I am single woman without any kids and I was truly depressed at the moment I heard the terrible stories of sandy hook. I even talked about it to my boyfriend that if and when I had kids how terribly scared I would be to let my children attend public schools. President Obama wants more law enforcement in school buildings….. But just having them there will never be enough. I completely agree with the article on “criminalizing children in school” more and more tragic things continue to happen to our country and our children are paying for the consequences. More and more people need to focus on providing our children with the best education and teaching them more about precautions and actions we can take while arising to situations like this. I believe having more law enforcement there is way more logical then allowing teachers to carry their own hand guns. How many children do you know that are curious and naive about “new” things around them? If a teacher was not carrying the handgun on them 24/7 we would have kids killing kids. I disagree with the fact that even though the policeman is in the schools to protect there are better ways to create in behaving….. Guarantying the safety of kids is a huge deal to me like first on my list before anything, so if I was a parent I would feel better that there was more law enforcement. Kids are much in tuned with what’s going on at their schools and after this horrible tragedy. By having more law enforcement can create a better environment and allow the teachers to focus primarily on their students.  

Media Dont kill me

The bulk of the population receives their information about government from media outlets; media outlets that rely upon ratings and advertisements. With this is in mind, why do we rely on the media or infotainment described in this article http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/thats_infotainment/ .

I’ve seen a lot of television in my day, I am sure everyone who lives outside of our country is laughing at us for having jersey shore and disgracing Italians in this small ignorant category, or teen moms who get famous for being immature pregnant mothers. One tragedy after another happens on the media, I haven’t seen one segment about a heroic soldier or informed kids get away from being abducted. The media harps on school shootings, what Lindsey Lohan did, or what tweets were said about the Koreans.

Many people are amazed on how this country has taken a whole different toll, but if you think about what we are actually allowing our kids to watch and what type of messages we are presenting to our growing generation. http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=2127045 explains how what we see or hear is being controlled to see what “they” (the media) wants us to see. It is quite disturbing to see what we fill our heads with, why we allow it, and why no one has broken this “hazing” of media? Americans can name the cast of jersey shore but we cannot name our local representative or senator. Being a part of such growth and change in our country the media will not prosper on the good of this country we can only harp on what we have lost.

In response to, http://bernadettesamerica.blogspot.com/

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Everyone may not always believe in this or that conspiracy but we all believe in something mysterious about the government, that the way we are going we will be doomed.

It’s the government, when is the last time you trusted a stranger to help you, that didn’t benefit themselves…..The constitution in my eyes is the “citizen bible,” tells the government and its constituents what we can and can’t do.

Our founding fathers were people with greater visions for our country then the people surrounding them at that time, is it crazy to think by writing such a powerful document that their wouldn’t be any type of consequences. It’s only natural by giving someone restrictions people will push to the edge of that “line.”

The II Amendment can’t be blamed for the deaths of people, which are like accusing who ever created McDonald’s, should be tried for the causes and deaths of obesity. Guns aren’t the reason, it’s the people. According to infowars.com, Doctors kills 2,450% more Americans then all gun related deaths combined. It’s true: You are 64 times more likely to be killed by your doctor than by someone else wielding a gun. That’s because 19,766 of the total 31,940 gun deaths in the USA (in the year 2011) were suicides. So the actual number of deaths from other people shooting you is only 12,174.

According to the FBI annual crime statistics, the number of murders committed annually with hammers and clubs far outnumbers the number of murders committed with a rifle. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. The media is another guilty culprit, the media harps so much attention on the “bad wolf,” in this country. The media illustrates how much fame and money can be granted when committing a horrific crime.

This is a pretty amazing story. An armed private citizen assisted a police officer who was pinned down by the gunfire of a madman who had just killed 3 people and could have killed many more. Amazingly the concerned citizen, Vic Stacy, did so by taking a shot of 50+ yards using only a pistol. The caliber hand gun is unknown, but Stacy mentions a “magnum bullet” which could mean a .357 or .44. Stacy landed multiple shots on the shooter and this allowed the police officer to also land shots with his AR-15 while the suspect was distracted.

When you’re given something like a handgun in Switzerland, or the legal age to drink in Germany is 18, you don’t care for it as much, it’s not as cool as you thought it was. The government refuses to have a tighter control on weapons, instead I think they want to take them away and sell them to the criminals, so people keep their jobs.

It is quite sad that public schools have added a “handgun drill,” I don’t have children but this already terrifies me, but I believe there are other way to keep our children and the people safe. We should be focusing on funding more for mental health research, more security at schools actually supervising the school, and educating on warning signs for the people who might act with a handgun. The government and the media should stand back and reconsider their actions and take care of us because they want to aid the American people, not because it their means of income.

