Sunday, January 16, 2011

A sneak-leak

Ever since the release of over 250,000 diplomatic cables from the U.N., everyone has been debating about what should happen to Wikileaks, a freedom-of-information-act website that posts documents revealing things about countries that were not meant to be seen by the regular man's eye, and it's founder Julian Assange, a hacker/internet political activist who created the website to condemn nations for being secretive and untruthful to it's people, and hopes that his website will drive governments to be more open about what they reveal to their people. Yes, there is a huge debate, should Assange go to jail for releasing confidential information, should Wikileaks be taken off the web forever. But come on people, the real debate should be if Julian Assange's hair is a super light blond, or if it's white and chic.
People are saying that Wikileaks is espionage and Julian Assange is committing it. But here is the Merriam-Webster definition of that word--espionage: "the practice of spying or using spies to obtain information of about the plans and activities especially of a foreign government or competing company."
So, this only proves that American people are too afraid of 'dem people who are gonna interfere with the way they are gonna live their lives and win the war. Had Julian Assange been going to U.N. meetings and wearing a ten-gallon hat with a video camera inside and handing the recorded tapes of rival countries to the government he was working for and that government then put the ten-gallon hat tapes out into the world, that would be espionage.
However, Julian Assange has never posted something on his website that was meant to benefit one country over another, in fact, there has been things posted on Wikileaks about Australia, Julian Assange's native country, so much so that Wikileaks was banned from Australia.
The only thing that Julian Assange has ever put on Wikileaks has been in the interest of keeping governments truthful and honest and nothing else. Never in the history of Wikileaks has Julian Assange said "Country A is perfect but every other country is bad". So, as I have just proved to you, the words Wikileaks and espionage should not be in the same sentence unless the words "is in no way" are between them.
So why are people running around saying that Wikileaks is the worst thing since flag burning and that Julian Assange is the Devil with a deceiving haircut? Because the governments all around the world are trying so hard to make the good guy be the bad guy so that the bad guy can be the good guy. Governments do not want to be made in to the bad guy, because all of a sudden, people get mad and, woops-a-daisy there's a Tunisia.
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Sam

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Roe, Roe, Roe your boat

One of the most controversial subjects today that some say is murder and others say is feminism.
Yes, you have guessed it, this post is about abortion rights (woo hoo!)
See, the issue of abortion rights was already dealt with by the Supreme Court of the United States in the famed case of "Roe v. Wade." where the decision was that abortion was, in fact, constitutional and that no state should pass a law against it.
So, if the Supreme Court, the nine people in the entire country whose entire job is to decide whether things are constitutional or not decided that abortion was permitted under the ninth amendment (The ninth amendment gives rights to citizens based on stuff that isn't already in the constitution.) then why is there still a debate?
Well, you see, there are those people who run around saying that it's murder to stop the heart of a not fully developed piece of tissue and, well, for some reason people listen to them.
Because of these people, 47% of all Americans (if you trust Gallup.com, it was the only site that I could find that gave me useful information) are "pro-life".
Obviously, something has happened since 1995-ish (complicated) when 56% of all Americans found themselves to be pro-choice and 33% of all Americans found themselves to be pro-life. But the fact that something happened is not the puzzle, the puzzle is why?
I have my theories, but what statistic is there to prove my theory?
According to gallup.com, the percent of people who think that abortion is legal in any circumstances has been above (or tied with) the percent of people who think that abortion is illegal in any circumstances since 1975, so why is the amount of people who consider themselves pro-choice dropped dramatically since 1995? The answer lies in the final statistic: those who think that abortion is legal in only some circumstances.
The percentage of those who think that abortion should be legal in only some circumstances has been above both of those statistics since the very beginning of the poll.
So we have, obviously seen a huge switch from people who believe that abortion should be legal sometimes from considering themselves pro-choice to considering themselves pro-life, but why?
Maybe "pro-life" is a more endearing title, maybe people just like to think of themselves who would choose life over death, maybe those people think that it would be more socially accepted to choose life over death. Or maybe they think that they would choose life most of the time, just sometimes they're for abortion.
I believe that abortion should be legal all of the time for the same reason that the supreme court did. The ninth amendment does guarantee that even though something is not specifically create any law, but it says that there are more human rights than listed in the constitution. Privacy can, and I believe is one, of these rights. Privacy to do what you want when it's your life is what the argument for abortion is.
Post questions and comments as comments
Sam

