The Soul-less World of Politics

It seems as if politicians these days have no integrity, no soul. The political pandering to interest groups never gets old, and promises of government transparencies are being found hard to keep. Voters are regarded as fools for believing messages of change, while elected officials on both sides of the aisle keep posturing to do whatever they can to keep their seats in the Senate and the House.

One GOP senator jumps ship, citing ideological differences with the more conservative elements of the Republican Party. But in a state that is increasingly becoming more Democratic, was it just mere coincidence that Senator Arlen Specter switched affiliation to the Democratic Party with his re-election season coming up?

The man who said that we can, and promised a new wave of transparency in the government, has recently upset his friends to the left when he decided this week to prevent the release of photos from Abu Ghraib. What happened to transparency, Mr. President? Keeping electoral promises isn't so easy now, is it? And now today, the White House confirmed that the US would continue to employ former President Bush's controversial military commission to prosecute detainees in Gitmo. That sure does look like change to me. Yes, we can.

And then there is the first madam speaker of the House of Representative from California. Nancy Pelosi, the vocal critic of the Bush administration, finds herself in a bit of a sticky situation. The madam speaker is adored by those on the left for her outspoken objection to the use of torture during the Bush administration. I sincerely applaud her stance on that. But you see, Ms. Pelosi forgot to mention that in 2003, she, along with other House Intelligence Committee members, were briefed by the CIA on its interrogation methods during the war on terror. Today, she disputed CIA records that listed 40 briefs that the committee received from the intelligence agency in which members of the committee were allegedly told the use of waterboarding during interrogation. A record of 40 briefings in which she was told that the CIA was torturing detainees in 2003, and she waits until 2007 to formally decry the CIA's methods of interrogation. Does Ms. Pelosi really think we're idiotic enough to actually believe her?

So in conclusion, politics is a soul-less world, void of any meaningful convictions and integrity. Flip-flopping around is the norm, and doing anything politically expedient is to be expected. But hey, at least in America, people like me who publicly criticize officials expect to live after wielding such criticisms unlike in other countries. I have that to be thankful for, right?

read more here and here and here and here.

Ramblings

A disclaimer: This is not a cohesive entry with a main point. This is not how my papers for classes look like. This is just a collection of various thoughts I've had lately that by themselves would not have been worth posting an entry.

A few days ago, I was watching college football. More specifically, I was watching the Michigan-Wisconsin game. I almost turned the television off after halftime because that game was ugly. Good thing I didn't. Aside from watching such a crazy comeback, one of the announcers said something that stayed with me. He was commenting on the reluctance of the Wisconsin quarterback in stepping up in the pocket and delivering passes and instead being sacked and hurried to make bad throws. He said something like, "You can't wait forever to throw that ball. You gotta pull the trigger earlier." Life lessons from a college football analyst, wouldn't you say? Can't wait forever...you gotta pull the trigger. Watching football has its perks.

The economy is going crazy. And House Republicans are playing the partisan game when they rejected the $700billion government bailout bill. Sure that amount of money is staggering, considering our generation will take the hit and need to pay it off somehow. But to blame Nancy Pelosi (I mean I'm not a big fan of her either but...) and her partisan speech before the vote as the reason why you vote against the bill? Come on! That's such bull. I expect more from my congressmen. Americans should kick everyone of them (not just the Republicans) out of the House this Nov. We need a fresh start.

Speaking about the bailout, all those people who were contacting their congressmen to vote no on the bill are not intelligent. Sure, the taxpayer shouldn't be called up on to bailout financial institutions for the mistakes that greedy corporate execs made in the first place. We shouldn't be asked to throw a lifesaver to these corporations that are giving those execs tens of millions of dollars in severance packages for the crappy job they did. But that's just one side of the story. This financial crisis also affects the so-called Main Street people, the average Americans when there is a credit freeze and banks are collapsing. Banks are refusing to lend to anyone out of fear at a time when small and medium businesses rely on short-term loans for their payroll and costs of operations. This can only mean a staggering number of job losses and economic shutdown if this prolongs. So if the average American wants to punish corporate execs, they must be willing to punish themselves. But perhaps that may not be such a bad thing, given that we are a society that has become slaves to the credit market, a generation that is burdened with reckless debt.

Learning a new language is hard. Learning Chinese is even harder. God have mercy on me. I'm learning to be patient and take things one step at a time. But it's hard. I should have learned a language when I was younger and my brain was more impressionable. This class is definitely taking up a lot more of my time than I had expected. But I have no regrets. I'm determined to learn it and be good at it (and it's not because of a girl as some have suspected). It's a critical language in the world today, and I think it'll be a good asset to have in whatever I end up doing after grad school. Also, it reminds me of my experience in China. It'd be cool to go back and talk to the natives in their tongue instead of having to rely on translators. Maybe one day...