The other day I posed the following questions to some of my friends, "Do you think you will be conservative in 20 years?". Shockingly, a few of us felt we would be. I placed the following label on myself "Conservative-In-Training" because I feel that there are certain areas I do not want to be associated as a liberal. That got me thinking, when did the terms "liberal" and "conservative" become harsh words. Very few people like to embrace either of those labels. And those who do embrace the label, they often differ to what each term really stands for.

For example, when someone says "Conservative", what picture comes to mind? Michael J. Fox as Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties? For some reason, I tend to put religion and conservatisim hand in hand. Are liberals the bra-burning, tree-hugging, non-meat eating people? I think liberals are more socially-conscious folks, they would like the government to spend more money on social programs. I think liberals do not like big business. Are these accurate portrayals? To some point, yes. But in this changing landscape, it's very hard to pin-point who are conservative or liberal. Here is an interesting article in Time Magazine that explains what I am thinking very well. Favorite quote:

And what do right and left mean anymore, anyway?

The American Conservative Magazine wrote a pretty interesting article. The series of articles were written because this particular election does not showcase the typical conservative candidate. Each writer has written an article on "The Conservative Case" on each candidate.

My favorite quote from the article written by Scott McConnell is:

These sentiments mean that as long as Bush is president, we have no real allies in the world, no friends to help us dig out from the Iraq quagmire. More tragically, they mean that if terrorists succeed in striking at the United States in another 9/11-type attack, many in the world will not only think of the American victims but also of the thousands and thousands of Iraqi civilians killed and maimed by American armed forces. The hatred Bush has generated has helped immeasurably those trying to recruit anti-American terrorists—indeed his policies are the gift to terrorism that keeps on giving, as the sons and brothers of slain Iraqis think how they may eventually take their own revenge. Only the seriously deluded could fail to see that a policy so central to America's survival as a free country as getting hold of loose nuclear materials and controlling nuclear proliferation requires the willingness of foreign countries to provide full, 100 percent co-operation. Making yourself into the world's most hated country is not an obvious way to secure that help.

It is an amazing coincidence that I had read the above article as well as this article on CNN, on the same day. I seriously hope Scott McConnell is wrong about countries using nuclear/any weapons against the United States. But, the current administration is not doing much to prevent that from happening.

I'm sure some of you are out there saying this could happen under anyone, not just President Bush. Well, my retort is, IAEA had no trouble keeping these weapons safe until the United States declared war on Iraq. Are we guaranteed that Kerry will keep these weapons safe, no. But, considering how much has gone wrong under the current President, I feel the only way to go is up with someone else.

My original point of this post was that I am very unclear as to what portrays a conservative or liberal candidate. I found out that I am not the only one who is having the same trouble. I guess this means we should just get rid of labels!

I just found this article on the NY Times. It talks about how President Bush has used his faith to make decisions, to bring people together and to help him. Personally, I think he depends too much on faith but it is kind of good to hear that he does not completely follow his religion's policies to the fullest extent. This is probably the reason that I will not vote for Bush. I have not seen him talking to folks that are not religious in order to make a decision in regards to many social issues, i.e. abortion, same sex marriages and stem cell research.

Once again I was fortunate enought to watch football yesterday as well as the baseball playoffs. Unfortunately, I did not get to see the Seattle/New England game. That was really the only game I was interested in this past week since my Giants had a bye week. I will not go into my tired old rant about how networks put the worse games on tv. I still have no idea why I would want to watch the Redskins/Bears game. But this coming Sunday I will get the New England/NY Jets game! The Redskins have a bye week.

Has anyone seen the AOL commercials where all the customers line outside the building in order to give advice to AOL executives on how to make the internet better. I was watching this yesterday and thinking, if all the customers think the internet needs to be improved what does that say about AOL? If all of AOL customers think their internet service needs to be improved, AOL must be deficient somehow. Is this twisted logic, I don't think so. AOL needs some better commercials.

