Check this out: America Serves | Change.gov

The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation's challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start."

(my emphasis added)

For those of you who aren't familiar with the 13th amendment, here is the text:

1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

If you are required to do community service, then that is clearly involuntary servitude. What are the penalties going to be if you fail to comply? A fine? Imprisonment?

I certainly agree that giving back to a community is a good and virtuous thing to do. Requiring community service, however, devalues legitimate volunteering and creates resentment among many of those forced to "give." It also creates a false sense of "completeness" for those that give the bare minimum number of hours - likely half-assed in order to fill the time requirement - without regard for whatever "good" they are supposed to be working toward.

http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A35740

NOVEMBER 7, 2007
Hillary the Republican President
A Clinton presidency would differ little from the GOP frontrunners

BY JACK HUNTER

During the last Republican presidential debate, I watched as each candidate made their case for war not necessarily on Iraq or Iran, but on Hillary Clinton. Each candidate delivered their pre-scripted, anti-Hillary one-liners as the audience laughed and cheered with each successive attack. But as the pep rally died down, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee summed up the overall vibe with this somber observation, "Look, I like to be funny. There's nothing funny about Hillary Clinton being president."

Huckabee is correct. There's also nothing funny about him being president. Or Rudy Giuliani. Or Mitt Romney. Or Fred Thompson. In fact, the thought of voting for any of them is downright depressing.

Deep down, Republicans like to bash Hillary Clinton for the same reason Gamecocks fans bash Clemson — they think it's a hoot. They've done it for so long it's simply become second nature. There's no doubt in their minds that they hate the other team, but they really can't articulate a reason why. Writing for Fox News, Radley Balko put this dynamic into perspective; "No Democrat inspires more wrath and anger on the right than Hillary Clinton. This isn't because of her policy positions — on most issues, she's really not all that far removed from President Bush. It's leftover partisan anger from the Bill Clinton years."

Balko is right. Republican obsession with the Clinton administration in the 1990s bordered on lunacy. Their hatred blinds them to the fact that the Bush and Clinton dynasties are not only similar but, in many ways, indistinguishable. Balko adds, "Cato Institute President Ed Crane recently (pointed) out that when you strip away the partisan coating, Mrs. Clinton's grandiose, big-government vision is really no different than that envisioned by the neoconservatives so loathed by the left. Clinton, remember, not only voted for the Iraq war, she still hasn't conceded she was wrong to do so, and has made no promise to end it any time soon."

During last week's Democratic debate, Clinton's fellow presidential contenders highlighted the similarities between Clinton and the Republican establishment she pretends to challenge. Chris Dodd pointed out that Clinton's recent vote to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a "terrorist" group — a 125,000 member branch of the Iranian military — will likely enable a future attack on Iran. John Edwards noted that Clinton receives more money from defense contractors whose profits depend on prolonging the war than any other candidate, Republican or Democrat. Barack Obama has even chastised Clinton for behaving like a Republican.

So what are Republicans getting so excited about? I remember listening to Rush Limbaugh and others in 1991 warn that a Bill Clinton presidency would lead to hell on earth or worse. What Clinton actually gave us was wars overseas, wide open borders, and a bloated federal budget.

His presidency didn't differ much from the first President Bush or our current president, except that Clinton was less ambitious. In terms of abusing our military with needless wars, bankrupting the government, and importing terrorists and other illegal aliens, Bush didn't depart from Clinton's agenda — he simply carried it to new heights.

Some Republicans like to call Mrs. Clinton a socialist, and as a proponent of big government, that accusation isn't entirely inaccurate. But if Hillary is the next Stalin, Bush and his successors are Trotsky. In practice, each party agrees that big government is good; they just disagree on the best way to use it. For every Clintonite health care proposal, the Republicans can match it with a No Child Left Behind. Socialized medicine is an awful idea. So is socialized retirement in the form of Social Security, yet neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have any intention of dismantling it.

How any reasonable observer can believe that a Clinton presidency would be radically different from that of a Giuliani, Romney, Thompson, or Huckabee is beyond me. Political cheerleading and yelling "go team!" is simply not enough for me. Considering the effectiveness of bashing Hillary as a campaign tactic, the Republican presidential frontrunners have every reason to keep playing their constituents for fools; I just wish so many Americans would quit proving them right.

