Monday- The Class Quiz over the Former Soviet Republics of Asia is tomorrow. Mr. Bruns will be gone on Friday so Weekly Forum Posts will be graded on Thursday.
Forum Posts:
GOP stands for Grand Old Party, this is the Republican Party.
There was an earthquake in Chile last week. So far, they know it has killed five people. There is a tsunami warning because of it.
A man in Alabama was in church with his girlfriend and a three month old boy. While in church, he shot his girlfriend in the jaw and head, the boy in the hand, and when the pope tried to help he got shot in the leg.
Pope Francis visited Cuba with his family and attended a private meeting.
There were studies about concussions and football being related to brain trauma, and the results said that 96% of players have brain trauma when they get a concussion.
Democratic Polls:
Hillary Clinton is leading the Democratic Polls. Then it's Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. Joe Biden, however, is still not sure whether he is actually going to run or not. Based on what he has said, it doesn't seem like he is going to, but you never know. Clinton is leading pretty easily, even if Biden runs, which is surprising considering all of the news about the email scandal. If Joe Biden doesn't run, that will benefit Clinton immensely. If he does run, this could be bad news for her.
Republican Polls:
Carley Fiorina benefited the most from the Republican Debate. Ben Carson is following close behind her. Donald Trump, however, dropped eight points after the debate and is now in third according to the polls. The rest of the republicans aren't doing so well. Based on the polls, Carley won and went from third/fourth place to first place.
Student Friendly Definitions-
- Anarchy- Free reign, being controlled by no higher authority. Chaos reigns. Examples: Soviet Union (had), China (has/had), Africa (had), Greece (has), Great Britain (had), Somalia. Countries don't choose anarchy. There aren't really countries that have full blown anarchy. No one really wants anarchy.
- Oligarchy- A country, business, etc, that is controlled by a small group of people. Examples: Russia (has), China (had/has), Saudi Arabia (has), Iran (has), Turkey (has).
- The Theory of Communism- The theory of Communism is just a theory of what should have happened by Karl Marx. The Theory of Communism has never happened. There are no examples of countries that have The Theory of Communism because it has never happened. An economic and social system envisioned by Karl Marx. He wrote a book called Communist Manifesto. He was German. Karl Marx hated capitalism. Capitalism leads to a very small number of rich people having all the money and controlling everything. Karl also said that all means of production and money hand out are equal. He envisioned that the lower classes that work away all day, will rise up through revolution and overthrow the government. Then they will make a class of society where everyone is equal. Then, as time goes on the government will wither away, everything will be equal and everyone will be happy. To create this idea, you'd have to basically go through a revolution. However, human nature is that people will stop working hard because they get everything equally anyway. After people realize this, everything goes down hill from here, and the government will most likely turn into anarchy. Communism is all about equality, like socialism. This theory is basically the idea of utopia.
Tuesday- We took the class quiz over the Former Soviet Republics of Asia Map. My class got a ten out of ten!
Current Events: (Politics)
- Ben Carson said that no Muslim should be president.
- Then he went on to correct that they shouldn't be president if they are going to push Islam on people.
- This has drawn sharp criticism from both democrats and republicans.
- Donald Trump tried to help people understand what Carson was saying.
- Ben Carson is now in third place.
- Ben also said a Muslim running for president would have to denounce Sharia Law.
- Sharia Law is what rules a Muslim's life. The three main things that are to be controlled in a Muslim's life are daily routines, familial/religious obligations, and financial dealings.
- It comes down to who is controlling this law. So if it was either the UAE controlling or a terrorist group controlling, the groups interpret Sharia Law differently.
- This is why Ben Carson is concerned about Muslims. That this is going to control their lives, and it's going to be their main point in life.
- He said this was the one condition for him to support a Muslim running for President.
- (However, in this day in age it'd be very hard for a Muslim to be elected president because most people think Muslims are related to terrorist groups.)
- Our only Catholic President was JFK.
- People are nervous about this because they think if there is a Catholic president, there won't be any separation between Church and State, and the Pope would basically be running the country.
