Drop in Unemployment rate DOES matter

In response to my fellow colleague's article, the reason it matters that unemployment rates have dropped is because it shows a reversal of trends against the recession. For example the price of gold which had gone dramatically up in the last few years took a sharp fall due to the new strength of the dollar directly because of the unemployment rates dropping. While yes I agree that .2% is hardly anything in respect to the overall problem it is at least showing signs of improvement which we have not seen in several years. The economy is finally showing optimism for a lasting improvement that we the American people have needed to see signs of for so long. The general attitude has been so low recently that any upturn is welcomed and we will take our victories, no matter how small where ever we can get them. The issue that raised about extra workers being hired for the holiday season also does not apply, in October we lost 111,000 jobs compared to November being only 11,000. While your fiance may have been laid off that one instance that you are choosing to look at does not mirror the overall picture in the United States job economy. The members of the Senate and Congress are also in a better position to see the trends than we are as well, they have the liberty of stepping back and examing the problem not just trying to cure the symptoms as they occur. I for one, do not want my lawmakers to be struggling with their own personal debt issues and not concentrating on the problems and laws that need to be made. The only people in some ways that even need to see this slight upturn are the investors responsible for pumping money into our economy. We all would love to be back when we all had good jobs and money, but that is not the way that life works and a recession was coming we just happened to land in the middle of it. President Obama agreed that while we are happy to see this improvement, the struggle is far from over. There is now hope where once there was none.

Why not use human stem cells?

In this article President Obama reversed an extremely controversial decision made by former President Bush in regard to research connected to human embryonic stem cell lines. The debate over the use of human stem cells is one that has been going on for many years now about not only the legality of using human stem cells, but also the morality.
Human stem cells are cells that can become any of over 200 types of cells in the human body. Embryonic stem cells are collected under extremely strict protocols when the embryo is in the blastocyst phase about 4 to 5 days old. The excitement surrounding these cells is understandable do to the amount that could be accomplished in terms of regenerative medicine after disease or injuries occur.
The controversy however, has been that until recently there have been no methods that allow for the cultivation of stem cells without killing the embryo in the process. Recent groundbreaking techniques have now made the collection of the cells possible without damaging the embryo and preserving its life. Animal stem cells have been used for some time however, there is only so much that can be done with one arm tied behind our back. We must cross the bridge into the human stem cells to see the benefit to humanity.
There are many special interest groups that will be for and against this new decision. Some will see this as great leap in our scientific ability to preserve life and others will see it as an afront to nature. Either way that we go however, someone is likely to feel tread on and overlooked. This could also bring an opportunity to reevaluate human cloning in small scales of organs and things of that nature that these stem cells would help to incorporate these into our bodies making us a much more resilient people and the best part is that these cells could be gathered at birth and used throughout our lives as the need arises. Either way this decision is one that I support but know will create much debate over the next few years.

Wiretapping legality

I agree with most of the points that the author of this article however there are some issues that I will explain. While I do not believe that it is ok or even alright for the government to listen in on the conversations of millions of American citizens it is not even legal for them to do that. A wiretap is only done if the person has suspected links or has been saying words that raise flags with the government such as bomb, kill, or Jihad. The government does not have the time resources or simply enough motivation to care about what the average person is saying at any given time of the day.
Wiretapping could however have tremendous advantages for use on the federal level, and should never be used on the state or local levels. Technology these days has progressed too far for the old days methods to be used to fight an ancient and archaic war that has been all but abandoned. Also, you cannot yell bomb in an airport and neither can you yell fire in a courthouse so perhaps the best idea is to not say anything that could be misconstrued and used in a detrimental fashion against you.

Congress Double-Cross At Mojave?

