Bobby Jindal's Win Makes Me Porud

Alright I know some of you are wondering what I am smoking and some of you might also be wondering where you can get some but when I talk about my being proud it is as an Indian-American and not as a Democrat. I know Jindal is about as conservative as one can get, but as an Indian-American I am very proud. As you know Indian-Americans are the richest minority group in the US. We tend to do well for ourselves here in areas such as IT and Medicine and Engineering, however when it comes to politics not soBobby Jindal looks like he might change all that. By winning in LA he has opened the door for fellow Indians-Americans to get involved in politics. Plus the fact that he is super smart doesn't hurt either I mean just look at this resume.

He attended high school at Baton Rouge Magnet High School. In 1991, he graduated from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, with honors in biology and public policy. Afterwards, he received a master's degree in political science from New College, Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. After Oxford, he joined McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm. In 1995, U.S. Congressman Jim McCrery (R-LA) introduced his former aide (Jindal) to Republican Governor Murphy J. Foster, Jr. Foster subsequently appointed Jindal, then aged twenty-four, to be Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health & Hospitals, an agency then representing about 40 percent of the state's budget; he served from 1996 to 1998. From 1998 to 1999, he was executive director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare. He was also the youngest-ever president of the University of Louisiana System between 1999 and 2001. Newly-elected President George W. Bush appointed him Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation; he held that post from July 9, 2001 to February 21, 2003.

Plus he delivered his own kid that got to take some brainpower.There is also the concern about Indian-Americans about is it possible for us to get elected, in other words will our skin color hurt us. A legitimate concern but if an Indian-American can win in LA where can't we win. much.

Right Wing 3rd Party, Please!

I was surfing the web today when I cam across an article stating that many Christian conservatives are seriously considering forming a third party.

Christian conservatives want more respect. They were instrumental in propelling George W. Bush to power—twice—and now they're feeling neglected.

Are you kidding me you don't feel respected, your run everything in the country right now. (Well except Congress but lucky for you they have no spines).I would love to see a Right Wing 3rd Party
The reason they are thinking of forming this 3rd party is due to the fact that pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay rights, and three times married Rudy Giuliani is the frontrunner for the GOP nomination right now. At a Values voter summit last week Rudy came in 8th among the participants. Now a lot of people think this is just a bluff but according to Richard Land who serves as president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission its is no bluff.

My intuition [is that] this is not a bluff. If Giuliani is the nominee there will be a third party. There are things that Giuliani could do to help mitigate the damage. But I have been in too many discussions over the last 15 years where evangelical leaders have said, "The one thing we will never allow to happen is for the Republican Party to take us for granted the way the Democratic Party too often takes the African-American community for granted." This is not a bluff.

Later on we see just how far right wing he really is

No, he's not going to do that, and if he did nobody would believe it. He would [have to] say, number one, "This is a pro-life party. I realize I am out of step with where the party is, and I am not going to try to in any way weaken the [pro-life] plank." He could say, "I will only appoint strict constructionists, original-intent jurists to the federal judiciary." Strict constructionists by definition think that Roe v. Wade was an overreach and is a badly decided decision. If he were to agree to appoint a pro-life attorney general in the mode of a John Ashcroft.

I think the Democrats will win in 2008 regardless of a Right wing 3rd party or not but it would be nice for there to be one because that will almost guarantee a Democratic Victory. I don't get how these people don't see they are handing the Democrats a key to victory, but oh well that’s not our problem.

Presidential Rankings

I was thinking it would be fun to put out my rankings of the Presidents and my reasons for it. I been thinking about it for a little while now and I think it would be cool for my readers to tell me where they agree or disagree. I’m thinking we’ll agree for the most part but I sure there will be a few disagreements. So without further ado here are the rankings:

