More political round-up
(I swear, Sid, I'll get to medical rewards credit cards soon)

In comments to Amelia's post about age and cohort effects on the Obama vs. Clinton race, Ben reminds us "..what Hillary thinks of us." Which is a link to a blog post about a news story from May '06 about Clinton criticizing the work ethic of our generation. While I'll admit, the bit about work being a four letter word stings a bit, and certainly generalizing is always a bad idea, I'm not convinced at all that "Kids, for whatever reason, think they're entitled to go right to the top with $50,000 or $75,000 jobs when they have not done anything to earn their way up," is a totally unreasonable thing to say. Just anecdotally, I know people my age who have quit (or want to quit) their jobs because within the first 12 months of said job they are a) doing the same, repetitive thing over and over again and/or b) they aren't managing anyone below them. Now, again, I get that if you've invested in your education, and especially if you've gone into debt to obtain that education, you're going to be a bit touchy about your salary. But you know what? You do have to start somewhere. And if you're a high school graduate or the holder of a bachelor's degree, you probably aren't going to make more than $50,000 a year at your first job. Thems the breaks. And no matter what your degree, you are most certainly going to have to pay your dues doing shit work and being the lowest rung on the totem poll with no minions to answer to your beck and call. That's how the work force works. So suck it up and invest your 12 months and then show off all your hard work and dedication to your boss and ask for a raise or a promotion or a minion to call your own or whatever it is that you desire. Until then, shut the hell up and stop whining.
(I know, I know, as someone who has not yet entered the workforce, it's easy to say, and I may just eat my words. But I promise, if I whine about one of the above things during the first 12 months of my job, you have every right to tell me to shut the hell up. In fact, please do.)

It also makes me nervous that during the course of a conversation with a friend I commented that both Obama and Clinton were in favor of rolling back tax cuts for the rich, where rich was defined as making more than $250,000 a year. This friend made a face, implying that $250,000 a year wasn't 'rich.' I know we all have our own contexts for what does and does not constitute wealth, and I know that I in particular have a tendency to undervalue myself, monetarily, and I know that once you have a family to support even the largest of salaries seems to disappear rapidly. Nevertheless. $250,000 a year is a shit ton of money. Again, if you ever catch me claiming differently, remind me to shut the hell up.

On the front of the AJC this morning there was a local woman quoted as saying that she's voting Republican this year because "health care is broken and the Democrats can't fix it." Oh this breaks my heart. Because even the briefest of glances at any of the Republican's websites, or the side-by-side analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation reveals that this is just so patently untrue. Indeed, McCain is the only Republican suggesting even the vaguest of reforms and modifications to our health care system. I know a post like my previous one is overkill and way beyond what should be expected of the average voter, but nonetheless, if you're going to claim to vote in a particular way because of a particular cause, for the love of god, please, I beg of you, do at least some sort of rudimentary research on that topic! Even if we are diametrically opposed in our ideas about how a certain problem may be solved, we should still be able to agree about who does and does not have any sort of plan to solve said problem vs. a bunch of empty rhetoric that clearly doesn't imply any sort of change or progress or solution.

And speaking of McCain, I used to think that I could almost get behind his candidacy too. He's clearly not my guy, but he could be ok, maybe. But then he started actually running for the highest office. And he started saying shit like this, "I will try to find clones of [Justices Samuel] Alito and [John] Roberts." Again, even if we completely disagree on the role of government and the solutions to common problems, we should be able to find common ground regarding people who are a) just plain bad at their jobs and b) violate the US Constitution.