Kiss me: I'm liberated.

Hmm. Life's been pretty tame lately.

What I've been thinking a lot about lately are the presidential elections and education.

1. Presidential Elections.

It might just be me, but in the tristate area at least, I feel as if media bias has shifted heavily towards Obama. I don't know when this happened. Maybe at some point during Obama's back-to-back wins in the primaries.

My thoughts are jumbled right now, so I'm not entirely sure how to make a coherent blog post. I was thinking about policy issues that are important for me, and I've got a few:

Education.
Iraq and Military intervention
Foreign Aid
Healthcare
Gay rights.
Regional policy[Particularly our relationship with China and the Middle East]

Education-wise, I'd like to think No Child Left Behind is great on paper. Increased accountability is always a good thing. But I'm not sure what the success rate is-- I know demagogues like to say it's a "complete failure", but I don't know what that means. In what ways? I'd like to think more kids are graduating and are better prepared than say, kids ten years ago. Or is the trend going in reverse? I feel like I have a lot to learn so I'm going to try to educate myself on US education. Haha.

Iraq is a failure. I'm not really sure any of the candidates have my full support on the Iraq turf, but McCain is by far the biggest failure what with his flip-flopping. I should put in a citation, but I distinctly remember his claim that a surge would not work around the 2004 primaries. And now he wants to claim that the surge is working and that his campaign is tied to voters' impressions that the surge has been successful.

Foreign Aid is more than just money. I don't know how else to say it-- I'm tired of American tax dollars going to unfriendly regimes and being squandered in whatever ways. Where is the accountability?

I'm not sure how I feel about healthcare, much less universal healthcare, to be honest.

I'd prefer to be able to marry someone and not be fired for being gay. Not sure how I feel about hate crime legislation.[Seems kind of wasteful to me, at least in homicide cases]

China's a toughy. I really feel as if Chinese people feel unaccountable for the things their government is doing right now-- trading with Sudan during mass murders[I suppose we've done similar things], not following human rights conventions towards its own populace. Development first, and then freedom and liberalism later? In a communist way of course. Actually, even after being there for six months, I'm still really ignorant.

I do like Barack's stance towards other Middle Eastern allies, which is possibly one of my biggest reasons for supporting him. I am so tired of the preferential and damaging treatment towards Israel.

So yeah. I think I'm gonna try to do more reading.

2. Education

With all of the school shootings we've been having, and the recent violence that's been happening in schools in Jersey City[I should cite some articles but...this is a lazy entry], I've been trying to figure out what the problem is.

I'm inclined to say it's philosophical, that it's something about kids' outlooks on life that has the most effect on the failure of our urban schools.

I don't think the problem is necessarily governmental. While I do think bad teachers, bad facilities and bad books might be part of the problem, I think not being able to focus on school, or not wanting to, is a bigger problem. I was talking to this boy who goes to Snyder High, a pretty bad school over here. And they got early last Thursday because of a shooting on the grounds. Like, damn.

There's a lot more to say but I'm strangely tired and can barely write coherent. Thoughts appreciated, as always.

<3s