A Very Big Thanks!

I would just like to pause for a moment and thank a few blogger friends who, over the last couple of months were very kind to award yours truly.

First of all I would like to express my deepest thanks to both Blogusvox and Ever for sharing with me the Oops Award.

Accoding to the folks who came up with the Oops award, the award was created and is to be given to bloggers who inspire others with their humor and their talents, also for contributing to the blogging world in whatever medium. When you receive this award it is considered a “special honor”.

The following Uber Amazing Blog Award was given to me by one of my first blogger-friends, RDL. The Uber Amazing Blog Award is a blog award given to sites who:
~ inspire you
~ make you smile and laugh
~ or maybe gives amazing information
~ a great read
~ has an amazing design
~ and any other reasons you can think of that makes them uber amazing!

Her blog was one of the first I enjoyed reading and visiting when I was still new to blogging. As such, a very big THANKS goes out to her.

Last but not least, the following Friendship Award was given to me by Madbong23 all the way from New Zealand. I enjoy reading about his life stories and experiences in that special part of the world.

Friends, thank you very much again for these awards. I apologize that it took me quite a while before posting them on here but please know that I appreciate the thoughts behind them very much.

Oh Those Republicans

This is a piece that I will write straight from the heart. It will also be my last write-up on last Tuesday's election

After suffering a devastating loss last Tuesday, the Republican Party is said to be doing some soul-searching as to the causes of their defeat. They are trying to figure out how to rebuild the party after two consecutive election losses that led first to the Republicans' losing their majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2006 and second, the loss of the White House to the Democrats with the victory of President-elect Barack Obama.

Although Mr. Obama scored a landslide victory over Senator John McCain, the Republicans are consoling themselves with the thought that even though Mr. Obama garnered 53% of the popular vote as compared to Senator McCain's 46%, Senator McCain's percentage of the total vote was still higher than the 43% former President Bill Clinton got when Mr. Clinton won the Presidency in the 1992 elections.

The Republicans still think that they can win the electorate back in future election by emphasizing conservative principles such as their beliefs in smaller and more efficient government, lower taxes, a strong military, meritocracy, strong religious and family values, and the capitalist economic system.

On the surface, those conservative principles the Republicans espouse ought to be attractive to a lot of people, especially immigrants who want to start a new life in a new country. But the problem with the Republicans is that there are sectors within the Republican Party who are racist and stridently anti-immigrant. Although these bigots (let's call a spade a spade here) do not make up a majority of the Republican membership, their voices were loud enough and their numbers were big enough to prevent President George W. Bush and Senator McCain from enacting a comprehensive immigration reform law back in 2006.

President Bush, in the early part of this decade, realized the need for the Republican Party to be a more racially inclusive political party. For all his imperfections, Mr. Bush was a politically moderate man who wanted more minority groups to be welcomed and represented within the Republican Party. He knew and understood that a lot of minority groups share the same socially conservative and pro-family values that the Republican Party stands for. Thus, Mr. Bush worked hard to win the support of minority groups and promised them that he will work to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill into law.

The bill was basically aimed at attracting illegal aliens to come out and register with the government authorities. Mr. Bush wanted the illegal aliens to pay taxes on income earned in the US but in exchange, they could gain a path towards permanent residency. His proposal enjoyed widespread support among Democrats and moderate Republicans such as Senator McCain. However, Mr. Bush ran into stiff resistance from members of his own party, specifically Republican congressmen who hid their racism under the guise of respect for the rule of law.

To make a long story short, the bill was defeated in Congress because of the hardline stance these anti-immigrant Republicans took. As a result, minority groups, especially the Hispanics, who helped Mr. Bush win reelection in 2004, switched their support to the Democrats and thus contributed significantly to Mr. McCain's defeat against Mr. Obama.

The irony from last Tuesday was that the Hispanics and other minority groups punished the Republican Party by voting against Mr. McCain, the man who helped Mr. Bush champion the ill-fated comprehensive immigration reform law. In addition, the Republicans are rapidly losing their hold in the most racially diverse areas of the nation. In the Northeastern region of the US where I live, with the lone exception of Maine, all Northeastern states (New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticutt, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia) are now represented by Democrats in the US Senate. The same is true of the West Coast. As of last Tuesday's election, the entire West Coast region (made up of the states of Washington, Oregon, and California) are now likewise represented by Democrats in the US Senate.

If the Republicans seriously want to win back both the White House and Congress in the coming years, they need to reassess their attitudes and policies towards ethnic minorities. The demographics in the US are changing dramatically. According to the latest figures from the US Census Bureau, 44% of American children today are ethnic minorities, almost a 1-to-1 parity. The bureau projects that by 2050, non-Hispanic whites will make up 46% of the US population, down from 68% today.

But in spite of such statistics and projections, a number of Republicans still continue to ignore the immigrant community. They still pursue policies seemingly under the assumption that what worked well for them in the past in a predominantly white America will continue to work for them in the future.

What a lot of Republican politicians and their followers fail to realize is that by continuing to ignore immigrants and minorities, the Republicans run the risk of being reduced to a regional political party and worse, probably an irrelevant one in the years to come. Over the last few days, I read several reports on the web and on newspapers as to how the Republicans plan to revive their party. However, most of the Republicans' plans still fail to mention the urgent need to reach out to minorities. Some voices of reason and moderation within the party see the need to do so but for now, it seems that the Republican Party leadership is still clinging to their old ways.

