Politics, Pets and the Policies of Evicting Crack-heads

The other night I went to Justin’s house (Justin is my ten-year old Korean student), to tutor him in English and eat delicious bibimbap with him and his family. Over dinner we had quite an intelligent discussion – mixing English, Korean and Russian – about politics in the US and Kyrgyzstan. His father said that even though he knew very little about the policies of either Obama or McCain, if he were an American he would vote for Obama. His reasoning was that the election of a black man to the US presidency would prove that the US really is a nation of immigrants, a nation for everybody, a nation without prejudice. I heard so many racist comments against blacks when I was in South Korea, that this was a pleasant surprise. (Of course, I’m currently listening to an NPR podcast on race in the current presidential election, which makes it seem as though such an enlightened view might actually be rather rare...)

With regards to politics in Kyrgyzstan, Justin’s parents were telling me about the similarities between Bakiev (Kyrgyzstan’s current president) and Akayev (the president who was ousted in Kyrgyzstan’s 2005 revolution). Nepotism was a huge problem under Akayev, with his children holding prominent places in the government. Apparently the situation under Bakiev is even worse, specifically with the power held by Bakiev’s son, Maxim:

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There were local elections here in Bishkek this past Sunday. Very few of my students voted; they all fervently believed that there was no reason to vote as the results had already been pre-determined. It was consensus among my students that whoever could pay the President the most money would earn seats in local government, no matter who received the most votes, so why bother? Several students said that if they lived somewhere where their vote counted, “like the US or Russia” (!!!) they would vote, but here in Kyrgyzstan, there’s just no point.

This guy was one of the candidates:
Doesn't he look like Frodo with a mullet???

And speaking of voting... my ballot arrived! :-) Perhaps I can finally manage to *not* be disenfranchised in a presidential election. I was able to download the mp3 of the most recent debate between Obama and McCain (better late than never; at least I’m not completely out of touch), and while I continue to be amazed by the fact that the Republicans have an intelligent and articulate sounding candidate, I definitely think Obama won. I understand that repeating your message is something politicians do in order to drive their point home, but the way McCain repeated himself verbatim so many times made him seem to me like a doddering old man. And the whole “that one” thing? Sheesh. Also, citing working across the aisle with that party-traitor Joe Lieberman is hardly a good example!

On a totally different note, the theme of the module I’ve been teaching this past week in my advanced class was honesty and dishonesty, which of course meant we did a lot of talking about boyfriends/girlfriends and husbands/wives cheating on each other. Today one of my students said that all husbands will cheat, and that it’s a wife’s duty to ignore the cheating, and not to confront him, but to do her best to be the perfect wife in order to lure him back. Everyone else in the class agreed with her (and there were five women and man in that class). Depressing! (And given recent events, duly so.)

What else? Minsk, my new kitten, continues to have diarrhea. Instead of receiving medicine at the vet, my vet wrote down the name of a medication to buy at the pharmacy – as in the pharmacy where *humans* buy their meds – and instructed me to give the cat 1/6 of a pill twice a day. I hope it works. With the lack of the “good” cat litter at my pet store and five cats in my apartment, Minsk’s digestive problems are definitely raising the odor level in my home. Gross, huh? And of course, I can’t even begin to look for a home for the poor girl until she’s healthy and 100% litter box trained. She uses the box about 90% of the time, which is an improvement over 0%, but still not acceptable. Sigh. But on the plus side, she is incredibly sweet and snuggly – the others are quite jealous!

And finally, the part of the tale you’ve been waiting for: If you’ve been following this blog for a while now, you’ve no doubt heard of Ronnie, my crazy old-guy neighbor in the Waycross ghetto who got high, then took off all his clothes in order to “show me his biologicals” as he said. Anyway, he used to squat in an empty house a block away from my Waycross home. (And I do mean squat: it wasn’t his and had no electricity or running water.) Then, for some reason, my mom hired him to paint this extra house that she owns. (She bought it super-cheap hopes to sell it one day, although given the current financial situation, god knows when that will be.) Anyway, while Ronnie was painting the house (in a style described by my mom as “a fuck-up”), he decided to move in and start squatting there. After all, that house has electricity and running water, and as the painter, he’d been given keys. Then he got arrested for possession of crack. As soon as he got arrested, my advice to my mom was to have the locks changed ASAP. She didn’t. That was a few months ago. A couple days ago she saw Ronnie riding his bike, and decided to make arrangements to have the locks changed. That was when she learned that he’d been out of jail and living in her other house for the past two weeks! Because she’d originally given him the keys and permission to be in there, the police said that they can’t do anything about it. After learning this, my mom drove around the ghetto (that being *my* neighborhood, btw) until she found him, then royally bitched him out until he promised that he’d be out by the end of the week. We shall see. Either way, she's having the locks changed at the end of the week, whether he's gotten his stuff out or not.