Friday, November 26, 2010

Large-Scale Grounding

If you are someone who likes the constitution, and if you are someone reading this blog who I don't know of or even do know of, I hope you do, than you know, or should, that the 8th amendment to the United States constitution (put in place by our founding fathers) forbids the United States to use "cruel or unusual punishment."
And this can apply to many situations in the United States today, but the two that come to mind are the horrible situation at Guantanamo Bay and something that is in place in most states in the United States and not some land that no one is able to go to unless they are our mortal enemies because the place that we are going is located in the country of our mortal enemies, and those two mortal enemies have absolutely no relation to each other which tells you something about the U.S., really, more than anything else.
Something that occurs in the United States and that is in place in most states (and that's a true understatement, by most, I don't mean 26, I mean 35. This doesn't seem like a lot, but with almost 20% more states disobeying the piece of paper that they were all based upon, it's pretty huge.) Yes, if you know what I'm talking about, than you can just skip over the next couple sentences. However, if you don't know what I'm talking about, then keep on reading. Maybe this will jog your memory on things that I don't like, I got the statistic of the 35 states that have the death penalty from an Amnesty International website. Yes, if you guessed it then you know me and if you didn't I don't know how you didn't. I'm talking about Capital Punishment!!!!!!!!!! Or, for stupidity purposes capital punishment is also known as the Death Penalty.
Yes, the death penalty is in place in 70% of all US states, the state that the man currently posting this is from not being one of them, he is proud to say. Yes, this resident of Wisconsin is delighted that even though he is not of legal age to vote on things like the death penalty, he is delighted to say that his state voted against this unconstitutional preposition. However, because of his state's voting, all of their good work may now be completely void. But that is another story for another day.
So why is this bill in place in 35 states even though the bill of rights clearly states that this bill can not occur in the united states?
Well, they say that criminals who are put on death row are given the chance to make a will and say goodbye to all of their loved ones.
I say to this argument may be true, but it is still unconstitutional. Even though the criminals are given more freedoms than their victims may have gotten at the time of their deaths, killing is still, in any situation, cruel (and I think that the victim would agree) and if it is used as a punishment, it is a cruel punishment. A cruel or unusual punishment.
Another argument for the death penalty is that we can now accurately tell who is guilty of what using DNA evidence.
I then would ask those people a question. Why is it, then, that all studies show that those who are of color or of lower class are put on death row and executed?
That's all I can say for now, I hope that all 35 states realize the points brought up in this article.
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Sam

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Alice in Blunderland

The TEA (Taxed Enough Already) party. That's all I really have to say to describe these people, don't I? The TEA (Taxed Enough Already) party. You would really think that this name should belong to starving people working all day to put one meal on their families table, those people have been "Taxed Enough Already".
So who are these people? Well, you would think that most of them would be Republicans, and your right. But only 49% of the TEA partiers actually are. Which is why there has been a recent Los Angeles Times headline saying "41% of TEA Party Members are Democrats, Independents." (actually, this is now invalid as I did start this post a while ago. Now about 49% of TEA partiers are Republicans and 51% are Democrats or Independents, so I'll use the more updated statistic, so I have inconsistent data because the headline is outdated.)
You probably had the same reaction when you read this as I did.
51% of the people marching on Washington talking about how they have been taxed enough are the good or partly good guys.
But then, read behind the headlines: the 51% is actually 43% Independents and only 8% Democrats (still, those have got to be some conservative democrats to support the TEA party). So that 41% is a very loose statistic, being that one of the parts grouped is more than 5 times the size of the other part.
Also, let's break down these "TEA Party Members": 40% are over the age of 55, 79% are white, 61% are men and 44% are "born again" Christians.
So the future America will be run by old, white christian guys (as if it weren't already.)
But then you realize that oh, okay it's bad to discriminate and say that all TEA partiers are the things listed above, because you then turn on to see that there are a few people who are members of this party who claim to be witches, and then claim not to be and vice-presidential candidates who still didn't know, by the time that they were announced as the vice-presidential candidate why there was a North and South Korea or that Africa was a continent.
Oh, okay so the future of America is a Palin-O'Donnell presidency with Marco "pelo" Rubio (who isn't really a TEA partier, I just wanted to make that Spanish reference) as the Secretary of State and Dick Cheney with a stunning return to politics and is immediately made Speaker of the House.
Not to mention the statistic that is far over-looked. See, if I were a reporter for something like the New York Times, I would put up a shocking statistic: "Most TEA partiers racist, unintelligent."
And okay, maybe I'm being insensitive to TEA partiers because hey, you still have that 21% who aren't white.
But frankly, I don't know why they wouldn't quit after going to their first rally when they have signs portraying President Barack Obama as things like a monkey and an African witch doctor (well, I guess there's a witch on both sides now) and they put the Swastika inside the letter "O" for Obamacare.
Not to mention that one guy who wrote a fake letter as a slave to Abraham Lincoln talking about how he wasn't crazy about the whole "emancipation" thing and talked about how it would have to make slaves...
Think for themselves!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's tragic, it's horrible!!!
Your making the slaves actually think for themselves and have a mind of their own.
Thank god that this man was heroic, courageous and tolerant enough to bring this to our attention that slaves were all stupid and needed to be told what to do and when to do it.
Thank god that he knew every single thing about what it was like to be a slave and how the slaves felt all of the time being a white (I know this for a fact) man who is from present day.
It's almost like he could read slaves minds.........
WITCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Sam

