Political mudslinging is commonplace in every election that history has had a pen and paper to record. Mudslinging, however, is different from what we’re seeing with John McCain and the GOP. First, as put eloquently by Dr. James Zogby, even insinuating that Barack Obama is somehow less American, less trustworthy, or less in any way from you and I… purely because he’s an Arab or a Muslim is racist. It is no different from calling someone a nigger, nor is it from claiming the Jews were to blame for Germany’s economic woes in the mid 20th century. Racism is something that this country needs to feel great shame for and overcome in a positive way that reflects the respect that most Americans show toward people of other ethnicities.

If we can’t all appreciate intellectualism and elitism, can’t we at least get behind the idea that denying truths as apparent as “the sky is blue” doesn’t help anyone? Barack Obama is Christian and African American. Sorry folks, he is. As far as the elitism comments go, I heard a great point of which I can’t recall the source. It went something like this. “When we have extraordinary dangers facing us, who do we call in the military to deal with those threats? We call on elite groups of special forces soldiers.”

Why the hell can’t that same logic, which is supported by everyone, apply to picking the people that should lead our country? How is it possible that people actually think it’s better off to leave the really talented and smart people on the sidelines? Darwin would have loved that.

Dr. James Zogby says, “Enough is enough!”

Washington D.C. - October 11, 2008 -We are disturbed by the degree to which ‘Arab’ has become the metaphorical mud to sling against your opponent. This week, for example the Republican Jewish Coalition released a document in which they use the term Pro-Arab as a pejorative accusation. For his part, Rush Limbaugh has joined in by declaring that Obama is in fact an Arab American. Then, on Friday, after a supporter called Senator Barak Obama “an Arab”, Senator John McCain came to the defense of of his political opponent by saying, “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man and citizen…” From this we are left to infer that an Arab man is less then a “decent family man.”

Dr. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, says, “Enough is enough! From the beginning of this campaign there have been those who have used Muslim and Arab in an effort to smear Barak Obama. This exploitation of bigotry and the stoking of racist fires to forward an agenda is reprehensible. This is not only offensive to the Arab Americans, but to all Americans. As any ethnic group who has ever been used to scare the electorate knows, this is a dangerous game that tragically can ends with innocent people being hurt.

And while We are pleased to see that the senator is trying to dispel rumors about Senator Obama, but we feel the need to point out that Arab Americans are also decent men and women with the full rights of citizenship as enumerated under the constitution. Arab Americans are part of the great melting pot that is this country’s strength. We work towards peace in the Middle East along side our Jewish partners. We raise our sons and daughters to be model citizens of this nation. We serve this country with honor. The suggestion that any ethnic group is treacherous and Anti-American is unacceptable, dangerous, and unbecoming of such a great nation.

John McCain has finally walked back his false character attacks on Senator Obama. It’s too bad that it got this far.

I like this video of Obama predicting this line of attack

Vote for Change is a pretty cool website that makes it impressively easy to figure out where you stand as far as registration and voting. If only government run websites could be this easy. Check it out if you still have questions.

This is mildly funny and extremely unbelievable. Absentee ballots that were sent out in my home county look like this.

UPDATE:
Obama responds to Ayers attacks with a more detailed response to describe the common sense conclusion that most of America came to on their own.

It’s been a chaotic few weeks with getting settled in and all, but I need to mention how hard it has been to be productive with so much going on in politics and the economy. It feels like every half hour there is a new story of incredible proportions breaking. It seems hard to keep up with all the information out there on both the election and the economy. Final videos have been posted, as well as the pictures if you haven’t seen them yet. As mentioned…Brendan and I are still working on finishing up the stories portion.
If you’ve got 10 minutes, please read this really great Vanity Fair article on the economic crisis. I don’t know what to do but this article makes me want to do something meaningful about the financial decisions that are being made.

Also, Bill Maher has been on fire. Just excellent satire coming from him.

Ebony and Irony starts around 1:50 in -

Late Night: The whole show was good, Maher starts around 18 minutes in -

After getting the apartment here in Portland, I’ve been spending the last week wrapping up the insurance claim on the bike, running errands, getting to know the area, and following the RED SOX. Up 2-0 in the first round of the playoffs, I’ve been ecstatic to have my satellite radio work everywhere downtown. There are enough ground repeaters that I can have the game on no matter where I go. Anyone interested in the Manny trade should read this piece by Bill Simmons. Excellent research combined with sarcastic and biting analysis smacks of someone who is a fan of the team, but can also look at the systematic way the new ownership works without rosy colored glasses.

The weather here was amazing for the last week, with bright blue sky days coming one right after another. Yesterday and today have been my first taste of pacific northwest rain. It’s let me get caught up on pictures and videos for the blog and I’d anticipate with more rain tomorrow, I’ll have most of the stories caught up as well.

Caitlin and I are both doing well health wise, with only some minor infection in one of Cait’s abrasions. Thank you to everyone who has been worried about us, we both talk about how nice it is to hear from so many people.

