Tag: Breaking

An Open Letter to Tucker Carlson

Image: RawStory

As a teenager in America, and in most people’s valid opinion, an American citizen, I do not know where to begin on the comments you have made.

I was born in Boston, Massachusetts and currently live in Erie, Pennsylvania. I have lived in the United States all my life, have a legal birth certificate, social security number, passport, and more… yet you still have the audacity to say that, because I am under the age of eighteen, I am not an “American citizen” as much as you, Donald Trump, Uncle Sam, or anybody else.

I am Jewish. I am Latino. I am American.

Being any of those things does not strip me of my American citizenship in the least, and neither does my age.

My religion is a part of who I am as an American. I love being Jewish—especially in a country that allows me to express my religion without the fear of persecution or punishment. I love getting to educate people and being the one that gets to help other people grow as individuals by teaching them about my religion and what it means.

My heritage is no less significant to me than my religion or citizenship. Being Latino is also a part of who I am. I am a product of my family who came from South America, and I love to brag about it because it makes me feel like I am a real contributor to what is the great, American “melting pot.” Nobody could ever take my culture, history, or family away from me—not even you. To me, none of this, in any way, makes me less American.

I still feel as proud to pledge allegiance to the American flag as anybody else.

I just want to know—if it isn’t my religion or ethnicity—then what is it that makes me less American than the people around me? According to you, I’m not an American—I’m just a teenager.

This is what you said a couple weeks ago:

Video: FOX News

I would like to clear the air here: We are ALL Americans.

If you genuinely think that teenagers are not Americans, then I think you are about to be pretty surprised.

Across the nation, we teens have organized school walkouts, protests, marches, and other events to exercise our First Amendment right. We are fighting together against ignorant people like you who think that, just because we are not eighteen, we cannot have an opinion, exercise our God-given right to protest or challenge arrogant people like you. We want to show that we have a say in our future and that people such as yourself do not deserve to speak for us—people who would rather let us take the fall (literally) just so you don’t have to lose your guns.

If you ever had any respect for us and stopped to listen to what we had to say, you would know by now that we never asked for anyone to lose their guns. We only asked for common sense gun laws—to put in place reasonable restrictions on the Second Amendment, just as there are the same restrictions on our rights to free speech and rights to privacy. If you think we are being unreasonable just look to the Supreme Court Heller decision, and you will see as plain as day, that while it holds that the right to bear arms is not related to service in a militia, it is not unlimited and that guns and gun ownership would continue to be regulated.

We teens have to live in fear at our schools. We don’t exactly think that this makes a ‘conducive’ environment for learning, do you? Nor do we think that arming our teachers makes for any more of a ‘conducive’ learning environment, but we already know that you don’t care. What you do care about is assisting the gun manufacturers to increase their revenue. You would prefer that you get to keep your guns—end of story.

I keep going over it in my head, but I just cannot answer this one question. I would really love it if you could answer it for me: Who exactly would it take to be killed in a shooting for you to realize that enough is enough?

Would it be a group of innocent civilians? No—we already saw that at the Pulse Nightclub, Las Vegas… (the list is way too big to count).

Would it be a group of church-goers like yourself? No—we already saw that in Charleston, Nashville, and Sutherland Springs.

Would it be a class full of high school students like myself? No—we already saw that at Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

Would it be a class full of kindergarteners? No—we already saw that at the tragic Sandy Hook shooting.

What would it take for you to realize that the one life person would be worth more than all the guns in America? I just struggle to understand how somebody who is adamantly “pro-life” can have such blatant disregard for all of our lives. Somebody who was really “pro-life” would care about the life of a human being after they are born. What is the point in fighting for their life before it is born if you are just going to let them be shot someday after they are born by somebody with an automatic weapon that they shouldn’t even have?

We are fighting for our rights—for our lives—and whether you like it or not, we are equal American citizens with free speech, the right to organize, the right to assemble, and the right to protest.