Saturday, September 11, 2010

9 years, we remember

Nine years ago today, there was an attack from Muslim Extremists on the World Trade Center in New York, NY. It was a day that shocked the world and started two wars, each killing tens-of-thousands of people. But what shocks me most about this day (and that may just be because I wasn't old enough to remember the attack, so when I hear about it I am not as appalled as I should be or would be if I remembered it) is the fact that even today, a day that happened because of religious intolerance, is the fact that Florida preacher Terry Jones marked today as "International Burn-a-Quar'an Day." Now I know that the plan has been aborted by the preacher but his reasoning for ending it was almost as bad as the reasoning for beginning it in the first place: "God told me to stop".
Let me evaluate the situation: He got the world upset about this whole thing, got himself to be on every single news network in the nation as well as everywhere else (hey, International Burn-A-Quar'an day raises international tension), got the general for the entire operation in Afghanistan, the Secretary of State, and even the President of the united states to make statements denouncing this international holiday and for what?: "God told me to stop."
He declares a holiday that will not only cost American lives in Afghanistan and make the United states image look like the worst country in the world but is also just plain racist and only elevates the stereotype "All Muslims are Terrorists" in this country for what?: "God told me to stop."
He creates an unconstitutional holiday, one that would not be covered under free speech. The first amendment only takes you so far, you can say whatever you want with only a few limitations such as hate speech. Hate speech is something that was restricted from the U.S. constitution, it is when you say something that is demeaning to a person. Such as race, gender sexual orientation or religion. Now International Burn-A-Quar'an day is hate speech, it discriminates against all one-and-a-half-billion Muslims because 19 attacked the World Trade Center nine years ago today for what?: "God told me to stop."
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Sam

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Cry over spilled oil

B.P. otherwise known as British Petroleum, formerly known as the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company under the rule of great Iranian President Mohammad Mossadegh has been taking a lot of heat lately because, well the pelicans kind of say it all. If you haven't heard of this, which I know you have Jacob (I wish I had more than one person who read my blog on a regular basis) than let me explain:
Basically, ever since the US okay'd offshore drilling many oil companies with any location in America have been drilling for oil on coastal lines across the good ol' US of A. But every once in a while, there is a malfunction and, in this case, the pipe doesn't turn off and it spews oil uncontrollably.
And this particular drilling plant was in the Gulf of Mexico which, as you may know, was famous for it's deep blue waters and white sand, now the sand and the water share the same color: a dark brown.
So whose fault is it?
Is it the fault of British Petroleum who shouldn't have gone out into the Gulf Coast in the first place or is it the fault of the people in Washington who approved offshore drilling in the first place?
Let's examine both arguments, shall we?
Let us start with the reasoning behind that it's BP's fault:
According to the British government, BP should have had a better drill plant and it is in no way the fault of the British Government.
I can see that, sort of.
You can say that offshore drilling is good because it lowers gas prices by making more oil available, and that oil only spills when the oil company makes a bad plant and for that reason, whenever a spill happens it is the fault of the oil company.
Then again, you could say that it is completely the fault of the government because, in a way it's kind of like when you feed a cat something that's unhealthy for them they are gonna eat it, and if that cat is not careful they could throw up all over your house.
Now my opinion:
I blame the entire oil spill on Sarah Palin who said on June 4 that the spill was "The fault of extreme environmentalists who protested drilling on land." This, she claimed, forced the companies to drill offshore and then this spill happened.
Let me name the things wrong with that statement:
1. She completely ignores the fact that "extreme environmentalists" also protested offshore drilling, so it wasn't exactly like these devil-like world savers only protested drilling on land and completely ignored offshore drilling.
2. She is for offshore drilling. She is ignoring that she advocated for offshore drilling and placing the blame on environmentalists who protested against offshore drilling because when something that a Republican endorses and a Democrat doesn't and it fails, which happens about 99.9% of the time, the Republicans try to hide that they supported it at one time and cover it up with lies, and when this oil spill is over, I'm sure that Sarah Palin will have a statement saying that we should not give up hope on offshore drilling, in fact, I think that she saw the picture of the pelicans above and said "Well, at least gas prices were lowered."
Post questions and comments as comments
Sam

