Breaking Down the Major Obama Appointments to Date

So far so good, I’d say, with some exceptions:

Rahm Emanuel: I cannot think of a better person for the position of chief of staff, given his reputation as someone who “takes no prisoners.”  He has been involved in politics for some twenty three years, from political staffer to Congressional Representative from the state of Illinois.  Besides his experience, his no-nonsense attitude is much needed to keep President Obama’s staff on task, with regard to seeing his agenda through.

Bill Richardson: This one I’m not terribly sure about.  Bill Richardson has had ample experience in federal office, as a representative, and as a member of Bill Clinton’s Cabinet as Secretary of Energy.  However, I’m not certain much in his years of political experience has set him up to serve as Commerce Secretary.  I could be wrong, the man did serve as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., so that in itself may have given him some understanding of the state of foreign commerce.  His tenure as Governor of New Mexico, too, lends itself to some understanding of domestic commerce.  Who knows.

Janet Napolitano: I feel like she would have been better for Secretary of Education than Homeland Security, given her accomplishments as Governor of Arizona.  Her nickname was the “Education Governor,” so I’m curious why Obama tapped her for Homeland Security, of all things.  I would rather have someone like, I dunno, Wesley Clark or someone with at least some experience in that realm.  Nonetheless, she could surprise me.

Tim Geithner: This one was a solid pick, I have no complaints.  He served as 9th President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.  I think that speaks for itself.

Larry Summers: Good pick, but I think many of the women in the country may have simultaneously shuddered at the announcement that he was going to be head of the National Economic Council.  Gaffes aside, he was Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, and I think he’ll be fine in this position.

And then of course, best for last:

Hillary Clinton: I’m wonderfully conflicted about this one, which I know is not “confirmed” yet, but looks highly likely.  On one hand, she has solid foreign policy experience (minus that little thing called the Iraq War).  For better or worse, by appointing this Clinton, you get the other Clinton as part of the package and he is still an active (not to mention mostly beloved) presence in most of the world, so that in itself could be a benefit to the Obama administration.  On the other hand, I would have rather seen her in another role, like head of the Department of Health and Human Services, given her strong support for universal healthcare.

More analysis to come as the appointments roll in. 

This Really Sums Everything Up

This is great:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3279/3006416363_95ef8de914_o.jpg

Thank You America

Dear America,

Finally.

Finally we have overcome so many hurdles, so many years of pain, so many years of suffering, of ignorance.  Finally we have opened our eyes and see not in color, but in competence.  We see abilities, we see potential, and we can finally see past race.  We have finally chosen someone who deals not in fear, but in hope.  We have finally chosen change.

Thank you for helping Barack Obama to win this election.  Thank you for restoring not only my faith, but the faith of most of the country, if not the world in the America’s humanity.  After eight years of George W. Bush, thank you for turning the tables and calling for us to seize our place on the world stage again not as a war monger, but as a bringer of stability, and of peace.

My dad was watching the results pour in and commented “I didn’t think I’d actually live to see this.”  I don’t think I thought I would see it either, and if I did, I thought I would have been much older.  This is a testament to the power of the youth, in part, but also a testament to the changing views of the country.  We are fast becoming a country that cares less about the superficial, and that’s a very encouraging sign.  No amount of smear tactics, no amount of false rumors could derail us from our goal: change for the better.

This is not to deny that John McCain was a good candidate, but unfortunately he just wasn’t right for this time and wasn’t right for our country’s needs as they stand now.

Change is here, change is finally here. 

Love,

Saroj

As It Stands…

Dems carry:

Pennsylvania

Illinois

Massachusetts

New Hampshire

Maine

Republicans carry:

Georgia

Alabama

Kentucky

Electoral votes: 103 Obama versus 58 McCain

My Feelings Today

I’m excited, above all, and that’s really the understatement of the year.  I am excited to see the country possibly regain some sense of dignity.  Yet I’m also worried that there will be the ignorant pockets that will be voting for candidates for all the wrong reasons, regardless of who the candidate is.  There will be those who are taking campaign promises at face value and not doing any real digging on their own.  There will always be those people.

I would love to see an Obama-Biden victory, I see that as the best possible future for our country.  While of course, politically, he has the right outlook for the country, there’s also the (oft’ discounted) fact that he has brought this excitement and hope to politics that I have never seen before.  Someone who is capable of generating such a positive reaction certainly is someone that I would not mind being in the White House.  This is, of course, compared to Bush.  He came across as an ignoramus, and (surprise surprise) lived up to the hype.  If he had a solid plan for the country, despite his coming across as an idiot, I could deal with that.  Yet he dropped the ball on both counts.  Obama, in stark contrast, has both the plan and the personality on his side.  More importantly, though, he has the plan.

Check back for results later on in the night, as the polls start to close and the votes are tallied.

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.

Faith and the Youth…Mortal Enemies or Friends Who Just Don’t Know It Yet?

It’s the classic developmental cliche: the disenfranchised youth.  Gone are the marionnette strings and off they go, puttering about, trying to establish their views on the world without the influence of parents.  Faith, whether it’s in religion or anything else, tends to fall by the wayside.  Cynicism reigns supreme.  So does faith have a place in the minds and hearts of the youth, or is it better suited for the later years, when the tumultuous waves of adolescence and young adulthood have subsided?

Ok I’m pretty religious myself…more like spiritual, but this isn’t a call for people to flock to religion per se.  It’s about having something that anchors you to some reality, to some constant, to some truth…  For me, that’s spirituality and science (two seemingly irreconcilable entities, but they work surprisingly well together).  For another person, it may be economics (ok not sure about that in the current economic climate but who knows).  To not have anything to hold on to seems almost inhuman.  To be apathetic means to not fulfill a core aspect of our being human: to believe in something.

Faith gives direction and faith gives strength.  Faith in a politician could both settle our own nerves and give that person the strength they need to see their mission through.  Faith in a set of ideals lends credence to those ideals.  Faith can be misplaced, but that’s part of the learning process; knowledge and experience is key to well-placed faith.  Faith should never be forced onto another person or onto one’s self, it is something that is personally grown and nurtured, not force-fed.

In this election, we cannot afford to be apathetic…we have to have faith.  Our collective faith was misplaced eight years ago, and again four years ago, but not anymore.  We cannot sit on the sidelines and cite our lack of interest, or a lack of faith as a reason to not vote.  Not now, especially not now.  I’m not saying vote for Obama or vote for McCain.  I’m saying get excited about someone or something in this process, this is about redeeming our country from eight years of ignorance and rash decisions that have cost us our place in the eyes of the world.

The youth are finally getting swept up in the urgency of the moment, they have found grounding in the messages of our candidates, but still it seems as though most are seemingly uninterested, thinking that this decision is still not that important, thinking that politics are still beyond their scope of interest or caring.  It’s time to drop these notions and join the fray.  Pick an issue you feel strongly about, pick a candidate who sees your vision for a successful America as their own, and have faith!

Sure Values are Important…

This is just ridiculous.  She can’t imagine a “President Obama,” and has issues with his mother being nonreligious and his father being a Muslim.  Seriously?  Oh, and Obama’s church apparently isn’t Christian enough for her…because she clearly knows what Christianity is supposed to be.  Christianity is about peace and acceptance, at its very core!

That’s like me voting for Bobby Jindal because he’s Indian and completely overlooking his policies.  It’s silly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwjlUMoLVvA