Tag Archives: News

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It’s a Random Sort of Day

Much like every other time I don’t feel like I can give enough of a rant about one topic, I decide to make a hodgepodge of rant of current events. Current events might not cover it, more of “I can’t think completely coherently for 300-500 words on one topic so I’ll just spew whatever pops into my little head”. Thankfully, these sorts of posts are hard to write a proper introduction for so I can just get right into it.

1) Gun Control, The Fiscal Cliff, The Debt Ceiling, and Te’Oing? Let’s just be honest here, the news is like the 24 hour Christmas Story marathon on TBS. You’re really just watching 24 hours of the same story, except the news cycle is apparently 2 weeks, not 24 hours. Just when you finally get tired of hearing about one topic, you really just get another thrown right in your face for a few weeks. It wouldn’t be so bad if the whole time they didn’t just basically repeat everything from the day before. Then the day before that… then the day before that… etc. Finally, the gem that is the “Te’Oing” thing happens. We get to hear about fake girlfriend conspiracies and debate about whether he knew anything and whether we feel bad for him or think it’s hilarious. (My stance? The idea of it, maybe sad. The memes? Hilarious.) But like the fiscal cliff and every other news story that we get tired of hearing, all they talk about is this one story. News stations, there’s more than one reason no one likes to watch you. Biased newscasting from all sides aside, we really can only listen to the same news story said in different words with the same exact idea so many times before we want to hit our heads against something.

2) Only You Can Prevent School Shootings. All this talk about gun control and “Obama’s stealing our right to bear arms” annoys me. School shootings are tragic and terrifying. People are like “why blame guns, why not the entertainment industry for violent games and movies. Violent games and movies do not kill people, crazy people with guns do. Gun control probably won’t save lives because guns can easily be stolen from responsible gun owners by crazy people who want to do bad things. Unfortunately, you can’t prevent everything in life and there’s really no way to stop people from getting their hands on guns and killing people. I think people on both sides of this argument are being completely irrational and ignorant and it annoys me. The best we can do is hope that we catch bad guys before they do bad things. Like the expression goes “Guns don’t kill people, husbands who come home early do.” Wait.. what?

3)  Baby Number 2. I know what you’re thinking. “Did Brianne pull a Jessica Simpson?” Excuse me for a minute while I die at the thought. Baby number 2 is referring to my second publishing that should be incoming soon after a hopefully quick editing process. I say this with a smirk, because there’s no such thing as a quick editing process. This will be a compilation of poetry, very very short stories and short stories. I’ll keep you posted, but I’m excited.

4) Practice What You Preach, Mama. This one will be short, but the subtitle says it all: Don’t tell your kids a lesson if you won’t follow through yourself. I can tell my son’s “you can be anything you want to be if you try hard enough” if I don’t try to get noticed for my writing and live my dream as a writer. You can’t tell your kid that they need to better themselves if you’re willing to settle for awful living conditions without trying to get out of it. And the most obvious lesson is, you can’t tell your kids that “sometimes in life you have to suck it up and do things you don’t want to”. Because the minute you don’t want to go someplace for family obligations and try to get out of it, those little buggers actually remember it. They say “remember when I said I don’t want to go to CCD and you said I had to because sometimes growing up means doing things you don’t want to?”. Yeah, also be careful what you teach them, it might bite you on the butt when you’re not looking.

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An Unique Occassion

Today I am doing two things I never do: make a post about a tragedy and write a post on Saturday. I don’t like to join sensationalized media and don’t want to be viewed as making a profit/a name for myself by piggy backing off a huge tragedy. I also think you guys get sick of me on my normal 3 days, so why should I make you suffer a 4th? But the joy of writing is I do whatever I want, when I want for the sole reason of just expressing something to get it off my mind. If I start a meaningful conversation about a topic, then that just means maybe I did something right. In any case, this post is made more for my sanity to say something that I need to say more than to make a social commentary.

This isn’t going to be about the poor innocent kids that died yesterday. They deserve a lot more respect than they are being given. We don’t need to see a grade schooler commenting on what happened; she needs to be with her family grieving. At some point, journalists forgot they were supposed to report correct and honest unbiased and unagenda-ed news and were there to offer some level of integrity that us lowly people should aspire to. Instead, they spout of repeatedly inaccurate information that differs between every person who views any news. On minute this guy is a suspect, a villain and then it turns out “whoops, we were wrong guys”. The news was more concerned with trying to be the first to report things than giving the people who want to know and understand what’s going on actual facts. Was the shooter a child of a teacher? Maybe. The only thing they seemed to get right were those heart wrenching death tolls. I’m not only mourning those kids, but the hard fact that the people reporting the news don’t really seem to care anymore. But, they were first.

