BrianShelledy.com

No doubt if you know me at all, you will understand that the election results are not something that I am entirely happy with at the least. However, as bad as the political ramifications may be for our country down the line, I can at least appreciate a few positives that came out of this election.

First, I recognize what an African-American president means symbolically for minorities in this country. While it is not the first or the last struggle in the human rights movement, it is a significant milestone in the fight. Racism was part of the ugly past of America, and though it hasn’t been stamped out completely, this was definitely an event that illustrates the fruits of that labor.

Obama is also an orator. When we look at our past, we find ourselves attracted to the great speeches. “I have a Dream.” “We will go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” “With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph — so help us God.”  Despite policy disagreements, there is no doubt that the speeches Obama will deliver could match or rival the great orators of our past.

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to live when there was some sort of advancement in American society, and I guess that this could be my chance.  While I won’t be able to agree with the policies of Obama, I can be proud to live in a country of opportunity that allows him to become president.  So, I congratulate him, and hope that he will take actions that help the United States remain the land of opportunity that bore him.

For the angry stuff, that’s another blog post.

Well, we had the final presidential debate yesterday, and it was probably the most interesting of the three.  I was hoping for McCain to do better, and he did.  It’s hard to win against Obama in public speaking, but my opinion is that when it comes to the issues, McCain is better then Obama.  That’s not to say I agree with everything that McCain is promising, but he did hit some good notes yesterday in contrasting his plans with Obama’s, and emphasizing that he was for less government.  There are some things that I wish would have come out in the debate before.  I think they should have talked about how Regan lowered the business tax rate and tax revenue went up.  I think they should talk about how even though we only have 3% of the worlds oil reserves, drilling is still a prudent option to help reduce the price of oil now.  However, the debates are over now, and unless they decide to show up at the third party debate that’s supposed to happen Sunday, we’re not going to get the two of them together for any more friendly conversations.  We’ll be stuck with the ads the campaigns choose to run, like the 30 minute ad that Obama plans to run that bumped back the start time of the World Series.

All over the news lately we have heard about the crisis in the financial market and the need for government to act.  There has been a massive amount of fear generated about the possibility of a global depression should some of these massive financial institutions fail.  Fortunately, our government is on the job.  Recently, there was an $85 billion, billion, bailout of AIG by the Fed.  Now we’re looking at a firehouse passing of a $700 billion bailout of a number of these institutions that made poor business decisions.  Of course, the media is casting a dire but rosy picture of this whole situation, and the line is that “we don’t want to do it, but we have to”.  That’s all well and good, but there’s a few things that I think we are missing out of this picture. 

First off, let’s take a look at this $85 billion bailout of AIG.  The key here is that we spent $85 billion dollars of “taxpayer money” that… and here’s the kicker… nobody voted on.  Chairman of the Fed Ben Bernanke and his group basically signed this money over.  And who oversees the Fed?  Where are the checks and balances for them?  There are none.  In fact, we don’t even vote on the person who is arguably the most powerful economic figure in the United States, if not the world.  Each of the candidates made their point about whether bailing out AIG was the right thing to do, but in reality, even the real president didn’t have an official say in it.  Even if Bush wanted to bail out AIG, he’d still have to push a bill through congress to do it.  So where is the accountability for Ben Bernanke?  Read more »

Well, our power came back on tonight, and with the tree removal service coming in tomorrow it looks like we’ll be out of this mess.  This has definitely been an educational experience.  We’ve experienced what it is like to be in a hurricane, grown closer to our neighbors, and have a few more stories to tell.  While it’s going to be one of the more expensive weeks we’ve had, I still think we ended up on top.  Anyway, as exciting as it is, I am going to sleep.  Farewell!

Well, things are going well here.  We’re still out of power, but I’m expecting it to come back up within the next 24 hours, as they have it across one of the major streets and ours is next in a logical projection I created in my imagination.  We’ll see how that works out. 

Fortunately, after the storm a cold front came through.  Initially, this created alot of rain and lightning, but now, we’re doing great because it also brought alot of cold air that’s sticking around.  Last night was comfortable for the first time in a while, and eventually I got cold.  We have not had phone service for a while because the batteries that keep it running went out.  Thus, I haven’t been able to update.  Now, however, things are back online.  As far as life without power or plans, we’ve been occuping our time by doing a puzzle and meeting with friends.  Our neighborhood has been meeting every night for dinner, just to gather around a central light and conserve everything. 

School is out for me for the rest of the week, and apparently my brother’s building at UH had part of the roof blown off… his classes are cancelled “until further notice”.

Just to give some of you who are looking at this website some information about how things are going with us, I’m not sure what they are showing on the national news.  We have the local news streaming to us over the internet.  Ironically, our cable is out but the internet is still working! Anyway, we still do not have power yet, and according to the local authorities, our power company has suffered a catastrophic failure which will prevent us from getting power for 2-4 weeks.  This morning, another thunderstorm came through as a result of a cold front, unrelated to the hurricane.  This woke all of us up with some heavy lightning, thunder, and rain.  Fortunately for us, this did not cause us any extra problems, however there is some more significant flooding closer to the cost for our fellow Houstonians. 

Our family is still doing well.  The generator that we were able to purchase is providing us some comfort, and we shared some of that with our neighbors yesterday as we had a sort of hurricane party.   It was good to get together with them and have a outlet for some of the stress associated with some of the damage we sustained.  We also had alot to celebrate as our neighborhood escaped without any injury. 

For now, we’re just taking some time to relax for a little bit, and soon we will get ready to begin cleaning things up.  We have alot of supplies here and we hear that the grocery stores will be opening again soon.  Again, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for thinking about us and praying for us.  We believe that we have been truly blessed to escape alot of the damage that our fellow Houstonians and neighbors have experienced.

Tree down in my Front Yard

EDIT: Pictures

EDIT: More Pictures 6:45 PM 9/13/08

Well, if you’ve been paying attention to the news, Hurricane Ike came through the Houston area this weekend.  I have lived here for some years, and I’ve never had a storm this bad. Of course, the only other hurricane we’ve been through was Rita, but we didn’t have any damage then.  As you can see from the picture, though, we have some damage this time.  The tree in the picture used to stand in our front yard, but now it’s fallen down across our driveway.  We had our cars parked in the driveway, and fortunately saw that the tree was going to come down.  We took the risk and moved our cars into the street, and made it ok.  5 minutes later, the tree came down.  While we were outside, we saw that there were a number of trees down on our street.  Also, we have a tree down in our backyard that looks like it crashed through our fence.

The power is out right now, but our recent generator purchase is allowing us access to power, internet, TV and coffee.  It’s been a long night, but it looks like we’re all going to be ok now.  I’ll try and post more pictures as I get them, and post more information as I find it out.

UPDATE: Read more »

This is just Ridiculous.

Today I was looking at the transcripts for various segments of the Rush Limbaugh show - I listen to him in the mornings but usually can only get the first hour before I have to go to class - and I came across an interesting segment on how George Bush and Batman had alot in common.  After seeing the Dark Knight, I look back at the movie and there’s alot of truth to it, in my humble opinion.  As far as whether it was deliberate or not, I leave that to you.  But for your reading pleasure, here’s a couple links for you:

Conservatism and the Dark Knight - Rush

What Bush and Batman Have in Common - Referenced Wall Street Journal Article

Upgraded to Wordpress 2.6, as well as upgrading some of the underlying apps.  Let me know if you run into any issues.

EDIT: I also changed themes. Hope you like it.