Obama's campaign has a new wrinkle

Obama to many people might be a new face considering his short term political profile. Some might say that he has very little experience in politics making him not the best nominee for president. Obama plans to gain the support of the seniors by abolishing the income tax of seniors who’s income is less than 50,000. He hopes to gain a little more support with this proposal. Although, despite Hillary’s lead amongst seniors, Obama is slowly gaining the lead of the seniors through his proposal. One commentator says that seniors as prone to be open to political change as young college students do. Obama does in fact have a lead against Hillary in polls with college students. His youth is sometimes a burden to his campaigning because of how people think of how inexperienced he his. Despite that fact, he is doubling his polls within seniors as he inevitably starts to target issues more like social security affecting the older crowd. One Polls puts it, "

In Iowa, an October Hawkeye Poll of likely Democratic caucus-goers found Obama
garnering support from 24% of those over 60, nearly double his August
showing” (Hook).

I believe Obama has the right intentions to help him gain a better stand on issues hoping to hook the seniors. Hillary, although still ahead of him for support of seniors, is winding down because I believe he actually is trying to win and target those big issues. His young political profile may not show true wisdom but I believe his maturity is evident within his campaigning.

Works Cited: LA Times "Obama's campaign has a new wrinkle" by Janet Hook

Abortion isn’t a religious issue or is it?

Does religion truly plays a role in abortion? Does it really state in the Christian Bible that abortion is bad? These are questions that are brought up as an opposition to the GOP presidential candidates. Many religious Christians believe that it breaks the fifth commandment, “Thou shall not kill”. Some made parallels amongst the Jewish people killed by the Germans during the Holocaust. It says that it’s different, that was actually killing persons compared to fetuses. Some people believe that killing fetuses does not measure up to killing persons, argued by the Evangelicals. Evangelicals according to polls,

“about 10% of evangelicals allow for abortion in the case of rape or incest”
(Wills).

The Catholic Church did not make a stand about abortion to prior to recent years. This causes a way that there not scriptural evidence saying that abortion is truly wrong and is killing someone. The author argues that,

“even popes have said that the question of abortion is a matter of natural law,
to be decided by natural reason, well the pope is not the arbiter of natural
law, natural reason is” (Wills).

This discredits other ways that it should be affiliated religiously. There is no sense of it being based on misconception that pro-life advocates or acts out of religious conviction. These have been a staple argument that still goes on in our world.
In my opinion, I personally am against abortion but only when it is truly needed such as a rape. I believe that once the egg is fertilized, there is life so when a woman is undergoing abortion, they are a killing a human life. In some cases rape is an outcome that does happen. Abortion should be last resort. If I was the father of the child, and the woman who is giving birth to my son at a young age should not have an abortion. There should be other alternatives such as adoption because saving a life would be the better scenario for me but this does not necessarily mean I am all with force against abortion. I don’t like it but it should be a choice if really needed. Now about the author, in a sense I disagree with him because I believe it does have a religious connection. Anything that is produced by humans that has living such as a fertilized egg becoming a baby is life. If someone were to have that abortion, it would be killing that life. God created this life and humans so I do believe that it has some religious connections. I found it weird how the Catholic Church actually took a stand on this in recent years and how that some popes acknowledge that this is based on natural reason. In a sense I agree with that statement because I am not fully against abortion, treated as a last resort. In my understanding, abortion is a hard topic to argue about because you will always have someone either one way, both, a little, etc.

works cited: LA Times: “Abortion isn’t a religious issue” by Garry Wills (Opinions).

U.S. mayors find it’s not easy to be Green

The article I found in LA Times talked about how it is hard to follow up the programs by staying green. The article opens up with,

“America’s mayors, responding to a growing sense of urgency over climate change,
are rapidly stepping up programs to weatherize buildings, capture methane gas
from landfills” (Roosevelt).

These climate changes we have had is not helping the cause. The urge to use non appropriate green related materials is getting quite hard to accomplish. They have realized the difficulty in changing

ways according to the Kyoto-like pact. To help mayors get a head start on
this project, Congress “has included block grants in energy legislation…up to $2
billion a year in a House Bill to jump start green jobs initiatives, training
low-income workers to retrofit buildings and install climate-friendly energy
systems” (Roosevelt).

This is all for the better, hoping that they will improve the U.S.’s carbon footprint. 728 mayors who make up a quarter of the nation’s population have actually signed up to help out in this Kyoto Protocol where they believe they should target a greenhouse gas emission to go below 7% 1990 levels by 2012, similar to the actual Kyoto target that the U.S. refused to sign. Some mayors are finding out that they are unable to live up to these standards. Some of them believe it is impossible considering the huge population their city holds. Mayors are still trying to find a way to live it up.
In my opinion, I like how the mayors have taken the responsibility to achieve this goal of being green. I still don’t agree with the idea that Bush denies anything that has to deal with global warming a form of trying to reduce our emissions by a lot in order to prevent his play on words, “climate change”. I thought Bush should have tackled this head on instead of just the municipalities trying to get a hold of this issue. Some mayors find it hard to control with a huge population to manage in the first place such as LA where Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says,

“just think about the need in my city: a million people go to work every day on
Wilshire Boulevard. It connects downtown with Santa Monica—to biggest
centers of jobs—and yet we don’t have a subway” (Roosevelt).

There are so many needs within the city of Los Angeles. He questions why we can’t have more efficient systems such as a subway. These obstacles need to be resolved in order to better our living style as polluting Americans, contributing to ‘global warming’. Mayors need to step up even further in order to tackle this issue head on because the Bush Administration won’t.

Works Cited: LA Times Sunday Edition by Margot Roosevelt

Dump Winner-Take-All

This article that I was reading in the LA Times this past sunday dealt with the issue of the way the elections are run in the U.S. in this particular case, the presidential elections. The article opens with, “

the effort by some California Republicans to alter the way the state’s electoral votes was distributed in presidential elections has been miraculously resurrected” (Keyssar).

They don’t agree with this idea of winner take all, basically the winning of the popular vote. Some Democrats argued that the Republicans responsible for this effort, are only power hungry, trying to push their odds of having an edge over the GOP. It is argued, that in most states, smaller elections are based on that idea of winner take all which enrages some Republican politicians. They believe that it should be wrong to impose a winner take all in a state to win the electoral votes of that one. All the efforts are imposed to make things fairer when it comes to elections because if they divided up the Electoral College it would it enhance it. There has been a bill hoping to get rid of the whole winner take all idea present in the states. Both parties argued about this issue.
In my opinion, I find this quite ridiculous. We should not be facing arguments about this type of cause at the moment. The article says,

“if both parties worked together on such legislation, jointly committing
themselves to remedy a design flaw in our Constitution, they might even succeed
in dissipating a bit of the cynicism that the electorate so frequently expresses
about political parties that seem far more interested in their own welfare than
the fate of the nation” (Keyssar).

I believe they should leave this issue at bay because we have other things to worry about than this. I believe the Electoral College is fine as it is right now. Sure, we the people don’t fully get represented but if we were given full representation it would be too hard and division between votes would cause too many discrepancies. This would cause other people opposed by this idea to stand causing a huge chaotic argument. There is this sense of being represented when it comes to wining the electoral votes of that state by winning the majority vote of that state. We shouldn’t linger on this topic.

Works Cited: LA Times Sunday Edition, “Dump Winner-take-all” (Opinions Section) by Alexander Keyssar