So, how much will the Yankees pay to have Carlos Beltran? Bernie Williams is practically out the door, so they will need a center fielder. I'm thinking a 5 year deal, 15 mil a year. I can not believe the post-season he is having, 8 home runs already! Not quite sure though if he is worth extreme top dollar, but you never know with the Yankees.

It's pretty much confirmed that I will be in Syracuse March 25-27, 2005. Why? One of the NCAA Basketball regional will be held there. I can't wait! I will be staying at a friend's house, but I'm sure I can convince him to have a few more folks over. So, anyone who wants to join, feel free.

So, I'm not sure why MLB didn't do this last week. There were two baseball games going on at the same time, unfortunately depending on where you lived that was the game you got. Tonight, the Yankees/Red Sox play at 5pm while the Astros/Cards play at 8pm. Maybe for once MLB learned from their mistake!

Finally, researching my idea that there is only two major companies in the world, I stumbled across this site. It was very interesting in seeing which corporations own what. For instance, did you know that the New York Times Corporation owns a portion of the Boston Red Sox. Something to think about...

Here is the transcript of the final debate. For those of you who did watch baseball playoffs, you made the correct decision. This particular debate proved to be a lackluster peformance by both candidates. Unfortunately to quote my friend Jett:

"I think John Kerry will lose the election. Even if he wins, I think Bush will cheat and remain "president" anyway. I am pessimistic about this."

Bush gave many incorrect facts last night in order to further misguide many voters. Unfortunately, many voters will not realize that these were lies and Bush will most likely get elected by cheating the voters out of the truth.

Here are some lies Bush said last night:

At home, we'll do everything we can to protect the homeland. I signed the homeland security bill to better align our assets and resources. My opponent voted against it.
-President Bush
Kerry did not vote against the homeland security bill, in fact if I recall correctly, wasn't it Pres. Bush that was hesistant to even create a homeland security department

Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations
-President Bush
Maybe this was taken out of context, but President Bush you definitely said "I truly am not that concerned about him". Here is the link of the speech he gave that day.

He been a senator for 20 years. He voted to increase taxes 98 times. When they tried to reduce taxes, he voted against that 127 times. He talks about being a fiscal conservative, or fiscally sound, but he voted over -- he voted 277 times to waive the budget caps, which would have cost the taxpayers $4.2 trillion
-President Bush
President Bush, I urge you to go to factcheck.org, a non-partisan website that does the research. If you had gone you would have learned the following, Of the 98 votes cited by Bush, 43 were on budget resolutions that are not made in to laws. Of the remaining 55 votes, 16 were on President Bill Clinton's 1993 deficit-reduction package, six were on a 1998 proposal by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to raise taxes on cigarettes by $1.10 a pack, seven were on a 1996 budget resolution, and another six were on the 1997 budget resolution.

He talks about middle-class tax cuts. That's exactly where the tax cuts went. Most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans. And now the tax code is more fair. Twenty percent of the upper-income people pay about 80 percent of the taxes in America today because of how we structured the tax cuts.
-President Bush
Once again, he lied. This is for all your Republicans out there who feel that this President lowered your taxes, in actuality, if you fall in the middle class you are paying more in federal taxes. Think I'm lying, take a look at this article.

Well, to say that the borders are not as protected as they were prior to September the 11th shows he doesn't know the borders. They're much better protected today than they were when I was the governor of Texas.
-President Bush
My favorite line of the night. President Bush, why didn't you try to make the Texas border more secure while you were Governor if you knew it was such a problem. I thought you are all about protecting the American people?

I rest my case. I hope everyone who is eligible to vote on November 2nd does vote. I will be really sad if only 20% of eligible voters voted, similiar to previous years.

I decided to change the template of my blog. Let me know if you like the design or think anything is missing.

I fiddled around with the comment link as well. You will no longer get a pop-up window to enter in your comments.

Don't worry, if you hate this new look, I've got a backup of the old look.

