What Caused the Recession?

I always love learning about the inner workings of the government and what the actions are that lead to certain consequences.

If anyone else has found themselves curious about the reasons that led us into our wonderful economy today, and caused the recession -- watch Inside Job. It's a documentary that's really well done and very interesting.

There are interviews from lobbyists, mortgage raters, government officials (like Elliot Spitzer and Ben Bernanke), and others. They are all asked questions that unravel the mystery of what happened with the banks and corrupt mortgages. There's talk about all the bonuses paid out and how the executives never had to pay them back after the government bailouts.

A lot of what's in the movie will probably make you mad, but it's worth knowing the information. It's available to rent in all of the regular places, including the ultra convenient: Redbox.

The Plan on Gas Prices

I know all of us are upset over the $4.18/gal gas lately. I came across Obama's White House blog for my previous post and also found that he posts a weekly address with relevant updates for the public.

This past week's address was about gas prices and his plans to keep clean energy a priority for America's future. He mentions that congress wants to cut 70% of the budget for clean energy in order to save by cutting down on wasteful spending and that he is working to convince them not to.

Cutting back on the one thing that will prevent us from dealing with the same issue down the road is ridiculous. I hope Obama follows through on his statements.

The weekly addresses are short video posts that are only about four minutes. Check out the one I linked to if you want to feel a little bit better about progress on gas prices.

Obama is American, Trump is Annoying

Recently there has been a lot of rekindled controversy on Obama's citizenship, and whether or not his birth certificate was real. At the beginning of the interest on this topic a couple years ago, Obama issued a copy of his Certificate of Live Birth to quiet the issue.

A Certificate of Live Birth is what anyone would have if they needed to request a new copy of their birth certificate. For whatever reason, Obama didn't have his original.

Anyway, the Certificate of Live Birth really looks like a poorly scanned document that doesn't show any signatures. About a week ago there were a lot of people talking about this, including Donald Trump who seems to be spearheading the conspiracy theory (check out Trump here). By the way, did you all know Trump is running for President?

Honestly, Obama is a great president and he's already in office so I personally don't feel like it should matter anyway. Especially when there are way more important things happening right now -- but, today Obama's White House blog posted an image of Obama's "long form" birth certificate to finally get America off the topic.

Check out the blog entry, it's interesting. And the newly posted birth certificate is definitely real. Of course it's still not the original, it's an official copy released from the Hawaiian hospital where the president was born. You can tell it's a copy onto watermarked paper -- but it's legitimate and has real signatures.

Welcome to America, Where You and I Were Born

This past Monday Paolo Corso, an American poet of Italian descent, held a poetry reading at WCSU. Corso writes poems and essays about her Italian heritage, and the interesting way that she relates to it. She particularly focuses on the idea of Italians' love for cooking, and how she completely disagrees with it and basically thinks it's an awful stereotype.

That evening the theme remained the same throughout; Corso told stories through her poetic voice, which for some reason reminded me of Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory, about burning all sorts of food. She would list off all sorts of Italian dishes, in Italian, which I could not understand. She mentions at least two or three times that she knows the audience is not Italian -- this was interesting to me as we are in America. Many people here are Italian, mixed with other things. Just like Paolo, I was born right here in America. I first consider myself American since I was born here and then, I relate myself to the traditions of the Irish, Italian, and Polish. Just like Paolo, I have a parent who immigrated here from Europe. I don't go around saying, "I'm Irish, I eat Corned Beef and Cabbage... and I actually hate shamrocks and wish stereotypes would go away".

Honestly I don't think it's fair of Corso to speak as a primary source on Italian attitudes on cooking. She was born and raised in Pittsburgh, by a mother who already didn't like cooking. It's a personal preference. It's also something that's passed on. I would bet that somewhere down the line one of her great or great-great-grandmothers just didn't want to cook. If that same ancestor loved cooking, well, what would Corso write about?

I just couldn't relate to Paolo Corso on her topic choice. I think people should be proud of their cultural traditions, no matter what they are.