Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Politics and more...

Well, it's presidential election time again, and I must say that this is one of the most complicated and important elections I have studied or experienced. Right now, I am sitting on my couch watching the Democratic National Convention. It is, perhaps unfortunately, one of the funniest and fluffiest things I have seen in quite a while. All I am hearing is continual rehashing of a few basic talking points over and over again, often word-for-word. I don't know about my readers, but personally, I expect more from what should be a serious presentation of the candidates. To be honest, I couldn't care less about the childhoods of Barack Obama or Joe Biden. I care about how well they will be able to lead this country in the tough times ahead.

I predict that I will feel the same way about the Republican National Convention, but I'll hold my comments until I have seen it.

So which candidate is better suited to lead this country? This depends upon each voter's personal priorities. We each want our leaders to lead in our favored direction, and it is each candidate's challenge to make more people believe that they will indeed move in that direction, whether they will or not. This is the foundation of the politician's art.


Enough about politics for now. I will be starting school next week, so this week is a very hectic one as I attempt to accomplish all of the tasks I intended to do this summer but never actually completed. Tomorrow is an especially busy day as I will be having one friend over in the morning, and going in the evening to visit another.

I am more nervous about this school year than about any I have been through so far. I have been told that this will be my most difficult year. I have many, many activities outside the home, as well as a very intensive set of studies at home. This year, I am taking English Literature, and if what I have read so far(for example, Bede's Ecclesiastical History Of The English People) is any indication, it will be a fairly difficult study. I am also looking forward(or not) to Pre-Calculus.

Well, tonight's convention speech-making is over and it is time for me to go to bed. Goodbye, all!

Daniel

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"... it is time for me to go to bed."

Posted by Daniel G. at 7:32 PM

WHAT?! bed at 7:30??? wow...lol


personally, what I care about the most in the election is the abortion issue. I haven't heard either of them talk about it except in the WORLD magazine but from what I have heard they are both not going to do anything about it. well then again neither was Hillary so....

people reading this might be thinking: "yeah? well what is Pres. Bush doing about it?!" I think (my personal opinion) that abortion wasn't such an issue for the earlier years of his presidency, - and he can't really BAN abortion - it's impossible - but not watching much news or anything like that I don't know if or what he is doing about it. for the past two weeks he was in Beijing. I know, that doesn't really give a reason :D I don't make excuses for the president ;)

of course, being a girl I have quite strong feelings about abortion. not saying that guys/men can't but hey when was the last time you heard....never mind...


here are some statistics:
In '05, we had 22.6 % of pregnancies aborted.
the estimated total abortions in '06 was 47,241,423 (which might include other countries but idk). (and internet challenged me can't find any 07 statistics. isn't that sad.)


Fifty-two percent of U.S. women obtaining abortions are younger than 25: Women aged 20-24 obtain 33 percent of all abortions, and teenagers obtain 19 percent.
Two-thirds of all abortions are among never-married women.

here is a website of more abortion statistics: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-unitedstates.html

ok I'm done now :D hope none of u were offended but if u were there's something wrong with you ;D jk jk

Wesley Tamkin said...

yeah..politics..I haven't been able to watch any of the speeches..not that i've missed much. I've been so busy that I haven't paid much attention...but from what I do know I largely agree with you..though I disagree that a childhood can't be politically important--it shows us that he is "one of us". and yeah expect similar things from McCain...but they will skip over his divorce; hmm maybe i'll vote independent...probably not..i'll probably vote for McCain in the end...

Dan Gualtieri said...

To gnnb: Actually, McCain has a very good record on abortion. Being the president, his primary interaction with the issue would be signing or vetoing any abortion bill which passes through the legislative process. I certainly trust McCain far more than Obama to make the correct decision in the relatively rare event of such a bill coming to his desk.

To wesley: I agree. My point is that the only purpose of the childhood stories is to inspire a "warm and fuzzy" feeling, and to hopefully gain the candidate some political capital. It has no purpose other than emotional appeal. Being entirely immune to emotional appeal, I see no value in these stories;-)

Anonymous said...

to daniel: yeah.. but also I think you would sort of have the right to abort if you were raped. idk.. what do u all think?

I don't really want to go into this too deeply cuz it is going to a diff topic but one worth discussing to a degree.