Euchre

Tonight is the night where a couple of friends and I will be entered into a euchre tournament at the student center. For all those who do not know what euchre is, it is a card game played with only twenty-four cards, the Nine through Ace in each suit. It's difficult to explain through writing so to learn, one would have to watch and play. Euchre is my favorite card game, there is no other game I would rather play more. There are many types of euchre and my favorite is bid euchre, but to understand that, one would have to learn regular euchre first, which is what I am playing tonight. I don't know how many people will be participating in this tournament, but the winner moves on to state, so hopefully I win, but I don't know if I would want to move to state. Only time will tell.

Presentation

Today my group did our presentation. It was over drugs and how, if legalized, can be beneficial for the government and the economy. The group met a couple times to work on the project before the presentation, so I think that helped in making the presentation run a little smoother. It wasn't the best, but I think we did alright as a group who didn't know much about the drug laws and such. I think, depending on how she grades, we could probably receive a B over all of it. The pamphlet and radio broadcast helped out with the presentation a lot. I think it went well.

Group Progress

Today in group, we decided to edit the pamphlet that we are presenting. The pamphlet is suppose to be more for the older generations of people and it will tell them the advantages and disadvantages of legalizing drugs. The point of legalizing is not for the use of it to be abused, but more for the use of it to be an economy booster. We plan on re-designing the pamphlet so that the older generations can appreciate it more and will actually plan on reading it once they get it and not just throw it away. Legalizing drugs is for the benefit of America.

The Break Of The Past

As we all know, school has started up again, since Thanksgiving break is over with now. But what is even more depressing is that the break came and went, way too fast. Most people had break from Wednesday November 25 to Sunday November 29. But I, on the other hand, had a much longer break, in fact my break was about double that of most peoples' breaks. My official last day of classes was Friday November 20. I left around one o'clock right after my Biology Lab. I was able to do this, with no regret about missing class, because I had no class, and I will tell you why. As you may remember, I once wrote about me not having class on Monday, so that is still in affect. But the real question is how I was able to leave Tuesday, and that is because the Friday class that was suppose to be made up on that day was already made up. See, my Friday class is Biology Lab and that is the only class I have on Friday. Way back when Fall Break came around, my Lab instructor decided to make up that lab the day before Fall break, that Thursday. It just didn't make any sense to make up the lab weeks down the road because by then, biology class would be way past that material and far into other material. That is why my break was so long, not only that but today was my first day of class since November 20, because,as I said before, I have no class on Mondays.

Pamphlet Work

My job is to put together a pamphlet about how crime is related to drug use and the fact that if drugs were legalized, then no one would have to steal money for the drugs in order to pay back a debt so that person can keep his or her life. I found a statistic that said, "Someone is arrested for violating a drug law every 17 seconds." (http://war-on-drugs.suite101.com/article.cfm/financial_cost_of_the_war_on_drugs/) People don't realize how much violence there is in this world because of people fighting over drugs. If drugs were allowed, then people would not have to hide and steal the drugs.

Group Work

Yesterday Drew and I started working on our project. We are using a pamphlet in order to show everyone our topic and to show our point of view. The topic is about drugs and how, if legalized, can benefit the economy in many ways. There would be less crime and there would be more money for the government, because the government would control the buying and selling of drugs and make money off of it. And in return, the money gained could be put back into the economy to give it a little boost. Our proposal is not just so people can get high and enjoy life, but its for the safety and future of this country and others.

Movie Quotes

NAME THAT MOVIE

1. "I haven't cried like that since Titanic."

2. Lou: [Lou hits Tyler in the face] Do you hear me now?
Tyler Durden: No, I didn't quite catch that, Lou.
[Lou hits Tyler again]
Tyler Durden: Still not getting it.
[Lou hits Tyler a few more times]
Tyler Durden: Ok, I got it. Shit, I lost it.
[Lou continues to beat up Tyler]

3. Phil Wenneck: Whose baby is that?
Stu Price: Alan, are you sure you didn't see anyone else in the suite?
Alan Garner: Yeah, I checked all the rooms... no one's there.
Check its collar or something.

4. Jules: Whether or not what we experienced was an According to Hoyle miracle is insignificant. What is significant is that I felt the touch of God. God got involved.

1. Pulp Fiction
2. The Hangover
3. Zombieland
4. Fight Club


TELL ME WHICH QUOTES GO WITH WHICH MOVIE.

IROBOT ROOMBA

This past weekend I went to Indianapolis to hang with friends. On Saturday, I went to Circle Center Mall. Now if you have never been to Circle Center Mall, it is a huge mall. It has, I think three or four floors, and for all you girls, the majority are clothing stores.

As I was walking around the mall, I found a kiosk with the automatic floor vacuums. These automatic floor vacuums are called IROBOTs and are just a circular object about a foot in diameter. The best part of these IROBOTs is that, at least the one I have, it has a docking station where it charges, and then when its fully charged, it goes and sweeps the whole floor. Then once the battery is almost dead, it automatically retreats back to the docking station to charge.

Now, I didn't get it for me, I got it for my mom. Since I left for school, she hasn't had time to vacuum as much as she has wanted to, so now she won't have to worry about it at all. I bought it as a Christmas present for her, but she will be receiving it earlier. I hope she likes it!

