Posts tagged ‘kerry’

Greatest Bridge Club Ever…

Woah. Yesterday was bridge club again, and it was the highest turnout that we’ve had since I joined. We had 2 tables going pretty much the entire time. It’s not enough to play a “real” game of duplicate yet, but we at least had to start keeping score (with one table where the partnerships switch every hand, there’s not much point in keeping score). So… yeah. We had about 13 people show up over the course of the evening, and even kept playing past 1:00. Sherri and I were partners for much of the night, which was a bit weird. Over the summer, she played regularly with someone she met at home, and got the hang of his style. However, this was a bit different than the way I played, so we kept getting some of our signals crossed. Oh, well. When I have the opportunity to start getting competitive (which won’t be until next semester, due to Systems lab conflicting with the start of the Unit551 games), I’ll get a regular partner and we’ll work out all of our quirks. There were some pretty good hands, though, and I had a great time. Hopefully, we can get our Monday games going like this too.

Well, I watched the presidential debate tonight. To be honest, I wasn’t that impressed with either candidate. Kerry pretty much just said “I have a plan” a lot (but not actually saying what sort of plan this was, or how it would work), while Bush dodged most of the questions (he didn’t answer the question about who he would put on the Supreme Court, he didn’t answer what mistakes he’s made or how he corrected them, he didn’t answer how he will protect people’s rights from the PATRIOT Act, etc).

In related news, my absentee ballot arrived today. I’ve found the notary on campus, so I’m pretty much set to vote. I had a bit of a scare last week when I opened my absentee ballot that I’d been saving for a while to realize that it was for the primary election, rather than the upcoming one. After panicking and firing some frantic emails to my dad, he got me straightened out, and explained how I should be getting another ballot soon.

Lets see… Stephen alerted me to the Stop-Loss provisions that have gone into legislature recently. They pretty much say that you can’t leave the armed forces for 3 months before or after your company is deployed. Since companies are pretty much deployed every 6 months, many people who were supposed to finish up their service have been forced to stay in the armed forces. A pretty good blog about it is here (the October 2 update Edit: this one). There’s a lot of shit going on in this country these days. I wish there was something I could do about it, but this kind of crap just seems so widespread. If anyone has an idea about how to actually get something done (note: this does not involve writing to my senator’s intern’s garbage can), I’d love to hear about it.

News n’ such

So… it just occurred to me that I should put some national news up here again. At the moment, I’m reading through an article about the job crunch in America. Despite what our current administration is saying, the economy is still in a recession. People are still losing their jobs, and the few new jobs that have been created pay significantly less than the old ones. This makes me worried, because in 2 short years, I will be out of here, and looking for employment (or grad school, if things continue like this). This appears to be particularly grim, as it appears as though Bush will win again.

I wish I could find it again, but I can’t, so I will describe an article I read in the Star Tribune over the summer. This guy took data about every election since the Republican party last reinvented itself (as I recall, this was in the 1940’s), and correlated the party in power with every conceivable economic factor – GDP, unemployment, average income, tariff rates, stock markets, jobs created, inflation rates, national debt increases, governmental spending, you name it. With perfect correlation, every indicator he looked at was better for the democrats than the republicans. He even tried letting the first year an administration was in power count for the previous administration (because the first year, you’re still feeling the effects of the previous group). However, this did not change the correlation at all. Either way, Democrats were better for the economy across the board. If you want a job in the next few years, vote democrat! For that matter, if you don’t want more of your civil liberties and “unalienable” rights violated, vote democrat. Granted, Kerry is a pretty bad candidate. However, Bush is quite possibly the worst president this country has ever had. This must not be allowed to continue!