If the GOP wants to finally start building party unity and momentum, Mitt Romney’s victory in Florida should be the signal fire for those who actually care about building strength for the presidential election (which is now only a surprisingly close 10 months away).

And this is why:

Romney can stop dividing his party by ending his carpet-bombing of Gingrich with negative ads. Romney spent over $9 million in Florida, whereas Gingrich spent only $3.8 million.

To be frank, as much as I dislike Gingrich, there is not much honor in resorting to a relentless campaign of television and radio ads tearing apart your opponent (one TV commmercial ended saying “If Newt Gingrich wins, this man would be very happy,” as a picture of Obama showed on the screen).

In 2008, Romney also led all candidates in Florida by spending $5.6 million, followed by Rudy Giuliani at $3 million, and Sen. John McCain at $2.1 million.

McCain, despite spending the least on advertising, still won.

Romney learned from his mistakes and spent more. Not only did he spend more, but he spent more on negative advertising than self-promotion advertisting.

So what does this say about our political culture?

Last week, for those of you who read, I talked about how boring the candidates have become and how the race has almost lost a sort of integrity that past races seemed to have.

This year, especially in Florida, mud-slinging has been rampant. It’s always been present, but Romney may have just clinched the nomination with this looked-down-upon tool.

But, Romney is running by legendary Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis’ famous motto, “just win, baby.”

Romney stepped his finances and advertisements into high-gear, causing the American people to question where to the draw the line on how we should advertise politics and perhaps even how much money we should spend on campaigns.

Should we condemn Romney for his somewhat dishonorable tactics to win Florida then? Romney himself acknowledged that his negative ad blitz was working very well leading up to the primary.

We should not – yet at least. Perhaps this was a necessary evil. Perhaps Newt was hurting his party by hanging on, delaying the inevitable and hurting Romney in the process.

This could create a huge push forward for Romney against Obama. But if he does not live up to his promises, Romney will be branded as a power seeking mud-slinger.

Instead of resorting to mud-slinging to bring down his fellow Republican candidates – and thereby divide his party – he can aim his guns at Obama, which he already started in his victory speech after clinching Florida, “Mr. President, you were elected to lead, you chose to follow, and now it’s time to get out of the way.”

Whatever the case, the GOP needs to make their decision now.

For example; aren’t you sick of having to walk to class?

Shouldn’t administration provide shuttles for us during the winter months?

Tuition is the highest it’s ever been, and the students should come first if we’re paying so much.

Besides such trivial things, what irks me the most about campus life is this – why are there never enough carrots in the cafeteria?

I’m dead serious. Every time I walk into the cafeteria they’re the only thing that I want to compliment my daily dosage of (thin as paper, but still somehow soggy as a sponge) pizza.

My day is automatically ruined when I walk over to the salad bar and there are only one or two – or in even some cases, none (gasp!) – of those delectable, crunchy, thumb-sized orange sticks.

Can’t a tuition-paying, regularly involved student who gets good enough grades get his fair share of carrots? The founding fathers of this university must be rolling in their graves.

My only question is where are all the carrots going? According to my calculations and rigorous research, the administration only allows the daily carrot import to the cafeteria to account for 1 percent of the entire student population.

Who makes up this “1 percent” who consume almost all of our carrots? Is it a small greedy portion of our fellow students? Is it the cafeteria staff, because they need something to munch on while they are working?

Who’s to say this “1 percent” is even human? Has anyone else noticed the abnormally high rabbit population around University Heights?

I mean, I’m not pointing fingers, but rabbits like carrots. Lots of rabbits means a sharp decrease in carrots. It’s simple economics.

And that’s why I’m proposing to make a student stand against this grave injustice. We’ll call it Occupy Wall – no, better yet, Occupy John Carrot.

I demand the administration act upon the carrot crisis, and until then, I will not attend class. I encourage many of you who see this unjust carrot distribution to join me and drop everything in your life to get this done.

We, as the 99 percent who are only allowed one or two carrots a day, are strong and can achieve equal carrot rights.

The administration should invest in an anti-rabbit force armed with B.B. guns on campus that can wipe out this ever-swelling population of carrot-stealing rodents.

They should also provide us with “carrot stamps” that we can hand in at local grocery stores to cover the exorbitantly high cost of a bag of carrots.

Do you think other colleges have these problems? My brother goes to school in Cincinnati, and in his cafeteria, they just don’t have a salad bar, they have a carrot bar that serves only carrots.

I don’t know if you’ve been to Cincinnati, but I also noticed a sharp lack of certain big-eared, buck-toothed, carrot-loving creatures roaming freely around the city.

We here in the good ole University Heights probably have it the worst out of any college in America.

This administration only seeks to make money by not spending on carrots and doesn’t care about the 99 percent of us who don’t get the carrots that other students around the country are enjoying.

We are the 99 percent, we are Occupy John Carrot.

But for me, there seems to be a common thread which rounds them up and sews them together – confusion.

Republicans were dismayed Tuesday morning by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s decision not to run for the presidency when they have three (at the minimum) other candidates that seem to take week-long terms as the party’s banner carrier.

Protesters have swarmed the financial district of New York City for the past three weeks, claiming grievances and declaring demands against the government and corporations while they have no leader or formal organization – or what seems like a definitive, rational plan.  The numbers of moderate Republicans and Democrats in Congress is shrinking with every elected Congress, leaving the political middle ground a barren wasteland.

Even the commander-in-chief himself seems panicked in the last year of his term, proposing large-packaged legislation that must be passed entirely as is, or not at all, in an effort to prove to voters in 2012 that they can remain confident in his ability to pass legislation. Obama has even grayed considerably since assuming office. The “hope” sentiment of his campaign is more than just gone, people seem to have forgotten the iconic slogan.

According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, 75 percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, while 19 percent believe we’re on the right one, opposed to last year at this time when 35 percent had a positive outlook – which are still not great numbers.

A phrase from literature that has been the center, which ironically has been the centerpiece of my education this semester, comes storming to the front of my mind: “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” Macbeth says as the end is nigh for him.

America needs a slap in the face. It’s not just Republicans, corporations, Obama or Democrats. With the presidential election a mere 13 months away, it’s important to stay informed on who to vote for. But it’s even more important to realize that whoever is elected to office isn’t going to change everything right away.

We shoot ourselves in the foot with this idyllic naïveté that is evident in the protesters on Wall Street, whose intentions are good, but demand very irrational reforms while lacking any knowledge of how simple economics work: money and the solution to economic and social problems don’t grow on trees.

By selecting a new favorite candidate every other week, the Republicans show how they want a knight in shining armor to come and save the country that they perceive as the sinking ship from the storm that is the Obama administration. This division and uncertainty, “this tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,” must stop and can stop. And we can’t rely on others to come along and save the day for us.

As John F. Kennedy said in his inauguration speech, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

Known as the “Increase Diversity Bake Sale,” they are charging different races different rates. $2 a cookie for whites, $1.50 for Asians,  $1 for Latinos, $0.75 for blacks, and a quarter off for every woman.

It is incredibly racist – and the students running the sale will be the first to tell you so.

