Last week, the news was aflutter with Rick Perry’s withdrawal from the presidential race. This week, the big story is Newt Gingrich’s victory in South Carolina. If we are to believe the mainstream media channels and the pundit consensus, we may be in for Round 2 of Obama vs. Anyone-But-Obama.

Round 1 involved our current president’s 2008 showdown with John McCain-Not-Obama. McCain garnered 26.6% of eligible votes (down from 28.5% for Bush in '04), and Obama received 30.8% (up from 27.1% for Kerry). Independents and 3rd parties accrued 0.9%, while the other 41.7% stayed home. The fact that McCain obtained as many votes as he did was a reflection of serious disdain for Obama, rather than an actual base of support for McCain himself. What I heard from most of my conservative friends was “he’s not perfect, but at least he’s not Obama!”

As we look at a possible Round 2, the media and pundits are spouting that Mitt Romney-Not-Obama is the likely nominee, with Newt Gingrich-Not-Obama as an alternate. Actually, he is better known as Newt Gingrich-Not-Romney-Not-Obama. No one I know is particularly pumped about going to bat for Newt; they simply think he's a more palatable Not-Obama than Romney.

Either option leaves Republicans holding their collective nose and voting for a decidedly non-conservative candidate. In 2008, Democrat contender Barack Obama actually managed to inspire the Republicans more than any candidate within their own party. He stands to do so again.

As has been observed elsewhere, the failure of a single candidate to rally conservatives reveals the deeply-fractured nature of the party. More importantly, though, it reveals that the relationship between Republican leaders and their constituency is on the rocks. In short, the Republican Party is in trouble.

The Nature of the Game

Don't get me wrong; I'm not a fan of political parties in the first place. At one time, I thought the solution to our two-party mess was to have more parties. More parties equals more choice, right?

Alas, I have come to realize the truth: political parties serve only to limit choice. They do not allow politicians who agree on one issue to cooperate, for fear they'll be seen as "aiding the enemy." Parties discourage strong ideological principles in deference to the almighty club membership. Worse than this though, they relegate people to rigid, self-destructive groupthink. The Party encourages members to climb into a box and reject anything beyond those cardboard walls as a possible solution.

From the inception of partisan politics in the U.S., parties served to move our democratic republic away from a nation under the rule of law, guided by the will of the people. We have morphed into a nation under the rule of popular opinion, guided by banks and businesses with close ties to the government.

Let us leave the political world for a moment, and consider a modern professional baseball game. Both teams play by the same rules, and their singular goal is to out-score the opposing team. There is relatively little divergence from one team to another in terms of strategy. Despite all of this, true baseball fans are fiercely loyal to their own teams. No amount of success, roster movement, managerial change, charity involvement, nor any other such factors is going to make a fan of the Boston Red Sox don a Yankees jersey, or vice-versa. In fact, I would wager that these two teams could entirely swap rosters, managers, and owners – so long as they didn’t change the team name and location – and the fan base would remain the same. (I know I’ve just lost some of the baseball people for the rest of this article as they lie on the ground, twitching. No worries, friends – this is all hypothetical!)

While this arrangement is fine for baseball, it has some serious negative consequences when applied to politics. The Republican and Democrat parties as they currently exist are glorified sports teams. The fans are voters, and for far too long, they’ve been very loyal.

The Man Behind the Curtain

During any election cycle, rhetoric abounds about fundamental differences between the parties. If we are to believe politicians, then real ideological differences exist, and the choice for one or the other determines the direction of the nation. For the constituency, this is absolutely true. Some genuinely believe that the government can (and should) help the unfortunate, provide social justice, and keep corporations in line. Others hold that government is incapable of these things, and that the real role of government is to provide a level playing field and to ensure personal liberty.

At the leadership level, this is largely a false dichotomy. Election after election, certain agendas move forward with complete disregard for partisan shifts.

For instance, the debt ceiling almost always increases, regardless of party. The last time the debt ceiling was lowered was almost 50 years ago, in 1963. It was lowered twice that year during the JFK administration, before he was assassinated in November.

Both parties serve to increase the size of government, make military contractors wealthy, pass bailouts recommended by the Federal Reserve, interfere in the politics of other nations, incrementally reduce the freedoms of citizens… it’s a long list.

