On November 30^th one of my class mates; Andrea Crosser wrote a blog regarding Same sex marriage.

This is a very delicate topic to agree on a conclusion, since we are a nation “known” to have a mixture and acceptance of different cultures and race diversity.

As Andrea mentioned some religious people believe that homosexuality is a sin, unfortunately most of the human beings base their lives around some type of religion or believes, and with that they think they are allowed to judge people. The First Amendment of the Constitution clearly states  freedom in a  person's religious views or lack thereof must be protected.

I believe as American citizens we have the image of fighting for “independency” since back in the days we always fight for our rights. We have a history of fighting against slavery, women’s rights, privacy and even voting.

America was founded on the concept that the majority should rule and this identifies us from other nations, “democracy.” It is the main reason we have a Bill of Rights as well as anti-slavery and equal protection amendments. Denying marriage to a homosexual couple is no different than denying marriage to Hispanic or black couples. This would be like taking a step back and starting the fight against discrimination once again.

A marriage is a relationship between two people. How does it hurt society or people not involved in the marriage?

Since gay couples cannot have kids naturally, this will likely increase the desire to adopt. Since there are so many kids around the country in need of adoption. This could possible decrease the criminal rate in the USA since some kids who are destined to grow with no love would have a change of life.  I am not against gay marriage but I do agree with “ Live and let Live.”

After reading some general topics on the U.S government I realized that we have to address the issue that the country is facing a high percentage of unemployed citizens.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics five million Americans are on a long term unemployment, which mean they have been jobless for 27 weeks or more,and another 7.3 million are out there looking for a job. With so much people unemployed we are at a 7.9% as a nation. You might be thinking “wow that’s not much” but if we look into how it’s affecting us as a nation, it makes a difference. What is really surprising is that among the Statistics, there were 813,000 discouraged workers in October. You ask “What are discouraged workers?”Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. Honestllyy????

How is it possible that people that have degrees are struggling with finding jobs, many employers prefer to train and pay cheap rather than hiring people who they believe will require more of a pay. (1)

So as I read more regarding unemployment in our current nation it is disappointing to see that Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on cutting taxes to upper income earners or not . With president Obama re-elected I believe this is not going to be an issue any more since he is all for increasing tax rate for rich/middle class people, since he always mentioned that those people should pay their fare share.

But why impose more taxes on middle class people it’s already hard to support a family. While there is people out there not even attempting to find a job, and with all these new laws and consideration of legalizing weed I believe we should drug test anyone who is receiving free assistance. That just our fare share.

 (1) http://news.yahoo.com/first-person-high-tech-training-years-experience-no-180800558--finance.html

On Thursday November 15 my classmate Andrea blogged about her opinion on Romney and his point of view on abortion and funding towards planned Parenthood. While reading this i came upon my own reality.

I agree with the argument that she wrote about. Not to mention I am also a women, but that doesn’t mean just because of that I agree. I believe it is unconstitutional for people to consider abortion something that should be banned. I agree with Andrea, that we should be able to determine if we are ready economically or mentally for the responsibility of a kid. As adults we are aware of the consequences but not ignoring the fact that accidents do happen.

Now reading the book called “Freakonomics” tells us an interesting version for abortions. In this book I read a theory about how crime rates went down after legalizing abortion. After researching information I came upon people writing against this theory, but as human beings, I believe there  will always be people who disagree with these ideas. So this is why I wanted to let everyone know that in my head this seem like a theory that made an impact in the crime rate. I think the fact that a lot of women have had the option to avoid brining into this world kids who would not have attention or the basic needs of life, dose avoid unwanted kids to go on to the street and steal or create more crimes. It is easier for kids to choose a wrong path if they are raised in an un-wanted, poor, single women family. In reality we have seen that women have stopped their goal due to raising a kid, we should always have options in order to fulfill our goals and dreams too.

A lot of people have not even heard of an event that is at risk of changing everyone’s thought of privacy. The Real ID Act was proposed in 2005 after the 9/11 attacks and has been prolonged till January 2013 for a decision. This Act was signed in 2005 as part of President Bush's "war on terror." This Act is trying to make general standers for the individual states driver license on a federal basis, making every state have a database with all the personal information scanned in order to be able to share it with every other state. The main focus is to avoid terrorist having the availability to “forge a birth certificate and obtain a DL which can be used to rent cars and place explosives” (1). This seems a little bit too drastic in my opinion. Over 600 groups nationwide oppose to it, but Majority are from foundations liberals and democratic.

If this Act gets approved the government will be able to track our every move if they insert the RFID chip, and if a state doesn’t approve the act the people will be considered non-citizens even if they are from USA, denying any access to courthouses, trains, airports. As Americans we feel the right to keep our privacy not by storing it in a database for everyone to see and access. This will create a general database where everyone will be able to share our information, but what will happen if this gets “hacked?”

