Is a 'Guarantee' Really Guaranteed?

While I was on my home page, I saw a headline that said, “McCain ‘guarantees’ Election Day victory in close race”. The first thought that came to my head was how optimistic that statement was. Being curious, I clicked on the link, and it brought me to the article. During Sundays interview with “Meet the Press” on NBC, McCain discussed his chances of winning the presidential race, which has become surprisingly close after Obama’s 12 point lead as late as Thursday. McCain said that “We’re going to do well in this campaign…we’re going to win it, and it’s going to be tight”. His headlining, and most optimistic quote, thought, was that McCain can “guarantee” a win on November 4th (Election Day). I was stunned by how bold and idealistic these statements were. Polls have showed that McCain has decreased his deficit to 5 points, a major change from Thursday’s polls, which showed him 12 percentage points behind. This gaining ground is thought to be due from McCain’s focus on the economy recently. Nonetheless, the polls still show that McCain is LOOSING! I believe he is in no position to discuss how he will win what he believes to be a close presidential race. Personally, I think he should focus on making the polls a little closer before he brags about how is believes he is going to win. I also wonder how McCain’s supporters feel after McCain has “guaranteed” them a victory. And will they would feel lied to if McCain ends up losing the presidential race. Although it’s good to be optimistic and have dreams, sometimes you have to know what dreams to keep to yourself, that way you won’t be letting so many people down if you fail to fulfill your dreams.

Who is More Realistic?

While surfing the internet today, I found an interesting article on the Washington Post’s website. It is a little outdated, but nonetheless interesting. The title caught my eye immediately; Who’s More Realistic: McCain or Obama? The article combines ideas of last unit’s topic of perilous times and our new unit of dreams and realities. As I began reading the article, I expected the author’s thesis right away. He had an interesting style where he discussed both candidates views on domestic policy, then finally said who he thought was more realistic. His answer was Obama, who he thought was correct when he stated that we lived in peaceful times, contradicting McCain’s views of the direct opposite. I thought this was surprising after reading both candidates thoughts on domestic policy. McCain, who thinks that we live in a dangerous world, and we have to aggressively use our power in this type of environment. Obama, who contradicted McCain with his view that the world is less dangerous than it was during the Cold War. Personally, from the invasion of Georgia over the summer to nuclear missiles, I believe the world is very dangerous. Therefore, I think McCain is more realistic on terms of foreign policy. One thing Obama said, though, I thought was very interesting; that the United States needs to stay calm. He believes that when fear spreads (connects to perilous times), we have a tendency to overreact, and cause new problems. Obama uses Iraq as a specific example of the U.S. overreacting to a situation, causing a costly and unnecessary invasion. The author of the article later gives more examples of this, while backing Obama’s claim. One of the examples, which I thought was comical and interesting, was how “the paranoia of communism helped fuel McCarthyism” because without the fear of the people, McCarthy never would have been trusted on all his accusations of communisms in the U.S. Overall, I thought this article had a nice link between last units topic and our new topic, and connected them very well.

New Response, Different Outcome? We'll Just Have to Wait and See

While I was surfing the internet, I found an interesting article on the New York Times website. The article talks about the challenge Elkhart, a small town in Indiana, is facing because of the economic situation. A large percentage of the residents in the area have been laid off their jobs in the past year. I thought it was interesting to see how much the town has been affected by the unusually large percentage of unemployed citizens. Banks are foreclosing peoples’ houses because they aren’t able to pay their payments anymore. The town has even passed a law saying each house could have one garage sale a month because that is the only source of some people’s income. The rise of unemployment has changed the balance of life in the area. City services are on the decline and the crime rate is rising rapidly. With people desperate for money, it seems like they will go to any length to get it. In the past 2 weeks, there have been 9 armed robberies on convenience stores. This stat is alarming and scary because Elkhart is the guinea pig town of the U.S., and this same situation could be seen in other towns across the country in future years. To summarize the situation this town has been facing, a company still in business is bigger news than a company that went bankrupt. This can be tied to a lot of situations we have discussed in class. This time period is linked to the great depression by many people, as it should because of how many similar situations have happened in the past month. The garage sale is very similar to when people would sell apples on the streets during the great depression. When the working class would lose their job, they would make money any way they could. Back then, it was selling apples, and now it’s apparently garage sales. I thought it was interesting to see the difference in authority’s response to the garage sales now to what they thought of selling apples during the Great Depression. Back then, the government was clueless about what was going on in the country, and they encouraged selling apples. Today, they look down upon this secondary way of making money during times of peril, and limit the amount one can do it. It will be interesting to see the outcome of this time now that they have handled the issue differently.

A Repeat?

While I was surfing the internet tonight, I found a very interesting article from the New York Times. The past week I have noticed how gas prices have been dropping and I have been very curious why that is. When I was scanning the home page of the Times website, one of the headlines was Oil Prices Fall Below $90 a Barrel. I even though gas and oil prices aren’t directly related, generally when one goes down, so does the other. My curiosity made me open the article and what I read was very interesting. The reason for the low oil prices was because of the economic slowdown. With the bad economy, buyers are being more cautious of their money spending, causing the demand for oil to go down. Only 2 months ago oil prices were at a record high or $147.27 a barrel, and analysts had predicted it only to keep going up. It’s interesting that a drop in prices is happening right now, because oil industries are still recovering from hurricane Ike. Experts say if the damage from the hurricane had happened in a time of economic boom, the prices would have sky rocketed. But as long as the demand stays low, so will the prices.
The past week in class, the topic has been the great depression. We made a web of why the great depression was started, and one of the branches was not as large of a demand in goods. After the stock markets crashed, people became more cautious of how they spent money. This caused less of a demand for products, putting many companies out of business. This is similar why oil prices have dropped recently. After the stock market fell the most points since the great depression, many people became cautious of their money. This has flattened out the demand for oil, forcing oil companies to lower the price. I thought it was interesting, and kind of scary to see the connection between the start of the great depression and now; after the stock market drops significantly, people become cautious with their money and the demand for consumer goods drops too. It will be interesting to see how this affects other companies.