I said at the beginning of this piece that I was writing it straight from the heart. I did so because of feelings of anger and sadness for the very sorry state the party now finds itself in. This Republican Party was a party that was once led by the great Abraham Lincoln. This Republican Party was the party that had once fought so hard to free the slaves and effectively ended slavery. It is highly ironic then that a hundred fifty years later, due to the narrow-mindedness and bigotry of some groups within it, this Republican Party is a party that now finds itself shunned by the very people it once fought so hard to free.

Congratulations, President Obama

This blog takes a few moments to congratulate former Senator and now President-elect Barack Obama on his historic victory. After a campaign that was remarkable for its discipline and consistency of message, his victory was indeed sweet and definitely one for the ages.

African-Americans have gone through a lot of pain, suffering and injustice since they were imported from Africa as slaves in 1619. It's been close to 400 years since they first set foot on American soil and yet, millions of them remain impoverished, unemployed, trapped in broken homes and live in tough, crime-ridden neighborhoods. The income of the average African-American family lags that of the average white American family. A disproportionately large number of inmates in American prisons are African-Americans.

I just hope that all African-Americans, especially the kids, will find inner strength and inspiration from Mr. Obama's achievement. I hope that a lot more African-American kids stay in school and do good for themselves so that someday, more of them will get to achieve what Mr. Obama did last Tuesday night.

Discovering Me

I want to live, I want to give;
I've been a miner for a heart of gold.
It's these expressions I never give
That keep me searching for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.

I guess everyone goes through a phase where a person starts to depart a bit from the person his parents want him to become to that of the type of individual he thinks he ultimately wants to be.

I wasn't introspective at all during my childhood and early teen years. My needs were simple and shallow: I wanted to have fun but at the same time, I wanted to stay out of trouble, especially with my parents. Having fun was easy because I was an easy-going and gregarious kid. I stayed out of trouble with my folks by observing the appropriate conduct when in the presence of other people (except in the classroom), by doing my fair share of the housework (we stopped having maids when I was eight), and by trying my best to earn good grades at school.

Although I passed all my subjects in school, I must admit I passed a few of them without really internalizing or understanding them. I thoroughly studied the subjects I loved but for those that I didn't, I used fear of my father's wrath to motivate myself to study and pass them.

I made a lot of "friends" in school without really giving much thought as to why I even considered many of them as such. I ended friendships either through heated arguments or through fights and didn't think much afterwards as to why those friendships ended. I disliked and viewed some of my teachers with utmost contempt and yet at the same time, I wasn't certain as to why. At home, I did and accepted as truth a lot of things my folks told me.

But my education and all the experiences I had up to that point were all catching up to me. After all the studying and living, I was starting to learn. I started to develop my own views and I started to question long-held beliefs especially in matters of faith, culture and tradition. I started to develop my own interests and views but yet lacked the confidence to voice them to my parents out of fear. In countless talks over the dinner table, I realized that although my parents worked hard to send their children to schools they believed would provide quality education, they were not exactly prepared to hear statements or assertions that went against their own beliefs and biases. Thus, ever the diplomat, I largely kept my views to myself. For the sake of maintaining harmony at home, I felt I had to maintain a semblance of conformity.

But outside the home, things were different. I became a lot more selective with my friendships. Although I continued to outwardly maintain a friendly demeanor, I became more guarded within. I distanced myself from people I deemed were mere users. I shunned people who felt the world revolved around them. Whereas before, I used to hang out with almost anyone in my class, I now started limiting myself to just four or five really close friends. Whereas before, I had accepted the majority's view as truth, I now started thinking on my own. I became more vocal with my friends about the hypocrisy I saw around me.

The process of self-discovery undeniably brought with it a fair amount of loneliness. Everything comes at a price I learned. My struggle and effort to become my own person brought with it a lot of arguments and misunderstanding both within the home and outside of it. I love my parents a lot but there are things in this world where they and I will never agree on. With other people, the process was a bit easier in a way because all it took was to cut off all contact with people I no longer trust or agree with. With the friends I have left at this point, they will probably remain my friends to my dying day. The relationship I have with them is such that they're never afraid to tell me things I may not want to hear and vice versa.

But outside of books and friends, music became a refuge for me. It was through music where I found strength and validation. One of the songs I listened to a lot during this time was Heart of Gold, a 1972 hit by Neil Young. This song had been around for many years when I first heard it as a sophomore in high school. The opening guitar and harmonica riffs conveyed the sense of loneliness one felt while in search of a true friend or a true love. I listened to this song a lot during those days when I needed gentle, caring souls to understand me. This song remains one of my favorites to this day.

Heart of Gold was a single cut from Mr. Young's 1972 album, Harvest. Let me just share with you below Mr. Young's beautiful live performance of this song from the early 1970s. Enjoy.

McCain and "Palin" on SNL

In what could be their last joint appearance on Saturday Night Live, Senator McCain and Governor "Palin" were on the show last night to "raise" additional campaign funds to help counter the Obama campaign's tremendous advantage in campaign finances.

Earlier in the week, the Obama Campaign purchased a half hour of air time on three major networks. Presented as "infomercials" on Senator Obama, these were supposed to package the Senator's "closing statements" in the dying days of this historic campaign. It is known that the state of the McCain campaign's finances compare poorly to Senator Obama's. Thus, the following comedy skit from SNL shows Senator McCain's two-fold "response" by not only getting some air time but also raising some much-needed campaign cash:

I must say that Mrs. McCain did some pretty good acting in that cameo appearance, didn't she? :-)

One very positive thing about these American politicians is that, unlike their counterparts in many Third World countries, most of them don't take themselves too seriously. A lot of screaming, debating, arguing, and insulting may occur between them during the heat of the campaign. But once the campaign is over and the election results are out, the will of the voters is respected and the losing candidate promptly concedes and congratulates the victor.