Monday, May 17, 2010

Racism from A-Z

For two posts (including this one) now, I have been condemning racists, first people and now a state. Well, not an entire state, just a state congress, Governor and 70 percent of this certain state. I think that all of you 4, sorta, followers know what I'm talking about:
Arizona.
Yes, this Southwestern state, the Grand Canyon state with a population of almost 6 million people, 300,000 or so of which are illegal immigrants.
And this 5% of the population is causing a national stir, you may have heard about this protesting going on all across America, who knows, maybe it was even in your town! (who am I kidding. The only people who have ever read this blog have not only been in one state, not even in one city. In one side of one city in one state in one country. Good ol' west side of Madison, Wisconsin, USA) But anyways, this new immigration bill states that any police officer can ask any person who they suspect of being an illegal immigrant for documentation of their legal status in the country. If they do not happen to have their papers with them, they could be arrested and perhaps even deported no matter if they are or are not an illegal immigrant just because they did not have their papers with them.
This is called "Racism"
There are many excuses to justify this law, one of which being that about 60 percent of the cocaine that enters into this country through Arizona, and another being that Arizona has the 6th most approximated illegal immigrant population in America.
But it's the ladder argument, however is what I use to say that it is, in fact, a racist law.
What I say is yes, Arizona has the 6th most approximated illegal immigration of any state in America. But then, factor this in, Arizona also has the second largest Mexican foreign born population in the United States, 5 times the amount of the Asian foreign born population and 6 times the amount of the European foreign born population, almost 2/3 of the foreign born population was born in Mexico. Why would you target anyone accept the vast majority?
Post questions and comments as comments
Sam

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Rush Limbaugh and things

There are good people, there are bad people and then there are Racists. Governmental racism, or the "Jim Crow" laws were eliminated after the civil rights movement, but other racists, like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, have managed to have TV/Radio shows with millions of followers.
Now, can somebody please tell me why you would follow these horrible racist people? I mean I get the whole thing with the first amendment and that you can say these things, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you should.
I don't understand that after the whole civil rights era with all of the monumental things in America's history like the "I have a dream" speech and the Montgomery bus boycott, not only that someone would say, "The NAACP should have a riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies." but also that 13.5 million people a day listen to that and that it takes newsone.com to actually point it out.
If I could get paid 33 million dollars to link Nelson Mandela to communism and say that the NFL looks like the Bloods battling the Crypts, I would be happy.
And if I could say that James Earl Ray deserves the Medal of Honor and call our President a Nazi, I would be very happy.
And you could say that this is just one example of a Republican, consider one of my other very good friends:
Glenn Beck.
Yes, another major voice in the GOP, the party of Lincoln, the President MOST FAMOUS FOR BEING NOT RACIST AT A TIME OF EXTREME RACISM. Has said things like "Barack Obama has a deep-seated hatred for white people." Is it he who has a hatred towards white people (and therefore his mother) or is it you, Glenn, my good ol' buddy who has a hatred towards black people? Yep my bestie Glenn, you had probably an audience of 3 point something million when you said that Al Gore's awareness for Global Warming used the same tactic as the Nazis when they rounded up Jews and exterminated them.
What men. What great American god-given men. You guys deserve the Nobel Prize.
Post questions and comments as comments.
Sam

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Gold War

A few months ago, I put out my worst blog post ever (yes, all you 2 die-hard fans who even know about the failure fail blogs "Freedom of Speech" and "Bethlehem Steel", which I didn't even spell right, this was worse than the one blog post on each of them.) "Diamonds aren't forever (James Bond lied, I know)". This was about "Blood Diamonds" and it was horrible. I want to delete it, but I sometimes use it as a benchmark to do better than. This one is about something very similar to the idea of "Diamonds aren't forever (James Bond lied, I know)" (I hesitate to even write that out) but I hope to God that it is better than... that. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, perhaps known better as Zaire as it was called Zaire under former president Mobutu Sese Seko, there is a war that has killed up to 4 million people and this war is about gold.

Okay, so let's break this thing down. In the DR Congo, there's a lot of gold, and in the U.S. and all around the world, (don't yell at me about this one Jake, I was all-inclusive this time) there's a huge demand for gold, but for stupidity purposes, let's just refer to DR Congo as "Country A" and the U.S. and all around the world as "Country B". Country A is on the poorest continent in the world, and if Country A is rich with gold which is worth up to 1000 dollars per ounce. If Country B needs gold for things like money and jewelry (and yes, he went to Jared), the citizens of Country A will try and mine the gold so much that they will risk their lives, work in mountains that are at high elevation and at constant threat for landslides.

How this war was started is nine countries that border or are close to DR Congo invaded "Country A" in effort to get the gold resources of the DR Congo, eventually this invasion ended, but ever since, rebel militias have been trying to take over various mines so that they can control certain mines and get all of the profits of that mine, and these militias will take these $1000 and ounce mines, including killing innocent civilians to create terror and keep the conflict going. The last thing that these militia leaders want is a sudden resolution to this conflict, in fact, they want to keep the conflict going as long as they possibly can. But we the people of the United States need to find a resolution of a conflict.

