In Response to "Sooner, Rather Than Later" by Rain Guerrero-Lopez

In Rain Guerrero-Lopez’s blog post on the necessity of Donald Trump’s impeachment, she lists several facts that strongly suggest moral wrong-doing on the part of our 45^th president. She backs up her argument with definitions and proven facts. I agree with her opinion, and I greatly appreciated the organized and detailed nature of her argument.  

Rain listed several occasions of which Trump has behaved in ways that should result in his removal from office. From his improper behavior, to his extreme conflicts of interests, it has been made clear that he does not plan to improve the nation for our future children. However, since this article was posted, additional horrors have occurred in the presidential office. This past week has been horror after horror, but I personally feel as though Trump’s major crime has been the removal of the man in charge of investigating himself, in the middle of the investigation. This action demonstrates an extreme level of hypocrisy and denies our country the fair and true democracy that we deserve. The fact that he reasoned that he fired the head of the FBI by suggesting that he was defending his ‘good friend’ Hillary after she was treated unfairly is humorous and also ridiculous, and it highlights the childish nature of how he has been behaving. That statement clearly a lie, and when you add that to the insane twitter header that he recently added, shows a lack of clear thought processes going through the president’s mind. I believe that he is not only unfit for his job for the obvious legal reasons, but also because he is mentally incapable of performing his job as President of the United States.

Blog Post 7: Why not taking immediate action towards clean energy is going to kill our planet.

Why is it that 56% of Republicans claim that climate change is a hoax, despite the fact that 97% of scientists have agreed that global warming is real and is being affected by humans? Science has been treated as myth by frontrunners of the Republican Party for years, but our current administration is continuing us down this dangerous path of lies with horrifying haste. Our new president is dismantling all of the environmental protections put into place during Obama’s presidency with ease, due to support of the Republican Congress. Obama struggled to pass the smallest act due to gridlock in a split party government. Since Trump does not have this same problem, our country is moving away from clean energy at 4x the speed that we were moving towards it last year.

I am not going to be redundant and repeat the hundreds of articles that describe how humans are affecting climate change, because it is clear that climate change deniers have seen the facts, and chosen to ignore them. But in addition to denying that humans are causing climate change, many people also choose believe that the temperatures on earth are not changing at all, that global warming simply doesn’t exist. Often, these people are ignorantly using the results of global warming to prove that it is not real. As the greenhouse gases affect our earth, the warm currents that sweep north in the Atlantic Ocean, east of the United States, the warmth reaches the ice caps, and melts them, a fact that should be well known to everyone. However, the cold water of the melting ice caps is brought south by the continuing currents and will in fact result in colder temperatures in Europe over the next few decades. Due to this, the more appropriate term for this phenomenon will always be “climate change”, but either way, people have falsely tried to claim that because Europe is getting colder, global warming is nonexistent.

In fact, these contrasting changes in temperatures better depicts the true danger that our planet faces. In America, we continue to use polluting, non-renewable resources as our energy sources despite the fact that clean renewable energy is well within our grasp. With Trump as president, it has become even more obvious why we can’t move away from our disgusting energy choices. With all of the big money coming from the hugely successful oil companies, it only makes sense that they would use their money to keep themselves in first place as the main energy supplier. Every day that oil and coal are our main supply of energy, is another day that we are putting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and increasing the rate climate change. But aside from that, there is another important reason why now is the best time for us to take action. Building wind and solar energy facilities will obviously use lots of energy itself, and will be an expensive endeavor. So for it to be financially viable, it makes sense to start the process now, when oil is only 50 dollars a barrel compared to in the future when our natural resources could cost us three times that amount.

Every day we waste is further destroying our planet, and why are we wasting time? To support the big companies that want our money. This path of action serves no one except for those already at the top, and it’s time for us to make a change for the better, for ourselves, and for our Earth.

Blog Post Six: Comment on a Commentary

I agreed with the opinions stated in this editorial written by Joshua Pena. The fact that the Republican party has taken control of almost every branch of our government has made it even more apparent that the goals of the Republican Party have become both hypocritical and un-American. Many of the goals of the party are overtly influenced by Christianity, which seems to not agree with our governments supposed separation of church and state. Also, the extreme rejection of poor people and the LGBT community seems to completely throw them off their moral high horse, as that kind of behavior is the opposite of what is biblically advised.

Joshua Pena was right in saying that while rich white males thrive, our country is stunted in so many ways. Until we can retrieve a balance of power in our national government, all we can do is hope that irreparable damage is not done to our Earth, or to minority rights.

Blog Post 5: Taxation without Representation?

Evan Vucci                

Here in this photo, a moment is forever memorialized in which the President of the United States signs into effect the ‘global gag rule’, which places a threat on the head of every medical facility in the world that receives funding from the USA, that if they so much as mention the word ‘abortion’, they will lose their funding. There is a heavy irony in the fact that our male president is signing into effect a document which solely will affect women’s rights to their own bodies, while sitting in a room of (smirking) men. Although, with only four women on his cabinet, it's easy to explain why he is so often photographed only with men.