Then, there is gun control. During a tragedy is probably the last time you want talk about this. I care more about what happened and think there’s a level of disrespect to run a commentary on gun control while we’re trying to swallow this news. Give it a day, journalists, at least. The sad truth is gun control wouldn’t help in this case, he stole them. Should there be a psych evaluation and a waiting period on people who want guns? Absolutely I agree. Do I think this would help? Probably not, the sad truth is if someone wants to get a hold on guns to kill a ton of people, they’ll figure out a way. Then who’s to say that’d even help? People can Google how to make a bomb, if they want a mass of people dead they can figure it out.

It’s sickening to me. We need to worry about looking at our kids, thankful they are here with us. We need to look at this tragedy and view is as nothing more than that. Sure, we want to know what’s going on but I’d rather have 100% accurate facts the day after, then be confused for the day it happened. I enjoy hearing both sides of gun control, but I’d enjoy it more if the advocates waited a few days to mention it as to not make martyrs out of these kids for their own agenda.

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Here’s a Ballot, Now What?

Originally today’s blog was going to be a random rant of whatever happened to be on my mind. Just like any other time a writer starts, they change their direction entirely. I became so passionate about one of my rants, that I decided to dedicate today to that instead.

Tomorrow is election day. I’m not going to give a speech about “people died for us to have this right”. I don’t believe in guilting people into voting. I don’t even believe in it myself. People didn’t die for the right for politicians to lie to us and make us overpay them. I’d like politicians to make minimum wage and not getting paid when they aren’t working like the rest of us. I’d also love them to be stuck with the same crappy choices for healthcare that the American people get. Maybe if we take away the riches and benefits, we’d get people in office that actually care about the people they’re sent to represent. I’d also like it if every law they pass also affected them. Then maybe they’d consider what they are passing before they decide to take the bribes to pass it. Also, I’d like to make it that people had to pass a general current event and civics test before they get to vote. It may be unconstitutional, but at least people who will vote have a general idea of what they are voting for and not race, party affiliation and good looks. I’m also offended that the old guy from Face the Nation (he doesn’t deserve a name, don’t bother telling me) for his commentary. Thankfully you can get access to transcripts online so I don’t misquote him:

“And here’s a confession. Sometimes voting against someone I don’t like is more fun than voting for someone I do like.And here’s the best thing of all. You can vote for or against someone for the best of reasons, the wrong reasons, or no reason at all. It is your vote, and you can do with it as you choose. In fact, you can waste it if you like.”

Really? Not that anyone probably takes his show anymore seriously than they do Fox & Friends, but he has the power of the masses. And he uses it for that? He could inspire people to make a change in the political times! He could tell the viewers, “listen, we need to vote on the issues not the person” or “you need to vote for someone who shares your same view of the country and how you want it to grow”. No, he says “waste your vote if you’d like, just do it”. He could’ve easily had said in one sentence “vote for Batman for president because Superman is from another planet and isn’t technically eligible for presidency”. This actually disgusted me. This disgusted me almost as much as most politicians do.

Growing up, I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I was also smart enough to realize that writers are starving artists and you needed a job to fund the dream. For a long time, I decided journalism would be the way to go. I started writing for my middle school newspaper and I hit a moment of realization: I was far to opinionated to be a real journalist. I could be an Op-Ed columnist, and did well with that. The teacher was proud of me when I went to her and said “it would be against journalistic integrity for me to write news, I can’t do it without being biased”. Shortly after, I decided journalism probably wasn’t the right place for me because it went against my morals. Watching news today makes me wonder what makes me different from every other person that decides to actually go ahead with that career path but instead of reporting news, they report their own version of the news. It really does sicken me. There should be a political party named “The Cynic Party”, I would jump the Democrat label for that.

The point is that these people (Fox News, Face the Nation, etc.) all are able to reach people and inspire them for good. They could tell people that issues are more important than white dry erase boards and half facts. They could actually give the viewers a full story, the true full honest story, so when we go into that poll booth we can make informed decisions that suit us and our visions for our ideal country. Instead, they tell us “this guy’s a Kenyan Muslim” and “this guy is a corrupt Mormon business man” or “does it really matter, just close your eyes and make your pencil mark anywhere”. Now we get to go blind into an election and pray we come out in one piece. I’m not sure who’s more to blame for this, the politicians or our “newscasters”.

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Things I Learned From the News Today

Before I get started, after some thought and convincing from friends, I’ve decided to tweak my format a bit. While I’ll still keep my Monday, Wednesday, and Friday format, the topics will be changing. Monday and Wednesday will still exist as usual, with whatever I feel the need to discuss that day with the recently new focus on current happenings in my life and as a parent/expectant parent. However on Fridays, I’ve decided to focus on my experiences as a teen and single mother. It was brought to my attention that I shouldn’t be wondering where a role model for people in that situation is; I should be someone to step up and be the role model. The only real way to make a change in the world is to be that change. I’ve preached it enough, I should stand by what I say and do it, otherwise what’s the point in asking other people to. My hope is that eventually after sharing my experiences I’ll have enough attention and readers where I can give advice to other people in that same position. With that said, if I do get attention of people in need of honest advice, I’ll be setting up an email for questions or anything else. I’ll answer to the best of my ability on my Friday blogs or a return email or both, depending on what the person wishes. I hope that this succeeds or even helps at least a few people who find themselves in a situation that still is looked down upon in our day of “acceptance”.