I would really love to learn more about what you think, and so, while I have been rather firm and harsh in this open letter, I would also like to invite you to an interview with WTP Magazine if possible to sit down and your thought process when you made the statement saying that we teens are not Americans. I am not asking this in an antagonistic way. I am only asking this because I genuinely want to learn why you believe this.

Hopefully, when we are done, you can realize that if we are old enough to be shot, then we are old enough to have an opinion on being shot.

If you are seriously interested, like I am, in taking me up on my offer for an interview, please send me an email at harrison.romero@wtpmag.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

“This Is Not a Drill”: False Alarm Terrorizes​ Hawaii

Image: The Australian

Imagine enjoying the glowing beaches of paradise one moment and fearing total, nuclear annihilation the next. Well, that’s exactly what happened to residents of Hawaii and vacationers Saturday morning.

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Notification sent to all phones in Hawaii at 8:07am HST

BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

That’s the message that was sent out to all of Hawaii via emergency alert notification. Many people began to panic, and wonder if North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un had finally reached his boiling point. As all activities came to a sudden halt, residents and tourists called loved ones, took shelter, and were preparing to die. Little did they know, in spite of what the message said, this was a drill, but it was also a colossal failure.

Moments after the alert was sent out the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency tweeted out that there was no missile threat to Hawaii, but it wasn’t until almost 40 minutes after the initial alert that a second one making the correction was sent. How could such a mistake be possible? A human error, according to officials.

“It was a mistake made during a standard procedure at the change over of a shift, and an employee pushed the wrong button,” stated Hawaiian Governor David Ige, while speaking to CNN on the alert broadcasted through television, radio, and emergency text message to all of Hawaii. Later, in a tweet, Ige has also promised to never let it happen again, but to many Hawaiians, his promise seemed empty and blame began to fall upon Ige, and his Twitter began to fill with angry responses like this one,

Responses like this are justified, considering that over a million people believed that today would be their last day on earth, all thanks to a careless mistake that could have been prevented.

To see the type of impact this alert had on Hawaii, this is a video from the Univeristy of Hawaii at Manoa showing people in a full sprint for safety after seeing the notification:

 

Alabama: A Man Who Allegedly Molested Eight Minors Is Probably Your Next Senator

Image: ABC News

A man who convicted a man of the murder of four children is currently losing to a man who allegedly molested/dated eight minors in a Senate race in Alabama—what a time to be alive!

It has been such a crazy month with the countless sexual assault allegations ever since #MeToo started trending. The charges of sexual assault on Roy Moore dropped a little over a week ago, but there’s no sign of them slowing down. Just last night, four more women came forward with claims against the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama.

Moore, born in 1947, was the oldest of five. Following high school, he attended the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in 1969. He subsequently served in the US Military, stationed in Vietnam, returning to his hometown of Gadsen in 1977.  That year, Moore began working for the office of the district attorney. He quit his job to run for the county’s circuit-court judge as a Democrat. He overwhelmingly lost in the primary to a fellow attorney, Donald Stewart. Shortly afterward, Moore left Gadsden to live in Australia for a year. He returned to Gadsen in 1985, the same year he got married.

In 1986, Moore decided to give it another shot and run for Etowah County’s district attorney, but he lost to fellow Democrat Jimmy Hedgspeth. Following his defeat, he decided to simply return to private practice in the city.

In 1992, the year that he had switched to the Republican Party, Etowah County’s circuit judge, Julius Swann, died in office, and the Governor of Alabama was to make a temporary appointment to fill the vacant seat. Jimmy Hedgspeth, Moore’s former political opponent who ran the D.A.’s office, recommended Moore, and Moore was installed in the position that he had failed to win in 1982. Moore ran as a Republican in the 1994 Etowah County election and was elected to the circuit judge seat.

Roy Moore was known as the “Ten Commandments Judge” for his refusal to take down a  plaque of the Ten Commandments that hung behind his bench. In 1995, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued him over the religious plaque and Moore’s tradition beginning sessions with prayers, saying such actions were unconstitutional and disregarded the separation of church and state. Moore told NPR:

Separation of church and state never meant to separate God from government. The First Amendment never meant to divide our country from an acknowledgement of God. It’s time to stand up and say, we have a right under our Constitution to acknowledge God.

