Tuesday, October 22, 2013

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.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013


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