Sorcery In The Congo

Sorcery In The Congo
Life in the Democratic Republic of Congo is one that very few people should ever have to be faced with. Children are treated the worst. They are thrown from their homes and abandoned by their families because society calls them witches. If a child is accused of witchcraft, he or she must either be forced onto the streets or must undergo an exorcism. Many children who are forced into such situations are beaten and/or murdered. This mainly happens to children who come from impoverished families. Every day, Congolese children are being accused of some sort of witchcraft or sorcery: this is not just hurting the lives of the children, but it is also hurting the overall society of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

There are more than 40,000 children living on the streets, of whom more than 80% were actually abandoned by their families because they were accused of witchcraft (“Sad Little Sorcerers”). Children are being accused of sorcery because an unexpected event may take place somewhere in the community. The adults in the community have no one else to blame, and they will not blame themselves, therefore they blame the children. Unexpected death or disease in the family is often taken as evidence of child necromancy, or a child using some sort of magic. One story tells of how there were two twin boys whose grandfather fell ill after his business failed, and then five of boys’ uncles died. Soon after that, the boys’ mother became a prostitute and disappeared. No one could explain why all of this happened, so the grandfather pointed at the children and accused them of witchcraft, which in turn, forced them to beg and steal out on the streets (“Sad Little Sorcerers”).

Test Scores and Knowledge

November 4, 2009, 4:31 pm
Obama Uses Malia’s Test Scores as a Teaching Example
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg The New York Times

MADISON, Wisconsin – President Obama marked the first anniversary of his election on Wednesday by calling on states to toughen their education standards – and wound up calling on parents to toughen theirs, too, as he confessed that his 11-year-old daughter, Malia, recently got a 73 on her science test.

(Note to parents: In Malia’s defense, the story has a happy ending: she studied hard and came home on Tuesday with a grade of 95.)

Mr. Obama campaigned for the White House on a promise of revamping “No Child Left Behind,’ the signature education law put in place by his predecessor, George W. Bush. He came to Wisconsin to promote his own education agenda, including “Race to the Top,’’ – a $4.35 billion grant program that requires states to compete for education money.

To be eligible for the money, states like Wisconsin, which currently have so-called firewall laws, will have to repeal them. The Wisconsin legislature is considering doing so.

“I know that in the past people are concerned, ‘Are we going to have our young people being taught to the test? That’s the last thing we want” Mr. Obama said, speaking to an audience of parents, teachers and students at a middle school here. “What we want to do is try and get testing right. I’s not about more tests, it’s about being smarter about our assessments.’’


But toward the end of his speech, Mr. Obama diverted from his prepared text to talk about his daughter’s experience in school – a rarity for a president who has tried his best to keep his children’s lives a private matter.

“Malia and Sasha are just wonderful kids ,and Michelle is a wonderful mother,’’ Mr. Obama said. “But even in our own household, with all the privileges and opportunities we have there are times when the kids slack off. There are times when they would rather be watching TV or playing a computer game than hitting the books.’’

Then, to a chorus of oooohs from the crowd, he said that Malia, a sixth-grader at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, had come home with a 73 on her science test not long ago. He recounted how, a few years ago, she had come home with a grade in the 80s, believing that she had ‘’done pretty well.’’ He and his wife corrected her, telling her that their goal was “90 percent and up.’’

“So here’s the interesting thing: she started internalizing that,’’ the president said, adding that when she came home with a 73 on the science test ‘’she was depressed.’’ He asked her what happened, and she said the study guide didn’t match up with the test. So she vowed to study harder.

“So she came home yesterday, she got a 95,’’ Mr. Obama said. “But here’ the point: She said, ‘You know , I just like having knowledge.’’

The moral of the story, in the president’s view: “Don’t just expect teachers to set a high bar. You’ve got to set a high bar.”

Analysis Paper

This is the opening paragraph in my Analysis paper that was just turned in.
Tell me what you think

The Commodores were an American funk and soul band during the 1970’s and 1980’s. They had a falling out when the lead singer, Lionel Richie, left the group to pursue a solo career in 1982, and for a few years after that, they could not make a hit song to save their lives until two sudden events happened in 1984. On January 21 and April 1, 1984, two great soul legends died. Their names were Jackie Wilson and Marvin Gaye. Both singers were loved by all, including The Commodores. The Commodores wanted to pay a tribute to Jackie Wilson and Marvin Gaye by using allusions to their own songs and telling of how the two great artists would bring their own style of singing into it: The Commodores song was called, “Night Shift.”

Back To Rome

October 20, 2009
Peter J. Boyer: Back to Rome- The New Yorker

A few years ago, when an Episcopal priest told me that many of his fellow churchmen planned to “retire and go to Rome,” I rather stupidly imagined a sunny scene of pensioner clerics sipping espressos on the Via Veneto. I soon learned that by “going to Rome,” disillusioned Anglicans meant reversing the course set by Henry VIII and reconciling with the Roman Catholic Church.

There may soon be quite a few Anglicans “crossing the Tiber” (to employ another term describing Catholic conversion), after the Vatican’s announcement that Pope Benedict XVI has created a special means allowing Anglicans to convert to the Roman Catholic Church while maintaining much of their own worship tradition. The Pope’s creation of a new structure within the Church to accommodate disaffected Anglicans apparently surprised Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury (and the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion), who, the Daily Telegraph reports, was only fully briefed on the move yesterday.

The Pope’s action was not a complete surprise, though, to those who have followed the long, slow fracturing of the Anglican Communion over such matters as the ordination of women and, more recently, of gays in some Anglican churches.