They are using the sale as a political satire of sorts in protest of California Senate Bill 185 that would allow the University of California and California State University to consider “other relevant factors” in selecting students for admission. In other words, the bill gives permission to state universities to take into account race and gender during the admissions process.

The sale is seen as a direct metaphor by the students as how they, and many others, see the bill. Goods or services are being offered to others based solely on race and gender. They, in turn, are doing the same thing with their “Increase Diversity Bake Sale.”

Although the sale might be an extremely clever and accurate satire, the only argument I can think of against it is it may not work effectively as they may want.  Instead of the spotlight being on Senate Bill 185, it will be on how a bunch of conservative college kids protested in a socially divisive manner.

I do not believe it should be interpreted as so, but I do understand why it is seen that way by a majority of people.

But what is admirable about this is this student group had the gall to do this on a very liberal college campus.  Seeing conservative activism is nice for a change – a breath of fresh air in the not-so-diverse political culture surrounding the average college student. Conservatives are incessantly portrayed as ‘the Man” by our demographic, politicians that only care about big corporations and oil.

Yet these young conservatives have chosen a noble fight that is truly an injustice.

Now, true, there are high school students applying to schools that are short on funds should receive some financial aid. Whether they get in or not should not be based on solely their sex or ethnicity. That is an injustice, akin to separating whites and blacks from the same drinking fountains during the Civil Rights era.

Diversity is often a misconstrued concept, especially on college campuses. Forcing diversity is in effect doing the opposite of what is intended – it divides and creates injustice.

Of course there is nothing wrong with being white, black, a woman, gay or hispanic. Giving preferential treatment to any of those is as unjust as denying any of them rights you would give to any of the others.

These students and their university, for allowing it to happen, should be applauded for recognizing the validity behind the bake sale’s point in a world forever increasing in unnecessary political correctness.

In a report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on regional and state employment, 26 states and Washington, D.C., reported increases in unemployment, while only 12 reported unemployment decreases from July to August.

The national unemployment rate remained the same at 9.1 percent from July to August. At this point last year, though, the rate stood at 9.6 percent.

This report comes right after President Obama’s proposal of The American Jobs Act earlier this month, in which the main goal, according to the president, is to “put more people back to work and put more money in the pockets of working Americans.”

Most of the unemployment growth has occurred in the West and in the South.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, leading the nation in unemployment rates is Nevada, with 13.4 percent. Next highest is California, with an unemployment rate of 12.1.

Many states leading the nation in unemployment are also in the South.

South Carolina (11.1 percent), Florida (10.7), North Carolina (10.4), Mississippi (10.3), Georgia (10.2), and Alabama (9.9) are all within the top 10 highest rates of unemployment.

Georgia alone has lost 29,000 jobs since last year, and lost 18,200 last month alone.

California has had a 1.2 percent increase in the past year, but its jobless rate is still higher than post-recession levels.

Since 2009, Nevada, California, Florida, Mississippi and Georgia have all still seen unemployment grow since the recession.

Michigan, perhaps hit hardest by the fallout of the auto industry, has recovered nicely since the recession. In 2009, Michigan had a jobless rate of 13.8 percent. Since then, it has fallen to 11.2 percent.

Ohio’s unemployment rate has fallen 1.3 percent since the recession ended.

Image from The New York Times

The Cleveland region specifically has fallen approximately 1.1 percent since June 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Historically, the Rust Belt has been the region that has seen the more difficult end of unemployment issues.

It seems since the recession in 2007, that trend may be shifting towards the Sun Belt and out west.

Michael Chriszt, an official from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s research department explained to The New York Times why Georgia remains at an unemployment stalemate, “For a long time we tended to outpace the national average with regard to economic performance, and a lot of that was driven by, for lack of a better word, development and in-migration. That came to an abrupt halt, and it has not picked up.”

South Carolina’s unemployment woes can be attributed to a still-recovering construction and manufacturing sector.

Richard Kaglic a regional economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Va., told The Times, “The state’s lingering troubles reflect what happened when its construction and manufacturing industries were hit hard by the recession.”

It’s also interesting to note a report released by the Census Bureau earlier this month that said poverty rose to a record 46.2 million Americans (15.1 percent) in 2010.

In 2009, the year the recession ended,  42.9 million Americans were in poverty, 0.8 percent lower than in 2010.

According to the Census Bureau, poverty rate grew the most in the South,  with a 1.2 percent increase, followed by the Northeast  and Midwest (both grew 0.6 percent), and then the West (0.5 percent).

The South’s poverty rate grew double that of the next closest regions from 2009 to 2010.

Surprisingly, despite the high rates of employment in the West, it still has the lowest poverty rates.

Obama’s jobs bill seeks to tackle both of these problems. The success of his presidency as well as the success of his campaign for 2012 could very well be tied to what he accomplishes with this issue in the final year of his first term.

After its blander 2009 outing, “Wilco (The Album),” Wilco has come back with a diverse, monster album in line with both its experimental tendencies – like 2002′s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” – and its roots – as in 1996′s “Being There.”

“The Whole Love,” which came out Tuesday, has a wide variety of different, yet similar tracks that go off in yet another new direction for one of America’s best bands of the past 15 years.

“The Whole Love” starts off with the epic, two-part “Art of Almost.” With heavily distorted, almost ambient guitars the song is reminiscent at times of “I am Trying to Break Your Heart,” the group’s opener for its 2002 critically acclaimed album, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.”

Drummer Glen Kotche, who has been busy contributing to Andrew Bird’s album “Helpless Creatures” and Radiohead drummer Phil Selway’s solo effort, “Familial,” between Wilco albums, comes back to the band with a percussional masterpiece on this track.

Perhaps the best song on the album, “Art of Almost,” pulls in listeners of all kinds and prepares them for what else is to come.

The main single from the album, “I Might,” is an instant Wilco classic. With more heavily distorted guitar, “I Might” stands out among other classics with it’s Doors-esque keys and distinct melody.

“Dawned on Me” will be one of the band’s best live songs. With guitars on guitars, and the rolling, refrain, “I can’t help it if I’ve fallen in love with you/ I’m callin’ just to let you know it dawned on me,” sang in a momentous beat by Tweedy will be screamed by the many different types of Wilco fans as the group tours this fall (a spring/summer tour for 2012 is also expected).

“Black Moon,” a track with a folk taste, is backed by a strong strings section (which seem to pop up all over the place in “The Whole Love”) along with Tweedy strumming along on his acoustic guitar. This track along with, “Rising Red Lung,” give the album the folk aspect that many fans will be looking for.

“Born Alone” – automatically one of Wilco’s catchiest songs – has a very identifiable guitar riff that will be recognized by all Wilco fans as another instant-classic upon first listen. With multiple guitar layerings, this song will also be one of their best live songs.

The happiness of the music contrasts with the somewhat depressing lyrics, a Tweedy tactic we’ve seen before. With lyrics like “Sadness is my luxury,” and “I was born to die alone,” the song takes on a whole new meaning.

Yet juxtaposed with the inherently fun music, the saddening feeling is instantly assuaged, and perhaps instills a degree of hope for the singer.

The title track echoes their sounds from 1996’s “Being There,” a salute to fans of their early work.

