Bobby Jindal Makes me Sick

I would have written more, but I have a presentation tomorrow. Translating politics and journal articles about calcitonin at the same time is much easier said than done.

Bobby Jindal sounded fake, and he sounded sing-songy, each word infused with a sickening saccharine quality. He kind of sounded like Bobby Brady with his child-like cadence, and equally childish solutions. Rehashing the same failed policies as somehow new and full of potential doesn’t work Bobby.The man cited Katrina as some sort of shining example towards which our country should work. He was calling out the current administration for increasing spending, though the Bush administration was the one churning out all those pieces of legislation vastly increasing spending.

The man clearly is intelligent, having gotten a Rhodes Scholarship, and accepted to both Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School. So how could he be so incredibly naive? I don’t see him as being a likely flag-bearer of the Republican Party in 2012 (more likely pallbearer but perhaps I speak too soon).

What about Obama’s speech? Is there really anything I need to say? He was concise, clear, and *gasp* eloquent. Oh how I’ve missed that after eight years of gibberish and nonsense, the resulting applause not so much because of the policies Dubya proposed but probably more because he was able to string together a few coherent sentences that resembled English. Obama’s propositions seem reasonable, not all rainbows and sunshine. He understands the challenges ahead, and has presented reasonable policies to remedy our ills. I think we’ll pull through all right.

To quote the student he recognized for her heartfelt letter to Congress asking for help for her school, “we are not quitters.”

Based on My (Un)professional Opinion…

It looks like it will be an Obama victory.  Expect updates every so often as the results start to trickle in.  What are your thoughts so far?  Who’s going to win and why?

“Aww First Timer”

No, no dear I’m not a first timer.  I voted once for president by absentee ballot, this is my first presidential election voting in a voting booth.  I’m just having trouble with the stupid curtain, thank you very much.

It’s some surprise that we haven’t all upgraded to newer, sleeker voting machines.  Instead, we here in my hometown are stuck with voting machines Noah must have used to punch his ballot.  Seriously…it’s kind of silly.  But otherwise, I had a mercifully short voting experience.  The line was oh…five minutes.  Thank goodness for multiple polling locations in one town, and even funnier that we’re a pretty small town.  I think I may have killed myself otherwise.

The other source of amusement: how a lot of people were looking at me like “holy crap, it’s one of them young, non-white ones!”  The rest of the people voting (at least when I went) probably were an average age of 50…plus or minus ten years.  All were white, except one guy signing in voters and one woman who I think was a voting official.  Welcome to my world.

I’m surprised at how Republican my little corner of New York is.  New York, though, always goes blue and the same will be the case today.  So I’m not too worried.  It’s just the rest of the country I’m worried about.  While I feel bad pushing my views on other people, I think here it’s ok to be a little pushy.  All you people who live in Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Florida, and Pennsylvania…PLEASE VOTE FOR OBAMA.  Ultimately the choice is yours, I’m just helping you make that choice. 

Let’s hope for change today, change for the better, a change for a brighter future.

For now, I want to go to one of those election parties!  To quote from my brother “today feels like Christmas!”  I swear he meant it jokingly.

Why the Youth (Especially) Needs to Vote

It looks like most of us are pretty riled up now, but just in case the point(s) isn’t perfectly clear, here’s why we need to get the vote out.

This election REALLY matters.

Ok…they said it last time.  Remember?  When John Kerry ran against Dubya.  That race really mattered too…needless to say, the nation collectively dropped the ball.  So we embarked on another four years of neo-conservative, country-destroying policies that have borne their poisonous fruit.  The economy is tanking, education is tanking, healthcare is tanking, everything…is…tanking.

How does that affect me, you may ask.  Let me put it in terms to which we can probably better relate.

The dollar is losing value, so your plans to backpack across Europe after college?  Not as cheap as you may think.  That trip to the Caribbean will probably cost you a bit more than you’d like.  Don’t even get me started on air travel.  Oh and that pretty Prada bag?  That’s an Italian import, expect a higher pricetag on that. Same for Armani, Gucci, etc.

Are you on par with students from other countries in the areas of math and science.  Probably not.  Why?  Blame Dubya’s “No Child Left Behind.”  While the intentions are good (increase passing rates) it also dumbs down the curriculum so far that everything is just watered down to its basics.  So you say you want to go to college to further your understanding of some topic of interest?  That’s fantastic.  Expect the price of a decent education to take off like a rocket, and those loans you were going to take out?  Yeah expect it to get harder to get a loan, and expect it to get harder to pay it off once you have your framed, shiny degree (or degrees).

Well now that you can vote, you can also probably buy your own health insurance right?  Most health insurance companies make some sort of allowance for full-time students over the age of 18 to continue to stay on their parents’ plan until some age (usually 25).  That’s assuming, of course, you can afford to be a full-time student.  If you can’t, well then you’ll need to find a job that provides healthcare benefits.  That is, of course, if you can find a job.  Finding a job in this economy is about as easy as finding a needle in a haystack.  Now imagine finding that needle with about a thousand other people clamoring to find it as well.  Best of luck.

Don’t expect to be able to buy a home anytime soon.  We are probably going to end up a society of renters…until the housing market is somehow, treated…if not cured.

Half our products are being produced abroad, where the regulations are much more lax.  Hooray for melamine!  Unless you like your food and merchandise with a side of profound neurotoxicity and painful kidney stones, we need to find a way to bring production back to the U.S.  Otherwise, expect really high medical bills…since getting affordable health insurance will be pretty hard.

Ok, but cars are better right?  Sure, I have a soft corner for imports.  Yet the question is…why can’t we get the same quality in the U.S.?  Ford, GMC, Chevrolet (for the most part) are still clunky and noisy even though they are cheaper.  They are lacking the smooth appeal in function and appearance that their foreign cousins seem to have as a default.  Let’s try to change that.

Gay rights need to come now.  Let’s stop living in a world that frowns on (at the very least) basic civil liberties for gay couples, while gladly contributing to the juggernaut that is the porn industry.  Seriously…does anyone else not see the irony here?

I could probably go on…and on…and on.  But we, as youth, generally have the attention span of small rodents.  So I’ll stop.

Please vote tomorrow.  I’m not telling you to vote for any specific candidate.  I’m telling you to vote for the candidate that can save our future.  I’m telling you to think long and hard about each candidate’s stance, and decide which candidate brings the most promising plan to the table.  We will be the ones inheriting most of the mistakes of the last administration, not our parents (though they will also be affected).  We are the ones that need to assure that, at the very least, our children will not have to deal with the same dilemma.

Please…go out tomorrow (November 4th, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise) and vote.  Polling centers, to my understanding, are open from 6AM-9PM.  Bring your iPod, bring a book, bring something to kill the time because lines will be long but they will be worth it.

Let’s hope this election yields a better future for us, and our country.

More Republicans Fleeing the McCain-Palin ticket

Thanks Chrissy for this one:

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/10/24/obamacans-prominent-republicans-line-up-behind-obama/

Among the ranks are a former White House Press Secretary under Bush (Scott McClellan) and a former McCain advisor, who voted absentee for Obama because he could not support McCain after his choosing Palin (Charles Fried).

Looks like the Straight Talk Express has derailed…or is dangerously close to it.

Sarah Palin Strikes Again!

God do I love that woman, makes me laugh more than I would given my crazy workload:

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/10/21/in-which-sarah-palin-displays-the-latest-in-donkey-fashion.aspx

Donkey chic and Paris fashion?  What a maverick!