Grand Old Party vs. Occupiers

First off I would like to congratulate you for picking an article with an important point of view. The point of view featured in the editorial you critiqued definitely takes an interesting twist on who to blame for all the economic trouble the common people have. Since a lot of homeless and weird hippies have shown up to the “Occupy Wall Street”, the movement has been downplayed by the media to the public. It has been thought of s another failed ideology, which is not true as emphasized by the article explaining that there are just people “who just think the deck is stacked against them” and think there is something that must be done about it, hence why the movement started.

For the length of the article you decided to critique on your editorial was too short. The length of your editorial cannot cover the entire article well. You also seemed to not have focused on a specific area, which would then allow for a shorter editorial, until the end of your editorial. Even then it seemed rush. The quotes were crammed and not explained. A rule of thumb that could help out would be that for every quote there must be at least 3 sentences that precede the quote, explaining why the quote was chosen. I am specifically talking about the last sentence which is a quote. It’s a nice quote to end with because it does leave the reader thinking, which is the purpose of an editorial, but there is no explication why the quote is chosen. Therefore leaving the quote by itself makes the writer look immature as though they lost train of thought of what they were going to write about and decided to insert a random quote to cover it up. Also on that last paragraph I saw different ideas that could have amounted to at least another paragraph. You could’ve taken “"The point is that we…” to “…..regulation and policies” and made it its own paragraph. Adding length to the editorial by giving examples of when the “little man” gets run over by the regulations and policies while the wealthy don’t.

On middle paragraph when you write about the writer and why the article is legitimate, it could have been narrowed to no more than three sentences since it’s not relevant to the topic at hand. Instead of using a whole paragraph to explain why this article is legitimate, the space could have been used to write a short summary about what the article is about. To which the reader would appreciate, because when I first started reading the article I did not understand what you were trying to say until I read the article itself. Then you could have tied it in to why it’s a relevant article, when the author says that a republican should take stance and control the situation, since it contains some insight on how the public is starting to view the Grand Old Party.

Lastly, I enjoyed your opening paragraph. It shows intellectual curiosity about a relevant issue and why a person reads what it reads based on interest such as “what an occupier is”. The article definitely gave me a different opinion on what I was beginning to think about “Occupy Wall Street” and who to “blame”.

What Now Obama?

Once again the political debate left a lot of people wondering who will be the Republican Candidate to take lead against Barack Obama in the upcoming elections. The remaining eight candidates (Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum) all stood firm during the South CarolinaPresidential debate sponsored by CBS, the National Journal and the Republican Party of South Carolina. From the beginning, candidates such as Jon Huntsman and Herman Cain wrestled for time against the mediators, who enforced the time limit strictly. The candidates longed for those extra seconds that could have them achieve the highest form of approval; the wave of applause by the public. Unfortunately there were times when the candidate’s extended responses caused tension between the mediator and the candidate, making the candidate appear childish to the public.

The main topic of the night was foreign policy and national security. It was emphasized from the beginning by the mediators that when the president assumes power it will be expected and demanded that he or she is able to make drastic decisions in a short amount of time. For most of the debate candidates spoke of reasonable answers that they would implement if they became president until the mediator asked what their stance on torture was, more specifically water boarding. On this question all hell broke loose, as the alliances that the candidates had formed, enforcing each other’s theoretical policies were broken; it became Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman vs. Michelle Bachmann and Herman Cain. The group of republicans was divided on the issue of “should torture be legal”. Herman Cain played around with the subject, calling it an “enhanced interrogation technique” instead of torture, saying it was vital way to get the truth. Cain teamed up with Michele Bachmann who agreed with Cain that torture should still be implemented since it was very effective against terrorists on previous years. She explained that “we have no jail for terrorists” and if torture is not used, is as “if we have decided to loose in the war on terror under president Obama”. Those words struck the public who eagerly applauded to finally hear Bachmann speak defiantly in the debate.

Then Ron Paul entered the debate. At first he shyly stood as he said “torture is illegal by our laws and international law”, then gained height as he continued stating that not only is water boarding “immoral and impractical” its “un-American”, the ending he needed to get the audience up and cheering. Michelle Bachmann quickly tried to add in a side comment in her defense but was shot down by the mediator who sensing a victory for Ron Paul, introduced Jon Huntsman who had yet to speak in the debate. He started off with a personal anecdote about his two boys who serve in the Army and all they want to do is “protect” the American values. As an ambassador he saw that “we should not torture we dilute ourselves down”, implying that the United States has an international image to keep up, which a “lot of people in corners of this world still look up to”, a point of view that most of the public agreed with hence the loud cheers that erupted. Even with their divided views on certain topics all Republican candidates agreed with Newt Gingrich statement that “Every single one of us is better than Barack Obama “

                It’s unfortunate to say, but some candidates took the floor more often than others, leaving some candidates on the dark while having other’s outshine them.  The next republican debate will be broadcasted Nov.22 which hopefully will allow those candidates that didn’t shine their turn at the spot light. 

Blog 6- Alabama has issues

The subject of Immigration is more often than not a good topic for discussion since it’s a topic with no right or wrong answer. The Alabama Immigration law unconstitutional by Mieroux had a good topic but I saw no critique. It appeared to have more information than opinion, which is the sole purpose of an editorial. The paragraph he wrote would be a good fit for the “breaking news” of a news paper, short and sweet brief glance over the immigration issue in Alabama. The editorial could have elaborated more on how the law has “affected many farmers who have lost many Hispanic workers” and perhaps added in a story of why the Hispanic workers are a “vital part to harvesting crops”, same with the public school issue. this not only would strengthen the editorial, but enlarge it as well since it appeared to be a bit short.  Perhaps a way to remember how to write a good editorial is “inform, promote, praise and entertain”. An easy way to websites relating to the article without having to MLA every website would be to “link” the websites, which is an option in the “new post” section. This also serves as a good tool for the reader because they can go back to the websites the article focused on and get a further understanding of the subject at hand.