On display for voters is the narrative that Democrats and Republicans are locked in an epic struggle for control of the political ideology that will steer our nation. Behind the curtain is the ugly truth: This country is being steered in a single direction, regardless of who is at the helm. The only struggle in question is who will be paid to rubber-stamp the heading as Captain, and who will get to dole out the very lucrative contracts associated with maintaining the ship. In the end, the leadership of both parties will be living it up with their friends in First Class. The rest of us toil below decks and argue about which group of aristocrats has our best interest at heart.

Thus, the man behind Oz’s curtain is revealed. The danger is not that wealthy people are in charge, nor that wealth is divided unevenly among the citizenry. The real danger is two-fold: 1) We drones working and living in the common areas are never permitted to leave, to find another ship, nor to influence the direction of the one we’re on. 2) Most of us are completely unaware of our situation and the true nature of the game being played at the top.

The party elite (their “elite-ness” is derived only from connection to the party) truly do not care which group is in charge. They will get their money either way. Goldman-Sachs has no party affiliation. They will dole out contributions to either party as they see fit. Halliburton will continue to get contracts no matter who is in charge. The mainstream media will continue to shape the debate and then profit from the narrative they have created. The impetus to increase the size of government, to increase our military intervention overseas, and to continually inflate the monetary supply is not remotely threatened by any nominal conflict in congress nor any change in the executive branch.

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Once the farcical narrative of partisan conflict has been exposed, it becomes much easier to understand the continual changes in Washington, to focus on what’s important, and to predict what is to come next.

We started with the observation that the Republicans are currently facing a scenario much like the one they did in 2008: voting for a candidate they disdain in order to avoid one they truly despise. In a case of it-would-be-funny-if-it-weren’t-so-sad, the Democrats are facing a very similar challenge this time around. Barack Obama has alienated much of his base by falling through on many of his promises. He did not draw back our military forces from the Middle East in a timely fashion. He has not closed the prison at Guantanamo Bay. He has not increased transparency in legislation, nor fought for civil liberties, nor made choices faithful to the Constitution. Amid continued economic disaster, all of this should spell defeat for any incumbent. However, if Republicans can only offer a repeat of their last nominee, they face annihilation.

Herein is demonstrated the political genius of the party elites. They are offering a choice between two candidates, neither of which is well-liked by either party. Yet, voters will get in line behind one or the other, depending on which team jersey they like best. Either way, the political leadership will get what it wants – they win. Either way, the people will be delivered something they don’t want – they lose.

The real contest is not between Democrats and Republicans, but rather between the Political Elite and the Citizen. Indeed, the Elite do their best to deny this fact and to propagate the idea that the partisan contest is real. Thus far, the Elite have been playing excellent chess. The Citizen has lost pieces all over the board and is facing an inevitable checkmate. Worse, he remains largely ignorant of his opponent’s identity. Despite the grim outlook, all is not lost.

One advantage remains to the Citizen that the Elite can never supplant. Party leaders have always known about this, and they fear it above all else. They make every effort to hide it from the Citizen, to keep it out of discussion, and to direct attention elsewhere. Nonetheless, in order to claim victory, the Citizen need only stand up -- and walk away from the board.

More and more, people are realizing that the current party system is not serving their needs. Occupy-minded Democrats and Tea Party-thinking Republicans are finding common ground in their opposition to bailouts for rich bankers and well-connected corporations. Adversaries of big government on the right and civil rights activists on the left are finding reason to unite over Federal encroachments on personal liberties.

The most recent evidence of this is displayed in the success of the Ron Paul campaign. Even within the Republican party, his Constitutional views on government are gaining support in the 10 – 15% margin. When you add independents into the mix, that number jumps past 20%. These supporters reject the monopoly claimed by party leaders over the political process. Though the leadership rejects him and his message, they are unable to squelch his influence. So long as party leadership continues to fail as a supplier of legitimate political ideology, it will also fail as a reflection of the people’s will.

Invasive Surgery

Yes, the Republican party is dying from the tumor growing on its heart; major surgery is needed. Any patient knows this news is difficult to bear, but for the party leadership, it is a death sentence. For too long, the leadership has been a cancerous growth feeding from and ultimately destroying healthy tissue. If you ask the tumor, it will never opt for removal. It will remain, draining resources and life until the patient is completely beyond recovery.

