A List: The Rick Warren Interviews

Evidently the cable company is not turning off the previous tenant's cable, so I was able to watch Rick Warren's interviews of McCain and Obama. It was nice to hear the candidates answer some different questions and not completely give their usual stump speeches. With that being said, once or twice I was wishing that the judge could direct the witness to answer yes or no and then explain his answer.

1. It's sort of old-man cheesy, but I liked how McCain refers to us as "my friends." Of course, that could get really old....

2. I'm glad Obama brought up the idea of decreasing the number of abortions as being common ground between those who are pro-choice and those who are not. Obviously the two camps are never going to agree about the morality and legality of abortion, but I think most everyone would like to see the number of abortions decrease. Over the last few months, I've looked into abortion more, and I've been astounded by how many are performed each year. It's really sad that there are that many unplanned/unwanted pregnancies and decreasing that number could be a great unifier.

3. Although the answers were fairly predictable, I liked the question "Which Supreme Court justice would you not have appointed." It certainly gives you an idea of where the candidates stand constitutionally, etc. And I totally agreed with what Obama said about Clarence Thomas; even as a child (granted a sort of weird one) I thought the entire Anita Hill issue distracted us from the fact that Thomas was otherwise unqualified to be a justice on the Supreme Court.

4. I certainly hope that McCain did not hear any of Obama's interview and tend to accept him at his word, but I wish he'd been in the "cone of silence."

5. When asked about who was rich Obama teased Warren about his millions in book sales. Funny.

6. While McCain may have told these stories a thousand times, I enjoyed hearing about his war experiences. Maybe I was just in a good mood. Or easily entertained.

7. While I found the interviews helpful in considering the candidates, I still wish there was some quick and easy way to evaluate the candidates, what they believe, and how those beliefs matter. I think sometimes we get caught up in what a presidential candidate believes on a certain issue, but if we looked into it more, we'd realize that it doesn't even matter (with regard to that issue) because there's no chance that his views on that would affect any policy. Or I'll read a candidate voted a certain way on an issue, but on further (and laborious) review, I might find that he actually voted that way because of a last minute rider or because passing this bill would mean something else and so forth. In fact, I heard a great story on this very issue today in which everyone was afraid to vote against a bill because they would then be labeled a certain way (basically in favor of "smut")--even though they all knew that the bill was unconstitutional. So the bill was enacted; the local governments acted in accordance with the new law; and voila local city was sued, lost, and had to pay enormous court costs (including attorneys' fees). It's all so complicated.

If you have any thoughts or opinions about the interviews, I'd definitely be interesting in reading them.

p.s. I'm grateful for the $2 Starbucks cold drink deal and that I liked my very first cold Starbucks drink. It was sort of like a milk shake (but according to the nutritional info less than 200 calories).