Tag Archive for 'politics'

Election 2008: It’s Obama for the win

After so long, it’s finally over. Barack Obama has won the presidency. I can’t express how happy I am. It’ll still be up to Obama to prove to America that he’s got what it takes, but at least Americans are willing to give him a chance.

Obama a Muslim? The horror!

It’ll never cease to amaze me how many people want to believe Barack Obama is some kind of secret Muslim. I mean, first off, what will it take to get people to finally believe him when he says he isn’t a Muslim? And second, what exactly is wrong with Muslims? I happened to be reading the Constitution the other day and I didn’t see anything in there that said, “Muslims cannot be president and if one does become president, that’s a sign of the apocalypse and the United States will turn into a nation of gay abortion-lovers who rape children.” Seriously.

The latest weapon of the “HAY GAIZ, OSAMA IS A MUSLIM” campaign is the fact that Obama used to go by the name Barry Soetoro when he lived in Indonesia. This is hardly surprising considering that his mom married a guy with the last name Soetoro. Oh wait! That’s apparently bad, too! Why? Because Obama didn’t make it public. No, I’m serious. Apparently, presidential candidates are supposed to be up front about everything in their lives, regardless of how important it is to the job they’re pursuing. And this isn’t that important. From what little I’ve been able to dig up on the whole Barry Soetoro thing (seriously, search for the name on Google and you’ll get pretty much all anti-Obama links), it wasn’t a legal name change, which means it has absolutely no impact on anything. Just like McCain’s five years as a POW. It’s irrelevant to the presidency.

The argument goes that if Obama used to go by a different name, he could be a different religion (?) or even have a dual citizenship (?!). There’s scant evidence to this effect, and a dual citizenship wouldn’t necessarily bar Obama from the presidency. The requirements, listed in the Constitution, say that a person must be a natural-born citizen of the United States, be 35 years old, and have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years. There’s nothing in there about dual citizenships, but, to be fair, dual citizenships didn’t exactly exist when the Constitution was written. It’s a rather weak attack on Obama, but that’s nothing new. After all, the secret Muslim accusation has been flying around forever and we still have yet to hear what’s wrong with being a Muslim…

The uproar surrounding this election is proof the world has gone insane. Rationality flew out the window a long time ago and it depresses me. I really can’t wait until November so this can all finally be over. Of course, I’m being optimistic. Even if Obama was to win in a landslide, the anti-Obama crowd would claim he stole the election (kind of like how the anti-McCain crowd will claim McCain stole the election if he wins) or whine about how the country will go downhill now that a Muslim is president. I don’t think I’ll ever escape from the madness.

You heard me

I hate politics. That is all.

(Hear that, political campaigns? Your negative attack ads have jaded me so much that I don’t particularly care for any of you. If your plan was to alienate possible supporters, you are doing a fine job. Carry on.)

State of the economy

I’m not really sure what to make of this “economic crisis” we’re apparently in. On the one hand, it is rather unnerving to watch a number of banks give up the ghost, including Washington Mutual (based right here in Seattle), but on the other hand, it doesn’t seem to be impacting me at all. Sure, I’m having a hard time getting a job, but, considering my past luck in procuring employment, that’s not surprising in the least.

It’s an interesting coincidence that I’m taking a history course right now that’s dealing with the economic situation of the 1930s, including the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. There were numerous bank failures and credit problems during that time period, just as there are now. It’s a bit eerie, but I have noticed that the proposed solutions are nothing like FDR’s solutions. Of course, the situation today isn’t nearly as dire (unemployment is still around 6%, not the whopping 25+% of the early thirties), but I have yet to hear any decent explanation of the bailout that just died in Congress. Why $700 billion? What would that money be used for? What good would that do? No one is really telling. Contrast that to FDR’s fireside chats over the radio, where he explained to the American public in straightforward terms what the government was doing to deal with the depression. President Bush’s recent speech about the economy wasn’t exactly informative or reassuring, even if he did avoid using the word “depression”.

The thing to remember through all of this, though, is that self-regulation by corporations (even banks) is not necessarily a bad thing, just as regulation by the federal government isn’t necessarily a good thing. I don’t know how this situation will be resolved, but I know that more government interference in the market is not the right answer. After all, the Great Depression didn’t end because of the New Deal. For better or for worse, it came to an end due to the onset of World War 2, when industry picked up to improve the U.S. military. Hopefully we won’t need any such thing this time around.

It’s been a while

Wow, I kind of haven’t been updating this at all. Strange, considering I couldn’t stop posting while school was in session. There’s not a lack of stuff to get irritated about, that’s for sure.

I do have a bit of good news, however. Washington state has abandoned the rather short-lived party ballot primary system, where voters would choose which party (Republican or Democrat) to vote for during the primary and only vote using that ballot. I don’t even know what the original reasoning for that method was, but it’s been dumped in favor of the new “top 2″ primary system. Now, voters can vote for whoever they want on the primary ballot, regardless of party preference. The top 2 vote-getters in each partisan position then go on to the actual election.

It’s a much nicer system because it allows people to vote for the people, not the party. It used to be that if you wanted to vote for a Republican governor in the primary, you’d also have to vote for Republican senators, representatives, attorney generals, etc. Now, you can vote for a Democrat governor, a Republican senator, and an independent attorney general all on the same ballot.

Of course, the choices haven’t gotten any better. The majority of the people running for governor this year are either complete nutcases (one guy wants to ban cars) or more concerned with attacking their opponents than telling people what they would do as governor (seriously, this one guy used his entire statement to rip into the incumbent; nothing in there about his positions on the issues). Ugh.

At any rate, I hope to start publishing more updates to the blog. I’ve let it go so long, I posted once in the entire month of July. I really need to start getting indignant more. I must be losing my touch.

 

September 2010
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