Right now there is only one doctor offering the proper surgery, and the tumor is in panic mode. It is doing everything in its power to intimidate, bribe, persuade, and otherwise coerce the patient to allow it quarter. Dr. Ron Paul has the scalpel in hand and over 30 years of experience with this exact form of cancer. He guarantees that the surgery will be painful and scary for a short time, but also that the chances of full recovery are excellent.

The Republican party has to ask itself whether it is ready to embrace this doctor and the life-saving surgery he offers. Otherwise, the tumor will stay, and the party will be on its own.

This is a problem for a lot of people; it leaves them with the idea that Paul would prefer bin Laden not face consequences for his purported role in multiple terror attacks over the last two decades. This is not Paul's position at all, but it bears some scrutiny.

First, it's worth mentioning that Paul called this one as far back as October 2003:

His analysis of our relationship with Pakistan hasn't changed since that time, and it's clear that he was ahead of the game early on. Paul didn't have some secret information that lead him to be correct in 2003 -- he simply used his understanding of our foreign policy in the Middle East and applied it to what he was seeing.

He was against spending billions of dollars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was against risking thousands of military lives and those of countless foreign civilians to go after a terrorist who was in neither country. He was against attacking and occupying a sovereign nation without a declaration of war.

He was not against finding Osama bin Laden and bringing him to justice.

In November 2001, Paul introduced H.R. 3076, aka. the Marque and Reprisal act of 2001. He listed Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda by name as the targets of the proposed letters. These specifically grant the President authority to hire "privately armed and equipped persons and entities" to go outside U.S. boarders to seize bin Laden and any co-conspirators. The Constitution (Article I, Section 8) provides for Congress to grant letters of Marque and Reprisal to the executive branch as a response to threats against our national security.

The main idea behind this is that a relatively surgical force would be used to apprehend Osama bin Laden and any of his co-conspirators rather than an occupation force. Incidentally, it is a surgical force like this which actually achieved the goal of eliminating Osama in the end (of course, they were military rather than private).

So, given these facts, what is Ron Paul's beef with the way things went down?

1. Osama never stood trial nor had the chance to provide us with intelligence.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al Qaeda operative accused of masterminding the 9/11 attacks, was apprehended in Pakistan in 2003 by Pakistani intelligence forces. He is being held at Guantanamo Bay and is set to be tried by a military tribunal for the crimes of which he is accused. If he is convicted, he will almost certainly face the death penalty.

Paul's argument here is that if bin Laden was a higher-priority target than Mohammed, we would ostensibly want to gain intelligence from him and have him face trial as well. The current version of the raid holds that bin Laden was unarmed. He could have been captured alive. He almost certainly would have been executed after trial. It makes little sense to me that we would not want to gain intelligence from him nor want to see him tried.

Incidentally, not everyone in Paul's non-intervention camp agrees on this issue. Michael Scheuer is the former head of the CIA's unit on bin Laden, and has sided with Paul on Afghanistan, Iraq, and blowback. He recently posted, "The death of Osama bin Laden is great news for the United States, and it is much better that he was killed rather than captured."

2. We used our military to invade a sovereign nation without permission.

This is hardly a concern for most Americans -- we've been doing that for a long time without regard for the Constitution. Some would argue that we're entitled to go wherever we want with impunity to avenge 9/11, but I disagree strongly. My most concise argument is to reverse roles:

Imagine that a private citizen of the U.S. has planned a successful attack on civilians in Pakistan. Our government is either incapable or unwilling to apprehend this citizen, and the Pakistanis want justice. Would they be entitled to enter our airspace and carry out a military operation without our permission? How would we react in that situation?

The real question is whether we're entitled to disregard the sovereignty of another nation just because we have superior military force.

In summary, Ron Paul was not opposed to capturing Osama bin Laden, nor to having him face justice. His concern is that we make our foreign policy and national security choices in a way that follows the Constitution and makes us safer in the long run.

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• Fallen Media Filter: Lets me embed pretty much any type of video or audio I would like with shortcodes. Old, but effective. (example)
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• OpenID: Incorporates an OpenID provider and consumer into my blog. I can sign in/comment on other websites using my blog as an OpenID, and you can leave comments with yours. This requires XRDS-Simple, so I have that installed too. I used phpMyID at one time, but it did not allow my blog to be a consumer.
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(Yes, this is a pretty terrible, one-off recording.)

