Obama and Asia-Pacific Leaders Vow to Work Toward Freer Trade

For this blog entry I went on NewYorkTimes.com to find an article. There were plenty of articles to choose from but the one that stuck out for me was how Obama was talking to asianpacific leaders about having better tradeand talked about creating a regional free trade zone. This meeting was the end of his 10 day diplomatic and economic journey where he recieved a warm welcome from India but was criticized for not being able to finalize a free trade pact with South Korea.

On his final say of his adventure Obama had a meeting with the President of Russia Dmitri A. Medvedev talking about how Obama is commited to lifting the Cold War era trade restrictions which would allow them to join the World Trade Organization. Obama also talked with 20 other countries and territories in the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum and agreed on taking steps to a free trade zone in that region. There is no official time table for this free trade yet but they thought a good starting point might be the Trans Pacific Partnership, Which is a free trade agreement that four small countries are in, but there are talks of five other countries including the US that might join in as well.

The Major leaders of the global economic activity agreed to remove protectionist measures put in place dring the current global economic crisis, but also to avois any sudden changes in the foriegn exchange markets. Obama also brought up with Medvedev that his top priority was the ratification of the two countries new arms treaty that was stalled in Senate. Obama and Medvedev will meet later on in the weel in Libson for the NATO summit meeting. Obama said that next time they meet he would like to talk about Afghanistan and missle defense.

The President then went to go see the Great Buddah of Kamakura before he left to deal with the Lame Duck Congress in Washington. Obama is seeming to make small steps into making other countries not hate us as much as they used to. This trade talk has seemed to have countries trust us a little more than they used to and hopefully if we follow through on these ideas it will help stimulate the global economy. I hope that we do lift the trade regulations on Russia from the Cold War era because we seem to always promise the Russians something then back out leading into a Cold War. If we lift the trade regulations then Russia will start getting alon with us better and hopefully other countries will follow.

Midterms 2010

Unlike the majority of Americans, I’ve been glued to the midterm election coverage over the past couple days. I keep checking the New York Times website to see if any other races have been decided. While it’s been reported for months that the Republicans were going to gain in the House, I guess I just had to see it for myself. I just spent the last few moments comparing the map from elections of Representatives from 2008 to 2010. The amount of blue that is changed to red is very surprising to me. Even California went 7/8 red this time around.
While this isn’t something to celebrate by any stretch of the imagination for sitting Democrats in Congress, it could be worse. Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell did not win (Angle lost by 6%, and O’Donnell by 16%). O’Donnell’s concession can be seen here and Angle's here. Angle was well known for her commercials profiling illegal immigrants and O’Donnell for her controversial Christian stances on pre-marital sex and other clips from the 1990's on Real Time with Bill Maher.

But it is important to note that while these radical Republicans did not win, Rand Paul did. Paul is a Libertarian who has been known for controversial opinions on the Civil Rights Act. It was almost humorous to watch the panel on MSNBC (including Kieth Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Mathews, and Lawrence O’Donnell) freak out about his success.

Congress now stands with each house being controlled by a different party. Republicans won 60 seats in the House of Representatives, putting the final total at 239 Republicans and 186 Democrats, while winning 6 seats on the Senate, putting the final total at 52 Democrats and 46 Republicans. How this will effect Congress is uncertain. When the House had a majority of Democrats and a supposed filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, still over 400 pieces of legislation were passed through the House and were not passed or reconciled by the Senate. Now, with differing ideologies in Congress, it seems to make sense that the House will pass even more legislation than before over the Democratic minority, only to hit a road block at the Democratic Senate. Another discussed point was the power of the filibuster. It was just recently threatened by John McCain over the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t tell. Now that the Democrats have no power to block a filibuster, will it happen more and more often?
These are all extremely hypothetical questions. All of the candidates that have been recently elected have been running on ideological statements and now must attempt to put those into practice. Republicans in this election ran on the ideal of small government and cutting government spending, and it is known that the United States will reach the designated debt ceiling sometime this spring. If the ceiling is not increased, then the United States will risk default. Read about it here. If the newly elected Republicans vote to increase the debt, than they will not appear to be the small government advocates that they appeared to be during their campaign. But if they don’t’ raise the ceiling then there will be repercussions for the United States financial system.