The thing is, I’d recently decided to try to sell my house and move into the other house (the one currently inhabited by the crack-head painter/flasher)! At the very least, I’d like to put my four Kyrgyz cats in that house so they won’t have to deal with a two-day world-wide trip followed by introduction to all those cats that live at my house. Neither of those things is going to happen if Ronnie’s living in there. I may well have to move myself and the Bishkek Four straight into the Spartan :-)

Debates!

Occasionally the internet here in K-stan is fast enough to actually allow me to download things, and I was lucky enough to download the first Presidential debate and Thursday's VP debate. For starters let me just say that in both debates I was incredibly impressed by the fact that the Republicans came off sounding articulate and intelligent. I mean, of course the Dems did, but we're used to that. It's been ages since we had an articulate Republican on the national scene, and that was just due to Reagan's training as an actor. It was actually quite nice to listen to intelligent people discussing things instead of an intelligent person talking above a redneck Texan bumbler. (Although dammit if Palin doesn't pronounced nuclear the same way Bush does. It's NEW-clee-ar, not nu-cu-lur.)

While I may have been impressed by the performances of McCain and Palin (to be honest, I was hoping Obama and Biden would wipe the floor with them, and was a little bummed when it dodn't happen) nothing McCain or Palin said did anything to sway me to their side at all; I am firmly behind Obama/Biden when it comes to policy. Also, it was obvious to me that Palin had been super-prepped for the VP debate, and was simply repeating the points which she had drilled; meanwhile, Biden came off looking as though he had a much deeper grasp of the policies than Palin.

I found this exchange in the VP debate amusing, as it seemed that she didn't know what an Achilles heel might be:

Moderator: The conventional wisdom, Governor Palin with you, is that your Achilles heel is that you lack experience. Your conventional wisdom against you is that your Achilles heel is that you lack discipline, Senator Biden. What is it really for you, Governor Palin? What is it really for you, Senator Biden? Start with you, governor.

Palin: My experience as an executive will be put to good use as a mayor and business owner and oil and gas regulator and then as governor of a huge state, a huge energy producing state that is accounting for much progress towards getting our nation energy independence and that's extremely important.

Now this is some weird shit.

It's All Politics

I love NPR's It's All Politics in general, and they had a pretty good post-debate podcast that you should totally give a listen to by clicking here.

Tonight's Democratic Debate

Even though I don't own a TV, it occurred to me this evening to see if I could watch the Democratic debate in Nevada live online at CNN's website. While I'm not sure what clips CNN will post after the fact, I'm glad that I got the opportunity to watch it live. I hate having to pick through the things networks deem newsworthy to post on their sites - or worse, reading transcripts. That's one thing that has me a little bummed about the fact that I'll be out of the country and in a place with spotty internet next year - I won't be able to follow the 2008 election as closely as I would like. But, at least I can keep tabs on what's going on now.

As far as tonight's debate, I'm not sure that I can name a winner. I can, however give you some of my thoughts:

Dennis Kucinich is a weird little man. While I do agree with most of what he has to say, he's simply a weird little man. With pointy ears. And whom the moderators and other candidates tend to ignore. Like when moderator Wolf Blitzer asked all the candidates about Pakistan - except Kucinich. His response was to wave his arms and shout "Hellllooooooo?!" and yet he was still ignored. He was even ignored when he began chanting "Impeach him now! Impeach him now!"

Then we have Joe Biden and Chris Dodd. My problem with them is that they look SO MUCH ALIKE, I seriously cannot tell them apart. They're both older white dudes with white hair. I would type that they seem to have the same positions on most issues... but I'm just not sure. They haven't done anything to differentiate one from the other in my book.

