All this information is from OpenSecrets.org

I predict Barack Obama will win the primaries. Why? He raised more money than Clinton, and in America, that’s what matters the most. Okay, I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek here, but still: Obama raised $138 million compared to $135 million for Clinton. McCain, who is in a much colder race, raised $54 million.

Where did they get their money from? This is an important question to ask. In the 2000 election, Bush received more donations from the oil industry than the last three presidents combined. And look what happened during his terms–gas prices tripled and we are in a war over oil. That is not a coincidence.

So I took a look at where our new candidates are getting their money from. I’m not that great with numbers, but what I learned was kind of interesting, so I’ll share. Obama got most of his money–74%–from Ideological/Single Issue, meaning individual donations, charities, etc. Another 26% is from Business, meaning corporate donations.

Clinton, on the other hand, received the majority of her donations–56%–from Business. About one-third of her money comes from Ideological/Single Issue.

Then I broke their contributions down by industry. Although I didn’t go through every industry, I discovered that Clinton led Obama in donations from every industry I looked at except for Computers/Internet and Education. Here are some samples of what I saw (keep in mind that while I’m including McCain in here, the comparisons are really apples to oranges because he ran on less money):

Industry: Tobacco
Clinton received $45,800
McCain received $17,000
Obama received $16,187

Industry: Oil/Gas
McCain received $283,285
Clinton received $276,150
Obama received $157,390
(This pales compared to Giuliani’s $649,608 from the Oil/Gas industry, btw)

Industry: Insurance
Clinton received $781,361
Obama received $594,760
McCain received $381,482

Industry: Real Estate (A big issue right now, obviously)
Clinton received $5,366,432
Obama received $3,038,325
McCain received $2,193,808

Industry: Commercial Banks
Clinton received $1,211,924
Obama received $1,175,885
McCain received $730,525

Industry: Casinos/Gambling
McCain received $102,200
Clinton received $91,125
Obama received $31,300

Lobbyists:
Clinton received $783,290
McCain received $453,365
Obama received $99,240
(Note that Clinton is the clear leader here–she has almost twice the donations of the second person on the list, McCain. Compare that to Obama’s modest $100,000.)

What does this say? It says, at the very least, that Clinton is friendlier with most industries than Obama is. Considering that most corruption in American government takes place in the dealings between businesses and politicians, these numbers further my distrust of Clinton considerably. They are, after all, on top of her voting us into Iraq and voting for the Patriot Act twice.

One of the reasons I sometimes write about education is because I’m concerned about anti-intellectualism in America. I don’t think Americans are dumb, but I do think that as a culture we have embraced that which is shallow, trivial, and worthless and it’s leading to major problems. It’s not just that younger Americans have worse reasoning skills and shorter attention spans than past generations–which they do–but also that they don’t care as much about becoming educated. They equate getting an education with getting a job, not with becoming smarter and better people. (Worse, many Americans seem threatened by education, as if going to school will brainwash them, not give them the intellectual tools to think rationally and logically–and thereby avoid brainwashings and other scary-yet-unlikely threats.)

So naturally, I’m interested in Susan Jacoby’s book The Age of American Unreason, about American anti-intellectualism. Jacoby blames this phenomenon on the rise of video and the Internet. And while some of her points sound like an older person threatened by the changing media landscape, her column in the Washington Post makes some good points. In particular:

According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it “not at all important” to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it “very important.”

That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it’s the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism — a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.

Whenever I think about this, I get nervous about the future of our country.

Michelle Richmond has summed up the move that made me lose respect for Hillary Clinton–when she voted for the War in Iraq. Like Richmond, I can’t get past it.

I remember being stunned at the support for military action against Iraq in Congress and the Senate [following 9/11]. When the resolution passed in 2002, I felt as though all of Washington was living in some weird post 9/11 version of Oz, where no one questioned George W. Bush’s motives, and no one dared pull aside the curtain for fear of exposing the true nature of the inept little wizard; they took it for granted that, because the U.S. had been attacked, the wizard spoke for all of us. If they had doubts, most of them kept those doubts to themselves. To me, the massive support for military action among powerful Democrats was an unforgivable case of cowardly politics. Because no matter how one feels or felt about Saddam Hussein, any rational course of thought would lead one to the conclusion that launching a “preemptive” (i.e. unprovoked) attack against a relatively secular Muslim nation–especially at a time when religious fanatics had killed thousands of Americans and were vowing to kill thousands more–could never end up well.

