Horrible bosses...

I recently read an article having to do with a devastating email sent out to the employees of David Siegel, which strongly urged them to take into consideration the consequences the company would have befall it if Barrack Obama was re-elected this November. His email included the following: "The economy doesn’t currently pose a threat to your job. What does threaten your job however, is another 4 years of the same Presidential administration. If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, as our current President plans, I will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company.” He doesn't condone Mitt Romney in the email anywhere, but the intent of the message is clear, which is to force his workers into voting for the republican candidate. One of the main differences between the platforms this election is which economical group is going to be taxed more heavily in order to alleviate the debt that this country has built up. Obama's campaign would focus this higher taxes on large corporations as opposed to the middle class, which he has said is the back bone of the country, it has been proven in the past that if the middle class flourishes so does the country. By taxing the higher income groups the middle class could stuff flourish and the debt would be decreased, sounds like a pretty sounds plan to me. Clearly this idea doesn't sit well with CEO David Siegel, his intention to force his employees into voting for his candidate is clear whether he wants it to seem so or not. I think it is astounding that someone, who names himself responsible for the jobs and welfare of his employees could think this gives him the right to voice his opinions to the extent in which he did so. This is America, the country of free speech and the freedom to choose the political candidate that you feel is going to make the best choices for your nation. While Mr. Siegel may have had the right to voice this opinion, I don't think bullying your employees into voting is the way to go about swinging votes in your direction.
The article can be found here: http://voice4america.com/paulbrown/2012/10/10/ceo-employees.html 

reflections on the trauma of my age

These past few weeks in my visual culture of politics class we have been focusing on trauma in art, more specifically on the influences of trauma on memorials. In an effort to make fresh the greatest trauma of the majority of our class's lives we watched different footage of the falling of the world trade centers on September 11, 2001. To be quite honest apart from that day and the following weeks, as well as the occasional footage screened on the anniversaries of the even I had not seen or watched any images of the falling of the twin towers. For me this moment in class brought back a lot of strong memories, ones that viewing the new 9/11 memorial in New York doesn't quite bring to surface. I was in the 6th grade, in my health class. These classes were held in two mobile homes outside of the main school building, later on the significance of being away from the main school would hit me, but not at the time of course...I was only 11. I vaguely remember another teacher coming in and telling something to my teacher after which we were ushered back into the building, and the humming in the halls about the planes having hit the World Trade Centers was everywhere. I can honestly say that as an 11 year old from Kentucky, and not a very worldly 11 year old at that, I had no idea what the World Trade Centers were, and how this news could possibly impact my life. It wasn't until we were brought into my English class and our teacher had the news on, and we witnessed the planes flying into the buildings, did I begin to fathom the magnitude of this horrific event. I haven't really pondered these memories many times in my life, but watching the footage that a family filmed that lived directly across the street from the buildings made me think of where I was that day and what I was feeling. It wasn't nearly as horrific as witnessing the even 500 yards away, but it still left an impact on my short life. When we began looking at memorials in class we focused on Maya Lin's Vietnam War memorial as well as the new 9/11 memorial. It was interesting to study the differences in feelings one has in viewing these memorials, and the peaceful intimacy that ensues as compared to the violence of what they are meant to represent. I personally believe that the footage from the New York apartment has a bigger impact, although that may not necessarily be a good thing. The memorials are poignant reminders of what happened, which serve as a way to lead us into our own thoughts and recollections. I think memorials serve as an integral part of society, and they can have as much of an impact as footage in this digital age. 

debate or reality tv?

My parents have always been big fans of "Sunday Morning" on CBS and the week preceding the debate they had a special giving a little history on past debates. They went over the debates that may have had an effective role in turning around the election for one party or the other, including the famous Kennedy vs. Nixon debate, as well as the Carter vs. Reagan debate. I have never had a grand interest in politics, not having been able to vote in previous elections I didn't think that I needed to watch the debates, I listened to what my family said about the participants, and then based my opinions on that. This year however I am a registered voter and this is the first time I have an active interest in the election, but I have to say that the debate didn't go necessarily how I thought it would. After having watched the special on "Sunday Morning" I believed that there would be a clear winner, and the debate would follow all ideas I had on debating, either the ideas I got from said special, or the fictional debates I had seen in movies or in school. To my surprise this was not how this year's presidential debate went at all. I watched the debate on NBC in my basement, with my boyfriend playing on the computer inputting tidbits of his opinion every now and then. After the debate I saw the media's reaction, and recognized that they felt very strongly that Mitt Romney was the clear winner, but I didn't exactly see it that way. I recognized a tired president who is juggling many things on his plate other than just the presidential election, but mostly I could not help but notice how passive Obama was versus Romney's bowling over of the mediator. Poor Jim Lehrer really didn't even need to be in the room as the participants were clearly going to address topics that they wanted to, and had been told to push. I think that Barrack Obama simply is not a confrontational man, and I believe that is a good quality in the leader of the free world, yes there were some issues that needed he needed to be more assertive about, but all in all he he appeared to me to be holding his composure not exhausted. Maybe restating the same facts over and over again wasn't the best idea, however at least he stuck to his facts. From the platform that I have seen Mitt Romney running on to his platform sold at the debate, there seemed to be a pretty big shift in the ideas. This debate, for me, turned into one big reality tv show, where the contestants are fed a plan, and then told to stick with this plan in order to gain more viewers, or in this case voters. Next time Obama may want to change his tactics, and it will be interesting to see how the next presidential debate goes down.

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.