Yet more softball

Yep. A lot of softball posts. I'm nearing the end of a stretch of 10 games in 10 days, so that's what I've been doing.

I'm a little surprised I'm not tired of it yet.

I must not be too exhausted. My Monday night team (average age: 25ish) batted me (average age: 36.98) leadoff again. I assume it was because of my blazing speed. I went 3 for 4, including one neat inning during which I singled, tagged to second base on a flyout to left center, and scored on a ground ball which the shortstop booted.

Yessiree. Blazing speed.

I hit much better on Mondays than I do the rest of the week. It would be nice to figure out why.

My best theory actually is that it's because I'm batting leadoff. Maybe I'll start hitting better if I approach every at bat as if I am the first batter of the game.

For the record...

I actually have no problem with the Supreme Court's handgun decision. The D.C. handgun ban seemed too far-reaching for even my tastes.

I do, however, have a problem with Scalia and his twisting and turning logic, primarily because he insists upon calling himself a 'textualist.'

I also am still absolutely shocked that the latest Guantanamo decision was just 5-4. That's just damned scary.

If the Bush Administration were a college athletic department, the NCAA would be preparing to punish the school for 'lack of institutional control.'

2 more questions

1. How come there isn't a serious movement to impose a fuel-efficient 55-mph speed limit?

2. (I can't take credit for this one. A caller to NPR mentioned it) How can Justice Scalia so blithely ignore the Constitution as to support repealing Habeus Corpus for detainees because to uphold it would "cost American lives," and then support the repeal of the handgun ban in Washington, D.C.? Does anyone seriously believe that repeal of this ban won't cost more American lives?

Softball again

Darn. No trophy, no prize money, no endorsement deals with Nike. We're not going to Disney World.

As usual when we lose, we just didn't hit at all today. Our defense was fine.

We won our noon game. I think the score was 15-9 or so.

After a two-hour wait, we lost the winner's bracket final in extra innings. I made a big throwing error in the 7th that gave them the tying run and might have cost us the game. Immediately following the game I was sure the loss was my fault, but when I gained some perspective I realized they had a good shot at tying it that inning anyway, and also that we only scored 6 runs in 8 innings, which is definitely the main reason we lost.

Then we lost 9-3 to the team we demolished last night. Again, three runs isn't going to win anything.

I stuck around and watched the firt game of the finals. The loser's bracket champion won that game so they were preparing to play the last game, but I was tired, sore, and hungry, so I left. 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. was long enough to be at the ball park.

Overall, it was disappointing. But we got four games in, which is enough to say we got our money's worth. And the tournament champion will turn out to be either the team we beat Friday night or the team we took to extra innings, so we did okay.

St. Martha's softball tournament

First, THANKS, BRIAN! "I love tomato source" is my all-time favorite comment on my blog. It's so obvious and so funny, and yet it never occurred to me. I'm kicking myself for not thinking of something similar.

It's amazing how often the perfect joke for whatever I posted pops into my head 2 hours after I've logged out. But that one never crossed my mind.

On to softball. We won tonight, 16-3, in the first game of the tournament. We play at 11:45 tomorrow morning and hopefully will play sporadically throughout the day.

I have no idea what we'll do tomorrow. We could lose two in a row and be home early, or we could win the whole thing. Our team is that unpredictable.

But tonight's game was one of my favorites. Ever. It was very, very enjoyable. Our team was mostly Yogi's (Yogis', Yogis. Damn. How do you pluralize when you just use the possesive portion of Yogi's Athletic Club? My grammar books don't seem to have an answer-probably because it's improper to even try. Or perhaps I'm overlooking it.), but we had no proven shortstop since Jimmy is on vacation, the star shortstop we thought we'd have bailed out at the last minute, our first baseman hadn't played in over a year, and we were slightly out of position in a couple of other spots. And I never know how we'll hit.

But we had a blast. It was 2-2 through 4 innings. We'd squandered several scoring opportunities but played spectacular defense. It really was great. We have a lot of capable fielders and can be counted on for 1 or 2 'wow' plays per game, but we made about 6 of them tonight. Then we blew it open with a 10-run 5th inning, and continued to play great defense. I was thrilled.

