Syrian Refugee Update

As you may have read in my early blog post of the Syrian Refugee crisis,  there has been hundreds of thousands of Syrians fleeing their country due to civil wars, corrupt government and terrorism and other foreign countries have opened their countries to welcome tens of thousands of refugees.

However, a few months ago the United States was receiving much criticism for not being as welcoming and opening up our country to nearly as many refugees and having an extensive screening process for anyone we do let in. Why was this being done? To prevent the possibility of basically welcoming terrorists into this country that could portray himself or herself as a refugee and then basically be welcomed into our country. The media was harsh on the government and their decision to be selective and take extra caution even though it was to ensure the safety of Americans.

In the wake of recent events surrounding the terroristic attack in France killing over 100 people and leaving many more wounded, ISIS claimed responsibility for this terroristic attack and it was found that one terrorist got into certain countries by claiming to be a Syrian refugee. I think this was an eye opening finding for not only American but countries all over the world who have been generous in allowing hundreds of thousands of refugees into their countries. Since then, many state governors have come out publically saying that their state will not accept any refugees, Georgia is among those states. Michigan and Alabama were the first to refuse any refugees and many states have followed suit. Now, the acceptance of Syrian refugees will be even more limited and strict because of recent events.

Now, it is not fair to assume every Syrian refugee is a terrorist but there is a great risk that comes with inviting many foreigners to seek shelter in our country. What do you think bloggers, is it a good or a bad thing for these states to refuse any acceptance of Syrian refugees?

Read more about it here: http://abcnews.go.com/US/states-refuse-accept-syrian-refugees-wake/story?id=35231800

People are Going "Crazy" Over This Sweater

Trending in the news media and social media recently are customers attacking Target for selling a sweater that they claim in poking fun of mental disorders. The Christmas themed sweatshirt has OCD standing for Obsessive Christmas Disorder and people are outraged.

I think it can be collectively agreed upon that mental illnesses are serious and should not be made light of. There are hundreds of thousands of people in the country that suffer from a mental illness or has a close loved one that suffers from mental illness. Mental illnesses are truly a life altering disorder that can affect how someone lives their daily lives and even completing simple, every day tasks.

The fact that people are upset about this sweatshirt is not surprising to me, especially in today’s world where it is hard to do or say anything without offending someone. What surprises me is that this shirt is offensive but no one makes a big deal of other shirts that commonly stem from mental illnesses.

There is a shirt that says “ My Name is [insert your name] and I am a wine addict”. Clearly this is making light of alcoholism, a serious illness that effects many people and families in this country and has even resulted in taking the lives of people. No one targeted this shirt for making fun of alcoholism; reviews even say how “cute” and “relatable” this shirt is.

Is it okay to make light of mental illnesses, alcoholism and addiction? Absolutely not. Obviously that is not the intentions of the shirts being sold and no one was meant to be hurt or insulted but I think the double standard in today’s world is just growing bigger. How can it be such a huge deal for one store to sell a shirt, but other shirts that say “addicted to pizza” “Coffee addict” and such are acceptable and being sold like crazy.

What do you think bloggers? Is the double standard of the media getting out of hand?

Ben Carson Touching on Political Experience

Politicians are known for dodging important questions and giving vague answers when confronted about certain situations. You will hardly hear “straightforward” be a characteristic used to describe a politician (except Trump maybe). This was made clear during the most recent Republican debate when the candidates were asked about their biggest weakness. Many candidates turned it into talking about their strengths, saying they didn’t have a weakness or completely ignored the question altogether and talked about some of their ideas and policies they would have as the future President of the United States. Now, I get it… these debates are crucial and they want to appeal to the public and will do whatever they feel is best to be able to accomplish that.

However, in a way this creates a gap between the candidate and the people. It makes them seem unrelatable in a way because they will portray themselves as above having a weakness. It is hard for the American people to fully relate to someone who claims to have no weakness and when they avoid the question it brings up a hint of suspicion. Earlier this week, Republican candidate Ben Carson bridged that gap and answered the question many people, no matter what political affiliation they have, have been asking. ‘How can you run for President with no political experience?’

People have been surprised how the two Republican front runners are those who have no political experience, and then there is Carly Fiorina not too far behind them who also has no political experience. News media, journalists, social media and Americans have all questioned this and presented this as a weakness to the candidates that they have only indirectly touched on…until recently.

Ben Carson made a Facebook post earlier this week got that a CRAZY amount of attention. Hundreds of thousands of comments, likes and shares…people loved what Ben Carson had to say in retaliation to the remarks about him not having any political experience. Also, he did it in a way that respectful and not centered around bashing other politicians. It would have been easy for him to say, “Well look at Obama and all his mistakes. He had experience and still increased our debt and etc etc.” but Ben Carson didn’t do that. He focused on himself and explained why not having political experience didn’t make him a bad candidate, just a unique one. The fact that he took his weakness and tackled it head one while also not disrespecting anyone else made him widely known and praised for this post. He also used history to his advantage by saying this in his post:

“Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no federal elected office experience. What they had was a deep belief that freedom is a gift from God. They had a determination to rise up against a tyrannical King. They were willing to risk all they had, even their lives, to be free. Today we find ourselves with an entire class of politicians. No one in Philadelphia, during that summer our nation was born, dreamed that service was a career with a pension”

Doesn’t matter what your political party is, it is hard to argue with that statement above. What do you think bloggers, Could we have a successful President with no political experience? Is this really a good or bad thing?