Happy Friday.

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

for you smartphone people

Now I've gone and made it public. I'm sure if I ever do settle down, I'll fall in love with someone who's nothing like most of these. This is totally going to come back to haunt me.

Essentials:

• Serves Jesus of Nazareth

• Dedicated to being part of a congregation wherever she lives.
• Does not consider divorce an option.
• Trusts and respects me.

Would be Nice:

• Accepts (good)/Appreciates (better)/Shares (great!) my obsession with foreign languages.

• Would be interested in living abroad for extended periods of time.
• Holds libertarian political values.
• Thinks reading is fun.
• Her idea of a great date is staying home, renting a movie, and snuggling on the couch. (movie optional)
• Could let me pamper her for a day without feeling guilty in the slightest.
• Could pamper me for a day without feeling used in the slightest.
• Loves to receive and give back rubs.
• Knows the difference between good cartoons and poor ones.
• Tends to see the best in everything and everyone.
• Takes genuine compliments as they are intended.
• Sometimes/frequently leaves the house without wearing makeup.
• Thinks being 5 - 10 minutes late for most events is normal.
• Would be bored after 30 minutes of shopping for clothes.
• Thinks living without Cable TV is a good idea.
• She is a great personal communicator.
• Never uses their when she means they're or your when she means you're.

Just Icing on the Cake:

• Thinks making unsolicited sandwiches for her future husband would be fun.

• Her first reaction to the words "family vacation" is to wonder which tent we should bring.
• She likes karaoke.
• Enjoys good-natured ribbing (i.e. thinks insult wars are funny).
• Holds the following pet hierarchy: Large Dogs, Ferrets, Cats, Sea Urchins, Small Dogs.
• Thinks waking up at 6am voluntarily would be ludicrous.
• Does not find the making of a future wife wish list to be insane and/or creepy at all.

I remember watching this movie for the first time, and it was pretty disturbing.

One might say that I simply have a weak stomach or that I'm unable to deal with reality. To the contrary, I believe there's an extent to which the reality of war should disturb us. Something is fundamentally wrong when one human is responsible for the death of another. If I am in a car accident in which another driver is killed -- even if I'm not responsible -- I don't shrug it off as bad luck; it's a life-changing event. If someone is sentenced to death, it is usually because they have caused the death of another. Killing (voluntary or involuntary) is an action that we have no power to reverse. We take it seriously.

This reality does not disappear in war. Combatants do not enter into lethal engagements lightly. If they do, it is viewed as particularly heinous, even among soldiers.

So what does any of this have to do with insurgency?

Motivations

Mel Gibson's character, Benjamin Martin, is hesitant to become involved in any conflict with the British at the beginning of the film. He has seen his share of violence in the French and Indian War. He knows how brutal things can be, and has himself committed atrocities. He does not want to expose his seven children to that kind of existence. Nothing the British have done in terms of disrespect, oppression, or even violence elsewhere in the Colonies is enough to rouse him. Neither freedom nor liberty are sufficient to inspire him. One single issue drives his hatred and willingness to die fighting, and that is the indiscriminate killing of his civilian son. From that point on, he becomes a member of the armed resistance. In modern terms, he would certainly be categorized as an insurgent.

Of course, we know that The Patriot is a fictional story loosely very loosely situated in historical context. What is not fictional, however, is the psychology behind Martin's reaction. We humans will endure significant abuse and oppression before involving ourselves in armed resistance against a government force. No one wants to become a target, and we'll usually try to evoke change via means that don't get us shot.

All of that changes if you start killing our children. If that line is crossed, all bets are off.

Nearly a decade has passed since the September 11 attacks of 2001, during which time much has been made of an existential threat posed to our nation by Islamic extremists. According to Bush 43, our resultant war on terror will not stop until "every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated." Furthermore, he claims terrorists "hate us" because we have a "democratically-elected government", and because we have "freedom of speech." Assuming it were possible to defeat every terrorist cell around the world, the argument is that we could commence with being free and secure once again.

This understanding of terrorist motivations has been accepted and repeated by our mainstream media outlets. It has been the party (both parties?) line ever since. Nearly a decade later, we remain in Afghanistan (to say nothing of our other entanglements) with no apparent intent to leave. It would appear that we have been incapable of achieving our stated goals thus far, and do not expect to achieve them in the near or foreseeable future.

Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit, has an alternate understanding of why terrorists are willing to attack the United States. He argues that the reason we're attacked is not because we're free or because of cultural issues, but rather due to our policies in the middle east. He bases that belief on Al Qaeda's explicit claims: "Vote for whoever you want: Bush or Kerry or the devil himself. This does not concern us. Our concern is to purify our countries from aggressors and to stand up to whoever attacks us."

Perspectives

Of course, there will always be anomalies like bin Laden or Zawahiri who are willing to fight for regime change. They are displeased with the oppressive leadership of Saudi Arabia, and with Israel's policies in Palestine. These governments (and others) would lose significant influence without the United States, and he's willing to fight to degrade that influence. However, your average Afghan resident has no direct interest in these issues. Many of these people have never even heard of the 9/11 attacks. They are doing well to feed themselves.

So why would they get involved with a group like Al Quaeda? -- for the same exact reason as our fictional Benjamin Martin: because their loved ones are dying.

A few days ago, 9 Afghan children were killed in an operation when they were misidentified as insurgents. As disillusioned as I am, I have a hard time believing that NATO troops would intentionally kill children in reprisal to an attack. Regardless, this is by no means an isolated incident. In fact, Gen. Stanley McChrystal made the following comments about our early involvement in Afghanistan:

"We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force... [none of the cases in which] we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it."

With that kind of admission from a General, it's not hard to see why the likes of bin Laden would find recruiting much easier. Consider this reaction by Mohammed Bismil, adult brother of two of the young boys who were killed last week: "The only option I have is to pick up a Kalashnikov, RPG or a suicide vest to fight." Another quote comes from a relative of injured civilians in a May 2010 attack: "If the military keeps doing this, the people will go into the mountains to fight them. When I saw my daughter injured, all I could think about was putting on a suicide jacket." (see video below at the 36:50 mark for the interview)

Conclusions

I recall my sense of queasiness being mingled with some level of satisfaction as I watched Mel Gibson unleash his holy wrath on a platoon of British soldiers with the expertise and stealth of a ninja. (It was like seeing the Punisher and Batman rolled into one.) His son had just been killed needlessly. He had a right to revenge. He had a mission to save his oldest son. He was achieving an honorable goal and making aggressors pay.

Of course that is an easy position for me to take. I'm an American white man; I can identify with this guy on a cultural level. I would be devastated if a child or a brother were murdered by an outside military force. I could almost see myself taking that kind of retribution, given the chance. It should be easy to understand the motivations of someone who has seen their loved ones killed by foreign forces, someone who has not been inundated with messages about the evils of the Taliban and Al Quaeda. We may see the man with an RPG or suicide jacket as an insurgent -- a terrorist -- but he sees himself protecting the family he has left and pursuing a righteous vengeance. Perhaps it would behoove us to consider how impossible it would be to see things any differently in those shoes, and to direct our policies accordingly.

One thing is clear: if we continue to kill civilians, we also deliver fiercely-dedicated recruits to Al Quaeda and its allies. Our long list of failures in this regard leaves no doubt that our declared enemy has grown stronger and that we have become less secure as a direct result of our presence in Afghanistan.

For instance, as a middle-schooler, I had a pretty sour disposition and very few friends. When I moved to a new city as a freshman, I decided I would be a totally different person. I remember clearly the conversation I had with myself before the doors opened my first day: "Lloyd, it doesn't have to be like it was at your old school. No one knows you, and as far as they're concerned, you might be the coolest guy here. Take down those walls you've built up and make some friends." I didn't turn out to be the coolest guy in school, but my social station improved greatly. Whatever people thought of you before, whether good or bad, you can change it all in a new place.

I bring this up because yesterday in my Bible reading, I felt led to look at Ezekiel 33. Ezekiel is told to relay a message for God. I'd like to quote it here because no summary I have composed does justice to the import of this passage:

Therefore, son of man, say to your people:

"If someone who is righteous disobeys, that person's former righteousness will count for nothing. And if someone who is wicked repents, that person's former wickedness will not bring condemnation. The righteous person who sins will not be allowed to live even though they were formerly righteous.

If I tell a righteous person that they will surely live, but then they trust in their righteousness and do evil, none of the righteous things that person has done will be remembered; they will die for the evil they have done.

