Back to the Maine elections. Of the five candidates (not including write-ins), I believe Libby Mitchell is the most qualified, albeit not revolutionary. Cutler seems to like to use lots of buzz words, but seems vague on details and I don’t feel comfortable with him. I know a “vibe” or whatever you want to call it is perhaps not the most scientific of reasons (although Malcolm Gladwell would argue differently in Blink), but I do feel that he is in this for the title of Governor, not the job. Below I copied and pasted directly from Libby and Cutler’s issues web pages.
On Economy and Jobs -
Libby:

Mitchell’s plan consists of 6 specific proposals:

Expand and modernize the Seed Capital Tax Credit;
Invest in the green energy revolution to create good-paying and sustainable jobs;
Implement a Farm and Bait to Plate Program to assist local farms and fishermen;
Help small businesses and entrepreneurs develop the management skills for growth by creating the Management for Maine Program;
Construct a Rapid Response Program in the Governor’s Office to help identify companies and small businesses that are in trouble avoid layoffs or those that have great opportunities that need quick turnaround for growth;
Bond for critical transportation, infrastructure, and research and development.
We will focus on the things we do well and build on them to get a competitive advantage. We will direct our economic development resources to focus on those clusters and sectors of business which are succeeding to leverage our competitive advantage, including composites, biotechnology, technology, tourism and the creative economy.

Cutler:

My plan is simple: cut the costs of living and doing business in Maine. We can transform our economy and create jobs by lowering the cost of electricity, lowering the cost of healthcare, and lowering the cost of government services. Once we have done that, we can begin to re-build Maine by investing in education and in our competitive advantages: our people, our quality places, our natural resources and our strategic location.

ON ENERGY -
Cutler:

Lowering the cost of electricity is one of the most important things we can do to create new jobs and attract new investment to Maine. That is why I want to create an Energy Finance Authority – not a big new bureaucracy, but a small commission – that will use low-cost, tax-exempt financing and public-private partnerships to build needed energy facilities, develop our renewable energy resources, invest in energy efficiency and sell lower-priced electricity directly to Maine businesses.

Libby:

Over 20 years, reduce the energy dollars sent out of state by $1 billion through continued and aggressive weatherization and conservation efforts and a continued push for renewable energy including wind, biofuel, tidal, and solar;
Establish a program to weatherize all Maine schools;
Create a public/private partnership to run natural gas lines to Augusta and Waterville;
Merge the office of Energy Independence into the new Governor’s Office of Strategic Initiatives and Jobs
Implement the Great Maine Forest Initiative;
Protect Maine’s forest, farms, and working waterfront with a four year, $100 million in investment in the Land for Maine’s Future program;
Develop a long-term plan to protect our abundant water resources.

EDUCATION-
Cutler:

We will create a climate of excitement, reform and innovation in our schools, colleges and universities, and we will foster better education at lower costs. We will authorize charter schools. We will measure PreK-12 student performance and use those measures to reward excellence and creativity from teachers. And we will maximize the value of our college and university assets by merging our two systems of higher education into one, making sure that we organize higher education around the needs of students, taxpayers and 21st century employer

Libby:

Expand pre-kindergarten services to every school district so that children enter kindergarten ready to learn;
Guarantee a grant for every qualified high school graduate to attend the University System, one of the Community Colleges or Maine Maritime Academy;
Cut the dropout rate in half by expanding the Jobs for Maine’s Graduates program to every high school in the state;
Raise public school standards by establishing benchmarks, maximizing time spent in the classroom, narrowing the focus of the Department of Education to better serve students, and including innovation and entrepreneurship in curriculums.

These are just three examples, but over and over, Senator Mitchell has specific plans and goals for her issues. Cutler uses lots of buzzwords, but rarely any actual specific plans. I think she is far more ready to lead this state than he is.
I do think Cutler is smart, and I would hope that if he is serious about helping Maine, that he could join Libby’s government as International Trade Liaison or something like that. He has lots of experience with international law and China, that could be very helpful in expanding future exports for Maine.

As for the other three candidates here are a few thoughts on why I will not be voting for them.
Kevin Scott is not in favor of equal marriage rights for all citizens but is in favor of a casino.
Shawn Moody is not in favor of equal marriage rights for all citizens, nor in favor of mass transit projects.
Paul LePage is an angry, homophobic, lying, wingnut, tea bagger, creationist, tax cheat who faked his wife residence to avoid paying out of state tuition and thinks drilling for oil in the Gulf of Maine “should not be ruled out” even though there is no oil, and it would ruin the Maine economy to have a spill even half the size of the one that happened this year in the Gulf of Mexico.

the League of Young Voters has a good site with questionnaires for all the candidates.