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, where authority resides in the Pope, the nearly eighty million Anglicans in the worldwide Communion acknowledge no official “head” of the church. Indeed, there really is no single, authoritative Church at all, but, rather, an association of churches—such as the Episcopal Church in the United States—of which the Archbishop of Canterbury is the symbolic leader. This loose structure reflects the congenital Anglican impulse, dating back to Elizabeth I, to find a middle way between Roman Catholicism and reform Protestantism. Sometimes, it presents a management problem, as when the Episcopal Church confirmed the 2003 election of Gene Robinson, an openly gay priest, as a bishop. (I wrote about the election of Robinson and the rift it caused in the April 17, 2006, issue of the magazine.) Robinson’s election excited revolt among traditionalists in the Western churches, and fierce opposition from Anglican leaders in Africa, where the church is rapidly growing.

Some American parishes left the Episcopal Church and aligned with the Africans, but, after years of conferences and committee studies, there is nothing approaching resolution to the central issues dividing the Communion. That is partly why many traditionalist Anglicans found themselves longing for the authority, and relative clarity, of Rome. “I’m very sympathetic to people who say, ‘Golly, I’d rather have a Benedict XVI,” one Episcopal priest told me.

The Nobel Peace Prize

Nobel Surprise
by Hendrik Hertzberg
October 19, 2009 The New Yorker

If President Obama really had to get a gift postmarked Scandinavia this month, he would probably, on the whole, have preferred the Olympics. At least at the Olympics the judges wait till after the race to give you the gold medal. They don’t force it on you while you’re still waiting for the bus to take you to the stadium. They don’t give it to you in anticipation of possible future feats of glory, like a signing bonus or an athletic scholarship. They don’t award it as a form of gentle encouragement, like a parent calling “Good job!” to a toddler who’s made it to the top rung of the monkey bars. It’s not a plastic, made-in-China “participation” trophy handed out to everyone in the class as part of a program to boost self-esteem. It’s not a door prize or a goody bag or a bowl of V.I.P. fruit courtesy of the hotel management. It’s not a gold star. It’s a gold medal.

We can take it as a sign of what a lucky fellow our President is that winning the Nobel Peace Prize has been widely counted a bad break for him. Barack Obama has come very far very fast. Five years ago, not long after finishing a distant second for a Chicago congressional nomination, he was still one of the hundred and seventy-seven members of the Illinois state legislature. Four years ago, he took his seat in the United States Senate, ushered there not only by his own undoubted talents but also by the serial self-destruction of his opponents. One year ago, he won the Presidency with a margin of victory—nine and a half million votes—that was the largest since 1984; absent the tailwind provided by his predecessor’s abysmal record, however, that margin would have been far smaller, possibly even nonexistent. He is certainly one of fortune’s favorites. He came into office on a tide of euphoria. Lately, though, his supporters have been experiencing a vague sense of disappointment. He may have saved the world from a second Great Depression and all that, but the jobless rate keeps on climbing, the planet keeps on heating up, Guantánamo keeps on not getting closed, and roadside bombs keep on exploding. He’s had eight whole months, and he still hasn’t signed a comprehensive health-care bill. Given that his perceived political problem is exaggerated expectations, does he really need a Nobel Peace Prize before he has actually made any peace?

The award to Obama illustrates, among other things, the difference between the “hard” and the “soft” Nobels. The prizes for physics, chemistry, and medicine are never given for trying, only for succeeding. Also, there is no apparent attempt to achieve regional, national, or ethnic balance. The same cannot be said of the literature prize, which frequently goes to authors who write in languages that few if any of the judges—eighteen grandees of the Swedish Academy—can read. Anyhow, literature is a matter of taste, which is why, among American writers, Pearl S. Buck was deemed worthy of the honor while Henry James was not. (The roster of literary losers, A to Z, also includes Auden, Borges, Conrad, Joyce, Kafka, Nabokov, Proust, Tolstoy, Twain, and Zola.) As for the relatively new economics prize (full name: the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel), it is neither hard nor soft, just kind of mushy—a Golden Globe, not an Oscar.

The peace prize, first given in 1901, has always been the trickiest of the lot. For the first fifty years or so the judges, a five-member committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament, almost always honored a person or an organization devoted to working, in the words of Alfred Nobel’s will, “for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”—a formula that excluded, for example, Mohandas Gandhi. After the Second World War, the judges’ definition of peace grew more capacious, producing laureates like Martin Luther King, Jr., Aung San Suu Kyi, and the Dalai Lama. But the choice has always been, as a former chairman of the judging committee wrote in 2001, “to put it bluntly, a political act.”

The chairman of the Republican National Committee would agree. He quickly fired off a fund-raising e-mail headed “Nobel Peace Prize for Awesomeness,” calling the choice proof that “the Democrats and their international leftist allies want America made subservient to the agenda of global redistribution and control.” A trifle overwrought? Perhaps. Still, to be fair to the chairman, there’s little doubt that for eight years the most prominent figure hovering over the Nobel committee’s deliberations was not any of the nominees under consideration; it was George W. Bush. Jimmy Carter richly deserved his belated prize—he is as responsible as were Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin for the thirty years’ peace between Israel and Egypt—and Al Gore, who sounded the tocsin on climate change, deserved his. But in neither case did the judges try very hard to hide their satisfaction in delivering a rebuke to Bush. This time their message was one of relief—and of hope and confidence, not just in Obama himself but in a United States that has reëmbraced, as the prize announcement put it, “that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world’s leading spokesman.”

A few hours after the news from Oslo, Obama, looking a little abashed, even a little uncomfortable, stepped up to a portable podium in the Rose Garden and spoke of the honor that had come to him so soon—too soon, even many of his admirers admit—and so unexpectedly. “Let me be clear,” he said, and went on, first acknowledging the obvious:


"To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize—men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace. But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women and all Americans want to build, a world that gives life to the promise of our founding documents. And I know that throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it’s also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the twenty-first century."

