Parties in the white house...

I was reading an article the other day about how much planning goes into a white house state diner. There was a separate article on the Do's and Don’ts. In my opinion I think this is absurd. The president is suppose to throw about 30-50 white house state dinners in his 4 year term. I can understand maybe one to five but 50, that just seems a little over the top. I thought the president was a very busy man, but apparently we need to spend millions of dollars to entertain 60 people for 5 hours instead of using that money to help with the millions of people jobless or to fulfill all those presidential promises you made to the country during the election period. Now I understand that it is the first lady whose responsibility it is to actually plan and put together these white house state diners but I feel like millions of dollars would be better spent elsewhere then entertaining the elite. So in the end I understand it is taking no more than 5 hours of the presidents’ time but that five hours starts to add up every time they throw a party. So they end up spending around 250 hours of the presidents’ time which could be better used gaining alliances with other countries or thinking of ways to make our country better. The best use of this time would be helping all the soldiers in Iraq and trying to make peace and end this war. But our country is elitist and the best must have the best.

The war in Iraq...more or less troops?

I read a critique written by my classmate Ana on the war in Iraq. She said that Obama wants to send 40,000 more troops over to sustain the war. I think that she was very passionate about what she wrote and that is what made it a good commentary but I do not agree with her opinion. She has some good points but other than people are dying I do not think she truly understands that we can not just pull out the troops and everything goes back to normal. If we pulled out all of our troops now, we leave Iraq to go back to exactly the way it was. A place where women have no say and the punishment for stealing is cutting of the thieves hands. We have already gotten ourselves into this mess it is to late to just walk away, we have to at least help clean up the mess and get Iraq back on its feet. I completely agree that war should always be our last resort but when this war was first talked about the whole nation agreed and supported it. But now that it has been going on so long people have started to change their minds. The deaths are tragic and people are dying everyday but backing out now would mean those deaths were for nothing. I personally have family over in Iraq and I can not wait for them to come back but they are over there for a reason. To protect our country and to finish what we have already started.

Thank you Ana for writing an awesome blog on the Iraq war. It was very enjoyable and I like how you put your true opinions down, I can tell.