The author Bruce Ticker from the smirking chimp wrote this atrocious article that basically bashes congress for somehow discriminating against minorities in religion by denying a Buddhist shrine to be placed on the land of the Mojave National Park. Congress then proceeds to allow a cross that was erected by a local VFW which was placed in 1934 to remain standing as a national monument because the cross was erected to commemorate fallen soldiers. Bruce later goes on and says that other minorities may consider this to be an affront to their choice of religion and that he interprets the first amendment as saying "I personally interpret the First Amendment to mean that no religious symbols are permitted on taxpayer-funded property". Is this a serious statement that he just made? Our money has the words In God We Trust on them and he is complaining about a cross erected for fallen soldiers? Should we also retract the printings of the flag raising at Iwo Jima? Should we go to Arlington and start kicking over the crosses? Bruce it seems is arguing that there should be a Buddhist shrine as well as the cross which makes no sense at all from his reasoning. In effect his interpretation of the first amendment would validate the park for not allowing the Buddhist shrine to be built in the first place, there is also the issue that the cross was " erected by the VFW in 1934 to commemorate fallen soldiers." Would that not make that a national monument like congress declared it to be? I imagine that the Pearl Harbor monument over the U.S.S Arizona which happens to be shaped like a cross will have to be moved or destroyed next due to his logic. The point that continues to stun me about this article is that the author plainly says that he does not believe that there should be any religious symbols on tax-payer funded property, then how is it that we are discriminating against minorities? they should not be allowed to have a religious shrine there in the first place. The next issue is that because a judge does not see his way they are and I quote "simplistic". The judges who are quote "relatively sane" are strongly urged by the author to consider the sequence of events? why would they want to do that, their job is to determine whether or not the cross is a national monument or not. The other issue seems to be that people are angry that congress swapped land in order to give the VFW the acre around the cross so that the issue of it being taken down or not does not apply. So now the cross is on private land and apparently in the middle of nowhere so the authors claim of resentment of viewing religious symbols on public land has no bearing on this argument as the land is now privately owned. Congress and the President have the authority to make national monuments and in fact to sell or trade land as well. This is one of the worst arguments that I have ever heard in my lifetime, Bruce constantly contradicts himself and has not done the adequate research to support of his audacious claims.

The Guantanamo Mess

Guantanamo has been nothing short of a disaster since the allegations of torture that were used on the inmates and I completely agree with the author's opinions on the subject of Guantanamo. President Obama found himself in a catch-22 in how to deal with the problem that he was left with by the previous administration. While I would never agree with the torture methods that were supposedly used on the prisoners, one would have to be completely ignorant to believe that these methods were only being used at this location. Any base that is used to detain prisoners would have used that same methods as Guantanamo did, the American people merely wanted a scapegoat so they could blame someone and somehow preserve their sense of morality. I do however, agree that President Obama was far too hasty in setting a random date for the base to be closed down and he was a little too eager to show one of his motions of change. I believe that he was trying to cash in on his popular campaign slogan of change he decided to try to make a series of sweeping changes to try to show the American people that he was not following the path that was left by his largely unpopular predecessor. However now that the base is under orders to be closed down so quickly we are bumping up against major issues like where to keep the prisoners and which prisoners to keep. Some of the people that are being held there are too dangerous to be released back into the public where they would try to harm the American people. While I do understand President Obama was under considerable pressure to close the base he was premature in the date that he set for closure. President Obama has indicated that he would be moving some of the prisoners back to their home countries to be kept there and some would be tried in court, however a majority would be relocated to an undisclosed location in the States. I strongly disagree with this course of action. I believe that the facility that they were kept at was the best option to hold them, the American people clamored for the closure of Guantanamo because they knew that the base existed. I especially disagree with keeping the prisoners on American soil, in my opinion Guantanamo was the perfect place to hold prisoners, it is on an island that is not connected to the United States and thereby making it safer for the American people. Senators like McCain have been harsh on President Obama's timetable for closure, no country is terribly thrilled about detaining the prisoners in their country and we don't want them here. While Senator McCain is correct in his misgivings about the closure of the base, he does not have a solution that will fix the problem. I thought that the author did a good job making the point that this problem has been a lot of blame and insinuations as to the competency of the current administration's ability to handle this situation and in the mean time nothing s being done. I agree that this issue will take a bipartisan effort to accomplish any kind of rational solution to this complex and pressing problem.

Big Federal Governemt

The federal government is getting seemingly bigger and bigger almost by the day, not quite how it was designed all those years ago, never since World War II has the government held this much control over our economy and industries. Is the growth of the federal government a concern for the American people or is the government simply doing what it needs to so they can insure our continued way of life. President Obama has the government at levels hardly ever seen in the history of our nation and some of the highest since the Great Depression, however some would and could argue that this is needed to pull our country out of the downward spiral that our economy has recently been in. The federal government has stepped so deeply into the economy that it will take several years for them to return the reins as they have promised to do. The federal government owns a controlling interest in not only the auto industry, but the housing, and loans as well. Some believe that now that the government has the control that it will be too difficult to relinquish that control back to the American people where it belongs. The government has hundreds of billions of dollars pumped into corporations in the housing, auto, loan, banking, and financial markets. The government at the same time is also trying create our own national health care system at the potential cost of billions more. The result of this unprecedented size of the government is still unknown, but be sure that we are in an era that is unique and will be studied and criticized just like the Great Depression. The recent era of big government is necessary but also potentially vicious, it is like owning a pit bull, you don't know if when you call it, if it will lick you or bite your hand. The above article has a more comprehensive list or view of the scope of the American government today and all of the power that it now wields, maybe George Orwell's 1984 has finally come true, or hopefully more probable is our government doing what they are bound and sworn to do which is to protect the American people and the standard of life that we have come to enjoy.