commentary #2

http://seankaskel.blogspot.com/2013/04/blog-stage-7.html - I agree with sean, we are the people directly affected by the election and we should be heard. If i had a better probability to win the lottery, of course i would pick that every time. Why go through the process of voting if it doesn't matter. I also agree that we need more factions in congress so that all americans can have a voice on their government. This class really did open a whole new world of government for us. Great post!

Stage 7

   An End to the Drug Wars

    As I said before in a recent commentary of one of my colleagues, the war on drugs has proven to be a a spectacular failure. According to a summarization from a New York Times article "Despite billions spent on measures from spraying coco fields high in the Andes to jailing local dealers in Miami or Washington, a gram of cocaine cost about 16 percent less last year than it did in 2001" which just further confirms my point. 

   Even if people believed all the misconceptions out there about drugs, and lets say just they were real. That would mean that drugs are very bad, but that doesn't mean the war on drugs is a good thing.

   It is essentially just a prohibition, and with that I believe the war on drugs is also very counterintuitive.  Why you may ask? When you stop the sale of drugs, that just means it costs more to sell. Therefore higher prices means  higher revenue for the dealers to buy guns, buy more drugs, and used to bribe officials. 

  Again, referring to the summarization from the Times "almost one in five inmates in state prisons and half of those in federal prisons are serving time for drug offenses. In 2010, 1.64 million people were arrested for drug violations. Four out of five arrests were for possession. Nearly half were for possession of often-tiny amounts of marijuana." Sounds a tad over the top there, but what does the government care? It's just your taxpayer money paying for the prisons.  

Numbers Tell of Failure in Drug War

commentary

http://arvinbui9.blogspot.com/2013/03/national-government.html#comment-form - -  I also agree with what Arvin is saying, the war on drugs has been a dismal failure, and marijuana should be legal. If marijuana were to be legalized there would be less money flowing into the black-market which then gives them less money for them to spend on guns, pay bribes and other illegal activities. I agree with you saying "...having marijuana is like having beer ..." all the government has to do is regulate laws like colorado and washington. Heck, if you walk on the beach in California you will find so many "green doctors" on the beach selling marijuana. So, i also agree with Marijuana being legal and an end to the War on Drugs.

stage 5

Biosurveillance- The Government's Got Your Back.

   Are you concerned that biosurveillance companies are not enough to protect against foreign dieses and bio-terror threats? According to the U.S Department Of Defense (DOD), "The White House has issued the first U.S. National Strategy for Biosurveillance to quickly detect a range of global health and security hazard."  The DOD defines Biosurveillance as " gathering, analysis and interpretation of data related to disease activity and threats to human and animal health to achieve early warning, detection and situational awareness".  
  
   This isn't a completely new concept, there are hundreds of separate surveillance programs that do the same thing. The federal government has made considerable investments in deploying biosurveillance systems across the country, but it has done so without a clear overarching federal strategy for designing or testing these systems. The DOD states "the strategy calls for a coordinated approach involving federal, state, local and tribal governments; the private sector; nongovernmental organizations; and international partners." Which means that this strategy will now implement all of the other organizations into one government funded plan focusing together on the prevention of hazardous diseases.

   “It challenges us ... to take full advantage of the advanced technologies, new vaccines, the latest science, and social media that can help keep our citizens safe..." says the president. 

   Andrew C. Weber, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs says "monitoring and understanding infectious disease always has been a DOD priority..." 

  Weber goes on explaining that that many of the DOD researchers have all helped to create vaccines for disease like malaria and dengue fever. He also states “we have a network of three U.S. Army and three U.S. Navy laboratories in places like Cairo, Egypt; Lima, Peru; Nairobi, Kenya; Bangkok, Thailand; and now in Tbilisi, Georgia.”  Now this all does sound very promising, an advance watch and alarm system against natural diseases and  bio-terror attacks. This program i think will  help solve problems like the 2001 anthrax letters, 2003 SARS outbreak, 2009 bird flu pandemic and 2011 nuclear emergency in Japan.