Now my opinion. I think that this war needs to be ended and the only way to legally end it is by banning all gold that comes from the DR Congo, but even then, there would be jewelry companies who will import these diamonds instead of ones found in mines here in the US because they're cheaper than the ones where there is not a conflict so the US needs to talk with government officials from "Country A" and possibly spread out our industry to the DR Congo so that there are not still people being killed with the entire world turning it's back on this conflict.
Post questions and comments as comments
Sam

Saturday, February 6, 2010

The Left Side of Hispañola

"In Haiti, there was a devastating earthquake. Up to half a million people have died. Please donate whatever possible" reads the sign that was created by me and this kid named Trevor Mcky at my school. It's all true and we've raised over 200 dollars for Haiti.

This earthquake all happened about three weeks ago, and this breaking news story has almost disappeared from news networks across the world. I guess even though there are still people dying under the rubble with absolutely no news support.

It was bad enough that it was a 7.0 magnitude, but let me explain further how the earthquake victims were so vulnerable to this earthquake.

First of all it was France. France colonized Haiti some time in the late 1600s or in the early 1700s and they were using Haiti as a port for African slaves. This lasted until the year 1791 when Haitian salves created a revolt lead by Francois Toussaint L'overture which ended in 1804 when Haiti finally defeated the French Military and Haiti became only the second free country in the Americas. However, then France pledged freedom to Haiti only if Haiti gave France a settlement, putting the newly developed Haitian in a great debt. Also, since these people were slaves, they had absolutely no training in running a government at all, and since the slaves had not gotten the right of an education, almost the entire country was illiterate. More than 100 years later, Haiti had a string of bad rulers, which made Haiti even worse.

Then, it was the United States who colonized Haiti from 1915 to 1934. Do you know what's weird to me, the United States Constitution was created because we hated our own English colonization, but then we go off 200 some years later and colonize other countries like Hawai'i, in which we completely eliminated as a country. Haiti is one of these sad examples. We ourselves collected taxes and set some of our affairs in Haiti. During this colonization, we collected billions of dollars from the Haitian people.

Then it was "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" who messed up Haiti even more. "Papa Doc" (Francois Duvalier) started the whole thing when he arranged the "Tontons Macoutes" ("Bogymen"), a secret force of men who would execute or assassinate all of the opponents of "Papa Doc" and whoever he saw as a threat to his power, he would drain all of their power. And he would use corruption to get what he wanted. And then, there was "Baby Doc" (Jean-Claude Duvalier), he did pretty much exactly what his dad did and not in a good way.

And then, it was the United States again. When Haiti finally started to get back up on it's feet again and started exporting it's goods, the U.S. started sending "aid" to Haiti, creating it's dependence on importing goods. This is because of this: when farmers went to the markets to sell their produce, they used to be able to sell their produce, but when the U.S. sent "aid", the farmers could not sell their produce, and so they had to shut down their farm entirely, and since they had no source of income, they could no longer export their goods. These farmers all had to move into Port-au-Prince which created a huge increase in population of Port-au-Prince which is where the earthquake struck.

Post questions and comments as comments
Sam

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Election Fraud (Yes) in Afganistan

A few weeks ago, Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced that he had not won his re-election cleanly, meaning that there had been some kind of fraud, meaning that Abdullah Abdullah, his main opponent, had probably won the election.
A few months ago, I had my first new post in a while called "Election Fraud (?) in Iran" about another controversial election in the middle east, but there it was between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir-Hossein Mosavi.
The Iran election was similar and different to the Afghan election.
It was similar because they were both suspected to have election fraud and both of them were extremely shady.
It was different because Hamid Karzai actually admitted that there was some kind of Election Fraud going on in the election.
Now, some might argue that that means that there wasn't any fraud in Iran. They'll say that the election in Iran was older than the Afghan election, and if Ahmadinejad hasn't said that he didn't win cleanly, then he probably did win cleanly.
This is exactly what Ahmadinejad wants you to think. Karzai coming out and saying that there was corruption in the Afghani election was probably the best thing for Ahmadinejad's corrupt win.

But anyway, back to Afghanistan, Abdullah Abdullah is against everyone in the Afghan government right now since, right now, everyone in the Afghan government works for Hamid Karzai. Although Abdullah is probably supported by most of the country, he has to get through the government before he becomes the next President of Afghanistan.
Since Afghanistan is still a developing democracy, it isn't exactly where the U.S. is since we've had a democracy for more than 200 years.
Now, we do know from 2000 and 2004 that we don't have a perfect democracy either.
This is a bad thing for us and for the rest of the world.
For us, we don't win clean elections and we get the wrong guy to run our country for 4 years.
For the rest of the world, we set an example for democracy worldwide, and if we don't have clean elections, the rest of the world doesn't have clean elections

