Curfew's for guests

As a military brat, when I heard that a woman had been raped by two men in Okinawa that just so happened to be service members, my blood boiled. I have a family member serving on the base in question, and called him right away, wanting to know what was going to be done to correct this... mistake. He couldn't tell me anything, but this article gave me the information I wanted to know.

The actions of the General are the ones that should have been committed. After hearing of the charges and the attack, a curfew has now been enacted on all military personal in Okinawa, from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., until further notice. This will ease the minds of the citizenry, and quell the out pour of anger directed at the U.S. military. There have been other attacks in Okinawa, with the most notable being the one from 1995, as the article notes, "a gang rape of a school girl by 3 service personnel", and as such, the population are justifiably upset. The article goes on to point out that Okinawa has felt the presence of the United States Military unfairly heavy since the end of World War II--the base there has more than half of all the service members in the country present. Citizen's of the cities near the base claim the base is a source of crime, according to the article.

This was, to be blunt, a blight on the honor of those who serve our country. The relationship of the United States in that area was already a tenuous one, at best, and these two men have fractured it even more. When you wear your uniform, you represent us, and as one raised around combat boots and fatigues am sorely disappointed in these men. Military members are held to higher standard, and as such, you are a model of sorts for your country and what your country stands for. When people enter the service, they are told to behave a certain way, and to always abide by the honor code. There was no such abiding happening here, and as such, even I, as a child of two service members from a family that has a long history of being all of the branches of this countries military, felt the need to apologize.

State of Federal Government

The United States government is an interesting thing. From our very founding, we have been nothing short of liquid, always changing and moving and redefining our Union and what role we want our government to play. From the Founding Fathers, to current day, the country has gone through more face lifts than any Hollywood starlet could dream of, and yet, we still keep plodding along. When the country was first founded, the Fathers originally wanted very little government interference on the common man—they, however, soon learned that a strong, and larger than they would like, central Federal Government was necessary to hold the colonies together; otherwise, we’d be a series of countries rather than states in a whole. Since then we have been expanding the role of the Federal government in our lives. Using to increase our standard of living, reign in corrupt business practices, and helping the poor get a leg up in a hard world that works against them at seemingly every turn. That was, until the eighties, when devolution of the Federal Government started—where we began to put less emphasis on individual and wellness programs, and more on our bottom line.

Most people are citing the will of the Founding Fathers for the reason of this deregulation of business, and defunding of social programs. I think, however, that is erroneous. The thirteen colonies and their inhabitants wouldn’t know what today looks like, couldn’t have, and wouldn’t be able to comprehend the sheer scale of commerce and trade—as well as connection—that we as a country have with the rest of the world. They also wouldn’t be able to understand how many people live here, and just how many no longer do farming work or artisan trade. To compare this current United States of America to the original thirteen, is foolish at best. We have taken the outline of our Fathers and furthered it, expanded it, turned this country into one so great that merely the speculation of our actions affects every other country on the face of the planet. We have had to adjust and adapt to a changing world, and to go, for lack of a better term, backwards seems contradictory. We shouldn’t try to cement ourselves, as we have never been a thing of unchanging stone, but instead, stay flexible, and fluid, and ever progressing.  

We shouldn't whittle the Federal Government away until there is nothing left. What will happen to our public schools? A national standard has been in place since the sixties, but there has been calls to let states decide how to educate their children. This is a bad idea, as soon you will not have a universal knowledge among the public and our future generations will suffer. This applies to businesses as well. The Great Depression was caused, not only by the invention of credit, but also businesses speculating and having increasing control over the nations wealth. The New Deal and the presidents of the time put in regulations to assure that this would never happen again. As soon as we started to take those regulations away, we slip into the Great Recession, and now are struggling to recover. We need a strong Federal Government for the benefit of our people. 

The Debate heard around the Party lines

After the Presidential debate two days ago, both sides are left with some new questions. Just who won the debate? Can it even be called one, as there are other runners from other parties that weren't invited? What went wrong, where, and for who? According to this Washington Post article Romney was the obvious winner--and while I do agree there to an extent, he goes beyond the mere stating of who won. He asserts that President Obama failed because he sees himself as a king, and that he has been avoiding people questioning for the past four years. His demographic is obviously Republican's, specifically the GOP, and possibly wanting to sway the few independents that still don't know who they want to vote for--if they want to vote at all. The author goes on to support his statement by stating the he hasn't held a press conference at the White House since March--which is hard to do when campaigning to be reelected.

The writers tone is very combative. He comes out swinging right out of the gate, and sets people who are Obama supporters away from his article, or those independents who are tired of the mudslinging and the vitriol that has been coming from both sides. Though I do agree that Romney did do a better job at the debate, that isn't because of the reasons the writer is stating-that Obama looking down, seeming reserved, and not matching Romney's energy. He fails to address the many lies that Romney told during the debate, that the presidential candidate would cut funding to PBS, and the tape released a few weeks back saying that the candidate wasn't concerned with nearly half of the United States population. He even goes on to assume what the President was thinking, saying "a sense that it was beneath him". If this was a piece trying to inform or sway people, as it was obviously attempting, it failed to do so spectacularly.