Ben’s Blog

I got a flu shot today, as I have for the past several years. Yes, it’s true that some years the doctors miss it altogether and put the wrong strains in the vaccine, but most years they get it right, and even when they miss it, the vaccine gives you some protection. In 16 of the 19 flu seasons prior to the 2007-2008 season, they got it right.

I thought it was particularly important we get the shot this year, because if we get the flu we would have to ship the kids off to their grandparents if we didn’t want them to get the flu. Liam is too young to get a flu shot, and Luke didn’t get one because his pediatrician recommended against it. His reasoning was that the downsides equaled the upsides, making it a toss up. I’m not entirely happy with that explanation, and will be better informed when it comes time to make the decision next year. The CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend kids over 6 months of age get it.

This year, I considered the mist version of the vaccine instead of a shot. Ultimately I decided to get the shot, for a few reasons. Studies show no definitive advantage of one over the other. Since the mist uses live viruses it’s possible, though unlikely, that you could give someone else the flu after you get the vaccine. In fact, because of this risk, health care workers aren’t allowed to use the mist. I couldn’t risk giving it to Luke or Liam. Also, the shot is cheaper. In fact, since I got the shot from my doctor during a regular checkup, it was free.

I was curious how my doctor was able to offer flu shots for free. I’m assuming it’s funded by the federal government. That’s the only explanation that makes sense, but I haven’t been able to find anything on the Internet to back that up.

Seriously? No one has a response to Monday’s McCain post? I was hoping to stir up some debate. It’s not too late.

As I promised a while back, here are my reasons for preferring McCain over Obama. Of course, I’d really prefer to be voting for Ron Paul.

Before I get into my specific reasons, let me tell you a little about my general political outlook. I like to say that I’m a pragmatic libertarian. I believe the government should play a much weaker role in our lives. I’m for personal responsibility. I’m also a big believer in pure, unadultered capitalism, with very few exceptions. If you’ve been paying attention to the Presidential race, then it should be obvious from just this paragraph who I prefer. Obama wants the government to play a bigger role in our lives. I don’t.

Government Spending and Taxation

I believe that the government should spend a lot loss money than it does. Neither party has done a good job reducing spending over the past several years, and I can’t say with any certainty that either of these candidates will either. However, with all the promises that Obama has made, I know for certain that he will not reduce government spending by any appreciable amount. McCain claims that he will, and I hope he follows through with it if elected.

The other side of the coin is taxation. I believe the government should tax us much less than they do now. I think ten percent is a good goal. While that goal will not be reached by either party anytime soon, I think McCain has the potential to take us closer to it, while Obama will take us further away.

I also take issue with Obama’s belief that the rich somehow owe society a large chunk of the money they have earned. It’s a popular belief these days, but it’s a very dangerous one. I refer to it as “Socialism lite.”

Health Care

Barack Obama believes that health care is a right. I don’t. It’s a popular sentiment, but as a libertarian I don’t believe that’s the government’s job. If I believed the government could do a good, efficient job of providing health care, I think I could get past my libertarian tendencies. Why should I believe that the government will handle health care more efficiently than say, Social Security, for instance?

Obama says he wants to open up the Federal employees health insurance program to all citizens. The reason health care for groups is generally cheaper than for individuals is because members of groups don’t self-select. People seeking to join the Federal employee health plan will tend to be sicker than the average person and the cost of the program will rise as a result. It’s simple economics, and Obama either doesn’t know this or chooses to ignore it. He’s a smart guy, so I tend to believe it’s the latter.

Obama also says insurance companies shouldn’t be able to discriminate against people with preexisting conditions. Unfortunately, in the real world, people that have pre-existing conditions cost more to care for. Ignoring that fact does not make it go away. Under Obama’s plan, the cost of my insurance would go up because I (a healthy person who has always had health insurance, even when it wasn’t convenient) will be treated the same as an unhealthy person who hasn’t been responsible enough to maintain health insurance.

For the record, I’m not a huge fan of McCain’s health care plan either, but it doesn’t scare me nearly as much as Obama’s.

Free Trade

Obama does not believe in free trade. I do, and I have a majority of economists on my side. Yes, free trade can be inconvenient at times, but in the end it is more efficient.

