Tag: Obama

Daily Response: Feb 5, 2009

Daily Response is a new daily series I’m starting that will be hosted here on my blog and distributed via my Facebook Notes and also on my tumblr. Daily Response is my impromptu comments on any notable news I’ve come across during the day either in real life or here on the Interweb.

1. Michael Phelps being suspended from the U.S. Swim team is justice. The team has rules and it must respect and obey them. With this said, I believe marijuana should be legalized. We have bigger fish to fry than catching smokers.

2. There has been an unnecessary public discussion via school wide email today. The short of it is that a student took issue with the content of an email sent by an organization. Instead of addressing this privately, the student chose to blast the entire school with his thoughts. This prompted responses from others telling him to shut up. This is a waste of my email storage space.

3. This video, “Verizon Math Fail” is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time.

4. I hate that American banks are being federalized. That the federal government is capping executive compensation is disgusting. We have a capitalist economy. Some regulation is okay, but now we are going too far. These types of moves by the Obama administration make me question whether I should have voted for him to lead my country.

5. While making toast this morning an idea struck me. Toasters should be offset so that piece one springs up ten to fifteen seconds before piece two, thus allowing time to butter piece one before piece two starts to cool off.

Inauguration 2009

I watched from my little room on my old TV a great moment in history – the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America. The prayer was inspiring. The music was moving. The swearing in was, well, a bit clumsy, but sincere nonetheless. A great start to a presidency with great potential.

All of this progress is good, however let us not forget the state of the union. Obama’s repeated sounding of, “Things will get worse before they get better,” still applies. We have a long and hard road ahead of us as a nation. The strength of Obama is the inspiration and goodness that will trickle-down from the President’s bully pulpit to individual Americans.

Let us not be fooled by the changing of the guard. While changing the name subsequent to “President” is significant, as I have often found in moving from one apartment to another, it doesn’t take long to find something wrong with the new place. And by the time my lease is up I can’t wait to move. I’m optimistic that Obama’s presidency will be different, but he has to do more than not be Bush.

God Bless America!

GOBAMA

Barack Obama’s win last night goes down as one of the major historical events of my lifetime — the kind of event that makes me remember where I was when it happened. The only other event like it that I remember clearly is the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. I was eating pizza at the La Famiglia pizza restaurant (now a Jimmy Johns) on the corner of E. William St. and S. State St. in Ann Arbor, MI when I heard, faintly on the store radio, that a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Centers. I was shocked — scared somewhat, although Ann Arbor didn’t seem like it would be next on the list of terror targets. I walked to the fishbowl and watched video news feeds on TV and on the web. It was a surreal moment — one I couldn’t believe was happening at the time.

Last night was equally memorable. I sat in the bedroom of my sublet watching the election results on both my computer and CNN HD. Next to me was my best friend and the one person I would most want to share a moment like this with. I smiled. I didn’t jump around. I just felt relieved and happy.

Then, this morning, while I was on my way to get donuts, I screamed, “GOBAMA!” a few times. What a tremendous moment in the history of the United States of America. Definitely not something I imagined I would see in my lifetime.

Change is not Unique

One day while I was home on college break, heading out the door, my mother said to me, “You’re probably more liberal than you think.” I laughed it off, as if being called a liberal or a democrat was a personal attack. (Not that some wouldn’t take it that way.) At the time I would have easily classified myself as a conservative republican, but without justification. Politics was more about the image than the idea.

Only recently have I begun to fight back against my default apathy, which, as I type these words, I am reminded is a much more difficult fight than I ever expected. I refuse to give up, or give in. I want to care very much, and I believe that my vote ultimately does count towards something. Even if that something is ideologically out of reach. Baby steps.

I’ve watched friends get behind a candidate (Ron Paul, mostly), and their passion and conviction is inspiring. I hope to one day feel that connection, but it seems that falling head-over-heals for a candidate is far more complicated than crushing on a cute girl in class. Rarely, in this day and age, am I permitted to observe a candidate from afar and overlook the imperfections that would otherwise dissuade me from supporting him. Instead, the micro attention feeds me an incessant stream of useless information. Never has so much been made of so little.

Further complicating things, information, useless or otherwise, without a personal conviction breeds apathy. It’s all static, and I want to cut through it. Oddly, the Friends episode where Ross tallies the pluses and minuses of Rachel and Emily comes to mind. I wish supporting a candidate were that easy. E.g., McCain has fat ankles – Vote Obama.

The real fight, for me, is realizing that… I don’t know how to put it exactly without falling into patriotic rhetoric too much. I need to realize that this all means something. For eight years now we’ve seen how badly a president can damage the image of the United States. The modern day cliche, “Change,” is what is needed. But, it certainly isn’t reserved solely for Barack Obama. Instead, each one of us, as Americans and as humans needs to look in the mirror and consider what change would mean for us and how we can bring it about ourselves regardless of who our leader is.

Super Tuesday 2008

Super Tuesday is almost as dip worthy as the Super Bowl. I wonder if the game will be as good. The anticipation is killing me.

I struggled with whether to add Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul to the graphic, but it wasn’t worth the extra effort in Photoshop to fit them in. Maybe if I could do some sort of footnote graphic – a “kind of running, but not really,” type of thing.

I’m in New Hampshire, so there’s no voting to be done today. Instead, I’ll be hopping between FOX and CNN as I read Antitrust, Federal Courts and Wills, Trusts & Estates for my classes tomorrow.