A Restful Weekend Reaches its Midpoint

So I wasn't in class Friday, so obviously my reaction will exist in a vacuum. I will use this opportunity to talk about things that interest me as a result. The pirate talk, though fascinating, has been beaten to death by this point. Everyone wants to stop it, but no one really really wants to other than the French and Indians, who have already killed several groups of pirates. So going a little deeper than superficial pirate battles, let's look a little deeper here. I'm interested to see how this could destabilize the region further, and to see the extend to which Yemen becomes involved in the process. It certainly won't be doing much to stop it. But could the economic instability already prevalent in the country expand even further as damages to the minor shipping out of the nation penetrates deeper into the national economy? How could this affect the prices of oil?

So as if we haven't talked about the election enough, I read a fairly interesting blog post about race and the election. To many on the left, Barack Obama somehow indicates that somehow everything is going to be okay in America, that racism is a thing of the past, and that somehow, even though he isn't in office yet, "yes we did." I think Obama's acceptance speech was great, in that it realized this. But I fear many among his supporters think that now, he has it covered from here. Just because someone you agree with has been elected doesn't mean we need to stop being vigilant about government accountability and its involvement in the private lives of American citizens. I'm not going to believe in change until I actually see it. Seeing disheartening numbers such as these go to show how there really hasn't been a value shift in the American voter. The same blocs exist in American politics; the only thing that has shifted is the relative power of the northeast and southwest over that of the southeast, the traditional "swing vote" of American politics. Clearly, a much deeper, long-term change in demographic perception must occur in the United States before "change" becomes a reality.