Impeached? So What?

I don’t really think I understand the point of impeachment. Until recently I thought I did, because I though if you were impeached, you were thrown out of office. But I now know that’s not the case, to do that you have to go through a whole different process, and I just don’t get why. Usually when a politician gets into some kind of legal trouble they step down before anything else has to happen otherwise they will be taken out of office I assume, but in Blagoavich’s case he’s been impeached but is just staying in office which I would think is a signal that he doesn‘t think they can take him out of office, and to me that really shows the uselessness of impeaching a person in the first place.

Citizen Student

We’ve been talking in class about the military advertise that is going on, especially the song “Citizen Soldier” before every movie, and how its manipulating people into wanting to join the army unfairly because its tax payer money that funds the commercials. Now I can see the validity of the position, but on the other hand we are being taught in class by teachers who are being paid with my parents taxes, and I know for a fact they would strongly disagree with a majority of the things we are discussing,. Also students don’t necessarily get to choose whether or not they go to school, so teachers have a more captive audience than a song playing before a movie full of people who can go out and buy soda and popcorn or text someone during the song, and I would say certainly have a stronger influence on kids listening to them. So we talked about thinking about media and what you watch, not just letting it wash over you unknowingly, and I would suggest making sure you’re doing the same thing in the class room.

Superpower Status, and why I care

Why is it important to me that America is a superpower in the world? I was asking myself this after class the other day, and I really wondered if it would effect me personally if America didn’t have the influence on the world it does today. I’ve come to the conclusion that it is directly important to me. Thinking back to a trip I took to Austria a year ago, I remember seeing my friends mother had a Countdown to the end of Bush’s Term keychain in her kitchen, and I couldn’t really believe that her family even cared about that, but there it was. And that got me thinking about how privileged I will be to get to vote and have a say on who I think will be the best president, and that the people in Europe, who are effected by the American Presidents actions, don’t get a say in the matter.

What Would You Do?

The other day I started watching a show called “What Would You Do?” on ABC. Its basically a show that tests “the average American’s” reactions to certain actions. In this particular episode the main event was testing French reaction to a couple of “Ugly American” tourists. Now the thing I found interesting about this was the stereo-type placed on the actors hired to play these tourists. The actors were wearing pro-Bush T-shirts, which obviously is not a popular American opinion and used a southern-accent. The ultimate goal of the experiment, to show people how not to act on an international vacation, seem like a good idea, but why couldn’t the tourists have just been wearing a T-shirt of a sports team or have had a New York accent? The bottom line is that stereo types like this are so overdone on TV that just by giving a person a Southern accent, the viewers understand that this is a stupid person, and the Bush T-shirts seem to me to be something to distance these “ugly American’s” from the viewers, so they can still laugh at these people, thinking “Oh I would never do something like that”. The whole segment seemed ridiculous and unfair in my opinion.

Ban the Lotto?

We talked in class about how the lottery is a regrassive tax, a tax that costs poorer people more than rich people. Our teachers mentioned a man who was trying to ban lottery tickets from being sold in a certain region, but that idea seems wrong to me. Our capitolist society is based on supply and demand. If there is a demand for lottery tickets, why should a business be demonized for filling that demand? It seems like it would be a much better use of this man's time to educate the people of th region about the risk of spending so much money on lottery tickets, who will then stop buying them, and there will no longer be a demand to supply.

Comfort Level

While discussing the first amendment in class the other day a factor determining whether certain acts should be protected or limeted under the law was comfort level. But how can we use that as a gauge for what people are allowed to do under the law? What one person see's as expressing themself another person could be seriously offended by. It is impossible to satisfy everyone by limiting or protecting certain rights under this law. In my opinion something that doesn't end up actually effecting a person should be protected under this amendment. For example, some people talk about how 7/11 selling pornography shouldn't be allowed because it might offend a mother with her child shopping in the store, but in the end it ultimately will have no effect on actions that person will take, other than possible making a decision not to purchase it. However, false advertising could cause a person to buy products based on false information, or someone shouting FIRE in a theater would cause mass chaos.

Campaign Coverage?

There are shows on constantly covering the ongoing Presidential Campaigns, and have been for almost two years, but why? The public obviously wants to hear their stances on the "issues" and know their backstory, but does it really take two years of basically round the clock coverage to be able to cover that? The answer seems to be an obvious no. Instead the media focuses on completely superficial, meaningless things like pins and clothes, and then fill more time by discussing what each canidate needs to do to win over the public. Why do we need to be told what will win US over? This process is already a complicated and hard one, but it really need to become this exhasberated?Meanwhile the long process has allowed the canidates to talk circles around themselves, hitting the same talking points over and over, or worse, "flip flopping" their opinions, digging themselves into a hole.

This long process doesn't benifit anyone but the press, by the end the public doesn't know what to believe and each campaign has exhaused itself and spent millions of dollars. There has to be more news to cover.