After scraping together income as an arborist's groundsman and demolition technician I found employment as a claims analyst at a local Health Insurer. There I discovered a penchant for software and database development and decided to pursue a career in IT while playing roommate roulette, as do most in their early 20s. I traveled the country following Phish, learning guitar and consuming every veggie burrito, headie nugget and mind-looping hallucinogenic substance I could get my paws on.
After Y2K, I spent a short time in Fredonia, NY on the eastern shore of lake Erie. Tended bar while seeking work in a dwindling post-dot-com job market and schmoozing with some of the greatest musical and comedic minds in the area.
After a glorious, soul-searching year I returned to the Health Care world for steadier work and a decent pay increase. Here I met my beautiful wife, Antoinette, with whom I've spent the last decade growing as a husband. We bought a house and have two four-legged children: the irreplaceable Chocolate Lab, Bailey, and humanoid Orange Tabby, Tigger.
I soon found myself gravitating towards politics, but quickly realized how far behind I was. I had spent my college years in the awkward ignorant bliss of liberalism where I cast my first presidential vote for the great Bill Clinton. I spent the aughts deluding myself into some offhand form of Conservatism - which would likely bymore accurately described as anti-taxism and pro-patriotism - and cast a vote for W. During this time, while caught up in the fear rhetoric of post 9/11 America, I turned a blind eye from the damage and deception of the Bush administration and voted for the wretched incumbent a shameful second time.
I spent the next four years in search of some political identity. I admittedly possessed limited understanding of the scale and power of our government and made it my own personal mission to fill this gaping hole of knowledge. Fed up with organized religion and politically biased media, I quickly came to realize that I was a square peg to the country's partisan round hole. Since my few constants placed me staunchly in favor of individual rights and fiscal conservatism, I quickly declared myself a Libertarian.
Fast-forward to the primary season of 2008. Leaning on my breadth of knowledge of the Health Care system at large I found myself at odds with the Cato-loving creatures of the party. After all, how could I favor the government overhaul of one of our largest industries call myself a fiscal conservative? Weary of Obama's uber-liberalism - though awestruck by his command and charisma - and disenfranchised with the cut-and-spend ways of the GOP and no less horrified by the prospect of a senile candidate who chose a half retarded yokel as a running-mate, I begrudgingly threw my vote to Bob Barr, more in protest of the current partisan climate than true ideological persuasion.
I now find myself strung precariously in the center of the political landscape. I think Obama has done a fine job in the face of economic disaster and obstructionist politicking from both sides (though more pronounced from the right, to be sure.) I find the thrust toward the fringe of the GOP, with their purity tests and lunatic propaganda, to be particularly grotesque. Also becoming clear is the mush-spined ways of the Democrats, who can't manage to band together to support the best thing politics has going for it right now.
So, here I am. As centered as I'll probably ever be and, frankly, I feel I've been pushed here. A quick bullet list of the issues that drive me:
FAVOR
- Federal Health Care Reform
- Gay Marriage
- Marijuana Legalization (and taxation)
- Woman's Right to Choose
- The Second Amendment
- The Death Penalty
- Entitlement reform
- Organized Religion of ANY kind
- Income Tax
- Sex Offenders' right to privacy
- Racial Profiling
- Nation Building
- Supreme court decision to repeal cap on campaign donations
- Farm subsidies
- Labor Unions
Books: Cats Cradle, The Road, Silence of the Lambs, God is Not Great: How Religion poisons everything
Authors: Harris, McCarthy, Cook, Hitchens, Avlon
Movies: The Big Lebowski, The Silence of the Lambs, Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Lost in Translation, Clerks
TV: House, Dexter, Curb Your Enthusiasm, American Idol, ANTM
Music: Phish, Led Zeppelin, The Shins, Radiohead, The Black Keys
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