We could come out tomorrow and stink. We could also play well and lose, because this is a good tournament.. But I'm hopeful. We've already defeated one team that I thought was better than us, so you never know.

Another verb for Mark

The Plainview Kroger has a few tomatoes available, but due to the recent scare they have pulled some varieties from the shelf.

They are currently working on 'sourcing' these varieties, and will have them as soon as possible.

Three questions

1) Why don't the combination Long John Silver's/Taco Bell restaurants serve fish tacos?

2) If current polls show that consumer confidence as we near the end of an 8-year Republican administration is now at a 16-year low, and if that previous low was at the end of a 12-year Republican administration, doesn't that lead to the logical conclusion that Republican fiscal policy isn't all it's cracked up to be?

3) Is any music that isn't actually blues but which is described as 'bluesy' not total crap?

Monday night softball

As I walked in to my softball game tonight I saw the other team warming up. A quick glimpse was enough for me to know my team was going to win. By a substantial amount.

They were not good. Not good at all. I was afraid we were going to hurt somebody. Luckily, my teammates and I were smart enough to realize this. We took it very easy, avoided any hits that could cause physical damage to the other guys, and finished the game in three innings.

Our opponents were called the Text Pistols. I guessed they were either from some cell phone company, some I.T. thingamabob, or maybe even some proofreaders or something.

But one of them told me they all worked in the English department at UofL. I said I had an English degree from UofL myself, but wasn't making much use of it. He said most people don't, but I knew that already.

I also wanted to tell him that the English department at UofL plays softball exactly like I always suspected they would, but I refrained from saying so.

George Carlin

Until noon today, I had completely missed the news about George Carlin. He's been one of my favorites for years.

Here are a couple of good quotes (Yes, I use too many quotes on this blog. But if I have something I want to say, and someone else has already said it better, then why offer my own inferior product? And if they say something I like that I'd never thought of, I'd rather attribute it and credit them than just rephrase it and pass it off as my own.):

"I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a man nailed to two pieces of wood."

"People I can do without. This is my list: guys in their fifties named "Skip." Anyone who pays for vaginal jelly with an Exxon credit card. An airline pilot who has on two different shoes. A proctologist with poor depth perception. A pimp who drives a Toyota Corolla. A gynecologist who wants my wife to have three or four drinks before the examination. Guys with a lot of small pins on their hats. Anyone who mentions Jesus more than three hundred times in a two-minute conversation. A dentist with blood in his hair. Any woman whose hobby is breast-feeding zoo animals. A funeral director who says "Hope to see you folks again real soon!" Girls who get drunk and throw up at breakfast. A man with only one lip. A Boy Scout master who owns a dildo shop. People who actually know the second verse to "The Star-Spangled Banner." Any lawyer who refers to the police as the "Federales." A cross-eyed nun with a bullwhip and a bottle of gin! A brain surgeon with "Born to Lose" tattooed on his hands. Couples whose children's names all start with the same initials. A man in a hospital gown directing traffic. A waitress with a visible infection on her serving hand. People who have large gums and small teeth. Guys who wear the same underwear until it begins to cut off the circulation to their feet. And any man whose arm hair completely covers his wristwatch. All right, that's enough of that."

"Religion has actually conviced people that there's an invisible man. Living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day of your life. And he has a list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any, any, of these ten things, he has a special place full of fire and smoke and ash and torture where he will send you to suffer and burn and scream and cry forever and ever until the end of time. ... But he loves you."

"I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don't have as many people who believe it."

"Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck."

"How come none of these boxers seem to have a losing record?"

"A lot of these people who keep a gun at home for safety are the same ones who refuse to wear a seat belt."

Can o' corn

I read a little this weekend about biofuels, corn, and related topics this weekend. One interesting story is at

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/15635751/ethanol_scam_ethanol_hurts_the_environment_and_is_one_of_americas_biggest_political_boondoggles

The author is Jeff Goodell.

The article quotes Senator Chuck Grassley as saying, "Everything about ethanol is good, good, good." But he’s from Iowa. The rest of the article pretty well encapsulates all that I’d heard was bad about it.

A couple of the main points are:

- 20% of the U.S. corn crop already goes to gasoline, but that’s only 3.5% of our gasoline. That doesn’t sound good. Goodell says “Even if the entire U.S. corn crop were used to make ethanol, the fuel would replace only twelve percent of current gasoline use.”