Hating Hillary by supporting Republican versions of her is the classic example of "not seeing the forest for the trees." And I will continue to only support candidates, however major or minor (Ron Paul anyone?), who are more interested in burning the fields and clearing the land, than merely trimming the hedges.

- Sarah and I went out to eat at Pacific Kitchen a few weeks ago, and I had, seriously, the best thing I've ever eaten in my life.  The BBQ Pork Porterhouse was so good that I had to stop in mid-sentence because I totally lost my train of thought.  I've had a lot of really good food in my 28 (almost 29) years, so it's truly saying a lot that I've never had anything better.  It was pure mouthgasm.

- I love this time of year because the weather is finally starting to cool down.  It makes me want to go outside and play.  Like ride a bike...

- I've started looking into acquiring a bike the past week or so.  Not anything really nice or expensive...I just want something to ride around the neighborhood, maybe on some bike paths, and possibly trails occasionally.  At the same time, some super cheap Wal Mart bike probably isn't going to make me happy.  I found a relatively inexpensive bike on Craig's List, and I'm going to look at it tonight, so you may see me riding around pretty soon...

- Consistently lifting hasn't been a problem for me the last few years, but I've really slacked on doing much cardio.  The last few times I've played basketball made me realize how out of shape I was.  It never used to be a problem as I could play for hours and barely be winded, so I decided I needed to do something about that.  I started running twice a week in the mornings a few weeks ago, slowly increasing the distance each time.  I'm now up to about 2.5 miles, so I'm feeling pretty good about it.

- Winter is approaching, and that means one thing to me: snowboarding!  Sarah and I have already planned one trip out to Colorado to visit my brother, and we'll probably be doing a few others over the course of the year.  If anyone is interested in coming with us some time, let me know.  Other places we're looking into are: Jackson Hole, Big Sky (Montana), Utah, and Whistler.  There will probably be at least one short weekend trip to NC or WV, too, and there's always the possibility of going to visit Sarah's mom in New Hampshire.

- Matt Ryan of Boston College is easily the best quarterback in college football, and the best pro prospect coming out after this season.  If the Falcons have a chance to draft him and don't do it, I'm personally going to go punch Arthur Blank in the face.

- Georgia Tech didn't look that great on Saturday (see above point about how awesome BC's QB is), but I'm still optimistic about the season.  A little improvement in a couple of areas, and it could still be a very good year.  By the way, Big Boi will be performing at halftime of the Tech vs. Virginia Tech game Thursday, November 1.

- I can't believe I hadn't heard about the "Jena 6" until a few days ago.  That's fucked up.  If people could just look at another person as an individual instead of looking at the color of their skin, then we probably wouldn't have problems like this...

- I can't believe that there are still some people that support the war in Iraq.  The reasons we supposedly invaded have all been proven to be false, so there is no reason we should have gone in in the first place.  We've now lost close to 4,000 soldiers, with 30,000+ more injured, not to mention the 70,000 dead Iraqis (many of whom were civilians).  In addition, we've thrown away billions and billions of dollars just to blow shit up and kill people.  It's having serious negative consequences on our economy.  There were no Al Qaida in Iraq before we went in.  Now there are probably thousands...we're actually making it easier for Al Qaida and other terrorists to recruit because of the turmoil we've thrown that country into.  The majority of people in Iraq want us to leave, and that's exactly what we should do.  Being there is harming our national security.  And pretty soon we're probably going to be attacking Iran.  Brilliant!  Just what we need! Another war!  If that happens, prepare for our economy to REALLY go into the crapper.

Not that there was anything wrong with my car.  I love my car, but it's not the most practical for going camping/climbing or driving up to the mountains with snowboards.

So I've spent a bit of money lately getting everything fixed up all nice to get it ready to sell.  I got the alignment done, new brakes, oil change, etc.  Today, I even got it detailed.  I got the works because I wanted it to look all pretty.  And it did.  Here's the evidence:

My car was looking nice.  Pictures were taken (duh), and I was planning to list it tonight.

Then on the way home from work, this happened (before anyone asks, yes, Sarah and I are fine...some bruises, but nothing major):

Doesn't it always happen like that???  Now I have to deal with some freaking insurance company that is going to try to offer me much less than my car is (was) worth.  It just figures.

Check the links to Susanne's and Erin's pics from Halloween.  I have to steal from others since I don't have a camera.

