"Blame it on Obama": and why its good

     The post by Carlos Aguirre, the author of "Congregating Monkeys", "Blame it on Obama" addresses the recent debacle of network problems surrounding the site HealthCare.Gov. In the post Aguirre doesn't attack or blame the president, to much dismay of those who read the title of this and had hoped for another thrashing of president Obama.

   
     A link to a CNN article pertaining to the presidents address to the issues about the rushed site and counters the negativity with going over the benefits of the Affordable Care Act. Aguirre brings up the fact that the sites problems are not with the site itself but with the impatient users. Aguirre does this but not to take away from the fact that the website itself services a majority of the country as most states opted out of creating a state specific site. He ends this part of the article with the hope that president Obama extends the deadline for people to be insured to help buffer the time the site was inaccessible to the masses.


     Aguirre then turns the blame to the Republicans and their ability to wait for the right time to "make it bigger deal than it is.". He goes on reiterating the fact that the problem not only lies with the site but with the user and the site opponents. Ending the article with propisation that Obama and the website be given a fair chance to see if it works, and if the site fails, then blame should be placed on the creators of the act.

This is gonna take a while, but two pictures this time!!!

This is the article I commented on, obviously i went a bit overboard, just bear with me I believe I've made a solid rebuttal.

Lets go ahead and take this paragraph by paragraph. 

Romney turn to music after the elections

"In the past 4 1/2 years that the United States has been transformed into one of the most corrupted nation ever...". Ever. Most corrupted nation ever. France is more corrupt than the United States. Saying that the United States is the "most corrupted nation ever" is putting us in the same ballpark as Mongolia, Somalia, and North Korea. I have no idea where you got your numbers or if you are just to busy watching Fox news to tell you your next set of impertinent states such as "Most corrupt nation ever". The Bush administration had 30 political scandals, one which was called Laywergate, which shares a related name to President Nixon's scandal, Watergate, that led to his impeachment.

Its not called "Obamacare" its called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or more commonly the Affordable Care Act, also President Obama hasn't been "promoting" PPACA for four and a half years. PPACA was introduced in the House of Representatives as the "Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009" by Charles Rangel (D-NY). The "inflicted" twenty thousand "pages of incoherent rules, regulations and mandates" is actually only nine hundred and six pages. The act itself was only signed into law on March 23, 2010. So this whole four and a half years of promotion boils down to six months of legislature spanning from September 17, 2009 to its signing in March of the following year. What also irks me is to see that so many people are against the first major overhaul of our decrepit sluggish excuse we call a medical system since 1965. It took forty five years and seven presidents to make a change.

Explain to me like I'm a child how the President of the United States of America "humiliated the US" by not sending anyone to Margret Thatcher's funeral. First off The delegations representing the U.S. at the two funerals were similar, comprising mostly diplomatic personnel and former cabinet members and congressmen rather than current officeholders. The U.S. delegation to Hugo Chávez's funeral included U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, U.S. Embassy Caracas Chargé d'Affaires James Derham, and former U.S. Rep. William Delahunt of Massachusetts. The U.S. delegation to Margaret Thatcher's funeral included former U.S. Secretaries of State George Shultz and James Baker, U.S. Embassy London Chargé d'Affaires Barbara Stephenson, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom Louis Susman. (Three current GOP members of the House of Representatives also attended Thatcher's funeral as part of a Republican delegation. The Presidents choice to send delegation to both funerals is not a disgrace of any kind, its the utmost gesture of respect regardless of the current relationship between the two nations 

How in the world has President Obama "torn and divided our country" to an extent that you compare it to times of the Civil War? He hasn't that's how. How has the President pitted homosexuals and heterosexuals against each other? or men against women? I haven't seen riots, conflicts, or any civilian turmoil inside the United States under this current administration, and to say that there is such problems and not have substantial evidence to back it up it beyond detrimental to your entire article.

Since id rather not go on forever I'm gonna short answer the last three paragraphs. 

The "shovel-ready projects" were apart of the 2009 stimulus bill but some where sidetracked due to government regulations and permitting procedures. Also the Presidents exact words were "Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected" not the "...Obama admitted that there was no such thing as 'shovel-ready' jobs.".