What do I think? Well, as I said earlier, since Hamid Karzai has come out and said that the race had fraud in it, Karzai has said without saying that Abdullah Abdullah won the Afghan election.
But now, according to nytimes.com, Abdullah has quit the race, and according to CNN Newsroom, it's because he feared that there would be even more fraud the second time around.
Post questions and comments as comments
Sam

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Happily Married

In the 1960's, Homo-Sexuality was far from accepted.
Now, in the 2000's, it is more accepted, but not to the point where it should be. And there, comes the Gay Marriage laws.
In the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama said that he didn't think it was the president's duty to make a law for the whole country to approve or dis-approve Gay Marriage, and thought that it should be up to states to decide weather or not to allow Gay Marriage.
John McCain, however, didn't like it at all.
No big surprises.
During the Presidential Campaign, however, Gay Marriage was being tossed around in the state of California, and Obama has said, publicly, that he is against Proposition 8, which later passed, and banned Gay Marriage in California. Although, he has also stated that he believes Marriage is between a man and a woman.
Is this believable?
Not especially.
It wasn't until his campaign that he has even been shy about this issue. When he was a Illinois state Senator, he was for it. When he was a U.S. Senator from Illinois he was for it. But when he was running for President, probably in an effort to get more votes, he was shy, and now that he's President, he's against it.
Also, explain this to me: he's against both Proposition 8, which would ban gay marriage, and Gay Marriage.
What do I think?
I think that Gay Marriage is absolutely needed in this country.
First off, no one just decides to be Gay, weather they're Gay or Straight is something that you are born with.
And secondly, according to many surveys from many sources, about 1 out of 10 people in America are Homo-Sexuals.
So if you are against Gay Marriage, that means that you are against giving 10 percent of the people in America the right to be Married.
Ten Percent of the people in this country are the work of the Devil.
10% of people in this country are not going to Heaven.
Will we ever change this?
A special thanks to huffingtonpost.com for additional information
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Sam

Friday, October 9, 2009

Congratulations: President Barack Obama

On October 9, 2009, something historic happened.
President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."
He was not a front-runner, in fact, people were surprised that he had won, yesterday, the front-runner, they said, was Colombian senator Piedad Cordoba, who's most famous act was to find and free 16 prisoners.
All applications had to be sent in only 12 days after he had taken office, and there was already talk about who it was going to be 2 months before he was even elected.
The committee said, just after they had announced that it would go to Obama, "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given it's hope for a better future".
According to Thorbjorn Jagland, the leader of the committee, the decision to give Obama the prize was "Unanimous" and that it came with ease to pick the President.
During Obama's speech, he said that he didn't deserve to "be in the company" of all the other winners of the prize, but that he would accept it, because he did think that he was trying to do a lot of things, like his attempt to find a resolution to Nuclear Weapons, the Global Economic Downturn, and finding the resolution to the Arab-Isreali conflict.
He also mentioned that he, as the President of the United States, was responsible with ending the useless Iraq war to premote a higher level of peace, and that he will donate about 1.4 million to charity and charitable causes.

As well as Barack Obama, other winners of the Nobel Prizes include Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, and Jack W. Szostack for Medicine and Physiology, Herta Müller for Literature, and many others.
A special thanks to cnn.com and other various sources for additional information
Post questions and comments as comments
Sam

Monday, October 5, 2009

North Korea's Iran

North Korea, like Iran, supposedly has Nuclear weapons. North Korea, like Iran, is feared by the U.S. North Korea, like Iran, are places that, out of fear, Republicans feel like we need to bomb.
God, has anybody learned anything from Pearl Harbor? Or even our Atom Bomb droppings on Japan?
Bombing just keeps everything going, in fact it makes the feud between those countries worse.
If we bomb them, they are more likely to bomb us.
If we bomb them, they see us as cowards.
Also, let me explain the physics of this, we think that they have Nuclear Weapons, so we get Nuclear Weapons, and we bomb them. Makes perfect sense, right?
Wrong.
If we drop a few Nukes on them, and let me just point out, that we don't know if they have Nuclear Weapons, and we're just assuming, 'cause, y'know, all Muslims are Terrorists.
Right now, there is about an 100% chance that no, they don't have Nuclear Weapons. But just to be sure, we should assume that that 0% is right, and go in, spend 10 billion dollars a month (and they wonder why our debt is so large), realize that there aren't any, but they'll still stay in Iran, to make sure that they aren't making non-existing Nuclear Weapons (and yes, "Iraqi Road" still wasn't enough).
But back to the point, if we bomb them, we are imposing a threat that is doesn't exist, we need to have Iran see us as a good country. Charitable, forgiving, and genuine.
If we bomb them, we are bad people.
To them, to the world, and to me.
How do we do this?
We give aid.
Iran has a lot of people in need of Aid, and if Ahmadinejad sees that we are supplying aid, it will change our image, slightly at first, but later, by a significant margin.
Also, we half to do it sincerely.
If we don't do it sincerely, and Ahmadinejad knows that, he'll just think that we are trying to suck up.
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Sam

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Close it now.