After a few more sombre words, he turned and walked back into the West Wing, there to attend another in a series of meetings on the strategy that he soon must set for the war in Afghanistan. The prize is won, but the peace, as always, is elusive.

Children and Exorcisms

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, exorcisms are running rampant. Whenever a child is accused of witchcraft, he or she is immediately either thrown out of the house or taken to a pastor. If the child is taken to a pastor, he will perform an exorcism. These exorcisms are not cheap. This is seen more in poverty-stricken parts, which is all over Congo, where the average person makes one hundred dollars a year in Congo. These exorcisms cost fifty dollars, half a yearly salary. It's a very lucrative business for the pastor. There was one incident in which the pastor held down a little girl's arms and legs, poured hot candle wax on her, and then bit her stomach hard and pulled up just stretching her skin and acting as if he was pulling demonic flesh out of her. Then he said she was cured.

Harris is a reporter and anchor for ABC News. His report on children accused of witchcraft in Africa will air tonight on Nightline on ABC at 11:35 ET.

(c) USA TODAY, 2009
(Dan, Harris "Children forced into exorcisms." USA Today n.d.: Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 13 Oct. 2009.)

The Loss Of All Innocence

A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah

This is what I think the saddest part of the book is....

"...I heard Josiah scream. He cried for his mother in the most painfully piercing voice that I had ever heard. It vibrated inside my head to the point that I felt my brain had shaken loose from its anchor….I searched for Josiah. An RPG had tossed his tiny body off the ground and he had landed on a tree stump. He wiggled his legs as his cry gradually came to an end. There was blood everywhere. It seemed as if bullets were falling into the forest from all angles. I crawled to Josiah and looked into his eyes. There were tears in them and his lips were shaking, but he could not speak. As I watched him, the water in his eyes was replaced with blood that quickly turned his brown eyes into red. He reached for my shoulder as if he wanted to hold it and pull himself up. But midway, he stopped moving. The gunshots faded in my head, and it was as if my heart had stopped and the whole world had come to a standstill. I covered his eyes with my fingers and pulled him from the tree stump. His backbone had been shattered. I placed him flat on the ground and picked up my gun. I did not realize that I had stood up to take Josiah off the tree stump…..my deafness disappeared….I turned towards the swamp, where there were gunmen running, trying to cross over. My face, my hands, my shirt and gun were covered with blood. I raised my gun and pulled the trigger, and I killed a man…..I angrily pointed my gun into the swamp and killed more people. I shot everything that moved, until we were ordered to retreat because we needed strategy (ALWG 118-119)."

Financial Planning

Inconspicuous Consumption

by James Surowiecki
October 12, 2009 The New Yorker

For all the uncertainty about the current state of the economy, everyone is sure of one thing: this recession has permanently remade American consumers, turning them from spendthrifts into tightwads. From cover stories on “The New Frugality” to stories about cheapness as a new status symbol and pundits’ repeated analogies to the lessons inculcated by the Great Depression, the message is the same: there has been a fundamental change in American consumer behavior, one that will endure after the recession ends, returning us, as one economist put it, to “the days of ‘Leave It to Beaver.

The assumption that consumers have fundamentally changed is understandable. Personal spending is down sharply from 2007, while the national savings rate, which dipped below zero a few years ago, went above six per cent earlier this year. But although analysts point to the numbers as proof of a new mind-set, you don’t need psychology to explain what’s happened: simply put, Americans have been spending less because they have less money to spend. After all, in the past two years, nearly seven million jobs have been lost and wage growth for people who have kept their jobs has been anemic. At the same time, the housing crash and the stock-market meltdown erased, conservatively speaking, about thirteen trillion dollars in household wealth. Given the well-known wealth effect—people’s tendency to spend more when they get richer, and vice versa—that alone would translate into an expected drop in personal spending of between five hundred and seven hundred billion dollars.

In fact, you could argue that consumption has actually fallen less than might have been expected. Spending did drop off the proverbial cliff in the fall of 2008, in the direst phase of the financial crisis, but it stabilized at the beginning of this year, and has now risen for four months in a row. And much of the decrease in consumption since early 2008 can be traced to a drop in spending in just two categories: gasoline (thanks to lower prices) and cars. The decline in new-car purchases has been so steep that the average life of a car on the road today is at a historic high. This is just one example of how better product quality makes it possible for consumers to cut back without experiencing much decline in their standard of living. We can delay buying a new car because the one we have can be driven hundreds of thousands of miles without problems—making the auto industry a victim of its own success. Nonetheless, the response to the Cash for Clunkers program indicates a certain amount of pent-up demand out there.

Of course, none of this precludes the possibility that our frugal ways will endure even after the economy starts to recover. But there are reasons to be skeptical. Recessions regularly give rise to assertions that consumers will begin spending more responsibly. Toward the end of the 1990-91 recession, for instance, Fortune reported forecasts of the “death of conspicuous consumption.” Time ran a cover story on the return to the simple life, arguing that “after a 10-year bender of gaudy dreams and godless consumerism, Americans are starting to trade down.” Consumer-behavior experts predicted that people would be more frugal in the nineties, and consumers themselves said they planned to cut back on spending. It didn’t happen. A decade later, the bursting of the Internet bubble and the impact of 9/11 led many to predict that Americans would consume less—and we all know how that panned out.

