I have been interested, and surprised, to see the demographics results of the presidential election.  The experts are saying that although the “youth” have voted in record turnouts, the way they voted really had no significant impact on the results of the election!  That really surprised me because I had kept hearing about how the youth vote was expected to heavily favor Obama!  I’d be really interested to hear more about the youth that chose to vote for McCain, what their reasons were for voting that way!

I could not believe my ears today when I heard on the news that the big bailout that the US Government was putting together to save our economy has not passed the House of Representatives!  What a complete disaster!  I don’t know what President Bush can do now, I hope he can do SOMETHING, this is a huge crisis for our country!  I have to say that most of those people who voted against the bailout will probably NOT get re-elected!  What a huge mess!

I’ve heard of doing stupid things, but having sex on railroad tracks when a train is coming has got to be just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!  I was reading about the incident (that happened in South Africa last Friday) on the BBC website, and it really made me wonder what in the world were these people THINKING? 

I almost have to assume that this was maybe a suicide pact?  Maybe they were both dying from AIDS and wanted to end their lives doing something they really liked? 

Crazy, stupid people!

I’m one of those people who don’t react immediately to tragedy.  I go on “auto-pilot” and continue doing what needs to be done and then later on I realize the extent of the tragedy and then I react with horror and grief.  I remember that was my reaction on September 11, I just went “numb” and kept on about my business.  As the day wore on, and the newscasters kept talking about how horrible it was, it slowly sank in the extent of the tragedy.  It finally sank in and I still haven’t quite gotten over the extreme feelings of empathy and of grief for the victims of the horrible terrorist attack.  My condolences to all of those friends and families who lost loved ones on that day, and my condolences to all of the family and friends of our soldiers who have died as a direct result of that attack.

I was so disappointed when Obama chose Biden to be his running mate!  I really wanted Hillary Clinton to be the next President of the United States, and was very disappointed when it became clear that she was not going to get the Democratic nomination.  I was hoping that Obama would choose Hillary Clinton to be his running mate, I think that would have been a really ideal team.  I know there are a lot of women “out there” who are too racially biased to vote for an African American, and will vote for McCain simply because he is caucasian.  That is really sad, because these women don’t support the McCain platform, and are democrats at heart, they are just unfortunately too bigoted to see beyond skin color.  That makes me very sad.

I was reading a story on today.msnbc.msn.com about how pre-teen girls are getting bikini waxes!  The article was talking about how girls as young as six years old are having hair-removal waxing done, from their faces, backs, and bikini areas.  I think that is way too early for something like that!  What kind of body image problem are these girls going to have as they grow up?  How can a mother be so irresponsible as to encourage this type of thing?  Why are we trying to force our kids to grow up so fast?  This is just plain silliness!

I did not actually read the articles, I didn’t have the time. But I was looking at the Newsweek website, looking at Business news and saw two headlines that were kind of strange in the sense that one followed the other, and seemed to contradict each other. One headline was about how “we” are far from a depression; the other headline was about how the economy was “worse” than we think.

I had to laugh because I think we ARE in a depression (I know the experts say a recession, but trust me, money is so tight I think a depression is more accurate) and if that is the case, if we really ARE, then the economy is NOT worse than I think

I was reading on the time.com website that gray wolves in the Northern Rockies have had their endangered species protection status restored by a federal judge. This ruling has upset the plans of the three states of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho which were planning to hold public wolf hunts this coming autumn.
The wolves were under protection previously, but that protection expired last March. Many farmers are upset over the decision to reinstate the protection, as wolves have been killing their livestock, which cuts into their profits. I don’t know exactly how I would feel about that situation if I lived in the area; seems to me that there are breed of dogs whose specialties are to protect herds against wolves, maybe the farmers should buy some of them!

I’ve been listening to the live coverage on CNN of the rescued Columbian hostage’s press conference. I have to say that when I heard about the dramatic rescue, I was so very happy for them and their families. Now that I’ve listened to one of them talk about how they were tortured and led around with chains around their necks I am especially happy for them. I cannot even imagine how hard it was for them to endure what they went through. Congrats to all involved in rescuing them!!

Well the talk this evening at work was about today’s Supreme Court ruling that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment in convictions of child rape. This was a case brought to them from a state where a man was convicted of raping a young child repeatedly and was convicted and sentenced to death.

I have mixed emotions about the death penalty, I really do. If I had a loved one in the system who was convicted of a crime that was punishable by death I would be against the death penalty for sure. But in some cases, where torture occurred (and I believe that child rape IS a form of torture) and in the cases of pedophilia, where the experts agree that pedophilia is NOT curable that perhaps the death penalty would be appropriate. I think perhaps the Supreme Court should have left that up to the individual states to decide.