Well, two nominations are finished...

The Constitution Party about a month ago at their convention nominated pastor Chuck Baldwin as their candidate for president, and today the Libertarian Party nominated Bob Barr as their candidate. The Republican Party isn't done yet, and the Democratic Party isn't done yet... but it is always weird to hear the media report only on one of those four. It is like they have already decided the way this primary season will go, and report it as if it is going that way.

Barr/(possibly Root), Libertarian Party

So Bob Barr... an interesting guy... formerly a Republican in the house, most well known for his efforts to impeach Clinton... and now he is part of the Libertarian Party. This is unusual for a lot of reasons, mostly his stance on the War on Drugs that he supports still in spite of the LP view that it is unnecessary, costly, and ineffective. He is pro-life (although his wife had an abortion) while the LP is very much pro-choice, or at least against a federal law for or against it. He also seems to be a lot bigger government and taxing and spending than the 0 of both that most of the LP stands for. But he is pretty well known and will definitely get more notoriety than Mary Ruwart or Wayne Root would have gotten. And another plus, he has a cool mustache.

Baldwin/Castle, Constitution Party

And Chuck Baldwin... I really can't say anything bad about this guy. He is definitely a small government believer. He brings with him a ton of the potential conservative support that McCain can lose this November, and as a pastor is a great speaker. I think it will be very interesting to see if the media will actually give Chuck Baldwin a public voice, because if most conservatives actually hear his positions and are able to research his significantly more "clean" record than any of the other potential nominees, then a huge chunk of the historically Republican voters would throw their support to him instead of McCain.

And here is a quote from Baldwin back in December before he even considered trying for the nomination...

"Unfortunately, it has been the Christian Right's blind support for President Bush in particular and the Republican Party in general that has precipitated a glaring and perhaps fatal defect: the Christian Right cannot, or will not, honestly face the real danger confronting these United States. The reason for this blindness is due, in part, to political partisanship or personal aggrandizement. Regardless, the Christian Right is currently devoid of genuine sagacity. On the whole, they fail to understand the issues that are critical to our nation's--and their own--survival."

Ideologically I match up closest to Ron Paul out of anyone currently still involved in the presidential run, which is why I keep getting more and more disgusted with the Republican Party and the way they are shutting out delegates from the national convention. In Lousiana, Nevada, Hawaii, Missouri, and others, party delegates that support anyone other than McCain are being disqualified and ignored. The convention process is being completely derailed to prevent any Ron Paul delegates from being able to show up in St. Paul to make their voice heard at the national convention. It just blows my mind to think that state GOP organizers would choose to (Nevada) completely halt their convention and not reconvene, disqualifying them from having any delegates at the national convention, rather than allow a few Ron Paul delegates to go. Ron Paul beat McCain in Nevada... but what does that matter.

So, my vote in November will most likely be going to Baldwin/Castle... but we will see what happens before then. Plenty of time for an Independent to come up and get some support...

Into The Wild

So I just finished watching this movie... and rather than talk about the movie and spoil it, I will talk about what I have thought about along these lines over the years.

Every year just about, I consider making a cross country trip. Just getting up, getting in the car, and driving. The thing that usually keeps this from happening, and moreso recently, is the cost of gas. I have driven from Dallas, TX to Calgary, Alberta Canada, but that was just three days. I have driven in a single day to Omaha, Nebraska, several trips to Oklahoma, one single trip east of the Mississippi River to Nashville, but never really anything of the scale that I really would like. When I was a kid, we took a big trip one summer and went to see a lot of different places. We hit the big sights like the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, Mount Rushmore (didn't get to see the secret golden city), and hitting the Pacific Ocean for a while. We had trips where we would spend a few weeks on the Gulf Coast, but never really any massive summer-long adventures. Now of course the major problem with any trip of this kind is money. Transportation is a huge part of it... I calculated out that just travelling from home to Florida, to Maine, To Washington state, to Southern California, and back would be at least a 30 state trip (not bad, and could easily include a few more) and would be 9,000 miles. Now with a car that gets 30mpg, which I do have, this is still 300 gallons of gas... which is $1200. That doesn't even include tolls, hotel rooms for at least the occasional shower, and food. Now of course the trip would be useless if I didn't spend at least a little time in each state I went through, or at least the major cities... so it could be okay to be a 90 day trip. That of course leaves three days per state on average, which I could totally do. This would take up the entire summer (and then some) and if I spent $10 a day on food, a few dollars a week on washing clothes, and of course find some meaningless item to pick up in each state as a collection, it would probably end up costing somewhere around $5000. That is for a single road trip. And I have seriously considered this. Miami, Florida is the southeast most city worth visiting, Bangor, Maine is the Northeast most, Seattle Washington to the Northwest, and San Diego, California to the Southwest. I have even thought up relatively specific paths to drive to make sure I go through useful cities along the way to not waste all the time just driving (like skipping Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, etc).