This is a far more severe and traumatic recession—the worst downturn since the Great Depression. So, just as the Depression, as the Times put it, “imbued American life with an enduring spirit of thrift,” won’t this recession make Americans thrifty again? Maybe. But the current downturn, bad as it has been, is nothing like the Depression, which lasted a decade and saw unemployment hit twenty-five per cent. What’s more, the notion that the Depression turned Americans into tightwads is largely a myth. In fact, it was after the Second World War that America really came into its own as a consumer society. In the five years after the war ended, purchases of household furnishings and appliances climbed two hundred and forty per cent, while between 1940 and 1960 the rate of homeownership rose by almost fifty per cent. If the Depression didn’t make Americans wary of the pleasures of consumption, it’s unlikely that this downturn will.

This doesn’t mean that we’re going back to the days when the average American saved not a penny of his paycheck. As people try to rebuild their nest eggs, the savings rate is bound to remain higher than it was a few years ago. And what we spend our money on will change, too; housing costs, which were the central cause of the rise in Americans’ indebtedness in recent years, should eat up less of our budgets in the future. But the evidence for a radical shift in the way we consume seems more like the product of wishful thinking (there’s a palpable longing among pundits for Americans to become more frugal) than anything else. In many categories, spending has dropped only slightly, if at all. And, while these are very tough times for retailers who believed that spending could only go up, retail sales rose briskly in August. Before we go proclaiming this the age of the American tightwad, a little perspective is in order. Even after the worst recession of the past seventy years, retail sales this year will be about where they were in 2005. Does anyone really think that four years ago Americans were misers?

Wanna Play A Game?

Rate these movies in order of highest to lowest in terms of most money in the Box Office:


1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
4. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
5. Titanic (1997)
6. The Dark Knight (2008)
7. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
8. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
9. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
10. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)


CAN YOU FIGURE IT OUT????


DON'T CHEAT!!!!!



TRY AGAIN!!!!




OK, SO YOU THINK YOU GOT IT RIGHT HUH?

WELL HERE, CHECK YOUR ANSWER!


5-8-10-6-1-4-7-2-9-3

1. Titanic (1997) $1,835,300,000
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) $1,129,219,252
3. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) $1,060,332,628
4. The Dark Knight (2008) $1,001,921,825
5. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) $968,657,891
6. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) $958,404,152
7. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) $937,000,866
8. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) $923,967,829
9. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) $922,379,000
10. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) $921,600,000

Obama's Meeting With The General

From McChrystal’s Mouth to Obama’s Ear

By PETER BAKER
Published: September 29, 2009- The New York Times

WASHINGTON — When President Obama looks at the screen in the Situation Room on Wednesday, he will find a face he has not seen lately except in newspapers. There, via secure video from Kabul, will be Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, his commander in Afghanistan, explaining directly to the president for the first time why more troops are needed.

Mr. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, made a point of speaking with his Iraq commander roughly once a week at the height of the war there, a habit that forged a close working relationship between them even if it effectively bypassed the normal chain of command. Mr. Obama’s aides said he relied on General McChrystal’s advice but did not feel the need to duplicate Mr. Bush’s personal engagement with battlefield generals.

Instead, they said, he receives weekly memos from General McChrystal and meets weekly with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Aides said the president had thoroughly studied the general’s report, and they noted that it was Mr. Obama who approved firing the last commander and replacing him with General McChrystal.

“The president signed off on putting General McChrystal where he is,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday.

Does he regret it?


I would say that the president values, General McChrystal's opinion enough to no go and visit him every week and make the general feel uncomfortable because his boss is coming to see him. Everyone knows that when the boss comes to visit, all must be on their best behavior. The general sends the president updates on what is happening in Afghanistan each week and the president meets with his advisors to decide what to do. President Obama has a lot of trust for the general to leave him with so much power, which president Bush might not have. President Bush did visit his Afghan-general each week, maybe to build a closer relationship or maybe to check-up on him because Bush didn't trust the general. I do not know for sure, but that could be a good reason why Obama doesn't want to do that with the McChrystal because he does not want McChrystal to feel unworthy of being the commander of the army over seas.

On The Night Shift

ARTIST: The Commodores
TITLE: Nightshift

Marvin, he was a friend of mine
And he could sing a song
His heart in every line
Marvin sang of the joy and pain
He opened up our minds
And I still can hear him say
Aw, talk to me so you can see
What's going on
Say you will sing your songs
Forevermore, evermore

{Refrain}
Gonna be some sweet sounds coming down
On the nightshift
I bet you're singing proud
Oh, I bet you'll pull a crowd
Gonna be a long night, it's gonna be all right
On the nightshift
Oh you found another home, I know you're not alone
On the nightshift

Jackie, hey what you doing now
It seems like yesterday
When we were working out
Jackie, you set the world on fire
You came and gifted us
Your love it lifted us higher and higher
Keep it up and we'll be there
At your side
Oh say you will sing your songs
Forevermore, evermore

{Refrain}
Gonna miss your sweet voice, that soulful noise
On the nightshift
We all remember you
Ooh, your songs are coming through
At the end of a long day it's gonna be okay
On the nightshift
You found another home, I know you're not alone
On the nightshift

This song was a tribute to Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson, two musical legends who died in 1984. It was actually the commodores first hit since Lionel Richie left in 1982. Through these lyrics, the audience can tell how the writer and singers truly feel of their late, great, friends. Whoever wrote this did care for both Marvin and Jackie. The reader can tell this in the opening line, "Marvin, you were a friend of mine." It also tells of how the writer is coping with the lost. "At the end of a longer day it's gonna be okay...You found another home, I know you're not alone..." It truly is a great and peaceful song.

Obama's Financial Regulation

The New Yorker
Ratings Downgrade
by James Surowiecki
September 28, 2009 Text Size:

When Barack Obama went to Wall Street last week to make the case for meaningful financial regulation, he took well-deserved shots at some of the villains of the financial crisis: greedy bankers, reckless investors, and captive regulators. But to that list he could have added credit-rating agencies like Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s. By giving dubious mortgage-backed securities top ratings, and by dramatically underestimating the risk of default and foreclosure, the agencies played a key role in inflating the housing bubble. If we’re going to reform the system, fixing them should be high on the list.