By no means is this a Monday Morning Quarterback column, but since I was so fortunate enough yesterday to watch a few football games, I felt there were a few things I'd like to comment about.

Yesterday, I watched the Giants/Cowboys game and the St. Louis/Seattle games. At first I thought the Cowboys were going to beat up my beloved Giants, but behind Tiki's amazing runs the Giants pulled out a win. But, I think I heard way to often how Tiki has changed the way he holds the football to allow less fumbles. I heard the announcers the first time and then they had to show examples many many times. Apparently the switch has worked because he hasn't fumbled once. All I have to say is, it's only Week 6!

Next game it looked like Seattle had the game wrapped up. No way could St. Louis come back to win. Well, amazingly Seattle hasn't learned from last year, never count the Rams out. Bulger threw some amazing passes and eventually won in OT. Which brings me to the point of this post.

I'm reading ESPN's John Claytons's column about this past weekend's games. He had a few good observations but one struck a nerve with me. This is what he said:

"Sunday was a day of crazy comebacks and strange decisions. The Texans, Rams and 49ers rallied from deficits of at least 16 points to force overtime, with the 49ers and Rams winning and the Texans suffering a tough loss. And just because the team that won the overtime coin toss won all three of the games (although the Vikings didn't win on their first possession), let's not revisit the idea of changing the overtime rule. The overtime rules are set to minimize ties.

The system has worked for more than two decades. Leave it alone."

I do not agree with him. I think the OT rules are insufficient. Why shouldn't the team who doesn't score first have a chance to score?

John Clayton conveniently forgets that in 2002, the Atlanta Falcons/Pittsburgh Steelers game ended in a tie. Granted it's only one game, but if the OT rules are supposed to minimize ties, why don't we find a system that eliminate ties. Games that end in ties in football just plain suck. Not just for the fans, for the players, for the team managment folks and the NFL.

I am not proposing that we use the same system the NCAA Football does. But maybe the NFL should take a look at their OT rules. Rules are meant to be broken. NFL should not bask in it's glory as being the best sport in America, there is always room for improvement. For example, the Instant Replay. It's been in effect for 3 years now and for the most part it has done it's job. Colleges are now looking to see how they can use it.

So, John Clayton, your thinking is backwards. Just because in your mind it isn't broken doesn't mean something needs to be revisited.

For those of you that missed the Vice Presidential debate last night, the Washington Post provided a great transcript of it. A co-worker suggested that I start reading the transcripts as well as listen to the debaters, he felt that I would understand the debaters better. He is correct, there are many things I miss when I listen to people that I pick up when I actually read the transcript.

Below are some of my favorite lines from the debate:

Mr. Vice President, you are still not being straight with the American people.
-Senator Edwards

One thing that's very clear is that a long resume does not equal good judgment. I mean, we've seen over and over and over the misjudgments made by this administration.
-Senator Edwards
Something can be said for experience though...can a person learn from their mistakes? We all know people will make mistakes especially when they start doing stuff, but to truly rate good judgement for a person we must see how quickly they learn from their mistakes adn that these mistakes aren't repeated.

We've got 10 million voters who have registered to vote, nearly half of them women.
-Vice President Cheney in regards to Afghanistan
The numbers are a complete fallacy, the Human Rights Watch said many people have registered multiple times. Tens of thousands of women have been registered more than once (some believing their voting card would entitle them to benefits or food rations), and masks regional variation in the figures, including data from some southern provinces showing that less than 10 percent of those registered are women.

Your rhetoric, Senator, would be a lot more credible if there was a record to back it up. There isn't.
And you cannot use "talk tough" during the course of a 90-minute debate in a presidential campaign to obscure a 30-year record in the United States Senate and, prior to that by John Kerry, who has consistently come down on the wrong side of all the major defense issues that he's faced as a public official.
-Vice President Cheney
Irony at its best...