I’ll be looking for a bicycle and a job very shortly, but looking back on the first couple of weeks here…things have been amazing.

Colbert Rips It Up

Updated In The Comments - New Pictures Up!

Hi Everyone -

Apologies for the lack of blog updating. We arrived in Portland about a week ago and were very excited for Missy and Jason’s wedding. That happened over the weekend and could not have been a better time. The night we arrived in Portland was a tough one though. After meeting Jason and Missy’s friends and family, I headed to the airport to pick up Caitlin. We’re both healthy, fine, and alright. On our way back, I crashed the bike. The bike is totaled…the accident was my fault…and we couldn’t be luckier. More details on the way in the next few days as well as a ton of blog posts to catch up the story of the trip. Crashing was definitely not in the plan, but everything that happened from the moment the bike went down… fell our way. Just couldn’t have been luckier. Thanks again for all your support.

The basic plan is for me to move to Portland now, rather than one month from now. Brendan is planning on heading down the coast to see family in San Francisco, fly home for a wedding and drive back out here in a moving truck.

The pictures make it look like a bunch of cosmetic damage. My guess is wheel and frame damage with the last straw…the engine crankcase.

I mentioned to Caitlin that I feel like, with unlimited funds, I could do this for quite a bit longer. All our basic needs are met, as well as some basic comforts. Limitations are there… but don’t seem to get in the way. Brendan and I have talked about, with the exception of internet access to keep up on topics that interest us and communicate with our friends, that we’ve pretty much figured everything else out. The excitement of finding a new place , and meeting new people of all stripes is limitless. There is also an attraction to the feeling of not being tied to any one place, job, or well…fill in the blank.

Spending time in the mid and proper west have given me a parallel perspective on this. Self sufficiency is the connection. Modern life is full of comforts, but they generally come a monetary price or at least the requirement of some ‘thing’ or ‘item’. Being on the road has forced us to be self-sufficient. We’ve conquered bathing, cooking, shelter and electricity. Of course these activities all require ‘things’, but there is something different about carrying it all and not just pushing a button or grabbing it off the shelf.

As a kid, I have vivid memories of forcing my brother to play all sorts of games with me. His interest level rarely mattered to me as my goal was merely to keep myself from being bored. It was the participation in what I was doing of another human being that I was after. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate solitude, quiet, and the like. Appreciation of these things has only served as a compliment to this social drive though. It has evolved into adult speak of cooperative activities, cooperative learning, sports, adventure & experiential education.

All these wonderful freedoms however do have a flip side for me. The lack of social interaction and a feeling of home at nightfall. When the world around us darkens…everyone but Brendan and me is bedding down for the night. As we ride, the darkness seems to close in around us, swallowing the scenery. Mountains, virgin stands of pine, and canyons are all draped in this cloak of shadows. In large doses, it makes my mind turn inward and I focus on the people I miss. I miss friends, family and the ability to talk to these people. I miss the warmth and light that these relationships bring…they would certainly have the power to light things back up.

The night that Brendan and I found ourselves in a motel, recovering from Brendan’s near death…I was trolling around on the internet and saw a message from an old college friend on Facebook. It was Kristin Schirmuhly and she was living in Denver. When Brendan and I had left Joey and Alices’s in Wisconsin, we just assumed that we’d be on our own until Jackson Hole. Here was(by the miracle of technology) an old friend offering up a place to crash. We made our way down through Fort Collins via our amazing stay at the Mishuaka Inn and took a ride through Estes Park on Trail Ridge Road.

This road winds up and down through the Rockies and provides some of the most spectacular views from elevation in the lower 48. Warned beforehand that we should stay out of the park after the mid-afternoon because of bad storms that happen almost every day, we promptly woke up late and shoved off at 4PM. Fast forward to 7:30PM and we were up on top of the world looking down over the Rockie Mountians. We also happend to be looking over the huge storm that was gathering beneath us.

It was taking position right over our route and was getting worse every minute. As we reached the rain, I thought if we were traveling at 60mph that we had a decent chance to dash right through the storm and arrive at Kristen’s just fine. Two things got in the way of that.

1) You can’t travel at 60mph coming down out of the mountains in a storm
2) It was a huge storm that seemed to be placed entirely over our route to Denver

Brendan is a champion. I had seen glimpses of this when we did a 10 hour drive from Delaware to Albany a year ago. What that ride didn’t have though, was the extreme cold of torrential rain at elevation. As we pulled into a gas station about two hours into the rain riding, I got off my bike…assuming that without any rain gear, Brendan would want to take a break and warm up inside. As I approached him, he looked at me with steely eyes that questioned my presence. When I suggested a break, he placed the gas hose back in it’s cradle with shaking hands and said, “no way…we’re going”.