I grew up going to a Christian Scientist church until I was about seven. In first grade I became friends with some kids that went to an Episcopal church and I told my parents I wanted to go there instead.
My mom was questioning the Christian Science dogma and my dad was an ex-Catholic. They also had some friends at that church so we started going there. I was an acolyte (altar boy) for several years, went to Sunday School, and played on the youth basketball team there. I was very involved.
When I was 13 it was time to do confirmation classes. By this time I had read enough history and world culture stuff that I knew about other religions and I did not want to get confirmed at the time. I wanted to spend some time reading and dealing with issues of faith before I made that commitment. I was given an ultimatum that I could no longer acolyte if I did not get confirmed. So I stopped, but the attitude upset me and I stopped going entirely, except on Christmas Eve with my folks.
Then I went to college and got a double major in Political Science and Philosphy. Reading several thousand years of thoughts made me recognize that I did not believe in God because there was no evidence for any one religion compared to another. After that I stopped going to Church at all.

I got married to a wonderful girl who grew up Catholic. However, she went to a Quaker-based school and a secular college and never expressed much interest in church. She would go with her parents when she was visiting sometimes, but we got married and moved to California. I don’t think we went to or even talked about church for 4 years. Then we moved back east, ended up in Portland and eventually had a kid (using IVF).
When she was around a year old, my wife mentioned that she wanted to start going to church again. I guess her very-Catholic mother was putting pressure on her about why the kid was not baptized yet. I thought it might be a good way to reexamine my thoughts on faith as well, so we started church shopping.
I had a couple of ground rules;
1) Nothing Catholic – Between their stance on IVF, treating women as second class citizens and the disgusting way they dealt with pedophiles in their ranks, I would not bring my daughter there.
2) Nothing Fundamentalist – The rampant homophobia and anti-science malcognizence were clear signs we should not go there.
3) I wanted a women pastor/reverend/etc – I thought if we ended up going to some place for a long time, it would be a good model for my daughter to show her women can lead a church just as well or better then men could.

So, with that in mind we went to lots of places, I will try to recount them here.
1) Unitarian Universalist on Congress St.
Way too hippy dippy for my ex-Catholic wife. Plus the random city folks made it feel a bit weird with a baby. Hard to park (we live off the peninsula).
2) Saint Luke Episcopal cathedral – Pretty church, but very gothic. Cold stone floors to kneel on. Songs in latin, very high-mass feeling. My wife thought it was more Catholic than some Catholic churches. Too stark for me.
3) St Alban’s Episcopal Church in Cape Elizabeth. Very pretty church, had driven by often on the way to the beach. Thought might be a nice community.
Showed up, could not find the right door. Finally got inside and nobody ever said hello. Not one. Left soon after.
4) Clark Memorial United Methodist Church – We ended up going here for around three years on and off. The pastor when we started was a young woman (28?) who had just started a couple of months before we visited and we thought it might be interesting to sort of grow into the church as she grew into her role as Pastor. There was a group of four or five families with young kids and while the rest of the congregation was generally older, they were friendly. Eventually they started doing an informal second service on Sunday where you could drink your coffee and the kids could run around. It was great and made going to church much more fun. The music was a bit more contemporary and we liked it. However, the older folks were having a hard time adjusting to a woman Pastor and since half the church was going to each service, things got pretty polarized. Eventually they worked with the UMC organization to force her out and get a new pastor. During this time, I spent hundreds of hours reading the bible, the Skeptics Annotated Bible, lots of books on Evolution and comparative religion and realized that what I had recognized 25 years ago was still true. I thought the whole thing was bunk and really was not interested in it or in teaching my children these fairy tales.
With that, we lost the cool service, the lady they brought in grated on me and we pretty much stopped going. We debated going back about a year ago, but due to some health issues my wife could not go and now we are pretty far removed from it. I would skip it completely at this point, but sometimes my wife wants to try again. I think she is recognizing her own doubts, but is also looking for some form of comfort in the face of Cancer.
5) Unitarian Universalist on Allen Ave – We went here after leaving Clark UMC.
Probably my favorite one. Big enough to have appropriate kids stuff and coffee hour and such. Very welcoming. No problem for me being an atheist, allowed my wife to work on her faith, while not being all fire & brimstone Catholic.

