What Color is that Baby?

How does race play a role in the news we see and read?

FCC this

Is the governement responsible for the television programs being braodcast into your home?

Whose job is it to monitor children in front of the tv?

Should we Save the GOP?

What does George Washington say about our party system?

What role does a political party play?

Can we survive without the Republican Party?

How might the Democratic Party react to the destruction of the Republican Party?

Honk if you "Choose Life" !

Should states be allowed to bar certain politically charged statements on license plates?

Who owns license plates? (keep in mind in NYS you must return them)

Is this a 1st Amendment issue?

How have the lower courts ruled?

Is Adam Liptak showing his bias in this article?

What further questions do you have for the author?

Article

Obama's First 100

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/04/29/us/politics/200900429_OBAMA_100DAY.html#

Why has the name of the super flu changed?

Listen again to the first 6 mins of his speech, what has the government done to protect us further from this outbreak?

Listen again to the first and second question he is asked, is the media giving too much attention to St. Francis Prep's swine flu?

Profiting from the FLU? SWINE or AVIAN

OBAMA+ LUGAR 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/opinion/06obama.html?pagewanted=print


INVESTING IN BIOTECH 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/07/us/politics/07obama.html?pagewanted=print


SWINE FLU 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/health/policy/28health.html?ref=health

(note the section of the Times the above article appears on)

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/swine-flu-a-cause-for-panic/?hp

Is there cause for concern according to these three articles?

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Should we be concerned about policy makers investing in private companies?

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How are policy makers using fear?

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What seems to be the link between Obama and the Flu?

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How can a "Swine Flu" in Queens become a billion dollar money maker for investors?

.

What is something you heard in class today that you would like to know more about?

(eg. blind trusts, the 1976 Ford Inoculation Blunder, the Great Influenza of 1918, telecommunications nationalization agenda or anything?)

.

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NEW AUDIO FILE

Friday- Deinstitutionalization

http://www.helium.com/items/837637-assessing-the-affects-of-the-deinstitutionalization-movement


http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=527&invol=581#section1


The number of beds for mentally ill patients since 1950 has dropped considerably, why has this happened?

What is the importance of the Olmstead decision?

What role might the Olmstead decison have played in the artcile Apeksha brought to our attention on Monday?

Mom on Fire!

Questions we can ask the class would be :

1. Do you think it's necessary that there should be background checks at a shooting range?
2. Should they be using real bullets ?
3. Should there be better security at the shooting range ?
4. Do you think the women herself should have special care and maybe have documented papers with her saying she had an attempted suicide..or mental case?
5. Was it okay for the son to even consider going to the shooting range with his mom due to prior events ?

Article http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6062648.ece

Iowa Bans the Ban

What does the phrase "equal protection under the law" mean? Will this impact other states to reverse decisions?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/us/04iowa.html?scp=3&sq=supreme%20court&st=cse

PROM

Should schools be held respoonsible for events at after prom or pre prom parties?

Are school giving tacit consent to illeagal activity?

Full story

BAILOUT THE AUTO INDUSTRY

Obama's Bail out plan


What stepts is Obama taking to help the US auto industry?

What are our options?

OBAMA'S Secret Letter.

Is president Obama compromising our safety by offering to withdraw missles?

Should letters like these be made public?

How might the Iranian press use a story like this to their advantage?

Article

Obama's Priority Speech

Speech and Transcript

Do you agree with the president's priorities?

What will change in the next two months?

How will this plan effect you directly?

Cartoon

Chimpanzee Stimulus Article and cartoon.

Should the media be censored?

Does this cartoon serve its purpose?

If you were editor of a newspaper would you allow this to be printed?

How might the cartoon violate the First Amendment?

AMERICAN DREAM

ARTICLE


How has the relationship between workers and management changed since this movie?

Give examples.

GREAT HORMEL VIDEO

FEBRUARY!!

Obama's OP-ED

Should sitting presidents write OP-ED pieces for newspapers?

How do presidents in ther first 100 days in office use thier popularity to push an agenda?

How did FDR use his popularity?

What about JFK?

"All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin."

- JFK Innaugarational Address.

Ethics Questions.

What problem does a president who sets the bar high for ethics have?

Why not higher lobbyists?

What about smart lobbyists?

Article

A Team of Whizzes

By BOB HERBERT

Barack Obama appears to have put together an extraordinarily competent team to cope with the crises abroad and at home — and to begin cleaning up the mess of the past eight years.
So why do I have this uneasy feeling?

Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, Eric Holder, Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers ...
Competence is clearly trumping ideology in the next administration, and lord knows after two terms of Bush & Co. it’s time to get back to the idea of smart, capable people advising the president and executing his policies.

What I wonder is whether the members of this team, in addition to their grasp of the issues and success at achieving power, have a real feel for the needs of the people they are supposed to be representing.

I don’t doubt that they have the best of intentions. But the people at the pinnacle of power in Washington are encased in a bubble that makes it extremely hard to hear the voices of those who aren’t already powerful themselves.

On Monday, the president-elect introduced a national security team that will face a nightmarish array of challenges: the promised drawdown in Iraq; a worsening situation in Afghanistan; the crisis unfolding in India and Pakistan; and so on.

But it also has a responsibility to look out for the members of the military who are exhausted from years of valiant service. Many have served three and four (or more) tours in combat, and many thousands have been wounded in mind and body and are having a difficult time putting their lives back together.

So a challenge as important as the challenges in Iraq and Afghanistan is to send the message — and make it stick — that more Americans need to share in the sacrifices required to keep the nation and its interests secure.