Susanne's Pics

Erin's Pics

Has anyone seen the pink (and when I say pink, I mean BRIGHT pink) house on North, just east of Moreland?

It was painted pink about a week ago, and Sarah and I have been trying to figure out who the hell would do that ever since.  It looked totally out of place, especially since those are some nice houses.

This morning on the way to the gym, things started to make a little bit more sense.  The first thing that I noticed was that the bushes in front of the house spelled out "Sundays".  Then we saw the big "E!" on one part of the front, and what was supposed to look like a giant hole around one of the windows.  And lo and behold, at the top was a sign that read "The Simple Life".

We still couldn't figure out exactly why it was like that.  We wondered if Paris and Nicole were going to be staying in this house to film episodes of the Simple Life?  That didn't really seem to make sense because it's a nice house, and I thought the premise of that show was them being in a "simple" environment.  Then we considered that maybe it was just and advertisement.  That didn't make a lot of sense either, because it's not exactly in a high traffic area, and it seems kind of expensive for that.

Anyway, I decided to go out there a few minutes ago and take some pics, and there were a bunch of people there.  It turns out they are doing a promotion for the show, and TV and radio crews are going to be there soon.

I'm mildly disappointed, as I was hoping for something a little bit more exciting, but oh well.

Here's a pic of the house (sorry for the shitty quality, but I only have a camera phone).

Let me just start by saying that skydiving is even more awesome than I thought it was going to be.  Jumping out of a plane has to be one of the biggest natural highs that you can get.  I'm sure BASE jumping is even more of a high, and bungee jumping, and probably THIS , but not much else.

We drove out to the farm (the place we went is called Skydive the Farm) Saturday afternoon thinking that we'd be able to jump soon after we got there.  I was planning on going to the Thrasher's game at 7, so I was hoping to leave by 5 or so.  Yeah, that didn't even come close to happening since we ended up sitting around waiting from about 1:45pm 'til almost 7:00.  At the end of Saturday they finally told us that they couldn't get us in because it was getting dark.  Needless to say, we were pretty pissed since they kept telling us all day that we were definitely going to get to go.  They did give us a very generous (sarcasm) discount of $10 for our troubles.  On the bright side, we were told that we could come back on Sunday and whenever we got there they would go ahead and put us on the next flight, so we planned on getting there around noon on Sunday.

btw, sorry to everyone that fell for my April Fools joke.  For those of you that didn't get it, I sent out a text message Saturday afternoon to about 15 friends saying that I broke my leg skydiving and was in the hospital.  Among the things that I told people were: I got a sponge bath from a hot nurse, I shattered my femur, I broke my fibia and fractured my tibia, I heard a loud pop and the bone was protruding through the skin, I broke my leg because the instructor landed on top of me, I was going to have to have surgery so they could put a metal rod in my leg, etc.  Surprisingly, only 3 or 4 people seemed to realize it was a joke.

Anyway, we finally got to jump on Sunday.  It was a near perfect day to go skydiving, too.  Upper 70s, partly cloudy.  Just beautiful.  I kind of liked having the clouds there because you could kind of guage how fast you were falling.  Of course, I was too busy screaming my head off (with a HUGE smile on my face) to really pay attention to that, but it was pretty sweet to fall right through a cloud.

Our instructors were very good.  I think all 3 of us felt pretty comfortable jumping with them because they really knew what they were doing.  My instructor had done over 5500 jumps!  We did a couple of flips coming out of the plane, spun around in circles really fast as we were freefalling, I got to pull the cord to release the chute, he let me take the controls and steer for a bit after the chute was open, and we ended with a perfect landing.  Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention that I got to wear a sweet chartreuse colored jumpsuit.  Brittany has some pics, so I'll try to post a pic or two once she has them developed.

I kind of wish I had purchased the video and pictures, but I didn't feel like spending an extra $80, and I don't really care because I plan to go skydiving again.  Next time, though, I'm jumping by myself.  I think it'll be a lot more fun without someone strapped on my back.

I'm very disappointed in all of you who didn't go with us.  Quit being such chicken shits!  Brittany, Deanna, and I are planning to go again sometime soon, and I want more people to come with us next time.