I think that is all of them, not including craft fairs and such.

I won’t vote for you if you don’t support gay marriage.
I won’t vote for you if you think creationism should be taught alongside science.
I’m less likely to vote for you if you support nuclear power.
I’m much less likely to vote for you if you support offshore drilling.
I’m more likely to vote for you if you support biomass or offshore wind.
I’m much less likely to vote for you if you think there should be an abortion ban in law.
I won’t vote for you if you don’t use Twitter.

Click through to see more explanations of his list. I will try not to duplicate too much. Here is my list of things I want in a governor.
1) Support equal rights. I like Jacobsen’s plan to make all marriages civil unions and leave marriages to churches. Should really be the way it is, since one is related to civil property rights and such, and the other is spiritual beliefs. Barring that, I would just do what the legislature did last year and simply make the forms say “spouse” instead of husband or wife. All the Democratic candidates have said they were against last year’s #1 and Mills as well.
2) Push for big incentives for weatherization projects and renewable energy, including higher gas taxes with money funneled to compact development and more buses. I know higher taxes are always problematic, but maybe the Deepwater Horizon mistake can encourage people to use less.
3) I don’t want someone for Governor that I would feel chummy with, have a beer with, be “regular people” (whatever the hell that is). I want someone who makes me feel not as smart as them. Someone who can answer questions on stuff I have not though of, someone that makes me think, “Wow they have something special.”
4) I want someone with experience doing business based budgeting, in the hopes that they will apply those skills to removing some of the junk from the current budget.
5) Someone in favor of school consolidation, especially at the administrative level.
6) Someone whose associates I admire or like their public statements. If you tend to hire and/or associate with good, smart people, that is a good sign.
If a candidates supporters mostly are monosylabic and insult other candiates/people/races/etc, then I am not going to vote for you.

That said, I am voting for Rosa Scarcelli in the primary.

Answers:
What, are you fucking stupid? They are all false. (Well, except #13. Gingers really do not have souls, but neither does anyone else. SOULS DON”T FUCKING EXIST.)

If you think science is wrong, but use GPS, a computer, the internet, a cell phone, drive a car, use anything made out of plastic, including Nylon or Polyester clothes, then you are fucking dumb.

Explanations:
1. No, it is not. We revolve around a smallish sun, on the edge of one of billions of galaxies that are trillions of miles apart. The universe is so huge it is really impossible to understand it well. The fastest thing we have sent into space, Voyage 1, travels at ~39,000 mph. At that speed, it would take around 75 THOUSAND years to get to the closest star to us, Alpha Centauri. That is 4.3 light years away. The farthest stars are 14 BILLION light years away.
2. GPS works by timing how long transmissions take to get from your GPS unit to a group of satellites. Those measurements are based on the same speeds that tell us how big (and thus how old) the Universe is.
3. Wrong, and the Doctor(oops, he has lost his license and been banned from practising) who came up with that study manipulated the data and used horrid methodology. The Lancet revoked the paper. All previous and subsequent studies have shown ZERO linkage between any vaccine info and any Autism/Asperger syndromes. The ingredient claimed to be the cause was pulled anyway, but there were no declines in diagnoses.
4. Chinese, European or whatever flavor Astrology you look at is complete bunk. No two practitioners give the same predictions and study after study has shown no correlation in birth times to later life events, successes, or failures.
5. Bacteria, Viruses, or auto-immune issues cause disease.
6. There was no short sell of stock, the owners took a huge hit on insurance, not made money, there was no exodus of 4000 Jews before the attack, the government’s response was poorly done, but that had more to do with new circumstances and an inept administration. The buildings fell as would be expected based on the circumstances, Popular Mechanics (among many, many others) clearly detailed how.
7. No, it was top-secret government testing. All accounts of extra terrestrials/aliens have never had any more legitimacy than religious delusions.
8. No, we can see the landing site now using modern satellite pictures.
9. No, we can see it is round now using modern satellite pictures and globes have been made and documented for over 500 years.
10. Non-random selection of random changes. Simple, elegant and amazingly powerful given the 4 billion years Earth has had to work on it. If you want to believe in some creation myth, which one of the thousands are you going to pick?
11. Socialism: no private property, all is collectively owned.
Communism: The stage that is suppose to happen after Socialism, where social classes go away.
Fascism: Classes are needed for a strong state, that demands loyalty to hierarchy. Anti-liberal, anti-enlightenment.
12. Any food that has been bred for distinct characteristics is a GMO food. The issues at hand relate to what could happen, but are more akin to slippery-slope arguments. There are legitimate concerns about patents and foods that cannot be replanted, but those are not related to the foods themselves.
13. The soul is an artificial construct of certain religions to help explain mind/body duality, but science (and any experience you might have with Alzheimer’s, stroke or aneurysm victims) clearly shows there is no independent mind or soul from the body.
14. Just like God is not in the Constitution, neither is sexual preference. The same part of the Bible that calls out male gay sex also forbids haircuts, tattoo’s
and cheeseburgers, but those are conveniently ignored.
15. The Soviet Union has not existed in 20 years. Fluoride saves teeth. Idiots who buy bottled water for their kids have found that out as they need far more dental care then kids who drink from the tap. For the first time in decades, rich kids have worse teeth than poor kids.