This event is reminiscent of an issue that set America on its path to freedom and independence. Every American child has heard the phrase ‘taxation without representation’ in their history class. They’ve heard tales of heroic soldiers revolting, and tearing themselves from the control of the tyrannical Great Britain, because they weren’t being allowed proper representation within the government. Systemic sexism is real, and despite the fact that legally women are allowed to be elected as representative figures, there is a tangible barrier preventing the ascension of powerful women in our society. Just observe the treatment of Hillary Clinton in this past presidential election and compare it with the treatment of her male colleagues. If we were to pay closer attention to other American elections, maybe we would see similar patterns arise as an explanation for the fact that 80% of congress is male, while only 50% of the country is male.

The interests of humans that live in the same area should not differ greatly by gender and race, but it has become apparent that what benefits one group of citizens greatly harms another. In this particular situation, it's hard to find a rational benefit that these men receive by stripping women of their reproductive healthcare. When you consider who this executive order satisfies, there is only one main group; religious people. Which is amusing, because is there not a section of our constitution that states that there must be separation between our church and state? No matter the motivation behind this executive order, the issue with our government is clear. Our representative government is out of balance, and something needs to be done to fix that. 

A Commentary on Ann Coulter

On March 8^th, an article titled “Immigrant Privilege Drives Child Rape Epidemic” was posted on Ann Coulter’s blog. The blogpost discusses immigration crime rates in America, however approximately 50% of the articles is made up of a list of headline titles involving the rape of children by immigrants. The audience of this article is clearly geared towards steady conservatives with no intent to convince people with opposing views, for the following reasons.

  Starting at the top of the post, her first sentence states that we should be relieved that we do not have “Muslim rapists pouring into our country”, but infers that we can’t relax because “we have Mexican rapists pouring into our country.” This inflammatory statement is clearly offensive and not conducive to welcoming a variety of readers to enjoy this article. The very next sentence refers to Latin America as being a ‘peasant culture’, and then adds that Muslims are also ‘peasant culture’. It is important to note that these two things she equates under the umbrella term ‘peasant cultures’ include the followers of the second most popular religion in the world, and 21 separate countries that are commonly referred to as Latin America. Shortly after this, she states that her statistics don’t even include legal immigrants, adding that she believes that legal immigrants are even worse than illegal. If I were dissect every sentence of this article and their racist and ignorant connotations, this commentary would be longer than her article, so I will stick to these statements. What does she mean by the term ‘peasant cultures’? Despite the fact that she has been recorded saying this phrase as early as 2015, I could find no other source of any other person or reporter using it, and it seems to have no real definition.

  The only sources she cites within this post is one of her own articles, and a website called North Carolinians for Immigration Reform and Enforcement, which appears to be a citizen run advice forum on how to report illegal immigrants and their employers. One of the most important points of a solid argument is that you mention the opposing points of views, and discredit them, but she did not do this either because it wouldn’t matter to the audience she was writing for, or because she can’t deny the statistics that prove her statements false. This article from The New York Times discusses how “Contrary to Trump’s Claims,Immigrants Are Less Likely to Commit Crimes”, and cites many studies such as this, and this. These sources cited by the well reputed paper The New York Times cite real statistics that have been put together by qualified researchers from well known institutions, while Ann Coulter's sole source is as reliable as Wikipedia, since there is no information on who is running the domain, or any sources for it's information.

Blog Assignment Three; on a critique of Trumps rescission of the Transgender Rights rule

Trump’s stance on LGBT rights has been all over the place, but his actions this week has finally made apparent his true opinions on the matter. He made the decision to rescind the rule protecting transgender bathroom rights on a national level, and many people had very opinionated responses. I read this opinion piece on the New York Times website. Written by The Editorial Board, the writers dissect the meaning and intentions of this move. The title of the article, “President Trump Breaks a Promise on Transgender Rights” makes it immediately clear that the writers’ intention is to convince their audience that this decision was injurious to a minority group and that this move was a hateful display by the president and those who supported the decision. The opinionated nature of the article would be irritating if it wasn’t so well sourced and backed up, and that is coming from someone who supports the opinion of the article that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was ignorant in making this decision and that his “baffling rationale” helped nothing. In fact the writers believed it did the exact opposite. Mr. Sessions believe that the rule that protected trans rights added to the confusion on the topic and has prompted legal fights that could be much more easily solved if the trans bathroom protection decisions were left to the states to decide. The rule that Obama put in place simply guided the interpretation of the 1978 law in order to support equality for all, and the rescission of the law effectively reinterprets the meaning of the original law, and takes away the individual rights of multiple minority groups. The New York Times caters to a wide audience, and the extremely researched nature of the writings of the Editorial Board supports the idea that the intended audience of this article is most importantly the groups of people who supported the rescission of the law in order to convince them of their ignorance. They used the facts of the laws to support their claims and it is difficult to refute facts, making their argument fairly solid.

The Silencing of Senator Elizabeth Warren

No matter which side of this matter you are on, the precedence that this event sets for the future of our Senate is important for everyone to be aware of. This particular article depicting the "Silencing of Elizabeth Warren[...]" appears on CNN. This article focuses on the fact that the silencing of Elizabeth Warren brought far more attention to the point she was trying to make, then just allowing her to read the letter in discussion. It's also curious to consider how Rule 19, used to silence the senator in regards to the nomination of Session's due to apparent "impugning" of another senator, has brought the rarely used rule to the forefront of discussions and raises the possibility of an increase in use.