Youth Politics

I’m a bit distracted right now with personal issues, so I haven’t been posting as regularly as I usually do.

We’re on the home stretch of the election season with voting only six days away. I want to commend all of those in college or otherwise out of state who turned in their absentee ballots to vote in this historic election. I have a feeling the youth turnout will be much bigger this time around, and I am pleased that I know so many of my friends who actually took the time to receive their absentee ballot, fill it out, and turn it in.

For those youths and others who are not out of state and can vote on November 4th, make sure to do so. Remember, not voting is the equivalent of accepting the elected president, whomever it may be. Sure everyone does have to accept the candidate who wins, but those who don’t vote I don’t believe get the right to say, “no I didn’t want that guy”, because by not voting, you automatically accept that others know what’s best for you.

I for one, will make sure to make my own decisions and not have anyone else tell me who should be the next president. If you feel the same way, definitely make it out to the polls. I look forward to seeing a much higher youth voter count this election season, so make sure to get out there and vote!

Let’s face it, all of us are pretty bad at checking our facts when it comes to political issues. You’d think that with the advent of the Internet, political facts are more easily accessible and thus it is much much easier to make an informed opinion. In many ways this is true; people know a lot more about what’s going on now then they did even 100 years ago. However, we’re still really bad at checking our facts, period.

Some people go into the process of looking up political information with a built-in bias. Let’s say for example a Democrat is looking for information to back up his or her claim. Chances are this person will easily find everything that agrees with whatever he or she says because there is just so much information out there that it’s easy to find exactly what you’re looking for. Then, this person proceeds to reiterate just those facts that support the claim to others. Those others then use that source to back up their own claims. And now you’ve got a biased source of information everyone has decided to follow.

The problem is people can easily overlook or not even find any evidence to the contrary. For example, I could do a Google search for “The Republicans are to blame for the economic crisis” and find a plethora of evidence to back my claim, simply because there are others with the same exact bias who have written about this subject. I easily skip out on all of the articles I’d have found had I done “The Democrats are to blame for the economic crisis.”

The second problem is that the Internet contains not only a bunch of useful information, but it also contains a lot of nonsense and garbage. People find articles that are completely untrue or even slightly untrue and use those as parts of their arguments. Yes the Internet is a blessing in that information is very easy to find, but it’s also a great curse for those who will listen to just about anything. And yes, there are those who will believe anything and everything. And then when there’s a contradictory statement, some people (not all mind you) will be too stubborn to listen.

My advice is this: Try your best to find all sides of an argument when looking up political facts. Know that it’s impossible for you to be 100 percent right about everything, because if that were the case then you’d quite possibly be the best politician ever. To think that you even could know everything suggests that the government is transparent enough for the common people to know exactly what’s going on, and I highly doubt that’s the case.

Anyway, just be extremely careful when presenting any sort of facts, and remember that you can’t always draw up conclusions based on what you find, because there’s probably a lot more you didn’t find.

If you have a political blog and are looking for a spot on my Awesome Political Blogs list, then leave a comment or send me an email at crowtche@juniorpolitics.com. I’m looking to have about eight blogs, so let me know. There are a few I’m already considering anyhow.

Oh, also, if you miss the Political News section I used to have on the sidebar, please tell me. I felt it made the sidebar way too cluttered and didn’t think anyone used it anyway.

This is sort of just an updates post, and later I’ll be talking about why you suck at fact checking. Yes, you. Me too, but mostly you : )

So I left at around 2:40 to make it to the Obama rally that was being held 12 miles from where I live. I went with a friend, and as we approached our destination, we noticed that there were a lot of cars. And I mean a LOT. People from Maryland and even as far as West Virginia were coming in DROVES to attend this rally. Traffic was awful. There’s really only one way to get into the park and well, we said screw it and went to a friend’s house instead.

This friend ended up not being home so we left back to see if we could still get somewhat in the ballpark of the rally as we were pretty close at that point. Then we noticed people parking in the plaza we passed by and walking in the general direction of the park where the rally was being held. That’s when we realized there must not have been anymore parking, and that people were willing to talk two plus miles to get there.

In any case, we did not attend. Traffic was insane. There was a HUGE backup of cars and it was a mess. I simply did not have enough patience to go (and my friend less, and he was the one driving). So, I wasn’t able to see how crazy Obama supporters are (besides the fact that they’re willing to park anywhere up to two miles away from the place), and I wasn’t able to hear Barack Obama in person. What a bummer.

You can read about the event here: Obama Rally at Ida Lee Park

To basically sum it up, he said exactly what he’s been saying the entire time except with some comeback remarks regarding Joe the Plumber and did so in roughly 30 minutes. Fair enough.

If anyone has a personal story about what an Obama rally is like let me know. I gave it my best shot, but traffic sucks.

I live in Virginia, and as such, both presidential candidates come to the state a LOT. Now, I have not been to any of the rallies, but I’ve finally been paying enough attention to attend an Obama rally being held relatively close to my house.

At this rally, I will be looking for two things:

1. I want to see what Obama has to say at a speech that will not be televised. Then I can come out of it with some sort of an impression.

2. I want to know what the supporters think and how they act. McCain rallies have been getting a lot of flak recently, so I want to get a sense for how it is on the other side.

I will of course comment on the rally, so stay tuned for that. For those who have never been to an Obama rally you’ll get to hear an account of what it’s like. Will I be cheering? Well, I’ll clap when appropriate. And I don’t normally hoot or holler anyway.

I’m going to be updating the blogroll by adding more significant links than the ones currently. I’ve got a few in mind already, but if you would like to be placed on the blogroll and your blog is actually relevant, leave a comment below or email me at crowtche@juniorpolitics.com and I’ll see to the possible inclusion of your blog. I’m shooting for about ten blogs.

I also notice that people are having a hard time commenting simply because they cannot figure out where to comment. This is due to me having the most recent post on the front page, which is NOT the blog itself. I’ll find a way of getting comments working on the main page, or at least putting a link that’s easy to follow.