1-31-13 BR

I don't think gun control should be the argument, but instead: national debt. Maybe we should try to escape the route we've been taking for the past decade and turn it around. We've just been digging a deeper hole.

1-30-13 BR

I think that if you get a college degree you might as well try to find a job in the field. You would have a much better life than someone without one, so why would you waste time and money to not use it? That's not the smartest of ideas.

1-29-13 BR

It shouldn't really matter who joins the BSA. Girls and Boys can join a similar group called a "venture group" which is the same thing almost. They do a bunch of high adventure activities including rock climbing and canoeing.

1-16-13 BR

Who cares what he wants on his liscense plate? Do we care what goes down his toilet, because if not, this shouldn't matter either. The American people are way too nosey in a politician's personal life. A liscense plate isn't the end of the world.

1-15-13

West Virginia and a few other states didn't have anything to say about the gun control policy. I'm sure that some of the rednecks would make us have one less senator if he tried to do something like that. Tomblin did inquire how citizens don't need magazines with hundreds of rounds in them though. That is something that makes sense.

1-14-13 BR

I'm glad that they aren't going to pass a weapons ban. Why would you take away guns from people who register them rather than the ones who obtain them illegally? That's ignorant to think that it would stop a gunman.

1-28-13 BR

I don't think I'd vote for her as a president. Other countries probably wouldn't respect us because a man wouldn't be the "most powerful man in the world." It's hard to tell what all would happen to our country. It's not that she isn't as smart, but it would be awful.

1-22-13 assignment

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day along with the inauguration of the United States president, Barack Obama. He was sworn in on the 21st due to the fact that the 20th was a Sunday, which makes it so he couldn't be sworn into office. Many highlights included the day’s events. Everything from gay rights to climate change was addressed. Many people were skeptical as to his inclusion of gays into his speech, but it seemed to work out well. He basically said, “If everyone is created equal, why don’t we act like it?” I can agree with this statement, but everyone knows it’s hard to treat everyone exactly the same because we don’t have the same views about everything. Even if you don’t agree, you should still accept the fact that they’re human beings. Climate change was another topic during the inauguration. He explained how it is not a myth and why we should be worried. He furthered that he is going to do his best to fight back at nature so we do not “betray” the children and future generations. He is pushing for cars to get almost sixty miles per gallon by 2025. My Pontiac g6 gets around twenty-eight on a good day while driving on a long trip without many turns. It may be a big number, but they are already making cars with over forty miles per gallon engines. Hopefully the droughts and extraordinary heat will be silenced with all of the new climate restrictions.