- Also, Scott Walker dropped out of the election. He was a Republican.
- Eight months ago he was kind of one of the front runners, especially for Iowa. However, Donald Trump took him by surprise and Scott Walker's percentages went way down. It is said that his percent was under one.
- If you're under a percent at this time, things really aren't going to change. Rick Perry dropped out about a week ago. Therefore, Scott is saying that other low percentage candidates should drop out as well so the voters can narrow the focus onto one candidate.
- The Pope is in the United States and will be talking to Congress this Thursday we think.
Student Friendly Definitions: (One Left!)
- The Practice of Communism- A political party that has total control of everything. They own land, businesses, are generally very strict with laws, sometimes control what everyone does, etc. This is very different than the Theory of Communism. Weaknesses of communism are that all the businesses are ultimately owned by the government, so no one really has freedom with their business. Having everything equal with the government owing everything also takes away initiative to work hard. Karl Marx started communism. Examples: North Korea (Kim Jong Un), Cuba (Raul Castro), Laos (Choummaly Saysone), Vietnam (Truong Tan Sang), China (Xi Jinping), Russia (Vladimir Putin, not Communist anymore -- They were the first/mother country of Communism).
Why the Theory Never Happened-
We were at war with Germany during World War I. Then Russia dropped out, giving some of their land to Germany. If you are a Marxist, you believe in equality. Lenin wanted to dissolve the Communist government and give the power to the people. They had to rebuild from the war though, so they wanted to wait. While they were waiting, Lenin died. He might have achieved creating the Theory of Communism but he died, so this never happened. This is when Joseph Stalin came to power. He started leading the country down a different path. He believed in equality and especially himself. Therefore, Stalin started killing people he thought he couldn't trust. If he didn't know if he could trust someone, Joseph would either kill them or send them to a camp. Stalin, Mau, and Hitler were the three worst killers in history. Hitler killed Jews, but Stalin killed everybody. If they looked at him wrong, dead, said something wrong, dead, etc. People also died so much because of the strict rules. So some died of starvation rather than being gassed. Stalin was extremely paranoid. He switched doctors constantly when his health started going down because he thought his doctors were killing him. This is ultimately why the Theory of Communism never happened. North Korea is probably the most hard core Communist country. Communism has never really been successful. It's really a dying government.
Wednesday- We talked about some current events and then used the rest of class time to take a quiz telling us which candidate our own opinions were most aligned with. My top candidate was Joe Biden with 75% and my lowest candidate was Ted Cruz with 53%.
Current Events:
- Obama is initiating a movement to reduce air pollution.
- Pope Francis is going to see Congress to talk politics soon on his visit here. Most say that he shouldn't bring up politics on his visit here because that isn't the point of his visit.
- Apparently 1 in 4 women in college report sexual assault on campus.
- More than 50% of the victims of these assaults say they didn't report it because they didn't think it was serious enough.
- These assaults in the study are in many forms. It could be unwanted kissing, raping, touching, etc.
Thursday- There weren't that many current events to go over. The two notes below are the two small stories we went over. Then we started talking about a new project we are going to do. We are going to get in groups of four people and research about two presidential candidates. My group is with Caitlin Bissen, Katelyn Kluver, and Aubrey. Our candidates are Bernie Sanders (Democrat) and Chris Christie (Republican). Then we got topics to research. Our job is to find the general republican stance and the general democratic stance on these topics. My group is researching abortion and climate change. We get the whole class period to research tomorrow. We also get the whole weekend and the whole class period on Monday to work on it. The project is due on Tuesday of next week. We had the rest of this class period to start researching and organizing our projects.
Current Events
- The Pope is meeting with Congress today.
- A new political poll came out. Donald Trump's support is 25% and Ben Carson is at 17%.
Friday- Mr. Bruns was gone so we had the whole class period to work. We worked on our projects about the presidential candidates and issues of the society. This project is due on Tuesday. We also have the whole class period on Monday to finish up on the final presentations.
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