We finally descended out of the mountains and into Denver. The feeling of warm dry air was palpable as we rushed toward the city. Drenched like a couple of sewer rats, we pulled into the driveway where we were supposed to meet a bunch of Kristen’s friends at a dinner party. Walking into that group of people and their house is something I will never forget. Both of us dripping water and Brendan visibly shaking from head to toe. We very quickly turned their living room into a storage locker for our gear as Brendan made a mad dash to the shower and I started in on all the delicious food they had waiting for us.

Thanks to Kristen and her friends…you saved our rain soaked asses!

After a few days of breakdowns, amazing drives, and torrential rain at ridiculous altitudes we found a small town north of Whistler called Pemberton. Our goal upon finding Pemberton was to find out if they had pizza, get some, make camp. We walked into DiCarlo’s Italian Restaurant and found Liz and Romeo. They not only offered us some pizza to buy, but also their backyard, their good company and a killer brunch this morning. It’s amazing to be taken in by complete strangers and shown such an amazing time. Cheers to the DiCarlos for their hospitality and to Pemberton for being such an awesome town.

Sidenote: We were fully prepared to eat this pizza in our tents along with some other food. Had we not met the DiCarlos, it’s completely possible that we would not have found out about the bear population that is very prevalent here and therefore never would have been heard from again.

When this whole thing started, it was hard to imagine what three months on the road would be like. I had images of being completely walled off from society, images of meeting new people in every town, and the wonder of when I would really start to miss friends and loved ones. So far, I think the best summation would be that it’s been a mix of the first two and that missing people is starting to set in. Being on the road has made for nice combination of avoiding the structures of society while at the same time having them at an arms reach. The nicest part has been getting to be a part of so many different people’s lives as we continue to meet new friends and visit old ones.

We’ve solved the issue of electricity and bathing has become less of an issue now that we have astronaut style bath soap. The internet has become such an integral part of how we both communicate with friends and learn about the world that that remains a bit of a thorn in the side. Other than that…a relatively trivial issue…we’ve really made this work and are having a ton of fun. Thanks to everyone for helping us out before we left and along the way.

Every biker we talked to on our way into Sturgis from the Badlands told us that we’d be finding one of two things. The kindest and most warm-hearted people, or the craziest party we could imagine. Now, Brendan and I are all about having some crazy experiences on this trip, and getting to see first hand what Sturgis bike week was all about seemed right up that ally. I have to admit, having told this story to some friends already, that I didn’t have any expectations for what this would be like. For some reason there was no computation in my head for what kind of party a bunch of biker dudes would throw. We rolled into town and just barely missed an appearance by John McCain where he suggested his wife should enter the strip to your skin beauty pageant.

What we didn’t miss was a monster storm. After taking refuge on the lawn of a Sturgis resident, we started making the rounds and getting directions from the wonderful community of people that seemed to come to this same yard every year. There were showers and a big garage for all the bikes. Maps and Guest books logged all the travelers. People seemed to come to this place to enjoy the parties and the vendors but mostly…to enjoy the people. Only planning on staying for the night, we headed out to see what all the party was about. After walking down the main drag and hitting two bars, it was pretty clear what the situation was. Not only was the crowd quite a bit older than we’d imagined, but the crazy party everyone talked about was nothing more than these middle aged white guys drinking a ton of alcohol. The TnA portion of this ‘crazy party’ turned out to be college age girls who were flown or bussed in from around the country to parade in front of these drunk guys in lingerie. Some were go-go dancers, others tended bar…but most of the people we talked to made it pretty clear that they were not from around here and they were there for the money. This had a pretty good sobering effect on us. Figuring we’d just seen a bad batch of Sturgis we decided to stay another night, see the black hills during the day and spend the next evening bar hopping all over town to get the best sample of what Sturgis was all about. Our hopes ended up being dashed as all we saw was more of the same. The only additions to the night were seeing guys doing body shots off of the bartenders and me getting into the middle of some Hell’s Angels. Now Brendan and I both appreciate the beauty of the female form just as much as the next guy, but the sexism was just too palpable to brush away. It permeated everything we experienced and was it not for the groups of really great people we met…I think I would have an entirely poor opinion about the place. I still haven’t decided if getting physically removed from Hell’s Angels turf was funny or scary considering that someone was stabbed the very next night. All in all, huge thumbs down to Sturgis ‘08.

Not only did we get chiggered while camping the night after we left, we had our share of motorcycle scares as well. We ran into each other on the road trying to dodge two different things and both dropped our bikes….mine into a HUGE bike sized mud puddle. The next day was when Brendan met the deer on the way into Wyoming. Now I’ve never been one for too much karma and mojo talk, but this place was not kind to us.

I’m sad to say that most of the scientific material in this book of excerpts from Einstein’s publications and speeches, material aimed at a general audience, went right over my head. Much more interesting were the discussions of such topics as religion and science, international peace, nuclear war, and Germany, Israel, and the Jewish people. The reading was a bit tough, only because his thought process was so consistent over the years. What I came away with was the following:

Keep reading…