You end up with a situation in which -- talk about demeaning. In effect, you demean the sacrifice of our allies when you say it's the wrong war, wrong place, wrong time, and oh, by the way, send troops.
-Vice President Cheney
If you hadn't gone to war with such careless plans than more troops wouldn't be needed. But, in order to clean up the mess that you started we need to send troops.

You know, remember "shock and awe"?
Look at where we are now. It is a direct result of the failure to plan, the failure to have others involved in this effort. This is not an accident.
-Senator Edwards

The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight.
-Vice President Cheney
Cheney referring to meeting Edwards only once but in actuality he has met him a few times in the Senate. We have to wonder what Cheney is actually doing when he is presiding over the Senate. Check out this link.

In the time that they have been in office, in the last four years, 1.6 million private sector jobs have been lost, 2.7 million manufacturing jobs have been lost
-Senator Edwards
These numbers are inaccurate, approximately 900,000 jobs have been lost. But Bush is the first president in 72 years to preside over an overall job loss.

And what the most striking and startling thing is, they are the first presidency in 70 years -- and I'm talking Democrats, Republican, presidents who led us through World War, through the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Cold War -- every one of them created jobs until this president.
-Senator Edwards
Amen.

The Kerry record on taxes is one basically of voting for a large number of tax increases -- 98 times in the United States Senate.
-Vice President Cheney
Cheney continued to charge that Kerry voted 98 times to raise taxes. But FactCheck.org -- a nonpartisan group Cheney cited during the debate as a fair data checker -- says nearly half were not for tax increases per se and many others were on procedural motions.

Well, the fact of the matter is a great many of our small businesses pay taxes under the personal income taxes rather than the corporate rate. And about 900,000 small businesses will be hit if you do, in fact, do what they want to do with the top bracket.

That's not smart because seven out of 10 new jobs in America are created by small businesses.
-Vice President Cheney
Cheney said Kerry's tax-cut rollback would hit 900,000 small businesses. This is misleading.

Under Cheney's definition, a small business is any taxpayer who includes some income from a small business investment, partnership, limited liability corporation or trust. By that definition, every partner at a huge accounting firm or at the largest law firm would represent small businesses.

According to IRS data, a tiny fraction of small business "S-corporations" earn enough profits to be in the top two tax brackets. Most are in the bottom two brackets.

In effect, what's happened is that in recent months, especially in Massachusetts, but also in California, but in Massachusetts we had the Massachusetts Supreme Court direct the state of -- the legislature of Massachusetts to modify their constitution to allow gay marriage.

And the fact is that the president felt that it was important to make it clear that that's the wrong way to go, as far as he's concerned.

Now, he sets the policy for this administration, and I support the president.
-Vice President Cheney
Stop standing behind the President and tell us what you really think!

I just purchased my plane ticket to Bangkok. Don't ask how much it was...a ridiculous amount of money. I've decided to go to Denver for Christmas since my parents will be in India.

Below is my itinerary...if I'm not back in the states on January 2nd, it's probably because I'm lost in some airport.

Passenger(s): ANJALI VORA

Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Frontier Airlines # 589

Washington Ronald Reagan National (DCA) to Denver International (DEN)
Departure (DCA): December 22, 6:15 PM EST (evening)
Arrival (DEN): December 22, 8:00 PM MST (evening)
Class: Economy

--------------------------------

Saturday, December 25, 2004
Cathay Pacific # 7583
Operated by: AMERICAN -- AA 677 - Please check in with the operating carrier
Denver International (DEN) to Los Angeles International (LAX)
Departure (DEN): December 25, 7:34 PM MST (evening)
Arrival (LAX): December 25, 8:53 PM PST (evening)
Class: Economy


Saturday, December 25, 2004
Cathay Pacific # 883

Los Angeles International (LAX) to Hong Kong Int'l (HKG)
Departure (LAX): December 25, 10:35 PM PST (evening)
Arrival (HKG): December 27, 6:00 AM HKT (morning)
Class: Economy

