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.

Convicts = Good Organ Donors?

Why would anyone who did something bad enough to be on death row want to do something good for people?

According to Christian Longo, who murdered his wife and three children, lots of convicts like himself would like to donate their internal organs to those in need. Hmmph.

I guess if I were in a situation where I needed an organ, or someone I knew needed an organ, it would be good to have the option to take one from a generous inmate. I would say that as long as the sick patient knows where their donation is coming from, and is okay with it, then it should be allowed.

Longo's prison, and others, currently do not allow organ donation by those with the death penalty. Read Longo's article to see whether you support a change on this policy.  He brings up some good points. It's true that it is a waste of otherwise healthy organs. He argues that if his state were to use a safer chemical in his lethal injection that his organs would remain healthy.

Also, knowing that a donor is available, and knowing the exact date and time that the organ would become available is quite interesting to think about. I just watched Never Let Me Go the other day, which is a pretty depressing movie, but it is about a made up society where we clone people to be organ donors. Essentially the characters in the movie were prisoners themselves, with a death sentence scheduled for their mid to late twenties.

Is your degree worth it?

Here's a good one for college students -- a news writer telling us again that we're going to school for nothing! We could all use some extra pessimism throughout college, right?

I got this interesting article in my NY Times daily email update the other day. It basically reinforces that the job world is changing and that jobs are going to computers. The one thing about this article that wasn't so bad was that it suggested that we need to think ahead and try to focus on different types of careers for our futures. However, it suggests leaving education out of the plan -- interesting.

Computers are easily stealing all the jobs that are easy to automate like in factories and your local Stop and Shop checkout. The article suggests that certain jobs will never be automated. Anyone wanna quit school and be a truck driver? That's what the newspapers think we should do.

This is a bad sign.

A lot of students seem down about the worth of their degrees right now. My literature professor actually spends five to ten minutes a class just giving us cheerful news about the economy! She's sweet. We all need a little bit of hope sometimes. 

Coupon Tax?!

While browsing the Hartford Courant website I came across an article about a new proposed coupon tax. This is part of Governor Dan Malloy's plan to overcome the Connecticut budget deficits. He wants to make it so that even if we buy an item at a discounted price, we pay tax on the original price. I don't think it's fair to charge more sales tax on sale items that people search for in weekly circulars.

Families that are searching for deals and clipping coupons are doing their part to save money. These families know how to keep a budget. Connecticut should forget about the coupon tax and instead hire some of these coupon clipping individuals to come up with some better ideas to get Connecticut out of debt.

On top of the stress that would be put on people trying to scrimp and save, this would affect retailers big time. Shoppers smart enough to clip coupons are also smart enough to buy their products online as soon as they can't get discounts in retail stores in their home state. This plan can backfire.

The Courant article also mentions that Malloy cannot just make this change instantly, he needs to first change Connecticut state law. So that is comforting.

50 Years Later, JFK Still Powerful

I’ve always heard such great things about John F. Kennedy, but I really never knew anything about him. Throughout growing up and going to school it was pretty common to hear adults mention his name, especially in sentences like, “Oh I remember when Kennedy was in office…” or just some mention of how wonderful of a person he was. It always seemed that Kennedy was somebody’s close friend or relative the way he was talked about. Grandmothers just love him.

Well, finally I got the chance to find out a little bit about what JFK was like through watching his inaugural address. It has been fifty years since the cold, winter day that he made his monumental speech in Washington. In the version of his inauguration speech that I found to watch on Youtube there was a text marquee every so often on the screen mentioning that the night prior to the inauguration there was a heavy snow storm. It was debated whether or not to postpone the important date because of the conditions, but it was decided to keep all plans in place. It was too important of a speech to postpone. I would guess that for a speech like the one JFK gave that day, he was very prepared to speak to America and wouldn’t want to wait another day to give his powerful words:

“Ask not, what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do, for your country.”

Seeing the full speech and being able to fit these words into the actual paragraph they came from, really made a difference. I of course had heard the phrase before, but until it is put with the rest of the speech it didn’t have as much weight. The entire speech flowed beautifully and was incredibly influential. Every word was clearly carefully chosen and spoken clearly to people listening all over the world.

JFK was a masterful speaker, and had a way with captivating his audience. I understand now how my grandmother felt that he was her close friend.

Because the 50^th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s inauguration has just passed, many have taken to comparing Kennedy to Obama. I can see certain similarities – both are amazing public speakers, and both connect with the American public in a way that other American presidents just do not.

People need in Obama what they got from Kennedy in a similar time. People want to hear the same kind of inspirational words. Obviously they are two different people, but I think we are pretty lucky to have someone who is worth comparing to a great president like John F. Kennedy in office during our generation.