Point Of View

I started to talk to my friend about politics and the government. This is what he says, "A good issue is the media manipulation of the facts for personal agendas. 85% of the CIA's multi-billion dollar budget is committed to U.S. media manipulation when it states clearly in their charter that the CIA is not supposed to operate within the 50 states." He knows way more about politics and government stuff than me but what is he trying to say here? The media is brainwashing Americans to believe what the government wants us to believe. Is this true? I think so. 
The media is used to brainwash peoples minds into thinking that there is something wrong with a certain issue. For example when the presidential debate comes around, people are brainwashed into thinking that one candidate is the best out there for our country. These candidates say things about other candidates to try to get people to think that the other candidate is horrible because of rumors and stuff. What I believe is that politics today is based on perception of reality, but not exactly reality itself. The news on politics is a little biased, so they give out information that they decide to give. Not exactly all the sides of a certain story. 
There is not really a legitimate source that I can use to prove that the government is using the media to brainwash Americans because like I said, these things are used to brainwash and the government does not want us to know that they are doing this to us. The only sources out there are opinions like this blog..

Who Decides?

Abortion. It seems that the decision made on this issue is primarily men. I think that it is wrong for men to tell women what they can and can't do to their bodies. Women do not tell men what they can and can't do to their bodies.Why should a man be able to tell a woman what she can or can't do? Abortion should be the choice of the woman. Although I do not think that clinics should do abortions after the 2nd month that a woman is pregnant. The party that is most opposed to the topic of abortion is the Republican party. The Republicans would like to promote abstinence and adoption rather than abortion or even just birth control. This is where the religious part of them comes out. Some of these people believe that once the sperm and the egg meet, they zygote is considered a living thing. Well yes it is living, but then again so are all cells. A zygote to me is not yet considered a baby a living thing, yes, but not a baby just dna. A baby should be considered a baby after 2 months when it develops a heartbeat. The Democrat party goes more towards pro-choice. Pro-choice gives the woman the decision to choose what she wants to do with her body. I think this is the better decision because it should not be anybody's place to decide for a single individual in the case of the persons body. Personally politics should not be involved in this topic and should be decided upon the insurance companies and the women. If some of the Republican party decided that birth control was a good idea then maybe women would not be going out to get abortions. But since religious Republicans do not like the idea of birth control, many women go and get pregnant and don't want the baby and abort it since birth control is not allowed.

Terrorism

How Can We Best Address the Challenges of Modern Citizenry in Order to Preserve and Promote our Democratic Republic regarding terrorism? Terrorism is not anything to play around with. Terrorism is one of the worst things that is happening in the United States. Terrorism does not only happen with people that are from out of the United States, but terrorism happens within the United States with people who were born here and grew up here. I feel bad for the President because he has to deal with the results of these terrorist acts. The CIA has been coming up with ways and strategies to prevent terrorist attacks.  I don't think that there are ways to prevent these terrorist attacks, I mean all we CAN do is just stay on our toes and watch out.

In order to preserve and promote our Democratic Republic regarding terrorism is by watching our surroundings and by keeping the communities in the know by our mayors, Congress, and President. They need to keep the American people informed on what is going on and how to prevent terrorism from happening on the inside.

It now seems that we are not safe anywhere. First it was at school, then on planes, at a movie theater, now outside! We are not safe anywhere and that is a problem. Everyone is now scared to attend big events because all of these things that are happening around us. Its horrifying! If only there was a way to have world peace. We all live in the same world, if we hurt each other, we are hurting our earth also, we should keep it calm and nice! 