The original case was dismissed, but in 1996, a Montgomery County Judge, Charles Price, initially ordered Moore to stop the prayer but he allowed the Ten Commandments plaque to be displayed. However, Price ordered the plaque removed after visiting Moore’s courtroom the following year. The case was again dismissed.

When Moore was elected to the Alabama Supreme Court in 2000, he took his fight over the Ten Commandments even further. Now, he was designing and planning a two-and-a-half ton granite obelisk inscribed with the Ten Commandments to be placed in the lobby of the Alabama Judicial Building. The Montgomery Advertiser states:

Moore had not told his fellow justices he was planning to install the monument, but brought a company into tape the installation of the monument in the Heflin-Torbert Judicial Building. Sales of the tapes later helped pay for his legal defense fund.

In 2002, a federal district judge ruled that the new statue was unconstitutional, violating the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. A deadline for removing the monument was instated and ignored by Moore in August 2003. A panel ruled that Moore had violated the judicial ethics code, and Moore was removed from the bench.

Just after a decade after being removed from the bench, Moore successfully won back his seat on the Alabama Supreme Court in 2012. No, he didn’t resurrect his Ten Commandments monument, but with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2015 that legalized same-sex marriage, Moore ordered state judges to protest it and enforce the state’s ban on same-sex marriages instead. In response to Obergefell v. Hodges, Moore wrote:

The Court’s opinion speaks repeatedly of homosexuals being humiliated, demeaned, and being denied ‘equal dignity’ by a state’s refusal to issue them marriage licenses.

That attempt to defy yet another court order resulted in another appearance before Alabama’s Court of the Judiciary, and he was suspended for the rest of his term in 2016, however, Moore’s age has prevented him from any chance of running again in 2018.

Now, Moore has decided to run for Senate in Alabama, and many shocking and revealing allegations have been put against him. He has been accused by eight women of sexual assault, and people are not happy.

This story was broken by the Washington Post, but the saddest part of all this is that Moore will probably still win.

Nate Cohn, a writer at the Upshot and the New York Times’ political data guru, said:

I don’t see any reason to assume Moore is in serious jeopardy.

When asked how much does he think this scandal might affect Moore’s chances to be elected, Cohn said:

My honest answer is that I don’t know. Alabama is an extremely conservative state that is deeply polarized along racial lines. Hillary Clinton might not even have received 15 percent of the white vote in Alabama last year. For Doug Jones to win, he might need to double that number. So this is not an easy task at all for the Democrats.

Cohn was asked by Slate whether there is any other state in the union that would be more likely to elect Roy Moore than Alabama. To that, he responded:

No. In Mississippi, the white vote is more conservative, but black voters are a much larger share of the electorate. If you had a revolt against a Republican candidate and black turnout was high, I think you can imagine how the Democrats get over the top there in a way that is tougher to imagine in Alabama. The argument the other way is that Alabama has better-educated metropolitan areas like Birmingham or Huntsville where maybe you can imagine that a Republican revolt would be modestly more likely than it would in Mississippi. But no, I think Alabama is basically as tough as it gets for Democrats.

Seeing what the political expert has said, it’s heartbreaking to think that an alleged child molester could beat a perfectly qualified Democrat just because of the political polarization in our society.

Yes, it is possible that he could win and be kicked out of the Senate, something that hasn’t occurred in over 150 years, almost immediately, but it’s not about whether he serves or not. It’s about whether the citizens prefer a child molester and a man who has been kicked off the bench of the Alabama Supreme Court not once, but twice, over a perfectly qualified candidate, simply because they are too dedicated to their political party. I truly hope Alabama makes the right decision, but it’s their decision to make, not mine.

While the Alabama Republican Party has not taken back their endorsement of Roy Moore, many Republicans and Democrats alike have called for him to drop out of the race.