The topic of American Government is a very broad one. When asked to discuss my opinion on its current state its very conflicting. As a member of the armed forces, having first hand experience, there are aspects to which I have a differing opinion from what most of Middle America believes. It cannot be argued that we are currently in a budget crisis and foreign wars are very expensive. I have a strong conviction that we must put the brakes on the excessive spending. The banter in the media, and the current issues of the Supreme Court, focus on social issues such as gay marriage. These are issues, which I believe, should not even be questioned. Why is American Government exerting their power in social issues when we have yet to solve our financial crisis? The bulk of the population receives their information about governmental issues from media outlets; media outlets that rely upon ratings and advertisements. With this in mind, these media outlets focus on moving stories such as school shootings. The stories of school shootings move the average American into action. Political leaders and lobbiests are aware of this fact and use it to their advantage. There have, as of late, been a rash of similar stories covering shootings that are causing Americans to demand reform of gun laws. Lobbying groups such as the National Rifle Association have been in strong opposition to harsher gun control; which I agree with. These proposed laws are not going to positively impact the big picture. Guns do not kill people, people kill people. As a whole, America tends to waste energy on matters that are irrelevant and wasteful. While we grow deeper into debt the media continues to draw attention away from this and onto more “gripping” stories.

Obamacare or ObamaCant

In a recent article, The Cruel Things President Obama IsDoing To The Labor Market , by John C. Goodman, president and Kellye Wright Fellow in Health Care at the National Center for Policy Analysis, Dallas, TX, is a research fellow at The Independent Institute, Oakland, CA, and author, most recently, of “Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis” (2012, Independent Institute). This article is written to anyone wanting to be employed, employees, and employers. “Bottom line: employment opportunities are being curtailed by the imposition of ObamaCare.” Goodman has written a very clear cut article on the effects of Obamacare intertwined with raising the minimum wage, by increasing the minimum wage, this would cause a decline in job opportunities for young skilled workers. Goodman’s argument has supported evidence from the budget office and the IRS on how much this could cost us. I think in presenting this argument with the unaware people, will shock many, and because we are unaware what these “great” changes will do, we react so quickly with emotion rather than try and understand the cons and pros. I think this argument can really make me rethink what and who to believe in, when “they(political figures)” want to help the “people(you and me).” It makes you think is this a conspiracy, do I trust "them". It affects low income families, anyone unemployed and wasn’t this Obama’s “thing” to help create more jobs…. I don’t know where I stand on Obamacare because I pay for my own medical insurance but Goodman lays out a very important issue that no one really knows about or doesn’t want to know…..

The "pinky" and the brain

In his state of the union address, President Obama cited brain research as an example of how the government should “invest in the best ideas.”

In this article,Obama seeking to boost study of human brain , by John Markoff he discusses Obama’s administration is planning a decade long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain and build a comprehensive map of its activity, Brain Activity Map project.

The hopes for a project like this could develop technology to understand diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, as well as to find new therapies for mental illnesses which in the long run could drastically shift the way this country is leaning to lately.

Of course the project could cost billions of dollars, “every dollar we invested to the map the human genome returned $140 to our economy-every dollar”, he said. “Today our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer’s. They’re developing drugs to regenerate damaged organs……Now is the time to gut these job-creating investments in science and innovation.”

The only real sources come from the teams of neuroscientists and nanoscientists in a concerted effort to advance this knowledge. There is not quite enough evidence in this project to be successful and project the numbers it claims, but it moves me and hits close to home, with great arguments and hopeful wishing this could either make or break our economy.

However, a number of scientists said that mapping and understanding the human brain presented a drastically more significant challenge then mapping the genome which is markedly different then the European project.

The significant argument, will it hurt or benefit this country, we are so far downhill, should we just attempt to manage better with more detail oriented proposals because we can’t really afford to cut back on anything else? The work from this project, will it benefit all working classes? How can we really strive to be the best country again, the medical field is something unbelievable and can economically help the growth of this country in the long run.

Immigration Reform, is the right thing to do

The article on Newsweek, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/29/culture-warriors-gearing-up-for-new-battle-against-immigration-reform.html talks about the immigration reform arising in politics today. Which speaks of the special interest groups meeting with the gang of eight and negotiating with them but the American people have been totally left out. Numbers USA and republicans are the opposing party of this so called amnesty to the illegal immigrants; say it would cost Americans trillions of dollars because of the open doors to be eligible for welfare, unemployment, and etc. By supporting the immigration reform there is some type of fear that would annihilate the Republican Party. The argument to this is that republicans need to embrace the rapidly growing Hispanics rather than be competitive.