Death Penalty

The death penalty. Should people be put to death by another human being legally? This is a very controversial issue/topic. It seems that in most studies and surveys, the results are very close. This is a topic that I think will never be resolved because it involves people getting killed. My viewpoint on this is in the middle. I feel that people should get the death penalty if they have created such of a horrendous crime. The thing about the death penalty though is that if the wrong person gets convicted of a crime and then gets the death penalty and gets executed then what? The judge convicted the wrong person and the wrong person got killed by the state. That is wrong but people have to be 100 percent before convicting a person and giving them the death penalty.  As I was reading an article in the New York Times, I read that for every inmate put to death, 3 to 18 murders are prevented. When it comes to the death penalty, the issue is differerent for the Democrats and Republicans. But going more into it, the death penalty is different for every single, individual person in these two parties it does not matter what party they belong to, everyone will have a different opinion on the death penalty.
There are 32 states that allow the death penalty but it seems that the death penalty is not used too often which could be a good thing or a bad thing.
In the end though it just depends on the individual although to me it is a huge controversy.    

Gay Marrige

Religion over mind-set what is the real reason people don't approve of gay marriage?

One of the most controversial topics involves who should be able to love who and who should be able to marry who.

Some people, such as religious people, feel that it is a sin to be gay.There are some political people that are religious in a way where being super religious interferes with the views of what is important. For example, Rick Santorum, former Republican presidential candidate strongly disagrees with gay marriage. In December of 2011, he blamed gay marriage for plummeting rates of marriage across America. Is this the reason why the rate of marriage is going down? Because of gay people. That is not true. I have learned that in the past that the reason for marriage is because women and men don't feel the need to get married, also because women are more independent and don't feel the need to have a guy/husband in their life to do things. So marriage rates are not going down because of gay people it is going down because people just choose to live that way and not get married whether gay or not.
MY point of view on gay marriage is that all people should be able to marry any gender that they want. It does not effect anyone. Anti-gay marriage politicians are only effecting the people that actually want to get married to the same sex and to me that is inequality. Let these people marry whatever gender they like!

The New Health Care Reform Act of 2014

The year we are required to have health insurance.

The health care reform act of 2014, this is one topic that has recently come to my attention. I was asked to take a 30 minute survey regarding this new health reform act of 2014. During this survey I learned lots of things that I did not know before. In 2014, a new health care reform act is going to come into play. We ALL are required to have health insurance. Or else.... What is this "or else?" This "or else" means that if you don't have health insurance, you are going to have to pay a tax penalty.  It is ridiculous. Since when are humans like cars?! The government is just looking for more and more ways to make the American people pay for things! I am one of those people who would be affected. Although this new reform act will give "tax credits" to those who cannot afford it, it does not help at all. I do not have money to pay health insurance of at least $200 a month! I am a college student that goes to school part-time and has two jobs, I still cannot even afford to buy a car, how else am I supposed to pay for health insurance. This will also be a problem for many people. There is a discount program (not exactly health insurance) that helps poor people out with visits to the hospitals and clinics but it is not considered health insurance. How are these people supposed to pay for their health insurance? This just makes me angry. I don't see why we can't be like other countries that give free health insurance. Sometimes I think that the United States is too greedy with money, because I know that some medicine is not expensive to produce. I thought Obama was going to help with health insurance!

Welfare/TANF

Welfare. Welfare is used to help families in need of assistance with money. A program that helps with this is the TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) There is a controversy as to how strict the eligibility and requirements should be to be able to receive assistance. This is because as you can see in the picture that I have up there, the number of welfare recipients are getting higher and higher. Although there are people that abuse the program for free money or drug use, there are actual people that need the help to be able to get food on their table everyday. For example in my mothers case. My mother is a single mother whose children have all grown up. But one is still a child on the inside, in his brain. My father left when we were in our teens, which is the worst time. My father did not think that this would affect anyone but it did. It affected my mother, not only because they have been married since forever, but because of my brother. My brother is mentally retarded and needs to be watched 24/7. Because of this with no help of my dad, my mother cannot work. She gets about $300 from my brothers SSI to pay the rent, but how can she get food? My mother would go to food banks but sometimes it was not enough. So she was able to qualify for welfare. Welfare saved us from hunger. My mother would love to work, but in the circumstance that she is in, she cannot.
So in a case like that I think that those people should be eligible to receive welfare because how else are they supposed to get money for food. As for the people that use welfare money for drugs (by selling the debit card) they should be required to take drug tests because there are people that want to take away the welfare program because of the drug use, which could hurt lots of families in need if they took the welfare program away.