The Swarrell Life

1) My wife is beautiful and I love this series of photos. 2) Barack Obama is not a socialist. The guy in this video is the actual Socialist Party Candidate for president. Obama a socialist? Um, no.

I received an e-mail this morning from a friend who is big GOP fan. I have included a portion of the original message below my response. I changed his name, in case this might bother him. I hope that I am wrong when I say that I think many people do not know when hyperbole is being employed, or even what it is: Dear Friend, The truth is somewhere in between conservative and liberal, maybe not even on the same plane of existence. I think that often we are asking the wrong question, making any answer at all irrelevant at best. The abortion issue is an example of an issue being over simplified to the point that it is about legality. I think that abortion is wrong. But do I think that making it illegal is going to solve the problem? There is a statistic that says that over half of global abortions happen in places where abortion is illegal. What does that say about the issue? That it is not the law that is going to make the difference. There are numerous studies that show that quality of l...

Only three weeks until the due date of our daughter. I have to say that I am a little nervous, mainly because so much is unknown. I know that it will be okay, but for now I'm a bit apprehensive. But Autumn is looking beautiful, as you can see above! I feel like the luckiest guy on the planet to have her as my wife.

I have voted for a president for exactly the second time in my life. I was raised in a largely right wing environment. I guess that's why voting for Ross Perot in 1992 was such a big deal. I was breaking with tradition, starting to think for myself. I became a bit disillusioned with the two-party system and decided to forgo voting for a while. Then I started regaining an interest in politics. The problem was that you can't speak to something that you are not participating in. So I registered, and here we are. I am not as timid about my views anymore. Thanks to my wife, I have learned to talk about issues in a more articulate way. Sometimes. Okay, maybe I still bludgeon people with them. I guess we all become our parents eventually. Either way, we should not have to vote out of fear. We should be voting FOR something, not simply AGAINST something. Jim Wallis in a blog entry on God's Politics articulates how fear is not what we should be subjected to or subjecting other peop...

Neither am I!

My take on abortion and gay marriage are very similar. Want to hear them? I'm glad you do. Read on; if you are a Christian, read it twice! The basic idea is that making something illegal is akin to winning an argument. You are not going to get someone to change how they feel by winning an argument. For instance: according to the Guttmacher Institute , "Legal restrictions on abortion do not affect its incidence. For example, the abortion rate is 29 in Africa, where abortion is illegal in many circumstances in most countries, and it is 28 in Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds. The lowest rates in the world are in Western and Northern Europe, where abortion is accessible with few restrictions." So making something illegal doesn't change people's minds about abortion. It is a highly personal decision, whether you are for it or against it. I would say that marriage is a highly personal decision. If we extend the same logic of the abortion ar...

The time is FLYING by, less than month to go. Today we get to hear the baby's heart beat again. We now are going to weekly doctor's appointments. I know that both of us are a little nervous, simply because it could happen at any time and there is so much that is unknown. We have prepared the best we can, now we just hope that is enough. Should we have read one more book? Maybe, maybe not. No matter how much we read, we'll never be ready. But I am still going to read one more book. Maybe it will have that one thing that will make the reading worthwhile. Meanwhile, our daughter is as big as swiss chard? Weird.