Hello All,
It has been a long time since I posted. I have been working on my senior thesis and in the interest of getting it done, I had a self-imposed exile from AIM, elmwoodstrip, etc. But my thesis is now drafted YAY!!! I just have to go through and make the edits my thesis advisor tells me to. IT should be a pain but I am ok with it because I have something down and that is what matters because I only need to get a B in order for me to get credit for it and graduate with University Honors in Political Science.

On to other news, I just got back from FLorida for my cousin's wedding. I was there for a weekend with all my family on my dad's side. It was great to see everyone. ALl but 2 of my cousins on that side were there, which is pretty impressive, my dad has 3 brothers and 3 sisters and many of them had multiple offspring and now they are starting to get married and have kids. Two of my cousins are pregnant. It is craziness. But the wedding was really nice. Rather than throwing rice, they had live butterflies in these envelope things and you let them go. It was wierd but ok.

When we were in Florida, it was also my Grandfather's 80th birthday. I can't believe he is 80. He is so active and energetic. It is great. He is constantly running around keeping himself busy doing stuff. If I could have half of the energy he has when I am 80, I will be set. At the wedding, he was supposed to say grace before the meal, but when he went up there, he felt that he should sing a song (my grandfather is not a singer). It was a song that his mother use to sing to sing to him when he was younger. It was really sweet and genuine. My grandpa is a great guy.

On to other things. Did you ever know someone that you really wanted to get to know better? Like a friend of a friend or something like that. You know them casually but you feel like you would be great friends if you hung out regularly. But at the same time you know you never could. Hmmm. That is all on that. Hopefully I will post more regularly.

Peace out,
-Jesse

As of late I have really enjoyed the Pretenders' song "My City Was Gone." I watched them play it on their induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I looked up the lyrics, and as I read them, I almost laughed/cried at how applicable they were to Buffalo. I decided to make a few changes and make the song about Buffalo. Here is my adapted version followed by the original:

Buffalo Version:
I went back to Buffalo
But my city was gone
There was no train station
There was no downtown
The zoo had disappeared
All my favorite places
My city had been pulled down
Reduced to parking spaces
A, o, way to go Buffalo

Well I went back to Buffalo
But my family was gone
I stood on the back porch
There was nobody home
I was stunned and amazed
My childhood memories
Slowly swirled past
Like the wind through the trees
A, o, oh way to go Buffalo

I went back to Buffalo
But my pretty countryside
Had been paved down the middle
By a government that had no pride
The parks of Buffalo
Had been replaced by shopping malls
And muzak filled the air
From West Seneca to Niagara Falls
Said, a, o, oh way to go Buffalo


Original Version:
I went back to ohio
But my city was gone
There was no train station
There was no downtown
South howard had disappeared
All my favorite places
My city had been pulled down
Reduced to parking spaces
A, o, way to go ohio

Well I went back to ohio
But my family was gone
I stood on the back porch
There was nobody home
I was stunned and amazed
My childhood memories
Slowly swirled past
Like the wind through the trees
A, o, oh way to go ohio

I went back to ohio
But my pretty countryside
Had been paved down the middle
By a government that had no pride
The farms of ohio
Had been replaced by shopping malls
And muzak filled the air
From seneca to cuyahoga falls
Said, a, o, oh way to go ohio

Here is an article from the March 7th issue of time. I could not agree more with the author. I believe (and have for a while) that the abortion debate is ridiculous. Noone is proabortion. Rather than fight to make abortion legal or illegal, why don't both sides fight to make it unneccessary.

-Jesse

Time Magazine
March 7, 2005

The Case for Compromise on Abortion;
How the pro-choice side is wielding a new principle that's tough to argue with

Andrew Sullivan

Something very unusual is happening to some Democrats and pro-choice abortion activists. They're getting smarter about their strategy. For years, they've harped on and on about a woman's right to choose, while failing to capture in any meaningful way the moral qualms so many of us have about abortion itself. So they often seemed strident, ideological and morally obtuse. They talked about abortion as if it were as morally trivial as a tooth extraction--not a profound moral choice that no woman would ever want to make if she could avoid it.

But that obtuseness seems--finally and mercifully--to be changing. Senator Hillary Clinton led the way in a recent speech to abortion-rights activists. She said something so obvious and so right it's amazing it has taken this long for it to be uttered: whatever side you're on in the pro-choice vs. pro-life debate, we surely all want to lower the number of abortions. Whether you believe that an abortion is a difficult medical procedure for a woman or whether, like me, you believe that all abortions are an immoral taking of human life, we can all agree on a third principle: we would be better off with fewer of them. And the happy truth is, abortions have been declining in numbers. According to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control, since 1990 the number of reported legal abortions dropped from 1.4 million a year to 853,000 in 2001. The number of abortions for every 1,000 live births dropped from 344 to 246.

How did this happen? No one is quite sure. It could be related to less access to abortion providers, but more likely it is a function of declining teenage pregnancies, more widespread use of contraception, abstinence programs and cultural shifts toward sexual restraint among young women. None of these strategies separately is a panacea, but each has a part to play. So what's the new pro-choice line? Let's keep up the progress. Let's defend the right to an abortion while doing all we can to ensure that fewer and fewer women exercise it. Leave the contentious issue of Roe v. Wade for one minute, quit the ideological bickering about when life begins for a while, take down the barricades, and craft a strategy that assumes abortion will be legal for the foreseeable future, but try to reduce it.

Both sides have something to contribute. Sure, we should fund abstinence programs, as many pro-lifers argue. They can work for some women. But so too does expanded access to contraception. The pro-life Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, has a bill called the Prevention First Act that would expand access to birth control. Or you can focus on expanding adoption as an alternative to abortion (which means adoption by gays as well as straights). NARAL Pro-Choice America, formerly known as the National Abortion Rights Action League, actually took out an ad in the conservative Weekly Standard last month, appealing to pro-life groups to join in the antiabortion crusade--not by making it illegal but by increasing access to contraception.

What's the downside? I cannot see any. Both sides can still fight to keep abortion legal or illegal. But both can also work hard to reduce the moral and human toll of abortion itself. Why shouldn't a future Democratic candidate commit to an actual goal of reducing abortions nationally by, say, one-fifth in a four-year term? Alas, the pro-life side is leery. A key part of their coalition is made up of conservative Catholics who oppose any kind of birth-control devices; others are hostile to any adoption rights for gay couples. Still others may fear that if the number of abortions drops significantly, their argument for making it completely illegal may become less salient.

But none of those arguments makes sense on its own terms. If abortion really is the evil that pro-lifers believe it is, they should stop at nothing to reduce its prevalence--now. Is it really better that someone should have an abortion rather than be on the pill? Is it really preferable for an unborn life to be snuffed out than to allow him to have loving gay parents? Those are the questions that pro-choicers should be posing to pro-lifers. Saving human life is the priority. Why are you so reluctant to do it? Call this position the pro-choice, pro-life compromise. If Democrats want to regain credibility on moral issues, it's a great way to start. And if Republicans want to prevent abortions rather than use the issue as a political tool, they can get on board. We have nothing to lose but trauma and pain and politics and death. And we have something far more precious to gain: life itself.

The truth comes out. I am apparently not really a Republican.

On Non-Fiscal Issues, you rank as a Moderate Liberal (23).
On Fiscal Issues, you rank as a Centrist (45)

Damn you Sam Hoyt!!!

[inlink]mike,317[/inlink]
Mike,
When I come home in may we can awkwardly hang out at spot with Yosepha everyday, if that works for you, and a good time will be had by all.
-Jesse