Blog Post #5

"Hillary ​Clinton: Equal pay, problem-solving would be top priorities"

     This article discusses Hilary Clintons recent statements regarding her plans if she were to become president in the 2016 election. Her main focuses involve equal pay between the genders and joining the two parties together in order to accomplish more for our nation. Regarding her statements on equal pay she refers to Patricia Arquette's speech at the oscars on Gender equality and says "In so many ways, our economy still seems to be operating like its 1955,". She gave her opinion on the two competitive parties by stating "I'd like to bring people from right and left, red, blue, get them into a nice, warm, purple space where everybody is talking and where we're actually trying to solve problems. That would be my objective,".
     This relates to our class because it is a good example of the competing parties and the damage it is doing to our progress as a country as Hilary explained. I completely agree with both statements made, I think the two party system has turned our government into a competition and I think it's ridiculous that there still isn't economic equality between the sexes. I also think she should've discussed the wage gap between races in addition to gender, while the gender gap is finally being at least acknowledged, the racial wage gap is being completely ignored.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-equal-pay-problem-solving-would-be-top-priorities/

Blog post #4

"President Barack Obama: 'YOLO man"

     In collaboration with Buzzfeed, President Barack Obama created a video "doing things everyone does but doesn't talk about". The video was to promote to promote his "signature health law", Obama Care. He practiced funny faces in the mirror and tried pronouncing oddly spelled words the way they appear such as Wednesday and February. He also pretended to shoot baskets and when caught deadpanned,  "Can I live?". He also used the famous phrase "Thanks Obama" when dropping his coffee and trying to dunk a cookie in milk that wouldn't fit in the glass. The "relatable" video was an attempt to connect with Americas youth. Several days after the video, Obama made a statement "My advice to a future president is increasingly try to bypass the traditional venues that create divisions and try to find new venues within this new media that are quirkier, less predictable,"
    This relates to our government class because we've discussed politicians self promotion tactics, though they're usually in the form of campaigning. Personally, i think this video was a smart move. I think many politicians are scared of appearing unprofessional and this video is definitely a breakthrough. It's a very smart tactic to reach for the youth because most politicians don't, leaving them very open to anything directed towards them.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/12/politics/obama-selfies-video-buzzfeed/index.html

Blog Post #3

Federal judge: Alabama judges must issue gay marriage licenses

     The Alabama chief justice continues to decline the Supreme Court's mission to legalize same-sex marriage for his personal belief that marriage should continue to be based off of traditional or biblical standards. The chief justice has ordered the lower courts of Alabama to not follow the federal court's overturning the ban on same-sex marriage. This is difficult for the lower level judges because they are being told by the federal court to allow gay marriage and being told by the Alabama chief justice to not.
      This is related to our government class because it involves the different levels of court and discusses flaws in the judicial system along with discussing controversial political topics (same-sex marriage, abortion, etc.) that we often discuss in class. I think it's awful that even though the ban has been overturned same-sex couples are still unable to be married because of a person's opinions that are only influential because they have political/judicial power. I don't understand how this doesn't count as separation of church and state but I think it's great that we're making progress

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/12/politics/alabama-gay-marriage-licenses/index.html

Blog Post #2

Abortion Poses Challenge for GOP in 2016

       The article starts by discussing the tens of thousands of "pro-life" activists who gather to Washington, D.C. every year for the "march for life". Just a day before this Republican leaders had "spiked one of social conservatives' biggest priorities", a bill that bans abortion after the 20th week of pregnancy. Other officials are concerned about this bill because they feel they should focus on less controversial issues first so they don't lose any support for the presidential election in 2016. As said by Republican Rep Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania "I would prefer that our party spent less time focusing on these very contentious social issues, because that distracts us from broader economic messages where I think we have much greater appeal to the larger public,"
     This relates to out Government class because it discusses parties and their platforms. I personally don't agree with this bill at all, I think that women should have the right to their own bodies and people who wouldn't ever need an abortion(men) should not make laws about abortion, but that's not really what the article is about. I don't think it was smart for the GOP to be taking action on such a controversial issue before the presidential election. This definitely will affect the amount of people fully supporting the party.


http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/23/politics/gop-abortion-vote-2016/index.html

Blog Post #1

The Three Slayings of Michael Brown

         
   “The Three Slayings of Michael Brown” discusses the controversial topic of the shooting of unarmed black males,specifically Michael Brown. The article is written by a man who is very knowledgable on the subject and discusses it humanly yet still on a political level. He talks about the treatment of Michael Brown by officials before and after his murder. He explains how he was essentially “killed three times”. The first time was his physical murder, the second time was when police officials started “a loud, long, and vicious blame the victim campaign. They held press conferences, leaked documents, and orchestrated a well-oiled press campaign to depict Brown as having gang ties, smoked dope, dealt dope, had an arrest record, was a school troublemaker, and engaged in every kind of deviant behavior. They capped that by waving pictures to the national press that purported to show Brown robbing a convenience store moments before he was gunned down.” The third killing of Brown was when Darren Wilson was not indicted. 

           This relates to our government class because it involves corruption, something we have discussed before. I think the article made great points and was very well written. I completely agree with the author. Racism has, and will continue to be a controversial topic, Some think that racism has completely ended. Statistics and everyday life show that racism still continues to be a problem.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/the-three-slayings-of-mic_b_6589204.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=Politics