In the end, who knows whether he will win or not? This entire election is ensured to be a toss-up, even though it should just be handed on a silver platter to the one who is not a child molester.

Suspected Military Coup in Zimbabwe

Image: Toronto Star

On Wednesday, soldiers in Zimbabwe took over the headquarters of ZBC, the nations state-run broadcaster. They then blocked access to government officers. As of today, there is no statement acknowledging it as a “coup” and the military insists that President Robert Mugabe is safe with his family. The first sign of a takeover was a fleet of tanks proceeding towards the nation’s capital, a video was posted on Twitter of the procession.

It appears that the commander Constantine Chiwenga has called for an end of the 93 year-old president’s, Robert Mugabe’s, reign of the nation.

As of today, new information has been released that President Mugabe and his wife are under house arrest but insist that they are safe. Several sources believe that the President’s latest move to fire Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who had large support to take over for the ailing Mugabe, was what provoked the suspected coup.

More info will be posted as it comes in.

Have Your Dentures Been Missing for the Last Week? Did You Vote in Portland, Maine? We May Have Found Your Teeth.

Image: Fixodent

First reported seven days ago by the Portland Press Herald, a local paper, and eventually reported 4,000 miles and an ocean away in Malta, if you haven’t heard about your own teeth by now, all of us here at WTP Magazine are sure hoping this works.

So you didn’t realize by breakfast time that you can’t chew? It’s fine. We all skip breakfast some days. We just want to make sure you get your dentures back safe and sound.

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Image: Portland Press Herald

The teeth were found by an election clerk at Merill Auditorium. They have been placed in a plastic bag and can be found at the City Clerk’s office in City Hall.

Reportedly, somebody had called the City Clerk’s office yesterday concerning the dentures, but the City Clerk, Katherine Jones, told The Rachel Maddow Show:

[T]he questions he asked did not match the dentures we have.

This statement obviously prompts one interesting question in particular: Did more than one person remove and misplace their dentures while voting in the same place in Portland, Maine?

We don’t know.

What we do know is that if you happen to have misplaced your teeth at Merill Auditorium while voting, then you should call the City Clerk’s office at (207) 874-8610 or (207) 874-8300.

If calling is somewhat of a problem because—well—you don’t have any teeth, emailing is also an option. You can email the City Clerk at klj@portlandmaine.com.

Whether it was something that was just so jaw-dropping on the ballot or whether the decision was just so hard that you had to pull out your teeth to think clearly, we sure hope that you find your teeth just fine.

Terror in Barcelona

Image: Gone Fishing

Fifteen people have been killed in a terror attack on Las Ramblas avenue in Barcelona on the 17th of August. Over 80 others were injured. An attacker drove a large white van down Las Ramblas Avenue, a pedestrian street packed with tourists and Barcelonians, plowing through crowds of people, killing and injuring many while causing mass chaos and a mini stampede. The attack happened before 5 pm Central European Time (11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time), and the Police acted quickly, evacuating the area and closing nearby Metro and train stations while getting aid to the victims.

The attackers reportedly had fled on foot. Four men were arrested for their alleged involvement in the attack. Also, police found another van they believe was going to be used as a getaway vehicle and found Moroccan passports. Driss Oukabir, one of the arrested suspects, claims his documents were stolen to rent the vans. Adding to the confusion, a hostage situation was reported by the media, but it is unclear whether it actually happened. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, but this does not mean that the attackers have any direct ties with ISIS. Furthermore, an explosion the day before that killed one person and injured 6 has been linked to the attack. Our hearts are with Barcelona, the victims of this callous and unwarranted attack, and the law enforcement and medical staff dealing with its fallout.