The final track, “One Sunday Morning,” is vintage Tweedy pulling at your heart strings with softer, rolling acoustic guitar, piano and simple drums, focusing more on what he wants to tell the listener lyrically than musically.

Tweedy sings of a strained relationship with an over-bearing father, and dealing with growing older. At 12 minutes long, it may drag at times, but remains a solid closer to a fantastic album.

Not surprisingly, Wilco has yet another fantastic outing with “The Whole Love.”

“It is wrong that in the United States of America a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million,” Obama said Monday during a speech at the White House – a more than reasonable proposal.

But is that really the case? Do higher-income Americans pay lower rates than lower-income Americans?

A study by the Congressional Budget Office begs to differ. In 2007, households in the lowest fifth of income paid 4.7 percent of their total income in taxes. The second fifth paid 10.8 percent, the third, 14.8 percent, the fourth, 18.3 percent, and the fifth, 26.8 percent.

According to this study, higher-income Americans pay a much higher rate than lower-income Americans.

Another report by Tax Policy Center, a non-partisan, private research firm in Washington, D.C., points out that 46.9 percent of Americans in 2009 had a zero or negative individual income tax liability, which – in lay man’s terms – means  that 46.9 percent don’t pay any sort of income tax, or are liable for so many deductions that cancel out any net gain from the income tax.

1.5 percent of households making over $1 million did fall under this category.

So, yes, there are a few high-income Americans who some how do not pay income taxes.

But that 1.5 percent looks a whole lot less of a problem juxtaposed to the fact that 58.3 percent of Americans making less than $75,000 don’t contribute to the income tax fund.

“I reject the idea that asking a hedge-fund manager to pay the same tax-rate as a plumber is class warfare,” Obama said on Monday. “This is not class warfare. This is math. The money has to come from somewhere.”

So where is the money coming from Mr. President? There’s a 1.5 percent chance that a hedge fund manager making more than $1 million a year is paying less than a plumber making $35,000, assuming that plumber isn’t in the 47.5 percent of Americans making between $30,000 and $40,000 that don’t pay taxes.

Ideally, should everyone be paying the same tax rate? I think everyone agrees that the poor should not pay higher than the rich, and a few believe the rich should pay higher rates than the poor.

Does this deficit reduction plan bode for a bigger debate than deflating the deficit?

Is Obama’s statement purely political and aimed at getting him re-elected for 2012?

Should rich Americans share a larger percentage of the load than their lower-income countrymen? Maybe, maybe not, but the money has to come from somwhere.

When I saw that Rod Blagojevich and Sarah Palin’s respective forays into reality television in the past couple of years, I thought it was an anomaly that would never be seen again. But then I started following Michelle Bachmann’s bid for the Republican bid for the presidency.

Bachmann’s campaign for the nomination has become a reality show. At least it has become that way for me. And it seems she would have it no other way.

Tuesday, Bachmann told Fox News Channel that the HPV vaccine that Rick Perry pushed as a mandate for young girls in Texas causes mental retardation, claiming a woman told her that her daughter suffered from it after getting the vaccine. All the while, Bachmann claimed she had no scientific proof, and that she “was not a doctor.”

While trying to expose what seems to be the front runner for the candidacy of her party to have left-leaning ideals although it would take a miracle for her to win the candidacy, she has successfully made herself a star in the media. Could it have been her plan all along? Why is a candidate that has said something as ridiculous as this be regarded as a serious contender for the nomination?

So this leads to ask why she would try to sabotage Perry. One option is that she is acting out of pure spite, which is most likely not the case. Secondly, she may have some conspiracy-like agreement with Romney to get him elected, and thereby receive a Secretary of State-esque position. This just seems like a bad side-plot to “The West Wing,” and also isn’t very plausible.

What I believe she is doing is simply basking in the spotlight. Any publicity is good publicity for Bachmann, but it isn’t necessarily for her hopes to win the nomination. She is creating her own reality TV show, and she’s the star.

This isn’t the first we’ve seen of “The Michelle Bachmann Show,” though. It has been running for years. Past episodes include her claiming in 2009 that “there isn’t even one study of carbon dioxide being a harmful gas.”

Or more recently this summer when she told people from her home town of Waterloo, Iowa, that she was had the same attitude of fellow-Waterloo native cowboy actor John Wayne. Turns out she was two-thirds correct on that point. She got the “John” and the “Wayne” part right, but was missing the “Gacy.” The infamous serial killer lived in Waterloo before committing his gruesome crimes in Chicago.

It just goes to show, I guess, what we accept as a legitimate candidate for the presidency of the United States. Has our thirst for drama spilled into our thirst for politics? Sure it has. Look at the publicity Monica Lewinsky received after the Clinton scandal.

The difference – she wasn’t running for the presidency.

The first is how incredibly proud I am to be American. Most of us have our roots in different countries, celebrating our heritage as being Irish, Italian, German, Swedish, etc. But, in truth, we are American, first and foremost. To think of what has been suffered so that we may live the lives we do as Americans, causes one to stand in awe.

The second is resiliency. They taught me to take experiences that were difficult to swallow with a grain of salt and to move on. To grin and bear it.

During these past 10 years since Mr. Kerwin told my sixth grade social studies class that both Twin Towers had been destroyed, a lot has changed, for better and for worse. Yet we as Americans have survived. America has survived. We still have a future to look forward to.

We have survived because of that trait which makes us distinctly American: resiliency.

Sept. 11 was not the first of America’s tragedies; we’ve even seen worse.

Ripples still remain from the Civil War, where a little over 500,000 people were killed, and, even more disturbingly, we did it to ourselves. Fortunately, we survived that and we stand on firmer ground because of it.

It’s difficult to stomach the thought of the storming of Normandy. You can imagine Dwight Eisenhower ordering Operation Overlord and saying, “We’ll be able to get over this.” Almost 40,000 American soldiers died during that battle, 20 times that of Sept. 11.

The resilient spirit of America can also be found in unlikely places.

In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, there was a story about an investment banking firm, Keefe, Bruyette, & Woods Inc., that lost 67 of their 171 employees on Sept. 11, including the CEO’s son who was interning at their headquarters on the 88th and 89th floors of the south tower.

Today, they nearly tripled their highest pre-2001 revenue. The employees interviewed say they try not to talk about what happened to their co-workers 10 years ago. “There’s an appropriate time and place to remember,” said an employee who’s father died while working for KBW. In the resilient American spirit, KBW has taken their tragedy with a grain of salt and survived.

Sept. 11 was one of those “everyone remembers where they were” moments. Everyone has a story of how they found out, what they felt, and how strong our response was to it. We’re still responding to it. Osama bin Laden was killed last May. We still have a strong presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The question becomes, what will be the breaking point? Will there be a time when we as American’s just can’t endure it? No one knows, but we can look back on how we’ve dealt with tragedy and be proud of what we’ve pulled through so far.

For now, Fred and Chuck would be glad to know that it still moves.

U.S. legislators along with the leaders of Britain and France questioned how the Pakistani government could not have known the al-Qaida leader was living in a garrison town less than a two-hour drive from the capital and had apparently lived there for years.

“I find it hard to believe that the presence of a person or individual such as bin Laden in a large compound in a relatively small town [...] could go completely unnoticed,” French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told reporters in Paris.