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is, by a Republican's standard, the only good thing in all of Cuba.
But, in reality it is the worst thing in that entire country.

The U.S.'s first encounter on Guantanamo Bay was during the Spanish-American war, when a Marine force camped there on June 10, 1898. The next day, two Marines were killed in the same area.
Five years later, in 1903, former President Theodore Roosevelt signed an agreement with the new Cuban government, where they would lease the Bay for 2,000 golden coins a year. But this was not something that they did voluntarily, it was something that was in the "Platt Amendment" that, more likely then not, the new government was forced to sign.
I think that they were probably forced to sign this, because it does not seem like something anyone would want. Basically, it gave the U.S. permission to interfere with Cuban affairs, and the Cuban government could not have any say in where or when they interfered.
This agreement was signed on February 16, 1903, and in the agreement, it said that "...for use as coaling or naval stations only, and no other purpose..."
Then, on July 2, 1906, another agreement was signed in Havana to re-buy Guantanamo with another property, Bahia Honda, and for both of these, they would pay $2,000.

The U.S., ever since has been dis-honoring the Platt Amendment, and it has not been for naval purposes only.
Now Guantanamo Bay is, well, Guantanamo Bay, the main torture center for America.
And, if they find someone in associated with Al-Qaeda, if they don't kill them, they'll ship them out to Guantanamo, tie their arms to the back of a board, shove water down their nose and mouths, ask 'em where Bin Laden is, they'll lie, and put them in a small room with 10 other former Al-Qaeda members.
I will never understand the use of torture.

And now, Robert Gates is saying that it might be harder then he originally expected to close Guantanamo, and John McCain has said "Apparently, we are not going to make the deadline, but we should work towards the closure of Guantanamo Bay because of the image it has on the world, of brutality, [which] harms our image very badly"
For once in my life, I can say that I agree with Senator John McCain of Arizona. That's true, completely. If you tie people's hands to a board, and shove water down your throat, it ruins your image.
And no one, unless their Hitler, deserves to die.
A special thanks to cnn.com and historyofcuba.com for additional information
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Sam

Monday, September 21, 2009

The Taliban Problem

Starting in 1996 until 2001, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. Who are the Taliban? An Extreme-Islamist group, who believe that Women shouldn't be educated, and should just not have a voice anywhere.
This, of course, is not accepted by the U.S. government.

The Taliban are one of the worlds worst groups, and the Taliban and Al-Qaeda probably were the ones who created the "All Muslims are Terrorists" stereotype.
If you judge all people associated with a religion just based on two groups, and even worse, if you say that all Muslims should die, to me, that's no better than Al-Qaeda.
And if you say "Oh, well they actually attacked us" then you are telling a lie.
There were about 3,000 people in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. And over the course of the Iraq war, we have killed about 10,000 civilians.
That's a difference of 7,000 people, dead.

In 2001, the Taliban lost control of Afganistan, and lost thousands of supporters.
After 3 years, the Taliban leaders had enough supporters to re-start the group.
And ever since 2004, the Taliban have been terrorising Afghanistan and it's leaders.
The movement is getting out of control, and right now, the Taliban are bombing innocent children in schools because they are educating girls, they are bombing to scare the school board. What the Taliban is obviously trying to is to get the government to stop educating girls so that the Taliban will stop bombing.
But the school board is not buying in, they have taken 5 years of this now, and they haven't bought in, yet.
People all across the world are calling out, telling them not to buy in, and other people are calling out to buy in.
What do I think? I think that although people will die in the process, the government should not buy in. If the Taliban gets it's way, then they will do more things, and if they keep on buying in, the government might as well be a Taliban government.
A special thanks to nytimes.com for additional information
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Sam

Monday, September 14, 2009

Iraqi Road

In my last post, I talked about 9/11, which is what triggered the Iraq war. After 9/11, the U.S. realized that Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were more powerful then we thought.
And at that time, George Bush thought that Osama Bin Laden was hiding somewhere in Iraq. This, of course, was absolutely irrational and untrue.
There were no Nuclear weapons in Iraq, and you couldn't even say that there was no way of telling weather or not there was Osama Bin Laden, and/or Nuclear Weapons in Iraq, because there was no legitimate proof of there being any of that in Iraq. In the speech that Colon Powell gave to the United Nations, it showed blurry pictures of where there "might be" Nuclear Weapons, and proof that there were no people or weapons associated with Al-Qaeda was that they checked, every space that looked like the ones Colon Powell showed.
Were there Nuclear Weapons? No.
Were there Terrorists? No.
And you would think that at this point, they would abort the mission.
But they simply couldn't.
1st, They had caused so much international news, that it couldn't just be over after a few months.
And 2nd, they had already taken over Iraq, and they couldn't get out of it.
And after another year or two, the mind set had come back, and then it came back, stronger than ever.
Then, George Bush sent more and more troops in, costing about 10 billion dollars a month, and we got in bigger and bigger debt.

