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Blog 8: Starbucks' Holiday Cups Criticized Once More

Unlike my other blogs, this one is not expressly about politics. I could talk about other current political issues that are taking place right now; however, this story really stood out to me. Starbucks is under fire once more for having their holiday cups not be red with a green Christmas tree. They came under a lot of heat on social media two years ago in 2015 when they came out with a plain red cup instead of one with a Christmas tree. I remember this like it was yesterday. I walked into my  senior AP history class and my friend Carin immediately started ranting about how terrible the Starbucks red cup was this year. She showed me that it was plain red and told me how boring that was, how much of the holiday spirit that took out of Christmas, and how she was never going to Starbucks again (or until January when the red cups disappeared). Now to put this in perspective, Carin went to Starbucks every day. I saw her come in to history pretty much every day with a Starbucks beverag
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Blog 7: #MeToo Movement Affects Politics

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It's been a little over a month since the #MeToo movement burst out on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Since then, dozens of sexual assault allegations have popped up against many powerful men, including celebrities and politicians. For some background, the movement resulted because of a counselor that tweeted about how a little girl she once counseled to told her that she was sexually abused. The counselor couldn't bear to hear what happened to the child so she told her she couldn't help her. Later she said it was because she didn't have the courage to say me too back. The counselor tweeted this many years later and had the message that sexual assault and harassment could no longer happen and stay quiet. People needed to stop hiding what had happened to them. They needed to share their stories. But it takes a lot of courage to tell these stories. So she created the hashtag, #MeToo, so people could simply say this to say what had happened to them instead of having
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Blog 6: Conspiracy Theories

Lately there have been a lot of theories as to why Hillary Clinton lost the election. Multiple reports have come out saying that the Russians put negative ads up making Hillary look bad on Facebook. I'm not sure what substance their is behind these claims. Hillary seems to be fully behind them as does the investigation committee. To me, it seems highly irrelevant whether or not the Russians were paying for negative ads about Hillary on Facebook. It seems like 99 percent of political ads I see nowadays are negative. Everything on TV slams the other candidate. It's all pointing fingers at the other person and saying what they did wrong. Don't get me wrong, it's a bit weird that the Russians were interfering in the election. They have no place to do so and the fact that Trump won when he was behind in all the polls leading up to the election was suspicious. He was projected to lose, and lose big, in several polls. But during the election he came back and won. Are
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Blog 5: My Motivation for Voting

This blog is primarily dedicated to examining how social media affected the voting process of U.S. citizens last year's election. But I would feel that I did an injustice if I didn't explain my voting process. Last year was my first chance to vote. I didn't vote. There are a lot of things you could say to that immediately. You don't care about politics! You have to vote as a U.S. citizen, it's your obligation! You're the reason why Trump one! You had the ability to do something important and you didn't! You're the problem with America, young people don't participate politically! All of these were statements I heard when I told people I didn't vote. I heard them from friends and family. I heard them from professors. But I stand behind my decision not to vote. It was a decision. It wasn't because I was too lazy or anything like that. I do care about politics. It's not my favorite thing in the world, but I recognize the significance
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Blog 4: What Social Media Outlets are Used the Most for Political Opinion?

It seemed like every time I went on Facebook from November 2015 to November 2016, there were literally dozens of posts by my friends on the election and presidential candidates. Twitter was more or less the same, but the other two big social media outlets, Instagram and Snapchat, were all but silent.  I have around 500 friends on Facebook, which is down some 50 or so friends from two years ago. I deleted these friends because all they ever did was post about politics- including how terrible both Trump and the Republican party were. I personally identify with the Republican party, although I didn't vote for Trump. These friends were making me feel awful about my beliefs and my opinions. Their words and posts were nothing but hurtful even as they claimed Trump was the hurtful one. It seemed so ironic to me that they used hideous words to describe a man's behavior who they were imitating. They ranted about how Trump shouldn't be allowed to use social media, mainly Twitter,
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Blog 3: Trump's Twitter Account

Twitter is a creative social media outlet that forces you to condense everything you want to say into 140 characters. This can sometimes cause people to leave out valuable things that they want to say. For others, they sometimes tweet some things they didn't mean. President Donald Trump uses it for other reasons entirely. Trump tweets more than most people, he averages around 12 tweets per day, according to an article on Mashable. That means that every two hours, the president of the United States goes on Twitter to share his personal opinions about major topics. That's about the same rate that most people use the bathroom throughout the day. But it's not just how often Trump tweets that is disturbing. It's what he says, almost every time. Just 40 minutes ago Trump sent out a two-part tweet that said: "Wouldn't it be great to Repeal the very unfair and unpopular Individual Mandate in ObamaCare and use those savings for further Tax Cuts......for the Middle
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Blog 2: Politics in the NFL

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On Sunday, Sept. 24, hundreds of players in the National Football League (NFL) took a stand against the President of the United States, by taking a knee together. This was not the first time a peaceful protest has occurred in the NFL, but it did have the greatest magnitude. It all started a little over a year ago when San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat during the national anthem in a preseason game. He sat, he did not kneel. Photo courtesy of YouTube Then he sat again. And again. Until someone noticed and pointed the camera at Kaepernick. This led to millions of people seeing him and getting mad that he did not stand for the national anthem. Many articles were published and reporters ranted about his decision to sit on TV. Then he was joined by teammate Eric Reid and they began to kneel. More players joined kneeling, including rival team Seattle Seahawks' safety Earl Thomas. The fact that two rival teams could have players joining on the field for
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