British Prime Minister David Cameron also demanded that Pakistani leaders explain how bin Laden had lived undetected in Abbottabad. But in a nod to the complexities of dealing with a nuclear-armed, unstable country that is crucial to success in the war in Afghanistan, Cameron said having “a massive row” with Islamabad over the issue would not be in Britain’s interest.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Tuesday that the U.S. is committed to cooperating with Pakistan.

“We don’t know who if anybody in the government was aware that bin Laden or a high-value target was living in the compound. It’s logical to assume he had a supporting network. What constituted that network remains to be seen,” Carney said.

“It’s a big country and a big government and we have to be very focused and careful about how we do this because it is an important relationship.”

A day after U.S. commandos killed the al-Qaida leader following a 10-year manhunt, new details emerged Tuesday from Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency and bin Laden’s neighbors in Abbottabad.

Residents said they sensed something was odd about the walled three-story house, even though bin Laden and his family rarely ventured outside and most neighbors were not aware that foreigners were living there.

“That house was obviously a suspicious one,” said Jahangir Khan, who was buying a newspaper in Abbottabad. “Either it was a complete failure of our intelligence agencies or they were involved in this affair.”

Neighbors said two men would routinely emerge from the compound to run errands or occasionally attend a neighborhood gathering, such as a funeral. Both men were tall, fair skinned and bearded.

“People were skeptical in this neighborhood about this place and these guys,” said Mashood Khan, a 45-year-old farmer. “They used to gossip, say they were smugglers or drug dealers. People would complain that even with such a big house they didn’t invite the poor or distribute charity.”

U.S. officials have suggested Pakistani officials may have known where bin Laden was living and members of Congress have seized on those suspicions to call for the U.S. to consider cutting billions of aid to Pakistan if it turns out to be true.Western officials have long regarded Pakistani security forces with suspicion, especially when it comes to links with militants fighting in Afghanistan. Last year, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton publicly said she suspected that some members of Pakistan’s government knew where bin Laden was hiding.

However, within Pakistan criticism has been focused on the U.S. breaching the country’s sovereignty. The Obama administration has said it did not inform the Pakistanis in advance of the operation against bin Laden, for fear they would tip off the targets.

A strongly worded Pakistani government statement warned the U.S. not to launch similar operations in the future. It rejected suggestions that officials knew where bin Laden was.

I ran into the room, turned on the news, and watched NBC’s coverage of the announcement that, and I saw that, yes indeed, we had finally taken care of bin Laden. Now the pretty unanimous feeling about the event was (and still is) a euphoric one, with college campuses erupting with choruses of “God Bless America,” and politicians releasing statements about the great work of the U.S. Special Forces and the leadership of President Obama.

But for me, I didn’t immediately feel the need to burst into sudden rejoicing like the rest of the country over the death of the mastermind of  9/11, who had killed almost 3,000 Americans on our own soil. To tell you the truth, I felt an almost somber feeling.

I think I felt like this because I did not understand what it meant right away. The man we killed over the weekend was not the same man he was almost 10 years ago, the one behind the attacks on 9/11. I’m not saying he somehow was void of his responsibility for them anymore, but rather that his significance had certainly been lowered. Bin Laden may have been the figure head, the face of al-Qaeda, but he was not calling the shots of the terrorist network at the time of his death, nor had he been for nearly a year.

He was nothing more than a symbol when he was killed in his max-security compound in Pakistan. Terrorism did not suffer a heavy blow, it was nothing more than a moral victory for a nation that was wronged by him. But what is important, why this may be the biggest news story of the year, and perhaps even since 9/11 or the Iraq War, is that his death marks the end of an era.

It seems like yesterday that Mr. Kerwin, my social studies teacher in grammar school, broke the news to our sixth grade class that our country had been attacked. It was the beginning of the age of modern terrorism, the new terrifying global reality. Osama bin Laden had taken over the “most evil man in the world” title. Terms like “jihad” and “militant Islam” were thrown into everyday vocabulary, often misunderstood and causing much harm. It was an entirely foreign and frightening experience for Americans.

What bin Laden’s death doesn’t signify is the avenging of those he killed. In fact I’m sure he felt that if he was killed, he would have felt even more glorified, more infamous, which is exactly what he would have wanted. Americans avenged the death of those 3,000 people themselves by soldiering on after 9/11, and not giving in to the fear that he tried to instill in us. That was our revenge.

What his death does signify is the end of the post-9/11 era. Terrorism is not new and foreign to us anymore. Just like the Red Scare faded into the past, the initial frightening blow of what bin Laden had accomplished is now done. That chapter of American history has been closed. May God bless America not for killing one evil man, but for what she has endured for the past ten years, and that she shows the same bravery and resiliency in whatever the future holds.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has all but announced his intent to seek out the nomination, while Mitt Romney, the ex-governor of Massachusetts announced he has formed an exploratory committee just this past week. Even businessman Donald Trump has said he has intentions to capture the nomination, claiming he is Obama’s “worst nightmare” in regards to his re-election in 2012.

The names keep swirling, and Republican leadership still remains in question.

So, Republicans, why not Barack Obama for the party’s nomination in 2012? He’s agreed to a budget that, in his own words, is “the largest annual spending cut in [American] history.”

Some of his proposals include cuts to Democrat favorites such as family planning and, again in his own words, “the costly new year-round Pell grant” for low-income students. He’s delving into  entitlement programs like Medicare. This must be music to the ears of Republican law makers and supporters of the party across the nation, right?

Most of his concessions were made to avoid the shutdown, but why was he the one to give in? Why did the Democrats get the short end of the stick on the spending agreement?

The reason is as simple as Obama wants to be re-elected in  2012, but I hate to break it to you, not under the Republican ticket.

He has agreed to slash the spending on programs traditionally supported by the Democratic party: funding for education, health care and environmental programs. But he remained true to his party’s ideals on important issues like repealing the Bush tax-cuts for the wealthy, and a refusal to cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood. “Some of the cuts we agreed to will be painful,” the president said. “Programs people rely on will be cut back; needed infrastructure projects will be delayed.”

By not abandoning these core liberal beliefs, but appearing to agree with Republicans on cutting the $38 billion makes him look like the greatest budget-cutting president in history. Check that, it does make him the greatest budget-cutting president in history. The president and Speaker of the House John Boehner apparently had a $30 billion deal in the books, until Boehner surprised him almost a week before the shutdown was supposed to go into effect with a new $38 billion proposal. Why in the world would Obama agree to that when the prior agreement was already on the table?

As the campaigns for 2012, the president will use this action filled with a suprising amount of bipartisanship as ammo to propel himself towards re-election. He certainly won’t back down from health care and the other issues while campaigning. But for now he’ll take these pills that are a tough swallow.

Lose the battle, win the war, right Mr. President? For his sake, hopefully he’s right.

Last Friday, hundreds were killed in a clash between rebels loyal to Ouattara and Gbagbo’s forces.

According to the U.N., approximately 330 fighters and civilians had been killed in a town in the west of the country, while some human rights organizations have been reporting a death toll of nearly 1,000.

It remains to be seen which side is responsible for the attack.

