Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Democratic Party Officially Nominates Obama

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Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) has been formally nominated by the Democratic Party as their Presidential candidate to stand in the November general election against presumptive Republican nominee Senator John McCain (R-AZ). Obama has been the presumptive Democratic nominee since securing a majority of party delegates on June 3, but Democratic National Convention delegates have now made his nomination official.

Senator Obama is joined on the Democratic ticket by Vice Presidential nominee Senator Joe Biden (D-DE), who Obama announced as his VP pick on Saturday.

Obama, who is mixed African- and European-American, is the first biracial major-party Presidential nominee. If-elected, Senator Obama would be the first non-white President.

Light Posting This Week

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Hey, just wanted to drop a quick post letting you all know that posting will be light this week. I’ve done a pretty good job since April (and the Website 20 launch) of posting at least five entries per week, which was my goal, but it’s probably just not going to happen this week. I’m planning to resume normal posting next week.

First, I’m in the midst of training for a new position at work, so for the next few days I don’t have much flexibility with my hours during the day.

Second, I’m not going to go into a lot of detail here, but there has been an unexpected death locally in my extended family. That has had me (and will continue to have me) tied-up whenever I’m not at work.

If you are desperate for something to read in the mean time, check out some of the sites I enjoy on the links page.

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Posted in: Life, Site

They’re Paying Attention Now

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Always-interesting Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal about the current state of the Presidential race and why it’s suddenly starting to look like a close contest between Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) when—earlier—it had looked like an Obama-blowout was in the making.

Noonan’s central thesis is that people are just now starting to look at the race, and so things are just beginning to settle enough that the polling reflects (to a point) how people will actually be voting in November. The ‘paying attention’ aspect of Presidential races seems to get short shrift by the media, but what happens before the moment people start paying attention is essentially inconsequential. Even what’s happening now, though more relevant to November’s outcome than what has happened previous, isn’t that important—most people decide who they will vote for in the final month before the election.

The current state of the election could not have been predicted last fall—a mere nine months ago. While the Democratic campaign had already settled into an Obama vs. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) race, it could easily have gone either way. The changes on the Republican side were more drastic, with the race appearing at the time to be between Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA), Mayor Rudy Guiliani (R-New York City), and Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR). McCain, now the presumptive nominee, was being written off by the pundits as an also-ran with no chance of winning.

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Obama Selects Biden for VP

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Presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama (IL) has selected Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) as his Vice Presidential pick. Obama, a first-term Senator who has been criticized for his relative lack of national political experience, has stayed true to political tradition in selecting Biden—a six-term Senator who is the fourth longest serving Democrat in the Senate. Vice Presidential picks are often selected in an effort to counteract the stongest opposition criticisms of the Presidential nominee.

Biden is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and is generally regarded as one of the Democratic Party’s preeminent foreign policy experts and a ‘moderate liberal’ with regard to his general voting record. In 2002, Biden voted in favor of the ‘Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq’ bill, which passed with a wide bipartisan majority and granted President George W. Bush (R) legal authority to invade Iraq. Biden has since been critical of the administration’s prosecution of the war, and has opposed both continuation of the present approach and immediate withdrawal.

Joining with President Emeritus Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations, Biden has issued a ‘five point plan’ for Iraq that would reorganize the Iraqi government into a decentralized Federalist system of semi-autonomous regions, encourage increased investment from neighboring countries, and create a plan for withdrawal contingent on increasing political stability. It is unclear at this time if Senator Obama will endorse the Biden-Gelb plan for Iraq.

Innocent Until Proven Guilty

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Few things annoy me more than when I get punished for the indiscretions of others. You might think this doesn’t happen often—and that’s true, if you’re talking about innocent people being charged and convicted for crimes—but there are plenty of non-criminal examples where you and I unjustly pay the price for the bad things that others do.

Minor examples occur every day. When I was a senior at Liberty High School in Bedford, Virginia, I and several of my friends liked to eat lunch outside when the weather was nice. The cafeteria had a set of tables and benches outside and eating outside was permitted. One day, a different group of students sitting at the other side of the patio had a food fight. Ultimately, maybe four or five kids threw food at one another and the commotion lasted less than five minutes. How did the administration handle this? Asst. Principal John Eggleston suspended outdoor eating privileges for all students during all lunch periods for at least two weeks. In addition to punishing the four or five students involved, Eggy punished me and a number of others too without cause.

You see this flawed disciplinary method constantly in schools. Some students smoke in the bathroom, so instead of enforcing the no-smoking rules for those kids everybody has to be granted teacher’s permission to pee. Some students go to inappropriate web sites, so instead of paying attention to the students’ Internet use they install flawed, automatic net-nanny software that interferes with all students’ Internet access. More examples abound.

Unfortunately, this goofiness is not limited to our lazily-mismanaged public schools.

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Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.