Is there any nation loved less than Mexico these days?  Somalia has its pirates and North Korea has its belligerence but I don’t think any other nation can claim quite as many haters as Mexico.   Between the escalating war between police and drug dealers and the outbreak of H1N1 (the disease formally known as swine flu), they have not gotten much good press in 2009.  It’s pretty bad when even China, purveyor of hazardous exports, doesn’t want your exports.  Mexico had already been taking a beating from America for years over immigration and I can’t imagine the latest troubles are going to do anything to help its cause.

Marriage is a hot topic.  Gay marriage, marriage rights, “what happens in the bedroom… “, etc, etc.   These all pop up in the news regularly.  Should ____ be allowed?  What about ____ ?   Maybe I’m missing something but I’m curious why marriage is a legal institution at all?

I’m living the hypocrisy so I can appreciate the tax benefits from being married… but I don’t understand why I deserve those tax benefits.  Regardless, not only taxes but health care, visitation, power of attorney, inheritance, citizenship… all of these are heavily influenced by your marital status.  The religious folks out there believe marriage is sacred… but it seems  but in the past month, I’ve had two friends reveal their marriage plans.  Neither was due to any dying desire to rush into marriage — it was simply for the health care.  A business transaction, nothing more.

It seems to me that if marriage is a sacred institution, which it should be, it should be removed from government supervision.  I’m not the only one who seems to think this way.  Replace it with a legally binding agreement unrelated to the religious ceremony known as marriage.  Marriage can then remain a bond between a husband and wife and the government can legislate w/o getting bogged down in the religious ramifications of laws.

Hollywood and DC have always had a curious relationship, typically involving actors or directors spouting unsolicited opinions about the current state of affairs.  On occasion however, some thespians take the next step and actively get involved in the political process.  Hollywood is typically considered left-leaning but surprisingly, the arguably most famous and successful of these actor-turned-politicians are two conservatives, Reagan and Schwarzenegger.

Christina added “House” to our regular rotation of shows awhile back.  It’s pretty entertaining even though it tends to have the same general storyline every episode.   The show from this week was a bit different and seems to have been developed “on-the-fly”.   Kal Penn, aka Kumar, aka Taj, played Dr. Kutner in House up until this week when he unceremoniously shot himself.  No rhyme or reason as far as the plot of House goes but apparently the star of stoner movies has decided to take his talents elsewhere.   More specifically, to his new job as Associate Director in the Office of Public Liaison for the Obama administration.  I suppose it’s no weirder a job transition than Schwarzenegger’s path from body-builder to action star to Gubernator but it’s definitely odd.

In my opinion, House has struggled a bit recently.  The suicide episode from this week was almost completely devoid of any humor (fittingly, perhaps) but I don’t watch House for the drama; I watch it to catch House’s latest one-liners.  These have been few and far between recently and the removal of Kutner from House is not going to help.  Kutner was probably the most entertaining character other than House himself.

As people’s expectations start to fall back down to reality, Obama will undoubtedly disappoint some of his more rabid supporters.  His first couple of weeks have had their ups-and-downs — the ongoing “Change-O-Meter” at Slate is both entertaining and possibly disheartening.   That said, I don’t follow politics all that closely but the news that Vivek Kundra was nominated  to essentially be the CTO of the government was very interesting.  From a tech perspective, which is something I do care about, Vivek Kundra sounds like a brilliant choice.  I read an article about him a while back and he sounds like exactly the sort of person we need making decisions related to technology.

Today is the big day.  Either John McCain or Barack Obama (sorry 3rd parties) will become the next President of the United States.  As I said earlier, history will be made one way or another.

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After having a discussion with one of my friends where I randomly started tossing out made-up ratios of Obama to McCain signs in the nearby areas, I decided to perform an experiment on my drive home today.  Other than some cities in the Hampton Roads area, parts of Richmond, and small communities around various colleges in the state, the vast majority of the rest of Virginia is traditionally Republican.  A generally rural state with a strong military presence, this has played to the Republican party and Virginia hasn’t voted for a Democratic president since LBJ in 1964.

