Parties?

Hands down I would defiantly have to agree with you about the ridicules amounts of parties or “state dinners” the President is expected to throw within his four years term. 50…? I completely agree that it is an absolute waste of money and that the money should be used on something that is a little bit more… necessary. And yes, I also agree that the amount of time that goes into all of this does indeed add up. I understand that the President has a life, and a family, and I do not expect him to be glued to his desk until his term is over, but I do not believe that the president should be accounted to hold 30 to 50 costly, 250 entertaining hours worth of state dinners. Heck, I think that they should even do away with the state dinners for now because our economy is doing so poorly; every penny counts. And not only that, the security guards that the President has… in the kindest words that I can find, suck. Honestly, I am really tired of hearing about all the extravagant parties, dinners, and dates that the president has. Is the money that contributes to all these events coming from our taxes? It better not be. To me it is starting to seem like Obama is looking more to be like a celebrity then he is our President. All in all I truly support Kailyn opinion of this matter. The time and the money could defiantly be put to better use.

Educate to Innovate

So as of today; Monday November 23, 2009 our President will speak about a campaign that will focus on certain organizations and groups that will help dedicated their time and money onto encouraging young kids to “pursue science, technology and math.”

Now there is nothing wrong with education, by no means. But I have more of a problem with the focus of this educational matter being more towards science and math classes. I myself am very interested in science and I do prefer it over all the other core classes but I feel that it is, in way, kind of degrading for History and Literate classes. Why most we focus more on Science and Math? Why specifically those two? Why not History and English? Are those two better than the others?

I know that it is a wonderful thing to be advancing in technology because that is what we need in society today and the way to get there is to focus more on math and science. But honestly history is just as important. If we had a world so advanced in science and then we had a bunch of dumb people who knew nothing about history and ends up letting history repeat itself a million times over to the point were we’re in the tenth depression in about two decades… we’re screwed. The same goes with English. Let’s live in the United States of America and be the only nation who had knows little about our own language and grammar than any other nation in the world. I wonder how far that will get us.

It sounds like I am really hounding this subject, but like I said I have nothing wrong with Math and Science, I just feel that people are now expected to know more about Science and Math then the other core classes. I believe that no one should feel any pressure to focus on anything and we should do whatever it is that makes us happy. There are plenty of people out there who are extremely brilliant in those fields but it takes time to invent something magnificent. Having a bunch of people who are interested in the same thing or who have only study the same thing would have to damage the economy in some way. There would be no balance and something would have to go wrong in the long run.

Abortion... Yes or No?

I agree with you that abortion should not become illegal. My reason for this is what if someone ended up getting raped and got pregnant? I would fully support that person getting an abortion if she wanted one. In the case if someone who was just being careless and stupid and ended up getting pregnant, I also feel that they have the right to have an abortion because what if this person is unable to care for a child right now? Would you want to know that the child is suffering greatly because their parent could support them? But at the same time I feel that there should be a time limit in a pregnancy where one can deem if it is not okay to have an abortion. I full support having an abortion within the first trimester but when you start getting to the second, that’s when I get a little iffy. And for the third trimester I would say you gone this far already you might as well have. None the less by this point in time the child is pretty much fully developed. I also agree with you, Nicole, on how you feel about President Obama’s remark about abortion. I just feel like what he had to say was extremely, poorly put together. When I read it I had to go back and read it a couple of more times to see if he really associated opposing aborting with terrorism. I personally support abortion to the end and I’m glad to see how respectful you are of other people’s opinions in you post.

More or Less Soldiers

Will we ever hear the end of Afghanistan and Iraq? There has been so much talk about pulling the troops who are there out… slowly and there is also talk about sending more troops in. And President Obama is deciding on sending more troops over... whatever. Make up your mind people because this has gone on for far too long.

Almost every single day there is news about how at least one of our solders has died. That is just not something I would like to hear every day. Over 4,000 United States soldiers have died in the war against terrorism. And this whole mess started as the result of 2,751 people dying from the September 11, 2001 attacks. I find it rather sad that the number of casualties on the war against terrorism has surpassed that of September 11.

For those people who goes off thinking “oh that’s not bad compared to over wars.” Think about this; yes there are other wars that have resulted in greater casualties like the Vietnam War but they all share one common factor and that’s someone had died. I don’t care of one person has died, it is still a death. This person is in the ground, dead, for us, as we carry on with a daily lives debating if we should send more person over there.

