McCain over Clinton

With only three real candidates left for president, I have settled on my final order. Obama first, then McCain, then Clinton, (then Nader evidently). the reason is quite simple. I believe Obama will try and to an extent succed in creating a government that brings different interest together to figure out the best way to solve the country's problems. that is the ideal for me. While clinton and Obama have very similar plans for the country, I think that Clinton is incredibly divisive and will marginalize any republican voice. She will feel entitled to do whatever she wants. An article in the times called her a democratic george bush. While I think she is much more intelligent than bush, I agree to the extent that both are incredibly polarizing figures. (Bush is still a popular president among republicans). since I believe that democrats are going to increase their control of both the house and senate, if we are going to have a polarizing figure in the white house I would prefer that person to be from the opposite party of the party that controls congress. I harbor no love for McCain, but prefer deadlock in government to a polarizing figure with near complete power.

Rejection letter

On Friday I received a rejection letter telling me that the firm is only interested in candidates that have 2-3 years experience. I applied to this firm in February 2007. I am tempted to write them back and tell them that if they had just waited one more year I would have that experience requirement and then I could tell them to piss off.

The persistence of isms

I was talking with one of my friends the other day about Hillary Clinton and how her run for the presidency has exposed certain sexist attitudes in the country. From there was also talked about Obama and racism. It was and is my opinion that Hillary has faced more sexist negativity than obama has faced racist negativity. But that got me thinking about how both sexism and racism persist in this country.

I cam to the conclusion that the vast majority of sexists are people who do not think they are sexist. Most people do not say that a woman, for no other reason than she is a woman, cannot do X. But I think that there are many people who say that a woman can be president but only if X, while never imposing that same restriction on a male. With racism, it is much harder to justify that kind of assertion. I think most rational people have a harder time justifying a race distinction, and for that reason there are fewer racists who do not think they are racist than there are sexists who dont think they are sexist. So I have come to the conclusion that even though I strongly oppose Clinton's run for the white house, and will vote for McCain if Clinton is the democratic nominee, I am grateful to her for having run because I think it has exposed some latent sexism. And recognition of the problem is the first step to solving it.

Man in the Iron Mask

I was looking for quotes because I decided that it was time to change my quote at the top of my blog, and I started with different quotes from some of my favorite authors. One of my favorite authors is Alexandre Dumas. This came up because I saw that by far his most famous quote is "all for one and one for all" from the three muskateers. I recently learned that the three muskateers is actually a trilogy, with the man in the iron mask being the third and final book in the trilogy. This book actually pits the muskateers against each other. the reason that i mention this is that when I read muskateers i thought it light hearted and very dissimilar to dumas other works (the book count of monte cristo for example makes the recent jim cavezel movie version look like bambi before mommy gets slaughtered). I find it incredibly amusing that Dumas, one of the darkest authors ever in my opinion, is best known for a line that is used as a rallying cry for unity, when the point is (I think) that unity only lasts until private interests outweigh group interests, and no matter how unified in spirit, the unity cannot last.