Speaking of Speaking.

A couple of interesting speeches last night. Obama, our new president and Jindal, governor of Louisiana seen as the GOP Obama, and the apparent heir of the GOP.

Obama was good. I was thinking back to the old ToastMasters critiques that we used to do so long ago. How would I have rated Obama? Really can't say because I got lost in the world he created in front of me. But in retrospect his message was strongly written, coherent, logical, forceful, direct. It sequed from point to point and carried emotion from anger to triumph to comedy to joy. I hate to say this, but it was probably the best public speech I have ever seen.

Jindal, first of all, had the extreme bad luck to have to follow this masterpiece by Obama. He failed miserably. He was not in control of his logic or his rambling points, much less in control of the entire world as Obama had just seemed to be. He looked worried in a couple of places and even, I thought, a little scared from time to time.

This is not enough to finish Jindal's career. Politics is a strange and illogical being. One week can heal all wounds and can also destroy that which is totally invulnerable. But his performance does open up the running for the GOP leader. Perhaps the greatest casualty in seeing this newcomer fall so badly is that it will tend to promote the "old heads". Not McCain, but other bad guys like Newt or Jeb!.

Meanwhile, Obama has now placed himself firmly in the position as President of the United States. If he can run swiftly and not fall and can lead the way clearly, many will thrillingly follow him all the way to glory.

Abstinence and Palin's Daughter

Just a couple of other things Palin got screwed up. The problem with abstinence is that it just doesn't work. It's nothing other than an easy way out for parents. This way they can put the blame on their kids and say it is all their fault.

Abstinence has never been easy for anybody. Parents get it wrong all the time. Preachers and even priests can't completely abstain as a group and these are people who have taken big-time, real serious vows placing their souls up to God as collateral for betraying a young one on sexual desire. But then they find a way to make it happen.

Easy to blame the Evil One for this. "The devil made me do it!" But I'm afraid that God is the guilty one here, because we are all clearly hard-wired to have sex, to have it repeatedly and with as many people as possible and as early in life as feasible. Darwin tried to get God off this hook by showing this natural selection process using random events would insure the continuation of life in a species and enable the most vigorous members to improve the product. But of course, like so many other "Christian Right" people, Palin believes that Darwin is the only human proven to have come from a monkey and all the rest of us were formed by an intelligent creator. So when I went to my parents for help and they said it was up me and God, and God made me, then God also made me do it.

Of course now there is a corollary to Darwin's theories. In this modern age, the really clever, ingenious, daring, capable, skillful, and resourceful young-uns who have the most sex with other students are the ones who DON'T have offspring. OK, so a clever blow to "Intelligent Design". But this is nothing new. This was widely known over the centuries. The great poet even wrote about how "Abstinence makes the hard grow longer", or something like that. But just ask ANY school kid.

Shoot the Chimp

As bad as it gets. That someone would “own” a “pet” chimpanzee is bad enough. That the animal would get sick, so sick that it would attack and seriously maul its owner’s friend is far, far worse. That police would have to come and shoot the poor thing dead compounds it into a grizzly cartoon of evil. And then there is the victim, a person who has had her life forever changed in a moment, and perhaps may not even live through this event.

THEN. Along comes Murdoch the Great, King of News, who contorts the issue, even trivalizes the issues involved, and compares it to the new president’s economic recovery plan. Of course Murdoch probably hadn’t noticed that the president is a black man, and he certainly could not have known that white racists for years have contemptuously compared black men with monkeys and chimpanzees. So we are to believe that Murdoch really didn’t know what he was doing? That it wasn’t his problem because he didn’t approve the cartoon? That he is now sorry that some people were so stupid that they were offended by the cartoon that he didn’t know he had published? Now - if ANYBODY believes that - then that’s news.

Some say Murdoch likes Obama. That’s too bad. Last thing Barrack needs right now is a 200 pound sick chimp that occasionally freaks out and is not responsible for what he does.

Sport? Oh yes, of course, ha ha.

After hearing about Alex ("A-Rod") Rodriguez, which comes after so many other "revelations" of other "sportsmen" who have cheated their competitors and their fans to the point where all serious people have decided that sport is simply a way to cheat people (fans and competitors) out of more money and make their various "games" much more expensive to attend, I looked up the word "sport" in a dictionary.

It said that "Sport" was an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess. Also it could be used to describe jest; fun; mirth; pleasantry: "What he said in sport was taken seriously". Also, mockery; ridicule; derision: "They made sport of him". It describes an object of derision; laughingstock or something treated lightly or tossed about like a plaything.

Oh, OK.