“We don’t have exact information as to who is behind this,” Dorothea Krimitsas, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross told The New York Times. “There were at least 800 [bodies].”

Previous to the battle, it was estimated that nearly 500 people have died since the election took place in November.

Gbagbo has continually ordered assaults on the neighborhoods surrounding the presidential palace in the nation’s largest city, Abidjan.

Horrific incidents of repression, such as Gbagbo’s forces shooting at peacefully protesting women, have led to his condemnation by the international community.

Human Rights Watch said in March that the actions of “Gbagbo and militias that support him gives every indication of amounting to crimes against humanity.”

Francois Fillon, the French prime minister, said French officials were negotiating with generals still loyal to Gbagbo, who are hunkered down in his compound in Abidjan.

French and U.N. forces intervened Monday by attacking the compound and two other main military bases still loyal to Gbagbo. Ouattara’s forces already control the capital, Yamoussoukro. Last week, the rebels swept into the city and surrounded Gbagbo’s residence.

The negotiators have presented a U.N.–backed document to be signed by Gbagbo renouncing his presidency to Ouattara.

“What is going on are negotiations with Laurent Gbagbo and his family to finalize the conditions of his departure,” Alain Juppé, the French foreign minister said at a parliamentary meeting on Tuesday.

The U.N. said earlier this week that three of Gbagbo’s top generals have told the international organization that a cease fire had been ordered to their troops, and that they were to hand over arms to the U.N. forces stationed there.

Although the U.N. has provided support in the fight against Gbagbo, they have expressed neutrality in the politics of the matter, contrary to the majority of the international community.

Secretary General Ban Ki Moon attributed U.N. intervention to the violent actions taken by Gbagbo’s forces on civilians as well as peace keepers.

As of Tuesday, reports coming from Abidjan have said fighting between pro-Ouattara forces and pro-Gbagbo forces had indeed stopped.

The several hundred French soldiers also patrolling the city have also noticed a lack of violent conflict.

Phillip Carter, the American ambassador to Ivory Coast, said the situation is “far from settled, but it’s close to being over.”

“Our forces have made significant advances. In a few hours, it will be all over,” Guillame Soro, Ouattara’s prime minister told The Times in a telephone interview Tuesday. “We came into the city of Abidjan today, and I think it will soon be finished.”

If all does proceed as predicted, what to do with Gbagbo still remains in question. A spokesman for Ouattara’s camp told The Times, “He will be judged, he must answer for his actions. Do we keep [Gbagbo] here or do we send him abroad? I don’t know.”

President Obama praised the U.N. and French intervention on Tuesday.

He went on to say the bloodshed “could have been averted had Laurent Gbagbo respected the results of last year’s presidential election.”

Last week, I wrote about Newt Gingrich’s divisive comments about how he believed America was going to be “dominated by radical Islamists.” Dominating the news this past week is Rev. Terry Jones of Gainesville, Fla., who followed through on his threat to burn a Qur’an, albeit almost a whole year later.

Riots have flared up in Afghanistan over this spotlight-seeking zealot’s implementation of freedom of speech, resulting in the death of U.N. workers stationed in the pre-dominantly Muslim country.

Now, the world is pointing their fingers at Jones as the one responsible for, in his own words “stirring the pot.” The degree to which the First Amendment extends is back in question, and it’s all because of the handlebar-mustached leader of the Dove World Outreach Center.

Should Americans allow for someone to do this? Is it a hate crime? The man should be punished when he intrudes on someone else’s rights, but if he wants to go burn a book that he believes belongs to a religion of hate, then let him. “We’re not very well-educated,” Jones’s son, Luke, said. “We’re just simple people trying to do the right thing.”

Jones said he was spiritually inspired by a poster of Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart” that hangs in his office. This is not a man that should be taken seriously. Not just by us, but by Muslims as well. I consider myself a Catholic, and if someone who said he/she wasn’t very well educated, I would laugh at them for their actions rather than take what they said to heart.

Why hasn’t the international media condemned the actions of those extremists who killed the U.N. workers as much as they have Jones’? Those are the people who should be punished. Jones did not intrude on their rights, he did not kill anyone, he simply made a statement against their religion. The majority  places the blame only on Jones.

Of course I recognize the man’s actions as ridiculous, uneducated and bigoted. Yet, in no way shape or form did he do anything illegal and therefore no one should be able to tell him what he can and can’t do. Why was there not as much fury over Newt Gingrich’s comments last week? Gingrich’s statement is scary because he may have power (once again) some day.

Jones looks to press his views on other ignorant Americans. The media gave him what he wanted – to be in the spotlight. I’ve seen more coverage on television news outlets of the 20 dead in Afghanistan attributed to his actions than the 300 plus killed in the ongoing conflict in Ivory Coast this past weekend.

Jones released a video that he said he hoped, “For some [Muslims], it could be an awakening.” And, hopefully it is, but not in the way that he intended. I hope it awakens the ability of people to educate ignorant people of the consequences of bigotry rather than condemn a “not very well-educated” man for his ridiculous statements.

Now imagine a candidate of his stature, his majesty with the unconditional support of the American people, telling the press that he believes that he sees America becoming “a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.” All that cheering would turn to crickets before you could say “U.S.A.”  Well, that’s what former Speaker of the House and presidential hopeful for 2012, Newt Gingrich, told a church in Texas earlier this week.

Now hold that thought. For some time now, my friend Marcus and I have been trying to plan a road trip across America, filming a documentary painting an accurate portrait of American life, proving to the world that America is more moderate than pictured. We want to show the fictitiousness behind the supposed polarization of red and blue states, of progressives and conservatives. We believe this separation to be a creation of the media, who cooked up these metaphorical gladiators to fight to the death for the enjoyment and excitement of their viewers, and confusing many who consume their poisoned product.

Gingrich, or at least the image he is projecting, represents what I believe to be that small faction of America, further polarizing American politics. The moderate America (the largest faction) is not being heard, and it’s because of their quiet, reserved voices.

William Butler Yeats, the great Irish poet, warns in his iconic poem, “The Second Coming”, “things fall apart” when “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

The bloodshed that is American politics is capable of being stopped, if and only if the moderate American (the best that lack all conviction) is willing to have their voice heard. We’re not all Red Republicans and Blue Democrats (the worst full of passionate intensity). Moderate America needs to take the reins of this great country, and truly remind us what it once meant to be an American.

Old Abe would be rolling in his grave after learning what has happened to the country that he worked so hard for and even gave his life to unite again after the Civil War.

George Washington would be equally upset. He warned political parties “may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.” I mean, America’s first president knew what he was talking about, right?

In their plight to vault themselves into political power, politicians have sacrificed American unity. This needs to stop in order to save this great country of ours.

Pegula, who is worth $3 billion dollars, takes the reins from Tom Golisano, who saved the team from bankruptcy and possibly even relocation. Buffalo is known for being a small-market team, and Golisano knew that, and it affected our personnel.

We let big names go after back-to-back runs to the conference finals because we did could not afford them, and it was a couple of painful years for Buffalo sports fans. Golisano made sure we broke even rather than won; he was business first. He remained in the shadows so as not to disrupt the transition of ownership.