And in the middle of it all, the leader of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, was executed, because the U.S. thought that he had ties to Al-Qaeda.
Saddam Hussein had his share of problems, he murdered and tortured tens of thousands of people in his own country, but had no ties what so ever to Al-Qaeda.
And there is no reason for the Death Penalty, no one deserves to die and people are very easily concealed in a prison.
The Iraq war is one of the worst wars in the history of America.
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Sam

Friday, September 11, 2009

8 years, we remember.

Eight years ago today, two airplanes hit the World Trade Center, which were some of the tallest building in the world, and the tallest buildings in New York. Where were these airplanes from? After the government (meaning the Senate and the CIA, since the President was sitting in a classroom reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", which according to him is his favorite book. Hey, it's probably the closest thing to "Ulysses" he's ever read) found that it was members of Al-Qaeda who hi-jacked the planes, and ran them into the World Trade Center.
This killed almost everyone in the towers, with only a few dozen survivors. And the people who did survive are now scarred for life.
A lot of people don't know that beyond the towers, another two planes were hi-jacked. One hit the Pentagon, and although there were no deaths, a lot of people got seriously injured. And one was going to hit the White House, but failed the mission.
This was the iconic moment in the"all Muslims are terrorists" stereotype.
Before this, we knew about terrorists, but didn't really care, then 9/11 came along, and the U.S. suddenly took action, as they had to. Once the Al-Qaeda group had gone into the U.S., and took lives, that's when you half to take action.
But then, they went into Iraq, and there was no reason to go to Iraq.
The decision to go into Iraq was made by the U.S. government, and a speech was given in a U.N. convention by Colon Powell.
Colon Powell was, more likely then not, the most reasonable person in the history of the Bush Administration, but he could have very easily said "No. I will not give a speech to almost every country in the world saying that a completely corrupted war is actually needed."
But, he did, and the speech basically said "There might be weapons, so we are gonna check, and spend 10 billion dollars a month on something that isn't real."
And that somehow persuaded a bunch of countries to help pay for this war.
I don't know.
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Sam

Monday, September 7, 2009

Exhaling is bad for the Environment?

CO2, Carbon Dioxide, is both good and bad for you. There are two types of CO2, one is Natural, and one is Artificial. Natural is what you exhale, and is absorbed by Plants and Oceans, and Artificial is more difficultly absorbed by plants and oceans, and in large amounts, nature can absorb almost no CO2.
Over time, (say, 30 years) a whole is created in the atmosphere, which rises the worldwide temperature, which makes the plants and oceans go crazy, in fact, they say when global warming hits its full effect, Antarctica and the North Pole will melt, which will turn the ice into water, rising ocean levels worldwide, which will sink all of the coastal cities in the world, like New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Seoul, and many more. We are talking hundreds of millions of people here, and if we don't get our CO2 level back down to 350, it is not going to be good.
There was a guest on Colbert (who by the way I challenge to a blog-off, and I am doing that because he doesn't even have a blog, so I challenge you, Stephen Colbert) a few days ago, and he was from 350.org.
And being the good person that I am, I went on this website. And it defines what I am talking about in this article.
It says on it has on it's home page the first part of a whole article (most of which they talked about on Colbert) and, although I can not quote everything on the front page, based on simple copyright laws, I can say certain themes.
And what it said was this:
(written as though it the average activist to the average person in the world), most people in the world are aware of global warming, and that all of the people in the world know that what ever it is, it needs to be stopped. But then it ends with a hopeful message, saying that it can be achieved.
I couldn't read beyond the sample that was given on the homepage, because the link didn't open, but I think that that pretty much summed it up.
The climate crisis is one of the biggest troubles in the world today, and I appreciate the efforts of 350.org.
My opinion, along with everyone in the world, (accept the Bush-Cheney administration) is that global warming is bad.
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Sam

Saturday, September 5, 2009

If the president's speaking, I want my kid out.

On Tuesday, September 8, 2009, the President will give a speech to late Elementary, Middle, and High school students, about how you should stay in school.
And of course, since it is the president, and not say Rush Limbaugh, it is going to be about the return of the Nazi-Socialists. Obviously.

Seriously, do these people ever give it a rest? I mean if George Bush could stop filming "Barney's Christmas Special", and go on national T.V. (right after he did something about Iraq) and say "Hey kids, don't do drugs" and basically walked off, would there be people keeping their kids out of school? No.
And even better, since it is completely going to be, "Drugs are something that were invented by Republicans and those Republicans have destroyed the world."
Right?
And, y'know we don't want to hear a racist speak to our children to manipulate our children and hypnotize them.
Can we ever change some people?
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Sam