05 November 2008


Oh...hello. So back by popular demand (and by popular demand I mean that my mom said that she wanted us to blog more so that she knew what was going on in mine and the Megatron's life) I am writing a blog for all my homies that IS around...no mo'? Anyrandom, so last night was kind of interesting for me. It was election night, and as some of you may know/loathe I have been working on the coordinated campaign to elect Barack Obama and Gov. Christine Gregoire. I guess I did my job, because the election went swimmingly for these two. Although I was "pooping my pantaloons" with excitement, I was also a little sentimental/observative of my surroundings. I spent the day training volunteers, driving to polling locations to make sure voters were staying in line, and looking at the results on the internets (also known as the world wide web). Because I haven't been able to spend much time with my Mega in the past few weeks, I decided to not go to the after party, and instead meet up with Meghan, Mark and Valda (my brother and sister-in-law) at a Gig Harbor dive bar. The bar wasn't very packed, but it was noticably divided. There was one side where people were looking at the TV with glossy eyes and huge smiles while Obama gave his victory speech. The other side was composed of angry rednecks with huge dips in their mouth yelling at the TV. At one point, one of these intellectual titans yelled at the TV, "this guy is the most un-American person in the world...he doesn't even put his hand over his heart to salute the flag." Later, him and his angry group of inbreds all toasted to "President Communist." Here's the thing. Obama is a dude. He's a politician. He's not going to be a panacea for all the issues that our country faces, but he is an intelligent, articulate, inspirational leader. He will surround himself with intelligent people. They will accomplish great things, and they will do some things that some people are not going to be happy with. What really made me upset with these idiots, is that they showed me that there are a lot of ignorant people out there. "He doesn't salute the flag?" Yes he does. And even if you haven't seen the hundreds of pictures of Obama saluting the flag, that's really what you're voting on? Will saluting the flag get us out of the Iraqi invasion that is costing our country $10 billion a month? Will saluting the flag help our economy? I really wanted to ask this guy which qualities in Obama reminded him of Communism. A progressive income tax? That's been around since the 1920's. McCain and Palin ran on the platform that Obama is a socialist amidst the $700 billion bail out championed by the Republican Bush administration. This bail out basically socialized banks (i.e. taking a ton of taxpayers' money/future money with interest and "spreading the wealth" to banks that need it). Why are we so scared of some socialist tendencies? Should we just get rid of social security and tell old people to just go die? I don't get it. Republicans are overwhelmingly Christian, and they vehemently oppose "spreading their wealth." Do we really think that Jesus would be a capitalist living in one of his 11 houses while others starve all over the world? Do we really think that Jesus would not want poor people to have health insurance or have old people just whither and die unless they were able to make good/lucky investments during their lives? That's madness. So yeah, I don't really understand that, but I do understand that we are selfish and greedy most of the time. Another thing that didn't really make me angry, but did make me a little bummed out was that every single one of the "bans on gay marriage" were approved. Having worked with several homosexuals over the past few weeks and having been friends with a few of them in my life, I don't understand the intolerance. I understand the propaganda that was served up by the "Yes On Marriage" crew because it seeped through to the people I love the most in my life. Would that proposition really make the government dictate to religious organizations that they have to perform gay marriages? Not in a million years. Does the Catholic Church have to perform a marriage between a Methodist and a Jew? No. That wouldn't make sense, and neither would the government madating that a Mormon Bishop has to marry a gay couple. Religions can be as inclusive or exclusive as they want to be and Prop 102 or Prop 8 would have never changed that. Even with my rant there, I'm not really that concerned by that, because I'm sure one day gays will be able to "civil union" one another and they will be able to enjoy the same equal rights that hetero couples have. They may even be able to "civil divorce" each other just like hetero couples. Anyways, this was supposed to be a blog about what's new in our life, but we've both been pretty involved in this election, so I guess that explains my rant. To end on a lighter note, Louie just got into the garbage and is chewing on a string cheese wrapper now, so that's pretty awesome. Nice work, Louie. Also, I'm fat. So yeah, I'll talk to you later.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Ryan and Meghan! Hey it's Tina Hammond from the train...I found your blog through myspace or facebook or something, and I just have to say that I love your blog and loved this last post! I'm an Obama-lover in Obama-hating Utah...so your post was music to my ears! Hope you guys are doing well!

Hilary said...

Hey, Rye. You should be on some sort of "talk radio" or something. I'm glad you kept all of that to yourself when you came to dinner last week(ha ha). Frankly, politics are lame. Glad the election's over. Hil