The second to last paragraph just states that the President has "unconstitutionally attacked" freedom of religion. Where since the administration has held office have they made any efforts to derail or deny any religious freedoms? the answer to that is none.

 Yet again you speak about the President like he is some tyrannical dictator out to smash any and all "freedoms" and "rights" that were "god-given" by the Found Fathers. The Founding Fathers lived 200 years ago and I honestly doubt they would agree with anything going on with the government, past and present. To bring up something that happened two centuries ago without any cold hard evidence to bring to the table its hard to even take this article serious. Reading this was bad enough and seeing that you were just spewing anti-Obama slander made me beyond worried for my generation if we just blindly speak negativity of our government without a sliver of research 

Its all to keep you "safe"

Getting a grade for ranting!! Huzzah!! 

With all the recent news of countries being called out on spying each other is funny, and sad. As if the UN was a high school auditorium, world leaders are bickering and spreading rumors of others spying on each other. I mean give me a break. Its been a long year of "espionage" and "uncovering" spy rings, with no end in sight. This whole thing started when Snowden, former NSA system administrator, came out with copious amounts classified NSA documents and gave them to the public. He was later charged with "Theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified intelligence to an unauthorized person.". In my opinion they screwed the pooch when they let this scumbag get away. Maybe they honestly messed up or if it was just apart of the long game. Keep him quiet by letting him go? Who knows. All i know is that Edward Snowden is traitor to the United States as a whole for leaking sensitive documents to the public. Now others think differently and want him to be treated like mother Teresa  Showering him in awards and praise for his courageous acts and bravery. Makes me sick. What it boils down to is that he snitched on his own country and deserves to pay. Yes this is a free country, yes its his right to spread the truth, but he went about it the wrong way. He could still be living in the US with his family and friends if he had only been a little more couth in his actions. All he had to do was run it up the ladder to someone who thought the same way he did and have it taken care of like that and the worst the could have happened is that he would have been told to shut up and get a bonus to keep his mouth shut. Well, we all know it didn't happen that way. The thing I cant fathom is why you would ever do something like that. He obviously had high clearance in the NSA, which in itself is a big deal and a rare privilege, but to throw it all away to "uncover" the truth is the most idiotic thing I can think of next to NASA spending millions to create a pen that works upside down in space. It wasn't long ago that a little thing called the Patriot Act was put into action, pretty much giving the government free reign over our information to enable a better chance at protecting us from outside threats. Now im not defending the act because even though its idea is mostly honorable, nothing is perfect. Its just when people like Snowden or Pvt. Bradley Edward Manning, aka Chelsea Elizabeth Manning, it frustrates me to see that these people do such frivolous and detrimental things for little to no achievement or reward. Also that whole "I want to be called Chelsea" thing has go to be the smartest thing next to getting Johnnie Cochran to defend O.J. Simpson. I could go on for days and days about this subject and how ridiculously simpleminded the public is to want to defend and praise these people for, and lets be honest here, telling on the government. Not to mention that the same government they scorn for spying on its people is the same government who they voted in 12 years ago that would go on to create the Patriot Act, that still stands this day without and impediment. So the next time you hear news weather it domestic or foreign on the topic of spying, change the channel, I promise there is something more important on.



**Edit: Brazil admits to spying on US diplomats after blasting NSA surveillance, after weeks of complaining about the NSA spying....

Hilary Duff after pot

Today on the 22nd of October, "The Dish" posted to their blog thread named "A 60-71 Majority For marijuana Legalization!" In this post the author gives data done by Gallup, who polled Americans on the subject of marijuana legalization and for the first time it showed that 58% of Americans say "yes, legal". The Dish goes on to speak about how they champion two social reforms, both being civil marriage for gay couples and the already stated legalization of marijuana. Right off the bat you can get the sense that this post will be targeted to liberals who want both reforms to become a full reality, and those who are somewhat skeptic of said reforms. Stating from their own personal opinion of the absurdity of gays being somehow outside the norms of regular family live, and that pot has not be proven to be harmful. The post continues to give information and a link to a article from the Washington Post called "is pot the new gay marriage?". I didn't go into detail of the article but its roughly the same idea that the blog post has. The post uses and excerpt from the article quoting that "... there is overwhelming support among 18-29 year old, 67 percent  of whom believe marijuana should be legal and 70 percent  of whom think gay marriage should be legal." which gives better hints that this post is directed to different demographics and stances on the issues. The post throws in more information about the issues by giving links to a blog called "Hit & Run" that again pretty much states the same ideals as the article from the Washington Post. The blog post even uses the same graphics as The Dish and the Washington Post. Closing with yet another link, this time to Business Insider which talks about the Gallup poll on marijuana but instead of giving the same graph as the last two links, Business Insider give a more detailed graph of the questions that they asked Americans during that poll. The post ends with a question of why the Obama administration hasn't pushed the issue or why they haven't revisited the "insane" classification of marijuana. In all, this post was informative and gave insight to the views of the author while giving substantial evidence and proof to back up their claims. I agree with the author.

