Ramblings

I made my opinion of Oprah's endorsement of Obama very clear in a previous post, however, I just heard something on the news that I found kind of funny. I guess some of Oprah's female fans are all up in arms because she endorsed the black male candidate instead of the female candidate. In other words, they are upset because they feel that she picked a candidate based on race... instead of based on gender. Ok, for me, I don't know, and never claimed to know, if race was a deciding factor in her choice to endorse Obama or not. I don't think it's too large of a leap of imagination to assume that it was, but we really don't have any way to know for sure. I could see if people somehow found out that she did, and were upset about that, for obvious reasons, but for those same people to be upset because she didn't pick a candidate based on gender is just so outrageous. It's just as silly and ridiculous to vote based solely on gender as it is to vote based solely on race. We need to vote based on issues and character that we learn about because we take the time to learn about them for ourselves. How silly is this?

Some say that John McCain learned his lesson on immigration (and if you're one of the people who said that to me, you're not the only one, I've heard it from several different people) following the defeat of the insane McCain/Kennedy farce bill, but I don't see how that can be. To this day John McCain does not admit that his plan was amnesty. I guess people say that they like that he says that he does not believe in amnesty, which is good, neither do I, but where I think we need to part ways with McCain is that he swears that his bill was not amnesty. The truth, though, is that it was amnesty, all dressed up and disguised in an ultimately vain attempt to sneak it by the American people, but it was amnesty, and I would respect honesty from the man far more that I could ever respect his new "I'm tough on illegal immigration" rhetoric. I'm a sheep in terms of my relationship to God, but not in terms of my relationship to other humans, so, sorry Senator, I won't follow blindly into your bold vision of the North American Union.

Have you been left wondering lately if it is possible to Worship God outside of your local Church? I think, and I admit that I could be wrong, that a lot of people are confused by what worship means. I think that some people do feel that they can only worship on Sunday morning with all the other Church-goers. I can tell you, for certain, Worship comes from our hearts, and can be done anywhere, at any time, it can be spontaneous within ourselves, or it can be triggered by some stimulus. Just today at the Gym the song Adonai by Avalon came on my MP3 player, and it really moved me. I actually felt compelled to raise my hands in Worship, but I was stopped from doing this by a very real and legitimate fear that if I did so I would fall right off the treadmill, which I didn't think would be a good idea.

I'm sure pretty much everyone has heard by now that movie star Heath Ledger was found dead yesterday, apparently from a drug overdose, possibly accidental, and potentially from prescription drugs, they haven't really cleared all that up yet, but it is a sad thing any time that someone dies. I didn't see much of his work, though I'm sure I'll see his final film, the new Batman movie "The Dark Knight" where he plays the Joker, because it's the kind of movie I'm likely to see anyway. Other than that I saw the Patriot where he played alongside Mel Gibson, and proved himself to be a really great actor. I wish his family, and especially his daughter, the best going forward.

Another news story is about the wife of a school administrator who fairly well ripped into a student who called her house looking for her husband. Of course, the kid recorded the conversation, and the TV people only played the woman's side of the conversation, which makes me wonder right there. She was obviously very angry, so I'm guessing the kid was pretty snotty to her, and she unloaded quite a bit on him. My position on this is, good for her. The kid had no right to call her home and give her a hard time because he didn't like something that her husband had done. Besides, she never swore, she never threatened, she just told it like she saw it. More people should have to guts to stand up and say what needs to be said. If they did, just maybe, the obnoxious among us wouldn't cause quite so many problems.