… And Hillary Clinton supported that maneuver. As much as I support her vision for health care and education, I can’t come to terms with her vote on Iraq in 2002. Because the Iraq war is the ugliest and dumbest thing our country has done in a long time.

Read more of Richmond’s Why I Believe in Barack Obama here.

It’s somewhat hypocritical for me to post this since my family wants to go shopping the day after Thanksgiving, but Keri Smith has a list of 10 things to do instead of shopping on Buy Nothing Day, November 23.

Every year, people complain about how Christmas is commercialized and has lost its meaning. I like the idea of consuming less so there is less distraction while we get back to why we have Christmas in the first place.

Personally, I’m making more gifts this year and cutting back on the number of gifts I give. Most of it is simply that I have less money, what with having a mortgage and all. But when I wrote a list of things to make, I was surprised by how many things I was capable of making that people might not mind getting as a present from me. I just wish I had gotten around to making my own vanilla in time for Christmas gifts. Oh well…

If you want proof that morality means nothing without love, compassion, and forgiveness, take a look at Dr. Laura’s son. Deryk Schlessinger, the right-wing radio talk show host’s “little bounchkin,” is now 21 years old and serving in the army. The military just took down Deryk’s MySpace page because of “Depictions of Rape, Murder, Torture, Child Molestation, and Abuse.” There were “cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation; photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of a bound and blindfolded detainee captioned “My Sweet Little Habib”; accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series of obscenities and racial epithets. ”

“Yes . . . F—ING Yes!!!” said one blog entry on the Schlessinger site. “I LOVE MY JOB, it takes everything reckless and deviant and heathenistic and just overall bad about me and hyper focuses these traits into my job of running around this horrid place doing nasty things to people that deserve it . . . and some that don’t.”

Oh yeah, and:

It also included several graphic cartoons. In one of the stick drawings, a top-hatted man laughs as he rapes a bound and bleeding woman in front of her family. In another depiction, a man forces a boy to perform oral sex at knifepoint as the child’s mother pleads for her son’s life.

Link

I used to listen to Dr. Laura in college driving back and forth to Portland all the time (my car didn’t have a CD player). I have always thought she makes some good points. I don’t think it’s bad to encourage people to try to make their marriages work or to get married before having children and so on and so forth. However, for every good point she made, there was at least one other point that was harsh, severe, or unforgiving. This attitude seems to be reflected in Dr. Laura’s own life–her mother was found rotting in a house after being dead for days. I guess you really do reap what you sow in life. She has publicly talked about Deryk her whole career, repeatedly saying she put him first and that her job in life is to be “her kid’s mom.” And now… this is who her kid is. So what does that say about her?

Very interesting.

Of course, it could be terrorists putting up a fake MySpace page just to make Dr. Laura and the army look bad. That’s a possibility too. Right? Right?

I love what Keri Smith is doing over on her Wish Jar Journal. In considering the number of brand she uses in her daily life, she started covering up some of the products in her house with skins that she created herself. For example, here’s her toothpaste:

As she puts it:

I wanted to consider what my house might look like with no visable brand names on packaging. This got me thinking of various methods to have products blend into my environment in a fluid way, either by simulating something that I find aesthetically pleasing, or by somehow integrating them into my psyche (ie. making them practical or necessary.)

I really like this idea. It made me look around my own house and consider all the brands I look at on a daily basis without even realizing it. It’s amazing how integrated advertisements are in our lives. Most of us don’t even question their existence anymore. Anyway, I would love to no longer look at flashy headache-y brand advertisements on a daily basis. I even started copying Keri and printed out something to cover my Advil jar with, but then realized I was out of tape.

However! I will get some tape soon, and then, look out sneaky brands!

Other branded things Keri altered:

Her Cereal Box

Her Lotion, Mouthwash, and Soap

A Pack of Gum

Peanuts

Her Dish Soap

Last Saturday, I took this photo of a protest of the War in Iraq in downtown Petaluma. It looks more dramatic than it actually was. The police officer is not arresting anyone–she’s helping a car that got into an accident while watching the protestors.

Never a dull moment around here.