Thanks for playing!

2. As I type this, I am watching video shot by a good friend of the time near my wedding.

3. When D2 and D3 are older, I want to have a flat in Paris long enough to get fluent and tour Europe with the family, maybe 3 months, maybe 3 summers.

4. I miss my Mom surprisingly often. (Although I read a friend’s blog who lost her mom years ago and I guess its not surprising.)

5.

6. I have been to India and am glad I went, although I don’t care if I ever go again.

7. I am barely passable in French and German, but would like to be fluent in French.

8. I used to be a dues paying member of the Libertarian party and I have only voted for a Democrat for President twice since 1988, Kerry and Obama. I liked Gore better than Bush, but lived in California and felt free to vote idealistically rather than pragmatically.

9. I often find it easier to be with my in-laws than my family.

10. I think Marriage, Marijuana, shipping wine, and pretty much all consensual acts done by adults should be legalized.

11. Without my family, I would spend all my time in my car with my camera. Vaguely like Mandy Patinkin’s character in “Music of Chance”.

12. Given my druthers, I would have a Hinckley Sou’wester 59 sailboat, a small, very modern house on the ocean in RI or the Cape or the Islands, and a small cabin (or camp as they say in Maine) near a ski area and river in Northern New England. I love the skiing out west, but its too far to travel all the time.

13. The only memory of my grand parents is my paternal grandfather’s laugh. My Mom’s folks died before I was born and my Dad’s folks died when I was 3 and 5.

14. I recently sold my snowboard because I never had time to get good and I am too old to keep falling on my face.

15. Besides a video iPhone with 64 GB of storage and a good bio-diesel hybrid enduro motorcycle, I try to not to covet more stuff in my life, in fact I really am looking forward to spring to get rid of a bunch of crap in our hovel.

16. I have performed the marriage of two couples and am a legal minister.

17. I do not believe in gods, ghosts, witches, Santa Claus, or any supernatural nonsense.

18. I was kicked off the track team for playing catch with a Javelin.

19. I like watching professional football, but not college. I don’t really like watching basketball, but prefer college to pro.

20. Out of the 1095 days my daughter will have been alive on Monday, I have been around to hang out in the morning and tuck her in at night over 1000 of those and that is pretty damn cool. I hope I am as lucky with her sister.

21. I own at least three watches but have not worn one regularly in 10 years.

22. Hypocrisy makes me want to shoot people. Repeatedly.

23. I listen to music as often as possible and more loudly than my wife likes.

24. Washing pots and cracking ice cube trays are two things that I somehow seem to ignore doing all the time. But I love cooking and ice in my scotch.

25. When left alone, I can read and remember something like 700+ words per minute, which is why I have around 50 blog/news feeds in Google Reader, plus Facebook and the 3-7 books I generally juggle reading at any given time. Currently, I just finished Micheal Pollan’s “In Defense of Food”, I started but gave up on Al Gore’s “The Assault On Reason” (not bad, just very dry and I pretty much know it anyway), Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals”, Dwell and Cooks’ Illustrated magazines, James Herriott’s vet books, The Happiest Toddler on the Block, and I am about to start The Origin of the Species in honor of Darwin’s birthday on the Feb 12th.

Addedendum: I felt 3 & 7 were too similar, so here is one more. I have had over 30 flat tires in my life, including a cab I got into in Montreal.

