say no would be crude, overly biased, and wrong. He obviously had some talent, even that which compares to the talents needed for presidency. Again, though, don't let the Obama campaign fool you, though. It's not that tough. I served with a group of people who did similar things in a community service organization. At this point, none of us from that board are qualified to be president. Which brings us to question 3...

3) What else is there?
His organizing exploits would look a lot better if accompanied by actual experience. Come back in 10 or 20 years with some legislation written, some risks taken, and something to back up the organizing. For now, it's far too little.

I give Obama credit for finding a way to get paid doing what I volunteered to do. It does not qualify him for president. It makes him an active, beneficial member of society. That part is an example we can all follow.

Howdy, y'all!

And so it begins. This is the first ever post on Horns and Heifers. Before we get to the meat of the posts, I figured I'd introduce myself and the blog. It's a little thing called social penetration...

I am a writer from the greater Milwaukee Metropolitan area. My older sister, who will be making regular appearances, is a fine writer in her own right in Austin, Texas. Our goal is to bring you a side of the news that gets forgotten, that from the non-coastal areas.

I'll be representing the views of the Heifers, the fine 'sconsinites of the Dairy State. Susie will be covering the Horns, though she is an Aggie fan. And, just as our logo features the Burnt Orange Longhorn and Maroon Gig 'em thumb in harmony, we too will remain fair. We will include as many illogical views and liberal mistakes as we will USC, UGA, or Florida logos. Fair does not mean wrong.

Many of the posts you read here will be a pseudo-debate format. My sister and I will take turns starting a discussion. We'll go back and forth twice. Sometimes we will agree. Other times we will disagree. Either way, we will uncover the arguments so we can have furtive conversation among all of us.

You have a responsibility, too. Talk to us. Make lively conversation. Suggest topics. Susie and I are new to blogging, so we are far from the established institution. We are, to be frank, the right kind of change. After all, you don't want more of the same like the Huffington Post or Alan Colmes' ridiculous Liberaland. You want us...and we know it.