Unfortunately, that’s not an easy task, since over the years the government has made the agencies an increasingly important part of the financial system. Rating agencies have been around for a century, and their ratings have been used by regulators since the thirties. But in the seventies the S.E.C. dubbed the three biggest agencies—S. & P., Moody’s, and Fitch—Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations, effectively making them official arbiters of financial soundness. The decision had a certain logic: it was supposed to make it easier for investors to know that the money in their pension or money-market funds was going into safe and secure investments. But the new regulations also turned the agencies from opinion-givers into indispensable gatekeepers. If you want to sell a corporate bond, or package a bunch of mortgages together into a security, you pretty much need a rating from one of the agencies. And though the agencies are private companies, their opinions can effectively have the force of law. The ratings often dictate what institutions like banks, insurance companies, and money-market funds can and can’t do: money-market funds can’t have more than five per cent of their assets in low-rated commercial paper, there are limits on the percentage of non-investment-grade assets that banks can own, and so on.

The conventional explanation of what’s wrong with the rating agencies focusses on the fact that most of them are paid by the very people whose financial products they rate. That problem needs to be fixed, and last week the S.E.C. proposed new rules to address conflicts of interest. But there’s a much bigger problem, which is that, even though nearly everyone knows that the agencies are compromised and exert too much influence, the system makes it impossible not to rely on them. In theory, of course, the mere fact that a rating agency says a particular bond is AAA (close to risk-free) doesn’t mean that investors have to buy it; the agencies’ opinions should be just one ingredient in any decision. In practice, the government’s seal of approval, coupled with those regulatory requirements, encourages investors to put far too much weight on the ratings. According to a recent paper on the subject by the academics Darren Kisgen and Philip Strahan, that’s true even when the agency doing the rating doesn’t have a long track record. During the housing bubble, investors put a huge amount of money into AAA-rated mortgage-backed securities—which would have been fine had the rating agencies’ judgments been sound. Needless to say, they weren’t. Despite subprime borrowers’ notoriously shaky finances, the agencies failed to allow for the possibility that housing prices might fall sharply.


I believe that President Obama is correct in saying that if we want to have a reformation, bringing down the big guys (the big businesses) would be the best way to start. I also believe that this guy saying that the credit-rating agencies are part of the reason why reforming will be hard. They control who which businesses will succeed and which businesses will fail. People will listen to them and that is because we and the government gave them too much power. In order to reform, we must start there.

The Story of an Author

At the beginning of June, I received my freshman reader book; that book was A LONG WAY GONE. At first, I did not want to read this book because I am not much of a reader. I do not like to read, but there was just something about the book and the background story that as the month went on, made me want to read it. Ishmael Beah, the author of this memoir, seemed like a very troubled yet interesting man. At least, that is what I felt in the reading. When I finished the book, I was shocked at what goes on in this world and how very few people truly know about it. I just thought to myself that I would like to meet this man. Then my wish came true. On Tuesday, September 15, Ishmael Beah came toe Emens theater at Ball State University. Not only were my eyes opened when I read the book, but they opened even more so when I listened to him talk a little about his life. How he could have grown up in a peaceful village, just to have it destroyed when he was a child. Then to be running from those who destroyed the village, the RUF, the Revolutionary United Front, and lose all those people dear to his heart. And then how he joined the army, becoming a cold-blooded killer, and suddenly, being taken away to become a normal child again. All of this happended over a period of four or five years, and then he was able to be himself again; peaceful, good-hearted, and intelligent.

"After coming out of the war, I had insomnia for many, many years. Just recently, I have been making progress and I can finally sleep four to five hours every night." -Ishmael Beah

Just watching him at the stand inspired me to just think about what may be going on out there in the world, that most of us are protected from. To truly think how many things we take for granted in this world is overwhelming. He has opened my eyes to the real world, and maybe someday, I will be able to do something about harm that is out there towards people and the environment. Hopefully, someday more people will get over their fear and actually bring aid to the other worlds not of their own.

"Only when we find ourselves in these circumstances, do we realize how strong the human spirit really is and how difficult it is to destroy."
-Ishmael Beah

Obama On Financial Reform

September 14, 2009
Obama on Financial Reform

The key line in Barack Obama’s speech today on the need for new financial regulation was the straightforward statement “Normalcy cannot lead to complacency.” This is a real danger: as I argued back in April, while it would have been disastrous had the government’s bailout efforts failed, their success was inevitably going to create the risk that “reformist pressure may well dissipate,” as people became less anxious about the survival of the financial system. This, roughly speaking, has been the pattern of financial crises in the U.S. over the past thirty years: big banks get into trouble and people start talking about the need for meaningful reform, then the banks work their way out of trouble (with the help of the Federal Reserve and bank regulators, and sometimes, as in the case of TARP, with the help of state funding), and the reforms never materialize. Obama’s speech, coming as it did a year after the failure of Lehman, was an argument for why that should not happen again. The substance of the speech was not new—the reforms Obama advocated were essentially the same as those Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner unveiled in late March. What was important about it was Obama’s rhetorical commitment not merely to tinkering around the edges of the financial industry, but rather to “the most ambitious overhaul of the financial system since the Great Depression.”

Of course, one speech does not a policy change make, and there are plenty of skeptics out there who are convinced that the possibility of meaningful reform has already vanished. On this reading, Obama waited too long to put his weight behind change, and now that the crisis is no longer in full bloom, the power of the financial lobby and the tendency to quickly forget about disasters will ensure that things are going to continue much the same as they were.