-Growing less staple foods here means it will be grown somewhere else, such as South America. To grow more food, they need more farmable land. But some of us sort of like the idea of keeping rain forests intact. Something about global warming or some such.

- The ratio of energy created to energy used for corn ethanol is pretty close to pathetic. 1.3-1 is the ratio given, whereas traditional gasoline is 5-1 and sugar cane is 8-1.

Other articles I found- and it was absolutely amazing how many there were, and how many different problems will DEFINITELY be created by using more corn biofuels- pointed out other problems. They seemed like fairly large problems to me. Here are the two biggies, in my mind.

-Fertilizing more land for more corn will cause much more pollution. A lot of it will run off into the Mississippi and eventually kill a lot of fish in the Gulf of Mexico. I should modify that to say ‘a lot more fish than we’re already killing.’

-Food prices will continue to skyrocket. We eat a lot of corn. If it’s in our fuel tanks, too, that’s more demand, hence higher prices. Most of the meat we eat is fed corn, too. So don’t look for hamburgers to get any cheaper.


Finally, I tried to find some arguments on the pro- side for corn ethanol. I typed the phrase ‘corn ethanol is great for America’ in a Google search. With pathetic results.

The pool of educated, impartial backers of this particular biofuel seems to be rather sparse. I did find a few sites that had great things to say about corn ethanol. They were

-Verasun Energy. Guess what they make? Give up? Corn ethanol.
-Iowacorn.org. Hmm. I wonder why they’d come out in support of such a thing.
-whitehouse.gov. I’m not going to bother to make a wisecrack.
-

Sorry to disappoint you, Brian

I chose the Mariners because they stink and because they don't have a large following outside their own region, so a fan from Kentucky would be worthy of filling page 12 on their sports page. Also it's the farthest ML franchise from Louisville. Plus I thought Safeco Field was a humorous choice because the name doesn't exactly bring to mind the same magic as Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, or Wrigley Field.
Crap. I hate having to explain jokes. I still thought the post was funny. You're just mad because you're a protegee.

(By the way, if I find out my ashes are at Wrigley Field I'm coming back to haunt you all big-time!)

If I die before I wake...

Some people at work were discussing burial arrangements.


Boy, if I ended the post right there, after that one sentence, it would have been very enigmatic, wouldn't it?

Anyway. I have no idea why that was the topic. It was not because someone had died. They were just discussing what their own arrangements would be at some point in the future. I think. I must not have been paying attention when the conversation started.

It got me thinking though, and I've decided that when I die I would like to be cremated, and I'd like my ashes scattered on the pitcher's mound of Seattle's Safeco Field.

I would like all my family and friends involved in this (well, all my remaining family and friends- I plan to outlive almost all of you, ha ha ha ha!). I think you'll have a great time. Here's the plan:

Call the management of the Seattle Mariners. Tell them I was a huge fan of their ball team, that I dreamed all my life of attending a home game of my beloved Mariners but could never afford the trip. Use any sob story possible to get them to cave to your wishes. If the Mariners organization resists, take my story to the newspapers and broadcast stations. They'll give in eventually.

With any luck, the day after my funeral the Seattle Times will run a heart-string-tugging (what's a heart-string? It sounds gross.) story about the devoted fan from Kentucky who supported the Mariners his whole life, despite never-to this point, anyway- having been further west than Santa Fe. The story will probably end by telling all the gullible readers that I finally achieved my greatest wish. Neato!

Or you can try it with the Cleveland Indians, if you'd rather. I'm not really particular. I can pretend to be a dead fan of any team. I probably won't complain at that point.

Proud to be difficult...

In the past I have at times taken issue with the phrase "Proud to be an American," or at least with usage. I suppose I've been thinking about it again because of Michelle Obama's comment, and the responses from the candidates, their spouses, and others.

I don't claim to be "proud to be an American." I'm grateful to be an American. I'm happy to be an American. I'm relieved to be an American rather than a 3rd world denizen. But I'm not proud, because I was BORN an American. I didn't do anything to earn it. It's the same reason I'm not proud to be 6 feet tall, or to have brown hair.