Gun Control

I do not believe in gun control, for both philosophical and pragmatic reasons. Obama wants stricter gun control, which is ineffective and possibly unconstitutional. There are already sufficient laws on the books to prohibit criminals from having guns. Anything further just takes guns out of the hands of lawful owners, leaving them defenseless against criminals.

Education

Obama is against vouchers. I see them as a simple and effective way to fix our poor excuse for an educational system.

Energy

McCain has proposed doing away with counterproductive subsidies on domestic ethanol and removing tariffs on cheap Brazilian ethanol. Obama has not because the corn lobby has him in their pocket.

Obama has also been non-commital on nuclear energy. If we were serious about getting off foreign oil, we’d be building nuclear power plants as fast as possible. It is highly efficient and safe.

Summary

McCain is far from perfect, but when I look at the issues, it’s obvious who my choice should be. That’s all I ask of you. Don’t vote for Obama because he’s “less like Bush.” If you vote for him, vote for him because you agree with him on the issues. You and I will disagree, but you will have my respect because you took the time and effort to have an opinion on the issues and find the candidate that most closely matches those opinions.

Please post comments, especially if you disagree with me. If you have a blog, write a post about why you’re voting for your candidate and post a link in the comments.

I will admit to having been more than a little amused when I saw a clip of an interviewer accusing Obama and Biden of being Marxists. I got a good chuckle out of it. The clip is below. You can see the full interview here.

To be fair, Obama and Biden are not Marxists. However, some of their policies (their tax plan in particular) do reek of Socialism. That’s one of the issues I have with them.

By the way, have I ever mentioned that Joe Biden is a darn good politician? I don’t agree with him on the issues, but I wish there was a center-right clone of him.

Ole Miss beat Arkansas 23-21 yesterday. It was Houston Nutt’s first trip back to the place he had been head coach for ten years. The win puts our record at 4-4, just two games away from being bowl eligible.

Arkansas cut the lead to two points with 1:07 left to play. Needing the ball back in a hurry, they tried an onside kick and appeared to recover the ball. However, the referees said they recovered the ball out of bounds and that it was our ball. The replays they were showing on TV made it impossible to tell what happened. Upon review, the referees reversed their call and said Arkansas had recovered the ball inbounds. While it was probably the right call, I don’t see how they could tell that from the video, and I certainly don’t see how they could say there was “indisputable video evidence” that Arkansas recovered the ball inbounds. Luckily, we were able to keep them from scoring.

Next weekend we face Auburn at home. We’re planning to go. It’ll be our first game in two seasons and Luke’s first college game period. There are a lot of Auburn fans on my mom’s side of the family, and they’ll be coming up for some tailgating. Auburn has had a rough time of it the last few weeks. They’ve been beaten by Vanderbilt, Arkansas, and West Virginia, all teams they should have beaten. Here’s hoping they’ve got one more loss in their system.

Barring some big upsets, it looks like Alabama will be playing the winner of the Georgia/Florida game for the SEC championship. Both of those should be good games.

The top 5 in the AP Top 25 remained unchanged this week. No. 1 Texas still has to face No. 8 Texas Tech in two weeks. They would most likely face No. 15 Missouri in the Big 12 championship game.

No. 2 Alabama plays No. 13 LSU in three weeks, and plays Auburn the last game of the season. While Auburn has had a horrible year by their standards, they’ve beaten Alabama for the past seven seasons. As mentioned, they would also play Georgia or Florida in the SEC championship game.

No. 3 Penn State played what will probably be their last ranked team of the regular season this weekend. They beat No. 9 Ohio State 13-6. However, Michigan State is 7-2 and could pose some trouble. The Big Ten does not have a championship game.

It would be very interesting if Alabama continues to win, only to get beat in the SEC championship game. Penn State, who didn’t have to play in one, would almost certainly get to play for the BCS championship. That’s just one of the hazards of playing in a good conference like the SEC I suppose.

I finally started using Facebook as of yesterday. Yes, I know, I’m only a few years late. (I have successfully avoided the whole MySpace thing. No plans on changing that.) I had been resisting for a long time now, assuming it was just another time waster. A friend of mine sent me an email to say that he was going to start posting some pictures on his profile, so I figured while I was on there, I might as well participate.

I currently have 114 “friends,” and probably nearly as many invitations still pending. It was nice to reconnect with a lot of old buddies, mostly from college, but also some from high school and Boy Scouts.