Now where does this all come into the movie? Well, the guy spent several months living off of nothing. Ditched the car, gave every last cent he had to a charity, and just went. This of course is a much much more difficult endeavor, especially the part about going to Alaska, and he managed to do it with almost no money at all, just living off the land, accepting the kindness of strangers, and hitching rides, jumping trains, and paddling down rivers. I don't know that I'd be up for all that, especially since I don't have the kind of time that he took. I would be up for a much more tame version. Maybe someday I will visit Alaska... or maybe move there depending on how things go with the next presidential cycle... but I don't see myself just living off the land. I have far too much fear of bees and bears and snakes to really do that. I could totally do that in a controlled situation, like being on Survivor, but not just doing it with nobody knowing and no way of being in contact with anyone. Who knows though... maybe when I hit my midlife crisis at 50 I will want to travel around and live off of nothing.

So anyone out there want to take a major road trip and split the costs???

Video Games

So I am generally one to play a lot of different video games once or twice... I like to finish what I start. When a game is really really bad I can't even play through the entire thing, but lately I have come upon a great deal of games that I couldn't even really get started much with, but that is for a whole other time. A few games that I have played lately and what I thought about them.

Rock Band: One of the few genres recently to completely revolutionize the way gaming is done. The Wii remote is one and the guitar remote is the other. Rock Band takes this one step further and adds drums and a microphone. Okay, so I was a LOT late on joining in on the Guitar Hero craze (a few years) and the Dance Dance Revolution craze (a few years) but I think both are spectacular ways of combining music and games. Rock Band is probably the best I have ever seen because not only is there the challenge of following the music, but you are actually playing something remotely resembling the notes on a controller that is a guitar... or microphone or drums. There is a significant amount of challenge involved in being good, although I have been really very good at each part, but it is great for groups of people and still good for a single player. I have done both of course and this is definitely a party game. And it is console only, but with Frets on Fire I already have a way to play it on PC with at least the guitar parts... as well as Guitar Hero 1,2,3, and 80s.

Call of Duty 4: Having played COD and COD2, I was expecting a lot from this game and it did pretty well for the single player. I haven't gotten into the multiplayer part, but based on the single player aspect I can say that it is probably good as well. The one thing about this game that stood out to me as being something completely different and new and cool was the one level where you are manning a gun on an AC-130 gunship and shooting targets based on heat signatures of bodies on the ground. It was truly an amazing level and completely new thing based on what I have seen in games. Very realistic and very well done. The rest of the game was pretty good as well, being a great story and good gameplay, although it was very linear and somewhat predicable in the tasks and AI.

Turok: A decent game. Once again, this is very much like Crysis/Far Cry/Every other FPS in the last few years. The premise is different, but the gameplay is the same. The only new thing is dinosaurs that you get to shoot and be eaten by.

Bioshock: Finally something different. While the Adam/Eve powers thing wasn't a completely new concept, the idea of tying it to all the different things it did during the game as well as having seperate weapons was pretty well done. The levels were unique although not completely different, but I did like the way things were put together. Maps worked very well, hints were somewhat helpful if not a bit intrusive and far too frequent. Yes, I know I press R to reload, just like the last time you told me 5 minutes ago and every time before that. This game was definitely designed with consoles in mind and isn't a very mentally involved game, but it was new, fresh, and fun. I have just started this one really, but it already seems like it will end well... I just hope the final boss isn't one I just have to run circles around and shoot... I hate when that happens.

Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas: No, not the new one... the older one I finally got around to playing through. I hated this game. Vice City was FAR more entertaining. The cars were cooler, there was way less "fluff" in the game (seriously, 400 different outfits? Working out? Eating food?) Games like this need to be more about the story and less about building up your character. Money and ammo should be the only things you would need to worry about. I don't plan on playing GTA4 for a while though.

Need for Speed - Pro Street: Graphically this game was great. The controls were not as good. I think they were going for a blend of realism with easy gameplay and got neither. I thought Most Wanted was the best Need for Speed game for a while. Carbon was terrible, but Pro Street was just okay. Underground and Underground 2 were way too focused on how the car looked. This was a pretty good mix of the two, with most of the focus being on performance. I definitely like the way the races were done, although I miss the drifting aspect of the Underground games.