Many politicians and famous people tweeted their support. President Macron of France, Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada, President Vladimir Putin of Russia and many other world leaders also issued statements or tweets expressing their solidarity with Barcelona, including our own President, Trump. Trump originally told Barcelona to “be tough & strong, we love you” in a kind, heartfelt tweet of solidarity, but then proceeded to tweet a bizarre statement mentioning a claim he made on the campaign trail about an American General in the Philippines during the early 1900’s dipping bullets in Pig’s blood before shooting 49 captured terrorists and sending the 50th back to report what had happened. Trump said it stopped terrorism for 35 years in his tweet. First of all, this piece of made up “history” has been debunked, and second of all, let me recount a bit of history to explain how truly atrocious and dehumanizing this urban legend is. When America invaded the Philippines, there were protests against it in America with supporters saying the invasion was cruel and unfair and supporters saying that we had to bring order and civilization to a “barbaric race,” in the words of a United States Senator at the time. The Muslims we were fighting against were the native Filipinos who were trying to protect their country. We were the terrorists. We put people into “reconcentration camps” and killed somewhere between 200,000 and a million civilians in a war that only killed 16000 Filipino soldiers. It is possible Trump’s story is true, except we weren’t killing terrorists, we were committing an atrocity against a country and race based on racist stereotypes. The answer to Islamic extremism is not to make the West seem barbaric or aggressive towards Islamism or people in general. Trump has been inadvertently helping ISIS recruit with his aggression and insulting speeches towards all Islam (and humanity) instead of violent Islam, even having been featured in ISIS recruitment video.

Refocusing on the attack, this is the ninth vehicle attack in Europe. Seven previous vehicle attacks were committed by ISIS affiliated attackers and one was committed by an extremist who drove into a group of people outside of mosque saying “I want to kill all Muslims.” There was also a vehicle attack on the home front in Charlottesville just this Saturday. White Supremacists had gathered for a rally protesting the taking down of a Robert E. Lee statue, their chants and messages couldn’t possibly be misconstrued as not hateful, with chants like “Jews will not replace us” as they held Hitler signs. Counter-protesters formed a line in front of them, refusing to let them pass. The protesters violently charged through them, and the two groups broke out into fighting. Luckily, police were there to disperse the two groups. While the governor of Charlottesville called it a state of emergency. Nobody had yet gotten killed or seriously injured and both groups were leaving. Then, a white nationalist drove a car into a group of counter-demonstrators, killing one and injuring nineteen. When the attack happened, the groups of protesters and counter-protesters had already split up, there was no violence or skirmishes going on between those groups at the time of the attack. In a statement after the attacks, our President refused to condemn the White Supremacists, even when asked direct questions about his view of them, instead, he blamed violence on “many sides.” Two days later, Trump claimed that he didn’t support the KKK or White Supremacist groups in a scripted speach, however, on Tuesday, he had undone the comments that he had made on Monday by going as far as defending the white supremacists. By any account, his statement of condemnation came too late and was too ambiguous. White Supremacists took his failure to condemn them as support, and it seemed a lot like support to everyone else as well.

As a nation, and as a world we are left with these facts; vehicles are easy to get and large groups of innocent people are easy to find. Having one group of crazy extremists inspired by ISIS to attack people was scary enough, but now because of the amount of xenophobia, fear and hate that has been caused by ISIS and how our countries have handled ISIS, anti-Muslim extremists and white supremacists are also attacking innocent people in their twisted war on people who are different.

There is no sign this is going to get any better. The leader of the KKK said of the attack in Charlottesville “we’re going to see more stuff like this happening at white-nationalist events.” He could absolutely be right. As more terrorist attacks happen, charged by different groups all of whom are growing and possibly becoming more violent, we need a leader who’s going to condemn all people who kill innocent civilians or attempt to whether they are White Supremacists, Muslim extremists or anti-Muslim extremists, without insulting any groups who did not kill innocent civilians. Unfortunately, Donald Trump has demonstrated how he is completely incapable of confronting many of his base supporters.

Who Shot Rep. Scalise?

Image: ABC 13

Just a few days ago, a gunman opened fire on a congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia. The gunman was soon identified by the FBI as James T. Hodgkinson, a sixty-six year-old from Illinois.