Enter Pegula. First and foremost, the guy’s a fan. He’s willing to spend what it takes to field a great team. He has taken off the financial chains holding General Manager Darcy Regier back from signing and trading for expensive, good players (disclaimer: not all good players are expensive).

Pegula made and founded East Resources, a natural gas drilling company. “If I wanna make money, I’ll go drill a gas well,” he said at his first Sabres press conference in response to a question regarding financial commitment to the team. And most importantly, the new owner said, “The Buffalo Sabres’ sole reason for existence is to win a Stanley Cup.”

Sabres fans have been celebrating ever since, drooling at the prospect of winning the Stanley Cup, and shaking the ghosts that haunt Buffalo sports.

Even people who are the most pessimistic of the tortured Buffalo sports fans I know are blindly accepting the fact that we will win the Cup, perhaps even multiple ones.

And I don’t get it. Nothing against Pegula, (he’ll be the first one to tell you that spending to the cap doesn’t equate with winning) but there is still so much to be proved.

Sure the Sabres made a good acquisition of a scoring winger at the trade deadline in Brad Boyes, a move we would not have made in the financially conservative days of Mr. Golisano. During his press conference, he looked at Sabre legend Gilbert Perreault and said tearfully, “You’re my hero.”

Even my 86-year–old grandfather said he felt “like ten years younger” after Pegula’s press conference and the Sabres first win of his administration. It goes to show how desperate Buffalo sports fans truly are. Don’t get me wrong either, I’m probably one of the most desperate out there.

Winning the Stanley Cup is the hardest thing to do in all of sports. Hope is a great thing, but it’s also a dangerous thing. Be careful Sabres fans, we’re not in the Promised Land. Yet.

Protesters carrying a pre-1969 Libyan flag and holding up a banner during a demonstration against Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi outside Downing Street in London on Feb. 22. (AP)

As Egypt continued to take significant steps earlier this week toward a new government, its neighbor, Libya, continued to erupt with protests and the violent response of Col. Moammar Gadhafi and his security forces in an effort to shut them down.

Gadhafi, the leader of the oil-rich North African country for the past 40 years, is the latest ruler to deal with an uprising that continues to surface across the Arab world. Along with Egypt, protests in Algeria, Bahrain, Yemen and Iran have sprouted, calling for new governments to replace their respective long-serving rulers.

Protests first started to break out in Benghazi, the country’s second largest city, last week to challenge Gadhafi’s rule. The anti-government movement was met with deadly retaliation from Libyan security forces on Saturday. The death toll was estimated to be at least 104 people, according to Human Rights Watch.

Gadhafi sent his son to Benghazi last week to tell the people that his regime promised reform, and to warn that civil war was on the horizon if the protests would not cease.

Due to the isolationist stance taken by the Libyan government, which has shut down the Internet on multiple occasions and has stopped foreign journalists entering the country, information regarding the events remains somewhat limited. Most of the information is obtained via telephone interviews with people inside the country.

Reports are leaking out of the country that Gadhafi has employed mercenaries from other non-Arabic speaking African nations. The language barrier between the protesters and these mercenaries is being blamed for much of the violence.

The government is showing signs of weakness, despite their apparent upper-hand in the protest crackdown. Mustafa Abud al-Jeleil, the country’s justice minister, has resigned in protest  of the brutality used by Gadhafi’s security forces.

Ibrahim Dabbashi, the Libyan representative to the United Nations, has also resigned. He referred to Gadhafi’s actions as “genocide” and “an act of war.” He warned all the African nations supplying mercenaries that “they will not see their soldiers coming back to their countries.”

Jen Ziemke, a professor of political science at John Carroll University, said that as more high-profile officials defect from the regime, the more likely it is Gadhafi will step down.

“To encourage their continued defection,” said Ziemke, “the international community or the U.S. might consider quietly encouraging and enabling members of the military and political elite to defect.”

Ziemke believes that the U.S. will face a more difficult challenge in getting Gadhafi to step down than the recently deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

“The risk with publicly calling for his removal is that Gadhafi can claim that since the U.S. or U.N. has called for his removal, this is evidence that the protests are really a foreign provocation when in fact they are motivated from inside, from the Libyans themselves.”

Over the weekend, mounting protests started to form in the capital city of Tripoli. On Monday, witnesses said Ghadafi’s forces had taken over most of the city, roaming the streets in trucks and helicopters, shooting wildly at the protesters.

According to Human Rights Watch, the death toll rose to an estimated 220 deaths after Monday’s violence. The crackdown in Libya has been by far the deadliest out of the recent Arab protests.

With every confrontation, the sentiment against Gadhafi seems to grow. “It is too late for dialogue now,” a Benghazi resident, who wished to remain anonymous, told The New York Times.  “Too much blood has been shed. The more brutal the crackdown will be, the more determined the protesters will become.”

The government beat, tear-gassed, and even killed some protesters. It’s ironic that the Iranian government was supportive of the protests in Egypt, but as soon as it happens to the fascist regime of the Ayatollah and Ahmandinejad, they crush it with an iron fist.

Obama got lucky with Egypt. What would have happened if Mubarak had not resigned under his own accord? Obama was eager to join in on the celebration and congratulate the Egyptians, but was hesitant on what to do when Mubarak wouldn’t back down (he simply asked for a “smooth transition of power”).

I’m not saying he’s taking credit for the revolution by any means, but rather he got lucky that Mubarak stepped down and took care of a massive problem for Obama.

This will not happen with Iran.

So far, the president is taking the same passive stance with Iran. I give him credit for calling out the hypocrisy behind the violent shutting down of the protests, and for providing what he calls “moral support to those seeking better lives.”

It should also be understood he doesn’t want to act because if he tries to prod a revolution in Iran, the regime could portray the recent protests in the region as U.S.-created puppet protests.

Obama cannot back down on this opportunity. If he wants to be the leader that people label him as, this is his chance. He cannot be as tentative as he was with Egypt. Obama has to call out the Ayatollah and Ahmandinejad for the injustices that they have committed over the years.

“Each country is different, each country has its own traditions, and America can’t dictate what happens in these societies,” the president said, and is something with which I completely agree. But when the people clearly do not believe in a government establishment, as the most powerful country in the world, the U.S. not only has the right to dictate what happens in those societies, they have the responsibility.

The president said earlier this week that the situation in Egypt is watching “history unfold,” perhaps the first of a flurry of revolutions in the region. Iran is the crown jewel. Obama needs to expose the facist regime there and help the oppressed people achieve “the better lives” they are seeking (disclaimer: this has nothing to do with Islam, simply the oppressive way Iran governs their people).

I realize Obama has a lot on his plate lately with the budget and working with the Republican House, but this could be the defining moment of his presidency, and he needs to act on it.

Step up to the plate and hit a home run, Mr. Obama.

President Barack Obama released his much awaited budget plan for 2012 earlier this week, and called for Republicans to join him in a bipartisan effort to reduce the gargantuan national deficit.

In an effort to reduce what is expected to be a $1.6 trillion deficit this year, Obama’s $3.7 trillion budget called for a reduction or elimination of over 200 federal programs, including community and environmental services. Obama also proposed reducing the Pentagon’s recently proposed budget by over $23 billion, excluding spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Obama proposed new taxes on businesses and the wealthy that will supposedly deflate the deficit by $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years. Households with incomes higher than $250,000 will lose lower tax rates and other breaks put in place during the Bush Administration.