Now… to the post.

What I learned from the local news today: Apparently it’s been studies that spanking a child could lead to adult mental illness. I understand that real abuse can, that’s already something that has been proven. But really? A spank on a misbehaving child could lead to mental illness? I’ve done a study too about not spanking your kid. From that study I learned kids that didn’t get spanked also grew up with a mental defect: It’s called “entitled spoiled brat that doesn’t follow rules”. I was spanked, my husband was spanked, everyone I know my age or older was. We weren’t hurt, the sound was the scary part, and it was never done in anger. I think kids need the fear of God in their parents to stay in line, whether you actually spank them or just threaten them and scare them out of their behaviors. It does work. I’m definitely not saying that hitting your kid is something you should do often as a main punishment or to abuse them. But I also think when people complain about how out of control their kids are and how out of control these other kids are growing up to be, we need to reconsider something that has worked in the past. Besides, this could easily be one of those studies like “what causes cancer this week?” Eventually we’re going to learn that cancer is caused by something predestined in our own system as a result of our genetics, and likewise we’re going to learn that kids that were spanked once or twice growing up isn’t the reason they had mental illness but that they were just genetically short-sticked.

What I learned from Anderson Cooper coming out: I don’t think anyone’s shocked, and I’m certain that most people will still love him. I know I do. I also don’t think this is real news, we need to stop focusing on what celebrities are gay. It’s not our business anymore than it is our business that we’re straight. They don’t walk down the street and debate if I’m straight, why should I debate their sexual orientation. I do acknowledge that people like him and Matt Bomer who are normally private about their personal life needed to speak up to show they weren’t ashamed of who they are, but what does that say about our culture that they need to tell the world and be branded as the “gay actor” or “gay journalist” to get people to not be ashamed of who they are and get bullies to accept them.

What I learned from Fox News: This next bit doesn’t just apply to Fox News, all the news organizations are guilty of this. However, I witnessed this on that channel so they get credit in the title. They were doing a segment on a Syrian activist’s funeral in which the Syrian government may or may not have bombed. (It’s not my place to say either way, it’s irrelevant to the point.) They show a clip where the body is being paraded through the center in celebration of the activist’s work, when all you see is an explosion and smoke and chaos. I remember growing up and they wouldn’t even show the bodies that were uncovered in Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s genocidal regime. All the bodies were blurred out, and they spoke over as they scanned the area. The blurred images were enough to show how awful of a person he was. Flash forward to last Olympics when the luger died on impact hitting a pole on the way down his track. It was live, so seeing it once couldn’t be avoided. For the rest of the night and week, we rewatched this image so many times that it was stuck in our minds. When did we arrive at a time when the news was worse for our kids to watch than an R-rated gory horror movie with sex and violence? The news should be just that, a source of information for current events. They shouldn’t need to show us horrific images to get more viewers. Let’s get back to reporting the news.

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Big News in a Smallish Big Town?

This morning we woke up to news of a shooting and standoff in our city. No, this post isn’t about the shooting. I have no wish to be one of those “wanna-be” bloggers that writes about a tragic situation for my benefit. Nothing ever really happens where I live, maybe one murder every 10 years which I bet is better than most places. Watching the news this morning, I realized one thing: news-people are seriously questionable. I know, I don’t hide my distaste for journalists, but it always amazes me watching them.

Of course all our local news channels did hours long breaking news broadcast of this event, why wouldn’t they? It was huge, especially in a city like ours. I didn’t mind they spent 4  hours reciting the same information, they didn’t know anything else to report but they knew the locals were going to sit in front of that television screen biting our nails, wondering what would happen and how this would end. I didn’t even mind they showed the same aerial view and street footage while saying “we don’t want to give too much away”. It was really just the simple expressions on their face that bothered me.

They had a look of “thank god something happened in this place, we actually get to report something”. I don’t like the idea of a something on this scale or worse happening and having the “trustworthy” people on the screen look like this was great for their boring career. Fine, it probably is great for your boring career, but what does that even mean? You’ll still be in that same small city local news and looking back and remembering that day there was a shoot out down the road from us. By down the road, you mean down the highway and off the next exit. Yeah, those were the glory days.

I don’t know why I even bother watching the news anymore, I have a smart phone and the internet. I think these newscasters are just holding on slowly because soon the internet will replace us all. Enjoy your job newscasters, soon we’ll just rely on small-town news websites and blogs to get our news.