Ben’s Blog

Had I been at home last night I probably wouldn’t have watched the debate, but there isn’t a lot to do in Cassie’s hospital room. I’ve generally been of the opinion that Presidential debates don’t contain a lot of substance. Last night’s debate didn’t change my opinion, but I did find it interesting.

Let’s be honest, not all of the candidates that were in the debate have a chance to win the nomination. Giuliani, Romney, and McCain are obviously in the running. Giuliani and Romney are frontrunners, but were defensive on several issues last night; Giuliani more so than Romney. I thought McCain was pretty strong in the debate. I had previously written him off s a true contender. While I still don’t think he’ll get the nomination, it’s probably too early to give up on him.

I think Mike Huckabee should be added to the list of real contenders. He came in second in Iowa, and I would argue he won the debate tonight. I don’t agree with him on a lot of things, but I thought all of his answers were strong and he wasn’t defensive. (It is interesting to note that Huckabee was born in the same small Arkansas town as Bill Clinton.) While he has executive experience, he doesn’t have a lot of the political baggage that Giuliani and Romney do. He’s got a long way to go to get the nomination, but I think he has a shot.

As a libertarian, I found Ron Paul’s responses to be interesting and amusing. He’s way more hardcore than me, but I do agree with him on a lot of issues. Have a look at his Wikipedia page. Unfortunately, like a typical Libertarian, he doesn’t know how to make his proposals palatable for the average citizen. He has no shot at winning.

Unfortunately I still think we have pretty sad selection of candidates this time around, though both parties have candidates that are better than their 2004 nominations. The question is, will their nominations be better than 2004’s nominations? I expect Hillary will win the Democratic nomination, which frankly scares me a little bit. Even scarier is I don’t see a Republican candidate that can beat her in the general election. I’m still holding out hope that Michael Bloomberg will run as a independent.

Today I ran up on this interesting article on the US budget. His main point is that we can’t do much to fix the budget unless we first fix the “welfare state.” The federal government spent nearly $2.7 trillion last fiscal year. That’s $248 billion more than they took in. The deficit made up about 9.2% of the budget. Around 60%, or $1.6 trillion, of the budget was “payment to individuals” which includes Social Security ($544 billion), Medicare ($374 billion), Medicaid ($181 billion), and other types of welfare.

According to the US National Debt Clock, the national debt currently stands at over $8.7 trillion. That’s $29,000 per person. Recently the debt has been climbing at a rate of $1.57 billion per day, or slightly over $1 million every minute of every day.

Most economists agree that the national debt itself is not that big of a problem. Last fiscal year the government spent 8.5% of the budget ($230 billion) paying the interest on the national debt. That’s substantial, but it’s not hurting us too bad. The problem is that the government continues to add to the debt, and every year they spend more of our tax dollars paying the interest.

This site shows that Reagan, Bush, and George W. Bush are the only presidents that have increased the national debt as a percentage of our GDP since the end of World War II.

Governor Barbour disclosed on Wednesday that he has $3.54 million in the bank for his re-election campaign. That includes $1 million from the Republican Governors Association, $200,000 from Carl Lindner, former owner of the Cincinnati Reds and 133rd richest person in the United States according to Forbes, as well as Jim Barksdale, former CEO of Netscape and benefactor of the University of Mississippi. Barbour spent $11 million in his campaign against incumbent Ronnie Musgrove four years ago. Musgrove spent another $8 million, making it the most expensive governor’s race in Mississippi history.

Unless something happens between now and the election, that record is probably safe. Barbour is as popular as ever, and the Democrats don’t have any big names. I have no doubt Barbour can raise as much as me needs, but I don’t think he’ll have to. Bill Renick is currently Barbour’s only opponent, and he has no name recognition or money.

In the Lieutenant Governor’s race, State Senator Charlie Ross has disclosed that he has $835,000 in the bank. He’ll be going up against State Auditor Phil Bryant in the Republican primary, who will formally declare his intentions next week. Ross will need that money to beat Bryant, who has better name recognition. Jamie Franks has declared on the Democrat side. No word on his campaign war chest yet.

King Abdullah II of Jordan gave a speech at Ole Miss yesterday, and I was able to make it. I got there about ten minutes before noon, and there were already over 100 people in line. By the time they opened the doors at around 12:15, the line had grown to around 300 or so. The Ford Center only has room for around 700. The Secret Service had two metal detectors setup in the lobby of the Ford Center, and everyone had to go through them on their way in.

After I got through the metal detector, I saw a student from my class. As it turns out he’s from Jordan. I suspect he got to meet the king. I’ll have to ask him on Monday. We talked for a minute, and I was in my seat by 12:30pm.

The king wasn’t supposed to speak until 2pm, so luckily I had brought a book. I would have brought my Treo, but they had specifically asked people not to bring PDAs or cell phones. However, I saw several people using their cell phones inside the Ford Center. Unenforced rules really bug me. The room was full by about 1pm. I assume that means you would have had to be in line by around 12:30 to get in. I’m curious if they turned anyone away. I suspect they did. People were sitting in the aisles for McCain’s speech. I imagine the fire marshal wasn’t too thrilled.

There was a lot of media there. There were no less than half a dozen video cameras and three times as many photographers. There were about a dozen Secret Service agents stationed by all the doors, near the stage, and in the balconies. There were a few Jordanian security guys too. There was zero security for John McCain’s speech last year.
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His Majesty King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein, King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, will be speaking tomorrow at Ole Miss. The speech is open to the public and will be broadcast live on the Ole Miss web site. His speech is part of a series hosted by the Trent Lott Leadership Institute. Last year Senator John McCain came to Ole Miss as part of the series.

King Abdullah is a fan of Star Trek and made a cameo appearance on Star Trek: Voyager in 1995 while he was still a prince.

King Abdullah is fairly progressive as far as Middle Eastern monarchs go. However, he has been criticized for restricting free speech in his country. According to Wikipedia, Abdullah has made it illegal to publically disagree with him. It is punishable by up to 3 years in prison and a $7,000 fine. I hope there will a Q&A session after the speech like there was with McCain. If there is, I have no doubt this will come up.

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This past Friday John McCain spoke at the Ford Center on campus. He was the first speaker in the Trent Lott Leadership Institute Lecture Series. I’ve always been a fan of McCain, primarily due to his sense of humor and his straight talking ways. I was worried that I wouldn’t get to make it since we were going out of town, but it worked out after all.

It was standing room only, and not much of that. I suspect the fire marshal would not have been a happy man. Chancellor Khayat introduced Trent Lott, who then introduced McCain.

I had expected a speech on leadership or something of the sort, but he actually gave a rather short speech about current issues facing the country. Social security, foreign oil, and the war in Iraq all came up. There was a lot of clapping until he got to the war in Iraq. There was still some applause, but it trailed off considerably. I agreed with most of what he said. Once he was done with his speech he took questions from the audience. He handled all the questions very well, even the pointed ones about the war.

At one point, someone brought up the possibility of him running for president in 2008. He made it clear that he wouldn’t decide for sure until after the mid-term elections in 2006. That’s smart, thought I really can’t imagine him not running. He’s getting on up in years, so this is really his last chance. I could definitely support him for president. I would prefer for him to run as an independent, but I’ll take what I can get. At least he is an independent thinker most of the time.