As promised in his State of the Union address last month, Obama highlighted education spending, clean-energy technology and medical research. He believes these priorities will help sustain the economy in the long term.

“Even as we cut out things that we can afford to do without, we have a responsibility to invest in those areas that will have the biggest impact in our future,” Obama told the press during his announcement of the plan at Parkville Middle School and Center of Technology in Baltimore on Feb. 14.

Obama reportedly went against his own deficit advisers by ignoring advice on the creation of a long-term plan that would reduce the inflating debt, including proposals to fix the Social Security debacle which will soon start handing out more than it receives via pay-roll taxes.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) called out the president’s leadership for not addressing the rising deficit enough, especially on the issue of Social Security.

“Presidents are elected to take the country’s challenges on and fix them before they get out of control,” Ryan said.

“Everybody knows the debt is out of control. The president set up a commission to that effect, and he doesn’t even take on any of the commission’s big recommendations,” he said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates also said that the Pentagon cannot do its job with cuts more than $9 billion, let alone Obama’s proposed slashing of $23 billion.

“Suggestions to cut defense by this or that large number have largely become exercises in simple math, divorced from serious considerations of capabilities, risk, and the level of resources needed to protect this country’s security and vital interests around the world,” Gates said during a Pentagon press conference.

Defending his budget, Obama said, “While it’s absolutely essential to live within our means, while we are absolutely committed to working with Democrats and Republicans to find further savings and to look at the whole range of budget issues, we can’t sacrifice our future in the process.”

Republicans plan on finding those “further savings” with a counter-proposal this week that is expected to cut around $61 billion from Obama’s original plan. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said the original proposal “will destroy jobs by spending too much.”

What President Barack Obama plans to do with his health care plan is to do exactly that. He wants to help people who are short on the buck to pay for one thing that every human should be able to have under every circumstance: health care.

And for that, I give the president a good deal of credit. I do believe that America should work for a social health care system which would provide benefits for those who cannot afford it.

People will blow the whistle on this undertaking as over-the-top government spending, and putting something that is too important into the hands of the inept bureaucracies of the federal government.

But don’t we trust the government with perhaps the most basic and important service of all? National defense has been run by the government for the entirety of this great country’s existence.

Now I do understand that it is a different situation when it is such a personal decision as picking your own doctor, but to say that the government is inept in running a national health care system is a little over the top.

But as soon as the government asks, rather tells us, you must buy what they are selling, that’s when it becomes over the top.

The government serves one purpose and that is to serve the people. Obama wants to make it mandatory to have health insurance, just like it is mandatory to drive with car insurance. If you don’t have health insurance, either private insurance or government, then the feds will pin you with a fine.

I don’t care if it’s 10 dollars or 10 thousand dollars, if you force me to buy something that isn’t entirely necessary, then that’s where you go wrong, Mr. Obama.

The government treads on personal freedoms when it forces you to participate in commerce. The government is given the power to tax in the constitution, but they are not given the power to make people participate in the economy. What if the government went out and told you to buy a car, or else it’s going to impose a fine that costs you half of what that car would have cost you?

It’s comparable to England imposing taxation without representation on America in colonial times.

ObamaCare has many pros: it’s going to allow people with pre-existing conditions to receive health care, and it’s going to help make health care more affordable.

So far, the case has come up in four federal courts across the nation. Predictably, two Democratic judges deemed it constitutional, and two Republican judges deemed it unconstitutional. Hopefully what needs to change will change, and progress can be made on an issue that needs addressing in order to help further us along to our ever-present goal: making America better.

The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights planned on filing two complaints on behalf of Majid Khan, who remains in Guantanamo, and Sami al-Hajj, a former al-Jazeera cameraman who was released in May 2008.

The organization also claims Switzerland is authorized under the UN Convention against Torture to arrest Bush for his admission of the use of waterboarding, a simulation of drowning, as a means to extract information from suspected terrorists. Both Switzerland and the United States are among the 147 countries that ratified the 1987 treaty.

In a  statement, the center claimed responsibility for Bush’s sudden cancellation, “Whatever Bush or his hosts say, we have no doubt he canceled his trip to avoid our case.”

Bush admitted in his biography, “Decision Points,” that he gave the order to waterboard suspected terrorists. In an interview with Matt Lauer of NBC’s “Today Show” in November, Bush defended his stance, “Three people were waterboarded and I believe that decision saved lives.”

The visit was initially canceled by the organizers of the event because they believed the risk of public violence due to human rights groups in protest of the arrival of the former president was dangerously high. But human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, said the cancellation was caused by increasing movements calling for action to be taken against Bush because of his use of torture.

“The threatened prosecution of President Bush in Switzerland shows that other countries will act against torture even if the U.S. doesn’t,” said Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch.

“The U.S. record on accountability for detainee abuse has been abysmal. The official authorization of torture by a head of state should never go unpunished,” he said.

Despite these threats, a Swiss Foreign Ministry spokesman told The Associated Press that the country’s Justice Ministry concluded Bush would be immune from such prosecution for any alleged actions during his administration. The Center for Constitutional Rights and European counterparts also filed suits against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other officials from Bush’s administration in Germany and France, but those cases were dismissed.

“President Bush was looking forward to speaking about freedom and offering reflections from his time in office,” David Sherzer, a spokesman for the former president, told The Washington Post.

While out of office, Bush has safely travelled to Canada, Brazil, China, Japan, South Korea and the Middle East. The visit would have been his first trip to Europe since the release of “Decision Points.”

My immediate plan would be to emigrate to the U.S. as soon as possible. So many immigrants have come to the “Land of Opportunity” recently that immigration has become one of the most contested issues on the political stage over the past 20 years. The classic liberal claims (to go along with humanitarian arguments) America was built on immigrants, so what merit did past immigrants have over the present day ones knocking on our door? The classic conservative (popularly caricaturized with the famous line from South Park “They took our jobs!”) is generally against raising immigration levels. I have always felt very torn on the subject, more so after my immersion experience.

I recently watched a presentation by author/journalist Roy Beck, entitled “World Poverty, Immigration, and Gumballs” which gave me a better perspective on the matter. Beck illustrates that, according to the World Bank, 3 out of the 7 billion people in the world make less than $2 per day. Compare that to the average American who makes $120 daily. Each year, the U.S. takes in one million immigrants. Beck believes going as far as doubling this rate would not only be futile in the effort against world poverty, but would actually exacerbate the problem.

When the U.S. accepts immigrants from these poor countries, we are going to accept the highly educated and healthy ones. Obama wants to bring more of these immigrants in from other countries to help boost American competitiveness. I was talking to fellow junior Patrick Burns at lunch the other day and we came to an interesting point. It’s good to be competitive and we should want to be the best nation in the world. But when it’s at the expense of other countries, particularly poor countries, it becomes wrong and rather selfish. Taking the cream of the crop from places like the Dominican hurts those countries and helps only a sliver of their population.