This is certainly possible, and it’s reasonable to wonder why, if Geithner introduced his reform proposals in late March, so little progress has been made on them. But I do think there are a couple of reasons to not give up just yet. First, and most obvious, the push for health-care reform has meant that other issues—even very important ones—got less attention over the summer than they otherwise would have. Perhaps it would have been possible for the Administration to make equal efforts on both the health-care and financial-reform fronts, but it’s plausible that concentrating on first one and then the other made more sense in political terms.

Second, when I spoke to Barney Frank a couple of weeks ago, he seemed certain that Congress was going to pass legislation dealing with the biggest financial-reform issues, including creating a resolution authority (which would allow the government to unwind too-big-to-fail insitutions, much as the FDIC does with ordinary banks today), regulating derivates, creating a systemic-risk regulator, and creating a consumer-protection agency for finance. Now, it may be that Frank was simply trying to put a brave face on the situation, but to me it sounded as if his confidence was genuine.

It’d be a mistake, of course, to underestimate how much power financial lobbyists exert on the Hill, and it’d also be a mistake to think that Wall Street itself is, on the whole, interested in serious reform. But I think there’s also a danger in adopting a completely bleak view of the possibility of reform, because it amplifies the danger that we’ll adopt an attitude of learned helplessness toward Wall Street. The idea of learned helplessness, which was introduced in the late nineteen-sixties by the psychologist Martin Seligman as a result of experiments with dogs, is that when people are subjected to repeated negative events that they have no control over, it’s easy for them to become convinced that they’re permanently helpless, and that there’s no point in trying to change things, because all such efforts are doomed to failure. Certainly Wall Street has subjected the U.S. economy to repeated disasters over the past thirty years, and the fact that we haven’t done anything to change this meaningfully may make it seem that we can’t do anything to change this. But what was doesn’t have to be what will be. The government is not, in fact, helpless. It has the power to restructure the financial industry in useful ways. And the public will to do this is there, too. We need to be realistic about how hard the fight for reform will be. But deciding in advance that we’re doomed to fail is going to make it less, not more, likely that the program Obama advocated today will become reality.


Posted by James Surowiecki: The New Yorker


"But deciding in advance that we're doomed to fail is going to make it less, not more, likely that the program Obama advocated today will become reality," James Surowiecki.
That sentence right there is why the US is in such turmoil. When people have no optimism, and believe that they and everything else is going to fail, it will. President Barack Obama is the executive leader the these United States of America. He was voted into office in order to bring the US out of the situation it is in. But when the American people constantly have disbelief in the President, then the US will have no where to go but down. The American people as a whole need to believe in Obama and that what he is working for is for the good of the country. There is no need to criticize everything that he does. Give him a chance, and change will come.

Obama's Health Plan

NEWS ARTICLE FROM THE NEW YORKER

September 10, 2009
Atul Gawande: The Road Ahead
Before President Obama’s speech on health care, I wrote out a list of what I thought we needed him to do.


1.Make clear the stakes.
2.Make clear what we get under his reform.
3.Understand our fears.
4.Convey strength in the face of them.
5.Speak to our core beliefs as a nation.

I thought he did this and did it amply. He made clear that our present system is damaging our people and damaging our economy. He made clear that if we accepted the challenge and the struggle, we could have better insurance coverage without preëxisting condition exclusions or sudden disappearance of benefits. Those of us who are self-employed or unable to get coverage through work could have the kinds of insurance choices and discounts that big companies and congressmen can get. Those who don’t have the money for this coverage could get tax credits to offset the costs. The elderly would get a better drug-benefit package.

There was nothing here that was watered down or unfamiliar, either. He did not skirt the realities that this would have to be paid for—that government would be requiring many businesses to cover their employees and most individuals to carry insurance coverage, and that he would be using money from ending subsidies to Medicare HMOs to help finance the bill. And he spoke with podium-pounding conviction in response to the absurd charges that this would involve government takeover of our doctor’s offices and to the deeper fears that those charges fed into.

After far too many weeks, he again became the Barack Obama one could rally behind—the cool-headed president willing to face long odds and enemy fire, rather than the coolly calculating professor with the academic’s annoying certitude.

As I said, he checked all the boxes on my list. And yet I remain concerned that he may not have done enough.

The stone faces of his conservative enemies made clear the limits of what words could do. I was struck that for nearly the entirety of his speech, he spoke facing not the camera or the Democrats but the Republican throng. This has become a test of who we will trust. Are we going to trust the Republicans, with their predictions of dark disasters that will result from going along with a President they do not believe should be allowed even to speak to our schoolchildren? Or are we going to trust this still new and untested President enough to give his changes a chance?

Obama has continued to defend policies that would push us, for the first time in history, in the direction of encouraging doctors to make more rational, better coördinated, less costly clinical decisions. This includes experiments with changing the way doctors are paid, a clinician board to identify inappropriate care, and a “fee” (i.e., tax) on extremely high-cost insurance premiums. I was also made hopeful by his willingness to break with Democrats and admit that the medical malpractice system is itself broken and, although not the cause of our cost crisis, a wasteful contributor.

But this is just a start. Our current health-care system presents seemingly insurmountable difficulties. It is too big, too complex, too entrenched, bloated, Byzantine, and slowly bursting. What may be most challenging about reforming it is that it cannot be fixed in one fell swoop of radical surgery. The repair is going to be a process, not a one-time event. The proposals Obama offers, and that Congress is slowly chewing over, would provide a dramatic increase in security for the average American. But they will only begin the journey toward transforming our system to provide safer, better, less wasteful care. We do not yet know with conviction all the steps that will rein in costs while keeping care safe. So, even if these initial reforms pass, we have to be prepared to come back every year or two to take another few hard and fiercely battled steps forward.