Assassin's Creed: The first game in a long time that I really really liked to play as a story. Everything about this game was great. The gameplay was very well done, although again, I could see how it was geared toward a console rather than a PC. The combat could have been made to be more than just the timing of hitting two buttons, or two of four (yes of, not or) over and over again. It didn't have the open aspect of a game like Oblivion, but it didn't feel 100% linear. Everything had to happen in a mostly specific order, although you could choose which ones to do (best 4 out of 7?) and what order to do them in. I would liked to have gained assassin powers in the real world though. A very good game.

Crysis: Great graphics, horrible story. Seriously, the same old thing again. You are fighting the bad guys only to find aliens have invaded. Didn't I play this game a few years ago when it was called something else? I could name 20 different games and each would have the same premise. Maybe it was zombies instead of aliens.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2: This game was actually fun. I really liked the way the weapons were implemented and the AI was reasonably well made. I love when an enemy sees me and then tries to sneak behind me, or at least hides from me. Being able to do no look shooting, leaning around corners, and even healing teammates all made for a pretty well immersive experience.

Iron Man: Another movie spinoff game. Except this one isn't good. Well, neither were any of the others. It is a general rule that if a movie comes first, the game is horrible, and if a game comes first the movie is horrible. This one is no exception. I hated every minute of it that I could tolerate to play.

Black & White 2: I was a lot late getting on to this bandwagon, like most. Vast improvements of the controls of the first game, excellent strategic gameplay, and really well done graphics. It was a lot of fun playing it, and even playing through the second time and with the expansion. I will probably never play it again, but it was a good play through twice.

Team Fortress 2: I played on the free weekend... and for a FPS this was an excellent time killer. It was like all of the other multiplayer FPS's that I have played, but with one great exception... it didn't take itself too seriously. Tons of fun while being cartoonish and weird.

Civilization 4: Maybe it is just me, but I found this game to be incredibly hard. My first few tries I could never find the right balance of expanding and developing. Even when I did, everyone then ganged up on me (I could never be everyone's friend, because they hated me when I was other peoples' friends) and wiped out my entire civilization. If I were somehow really good at this game, I might just play through once or twice. It didn't have that quality to me that would keep me playing it for fun, although possibly as a multiplayer thing.

And I am sure in the last 6 months I played another game or too, but I can't remember them currently. So that's it for now.

Survivor, in general

So this season is over, and I still hate more than anything the fact that they always seem to put the finale on Sunday night. Granted, I still watch it, but it makes no sense. An entire season of a reality show on the same night and time, and then for the one that people really want to see, it is on a new night. That, more than anything else, bothers me about this show.
Now just to qualify, I do watch every episode of Survivor. There was a time where I sometimes made a difficult choice between Friends and Survivor on Thursday nights, but Survivor ended up winning that fight due to Survivor: Australia. I never watched the first season. I saw the finale, at least part of it, but that was all. Everything else since then I have seen, and I did go back and watch the first season later on. I think the show is definitely getting better, although the contestants are not. People know the show too well and they play it now like a formula. What they really need is to recruit people thinking they are going to be on another show and then the twist is they get dropped off in the middle of nowhere and filmed. Surprise, you are on Survivor. Now vote each other off.
Next season is going to be in high definition... not sure how I feel about this. It will be good to FINALLY see survivor in widescreen like my TV is, but every cut and scrape, every oozing bug bite, all will be clearly visible. They will still blur out anything that would be advantageous to high definition anyway.
One thing about this show, much like American Idol, is that the producers intentionally make it so that you only see one side of how things happen. Often this is just so that the winner is a surprise. Alliances are hidden, comments about who is getting voted out are edited out just so there is drama at the end, and nothing ever actually gets said at tribal council. Isn't the point of tribal council to voice issues and opinions? This never happens. If I were on Survivor, the first thing I would do is to make alliances with everyone, and then at tribal council reveal what every single alliance in the group was. Every backstab, every blindside, they would be done away with. It would all be done out in the open.
I might last a week.