Richardson came off well, and had strong answers. He's obviously a really smart, sensible fellow who would probably do a pretty decent job as president. But he seems more like a behind-the-scenes-get-things-done kind of guy to me, and I suspect that might make him seem un-presidential to many others. Also, he makes some fantastically amusing quizzical facial expressions, which I rather suspect mirrored the ones on my face the other night at that poetry reading.

Now, ya'll know I love Obama (I even have an Obama sign in my front window). He's such an incredible orator when he has a prepared speech (think his 2004 convention keynote speech, among numerous others. He had an incredible one that I heard on NPR the other day, but hell if I can remember where he was giving it...), but he's not *quite* as stellar when he goes unscripted. Nonetheless, I'm still rooting for him as my candidate of choice. His answer on the issue of alternative energy sources was very JFK-esque: I'm running for President because I think we can do it. Live, it was totally reminiscent of Kennedy's we choose to go to the moon speech. Also, watching Obama and Hillary go toe to toe on issues of health care, taxing the super-rich and fixing social security were certainly the high points of a debate that was, at times, dull.

Edwards has a really cute smile. I'd never noticed before. He had really strong answers on issues of trade, Iran, the Patriot Act and torture... but I remembered that because I wrote it down as he was answering. Nothing he said really stuck with me. (Also, can someone seriously tell me what has happened to this country that torture is an issue on which people have opinions other than that it is heinous and should be illegal?)

I didn't see the previous debate, but I know that the news afterwards was that Hillary didn't perform as well as she should have. This was followed up by the debate over was she or was she not playing the gender card. Well, she's a politician, and she's smooth and she covered for that EXCELLENTLY with her answer to whether or not she was playing the gender card... It brought tears to my eyes. Literally. Even though I'm pretty certain she had that pre-scripted. She gave good answers, and came out looking like a strong leader - and like a strong politician. It's that strong politician part of her that makes me wary. That, and the fact that she doesn't seem to understand that people who make over $97k/yr ARE NOT MIDDLE CLASS. And she apparently voted to name Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group. Um, no. (Although Obama didn't even bother to show up for that vote, the punk.)

And who the hell thought it was a good idea to let the final question of the debate be some lame UNLV student asking Hillary if she prefered diamonds or pearls? Stupid, stupid question.

Huh?

I don't mind not having a television, but it would be nice to watch the presidential debates as they happen, instead of having to hunt up selected clips online or wade through boring transcripts. Now, watching two hours of political debate is one thing, but wading through the transcripts, reading the dry words without any of the political personalities bringing them to life is a bit much, even for me. Now, you can watch selected clips of the debate on MSNBC's website, here. But one has to wonder why certain clips were chosen. I mean, here's what I learned:

Dennis Kucinich admits to having seen a UFO, and Shirley Maclaine is the godmother of his daughter. I'm surprised they didn't manage to work his young, super hot and super tall wife into the debate as well. Since I can't link you directly to the clip in question (curse you, MSNBC), here's from the transcript:

Moderator: The godmother of your daughter, Shirley MacLaine, writes in her new book that you've cited a UFO over her home in Washington state -- that you found the encounter extremely moving, that it was a triangular craft silent and hovering, that you felt a connection to your heart and heard direction in your mind. Now, did you see a UFO?

Kucinich: I did. And the rest of the account -- I didn't -- I -- it was an unidentified flying object, okay. It's like -- it's unidentified. I saw something. Now, to answer your question, I'm moving my -- and I'm also going to move my campaign office to Roswell, New Mexico and another one, an extra, to New Hampshire, okay. And also, you have to keep in mind that more -- that Jimmy Carter saw a UFO, and also that more people in this country have seen UFOs than, I think, approve of George Bush's presidency.

But I *do* have a crush on Obama!

McCain: Not Moderate Like You Were Led To Believe

(If you're having trouble viewing the video, click here.)

Additionally, check out Nick's post on Obama, Edwards, Hillary and McCain.

Barack Obama for President!

Ever since his speech during the 2004 Democratic Convention (when I found myself wishing that he, not Kerry, were the Democratic nominee) I have been hoping that Obama would run in 2008. I know who I'm voting for!