In this way, successful reform will have to be more like a series of operations, with x-rays and tests in between to show how we’re doing. Embarking on the effort will be among the most severe challenges we take on as country. Outside the settings of war and economic collapse, we’ve never sustained any policy effort of this scope and duration. It is perfectly possible that our next push will be defeated, or used as an opportunity to dismantle the progress we’ve already made. But I can see no other choice. We can only forge ahead.

.Posted by Atul GawandeInNews Desk
| In the News

This is a good sign of change in our country. Obama will bring change and the health plan is one way he will accomplish this. Although not everyone in this country believes in President Obama, just wait and see, change will come.

Case of the Mondays

Monday is the worst day of the week. A Monday in any month is the worst; it means that the weekend is officially over and that it is time to start a brand new work week. In this case, work means school and school is never fun, although it is very beneficial to everyone. Just waking up Monday morning, one may think, "Here we go again," or "Here goes another sucky week." And then, once Friday comes around and classes are over, we think, "Thank God." But those two days go by fast and once they are over, "Here we go again." This brings me to my main point, but just for the majority of students who actually have classes on Monday and have to wake up early to go to their eight o'clock class. That is not me. See I have no classes on Monday which means I get a three day weekend every week and when I wake up Monday morning and turn to the clock to see that it says nine thirty, I think to myself, "Ahh looks like it's too early too get up yet." So for all of the people who think that your Monday is bad, just stop and think of me and say, "Damn him."

Memoir

One night during dinner, I was sitting with my mother and she had just made a delicious roast, one of my more favorite dinners. Somehow, as we began talking, the conversation landed on the topic of my past babysitters. That is when I told her about my first babysitter and how she would lock the few other kids and myself in the basement while she did house work. I did not know at the time that what the babysitter was doing was wrong, but as I told my mom the story, it became clear to me that I should have told her much sooner than I did.

Everyday was the same, waking up around six in the morning and my mom dropping me off at the babysitters house on her way to work. Each morning, the babysitter, Becky, would make her daughter, son, and myself a mayonnaise and bread sandwich. That is it, she would cut the sandwich into four squares and serve us each four squares. We were forced to eat them and to this day I'm not sure if I actually liked the sandwiches or if I just did not want any trouble, so I ate them; but now, I can say that I cannot eat mayonnaise now or I will literally throw up on the spot.

Movie Quotes

SEE IF YOU CAN GET THEM ALL
QUOTES

1. "We're in a little bit of a pickle Dick."

2. "Tonight, We Dine In Hell."

3. "Having her around is like a breathe of fresh ass."
-"You just said ass."
-"No I didn't, I said that having her around is like a breast of fresh air."

4. "Can you pass me the honey?"
-"It's right in front of you."
-"Umm, could you help me out here?"
-"What are you, Blind...? Ohh my God I'm so Sorry."

5. "You can either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

ANSWERS

A. Wild Wild West

B. The Dark Knight

C. 300

D. Daredevil

E. Fun With Dick and Jane

W. H. Auden Quote

"I AND THE PUBLIC KNOW WHAT ALL SCHOOL CHILDREN LEARN,
THOSE TO WHOM EVIL IS DONE, DO EVIL IN RETURN."
-W. H. AUDEN

It could not have been said in any better way. This is very true to life today. People do not understand that children are this world's future, and everytime a child is abused either physically, mentally, or any other way possible; that will leave lasting effects on the child and therefore create an undesired outcome for the future.

About Me

I have lived in Fort Wayne all my life. I travel all the time, so being away from home is nothing new to me, but this is the first time I have actually lived somewhere else. Adjusting is no problem for me, although some have doubts; I'll showed them.

In Fort Wayne, I attended Homestead High School, which is one of about fifteen or twenty high schools in the city. I graduated with a class of five hundred students and Homestead has about 2200 students in total. Homestead is definitely one of the best schools in the city because it is part of the Southwest Allen County School System, which, for some years running, has been the best school system in Fort Wayne.

At home, I live with my mom and my two dogs, a six-year old Jack-Russell Terrier, and an eleven-year old Miniature Schnauzer. Besides them, I have a very large extended family because my mother is the youngest of eight. She just turned fifty and her oldest brother would be seventy-two now if he did not die this past February; Friday the 13th. Other than them, I have so many cousins, some of whom I have not even met before, or see very rarely. The majority of my family does live in Fort Wayne though, so that makes seeing them convenient.

Ever since middle school I always had my heart set on going to Purdue University. During my Junior year of high school I visited Purdue and Ball State, because these are two of three schools in Indiana that have my major, Wildlife Biology. The other is Indiana State, but I did not feel like going to Terra Haute. When I visited Purdue, my dream school, I really liked their biology program. Then I took a trip to Ball State University. This school's program just blew me away. Here at Ball State, the professors will actually know who I am, plus there are more hands-on approaches to things that I want to do, which Purdue does not do until about Junior year. Also, at Purdue, I would just be another number, so it's not really for me or any undergraduate student.

This past May when I received my acceptence letter from Purdue University, I chose to turn them down and chose to accept Ball State's offer. I believe that I have made the right choice. I was not sure if it would be the right choice or not, until I came my first day to move in. These next four years are going to be great. Everyone who I have talked to about College has said that the next four years will be the best years of your life. Not to say I doubted them, but I'm beginning to believe that they were right.