American Idol, Season 7

Every season... every single one, the person I like doesn't win. Doesn't matter when or where, but they never win. Usually they don't even make the finals.
Since now I don't care who wins anymore, I figure I should summarize how I felt about this year on American Idol. There were a few contestants that I thought had a chance to actually be good, and they were. Michael Johns was one. The other was the kid living out of his car that didn't make it to Hollywood. He was genuinely talented and had a story that people could get into. The rest of these jokers are so generic that it is laughable. It is like American Idol cut off a session of travelling the country looking for people to be in a band and just decided to let the 32 fight it off to be the top 1. You have your rocker girl, your rocker guy, your diva girl, your diva guy, your cute young girl, your cute young guy, the folksy girl, the folksy guy, and of course you have Michael Johns... but I digress. So it is now down to David, David, and Syesha. David Cook is the one that I am hoping wins because he is the only one that doesn't previously have a relationship with a record company or a reality singing show. Plus he is actually a good singer unlike the other David. I can't stand the fact that he STARTS a song being out of breath. Syesha isn't a bad singer, but I can't stand her for various reasons, most of which were obvious during the early rounds. Also, Brian Dunkleman, season 1 co-host with Seacrest,said that Clay Aiken actually had the most votes for the final in season 2 but they gave the title to Ruben anyway. And it isn't even so much that people don't know the show is somewhat rigged... but it is like professional wrestling. They watch anyway.
So now is just the wait until Archuleta wins the title, and next season starts.

And for the record, my picks to win (not who I thought WOULD win)
2- Clay Aiken (2nd)
3- George Huff (5th)
4- Bo Bice (2nd)
5- Chris Daughtry (4th)
6- Chris Sligh (10th)
7- Michael Johns (8th)

Politics Today

First post, so I will clarify that I won't be voting for either the Republican Party OR the Democratic Party in the presidential election this November... already decided.

So if the mainstream media ruled the world, there would be two candidates left in the running for president. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and Clinton would be on the way to her demise. In reality of course John McCain is still in the running as well, but he is on vacation or something while waiting for the Democrats to make up their minds... and meanwhile, Ron Paul is still gaining traction across the country from people who realize that they still do have a choice besides the two candidates who keep tripping over their own lies, or the lies of their friends... and in some cases just who their friends are when they are honest.

So about Ron Paul... yes, he is mathematically eliminated from winning based on MSM estimates of McCain delegates. In reality of course, across the country at local, county, and state conventions, the Republican party is so afraid of Ron Paul supporters that they are cutting and running from the legal process that they have used for years and years. Now technically they are private entities and they aren't bound by the legal process of voting that includes the "one man, one vote" concept... and this is ever more obvious in states right now like Nevada, Missouri, and various local conventions.

In Nevada, the Chairman declared recess and walked out when it was apparent that Ron Paul delegates were more numerous and were going to win nearly all of the delegates to the national convention. Why is this a problem? I don't know. Mitt Romney won the state primary several months ago, and Ron Paul came in second, beating McCain. Mitt Romney dropped out before his delegates were selected, so the process continues on without him. Why then would Nevada be required by their rulers in the party to send McCain supporters to the national convention when Ron Paul hasn't dropped out and has support? Who knows, but it seems that with the current indefinite recess that was never voted on (majority vote is required under Robert's Rules of Order) will cause no delegates to be sent from Nevada rather than sending a few Ron Paul supporters. Out of the 2200 or so delegates at the national convention, Nevada makes up about 31 total I believe, so even having 1.5% of the delegates being Ron Paul supporters doesn't seem to be okay with the Republican machine.

In Missouri, every single Ron Paul supporter that made it as far as the state convention had their credentials challenged. Now to be honest, there aren't any qualifications to being a delegate. All you have to do is show up to the caucus, which is generally after the primary, and have the people that show up choose you. From there it is the same thing only in smaller numbers and larger areas represented at the county and state level. Apparently since the delegates did not sign and swear an oath to support John McCain at the state convention, they were being dismissed as delegates. To me this seems to fly in the face of the whole point of the political process... but apparently, as I suspected many years ago, there is nothing fair nor representative about our voting process.

And this whole thing repeats itself over and over again across the country. In a town in west Texas a convention consists of the chairman standing up, completely ignoring calls to explain what he is doing while he reads a list of names, and afterwards people find out that the names on the list, many of the people not there, were those that were selected to move on to the state convention. Once again, those that are legitimately involved in the process are excluded based on the fact that they might not support who the GOP machine have chosen. In several locations in Florida, the same thing. Committees to select delegates have three people come in as part of the selection process, and the result is that the three alternates and three delegates selected do not include the people that actually show up.

And now, I hear that a lot of Independent voters, Libertarian Party members, Green Party supporters, and others who have no affiliation have banded together to try and put forth a voting bloc for the Constitution Party. I may just have to vote that way this Fall, but it depends on who their nominee is and what their poltics are. Yes, I actually vote based on someone's politics, not whether they wear flag pins, cry about how hard the process is, or were a POW 50 years ago. Nothing against any of those things, but they have nothing to do with politics.

And my favorite quote relating to this wonderous process...

"A vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil."