Wikileaks: Is It Really Necessary?

So WikiLeaks has been in the news a lot lately. On November 28, 2010 WikiLeaks released their next chapter of information they believe the general public should know about our Government and what it is saying about other countries.

According to Wikipedia, (because their site was taken down by Amazon.com and this information is now unavailable), WikiLeaks is a non-profit media organization that publishes documents that are unavailable to the general public. The documents are given anonymously from different sources and then released. WikiLeaks feels that Americans have the right to know what OUR government is doing in OUR name.

They are right that we deserve to know what the government is doing, but to a certain extent. What they recently released, I feel should not have been. They released documents that discussed the government's true feeling to everyone in the World; our Allies and our Enemies. Why was that necessary to release? That is not information majority of the US cares to know. Why would we need to know? How are the governments views of other countries relevant to our lives? All this did is put us in a very dangerous position. Also by releasing that information, it could ruin the relationships we have put so much hard work into forming.

The way I view this, is that it is all merely just a game of gossip: the gossiper, the gossiped about and the trusty informant. Everyone in the world has their own opinions about people, companies and governments. They all believe things should be done different and that people should act differently. In the game of gossip, some one speaks poorly about another, in this case the US is the gossiper and the World is the gossiped about. Gossip is usually just a form of venting and frustration. No one wants or expects the other side to find out because you know it will hurt them and your relationship with them. If you aren't friends, then you know it will only make the already bad situation worse.

There is always that one person (or in this case group) who looks forward to telling the other party about this gossip - the informant. They feel they are doing a good thing by getting this information out in the open, but what they have really done is blow the entire situation out of proportion instead of turning a blind eye and letting the gossip die down, which it always does! This is exactly what Wikileaks did or has possibly done; they blew this entire situation out of proportion. They made the situation for our good relationships uneasy and they possibly (probably) made the situations worse with our enemies. They might have given them an even bigger reason to dislike us and want to do harm to us.

Some will argue that the government shouldn't have said these things on record. That they shouldn't "gossip" at all. True, but sorry. You know that will NEVER happen. It's nature to vent and gossip. Started from when we were kids. The fact that you are saying they should not have done that is gossiping itself honestly.

In the eyes of a PR major, by releasing this information that everyone so called "wanted and needed" to know, they just made it more dangerous for America. It was a terrible PR stunt. America has been working hard trying to be at peace with countries and by releasing these documents, they pushed back those efforts completely.

What do you think about WikiLeaks? Do you think they should have released those documents?

How Public Should Public Life Be?

My friend Sarah Lewis, emailed me this news article in the NYTimes, The Facebook Skeletons Come Out and I found it very interesting. It talks about how many of the candidates running for various offices had photos surface from their past and become public to the country.

Sean Duffy was one of these people. Duffy was on Real World: Boston in 1997. Real World is a show made completely off drama and fights. Not really something people want to see in a leader. Fortunately his past decisions of dancing on a pool table in his underwear did not affect his election because he won his race. Duffy was asked about his past and was quoted by The Washington Post saying , “I never thought I would run for Congress. If you look back at a certain reality TV show, you know that.”

I know when we're growing up our parents tell us to think about how our decisions could affect our future and to not do anything that we wouldn't want coming back to haunt us. But why should the fun we have when we're younger come back and bite us in the a**? What we did then has no significance to what we are planning to do now. If anything we've learned from those mistakes and they have made us who we are now, a better person more capable and reliable for the job at hand. Why punish someone for a little bit of fun they had? You never know, they may be the person who could change the world but aren't able to because of some old photos that gave them bad press.

Krystal Ball, a congressional candidate for Virginia, had to explain why she was wearing a Santa cap wearing lacy hosiery and simulating sex acts on a toy when she was 22 years old. After she explained the situation, she argued that people should not be scared out of running for office because of what they did when they were younger. "I had a whole lot of people who were older than me saying they were feeling grateful that Facebook and digital cameras weren’t around when they were growing up," she said. "I am not the only person with stupid photos out there, and I would hate to have some young man or young woman think, 'I can’t run for office because I did something stupid at a party however long ago.' "

Personally, I don't understand why it's our business to go so in depth on the photos off Facebook. Those photos do not tell us who that person really is or their views on important issues. For example, Aaron Schock, a representative for Illinois, had to explain why he had a picture of him shirtless "with a skimpily clad woman" (aka girl in a bikini). I'll tell you why. He was at the pool! All guys are shirtless and all girls wear bikini's at pools. The girl wanted a picture and he was nice enough to take it with her. I don't see what he needs to explain there or why that is looked at negatively. I think it was very polite of him to take the picture with her.