I live in northern Virginia (Nova), an extremely dense metro area outside of Washington DC.  Northern Virginia is heavily populated by basically two types of people: those who work for the government and those in the high tech industry.  Not surprisingly, as both of these typically Democrat-leaning groups have grown (quite dramatically), the area has become more and more Democrat-leaning in general.  Four of the counties in the Northern Virginia area have been in the top 15 fastest growing counties each year for the past 5-10 years.  Since the growth in this area greatly exceeds the growth in the rest of Virginia, the state in turn has also turned more and more Democratic.  Five of the last seven governors have been Democrats and Mark Warner, a former Governor looks set to beat another former Governor, Jim Gilmore, for the Senate seat.  That would put both Senate seats in the Democrats hands.

That said, even though Virginia still hasn’t gone Republican for so long in the presidential race, many pundits are predicting Virginia to go for Obama.  This is highly dependent on how strongly he wins in Northern Virginia.  From this, I decided to perform my highly scientific and foolproof research experiment: I would simply count the number of signs, bumper stickers, etc, on my way home from work today to pick up Christina at the VRE, on my way out to dinner, and finally on the way home.

I only had one rule:  A single home only counts as one vote, regardless of how many signs they have out front.  One person, one vote.  I had a few interesting observations: Neighbors seemed to clump together and support a certain candidate.   One corner would have all McCain, the next all Obama.  Do these people move around together?  In McCain’s favor, I came across a house that had signs for all Democratic candidates for the state positions but surprisingly, a McCain For President sign.  He’s obviously convinced one Democrat to vote for him.  More humorously, Obama has at least one support who decided their whole house needed to be decorated in Obamania.  Banners hung out of every window while signs littered the lawn — that’s the kind of enthusiasm Obama has to love.  And the neighbors probably hate.  

All in all, I was actually a bit surprised at the results.  With all the talk about how Obama looks set to “turn Virginia blue”, the signs favored him by only 45 to 35.  I’ll be curious to see how my results stack up with the actual results from the election.

No soon had I mentioned that I tried to stay out of politics than McCain announces his VP selection.  I said it before but you have to be somewhat excited about this years presidential election.  Two reasonable candidates and now, a guaranteed “first” – either the first minority president or the first female vice-president.  Well done, McCain and Obama. Well done.

I try not to get too involved in politics mostly because of the partisanship and incompetence at all levels but every now and then, someone says something that just rings true.

We are borrowing money from China, to buy oil from the Middle East, so we can burn it in ways that destroys our future.

– Al Gore

Last night, Christina and I had dinner with another couple, Andrew and Jen.  Andrew is best friends with Christina’s brother and is about to be deployed.  They had their wedding the weekend before ours and so it was, yes, yet another anniversary dinner!  It was great to see them though and I wish Andrew all the best when he goes overseas.

I already mentioned that I can’t believe two nations could fight a modern conflict using the incredibly powerful weapons in use today.  Just as amazing, and probably stupid, are the journalists who cover these conflicts.  They sit in the middle of a war zone and assume their journalist credentials will protect them from bullets and bombs.  While we are given an unprecedented view of battles on TV that is disturbingly captivating, I simply can’t imagine what makes these journalists go through what they do.

The news this week of the invasion of Georgia by Russia has jarred me.   I’ve grown up in a country that has by far the most powerful military in the world but hasn’t really fought a traditional war since before I was born.  All of our recent military actions have quickly turned into  rapid response deployment of our superior weaponry against an asymmetrical, guerrilla force.  We fight very few pitched battles as our opponents have either capitulated almost immediately and/or devolved into fighting an insurgency that avoids direct confrontations.  Relatively modern countries fighting a modern-day conflict using traditional arms seems “antiquated” somehow.