The most interesting thing has been seeing the connections between my groups of friends. There are more than a few instances where a friend from one group knows a friend from another group. It nearly makes you want to sing It’s a Small World.

Yesterday’s football post failed to mention that we’re playing Arkansas this weekend. A few weeks ago it was looking like Arkansas was going to be a gimme. They’ve had a horrible year, but managed to upset Auburn two weeks ago. They’ve since lost to Kentucky. We should definitely win this game, but you never know with this team.

Remember that our coach, Houston Nutt, had been Arkansas’s coach for many years until they ran him off at the end of last season. Arkansas hired Bobby Petrino, the former Louisville coach coming off a bad year as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons. I’m guessing a lot of Arkansas fans would like their coach back.

We need to win three of our remaining five games to be bowl eligible. Arkansas, Louisiana-Monroe, and Mississippi State are all very winnable games. We should be able to beat Auburn too, but they’ll be though. Beating LSU would be a big upset, so I’m not going to count on that. In short, we need to beat Arkansas this week.

Luke and Liam went to the pediatrician yesterday. It was Luke’s 18 month checkup and Liam’s 2 month checkup. I was eager to see what Liam weighed compared to Luke at his age. He seemed to be gaining weight faster than Luke.

As it turns out, Liam weighs exactly, to the ounce, what Luke weighed at his two month checkup (12 lbs, 13 oz). He is also 23.5 inches long, 1/4″ shorter than Luke at that age. He was born 4 oz. lighter and 3/4″ shorter than Luke, so he’s doing a good job of playing catch up.

Now it’ll be interesting to see where Liam goes from here. At some point Luke’s growth absolutely exploded. Liam’s current numbers put him in the 50-75th percentile in weight and height. Luke is now 28 lbs, 6 oz and 33.4 inches tall, which put him around the 90th percentile in both categories.

Both boys got some shots yesterday. They both handled them well. Liam actually didn’t start crying until the second one.

The last couple of nights Liam has slept for four hours or longer at a stretch. I’m not willing to say it’s permanent just yet, but I’m hopeful.

Luke is still sleeping through the night, and seems to be sleeping more soundly as of late. In the not too distant future we’re going to try him in his own bed. Yes, he’s sleeping in the bed with us, if I haven’t mentioned that before.

If I could give one bit of advice to new parents, it’s “Don’t even think about letting your child sleep with you.” It’s next to impossible to get them out once you start it. We learned our lesson and Liam is sleeping is his bassinet, which seems to be getting smaller by the day.

You would think with a headline like that I might be a little upbeat about the game. I’m not. While we played better than I expected, and had a chance to win the game well into the fourth quarter, it’s hard not to be depressed when you think back to the games we could have won this season had we played half that well. Alabama has struggled in the second half all season, and that proved to be the case this weekend as well. Alabama took a 24-3 lead into halftime, but couldn’t score the entire second half.

No. 1 Texas impressively beat No. 11 Missouri 56-31 this weekend, proving that they belong at No. 1. Texas has a tough schedule ahead though. They play No. 6 Oklahoma State next weekend and No. 8 Texas Tech the week after that. No. 2 Alabama still has to play No. 13 LSU and presumably the winner of the SEC East in the SEC Championship. No. 3 Penn State’s big challenge comes next weekend against No. 9 Ohio State. I think they’re up for it.

If Texas, Alabama, and Penn State all continue to win, there could be a huge controversy as to who belongs in the BCS championship game. I’m all for controversy, as it’s the only way we’ll end up with some sort of a playoff. Oklahoma State and Texas Tech have a shot at the BCS championship game if they continue to win, but that seems pretty unlikely. They both have to play Texas, Oklahoma, and each other before the year is out.

I had seen clips of McCain and Obama at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner last week on TV, but it’s hard to appreciate just how funny McCain was without seeing the whole thing. There are two videos below, first McCain, then Obama. Notice the crowd’s reaction. They thought McCain was funnier. And remember that the crowd is probably 98% Democrat. It should have been a tough crowd for him. Even Obama and Clinton were cracking up.

Obviously he can’t treat his campaign like a big joke, but if we’d seen more of this McCain he wouldn’t be as behind in the polls. McCain is a likable guy when he isn’t being “handled.” Unfortunately, when all is said and done, McCain will regret not being himself more during the campaign.

Obama was funny too, just not as funny as McCain.