Read Ben Carson’s entire Facebook post here: https://www.facebook.com/realbencarson/posts/549786315187839

The Important of Understanding Media Bias

It is all too common that people take what is reported by the news and media at face value and fail to believe that it could be bias or twisted in a way as to present the situation in a manner that is untrue or not covering the whole story. It is concerning to see the media, even credible news stations, present information and stories so skewed and full of hidden agendas and see people take it for what it is and not second guess it at all. 

Typically, the media will convey a story in a manner that captures people's attention, it will be dramatized and presented to the public in a way to get a specific response out of them. They will report what will get the people talking, whether it isn't completely true or one sided. 

I saw this in the recent coverage of the video of South Carolina police officer forcefully removing a student from the classroom. This post is not about the right and wrong of what happened and whether or not any of these actions were justified, it is about how one sided the media can be. 

I looked up this same story on many different sites and noticed the same thing, it was all told from the side of the girl in the video. No one took the time to get the police officer's side and let him defend himself. Very few articles on this issue mention how students reported that the girl in the video also got violent with the officer at one point. I've seen so many individuals post their opinions on what happened based on opinions they made from very one sided articles that only tell one person's side of the story. It is important to remember that the entire incident didn't take place in the less than one minute video. There are events that happened before that camera started to record and after it stopped and it is very important that people realize that because they take to what they see people post online about certain situations. 

This is true about everything reported to the public, and there is bias in everything. People need to learn to be skeptical and not form a hard opinion on something until they do their research because what is reported in the news is commonly misleading. 

See the video and read about what happened here: 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34644336
http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/27/us/south-carolina-school-arrest-video/
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/10/27/video-surfaces-showing-south-carolina-school-officer-tossing-student-onto/

What is Going On With All the Violence?

Modern day media has changed the way information travels all around the world and in a big way too. Before the days of Facebook, Twitter and online news media, people found out about what is going on in the country the old fashioned way: the newspapers. There could only be so much printed on a newspaper so not only did it limit the details that could be provided on certain stories, it also limited what stories could be published. Publishers had to choose what would be most important/gain the most attention from the masses and go with that. In today’s world, they have it much easier. There is no space limit on the internet, and as many stories as desired can be published and more easily accessed by a large number of people. Anyone could go to FOXNews or CNN online, news Facebook pages or twitter to see what is going on not only in the United States, but around the whole world. Actually, people don’t even have to pursue news topics anymore, people can retweet and share information on social media and stories will show up on individual’s timelines for them to see.

Being that the news is now more accessible to people, people know more about what is going on in the country they live in. The first thing I noticed this morning when it was reading the news online: violence. Actually, the first three stories I saw were all around violence, First was and NYPD officer was fatally shot, the second was a 4 year old girl was killed in New Mexico and then there was an update on Detroit emergency workers that were stabbed. I could probably go on for days about all the stories in the media about violence and it paints a scary picture of the world we live in. More often than not, you will see unsettling, sad and disturbing stories in the news before you see one happy one. It seems like there is some tragic happening almost every day and makes the country we live in today seem as unsafe as ever. We have terrorists like ISIS to worry about but sometimes it seems like the biggest threat could be the person right next to us.

Thinking about all the media coverage of violence has me thinking one thing: Is violence really on the rise right now, or does it just seem that way because we now have easy access to hear about what is really going on around the country?

Is the violence in modern day just as bad as it was say twenty or thirty years ago? It is easy to assume that there is a spike in violence around the country because we see it everywhere. We can’t go online without hearing about an innocent person being killed, a school shooting, or a cop being killed on duty. However, is it possible that all of these occurrences happened just as much in the past, but because of the lack of social media and internet usage, it just wasn’t as widely broadcasted?

What do you think bloggers? Is violence on the rise or does increased media access just make it appear that way?

Read the major stories on these news sites to see more:

Heres a video on one of the stories mentioned above: http://video.foxnews.com/v/4570034279001/four-year-old-girl-killed-in-alleged-road-rage-incident-/

http://www.foxnews.com/us/index.html?intcmp=hpnav

http://www.cnn.com/us

Is Hillary Clinton's Email Scandal as Low Key as Portrayed on the Democratic Debate?