3) I think that saying “government is bad” or “corporations are evil” are two equally stupid lines of thought. First, I don’t believe any things are intrinsically good or bad. I hate mosquitoes, but I like fish and dragonflies and they eat mosquitoes or their larvae for food. Get rid of one and you lose the other. Government has the capacity to do things that help people or not. The effectiveness of that is based on the people involved in the process. Same for business. I think one important caveat is that a companies primary goal is to make money. So, if the same job is to be performed by either gov or business, the profit motive can cause shortcomings or incentives. All depends on how it it’s implemented.

4) Bumper stickers are fun, but they are not how to solve issues. Very rarely is there a single solution to a problem. Abortion is wrapped up in religion, politics and more. I have never met anyone or seen any studies that show people want more abortions. Some think outlawing it will work, but that has not worked for alcohol, drugs, speeding, etc. Nor has it worked in the past for abortion, not sure why they think it would now. If you create safe, effective contraception, teach people the facts on sex, and allow wide access to the morning after pill, you could drastically reduce the number of abortions, thus reducing health care costs as well. There will always be a need, based on lack of education (looking at you Mrs. & Ms. Palin) or health complications. But if those were the only times it happened, then there would not even be a need for this discussion. As long as it is wrapped up in “shameful women” and religion, a rational solution will be a long time coming.
Ditto for gun control (does not work, try licensing), welfare (should be minimal and relates to sex ed and taxes as well), health control (no ads and no profits means gov can do it cheaper, but what about better?), energy policy, etc. We could be energy independent in 10 years, but not via solar or ethanol or nuclear or geothermal or wind, but by reducing consumption and increasing alternate production. A mix of all of the above options are needed, each used in an appropriate fashion.
Easy example – mail trucks. They do stop and start all day, rarely traveling more than a few miles and sit all night. That is a perfect situation for electric (not hybrid) cars. Slap some solar panels on the roofs of the post office, they would charge batteries for the cars and then could just drop in a fresh one each morning and be off. Would this work in Seattle or Maine where they do not get 300+ days of sun each year? Maybe not, but maybe they could use hybrids and for the other 75% of the country, it would work great.
The issue is not that everyone should use an electric car, but for some situations they would easier than gas (very little maintenance for one thing).
So, when people ask me questions like – do you like unions? or do you support the troops – I generally ask for clarification until they are either willing to have a conversation or walk off in a huff because I won’t give an easy answer.
I could go on about lots of those issues, but I generally find people don’t even read anymore, so not sure if anyone would get through. I might use these as launching points for my blog (message me if you want a link, I keep it anonymous).

5) I guess we are supposed to do five as that is how it was passed to me. hmmm… ohh, taxes, that’s always fun.
Make it far simpler. Median (not average, because average is disingenuous in this discussion) income in the united states is $50,233 per household. http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf
That means that 1/2 of all households in the country made less than that and 1/2 made more.
There are certainly regional variances, but lets just go with 1/2 of that – $25,116.50. I will round up for generosity and math.
If your house hold income is under $26,000 you pay no income tax. You will still get dinged by sales, gas, cigarette, and other taxes, but you owe no fed income tax.
Everybody else pays 10 percent on ALL income realized that year. I don’t care if you make it playing poker, catching lobster, selling life insurance, trading pork belly futures, sold stock or inherited it. Any money you actually make, you owe. No deductions for kids, mortgages, or anything else.
Business have the same tax rate BUT all publically traded companies have to pay taxes based on their annual reports, not GAAP or other accounting tricks. If you are telling your shareholders you made 3 billion dollars in profit, please send 300 million to the government, thank you.

Sales taxes are inherently regressive. When you only have $20k if income, most of that is going to be spent on food, clothing, etc. Sure there will be luxuries, but not $500k boats. So, again, make it simple.
3% across all states – EXCEPTING food and clothes. States keep any taxes on items shipped to their state, but not just bought on a web server located there. So, if I live in Maine, but buy wine from California at a liquor store, the state currently gets 5% or whatever. If I bought it online, there would be no tax. Some states have said that in that case, California should charge sales tax, I think that is crap. It should only be taxed at the site of usage.

The actual revenue and impact would be roughly the same as today, but it would be simpler and easier to process and enforce.

So, there are my 5. I am always open for evidenced based debate ( I was on the debate team after all), but please, no yelling, no appeals to authority, and no ad hominem.

Forget the great URL:

http://RestoreJossWhedonAndHisSmokingHotAssKickingChicks.org

It just links to the video