And if I say to a wicked person, 'You will surely die,' but they then turn away from their sin and do what is just and right -- if they give back what they took in pledge for a loan, return what they have stolen, follow the decrees that give life, and do no evil -- that person will surely live; they will not die. None of the sins that person has committed will be remembered against them. They have done what is just and right; they will surely live.

Yet your people say, 'The way of the Lord is not just.' But it is their way that is not just. If a righteous person turns from their righteousness and does evil, they will die for it. And if a wicked person turns away from their wickedness and does what is just and right, they will live by doing so. Yet you Israelites say, 'The way of the Lord is not just.' But I will judge each of you according to your own ways."

It's shocking to me how accommodating God is here. What I mean by that is, God gives us the freedom to change our mind about what kind of person we want to be.

We humans have a tendency to assign one another (and ourselves) permanent labels based on our past. Inertia is a physical concept, but we import it frequently into the spiritual realm. If I lied to someone yesterday, they might assume I am that much more likely to lie again today. Conversely, if I've been making good choices for the last ten years, people may assume I'm nigh insusceptible to do anything different.

It's funny how often a godly life is seen as a set of chains to restrict us from doing what we like, and yet God's very choice to allow us free will also pegs Him as unfair. How can He immediately accept someone's choice to change for the better when they've been making bad decisions for years? Do all those things count for nothing? Conversely, how can He condemn someone who begins to make bad decisions when they've been doing well all their lives? Do not all those years count for anything?

The problem, I think, is with our skewed perspective. We only see these policies of God's in light of how they affect us in the moment. If God allows me to have a second chance, to change and do better in the future, then He's great. If He allows that same freedom to someone who wounded me deeply, He is unjust. Conversely, if God forces those who commit to Him never to change their mind, never to have the freedom to walk away, He has created soulless automatons. If He allows someone who has stayed on the path their entire life the freedom to turn off at the last minute and waste all those years, He is heartless.

In our twisted way of thinking, God cannot win.

Returning to our tendency to assign these permanent labels, let me confess that I've been completely guilty of that way of thinking, myself. I've assumed people who have wounded me in the past would continue to do so, and so put up my walls to refuse them the opportunity. The cruel end of that path, by the way, is even more pain. It often results in the loss of what might have been wonderful if we'd not made such stalwart assumptions.

Perhaps even more cruel is when I affix these permanent labels to myself. We all know the voice inside who whispers that we can never escape who we are or who we once have been. We choose to agree with this voice, and descend ever further into our own demise.

It's comforting to know that the voice with whom we've so frequently agreed is lying. What we once were -- even what we are -- is not binding. Rather, we have the freedom (and every reason) to choose better.

It's been a long time since middle school, and I'm thankful most of you never knew me then. Being stuck with that personality would be pretty unpleasant. Whatever laurels I may now possess, I want to resist the temptation to rest on them. The same voice that would bind me to pits in my past would just as soon blind me to those in my present.

Lord, teach me to walk right beside You, following where You lead. Only in submitting to You do I escape the chains behind and the pitfalls ahead.

These are just presented in the order I wrote them down:

1. Read the Bible all the way through.
2. Translate one of the shorter books of the New Testament from Greek.
3. Get my weight down to 175lbs.
4. Run a 7:30 mile.
5. Bench my own weight.
6. Have at least one immediate neighbor visit my apartment.
7. Visit Japan.
8. Take the GRE.
9. Read twelve books.
10. Host a single day LOTR movie marathon.
11. Write a short story.
12. Write a song.
13. Take a road trip somewhere west of Texas.
14. Play at an open mic night.
15. Cook a legitimate three course meal for someone(s).
16. Ride the city bus for at least an hour.
17. Complete a two-day solo hike.
18. Wake up to see the sun rise once a month.
19. Take care of/keep from killing a plant for at least three months.
20. See the Grand Canyon.
21. Spend a night sleeping on my porch.
22. Convince someone to walk around with me in the pouring rain.
23. See a big college football or NFL game.
24. Pay off my credit card (and thereby be debt-free).
25. Perform fifty consecutive push-ups.
26. Sing karaoke solo.
27. Have lunch with a professor from my alma mater.
28. Enter a ping pong tournament.
29. Learn all the words to "Ice Ice Baby".

So that's it, folks. If you've got any better suggestions and think one of mine should be replaced, you'd better get it in before Tuesday. : )