Interesting Stuff

Yeah, Green Day. Boo election! I honestly don’t see what people like about Bush. Yes, he’s very charming and charismatic. However, I don’t know of a single thing that he has made better in this country (if you know of one, please tell me; I’m willing to learn). He has made a mockery of our foreign policy. He has committed our troops to an unjustifiable war and more are killed daily. He is the first president since Hoover to lose jobs during his term, he has increased the national debt more than anyone else, and he has impeded science on almost every front (stem cells is obvious, but I might remind people of this article as well). He is against gay marriage (I can’t believe that 11 states have banned it, either). We all know what happened to No Child Left Behind, as well. Notto mention the USA PATRIOT Act, which he is trying to strengthen. I honestly cannot think of anything good about the man besides his personality. Mind you, I don’t think Kerry would have been a good president, but anyone is better than the fool we have now.

Travis claims that Republicans, as a whole, help the economy by trying to implement a flat taxation something-something (everyone gets taxed equally, rather than the rich getting taxed a lot and the poor getting taxed a little). He does this by giving tax breaks to the rich, who pay higher taxes. Yes, I agree that that’s a pretty good idea in theory. However, over the summer, I read an article in the Star Tribune about how Republicans, empirically, are much worse for the economy than Democrats. Sadly, I haven’t found the article since, so I can’t show people. However, I did stumble across some people who looked at the same data and arrived at the same conclusions here. It mentions a website here, where the data is presented, comparing Democrats and Republicans, and Bush to everyone else. As far as I can tell, this suggests that Bush is, by far, the worst president ever, from an economic point of view. I really don’t understand why half the country likes him.

The one bright note out of all of this is that California voted for the stem cell research funding (I believe it’s $3b over 10 years). Nifty!

This past Monday was the first time that Unit551 played with our bridge club. Due to a big E&M test the next day, the only Mudders who showed up were Carl, Robin, and me, and the only one who could play was Carl (I had lab for the first hour, and Robin had to go study). Still, there were enough people for a 3-table Howell (sort of a round-robin-type game), and Carl didn’t take last place! He got 2nd-to-last. Still, that’s quite a feat, when competing against a bunch of Life Masters (his partner was one, too, but they hadn’t played with each other before, which must have made things a bit hard). Well, hopefully, I’ll get to play with them next semester, if not before.

One last thing, that I thought was really scary: http://www.livejournal.com/users/anniesj/331112.html Just so people know about what can happen these days. I’m rather jarred by this, all in all. A bit too Orwellian for me.

Well, that’s about it, and I hope to update this more regularly, with shorter posts.