President-elect Obama campaigned on the mantra of change. For years the federal government catered increasingly to the interests of the wealthy and the powerful. This reached a destructive crescendo when the ideologues and incompetents of the Bush administration came to power.
That is what needs to change.

Will this new Obama team, as brilliant as it appears to be, begin addressing on day one the interests of those who are not rich and who have not had the ear of those in power?

I think about the cops and firefighters and factory workers and schoolteachers and hospital aides and bank tellers and truck drivers who are having trouble making ends meet, hanging onto their homes, sending their children to college.

Will this new administration really be looking out for them?

One of the reasons the economy is so deeply in the tank is that ordinary Americans have not received a fair share of the economic advances of the past several years. You don’t hear much about this. Americans have been working harder and harder, and more and more efficiently (we are now the hardest working people on the planet, having passed the Japanese in this category), but ordinary workers have not been paid for this enhanced productivity.

As my colleague at The Times, Steven Greenhouse, pointed out in his book “The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker,” published earlier this year:

“Even though corporate profits have doubled since recession gave way to economic expansion in November 2001, and even though employee productivity has risen more than 15 percent since then, the average wage for the typical American worker has inched up just 1 percent (after inflation).”

That was part of a pattern of gross unfairness that has been unfolding for some three decades. No wonder people have depleted their savings and maxed out their credit cards.

The crisis now, of course, is not that wages are stagnant but that the jobs themselves are disappearing. It’s not just change that the nation needs, but big change.

President-elect Obama has talked of a “new dawn of American leadership.” Three-quarters of a century ago, Franklin Roosevelt promised a New Deal and said his biggest task was “to put people to work.”

That’s as appropriate a cue as any for the next president. I hope Mr. Obama’s “new dawn” portends more than just a few nibbles around the edges of change. We need change that brings about more shared sacrifice in wartime and tough times, and a more equitable distribution of the nation’s resources all the time.

I want to know who in the Obama administration will be listening to the young girl on the South Side of Chicago whose future is constrained by a lousy public school, and the factory worker in Toledo whose family’s future has been trampled by unrestrained corporate greed and unfair trade policies.

All the evidence is that the next administration will be competent and smart as hell. Now I’d like to know for whom they plan to deliver.

How is the new administration going to listen to the people's concerns?
How might surrounding himself with Washington's Elite backfire?
Is the average person going to be represented in government? Do we want the average person represented?
Are the American people smart enough to truely govern themselves?

Bans in 3 States on Gay Marriage

By JESSE McKINLEY and LAURIE GOODSTEIN

SAN FRANCISCO — A giant rainbow-colored flag in the gay-friendly Castro neighborhood of San Francisco was flying at half-staff on Wednesday as social and religious conservatives celebrated the passage of measures that ban same-sex marriage in California, Florida and Arizona.

In California, where same-sex marriage had been performed since June, the ban had more than 52 percent of the vote, according to figures by the secretary of state, and was projected to win by several Californian news media outlets. Opponents of same-sex marriage won by even bigger margins in Arizona and Florida. Just two years ago, Arizona rejected a similar ban.

The across-the-board sweep, coupled with passage of a measure in Arkansas intended to bar gay men and lesbians from adopting children, was a stunning victory for religious conservatives, who had little else to celebrate on an Election Day that saw Senator John McCain lose and other ballot measures, like efforts to restrict abortion in South Dakota, California and Colorado, rejected.

“It was a great victory,” said the Rev. James Garlow, senior pastor of Skyline Church in San Diego County and a leader of the campaign to pass the California measure, Proposition 8. “We saw the people just rise up.”

The losses devastated supporters of same-sex marriage and ignited a debate about whether the movement to expand the rights of same-sex couples had hit a cultural brick wall, even at a time of another civil rights success, the election of a black president.

Thirty states have now passed bans on same-sex marriage.

Entire Article

How McCain, Obama would do as commander in chief

Washington

What kind of commander in chief would Sen. John McCain or Sen. Barack Obama be?

National security issues loom large for the next president: He will have to manage the drawdown of thousands of American troops in Iraq, oversee the deployment of thousands more in an increasingly violent Afghanistan, and assess whether to grow the military to cope with the war on terrorism.

On these issues, the advantage might seem to be all on the side of Senator McCain, a war veteran.

But former defense officials, as well as active-duty and retired officers, say that the military – whose rank and file are perceived to vote Republican – sees positives and negatives in both candidates.

McCain’s big advantages are his experience and his familiarity with the military, but Senator Obama’s may be a greater willingness to listen to Pentagon advice.

That could be important because the past eight years under the Bush administration, especially the decision to invade Iraq, has left some Pentagon officers feeling ignored.

“Senior military officers have carried out orders they didn’t agree with all their professional lives,” says Dennis Blair, who retired as a four-star admiral in 2002 and who served in senior defense jobs during two administration transitions. “All they want is for their best military advice to be considered, and then they will salute and execute their orders. It’s pretty easy for an incoming administration if they are smart enough, to give them a chance.”

McCain’s strengths in the national security realm could be a weakness if he comes at the Pentagon with too many preconceptions, say former defense officials. The Pentagon may also be an ideal place for him to display his “maverick” approach.

“He is a reformer, and he will try to make sure there is a minimum of bureaucracy and a maximum of efficiency,” says Rep. Duncan Hunter (R) of California.Obama, perceived as a “listener,” is considered a national security neophyte who will need to make forceful decisions based on the advice he receives to establish his credentials within the Pentagon.

[Entire Article]