Here is a pic of me, Brittany, Deanna, and our 3 instructors just before we got on the plane:

A few of us made a quick trip up to West Virginia to go snowboarding at Winterplace over the weekend.  The snow conditions weren't ideal, but it was a good time anyway.  It's definitely worth the 6 hour drive!

Here are a few pics:

Me, Big Jon, and Jon Saturday night right after we got to the mountain

Me and Sarah

Getting ready to start the day on Sunday.  It was quite warm...almost too warm.  Pretty sure it got into the upper 50's that day.

Sarah and me on the chair lift on the way to the top

About to hit a very flat run.  I hate runs like this one...seems to be the only time that I fall.

There goes Big Jon, leaving me in his dust!  Although, I'm pretty sure he fell shortly after this picture was taken.  He falls so gracefully!

 

 

Ok, it's only been about a month, so I guess it's about time I post up some pictures and tell you all about my trip to NY. 

I had to go to Connecticut for 2 weeks for work, so I figured I'd go a few days early and hang out in New York.  My buddy Jack lives in Rhode Island, so he met me in NY.  I had only been to NY once before, so I was really looking forward to it.  Especially since the first time I went was with a couple of friends who "didn't want to look like tourists".  Pretty lames since we were tourists.  Also, that first time was only a couple of weeks before September 11 happened, so we missed out on our only opportunity to go to the World Trade Center.

Anyway, back to the trip.  I love New York.  There is so much going on, so many amazing restaurants, so much to do and see.  I love being able to walk everywhere or easily catch a cab.  San Diego now has some pretty stiff competition for where I want to move (hopefully within the next couple of years). 

We got to our hotel Friday night, took showers, and rested for a little bit before heading out.  We didn't really know where to go, so we asked the people at the hotel, and they told us an area that there were supposedly some cool places. 

Too bad all the places down there sucked.  They all had long lines outside, and each time we finally got in, every place was only half full and the people that were there were all ugly dorks. 

We slept pretty late on Saturday, but we made it out early in the afternoon and went to Gray's Papaya for some awesome hot dogs.  We spent the rest of the day going by Ground Zero, going to Battery Park to get a view of the Statue of Liberty, and walking down Wall Street.

I would like to recommend that you DON'T go to Gallagher's in midtown to eat.  It was close to our hotel and seemed like it would be decent, but it wasn't.  In fact, it was horribly overpriced and not very good. 

Saturday night was the most fun we had while we were there.  Kate just happened to be in NY the same weekend visiting some of her friends, so we met up with them.  It was good to hang out with some people that actually knew where to go since Kate used to live there.  We went to a couple of cool bars and then a few hookah bars, which was a lot of fun.  The night was capped off at 6am by going to a French restaurant called L'Express.  I had an omelette with salmon and goat cheese, and it was the best omelette I've ever had. 

We had to check out of the hotel Sunday afternoon, so we didn't really get a lot of sleep.  It was also a lot harder to get around because we had to get Jack's car out of the parking deck and drive that around since we didn't have anywhere to leave it.  To make matters worse, we almost ran out of gas.  We were in Manhattan, and didn't know where any gas stations were that were close by, so we decided to just head over to Long Island to find one.  The gas meter said "0 miles to empty" as we were pulling up to the pump, so we got pretty lucky.

After we got some gas, we made our way back to Manhattan and met my friend Leigh Anne (she still lived in NY up until about a month ago).  That was nice since I hadn't seen her in years, and was also nice since she took us on a mini tour of Central Park and the east side of Midtown.  We got to see a few of the museums (from the outside) like the Met and the Guggenheim, we saw Rockefeller Center, a bunch of cool buildings, etc.  Then, of course, we went and ate at another great restaurant.  It was another French place, this one was called Le Bateau Ivre. 

I don't have any pictures from Friday and Saturday nights because I was using Narineh's camera, and I didn't want to lose/break it, but here are a few pics from Saturday and Sunday.

Jack in our hotel room.

Me, outside Gray's Papaya.

They stack cars on top of each other to park them.

Ground Zero.  (it's hard to tell from the picture just how big it is)

Lady Liberty

Riding the Bull

Jack on Wall Street

There was a big street festival on 5th Ave. on Saturday.  That's our hotel on the left, the Sheraton Hotel and Towers.

Jack, Leigh Anne, and Me in Central Park.

Some famous sidewalk artist, De La Vega, drew this.

Jack and me at Rockefeller Center