It is pretty obvious how I feel about sending more troops over to Afghanistan or Iraq. I feel that it was wonderful that we stood up for ourselves in the September 11th attacks and sent out troops over there to do some damage. What I don’t agree with was that after spending millions of dollar on the troops and the war, we decided to spend millions more on rebuilding what we destroyed.

Our window to do great goods in this war has long seen been closed. It is time to get out troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan because there really is nothing else that we can do. It is up to their nation to do whatever they want and that does not involve us.

Peace Prize

I found a post on the Power Line on Friday October 9, 2009 titled A Peace Prize for Hope. This post centered on President Barack Obama and how he just won the Nobel Peace Prize. By reading this post it is very clear that the author was not too happy about our President winning the prize. He states in the post “President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after only nine months on the job. It seems a tad premature…” The point of his blog was to enlighten the audiences on why he feels that President Barack Obama does not deserve that it. He makes it clear that it is not the President that he has a problem with but it is the person who picks the winner of the prize. The author feels that the “the Nobel Peace Prize has gone haywire on numerous occasions over many years.”

The author of this blog post is named Scott and that is pretty much all that I know about him from looking at this website. He writes for the Power Line and that is basically it. I read this post because I do feel that what the author provide enough evidence to me to consider this post legitimate.

Scott, the author focuses on several different years and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize each of those years to help persuade the audience. With these sold fact that he provides it helps the creditability of his argument. He also provides a little background information about the winners to allow readers to judge for themselves if the winner’s action should be acknowledged and rewarded.

In all honestly I was not too happy about President Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize and that was because that I felt that the prize should go to someone else who has already made a solid impact on this world. And I would say that when I first heard about it I was somewhat upset that he even accepted it but now after reading this blog I feel differently. I mean anyone would want to accept the Nobel Peace Prize and the stack of cash that came with it. Now instead of being displease with the President, I am more disgusted with the person who picks the winner of the prize. I mean how did Yasser Arafat win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994?

Death Row

An author who posted an editorial in The New York Times on September 27, 2009 argued that death row is “immoral, does not deter murder and affects minorities disproportionately — we can add one more. It’s an economic drain on governments with already badly depleted budgets.” This argument is directed towards all states that uses the death penalty. The author catches the audiences’ attention by bring up a matter that practically affects everyone and that is money. By talking about the millions of tax dollars that is spent on maintaining death row of course it is going to seize the interest of many people, especially during this time of economic crises.

The basic argument in this editorial is that the nation should do away with the death penalty. The assumption is that hopefully the audiences would feel that the death penalty is one of the most useless actions that is still in practice or at least one that is just flat out simply wrong.

The author does use facts and evidences in the editorial to help support the argument. The author picks out some states and focuses on the amount of money that is being spent each year to maintain death row. An example of this would be in the fifth paragraph of the article where the author talked about how North Carolina has put 43 people to death since 1976 at 2.16 million per execution. The author also talks about how the senator of Kansas pointed out that her state has “not executed anyone in more than 40 year and that she wishes to replace capital punishment with life without parole” in the sixth paragraph.

I feel that this was a pretty good argument but it does not win me over. This is because I feel that the death penalty is a very justified punishment. If there was a serial killer out there who murdered dozens of people I would want that person dead. I would not want that person to get life without the possibility of parole. That would mean the taxes taken out from my paycheck goes to feeding the person and keeping them alive until they die. I do not want that, I would like to pay for them to die. And in this editorial where that author says that death row is “an economic drain on governments with already badly depleted budgets.” I disagree that one should look at death row like that. In this time of economic crises it is easy to point a finger at anything that coast money and say that it is a problem.

The significances of this would be that no one ever really had a problem with death row until the recession started. I feel like people are looking for anything to blame at this point. People are mad and upset about the recession; people are losing job; money is tight. People want something to blame, it’s as simple as that.

Child Mortality Rate Declines Globally

I picked an article from the New York Times that deals with the how the rate of child mortality has declined over the years. I feel that people show read this article because in all honestly it is an uplifting matter. With everything there is that is happening around the world it is nice to know that something good is happening. Globally the efforts to help save children’s lives have been very successful. It sights in the article that efforts have “cut the number of children under 5 who died last year to 8.8 million.” That is a remarkable amount of lives save. The article sheds light on real life stories, statistics on child mortality and ways to ensure the health of a child. I feel really good about reading this article aside from all the other disputes there is out there. It’s promising to know we are doing something right.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/world/10child.html?ref=world