February 20, 2008 - Now that Ellie has a car again, I was able to drive to work on my own. This was particularly well timed, because I had a gig right after work today, and if she didn't have a car she would have had to work out some alternative arrangements. It was an exciting day at work today for me. I put together my first proposal to a customer. I was in charge of everything from contacting the customer for more information to writing up the proposal to sending it out. And while I think our chances of winning the bid are pretty low mostly for geographical reasons, it was exciting to be trusted to put everything together. I had to leave work a little early today to get to Little Harbor Resort in Ruskin by 5:15 PM. Traffic was light so there were no problems getting there on time. I played for 4 hours with Bonnie. During our last sent, the moon went into full eclipse. We stopped playing for a few minutes to observe. I was reminded of a few things. 1. The moon doesn't play a big role in my life, and watching this eclipse wasn't very exciting. 2. It must have been very different 200 or more years ago when eclipses happened, because they were probably not as knowledgeable about when they would happen, and there weren't all kinds of sensational things dulling down the excitement of a full lunar eclipse. 3. There are a lot of songs that involve the moon. In fact, I am somewhat interested in recording a moon themed album some day. On my way home from the gig I stopped at the band house in Ybor to catch the end of practice, but nothing was going on at that point, so I continued home, arriving just before midnight. I've been listening to a lot of public radio lately. There is a program called Democracy Now on 88.5 (WMNF) that leans quite towards liberal stances. I find it troublesome that the media is allowed to be so biased in its programing, especially on a public channel. But even more than I find that troublesome, I find the prospect of Hillary Clinton being elected to be a tragedy for the democratic republic we call the United States of America. If I am doing the math correctly, for the past 20 years our country has been run by 2 families, the Bushes and the Clintons. We have 4 years of George Bush, then 8 of Bill Clinton, then 8 of George W Bush. Now, it's not that I don't like Hillary. I don't even care about how great she might be for the country. The part that I think is a disservice to our form of government is the fact that if Hillary is elected, it would potentially mean 24 or 28 years (if she gets elected twice) of rule by 2 families. Assuming 28 years, that would mean the same two families have run our country for almost 13% of its existence. Now, I'm not a political expert, but I don't think there are many countries out there that call themselves democracies that have had a similar experience. This sounds more like what you would expect from a country run by a dictatorship or a regime. But the crazy thing is, we, the American people did it to ourselves. Given the option of probably fifty million or more people meeting the qualifications to be president, we select the ones who represent a continuation of familial rule, rather than seeking out the person who might be most qualified to do the job. And I think this familial relationship is something that runs through more than politics, so I'll address that more in the future, but I think having a country dominated by families is, even given our 'liberties and freedoms that we all enjoy', nothing better than the regimes that exist throughout the world that we are trying to dismantle governmentally and militarily in the name of spreading freedom and democracy. If we as a country can't even figure out how to select leaders that are going to represent the people rather than selecting people who will continue their family and personal power-grab, what are we doing thinking that the countries we are uprooting are going to be any better off now than than they were?