The Right Voice

Republicans vs. Republicans - Democrats vs. Democrats. Primary season is the time where parties go out and choose a nominee to represent them in the general presidential election. The less time it takes for a candidate to be chosen, the better. This is because you want a candidate to focus their energy going after the other party, instead of your own.

This year, the Democrats decided to run proportional elections where the candidate gets a proportional amount of delegates related to the number of votes he, or she, recieves. The Republicans still go by the winner take all model.

There is a clear front runner in the Republican party with McCain only a few primaries away from victory. Romney (who has more delegates than Huckabee) has dropped out. Ron Paul knows he won’t win, but is still on the ballot (likely a move to appease all the people who gave him millions of dollars for those 14 delegates). Huckabee is on the ballot to appease the Conservative Christians and, I think, has a good chance of being the running mate of McCain.

On the Democrat side, it is dead even. Both candidates (Hillary and Obama) are having to expend a lot of resources to win this crucial race. Most people believe that the Dems will take control of the White House due to the lack of appeal to President Bush. this is going to be a fierce battle until the end for the Dems. This will be a grand experiment for the proportional election. Will the dems have anything left in the tank when the real battle begins?

Let me try to explain this with an example. There was the battle between HDDVD and Blu-Ray Discs (for arguments sake, let’s go back to where it was still a battle). Nobody wanted to buy HDDVD or Blu-Ray because they were uncertain who would come out ahead. The same could be said about the Democratic primary. Who will win? Who should I support? McCain is Standard DVD’s. He may not be the best thing out, but we all have DVD players, so we will continue to buy them for now. Huckabee, in this example, is VHS. Some people still have VHS, some prefer VHS, but they all have DVD players.

Who will win the election? It is anyone’s guess. I will say this, though. Going against your own party never works out. democrats have started to go down that road, and it could be a mistake. Once a candidate is named the front runner, the other candidates must embrace him, or her, to rally the party behind the front runner. It is much harder to do after you spent months attacking the candidate and all of a sudden say Just kidding, go and vote for him/her! You can argue all you want about issues, but you cannot attack the platform because, after all, it is yours too.

“I could just stand up here and say ‘Let’s just get everybody together, let’s get unified.’ The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect,” she said at a rally in Providence, Rhode Island.

Obama fired back in Lorain, Ohio, criticizing the New York senator for changing her position on the North American Free Trade Agreement pushed through by her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

“She has essentially presented herself as co-president during the Clinton years,” he said. “So the notion that you can selectively pick what you take credit for and then run away from what isn’t politically convenient, that doesn’t make sense.”

Stuff like that does not work in America. How can you support someone after you have basically said they would make an ineffective president?

Upon looking for Republican quotes bashing one another all I could find were several news articles commenting on the search for McCain’s VP, and a quote from McCain responding to Chuck Norris’ claim that he would not have the stamina to run he country for 4 years saying “I should send my 95 year old mother to wash your mouth out with soap”. I also found ads for conservative ads sites polling for McCain’s ruunning mate. Seems that the Republicans have a candidate and the Dems are still battling it out. We shall see…

Todd

What comes to mind when hearing those words? Is it someone who collects historical data about a culture and shares the information for others to learn? If it is not, then it should be. However, more often then not, it is applied to people who like music made before the 1960s. This is not only wrong, it is ignorant. Music is music, and music is timeless. Music has a history, but music is not history. Sure, if you are like me, you can hear a song and know what decade it is from. But, I ask, why is a song made in 1937 not as good in 2008? There is a disconnect of logic there.

The Problem with music today is that they do not study the history of music and seemingly disregard all songs that were written before 1998. they learn how to play the guitar and sing lyrics that some would define as catchy. Their record does well and they think they are bigger then music and get sucked into an alternate reality that only they are contained in. I don’t care who you are, how many records you’ve sold, or how many magazine covers you have been on, you are not a better musician then someone like Robert Johnson. He gets cast aside, though, because he had the misfortune of being born in 1911. You will not anyone more entertaining then someone like Louis Prima. He is irrelevant, though, because he made music in the 1950s.

I know what you are saying. You are saying that songs back then played to the popular trends of the day and we cannot identify with that culture. I am going to let everyone in on a secret. Fashions and trends of today will fade away and no longer be popular. Everything will fade. Why not learn about other periods of time? It will allow you to appreciate more music than you ever thought possible. You will go from saying “That was a great song for 1920″ to “That was a great song”

Todd