James T. Hodgkinson was a resident of Belleville, Illinois, and a very staunch Democrat. His Facebook page contained several critical posts of President Donald J. Trump. In one, Donald Trump was described as a “traitor” who “has destroyed our democracy.” The Facebook account’s banner had an image of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a notable candidate in the Democratic primaries of the 2016 presidential election. His profile picture had the American flag and said, “Democratic Socialism explained in 3 words: We the People.”

Michael Hodgkinson, the shooter’s brother, said in a phone interview to the New York Times, “I know he wasn’t happy with the way things were going, the election results and stuff.”

A man by the name of Charles Orear told The Washington Post that he met Hodgkinson when they worked together in Iowa on Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. He had described Hodgkinson as “very mellow, very reserved” and a “quiet guy.”

He was this union tradesman, pretty stocky, and we stayed up talking politics.

Former Mayor of Alexandria Bill Euille told the Washington Post he spoke to Hodgkinson almost every morning at the local YMCA which is so close to the baseball field where the shooting occurred that one of the bullets landed in the indoor pool.

He was a very nice person. [H]e sat in the Y’s lobby for hours and hours. Outside of myself, I don’t think he knew anyone else in town.

Hodgkinson owned a home inspection business in Belleville, Illinois, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. Hodgkinson was a licensed home inspector from 1994 to 1997, and also held a liscense from 2003 to 2016, but it was never renewed.

According to The Belleville News-Democrat:

Hodgkinson has a varied arrest record in St. Clair County, for offenses such as failing to obtain electrical permits, damaging a motor vehicle, resisting a peace officer, eluding police, criminal damage to property, driving under the influence and assorted traffic offenses.

According to The Daily Beast:

In 2006, he was arrested for domestic battery and discharge of a firearm after he punched a man’s girlfriend “in the face with a closed fist,” according to a police report reviewed by The Daily Beast. When the man walked outside of the residence, Hodgkinson aimed a shotgun at him and later fired one round.

Hodgkinson was also “observed throwing” an unidentified minor “around the bedroom,” the police report said. Police identified the girl as his daughter. After the girl broke free, Hodgkinson followed and “started hitting her arms, pulling her hair, and started grabbing her off the bed.”

When Hodgkinson’s girlfriend tried to leave in a vehicle, he reached inside and “turned off the ignition,” the report said. “James then pulled out a possible pocket knife and cut [her] seatbelt.”

The charges were dismissed, according to court records.

James T. Hodgkinson was a prolific writer who often submitted letters to his local newspaper for more than a decade.

After learning that Hodgkinson had volunteered on the Sanders campaign, Sen. Bernie Sanders publicly detested his actions and any acts of violance.

Let me be as clear as I can be. Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms. Real change can only come about through nonviolent action, and anything else runs against our most deeply held American values.

Barack Obama: “We were the change”

Image: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Last night, President Obama gave his farewell address in Chicago to a crowd of over 20,000 people. President Obama will leave office in nine days, and that change will be positive for some, and negative for others. Obama has stated, last night and at multiple other times, that the transfer of power to the next President can, and will, be a peaceful one. This election was seen as ‘different’ because you either ‘loved’ or ‘hated’ a candidate. The election turned out to be in Trump’s favor, and we all need to respect that, whether or not our views matched his because this election was a representation of our democracy.

“America is a better, stronger place than it was when we started.”

“Focus on the state of our democracy” was the main idea of Obama’s farewell address. Obama’s first topic was that we need to realize that “everyone has economic opportunity”. When he gave his first point, he was basically outlining the idea that no matter what race, gender, or sexuality you are, there is basically nothing stopping you from opening a business, presenting an idea, or putting yourself out there. Only we can remove the barriers that are preventing us from doing what we love to do, and sometimes we ourselves are the ones creating the barriers in the first place. In order to get the future we want, we must take risks in the process. As Obama said last night, for every two steps we take forward, we take one back. For women’s rights, this is extremely true because we are now able to vote and do many other things that men are able to do, we still have a very large gap in pay between men and women. The only way we can fix the problems we have is to go above our potential and make the changes ourselves and not wait for others to do so. Although we may have come very far within the past eight years, the “progress we’ve made is not enough.” We don’t have the right to complain about people being ‘lazy’ or an ‘ineffective citizen’ if we don’t give them the opportunities that they need in order to get back on their feet.

