Politics Archive

Cage Match 2008

One of these two men will eventually become President of the United States of America. Both Obama and McCain have been training for over a year now, preparing for the inevitable cage match fight that will send one to the Oval Office, and other, to the grave.

The still controversial 2005 constitutional amendment did away with the previously outrageously expensive presidential election two-party race, and introduced a tag-team cage match “to the death” fight for the seat of one of the most powerful positions in the world. The catch is that each national political party may only submit a two person team, and that the team have a prepared a full political policy plan for running the government in the case that they win. Most parties still run their primary system in the fashion as previously, evident this year with both candidates. Early opponents of the amendment were worried that the political parties would turn their focus on picking a candidate that would be the top fighter in the ring and a traditional politician, creating a puppet position in the government. However, the amendment passed with 85% support both in congress as well as national support, and the political parties seem to have eased the worries about having unqualified nominees.

The Cost of Revenge

I’m usually a fan and promoter of the great writing found in the pages of the New York Times. Sometimes though, even the mighty fall, and when it comes to journalistic integrity the Times fell quite hard.

If I’m completely missing the point of unequivocally separating news and opinion, Randall Stross missed the bus altogether in his article “First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry”. The title itself almost reeks of arbitrary contempt.

College students are frugal people. Between work and school it’s not easy trying to make a living while attending and studying for classes. Especially when you’re paying $200 for a book that’s going to be outdated the very next semester. Comparatively between work and school, students are already short on time, energy and patience when it comes to managing financial resources; competing with studying and working, competing with teachers and employers - this group of people have four years of hell with the hopes of graduating with a degree and making a life for themselves.

You almost want to sympathize with students; or you can just as easily tilt the argument beyond fair limits and call it “revenge” when some students take it into their own hands to share textbooks.

Stross completely takes the subject and stretches the argument beyond acceptable barriers, and reduces an entire crisis down to an unnecessarily harsh simplification. When you consider the only tangible quotes in the NY Times article comes from publishers, and not a single active quote comes from either students or Peter Sunde (owner of ThePirateBay.org - the medium students are using to distribute these files), it’s hard to take this article even slightly serious.

Journalistic integrity or not, I’ve got to disagree with everything in that article - I just need that closure only revenge can give you.

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