One thing that is always predicatable about elections is their unpredictability, that's for sure.

What One Word Describes Your Current State of Mind? Disconnected.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve never claimed to be the best student…but election day has been distracting to my studies tonight.

I stumbled on a NYTimes.com interactive online piece which poses the question “What One Word Describes Your Current State of Mind?”. The piece asks you to enter the word that best describes your current mood, with the header of the frame reading “Election 2010”. When I first clicked to the page, I was simultaneously comforted, and perplexed: are we not listening to these “disgusted, sickened, powerless, anxious, worried, tired, and nervous” Americans? “I’m not alone! I’m one of them too!”, I thought. When I saw “worried” fly past the screen, I clicked “I also feel worried” What is worrisome is simple: The new face of Congress, and my inability to change it. 

Washington Post reporter Ezra Kline called election day “The end of the ‘do-something’ Congress”. From historic health reform, something that the national government has struggled with for decades, to the 75,000 infrastructure projects that were initiated in the past two years, to the refinement and overhaul of financial regulation: it hasn’t been perfect…but it’s been ‘something’. No other time in the past 40 years have we seen such a prolific amount of legislation flow from Capitol Hill. Within a few years, over 32 million Americans will now be able to gain health coverage they once could not afford; fantastic. 

..and it’s all ended, the progress anyway. Despite being a Congress that was able to legislate like no other, it seems that they’ve failed as politicians. Multiple polls show a widespread ignorance that the 111th Congress was successful at “getting things done”.

I’m worried, cynical, tired, and nervous. I feel disconnected, disenfranchised by the American political system. I’m not alone, but our voices seem to fall on deaf ears. But hey, we’re in this together, right?

Young Voters Say They Feel Abandoned

As of Tuesday Barack Obama will have been in office for two years. At the begining of his term President Obama seemed to be very connected with the youth of America making promises to help pay for education and lower taxes for the youth. Obama seems to be losing the votes of the younger crowd more and more as his term goes on. early on in the 2008 election Obama turned his sights on the youth realizing that there is not a big voter turnout, this was a very smart idea because by gaining the support of the youth Obama gained many votes that helped him win the election. He recieved sixty-six percent of the vote in the US for ages 18-29 which was a historic proportion. There were the most americans under the age of 30 who helped work on campaigns at a greater rate than the general population for the first time since 1952. It is safe to say that in the beginning of Barack Obama's presidency that he had the youth vote on his side.

The youth voters who supported Obama have seem to been on a decline since his election in 2008. Many of the youth who supported Obama was saying that they would have liked to be more involved with the Obama agenda. They were hoping to train and work in the campaign office once Obama was elected. Much of the youth supporting Obama, they seemed to be the faces for the campaign in college campuses and little towns who would turn undecided voters into Obama voters. In Miama alone they got 2000 new voters.

The youth helped Obama more than just asking people to vote for him but they got the word out about Obama every way they knew how, through facebook,twitter and even the Great Shelp which was run by Sarah Silverman trying to get young Jewish kids to have their grandparents vote for Obama. Most of the younger voters felt that they were being used by Obama because he was all about the youth in his campaigns then when he got elected into office he mainly focuse on health care and the older crowd and forget about the youth. In the past few weeks before the midterm election Obama seemd to be trying to reach the youth again, by going on the daily show and having a conference call with the College Democrats around the country. Lynda Tran a Spokeswomen for Organizing for America said that President Obama " was busy digging us out and making sure we didn't fall into another great depression.

I happen to agree with Lynda Tran, Obama has a lot of things on his plate. He can't do everything he promises right away he is more worried about our economy,trying to get it back on the right track. I can understand why he is dealing with this first because the economy affects all of us. Obama has started getting back to the youth in recent months by having conference calls and going on younger talk shows. I can understand why some people are losing faith in President Obama but I feel like he stepped into a position that had multiple problems with it and he is trying to fix them the best way he can. It is just going to have to take time, it can't all be solved over night. So I feel that Obama has not forgotten about the youth, he had to deal with some big issues but now is getting back to the youth and hopefully will make the changes he set out to make.

www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/us/politics/01generation0.html

www.prx.org/.../27147-barack-obama-addresses-youth-issues