Obama’s second topic of the night was that we will never have a post-racial America. We have come farther than people back in the 1950’s would have ever thought we could come, but we’re not even close to where we need to be. Something Obama mentioned last night that interested me was that, in order to have large parts of the future workforce be able to do their job, we need to train them in order to do so. The racial diversity in the United States is noticeably growing, and by the time today’s kids are working, the people we consider ‘minorities’ now will be a majority of the population, therefore we need to look past race and give them the same opportunities that everybody else has. It may surprise many, but many people still want to have segregation be part of everyday life, including having separate housing and schools. A point that Obama brought up was that we need to keep the laws banning segregation and discrimination upheld, no matter the cost because there are people out there who are willing to do anything to have a separated America. The laws are not the only things that need to change; our hearts need to change as well, and if they do not change, we will be challenging what our founding fathers said regarding natural-born Americans. Do ‘minorities’ who were born as a natural citizen of the United States deserve the same rights as we do? Yes, they do. Many, many people are against Muslims entering our country because they think that they will be a threat. Back when the Italians, Irish, etc. entered our nation, people thought the same things about how they were going to ‘ruin our country.’ Obama mentioned that we are starting to only believe things that agree with our views, and we are not looking at what is actually going on around us. It’s almost like we block out information that we do not want to be true, and filter others so that we only hear what we want to hear. During these next four years, we need to come out of that ‘bubble’ and challenge ourselves.

“I reject discrimination against Muslim Americans, who are just as patriotic as we are.”

The third problem that Obama presented was that “politics are a battle of ideas.” With all of these biased news outlets, nobody knows what to believe anymore and that’s causing people to stay closed-minded and without a “common base of facts”. Without a common base of facts, we will be more separate than ever. Another extremely debatable political point that Obama made was that we have made much progress with the prevention and controlling of climate change, but many politicians think that there are bigger things to deal with first, politicians including Donald Trump, our future president. When the problem is denied, it betrays America. We can use the freedom that we have been granted by showing people the problem and making it known to everybody. We must act against the people who are saying that ‘minorities’ do not have the rights that everybody else has because they are trying to cause larger problems than there already are. Obama said, in his address last night, that we have to be “vigilant but not afraid”, which means that we must work with others to be able to gain the rights that we need.

Obama’s last topic of the night was that “our democracy is threatened when we take it for granted.” When we use our rights but do not give back to our people, we are, essentially, taking our democracy for granted. We should be looking for help in “rebuilding our democratic institution.” For example, if the issue of same-sex marriage is brought before the Supreme Court during Trump’s presidency, we need to remind the justices that marriage is a right and we should not be allowed to take that away from somebody. If Congress ends up making a decision that outrages many citizens of the U.S., the fault is entirely ours because we did not try hard enough to prevent them from passing the decision.

A topic that Obama mentioned was that the Constitution is just a piece of parchment with no power in itself unless we, the people, give it power. This is a great example of how nothing happens on its own, as our country would be in complete chaos right now if we did not have certain guidelines as to what we have rights to do. “Embrace the task that we’ve been given” is another point that Obama brought up last night. By embracing the task that we’ve been given, we can make America the greatest it can be and hopefully resolve many of the conflicts that have troubled our country. During his farewell address last night, President Obama mentioned that, if we are unhappy with our government officials, there is nothing stopping us from running ourselves. This is important because it shows where almost every politician started. At the end of his speech, Obama requested one thing from us all. His request was for all of us to believe in our ability to make changes, and those words will inspire many in the future. Many people will miss having Barack Obama as a President, but we are sure to have at least some good come from Trump’s presidency, as well as lessons learned.