1. Abraham Lincoln: Led the country through its darkest hour.
2. George Washington: Father of the country did a good job as the first president, set the tone for the rest.
3. Franklin D. Roosevelt: New Deal helps lead the country out of the Great Depression, lead US through WWII, greatest Democratic President no question.
4. Theodore Roosevelt: Square deal and the regulation of industry one of many Republican presidents who would be Democrats today.
5. Thomas Jefferson: Louisiana Purchase good for America.
6. Andrew Jackson: The first populist president
7. Harry S Truman: Marshall Plan and the de-segregation the military
8. John F. Kennedy: Peace Corps and Cuban Missile Crisis resolution
9. Dwight D. Eisenhower: Got us out of Korea (well sort of) and built the highway system
10. Lyndon B. Johnson: Great Society Program, Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act
11. Woodrow Wilson: Lead us through WWI
12. James K. Polk: Resolved the Oregon boundary dispute, Got us Texas (mixed results there), and led us through Mexican-American war which was a pivotal moment for the US.
13. James Monroe: Monroe Doctrine
14. James Madison: Led us through war of 1812
15. Bill Clinton: The only reason he at 21 right now in most historians rankings is that he is ranked last in moral authority, how is lower than Nixon and the pre-Civil War Presidents I do not know. But Clinton achieved a lot including Reducing the federal deficit, Americorps, School-to-Work Program, A cease-fire in Northern Ireland, A Peace Agreement between Israel and Palestine, 22 million new jobs, and increased minimum wage, and The Brady Bill.
16. Grover Cleveland: Modernized the US Navy
17. John Quincy Adams: Good statesman who continued the policies of James Monroe
18. William McKinley: Led us through Spanish American war, got us Guam, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii
19. Martin Van Buren: Poor’s man Andrew Jackson (ok very poor man)
20. Jimmy Carter: Help to negotiate peace between Egypt and Israel
21. Gerald Ford: Help stabilize the country after the Nixon Administration
22. William H. Taft: Tried to be a progressive.
23. George HW Bush: Persian Gulf War
24. Chester A. Arthur: Helped established the Greenwich Meridian
25. Rutherford B. Hayes: Signed a bill which allowed female lawyers to argue before the Supreme Court
26. Ronald Reagan: Helped to end the Cold War by making the USSR spend itself into the ground, put Sandra Day O’Conner on the Supreme Court
27. Benjamin Harrison: Sherman Anti-trust Act
28. Andrew Johnson: Let reconstruction happen in the South
29. Ulysses S. Grant: Treaty of Washington
30. John Adams: Alien and Sedition Act
31. Zachary Taylor: Formed the Department of the Interior
32. George W. Bush: I can count the polices of his I support on one hand
33. Calvin Coolidge: Did not do much help contribute to stock market crash
34. Herbert Hoover: Did noting after stock market crash
35. James A. Garfield: Died in office, did nothing
36. William Henry Harrison: Died in office did nothing
37. Tyler: Did nothing in office
38. Richard Nixon: Watergate
39. Harding: Teapot Dome Scandal
40. Pierce: Did nothing to stop the Civil War from happening
41. Millard Fillmore: Fugitive Slave Act
42. James Buchanan: Did nothing to stop Civil War from happening

Run Away Socialized Medicine is Coming!

Now that I have you attention I must tell you that one thing that has been annoying me lately is the Republicans referring to universal health care as socialized medicine. I don't understand why the republicans are being so simple and do not realize that universal health care and socialized medicine are not the same thing; they are different. Republicans act like capitalist can't support universal health care and that is just wrong, here is why.
I have not always been for universal health care it only a recent development for me. But in college when a professor made it very clear that it was not socialized medicine I started to look at it differently. I now see that it is something that we need is this country with 47 million Americans without insurance. I was browsing Slate today and came across an article on the subject this passage in particular stood out to me:
To some, the prospect that socialized medicine would still frighten anyone is absurd. Fears that "creeping socialism" might insidiously erode American freedoms are a relic of a distant age, like worries about fluoride in the water. Even so, the socialized medicine meme may have transcended the fevered ideological climate that spawned it. The words retain a talismanic power—a power that will soon be tested again.
Republicans seem to think that universal health care as socialized medicine will ruin America but that is not the case because UHC isn't socialized medicine and it will help save America. If America would implement UHC it would probably be most like the Canadian system where everything is private but the difference is the Canadian government pays for the health care; a single payer system. Of course taxes would be higher but to me that would be fine. As for the part about destroying America I am a capitalist and you know who else was: FDR. When FDR first introduced idea like this and others that help the poor and disadvantaged it was to save capitalism in America, which was not looked upon so greatly because of a little thing called the Great Depression. Taking care of ones citizens is not a socialist concept. It can be but it can also be something a capitalist country does. I just don't know how to convince Republicans of that. Oh and in the Seattle PI this weekend there was this great cartoon of a sick kid in bed with his mother saying you may be sick but President Bush says that better than being a socialist. Kinda funny. That is all.

Pulling out of Iraq before 2009? Not Going to Happen.

Let me start off by saying I am against the Iraq War. I am sad to say not from the beginning, I supported the war when it first started, but after three months or so I started to see that that was a mistake, there were no WMD’s to be found, we were starting to get bogged down with no exit strategy in sight. I then obtained the view that we had to stay in Iraq to fix what we had done, but after a year or so with no end in sight and a civil war going on I knew the best thing was to get out of Iraq. So when the Democrats took back Congress in 2006 I was happy but soon learned that a pullout before 2009 was not possible; here is why. There are only a few things that the Democrats can do they can pass a bill for a partial withdrawal and pull more troops out over time, they can set a date for when all the troops must be out of Iraq, or they can cut off funding. With the withdrawal plan it seems we have the votes to get it passed (even with a few Republicans voting for it) but you know that the President will veto it and we definitely do not have the 2/3 votes needed to override the veto. It seems very unlikely that till will happen.
The other option we have is cutting of funding for the war. At first I was skeptical about this, as I feared it might make the Democrats look bad in the eyes of the public that we were cutting off funds for the troops. Then I realized that with the majority of Americans opposed to the Iraq War they would see it as a way of ending the war. Unfortunately even if Congress did pass a bill like this the president would once again veto it and we definitely do not have the 2/3 votes needed to override the veto. it looks like the best thing for the Democrats to do is keep passing bill after bill that calls for the withdrawal of the troops and with each veto the American people will see it is President Bush that is keeping the troops there.