Mental Health Break- How the Midterms Will be Remembered 1,000 Years From Now

House fails to extend unemployment benefits

Yesterday, on November 17th, the house failed to pass a bill that would have extended the jobless benefits for another three months. The last extension which lasted six months costed the government $34 billion, adding more to our deficit and also causing huge debate.

Both House and Senate Democrats have said they would have liked to extend the deadline by a year, but the House settled on three months in hopes that it would pass more easily.

I can understand that their are a lot of different opinions that causes debates. For the fact that millions of families are dealing with the hardships of not having a job, but also the fact that its digging a deeper hole for a our deficit which we are trying to dig ourselves out of. Its a hard call to decide wether we should help our nation in the long run or help our citizens in need now.

 

A Second Group of Experts Calls for Cutting Military Programs to Lower U.S. Debt

A bipartisan group of budget experts are putting the pressure on the Pentagon to reduce the spendings and reduce weapon programs. If this proposed five year plan to freeze Pentagon spendings, it would save $5.9 trillion dollars by 2020.

“Would this be easy? No,” said Gordon Adams, a professor at American University who led a team that prepared the group’s recommendations on military spending.

But given that the Pentagon accounts for more than half of the government’s discretionary spending, “We think it’s a reasonable plan,” he said.

Although its an on going debate about who's the problem, I believe that even though this will cut down the defense budget its a step in the right direction. If we continue on this path we can slowly work our way out of this deficit.

Caffeine and Alcohol Drink Is Potent Mix for Young

The caffeinated and alcoholic beverage that is known as Four loco has been putting students and young adults in hospitals. The caffein masks the affects of the alcohol making it difficult for people to judge how intoxicated they are.

“This is one of the most dangerous new alcohol concoctions I have ever seen,” said Dr. Michael Reihart, an emergency room doctor at Lancaster General Hospital in Lancaster, Pa., who said he had treated more than a dozen teenagers and adults over the last three months who had been brought there after drinking Four Loko. “It’s a recipe for disaster because your body’s natural defense is to get sleepy and not want to drink, but in this case you’re tricking the body with the caffeine.”

Since anyone can mix alcohol with caffeinated beverages, the fact that officials want to ban the drink is ridiculous. Students and young adults who drink the beverage are responsible for what happens to them and if they end up in the hospital its their fault. 

Military wants to scan communications to find internal threats

The Pentagon wants to create some sort of system that can detect potential internal threats by looking through emails that are sent out. This system should cut down threats but is being questioned by privacy and security experts. 

"Each time we see an incident like a soldier in good mental health becoming homicidal or suicidal or an innocent insider becoming malicious, we wonder why we didn't see it coming," DARPA says. "When we look through the evidence after the fact, we often find a trail -- sometimes even an "obvious" one. The question is: Can we pick up the trail before the fact, giving us time to intervene and prevent an incident."

Although this does invade peoples privacy, if the Pentagon can come up with a stable system that is affective  and will cut down crime rates I believe that a system that can detect threats through emails will be worth it.

Mental Health Break- Call Me Senator

The Corrosion of America

In the United States underground sewage and water pipes are corroding and bursting every several minutes. These pipes are simply not getting the maintenance they should be getting because of our trembling economy. Which is not fair to the American people who are receiving polluted water from their faucets.

“For decades, these systems — some built around the time of the Civil War — have been ignored by politicians and residents accustomed to paying almost nothing for water delivery and sewage removal. And so each year, hundreds of thousands of ruptures damage streets and homes and cause dangerous pollutants to seep into drinking water supplies.”

If we can somehow come up with the finances to give new jobs to people to work on our nations water systems, it can give thousands of unemployed people living in America jobs. The funds we are throwing away to fight over in the middle east is the main cause our nation is struggling financially.