Equality

I've been thinking about this post off and on all day.  I meant to post it sooner, before the election was announced but I just didn't have enough time.  Today, Barack Obama was elected the President of the United States and I couldn't be happier.  I think that President Obama will do everything he can to bring about real change in our nation.  A lot of people *coughplumbercough* seem to complain about higher taxes and inexperience, but I think both of those things will work to his credit.  Higher taxes for the rich will bring our country more revenue while taking some of the burden off the people that are working paycheck to paycheck.  His experience is what we need leading our country, we don't need somebody that's been in Washington for 3 decades that's just working for the lobbyists and special interests, we've got a President whose special interest is the people of his country and this will really move our country forward.

Unfortunately, it also looks like Prop 8 is gonna go through, which is a real shame.  I thought one of the basic tenants the US was founded on was that the majority cannot take away rights from the minority, but I guess that all goes out the window today.  This was the first case that rights of a minority group have been voted away and it's really pathetic.  I don't think this is going to be permanent in our nation, eventually homosexuals will have equal rights to marry in every state and the children of that time will look back on this and scoff at the bigotry and discrimination that led to the elimination of rights.

Injustice

According to Access Services' Website, they have a vision. They accomplish this vision by "Providing quality, efficient and dependable ADA paratransit service." I may be crazy, but I don't think that quality, efficient and dependable service would leave a handicapped person in the cold just because they weren't waiting in the street when their transportation arrived nearly 20 minutes late. It's pretty appalling that they have such blatant disregard for their customers. The drivers won't go out of their way to find a passenger and usually late or early, making it almost impossible to go anywhere that requires an appointment, such as a doctor's office or, god forbid, most social events. I think the point of Access is to make handicapped people just stay at home. Access exists because a state law requires there to be some form of transportation for handicapped people but they really need to step up their service in order to represent the state in a positive way.

Another Bitchfest

The COLL presentation went better than I thought it would. Our presentation was still shitty cause the others were complete morons, but the other groups set the par so low our badness was actually a couple of notches above all the other groups today. The first group was a bunch of kids doing lowering the drinking age. These guys weren't bad and aside from a technical issue with their videos I'd say they were pretty solid. Next was a group about sex ed. I don't really know what their stance on the issue was b/c one girl was saying that teaching abstinence was the best way, the next girl said... something, I don't really know, the con side of their argument was a bunch of stories and then the guy literally saying "That's crazy." The last guy was also con and I really don't know what he was saying either, he just kinda rambled off some statistics and then said he was done. The funniest part was that their thing was just the four of them reading off of cards, they couldn't even manage to make a power point between themselves, which lead to theirs being the dullest thing I've seen in a long, long time. Next we were up, and even though it was short we had some good points and it sparked some decent discussion. The last group was about legalizing marijuana, and even though they had some valid points on the legalization, they didn't have any kind of debate at all. Most of it was just statistics about what happens to you and then at the very end they said some negative things but I don't even know what they were b/c they didn't have a slide or anything. The thing that bothered me the most was the prof was saying how medical marijuana wasn't a good idea b/c it should be up to the FDA not voters on what constitutes medicine. The problem with that reasoning is that the FDA hasn't said that marijuana doesn't have medical purposes, in fact they haven't said anything b/c they don't test it, they just stick their thumbs in their ears and wag their tongues at the idea of marijuana. The federal government had 15 medical marijuana test subjects in the 70s and then never asked them how the treatment was working for them. I don't know about you, but that doesn't seem to be a valid way to decide on a drug that could potentially help millions of people. This has kinda turned into me talking about drug legalization, which is a whole nother blog topic. I think I'm gonna end it here.