Secret CIA Assessment Shows that Russia had Influenced our Election

Image: Inquisitr

For awhile now, before the eighth of November, we all heard the rumors about Russia attempting to influence our election. Do you remember that? Well, Intelligence Agencies have identified individuals connected to the Russian Government who provided WikiLeaks with the thousands of DNC emails, including those of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.

Officials have recognized these individuals as being part of a larger scheme to boost Trump’s chances and lower Hillary’s.

It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other: to help Trump get elected.

According to the Washington Post, Senators were briefed on these matters sometime around September, but Mitch McConnell had voiced doubts about the validity of the intelligence.The Trump transition team has declined to comment on this issue.

The Trump transition team has declined to comment on this issue, though since the rumor was first spread, Trump has repeatedly assured us that there was no Russian hacking in this election, even this week to TIME Magazine!

[The hacking] could be Russia, and it could be China, and it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.

Though the CIA has proven that these individuals were responsible for hacking the DNC emails, questions are still left unanswered. The intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence pointing to officials in the Kremlin directing these hackers to pass the emails to WikiLeaks. According to the officials that spoke with the Washington Post, rather than government employees,  the individuals were “one step” removed from the Russian government. The deniability is still plausible because Russia has used operative middlemen for intelligence operations in the past.

The Obama Administration has been debating for months on how they should respond to the alleged Russian hacking because many officials were concerned about creating tension in Moscow and/or being accused of attempting to help Hillary Clinton.

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Time Magazine’s Person of the Year

Image: Today

Donald Trump has finally been named TIME’s Person of the Year. “It is a great honor,” said the President-Elect on the Today Show this morning.

It means a lot, especially me growing up reading TIME magazine, and it’s a very important magazine, and I’ve been lucky enough to be on the cover many times this year — and last year. But I consider this a very, very great honor.

Since his announcement of candidacy, he has been on the cover of many, many magazines. He has always had an obsession with putting his face on the cover of magazines, and so this only makes him feel even better about himself. Actually, Trump keeps all of the said magazines in his office and frequently jokes about them saying that he does not have time to read them all because there are so many. He has even referred to himself as a “supermodel, except like, times ten.”

Last year, when TIME announced Angela Merkel as their Person of the Year, Trump was openly disturbed that he was not the winner. TIME Magazine responded by saying throughout their entire existence, they have never chosen a presidential candidate as their Person of the Year, and if he won (he did), he would have a much greater chance of becoming the Person of the Year.

I was on their cover four, five weeks ago. They should have picked me for the ‘Person of the Year,’ but they didn’t. No, they should have.

Trump, at a Rally in Arizona, his first rally since the announcement from TIME in 2015, could not help but go on a rant about the magazine and their choice. You could see in what he says that was affected by the result.

I said I’m never going to get it because I’m not establishment. But every panel that I saw on television when TIME was — because, you know, it’s sort of cool, even though the magazine’s going down the tubes. No, it’s a cool thing. Most magazines are going down, in all fairness to them. It’s great, isn’t it? To watch these guys go down the tubes? Isn’t it great? I love it.

Trump had used his ‘political revolution’ as a reason he deserved the title and related this bad decision to the one that he believes the Emmys made when they did not give the award to The Apprentice.

It’s just like ‘The Apprentice.’ For the first three seasons, I should have gotten the Emmy for the Apprentice. Got the No. 1, got tremendous ratings. It was the hottest thing, and they picked these shows that were establishment — ‘Amazing Race.’ You fall asleep watching it. Okay? It’s not a race; it’s a sleeping contest. Because I’m not establishment in Hollywood, I’m not establishment politically, so Time magazine picked a woman who is destroying Germany. She let the migration come right into Germany. She’s destroying Germany.

While he expressed much joy in receiving the recognition this year, he was not a big fan of some of the wording on their cover where it said, “President of the Divided States of America.”

Since then, becoming the Person of the Year was Trump’s personal Holy Grail.

I guess this is great because it gives him something new about which he can boast.