Wednesday, January 25, 2012

State of the Union and the Intern Reaction

Unless you live under a rock or your age is smaller than your shoe size, then you know that last night was President Obama's 3rd State of the Union Address. I will be brief about my opinions of it but please know that I fully intend to express my right to the first amendment.....First off, he spoke only on feelings of "change" to make his audience feel warm and fuzzy inside. There was no discussion of specific policies or what he himself planned to do in regards to making this "change." He's been feeding us false hopes since he has taken office and there are enough constituents calling every week that want him out of the White House now. On top of the SOTU address yesterday also marked 1,000 days without a budget in this country, now you know why we can't find a way to get out of this deficit. If you would like to find out more on the buzz going around in politics or how I feel about these topics in a deeper and more professional manner please feel free to contact me. This past weekend some friends and I went out to experience chinatown up here, if you've been to the one in NYC you would know that chinatown is dirty and full of novelty shops and stolen or fake merchandise for sale. This is not the case at all with chinatown DC. It was clean, well lit, and ran legitimate businesses. For those of you who plan to visit Washington DC be sure to go visit chinatown at night. In FSC related news fellow students Tina Cota-Robles and Cynthia Navarro have just arrived on monday and will doing internships through the Washington Center so this weekend I will be sure to give them a warm welcome and help them find their way around the city and to all the sites. Now moving on to my experiences this week, in hopes that you already haven't become so bored that you exited out of the webpage, I had a chance to take some legislation down to the House Chamber this week so that it could be given a bill number for a committee meeting today. Now comes the cool part of the story, it wasn't taking down the bill that excited me, it was walking down to the chamber with every congressional member in the US all in one place while the news coverage teams were setting up stations and preparing for the SOTU Address, so in the mind of a political science undergrad it was a crazy and exciting vibe. Later that evening my roommate and I went for a walk around the Capitol just for the heck of it and found ourselves taking a 30 minute detour around every police officer and military officer in the DC,MD,VA tri-area.....it ended up being well worth it though since we stood on a street corner waiting for the walk signal and got lucky by being just a few yards from President Obama's secret service escort coach, I would post a picture if I had been able to take my phone out at the time but that's life I guess. If you have any other questions, concerns, or anything else at all feel free to contact me. Enjoy the rest of your week everyone!!
Thank You and God Bless,

Gage Nicholas

7 comments:

  1. Hi I'm Alex, I'm in Anderson's political parties and interest groups class.It must have been really cool being in a room with so many influential people. Ur story about being so close to the secret service escort coach reminds m of the the first time I went to D.C. I accidentally ended up on the wrong side of a road block leading to the white house and had to get escorted back to where everyone else was standing.

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  2. I think its awesome that you are getting the experience of Congress first hand (plus I'm jealous)! But one of the things I have not yet had a chance to experience is China Town, but it is surprising that its cleaner and more presentable than the one in NYC. However, being someone that will be in your position over the summer, I am really interested in what your daily schedule is and if you have any say in the tasks you're assigned? Thanks and keep up the good work!

    -Wes

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  3. Haha! Preach it Gage!!

    It does sound like you're having a great time up there! I only went to D.C. once and I was only like 10 or 11. I would like to go back! The stories I'm hearing from the two blogs sound pretty darn cool!

    So if the chinatown up there is nice and clean, where do you get your pirated DVD's and Faux-lexes?

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  4. Glad you are having a good time man. Stay busy and have fun

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  5. I'm just curious...what is it that is discussed between interns up there? At the Public Defender's office our conversations were so random at times but we ALWAYS talked about the interesting files and clients we had to interview. Do you discuss policies or do you talk crap about other politicians that may be against right wing policies? <- just a random question

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  6. Gage! I agree about the State of the Union, in my opinion it was awful and I fell asleep. He says the same thing in 15 different ways all the time. But we miss you in class! Glad to see you're having a good time :)

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  7. Hey Gage,

    That is crazy that the Senate hasn't submitted a budget in over 1,000 days. Who is creating the US budget if the Senate isn't?

    Rick

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