DOD Has Running Start on Biosurveillance Strategy

stage 4

     Michael Boland author of the article, Once Again, Facebook Is Supposedly the Latest 'Google Killer'. Discusses the differences between two internet sites Facebook and Google, he starts off from the very beginning with something called a "link bait headline"  which is pretty much a strong headline/title used to capture peoples attention. Luckily i fell victim to his ploy, or else i would not have come upon such an interesting article. 

This article is defiantly for a certain type of audience, he goes into detail on what type of search engine is used for both sites so the reader would have to know something about internet, he also brings up different websites as well as different features of those sites, and he doesn't stop to explain what each site is or what feature does what. This article is defiantly geared towards those who already internet savvy. 

I did find this article very fun to read.  Boland would explain to you something about Facebook's search engine, enough so that you're not bored, and then he'd throw in a joke to keep you reading.

I think Boland was defiantly trying to convey an argument to the reader. Hinting that Facebook is not better than google, he explains how although Facebook does have a better search for something in common with you, google on the other hand has volume, 30 trillion pages worth of  online volume ."This is interesting but it's no Google killer" he states "...it doesn't yet have the volume" sounds like Boland implying that Facebook is not yet strong enough to beat google. He argues that Facebook is not a Google killer. He expresses this through his commentary and points out facts that Google is still much bigger.

Michael Boland did a great job expressing his stance on the argument. I think he is right in believing that Facebook is not a Google killer, because Facebook still has to overcome some barriers before being called a "Google Killer."  

Stage 3

"Millions of gun owners believe that the administration will use the public safety announcements (PSAs) as a launching pad for a campaign to make gun ownership socially unacceptable. Now where would they get that idea?"

       The article, Gun safety is not government job by Robert Farago is a very humorous, and satire piece, although he does talk about real events, most of his argument is based on his feelings instead of facts. I think most audiences who enjoy a good chuckle would enjoy reading this but, i do believe his expected audience would be gun safety activist, or any parent owning a gun, because throughout the article he talks about how the Public Service Announcement would affect the kids and how they behave. There were many parts where he would use a real news event and spin it off as a joke which I found to be very helpful in getting the readers attention, "Relying on the same people who brought us Operation Fast and Furious to keep politics out of gun safety ads is like asking Lindsay Lohan to teach Driver's Ed." Him saying that got my attention and caused me to do a search on "Operation Fast and Furious" which i defiantly think is a great trait to have in a persuasive argument.

     The basis for his argument clearly lies with the federal government, how they are trying to interfere with personal life and regulate gun safety, he says "Not only is the federal government incapable of providing this kind of comprehensive instruction, it's none of its business." His view on the Gun Control PSA is obviously quite negative, in fact most of his argument is based on the assumption that PSA's will "brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way."

Farago does try to make something clear though, "If Obama administration officials want to decrease the number of accidental firearms deaths among small children, they could arrange for the gun safety experts at the NRA to offer their time-tested Eddie Eagle GunSafe Program to all the nation's public schools." 

In the end, this article was a very enjoyable read, but sadly just not any hard hitting evidence. I do believe his argument is successful in that "Children's gun safety is a parent's responsibility. Period." the government absolutely has no right to interfere with such matters. 

Stage 2

Killing U.S Citizens in Al Qaeda

   In the U.S. Constitution there is a guarantee of a "due process" in which if anyone is considered or suspected of anything, that individual has a right to go before a judge and plead his or her's case. Now how would you feel if someone took that right away from you? Exactly. Now imagine U.S. Citizens being killed because that individual is "suspected" of terrorism. What a horrible thought ""It summarizes in cold legal terms a stunning overreach of executive authority "" says Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. 

   A U.S. Memo has been obtained by NBC news stating that, "it would it would be lawful to kill a United States citizen if “an informed, high-level official” of the government decided that the target was a ranking figure in Al Qaeda who posed “an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States”. Wow what ever happened to checks and balances? So an "informed, high level official" can over step the whole judicial process and order a killing of a U.S citizen, on top of that it also loosely defines "imminent threat" saying "it is not necessary for a specific attack to be in process when a target is found if the target is generally engaged in terrorist activities aimed at the United States". So the target could not have to be doing anything to be killed, he could be "generally engaged" which isn't saying much... This document is still going through congress so just stay tuned to see the end.

KIlling U.S Citizens in Al Qaeda