Naturalized citizens who worked hard to gain this status should be proud. If you're born a citizen, then "proud to be an American" seems like you're taking a lot of credit for something you didn't do.

Plus, I don't like the blanket assumption of approval I would be giving. This is a nation of 300 million people and 3 and a half million square miles. I can't just say I'm proud of all of it and be done with it.

There are things I'm proud of and things I'm not.

I am very, very glad I'm an American, and I hope I do my part to make this a good place and to make the American culture one of which we can all be proud. But I can't take credit for all or even most of it, so I can't pride myself on it.

"Poopikins, it's time to stop preaching damnation to everyone, sweetie!" -Mrs. Cartman

While talking with Brian the other day, I was trying to remember the dialogue to my favorite South Park scene. It's from the episode "Do the Handicapped Go to Hell?" With help from Wikiquote, here it is:

Sister Anne: Now let me explain how communion works. The priest will give you this round cracker. And this cracker is the body of Christ.
Cartman: Jesus was made of… crackers?
Sister Anne: No.
Stan: But crackers are his body.
Sister Anne: Yes.
Kenny: What?
Sister Anne: In the book of Mark, Jesus distributed bread and said "Eat this, for it is my body."
Cartman: So we won't go to Hell as long as we eat crackers.
Sister Anne: No no no no!
Butters: Well what are we eating then?
Sister Anne: The body of Christ!
Stan: No no no I get it. Jesus wanted us to eat him, but he didn't want us to be cannibals... So he turned himself into crackers. And then told people to eat him.
Sister Anne: No!
Stan: No?!
Butters: I can't whistle if I eat too many crackers.
Sister Anne: Look, all you need to know is that when the priest gives you the cracker, you eat it. Okay?
Boys: Okay...
Sister Anne: And then you will drink a very small amount of wine. For that, is the blood of Christ.
Cartman: Oh come on now this is just getting silly.
Sister Anne: Eric, do you want to go to hell?
Cartman: No!
Sister Anne: Then stop questioning me.

A quick PGA note

I don't know how much Tiger pays him, but assuming he gets roughly the average caddy's cut of winnings, Steve William must be getting awfully close cracking the top 150 of all-time tour earnings. Not bad for a "looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock."

Belmont Stakes

This week I heard numerous ‘experts’ say that the Belmont Stakes is the toughest of the Triple Crown races to win. Based on their comments, I expect the term ‘expert’ can in this case be defined as “football beat writer who is assigned to cover horse racing because there are no football games being played that day.”

The Belmont Stakes is ¼ mile longer than the Kentucky Derby and 5/16 mile longer than the Preakness Stakes. But that doesn’t make it harder to win. The race is a mile and a half for each horse, not just one or two of them. They still all have to run the same distance.

Yes, the Belmont has stopped quite a few Triple Crown bids lately. That doesn’t necessarily make it the toughest race, because someone still won. And yesterday, for instance, that someone was Da’ Tara.

Da’ Tara won a maiden race at Gulfstream in January. Since then he was 3rd in an allowance, 9th in the Florida Derby, 5th in the Derby Trial at Churchill Downs, and 2nd in the Barbaro Stakes on Preakness day.

Not exactly a sterling résumé. Does the fact that the horse that won the Belmont wasn’t good enough to run in the Derby and Preakness mean that the Belmont was tougher?

Time to launch my dirty tricks campaign

First, I want everyone to know that I have nothing particular against Senator McCain. I admire him for his service to the country and think that he would probably be the best Republican president of my lifetime if elected. But I greatly prefer the other guy.

The following, therefore, is firmly intended to be tongue-in-cheek. I just wanted to see if I could succeed at Karl Rove-style politics.

Thus, as an intellectual exercise, I dug up and spun the following facts about John McCain:

Fact 1: John McCain was born in Panama.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t care for the idea of a president of the good old U S of A who’s beholden to Panamanian interests.

After all, Panama’s a good neighbor of Venezuela . Do you really want a president who is practically under the thumb of Hugo Chavez?

Fact 2: John McCain has a history of groping, hugging, and squeezing teenage boys. He has been known to become violent with them.

He claims that this is completely above-board, that all of these incidents took place while he was a member of his high school’s wrestling team, but I’ll leave it to you to decide.