Other examples are Blake Farenthold, a representative for Texas, and Christine O'Donnell. Both had to explain why they were wearing certain costumes. Farenthold wore pajamas with little yellow ducks all over them while standing next to a girl in black lingerie and O'Donnell wore a ladybug costume on Halloween. Again, what is there to explain? They were at costume parties! Everyone has costumes parties, even adults. It just shows they have a social life and enjoy their time with friends.

What do you think? Do you think candidates pasts should be brought up and analyzed or do you think that pictures from college are irrelevant to what they plan on doing for their state and country?

Let me know.

Veteran's Day Events In Athen's

Today is Veterans day. This is a day where Americans celebrate the men and women who have served or are currently serving in our military. It is a day to celebrate and thank them for their bravery.

Many places in Athens are holding Veterans Day events.

1. Oconee Hill Cemetery had a Veterans Day event this morning from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. The OCH Cemetery is located right next to Sanford Stadium on East Campus Road. This event included a self-guided tour from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. The tour allowed guests to view the graves of past veterans from many of our histories wars including the Spanish-American War, Revolutionary War, Civil War, Mexican War, and both WWI and WWII. There are also soldiers who died in the most recent Iraq War buried in this cemetery. After the self-guided tour, there was a flag and statue dedication. The flag was dedicated by the Friends of the Cemetery to veterans, as well as firefighters, police officers, and first responders. The statue was commissioned by Mrs. Bridges in memory of her son-in-law, Sergeant Sean Gressler, who lost his life in Iraq.
If you were not able to attend this event, you can visit the cemetery daily during their business hours, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The cemetery is full of history and everyone should take the time to visit the remarkable people buried here.



2. Also this morning, Bel Air Elementary School hosted their annual parade that local veterans are able to participate in. The parade started at 8:30 a.m. Both Malakoff Elementary School and Brownsboro High School also planned Veterans Day events that began at 9 a.m. and 10 a.m.

3. An event that is going on all day is at Chickfila on the East Side. Children can decorate bags for soldiers and Veterans can show their military ID and get discounts on items from their menu.

4. And finally at 2 o'clock, Oconee County Middle school is hosting a Veterans appreciation event. The middle school's symphonic band will perform and retired Army Capt. Joshua Darnell will speak.

I love that so many people take the time out of their day to have ceremonies to celebrate such an important day and important people. If you were not able to attend events this year, then make sure to keep an eye out for next year.
UPDATE: Your Pie's Athens/Watkinsville stores are offering 50% discount to all veterans today. Be sure to visit and get a delicious pizza.

Go Vote!

Go make you voice heard today by voting. If you need help figuring out the GA candidates for governor and their views, check out my previous post, the State of Georgia Governor Candidates.

State of Georgia Governor Canidates

Tuesday, November 2nd will be the state of Georgia's Governor elections. I decided it'd be good to do a post on the two candidates and easily lay out what they want to get done if elected.

Nathan Deal

Nathan Deal is the Republican candidate for Governor. Here are his ideas:

• Economy: 1) Has a specific plan to bring new jobs to GA - fundamental to this goal is a pro-growth, business-friendly economic environment. He plans to do this with comprehensive regulatory and tax relief. 2) "Real Prosperity" will give tax relief for families and small businesses which will put steps into place to fuel growth and development.
• Education: "Real Results" - Plans to strengthen public schools and improve student achievement - will prioritize funding for education, protect teachers jobs to keep small class sizes and focus on enhancing science, technology, engineering and math education - Deal's idea includes making separate schools that focus more on these topics than others. Just like the difference between research colleges and technological colleges.
• Illegal Immigration: Implement a statewide program that will give law enforcement the power to work with federal authorities to enforce the laws. He authored legislation that would end birthright citizenship to babies born in US to illegal parents. He will continue working to fight illegal immigration. According to Nathan Deal's website, "New immigrants have forever been an important part of our American culture, but our system must be orderly, sustainable, and in accordance with the rule of law."
• Right to Life: Pro-life. Will end funding for abortion in Georgia
• Healthcare: Will continue fighting the recently passed Healthcare Bill. Deal will also fight the number of lawsuits and 'jackpot jury' trials that drives up the cost of healthcare.
• Budget and Taxes: 1) Work to ensure that taxpayer dollars are used effectively by enacting a zero-based budgeting (expenditures in departments must be approved, both increases and decreases, instead of traditional budgeting where managers justify increases). Hopes this will eliminate wasteful funding while also creating additional funding for education, transportation, public safety and healthcare. 2) Will eliminate marriage penalty tax and reduce corporate income tax by 1/3. This will help create jobs and ensure Georgia taxpayers are the beneficiaries of improved efficiency in government.