12 2012 events

Top 12 News Stories of2012 1. Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting 2. U.S. Election 3. Super storm Sandy 4. Iphone 5 5. World Ending 6. Video Games 7. Gas Prices 8. WBC 9. Gay Marriage/ Chick-fil-a 10. Lance Armstrong 11. The Fall of Gen. David Petraeus 12. Mass Shooting at Aurora and Oak Creek 1. Sandy Hook Shooting December 14, 2012 is a date most of us will remember. It's the day that Adam Lanza killed twenty-six people in an elementary school. Twenty students and six adult members of the school were shot and killed with a semi-automatic assault weapon. It claims the title of second most deadly school shooting of all time and the second deadliest mass murder at an elementary school. The Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 is the deadliest shooting, and the 1927 Bath School bombing in Michigan was the deadliest elementary school mass murder. It's hard to fathom what the families and friends of the victims went through over the Christmas break this year with the Westboro Baptist Church extremist group pestering them in every way possible. It's hard enough when a family member passes away, let alone twenty-six children. The WBC decided that they would try and picket the funerals of them saying how they thank God for fulfilling his will against a country with gay marriage. Hundreds of firefighters and other members of the community made a wall so they couldn't get through. 2.U.S election This year's election was highly anticipated by many from racists to saints to coal-activists. Not a single county in the great state of West Virginia was an Obama county. In our own county, over 3800 voted for Romney while under 1800 voted for Obama. He won by such a big margin due to electoral votes. It should be the number of votes received rather than "electoral" votes in my opinion. Obama would have won either way, but not by near as much as he won by. Romney was an idiot, but he should have had a chance to try to change our nation since Obama didn't really do anything good for the nation in his past four years of office. He might as well have just drunk coffee all day long every day. At least he can't screw up much more in the next four years and probably less than Romney would have. 3. Super Storm Sandy Formed on October 22, 2012 and dissipated on October 31, 2012, Hurricane Sandy rocked North-Eastern America's world. Over $63 billion in damages were caused by good ol' Sandy and helped us escape school for a week. Only Katrina did more damage to the United States as a hurricane. A predicted 10 million Americans went without power for at least a few days. Sandy affected around 24 states including mostly all of the eastern side of America. Fifteen thousand homes were destroyed and hundreds of people died. With all of the snow it brought, ski resorts were able to open in November. This was the earliest opening of Snowshoe Mountain in over ten years. Their opening day was during Thanksgiving break from school and has opened almost every trail due to the super-storm. Many people from many different countries were affected due to the huge beast that started as a wave. 4. Iphone 5 Arguably the most anticipated phone of 2012, the touch screen Apple smartphone was quite a shocker on its day of release. Over two million devices were sold to patiently waiting, hungry customers in the first twenty-four hours of its debut. There aren't very many features that people don't like because it's basically the Iphone 4s 2. The only really big improvements are the bigger screen and the thinner profile. It also comes with 4G LTE and a faster processor. According to CNet, a couple things are unfinished on the handheld. One of these is that Apple Maps is glitchy and not as great as Google Maps. Another lacking feature is NFC. NFC or Near-Field-Communication is one of the upcoming features of all smartphones. It's already incorporated in Samsung's GS3 and Note2. We will have to wait and see which device will be the top selling. 5. The End of the World The "end of the world" occurred on December 21, 2012. According to the Mayan Calender, the Earth's cycle was supposed to start over. Many people interpreted this as being the end of the world and that Jesus would return to Earth. If you're a religious person to begin with, the Bible states that no one will know when God will end the world. Obviously they were wrong in every way possible. The only thing that we got on the 21st was a little bit of snow. Maybe that's what the conspiracy theorists were talking about, the end of the world for grass. Maybe the grass will re-sprout next year. I'm sure that people who believed in this day were quite disappointed when they woke up and it was sunny outside. I'm sure that there were people who went out and bought tons of canned food, milk, and some batteries to last a couple more months than everyone else. I, myself, bought some ski wax to get ready for Snowshoe. 6. Video Games There were a few new game releases this year that wowed the GameStop's around the world. Halo 4 was probably one of the most anticipated games of this year. Halo is based around aliens and big guns. You go around and kill everything in sight and hope to not get murdered by the Covenant or Forerunners. They are the two "bad guy" groups that try to take over Earth and mostly succeed. It's a pretty fun game. Another game of the year was Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Call of Duty, manufactured by two different video game companies, is a huge franchise that little kids everywhere anxiously wair until December 25 to receive. It is a war game based around many different wars that the U.S. has either been a part of or just made up. The new game is based around a futuristic type of warfare. They come out with a new one every November. 7. Gas Prices As all of us who drive know, gas prices have been quite ridiculous this past year. 2012 marked the highest national average in gas prices to date: $3.60. The next two most expensive driving years were second 2011 and third 2008. In 2011, gas prices were averaged at around $3.51 while 2008 averaged $3.25. These prices have made it difficult for anyone to go out and do what they have done in the past and just go out and drive. As a teen, it’s hard for me to even get enough money to drive to school and back every other week. Not only have the prices affected teens, but almost every adult around the country that tries to buy a vehicle in the country. The average cost per year of a vehicle has also increased. Not only do you have to pay for the vehicle which is pricier than in the past, you also have to spend more on tires and maintenance as well. Both of these have also increased. 8. The Westboro Baptist Church Tragedies happen around us every day. Some of these things include deaths of soldiers, or more recently, the Sandy Hook murders. Most of us could come to tears when thinking about all of the lives lost or have hatred towards the people behind the events. The Westboro Baptist Church extremist group is quite the opposite. They go to funerals of events such as Sandy Hook or passed away soldiers and picket the events. Signs are held high with sayings like “Thank you God,” “God hates Fags,” and “Thank God for dead soldiers.” Their website (www.GodHatesFags.com) has been their main attempt at converting others to hating anyone who is gay. They are one of the worst American hate groups of today. If you see their signature rainbow colored picket signs, you know there will soon be trouble to follow. They have been attacked by many including hacker group “Anonymous” and “The Jester” by having their websites taken down and causing many damages. 9. The Chick-Fil-A controversy. Everyone loves the delicious chicken brought to us every day by the fast food giant we call Chick-fil-A. They offer everything with options of chicken and pickles or just regular chicken breast on a bun. The controversy surrounding the company was about the owner’s traditional values when it comes to anything from recreation the marriage. For this reason, Chick-fil-A is not open on Sundays because Sunday is the day of rest in Christian society. In one interview, the chief operating officer, Dan Cathy, stated how he opposed same sex marriage. In fact, the family run business has donated millions of dollars towards ex-gay rehabilitation and other anti-gay foundations. As you can imagine, gay rights groups everywhere went into protest mode. A few cities including Chicago denied the company to open up any more stores without working with LGBT groups across the nation in terms of hiring. Many people still support the company because gay people work there. To me, it was a lot bigger than what it needed to be. 10. Lance Armstrong Lance Armstrong, the seven time Tour-de-France winner, had his medals completely stripped due to blood doping charges. Honestly, I think it’s quite stupid that he alone should be charged with all of these charges and be the center of attention for all of the cycling drug use in the huge race. Actually, the top 10 finishers in the tour also happened to be doping. Sorry, but he should be able to keep his medals if everyone else was doing the EXACT same thing. Since he’s an American favorite, he got in trouble while no one else did. If you go back and look at the history of cycling, it’s basically like the history of baseball. Everyone in baseball took steroids the same as everyone who rode a bike for distance added red blood cells to their blood stream. I mean heck, it might as well just be legal. He shouldn't get his medals stripped and will still be the best ever. It doesn't matter what the critics say. 11. the fall of gen. p General Petraeus, one of the most decorated generals of his generation, subdued Iraq and steered the course for exit in Afghanistan. His career began to unravel on Nov. 7, 2012 when his boss, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, confronted Petraeus about his affair with his 40-year-old biographer, Paula Broadwell. Clapper urged Petraeus to resign, and Petraeus agreed that he had no other choice. Soon after this day, the rest America would begin to learn about a different side of Petraeus. Petraeus and Broadwell met while both were stationed at Camp Cupcake, The headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul. The two formed a bond. After his stint in Afghanistan, Patraeus was appointed director of the CIA and retired from the military. His life took a major turn. An old friend who remains in contact with Petraeus put it this way: “He didn’t realize how much retirement [from the military] affected him personally. As that sank in, he hit a low point. His affair with Broadwell began about two months into his CIA tenure. The affair would not have precipitated Petraeus’s downfall if the FBI hadn’t decided to investigate. It all began when the FBI fielded a complaint from a neighbor that she was being harassed via email by Broadwell. When agents began looking at these emails, they wondered if she posed a threat to Petraeus’ safety. When the affair was discovered, agents had to examine the possibility that she was extracting secrets from Petraeus for a foreign intelligence service.Iinvestigators also looked for evidence that Petraeus had disclosed classified information to Broadwell. No evidence supported that theory. The FBI also looked at whether Petraeus might have been involved in Broadwell’s alleged cyber-harassment of Kelley. All of these led to dead ends. There was no evidence of a crime, only the tell-tale emails of a love affair that had recently ended by mutual consent. The FBI interviewed both Petraeus and Broadwell. Both denied that the CIA director had leaked any classified information to Broadwell. As the investigation continued, more people were informed. In the end, General Petraeus resigned from his post of CIA director. 12. Mass Shootings at Oak Creek and Aurora Two mass shooting involving unarmed civilians occurred two weeks apart. These rocked America’s summer and raised new anxieties of gun violence. The first of these shooting took place on July 20th in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. During a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, a gunman carrying multiple firearms, grenades and combat armor burst in and opened fire. 12 people were killed and dozens more were injured. The randomness of this shooting was troubling and led to fear among many Americans. The next incident took place on august 5th in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. During this incident a shooter ran into a Sikh temple and killed six people before exchanging fire with a police officer and then shooting himself in the head. Both of these incidents crowded the front pages of national as well as local newspapers and were reported by all major news stations. Many questions arose such as the ability of the 24-year-old Aurora gunman acquiring such firepower very easily and the racism of the Oak Creek gunman. While the randomness of Aurora seemed like a threat to all, the incident at Oak Creek seemed too directed towards one religious group. Due to this, the Aurora shooting gained much more media attention.