Fact 3: As a naval pilot, before he even got to Vietnam, he crashed two planes and flew another into power lines.

I frankly don’t know what, if anything, this means, but I do find it a little disturbing.

Fact 4: While a “prisoner” in Vietnam, McCain was housed in the Hanoi Hilton.

The Hiltons I’ve stayed at have been very posh. It seems that having an admiral for a father can be very helpful.

Fact 5: The North Vietnamese offered to send McCain home in 1968, but he stayed until 1973.

As I said before, very posh.

Fact 6: McCain divorced his first wife in February of 1980 and married another in May of that year. Make of it what you will.

Fact 7: John McCain was one of the Keating Five. And in case you didn’t know, that was NOT a pop vocal group

And

John McCain quotes:

“By 2008, I think I might be ready to go down to the old soldiers home and await the cavalry charge there.”

“I believe that the success [in Iraq] will be fairly easy.”

“I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.”

“Know that old Beach Boys song Bomb Iran? Bomb, bomb bomb…”

Frustrating news search

I saw in the news that there was a double murder-suicide in Hazard, KY. The shooter was a man named Jerry Fugate, aged 55, who lived in the area.

I used to be friends with a girl named Sheila Fugate from Hazard. She went to medical school with Lena and Anthony, and read at our wedding. I haven't seen her in several years, though.

I went on-line to try and see what relation he was, if any. I tried the Hazard newspaper and others, hoping to find an obituary, but I have had no luck at all.

Softball Update

The first few 3 weeks of the season, we played well on Tuesdays and stunk on Wednesdays. I'm happy to report that we have lately reversed that trend.

We now stink on Tuesdays and play pretty well on Wednesdays.

I finally started hitting the ball well tonight, and I was very busy on defense. Happily, I played so well that I won the game single-handedly. Okay, that may be an exaggeration.

Come to think of it, saying we played well tonight might be stretching the truth, too. We scored 9 in the first inning and held on for a 12-5 win- or something like that. So our bats continue to disappear for far too many long stretches.

how about now?

If you vote on looks...

Be honest... they look a lot alike, don't they?

Bio of Senator Obama

I have reached the realization that many people choose candidates for odd reasons.

Apparently, George Bush is a great guy to have a beer with. Odd to me, I don't tend to drink with Born-again former coke-heads, especially the ones who don't even drink. And I also generally prefer hanging out with people who can speak in complete sentences.

I also realize that most people who vote for odd reasons will in no way be persuaded by any argument of mine.

I know a lot of people have dismissed Senator Obama already and will not vote for him no matter what.

Finally, I also realize that to say the readership of my blog is in double-digits might be stretching it a bit.

So this may be an exercise in futility, but to make it as easy as possible for readers to gather info about the candidate before dismissing him, here is a biography of Senator Obama, copied and pasted from Wikipedia.com. As usual, I'm only taking it on faith that it is accurate, but I believe it probably is. At least it meshes pretty well with what I believe I know about him.

Here it is. A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF SENATOR OBAMA, shamelessly copied from Wikipedia.



Obama attended local schools in Jakarta until he was ten years old.[2] He then returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents while attending Punahou School from the fifth grade until his graduation from high school in 1979.[5] Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years.[6] He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations.[7]

Obama graduated with a B.A. from Columbia in 1983, then worked at Business International Corporation and New York Public Interest Research Group before moving to Chicago in 1985 to take a job as a community organizer.[8][9] He entered Harvard Law School in 1988.[10] His election in 1990 as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review was widely reported.[11] Obama graduated with a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991, then returned to Chicago where he headed a voter registration drive and began writing his first book, Dreams from My Father, a memoir published in 1995.[12]

Between 1993 and 2002, Obama served on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a philanthropic organization providing grants to Chicago's disadvantaged people and communities.[13]

Obama taught constitutional law part-time at the University of Chicago Law School from 1993 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004.[14]

Obama worked as an associate attorney with Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland from 1993 to 2002. After 1996, he worked at the firm only during the summer, when the Illinois Senate was not in session.[15] Obama worked on cases where the firm represented community organizers, pursued discrimination claims, and on voting rights cases. He also spent time on real estate transactions, filing incorporation papers and defending clients against minor lawsuits.[16] Mostly he drew up briefs, contracts, and other legal documents as a junior associate on legal teams.[16] Obama also did some work on taxpayer-supported building rehabilitation loans for Rezmar Corp.[17] which is co-owned by his long-time political supporter Tony Rezko.

Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996. Once elected, Obama gained bipartisan support for legislation reforming ethics and health care laws.[19] He sponsored a law increasing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare.[20] In 2001, as co-chairman of the bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, Obama supported Republican Governor Ryan's payday loan regulations and predatory mortgage lending regulations aimed at averting home foreclosures,[21] and in 2003, Obama sponsored and led unanimous, bipartisan passage of legislation to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they detained and legislation making Illinois the first state to mandate videotaping of homicide interrogations.[20][22]
Obama was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, and again in 2002.[23] In 2000, he lost a Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives to four-term incumbent Bobby Rush by a margin of two to one.[24][25]
In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee when Democrats, after a decade in the minority, regained a majority.[26] During his 2004 general election campaign for U.S. Senate, police representatives credited Obama for his active engagement with police organizations in enacting death penalty reforms.[27] Obama resigned from the Illinois Senate in November 2004 following his election to the US Senate.[28]

Obama defeated Republican Alan Keyes by the largest margin in a statewide race in Illinois history.

In July 2004, he wrote and delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts.[38] After describing his maternal grandfather's experiences as a World War II veteran and a beneficiary of the New Deal's FHA and G.I. Bill programs, Obama spoke about changing the U.S. government's economic and social priorities. He questioned the Bush administration's management of the Iraq War and highlighted America's obligations to its soldiers. Drawing examples from U.S. history, he criticized heavily partisan views of the electorate and asked Americans to find unity in diversity, saying, "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America."[3

LEGISLATIVE RECORD

-Obama voted in favor of the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
-Obama took an active role in the Senate's drive for improved border security and immigration reform. In 2005, he cosponsored the "Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act" introduced by Republican John McCain of Arizona.[- (Kevin’s personal aside: I had forgotten this point. I now find it humorous that so many ‘minutemen’ will have to choose between co-sponsors of this bill. My advice to them is to vote for Bob Barr.) He later added three amendments to the "Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act", which passed the Senate in May 2006, but failed to gain majority support in the House of Representatives
-In September 2006, Obama supported a related bill, the Secure Fence Act, authorizing construction of fencing and other security improvements along the United States–Mexico border.[52] President Bush signed the Secure Fence Act into law in October 2006, calling it "an important step toward immigration reform."[53]
-"Lugar-Obama" expanded the Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction concept to conventional weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles and anti-personnel mines
-After Illinois residents complained of waste water contamination by a neighboring nuclear plant, Obama sponsored legislation requiring plant owners to notify state and local authorities of radioactive leaks.[57] A compromise version of the bill was subsequently blocked by partisan disputes and later reintroduced
-In December 2006, President Bush signed into law the "Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act," marking the first federal legislation to be enacted with Obama as its primary sponsor.[59]
-In January 2007, Obama worked with Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin to eliminate gifts of travel on corporate jets by lobbyists to members of Congress and require disclosure of bundled campaign contributions under the "Honest Leadership and Open Government Act," which was signed into law in September 2007.[60] He introduced S. 453, a bill to criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections, including fraudulent flyers and automated phone calls, as witnessed in the 2006 midterm elections
-Obama's energy initiatives scored pluses and minuses with environmentalists, who welcomed his sponsorship with McCain of a climate change bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by two-thirds by 2050, but were skeptical of his support for a bill promoting liquefied coal production.[62] Obama also introduced the "Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007," a bill to cap troop levels in Iraq, begin phased redeployment, and remove all combat brigades from Iraq before April 2008.[63]
-Later in 2007, Obama sponsored an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act adding safeguards for personality disorder military discharges, and calling for an official review following reports that the procedure had been used inappropriately to reduce government costs.[64]
- He sponsored the "Iran Sanctions Enabling Act" supporting divestment of state pension funds from Iran's oil and gas industry, and joined Republican Chuck Hagel of Nebraska in introducing legislation to reduce risks of nuclear terrorism.[65][66] A provision from the Obama-Hagel bill was passed by Congress in December 2007 as an amendment to the State-Foreign Operations appropriations bill.[66]
-Obama also sponsored a Senate amendment to the State Children's Health Insurance Program providing one year of job protection for family members caring for soldiers with combat-related injuries.[67].
-At a meeting with Palestinian students two weeks before Hamas won the legislative election, Obama warned that "the U.S. will never recognize winning Hamas candidates unless the group renounces its fundamental mission to eliminate Israel."[73