I see this as if they are trying to restrict our civil liberties and a abuse of surveillance since the national ID system will facilitate monitoring citizens movements, speech and political activities when fully operational. I don’t think that a terrorist would have any need to use an identity card or fear being identified if his mentality is to damage our nation.

Many states are going through economic struggles with unemployment, unable to pay teachers, and in order to go through with this Act, states need to make changes. The Department of Homeland Security is giving out up to 150 grants equaling $175,000,000 to implement Real ID requirements; can’t we use that money for something else?

They are even using the excuse of the arrest of Khalid Aldawsari in Texas as a reason to implement immediately the “REAL ID.”  In the governments affidavit they indicated that he planned to acquire a false birth certificate and multiple false driver’s licenses, assumedly to assist in his getaway after executing his formative bombing plans. Fortunately a company in North Carolina reported to the FBI that he attempted to buy a chemical.  He was not caught due to false documents.

Is this act really going to benefit us or is it going to give us bigger security issues in a future? I guess we can only hope for the best.

(1)   http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20039631-501465.html

While reading thru some blogs I came up on a headline that caught my attention, maybe because I am a woman.  On October 19 Hayley Krischer posted her opinion regarding a topic Women should take into consideration when voting this year.

This post talks about what the presidential candidate, Romney, thinks about abortion and contraception on the legal side. It gives us an idea of things that women would face in the near future if we decided to vote for Romney. Times have changed and it has cost the nation struggles to be at the point where we are. It was hard to stop discrimination towards colored people, women's right to vote, and equality among different genders. And to come upon a point of view from a different perspective, I have to say I agree with the writer on certain points. I believe as women we have the right to decide if we have the capability of having a baby or if we want to have some type of protection that can be affordable for everyone. Doing some research regarding the "Roe v Wade" case I see how they want to make a balance in regulation abortions to protect prenatal life and protecting women health, but i don't think that they should stop funds from  going towards planned parenthood or change anything that has improved our nation. Having less pregnancy's at a younger age in our nation is a benefit because a lot of those young mothers end up without a career, single and low income. As the author mentions the National Center for Health Statistics uncovered that the rate dropped 18% and abortions 32%, and still they want to make changes. Having the ability of more affordable health clinics for women allows our nation to be more educated. Being more educated allows crime rates to go down, since most kids from single mothers end up with low income and/or criminal records. I also agree with the part she talks about the Blunt Amendment, how is it possible that employers can deny health coverage just because they consider it "morally objectionable."

 The only thing that I really didn't like is how this opinion makes Romney look like he is not being equal towards women. I considered myself more republican, but I don't want our nation to give a step back on women's right and equal opportunity. No woman should have to choose between seeing a doctor and putting food on the table for her family.

In the Opinion page of the New York Times I found an interesting opinion by Ross Douthat published on Sept 29 2012 called “why Obama is winning.”  Which talks about Obama and the unemployment at this moment.

I agree with the author, since we elected Obama as president, in 2008, the unemployment rate has decrease. After going thru George bush and his last two years of worsening the economy including the “subprime mortgage crisis” and the huge increase in the U.S national debt. In 2008 the unemployment rate was at it maximum of 11.8% after 14 years of trying to stabilize it, it reached its maximums. (http://www.epi.org/publication/webfeatures_econindicators_jobspict_20081107/)  Now after 4yrs it’s decreased down to 8.1% as of fall 2012. As we read we can agree with the term that “economy is growing” is correct. Although it’s moving at a slow pace at least we are going upward.

A lot of people prefer to see the nation taking baby steps to avoid going into debt or losing ground making us be worse than before.  This improvements that has happened slowly is the reason why we see Obama ahead of Romney at this moment, the people prefer to support a person who at least has done a little of improvement to our nation instead of someone who really doesn’t have a plan of attack.

A very important topic that is mentioned in this opinion is the fact that we have got to think of the consequences in a near future of the increase of unemployment we suffered. Since now in day’s people feel they have to secure their jobs, it’s made younger people put off the decision of having kids, marriage and doing life.  This means that in a future whit this reduction in birthrate we will not be going thru another “baby boom”, instead we will have less working people to pay off debt. Some people believe that periods of economic stagnation are followed by a burst of growth, so let’s just hope they are right.

 Immigration 0r DisCriminati0n ??
On September the 20th, the New York Times published an article called "The Candidates Face Hispanic Voters."
In this article its impressing how the actual candidates for president cant really give a direct response regarding immigration issues. since we can not deny that this is a topic that concerns us as a nation, since we saw what happened to Arizona, I wonder if that is the destiny of the whole nation. So after reading this it got me thinking "which candidate would make a better nation for me and my kids?." Or did this article just make a fool out of  Mr. Romney. Making him look like a person who hasn't taught of a solution for this immigration issue that has been happening over the last couple of years.
Even if some people don't agree with immigrants, we have to accept the fact that this is reality.!!