Roy Barnes

Roy Barnes is the Democrat candidate for Governor. Here are his ideas:

• Jobs: 1) Immediate Solution - Believes that making businesses more energy efficient will lower costs and will help create more room for job growth. 2) Training - Believe if we reinvest in higher education then it will help create job opportunities. 3) Focus - If we focus on create incentives for medical research, then the increased research could help raise the number of jobs. 4) Incentive - Reinstate the property tax relief so families can afford to buy houses, raise a family and start businesses. 5) Value-added Agriculture - produce and process our agriculture in state and the production will increase job opportunities. 7) Green Jobs - Take advantage out of our abundance of greenery. This could stimulate trade, reduce pollution, and create jobs. 8) Tourism - Take advantage of all our fantastic scenery and landscape throughout the state of Georgia
• Education: 1) Public Education - Do not have furloughs for teachers and cuts from education budgets. Cannot have a great education if you cut its budget. 2) Raise teachers salaries to show how important teachers are to the operation and success of our schools. 3) Focus on emphasizing math and reading, reducing class sizes, and make the number of days given to standardized testing so that Georgia children every opportunity to succeed in their classes and on their tests. 4) Work to guarantee that both active and retired public education employees receive their pension and health benefits and not lose anything that was apart of that agreement.
• Transportation: 1) Have an elevated, light-rail system that will help workers who live in the suburbs of Atlanta get home quicker and make our Atlanta highways less clogged with cars. 2) Improve and expand our states highway system. Also have a railway connect all major cities in Georgia to help improve access for businesses, workers and visitors.
• Water: 1) Need to focus on repairing leaky pipes and updating inefficient municipal water infrastructure. Offer incentives for owners and consumers to use more green technology that lowers use of water. 2) Need to create new reservoirs in North Georgia so that we can increase our capacity for water storage and/or find new alternatives to store water effectively. 3) We should not wait for the courts to make a decision on this topic, we need to start working immediately to make all these ideas become a statewide priority.
  
• Restore Georgians trust in their Government

After reading both sides, I hope you have a clearer idea on who you would like to vote for. Everyone of us should go out and vote before or on November 2nd. It's important to have our voices heard and for us to have some control of our future.

What are your opinions on these two candidates and who will you be voting for?

Obama Speaks with the Future of America

Tomorrow, October 14th, President Obama with participate in a special to talk with the youth of America about anything and everything going on right now. The special is airing on MTV, MTVu, BET, Centric, TR3s and CMT at 4 p.m. (ET) and will stream live on MTV.com, BET.com and CMT.com.

I think this is a great idea President Obama and his team have. So many politicians do not give any thought to our generation because they believe we do not have any control with voting or have any interest in politics. Sure this may be true, but on the other hand, we are growing up and decisions being made now will affect us in the future.

President Obama is taking the initiative to show our interest by giving our generation the time and energy to talk with us. I believe that politicians should not leave us out. I mean we are the ones who will be making the decisions in a few years. I know we aren't very interested right now, but they still shouldn't ignore us and our opinions. Some of us actually have opinions to give.

An example of a politician thinking we don't make our own opinions/decisions is Carl Paladino the Republican Candidate for New York. Paladino was discussing homosexuality and said "I don't want them [kids] to be brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid or successful option." Basically he is telling parents stop teaching/"brainwashing" your kids into believing being gay is OK. Well I'm not going to go into how dumb this statement is. That can be a blog post in and of itself. But excuse me Mr. Paladino. Most parents are as equally close-minded as you. We the kids are more socially liberal and can choose who we want to judge or accept/like. And not to burst your bubble, but we decided a while ago that openly gay citizens are people too and we should not treat them differently. Most parents didn't teach that, so don't lay into them. The people you should be directing your speech to are the "kids". You need to actually pay attention to us and talk to us about what you "believe" is right.