POLITICAL POSITIONS

Economy-
"We should be asking ourselves what mix of policies will lead to a dynamic free market and widespread economic security, entrepreneurial innovation and upward mobility [...] we should be guided by what works."[99] Speaking before the National Press Club in April 2005, he defended the New Deal social welfare policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, associating Republican proposals to establish private accounts for Social Security with social Darwinism.[100] In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Obama spoke out against government indifference to growing economic class divisions, calling on both political parties to take action to restore the social safety net for the poor.[101] Shortly before announcing his presidential campaign, Obama told the health care advocacy group Families USA that he supports universal healthcare in the United States.

Education-
Obama announced an $18 billion plan for investments in early childhood education, math and science education, and expanded summer learning opportunities.[104] Obama's campaign distinguished his proposals to reward teachers for performance from traditional merit pay systems, assuring unions that changes would be pursued through the collective bargaining process.[105]

Taxes-
At the Tax Policy Center in September 2007, he blamed special interests for distorting the U.S. tax code.[106] His plan would eliminate taxes for senior citizens with incomes of less than $50,000 a year, repeal income tax cuts for those making over $250,000 as well as the capital gains and dividends tax cut,[107] close corporate tax loopholes, lift the $102,000 cap on Social Security taxes, restrict offshore tax havens, and simplify filing of income tax returns by pre-filling wage and bank information already collected by the IRS.[108] Announcing his presidential campaign's energy plan in October 2007, Obama proposed a cap and trade auction system to restrict carbon emissions and a 10 year program of investments in new energy sources to reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil.[109] Obama proposed that all pollution credits must be auctioned, with no grandfathering of credits for oil and gas companies, and the spending of the revenue obtained on energy development and economic transition costs.[110]

Iraq-
Obama was an early opponent of the Bush administration's policies on Iraq.[111] On October 2, 2002, the day Bush and Congress agreed on the joint resolution authorizing the Iraq War,[112] Obama addressed the first high-profile Chicago anti-Iraq War rally in Federal Plaza,[113] speaking out against it.[114

Speaking to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in November 2006, Obama called for a "phased redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq" and an opening of diplomatic dialogue with Syria and Iran.[119]

Foreign Policy-
In a March 2007 speech to AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobby, he said that the primary way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons is through talks and diplomacy, although not ruling out military action.[120] Obama has indicated that he would engage in "direct presidential diplomacy" with Iran without preconditions.[121][122][123]

Detailing his strategy for fighting global terrorism in August 2007, Obama said "it was a terrible mistake to fail to act" against a 2005 meeting of al-Qaeda leaders that U.S. intelligence had confirmed to be taking place in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. He said that as president he would not miss a similar opportunity, even without the support of the Pakistani government.[124]

Personal-
Obama plays basketball, a sport he participated in as a member of his high school's varsity team.[145] Before announcing his presidential candidacy, he began a well-publicized effort to quit smoking. "I've never been a heavy smoker," Obama told the Chicago Tribune. "I've quit periodically over the last several years. I've got an ironclad demand from my wife that in the stresses of the campaign I do not succumb. I've been chewing Nicorette strenuously."[146] Replying to an Associated Press survey of 2008 presidential candidates' personal tastes, he specified "architect" as his alternate career choice and "chili" as his favorite meal to cook.[147] Asked to name a "hidden talent," Obama answered: "I'm a pretty good poker player."[148

Religion-
He describes his mother, raised by non-religious parents, as detached from religion, yet "in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known." He describes his Kenyan father as "raised a Muslim," but a "confirmed atheist" by the time his parents met, and his Indonesian stepfather as "a man who saw religion as not particularly useful." In the book, Obama explains how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand "the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change."[149