After numerous GOB debates, people were interested to finally see a debate between the Democratic candidates earlier this week. These debates have been beneficial in revealing many candidates goals, accomplishments and views on many crucial topics. Both Democrats and Republicans have been asked important questions on the issues surrounding our country today helping the public form an opinion about the candidates, one of whom will be our next President. Within both parties, there are candidates who are the center of scandal and attention and it was intriguing to the public to see how such matters would be addressed during the debate. Trump made light of the accusations to him about not treating women well and not being a “full republican. Clinton defended herself when accused of flip flopping on certain political matters but in regards to her infamous email scandal…she was quick to dodge the question and make it seem so unimportant compared to other things that could be talked about. Even Senator Bernie Sanders belittled the email scandal by saying “That is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.” My first thought was, “wow, they are really making a big deal of these emails when there are other important things to talk about and focus on in the world”. This email situation was made to seem silly and over exaggerated especially since other candidates on the stage seemed to think so as well, not just Hillary. 

But is the nature of these emails really not that important? 

Here is a background of the issue: While service in the office of Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton used her personal instead of her official government email account that is maintained on secure Federal Government servers to conduct official business. While she claimed there was no classified material discussed using her personal email, the FBI found an incredible about of emails that contained classified information. This is dangerous because there servers were not protected, they could have easily been hacked revealing such classified information to potentially the wrong people. Federal rules prohibit the sharing of classified information on personal systems.

While looking into many sources about this issue, it seems like it is something that is very important, so important in fact that she has been encouraged to hire a criminal defense lawyer. She could be facing charges because of violations of the Espionage Act for “gross negligence”. It has even been reported the Secretary of State is one of the most targeted from intelligence agencies to get classified information from. The FBI has been able to uncover emails that have been deleted proving more and more classified information has been shared under that person email account. 

In other cases, other political officials have received quite the punishment in regards to the law and dealing with classified information. Sentences have not been lenient on others who have let classified information get into the hands of people it was never intended for. 

During the Democratic debate, many candidates discussed this issue as being almost silly and light hearted and completely undermining the severity of the situation. If I wouldn’t have looking into to other additional sources for information about this situation I too, would have thought it as not being a big deal. However, when it comes dealing with classified and sensitive Federal government information being negligent is always a serious matter. 

What do you think about this situation bloggers?

Read more about Hillary Clinton’s email scandal here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/read-hillary-clinton-email/

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/election-2016/first-democratic-debate-highlights/hillary-clinton-on-email-questions

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/10/16/source-fbi-probe-clinton-email-focused-on-gross-negligence-provision/?intcmp=hpbt1

Removal of Ten Commandments in Oklahoma

The United States is known worldwide as the ‘land of opportunity’ and the place people seek to gain citizenship to enjoy the vast amount of different freedoms that often, as Americans, we take for granted. We have freedom of speech, where as in other countries you could be prosecuted or murdered for speaking out against government officials. We have freedom of religion, where as in other countries it is considered a crime against the government to practice certain religions and it could lead to jail time or even death. When the states separated from England after the Revolutionary War to gain its independence, the goal was to have more freedoms and to not be entirely ruled and dictated by the government.

Separation of church and state was a main foundation when the constitution was being written and the Supreme Court often attests to that by maintaining what was written in the first amendment. This is why there is no established church or religion for the United States or religious qualification for office. However, this is still a subject of heated debates in numerous different circumstances. Lately, the controversy has been targeted towards Oklahoma’s state capitol and their monument of the Ten Commandments.

The amount of people who are against the removal of the monument seem to heavily outweigh the people getting attention for the support of the removal of the monument. The Supreme Court (7-2) ordered for the monument to be removed from this area since it is in violation of the state Constitution separation of church and state which states “not have a display on state property that supports "any sect, church, denomination or system of religion.". People have not held back their unhappy feelings about this, some lawmakers even want to amend the state Constitution to allow the monument. The Governor of Oklahoma commented on this issue saying “…We felt it was a good place to be able to display it properly to people could see it.” There are many people in the community who felt it was wrong for it to be removed from this area. But was it?

Let us all take a look at the other side of this. I think many people’s feelings and emotions are swayed because even though there is no establish religion of the United States, the number of people identifying themselves as Christians heavily outweighs other religions. This country is very open to other religions and spiritual practices and that is what this country intended to be when it was founded and established as an independent country. People can choose to practice whatever religion they choose, if any at all. Because of this, it is important to separate church and state because not everyone has the same church, belief and values and we cannot rule people according to beliefs not everyone has. Imagine if the tables were turned and there was a statue of Buddha or the Five Pillars of Islam? People would be unhappy with that as well because not everyone follows religious or spiritual beliefs associated with those monuments. I think it is important to remember that this isn’t an act against Christianity, this is an act to follow the Constitution and separate state and ALL religion. Even a Baptist minister said “Frankly, I’m glad we finally got the governor and attorney general to agree to let the monument be moved to private property, which is where I believe it is most appropriate. I’m not opposed to the Ten Commandment. The first sermon I ever preaches was on the Ten Commandments. I’m just opposed to it being on public property”.

What do you think bloggers, was this removal of the statue something you agree with or disagree with?

Read more about it at these sites:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/10/06/after-court-order-10-commandments-monument-is-removed-from-grounds-of-oklahoma-state-capitol/73445134/

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/us/oklahoma-removes-ten-commandments-monument.html?_r=0

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/oklahoma-removes-ten-commandments-monument-under-court-order-n439806