Criticism #1

Non related picture

Today we are looking at an editorial piece from the New York Times named “Politicians for Sale” by their “EDITORAL BOARD” which consists of a 17 person brain trust with a wide range of expertise. Also each piece produced is supposed to represent all 17 voices on the board which makes it somewhat difficult to pin down who wrote this specific piece. The topic was about the controversial ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and the political donator, and Alabama businessman Shaun McCutcheon who is challenging the ruling made by the Supreme Court. The challenge is to the overall cap on contributions an individual may directly make to federal candidates, party committees, and political action committees in a two year election cycle. This editorial is obviously intended to be read by the middle class voters who are politically up to date with the now rising issue of party contributions. The editorial is very informational with at least half a dozen links to related information to better enhance the readers experience.  It’s not until the end of the editorial that the piece is from the writer’s point of view. Overall it is very informational and can seem one sideded but tries only once to make an argument for both sides leaving the reader to side with the write with ease. All in all it was a well written editorial that I would have overlooked if it wasn’t for this assignment.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/08/opinion/politicians-for-sale.html?_r=0 is the link you wanna look at to see what I’m babbling about 

What does zero tolerance mean?

By definition zero tolerance is a policy that imposes automatic punishment for infractions of a stated rule, with the intention of eliminating undesirable conduct. Which seems dandy and a good idea, but when it is used to over step civil liberties and boundaries such as private property does it become a problem and not to mention the ongoing debates about gun control. Well for 7th grader Khalid Caraballo, of Virginia Beach, such a scenario is being played out. On September 9th a 911 call was made by a concerned citizen who was "uncomfortable" about Khalid playing with a toy air-soft gun in his front lawn. Here is the actual call made on Sept 9th. Khalid along with his friend Aidan Clark were in his mother’s front yard and the caller drove past and made the call knowing that the gun had a high possibility of being a toy, also admitting the gun wasn't being pointed at anyone and that it was pointed at a target in a tree. Not only did the caller drive past, she consciously drove past twice and either drove slow enough or stopped long enough to be "seen" by the two children playing in the yard. Weather the call was made on a racially biased stance or it was just a citizen who was concerned for her safety from a potential threat a two 13 year old kids pose. Khalid, along with his friend Aidan Clark, were suspended after the Larkspur Middle School got wind of the "incident" and along with said sentencing of those two children a statement was released by the principal of the middle school (Larksupr Middle School Note To Parents). The note sent to parents had dates that do not correlate to the events that happened, and continues to use the following day's "events" to justify their claim that "a child was only 10 feet from the bus stop and ran from the shots being fired but was still hit" when in fact the bus stop is 70 yards from Caraballo's front lawn. These and other inaccuracies of the incident that transpired were passed along to the Virginia Beach City Public School System who in a unanimous vote, voted the children be "long-term" suspended until June of 2014, and in January of that year another hearing will be held to see if the children will be allowed to return to school. Until then the children were given the option to attend an alternative school. Aidan Clark's father Tim Clark stated that his son will be home schooled and Caraballo will be attending alternative school. The two boys were charged with "possession, handling and use of a firearm", but what isn't stated by the middle school, the school system, or even in the note sent out to the parents, is that the "firearm" was used and handled on private property which in relation to any type of school property is at least 70 yards. With all the discussions about gun control and zero tolerance  it has come down to petty control over kids playing with non lethal toys. Has it come time we come to a decision to help prevent further unneeded nuisance like this?

Whats your take on this debacle? Click here for the full story
Photo above: Khalid Caraballo aiming his airsoft at his target in a tree