The State of America.

According to President Barrack Hussein Obama the United States is doing just fine. Depending on the information you possess or the viewpoint you may have this could be right, wrong, or mean absolutely nothing. I watched the entire 1 hour address to the nation and to Congress, and then I also watched Senator Marco Rubio's response to the speech. Both men spoke relatively well, both men are not purely Caucasian White (although the President is more than the Junior Senator from Florida who is ethnically Cuban as both of his parents were immigrants from that country). President Obama is seen as quite liberal, and Senator Rubio as quite conservative. Both have non-traditional American names. The two men are relatively young and well educated, although the Senator is bilingual being fluent in Spanish. The differences and similarities between the two men represent something new and different in the United States, yet also consistent with modern politics. I'm not going to go into their speeches or their points made, but I will make this statement: each economic strata has a certain political party that is loyal to it, save for the middle class that all of the politicians keep yacking about. These individuals make up the largest percentage of the electorate and therefore wield the greatest political power, not the poor and not the wealthy. If somehow the working middle class could galvanize together then they would find themselves in a better position to dictate to Washington what they want. Imagine that; a new political party that completely empathizes with the largest percentage of the country's population, now that's power. Anyways. Both speeches were mildly interesting and although the President's was more illuminating than the Senator's response, I have to admit that there wasn't anything really new about the President's agenda. That's American politics though, and it should be interesting to see what all he can accomplish for the end of his final term. I didn't have too busy of a day, although looking back it kind of felt that way. I went to the doctor's office to get my pre-employment exam which wasn't too bad aside from getting stuck with needles a couple of times, and then coughing and looking the other direction when the doctor....inspected the goods. God bless the people who work in the medical field; I don't think that I could do it, but then people say the same thing to me about the mental health field. I suppose each of us have particular talents for particular fields. For the Oscars tonight there is Best Documentary Short: Inocente, Kings Point, Mondays At Racine, Open Heart, and Redemption. Having just watched the trailers for all of these short documentaries the last three stand out to me. Mondays At Racine is about cancer patients being given dignity by a hair salon which gives free services to cancer patients every third Monday of the month. Open Heart is a little a more touching and enormously more tragic. In Sudan, only a select few, the ones deemed most at risk are given special treatment for heart problems they have. One of the doctors quote a number that about 300,000 people die a year (in either just the Sudan or Africa) alone of just something as simple to fix as strep throat. Watch this trailer if you watch nothing else. Even though Americans endure and have pain and tragedy, what happen over in Africa to well over half of the population is truly more tragic than anything the United States will ever bear. Lastly, is Redemption and this struck me because it's about people in New York City that try to make a living by redeeming cans and bottles for 5 cents each. It's definitely a little trippy to see desperate people argue and fight over garbage. It is perhaps the truest depiction of innate human nature. I think the Academy is going to choose Open Heart and I would choose that as well, and honestly more needs to be done to help those people over there. Well, have an excellent night everyone.
Mondays At Racine trailer
Open Heart trailer