We learned on the trip that the goal of what we were trying to do was to help the people we worked with help themselves. Taking their best and brightest is not helping them help themselves. The idea is not to work for them, but rather with them. Simply giving to the poor doesn’t do anything, nothing is instilled in the culture.

Using immigration as a way to fight world poverty is an irrational and ineffective weapon (and in my opinion, rather pretentious). Poor countries need their best and brightest, bringing them to the U.S. for our advancement is a rather selfish thing to do. As Beck said in his presentation, “They have to be helped where they live.” Find out more at www.numbersusa.org.

Obama set the tone for the need to compete with growing economies across the world. “We need to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world,” Obama told Congress. “We have to make America the best place on earth to do business.”

He also called for 100,000 new math and science teachers in an effort to give America a competitive edge in education.

This proposal came after the disappointing results from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which showed that less than one-third of elementary and high school students scored in the “proficient” range, were released mere hours before the president’s address.

Obama also proposed a new $8 billion research and development program for clean-energy resources. He said 80 percent of America’s electricity should come from these innovative resources. Obama also called for a $4 billion tax plan on oil companies to help fund the new spending.

Some of Obama’s other goals included making high-speed rail available to roughly 80 percent of Americans by 2025. He also promised a new national wireless program that would make high speed wireless Internet available to 98 percent of Americans.

Without going into significant detail on these goals, Obama urged the importance of spending on research and infrastructure.

Despite all his spending proposals, Obama also called for spending cuts, including a five-year freeze on discretionary spending that, according to the Wall Street Journal, would account for about 15 percent of the $3.5 trillion spent by the government last year alone. This would save the government roughly $400 billion over the next decade.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) and other Republicans remained unimpressed by the president’s proposed spending freeze.

“We are at a moment, where if government’s growth is left unchecked and unchallenged. America’s best century will be considered our past century,” Ryan told the press.

Obama also called for a reconstruction corporate tax law. While calling for a reduction in the 35 percent corporate tax rate, he urged Congress to eliminate certain corporate tax deductions to help offset any addition to the federal deficit. Obama is expected to run into problems with both parties on this proposal.

“It’s a solid stone wall that you run into if you want to try and do it without losing revenue,” Rep. William Archer (R-TX) told the Journal.

Obama also addressed the ever-present question of handling the looming Social Security problem. He promised that he would not cut any benefits from Social Security and that he would oppose investing the surplus of the fund into the stock market, something that President George W. Bush tried to push during his tenure.

Last week, the freshman members of Congress called for even larger spending cuts than Republican House members initially recommended.

The newly-elected members were elected under the pretenses that they would reduce the government’s role and cut spending drastically in an effort to stop the bleeding of the nation’s $14 trillion deficit.

“I think most freshmen (representatives) feel like I do, that we’ve got to do some big, big things,” Rep. Joe Walsh, a newly-elected Republican from Illinois, told reporters. “The voters sent us here to do this.”

While campaigning, the GOP promised voters that they would cut $100 billion from the federal budget – excluding non-defense programs.

In order to do that, lawmakers argued that roughly 33 percent of those government programs would have to be cut by the end of the fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30.

However, on Tuesday, the House voted to restore spending for the next fiscal year back to 2008 levels, $40 trillion less than what the GOP originally aimed for.

Although the Republicans hold the upper hand in the House, it should not be forgotten the Democrats still own the majority in the Senate.

“President Obama will have problems getting his policy proposals enacted because the Republicans hold the majority in the House,” said Larry Schwab, a political science professor at John Carroll University.

“On the other hand, the Republicans cannot enact their agenda in Congress because of the Democratic majority in the Senate and the president’s veto power. So both parties must compromise to achieve any progress on legislation and the budget,” said Schwab.

Contrary to these recent efforts of the newly-elected officials, Obama plans on pushing for more government spending. Some of the spending Obama wants would be put towards clean-energy manufacturing, education and infrastructure.

In his State of the Union Address, Obama called for more spending in an effort to create more jobs and bolster American competitiveness with economies challenging U.S. supremacy, like those of China and India, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“We seek to do everything we can to spur hiring and ensure our nation can compete with anybody on the planet,” Obama told reporters after a tour of a General Electric Plant in Schenectady, NY, on Jan. 21.

Although he has called for new spending, Obama has also proposed his own sort of budget cuts, yet they probably don’t match the magnitude that the GOP is looking for. The White House has said that GOP proposed budget cuts could stall economic growth.

According to Schwab, President Obama has two goals in mind with his proposals.

“First, he wants to gain favorable public opinion by showing Americans that he has more ideas about improving the economy. Second, he can use these proposals as bargaining chips in his negotiations with Republicans,” he said.

During his State of the Union address, Obama called for ending earmark spending and proposed a five-year partial budget freeze. He said this would reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange takes his seat during a news conference at the Geneva press club in Geneva, Switzerland, on Nov. 4.

Thanks to independent Australian journalist and hacker Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, the curtain has been pulled back on hundreds of thousands of American diplomatic documents and cables, otherwise kept secret from the public.

Published via WikiLeaks, top-secret information dealing with the international relations of the United States has been put on the Internet for the entire world to download and read.

The cables concern a large range of diplomatic topics, from American blueprints of setting up a unified Korea if North Korea were to collapse, to lists of certain sites around the world that if attacked would have a “critical impact” on the national security of the United States.

According to some of the published documents, American diplomats have participated in talks with South Korean officials regarding how the two countries would handle a North Korean collapse The North has recently suffered from  severe economic troubles and, with its leader Kim Jong-Il in bad health, could face an increased risk of instability with his death.

South Korean officials have even developed a plan of economic incentives to appease China, North Korea’s most powerful ally.

A list of sites sensitive to the national security of the United States was also released via WikiLeaks.

Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, told BBC radio the publication of the list created a “great concern, of course, about disclosing a list of targets that could be of use to terrorists or saboteurs.”

The list, compiled by the Department of Homeland Security in 2008, labeled these sites as “critical foreign dependencies.” These range from hydroelectric dams in Canada and Mexico, vaccine manufacturers in Denmark, and mines in Africa.

Mark Stephens, Assange’s lawyer, insisted to the BBC that WikiLeaks was not putting those sites at risk by releasing these documents.

Some cables are not total surprises, but are mere confirmations of suspected knowledge. One of the most significant cables to be released regards Iran’s acquisition of a small arsenal of long-range missiles from North Korea. Speculation surrounding the subject has been circulating since a 2006 report that North Korea may have sold Iran Russian R-27 missiles.

According to The New York Times, “many arms control experts concluded that isolated components made their way to Iran, but there has been little support for the idea that complete missiles […] had been secretly shipped.”

According to the leaked cable, released Feb. 24, the missiles, modified by North Korea, are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

The estimated 19 missiles obtained from North Korea by Tehran can reach most of the capital cities of western Europe. Although Iran has not obtained a nuclear device capable of being attached to the missiles, the weapons remain an important step in their efforts to obtain a nuclear arsenal.

In a press release, the White House strongly condemned WikiLeaks for leaking classified documents and sensitive national security information.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department have begun to notify foreign officials of the publications that are expected to surface in the near future.

The press release went on to say that the cables may “deeply impact not only U.S. foreign policy interests, but those of our allies and friends around the world.”