Anyway, back to the point. I'm glad the president is taking time to speak with us and hearing our opinions, our likes and our dislikes. So whether or not you agree with President Obama, everyone one of us should tune in to one of the channels listed above and hear what he has to say. If the numbers of those watching are high, this will show adults/politicians how, despite what they think, we actually do pay attention and have our own opinion separate from them.


I know I will actually take the time to watch President Obama this time, will you?

Links used:
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1649305/20101005/story.jhtml?xrs=eml_MTVNews6
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/10/carl-paladino-brainwashed-homosexuality-lifestyle_n_757460.html

Democrats and Republicans: What is the difference?

Today I am focusing on the differences between Democrats and Republicans. This is a very basic topic but an important one to understand. I have known for a while that I do not really know and understand the differences between these two parties. The only differences I can think of right now, are from my Communication Law class. We defined a Liberal person to be someone who was more concerned about protecting individual rights and liberal justices. They were usually more willing to recognize new constitutional rights not explicitly stated in the Bill of Rights and to increase access to government information. Conservatives justices tend to favor states rights over central government regulations and to support individual property rights. They also tend to interpret constitutional rights more narrowly than liberals. Granted these are more geared toward communication but I believe they touch on the basics of liberals and conservatives.

Regardless, I began researching the World Wide Web for the answers. I finally came across this website that laid everything out neatly and to the point. I have to say I was relieved when I found this website because the only definitions coming up were on Wikipedia and even though most things on that website are legit, it still is not considered a reliable source.

Here is the website: http://www.balancedpolitics.org/ideology.htm

This website first touches on what is a liberal and conservative. A liberal was "someone who advocated change, new philosophies, and new ideas." A conservative person was "someone who avoided change, instead preferring to stick to the tried and true." A democrat follows a liberal view and republicans follow a conservative view.

The website then shares all the different topics that are debated between the two groups. I'll state the more common ones:

1. Mexican Border Fence
2. Abortion
3. Immigration
4. Same-Sex Marriage
5. Health Care

Some I have never heard of include (Also including their definition and most definitions come from website):

1. Affirmative Action : generally means giving preferential treatment to minorities in admission to universities or employment in government and business
   
2. ANWR Drilling: Debate whether or not to drill for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge
   
3. Kyoto Treaty: A treaty that sets a target for countries to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
   
4. Three Strikes Law: A person who is convicted of three felonies is given mandatory 25-to-life sentence
   
5. Malpractice Lawsuits: When a patient sues a doctor for malpractice, he or she may recover monetary damages for lost wages, medical bills, and pain & suffering. There was a proposal putting a cap of $250,000 on the pain/suffering and punitive portions of theses damages.

Not everyone who considers themselves liberal/conservative agrees with all of these ideologies however. People have their own opinions on what's better than others. People who believe everything is right and needs to be done are extremists. People who agree with some and not others are thought to be more moderate.


Other differences between democrats and republicans can be seen throughout history with the different presidents elected. The major democratic president that set the ideals for democrats is Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR set up the New Deal after the Great Depression. FDR's main goal for "New Deal" was to help everyone who was affected by the depression. This urge to help people, led to the creation of Social Security and Welfare at this time. FDR used the government to directly help the American people. Democrats have kept this focus to help the American people throughout history and want the government to continue programs that help middle and lower class people.
The major republican president that set the ideals for republicans was Ronald Reagan. Reagan's main focus was to get the American people to rely less on the government. He wanted the people to make their own decisions independent of the government. This independence became helpful for businesses, because Reagan was able to deregulate businesses, which allowed them to make their own decisions on how they felt their business should be run. Also during his presidency, Reagan cut taxes in hopes to better stimulate economic growth (which it did) and he helped prevent unions from going on strike. Reagan's presidency has shown the republican's ideals well by cutting taxes and deregulating businesses. Republicans have continued to urge less government involvement in business and American lives.

So to sum everything up, Liberals/Democrats have the best interest of the American people in mind. They believe the government should work hard to help everyone who is in need. Conservatives/Republicans believe the government should stay out of the decision process for businesses and that people should be in charge of helping themselves. One thing is certain however, the number one goal for both parties is that they want to make America a great country. They just have different ideas on what makes America great and want to make it a great country through different methods. It's good to have competing ideas and opinions. Our country wouldn't be great without difference in opinions. This constant competition allows us to keep everyone on their toes so that they can create a better form of both ideas. I think life would be boring if we lived off one ideal.

Please let me know what you think. I'd love to hear everyone's opinions!

I received some information from the following website(s):
http://www.balancedpolitics.org/ideology.htm
http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php