1-3-13 BR

It's awful to think that someone had to come home to someone else all in their business. People should just mind their own and keep their hands to themselves. I feel sorry for the folks.

1-2-13 fiscal cliff assignment

Last night, President Barack Obama signed a "fiscal cliff" plan into effect. This plan made it so we wouldn't go into another recession. It does not look like it's making much of a difference when you read percentages, but when you look at real numbers, you see a totally different side of the plan. This plan was put into effect so that our economy would stay stable and keep the world economy stable in the process. Our nation has to buy stuff. Without us compiling our money to pay the deficit, the whole world would suffer. What is the fiscal cliff? Well, it's a 4.6% increase in taxes to the rich while keeping the middle class taxes from spiking. This will in total within ten years create over 600 billion dollars. It raises taxes from 35% to 39.6% with a maximum tax of 40%. It's a good thing that it only applies to individuals making over $400,000 and couples making over $450k a year. If this applied to the working class of Americans, they probably could not even afford the house that they currently live inside of. It's hard enough with the tax now. It saves over 30,000,000 homes from the tax raise. At least Obama knows that if you can live on $100,000 you can live on $400,000 easier. Another job of the bill was extending the payment of those without a job. Unemployment has been decently higher than what anyone wants. Now, unemployment can be received for up to one year instead of getting none at all if the plan wouldn't have passed. It saved our country for the better or worse.