Monday, December 27, 2004
Thai Airways # 603

Hong Kong Int'l (HKG) to Bangkok International (BKK)
Departure (HKG): December 27, 8:00 AM HKT (morning)
Arrival (BKK): December 27, 9:45 AM ICT (morning)
This flight arrives two days later.
Class: Economy

--------------------------------

Sunday, January 2, 2005
Thai Airways # 664

Bangkok International (BKK) to Shanghai Pu Dong (PVG)
Departure (BKK): January 2, 10:55 AM ICT (morning)
Arrival (PVG): January 2, 3:50 PM CST (afternoon)
Class: Economy

Sunday, January 2, 2005
United Airlines # 836

Shanghai Pu Dong (PVG) to Chicago O'Hare International (ORD)
Departure (PVG): January 2, 7:10 PM CST (evening)
Arrival (ORD): January 2, 7:05 PM CST (evening)
Class: Economy

Sunday, January 2, 2005
United Airlines # 628

Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) to Washington Ronald Reagan National (DCA)
Departure (ORD): January 2, 8:45 PM CST (evening)
Arrival (DCA): January 2, 11:28 PM EST (evening)
Class: Economy

I've been feeling a little odd lately. I've been feeling the following emotions, grumpy, sleepy, cranky and sometimes happy. But, I feel like something is out of whack. When I'm around my co-workers and friends things seem normal but there is this lingering feeling of unease. Maybe it's just that the weather is changing and I'm not ready for winter. Maybe it's just my allergies...

I'm not going to talk about the debates last night. Yes, I did watch all of it, the whole hour and half. But we've got enought people blogging/talking about it, so I'll leave it to them.

I will talk about something else that everyone else is talking about. Baseball is back in DC. I got to say that I am a little uneasy about the prospect of baseball in DC. Let me explain, I think it is terrific that DC will have a baseball team. I just don't agree with people who believe baseball will change DC. I've read many articles that say that the baseball stadium will revitalize DC. If anyone has been to the area where they are proposing to build the stadium, they will agree with me that it definitely needs some sort of revitalization. The other points that these articles state is that the stadium will bring in many jobs.

I have to disagree with those points. In terms of revitalization, many cities have tried building stadiums/arenas to make their cities more prosperous. The cities spent inexorbitant amount of money and the results they were expecting did not come about. One example, Cleveland. Cleveland built a brand new stadium for the Indians and the Browns. Instead of revitalizing the city, it is now the poorest city in the United States. I'm not sure if people forget that stadiums cost lots of money and the owners try to recoup this money by ticket sales. We all know for a fact that ticket prices have sky-rocketed. What makes this worst is that the public will be funding this stadium...and statistics aren't favorable for publicly funded stadiums. According to Stanford University economist Roger Noll, "There's never been a publicly subsidized stadium anywhere in the United States that had the effect of increasing employment and economic growth in the city in which it was built".

Well, someone could make the point, this stadium will be metro-accessible, so more people will be likely to go to the games since it will be convenient. I agree with this point. Look at the MCI Center, it's right above a metro station. Many people gladly use it in order to avoid DC traffic (3rd worst in the country). So, since so many people will be going to the stadium that will help to pay for the stadium. Well, in comparison to the MCI Center, the baseball stadium will not be used as often as the MCI Center. The baseball season is roughly 6 months long, but there aren't games every day. MCI Center can be used all year long for many types of events, it isn't pigeon-holed to one sport. Plus, the MCI Center wasn't publicly funded, most of the cost was paid by Abe Polin.

Third, it's the Expos. Who is on their team? Does anyone expect them to get better in the next year, next 2 years? Will people still be willing to go see baseball games for a team that sucks. I'll probably make the effort a little more often to see the DC team if they are good. Say perhaps, randomly after work on a Wednesday, just hop on the metro, buy the ticket at the gate and watch a game. But, I don't think I would make the effort to watch a crappy team.

In conclusion, I like the prospect of a baseball team in DC. I just have some reservations about the stadium that will supposedly be built and people's expectations of how baseball can fix this city.