Drums of War

In a recent posting to the website Voice 4 America accusations made by former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich concerning the recent attacks on U.S. Embassies in Libya and Egypt were brought to my attention. Gingrich proposes that President Obama refuses to pronounce these actions as acts of war and merely names them "acts of senseless violence". I can't argue that these attacks were not awful, and that they were or were not acts of war, but I believe that Gingrich's idea that due to Obama's extreme left view of the world he is impeded in his decisions to claim these as acts of war. I believe that due to the current situation, and the fact that we have been a country at war for over 10 years, as hard as that is to believe coming from life at The University of Kentucky, we have to pick and choose what is necessary to take action against. I am a firm believer that we wouldn't be in the situation as a country that we are in if we had not rushed off to war in the first place, and as the website claims Gingrich "banging the drums of war" reminds me a lot of where we were 10 years ago. I do not think that Obama's decision to not act against these attacks is not a result of his "extreme leftview" but merely a president in an election year critically thinking the actions that he makes and their repercussions, which is something that may have been helpful in our last president.
Here is the website: file:///Users/appleowner/Desktop/gingrich-opinion-act-of-war-not-senseless-violence.html

Political cartoon in the Herald Leader, concerning the question that both parties have been slinging, "are you better off than you were four years ago?" This image would argue that Mitt Romney sure is, as is the country given the state it was in four years ago. I don't know if Romney really has something to hide in his taxes, but I usually don't hide things I'm not ashamed of. I think this political cartoon is pretty genius.

Middle class: pols love, don't understand it: a response

In all recent political advertisements and speeches it has been clear that a major target audience within both parties is the middle class, why is this? An article in today's issue of the Herald Leader tried to tackle this question and I found that it was lacking in any new evidence to support its claims. The article posed the question "if we get our economy growing at a decent clip will all be well for the middle class?"...sadly the answer is apparently no. I would place myself in the category of middle class and not surprisingly so would almost all other Americans, so wouldn't it make sense for both parties to try and swing the middle class vote? I believe it would. The author has some ideas about improving the state of the middle class in the future, including better and more jobs and increasing the level of higher education in the U.S. and I agree to some extent, but will this help the middle class or just make it larger?

occupy this.

I recently attended a presentation given by artist and activist Blythe Riley concerning her experiences within the occupy movement. I have to say that some personal accounts of the movements that she was involved in both interested and appalled me. I was not appalled by the activists, it is anyone's right to protest for the freedoms that they believe are being denied them, I was appalled by the reactions of some of the authority figures. The strongest reaction I had was to the activists within the group "Occupy Museums" prompt removal from the museum of finance when they were simply presenting the museum in question with a cardboard model of a house. I believe that it was quite obvious that the stunt was harmless and that the Museum of Natural History had the correct reaction in letting the occupy movement go about their business. Some of the responses of the crowd to Riley's presentation were odd to me as well, I think that many people saw it as a means to get a response from the authorities when clearly it was meant as a means to simply get the word out that something is wrong. I don't find some of the ideas of the group to be all that worth wile, such as the new economy ideas, but it is clear that they are trying to steer our future in the right direction. Her talk was eye opening, especially to someone who had only seen a few of the news reports on the activities of the occupy movement, and the fact that she opened her talk with an activity on whether or not we have debt brought her talk more to home.