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.

I recently perused the flickr stream of photos from the republican national convention. I understand the need to point out the uplifting generally upbeat side of any political situation, but these photos just left me with a need to ask what else is going on? These photos seemed to be like painting an old moldy wall, the bad stuff is bound to come up eventually. I found it particularly interesting that there are no images of the current runners for the presidency, they focused on past presidents and the good ole' days of the republican party. Use these images to let us learn about the issues that the convention will address and don't show us your cute little secretaries in their matching outfits, where is the substance?

political image: pertaining to the fact that Americans take the right to vote for granted and then when they are unhappy with the consequences of an elected political officials actions they have no right to be when they did not act on election day when they could have had a hand in choosing someone else.

politics is...

This is my first post in a blog pertaining to a class I am taking at the University of Kentucky; the Visual Culture of Politics. We were given the task to give our own definition of the term politics. Given the current year and the election coming up there could not be a more controversial or important topic, and due to the fact that I will be voting for the president for the first time in my life I believe it is time for me to really delve into my thoughts on the matter. To me politics encompass the governing body of a people, and the decisions which said governing body make which will have influence or impact on the governed body. While politics involves the governing body it also has to do with one's own personal beliefs about the governing body. One can get into an argument over their beliefs on who should be the governing and call this argument political, while they themselves are having no direct impact on the governing body. I also think that politics has to do with the division of power within a group of people. We choose our political leaders because we believe that they can give us as a group the things that we either want most or need most within our community. From the class president in a small elementary school to the leader of the free world we are essentially asking the same thing of our appointed command. Any act that a governing body carries out would also be considered politics to me, as it is what is essentially anything to do with that group of people and the way they are structured. Essentially politics are the governing bodies and who decide who gets what, when, where, and how.