Eight years later...

Well, I guess it's time to annouce that we will soon be back in diapers. No, I haven't become incontinent. We're jumping back into the baby thing! Nick is nearly 10, Ethan is 8, and come end of April-beginning of May we'll have #3 joining us. In fact, the baby should be arriving about a week after I run the half marathon. If we time it right, I could be recuperating in a bed right next to Jana... ;)

There'll be more posted on this topic a little later. I'm in Tulsa tonight, just working on some work stuff & thought I better update our family blog. But that brings me to something that's got me a little... um, perplexed:

Why, out of all of the people we know (that have blogs), WHY AM I THE ONLY GUY POSTING STUFF?!? I look around at all of our friends & neighbors blogs, and I'll be danged! Everyone else's blogs are being maintained/updated by the wife/mom/master of the house... Now, please don't misinterpret my confusion. I'm not at all suggesting that this should be Jana's thing & she should be the one posting & keeping everyone informed. Ah, here's the perfect analogy:

Let's pretend I'm at The Gateway, walking around by myself, just doing a little window shopping. Stopping at a store window front, I see a sweater that I really like. I enter the store, go over to the sweater table-thing, and start holding up various colors to see which one looks the best (remember, we're pretending. In real life, I just grab whatever color I think is my size, buy it, go home, try it on, it doesn't fit, jump back in the car, return to store, return sweater. Repeat 3 times...). I select a sweater in a navy blue, and proceed to the changing room to try it on. As I'm sitting there, waiting for a room to become available, I finally start to look around and take notice of my environment. "Wait a minute...", I think to myself. "Why do I feel so immasculated all of a sudden?" I ponder. GASP!!! I'M IN A WOMENS CLOTHING STORE!!! Running out, with my head pulled back into my shirt like a turtle, I run for the door, however a little confused because I really liked that sweater!

Do you see what I mean? Anyway, I've decided that, you know what, I like this blog thing! I'm going to embrace it, but don't be surprised if I tell a random story about guns or beef jerky or big engines or some other manly topic. And I'll DEFINITELY be encouraging Jana to take the lead on our blog!!

NObama!

It probably won't matter much, but I've got to vent. After watching the VP debate and reading the anti-Palin articles that followed, I decided there wasn't enough anti-Biden. Believe me, its well-deserved! The dang media is so liberal that its a pretty safe bet that you won't hear this on any of the major news outlets.

I know it's a lot to read, but I'm trying to eliminate some misinformation. Here are some false statements Biden made in the debate and the truth:

BIDEN: Complained about "economic policies of the last eight years" that led to "excessive deregulation." 

THE FACTS: Biden voted for 1999 deregulation that liberal groups are blaming for part of the financial crisis. The law allowed Wall Street investment banks to create the kind of mortgage-related securities at the core of the problem now. The law was widely backed by Republicans as well as by Democratic President Clinton, who argues it has stopped the crisis today from being worse.

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BIDEN: Warned that Republican presidential candidate John McCain's $5,000 tax credit to help families buy health coverage "will go straight to the insurance company." 

THE FACTS: Of course it would, because it's meant to pay for insurance. That's like saying money for a car loan will go straight to the car dealer.

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BIDEN: Said McCain supports tax breaks for oil companies, and "wants to give them another $4 billion tax cut." 

THE FACTS: Biden is repeating a favorite saw of the Obama campaign, and it's misleading. McCain supports a cut in income taxes for all corporations, and doesn't single out any one industry for that benefit.

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BIDEN: "As a matter of fact, John recently wrote an article in a major magazine saying that he wants to do for the health care industry -- deregulate it and let the free market move -- like he did for the banking industry." 

THE FACTS: Biden and Obama have been perpetuating this distortion of what McCain wrote in an article for the American Academy of Actuaries. McCain, laying out his health plan, only referred to deregulation when saying people should be allowed to buy health insurance across state lines. In that context, he wrote: "Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."

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PALIN: "Barack Obama even supported increasing taxes as late as last year for those families making only $42,000 a year." 

BIDEN: "The charge is absolutely not true. Barack Obama did not vote to raise taxes. The vote she's referring to, John McCain voted the exact same way." 

THE FACTS: The vote was on a nonbinding budget resolution that assumed that President Bush's tax cuts would expire, as scheduled, in 2011. If that actually happened, it could mean higher taxes for people making as little as about $42,000. But Obama is proposing tax increases only on the wealthy, and would cut taxes for most others. In the March 14 budget resolution supported by Obama and Biden, McCain actually did not vote.