Come on, Congress

image source: ens

As this week passes I can't help but feel a bit of an Arkham City vibe coming from Boston; our Country in general. Resin letters popping up again, bombings, now two men, a police officer and one of the original bombers (possibly) killed in a gun fight, and the other bomber on the run. What a great time for Congress to decide not to pass the gun control bills. 

While the Boston crisis began with explosions and not direct gun use, it has led to that. Violence breeds violence, so this is not very surprising. While I am a strong believer in honoring our Constitution and believe our Forefathers crafted a masterpiece, I am not so narrow minded to ignore the fact that interpretation and modification is necessary, and should be welcomed. Those before us wrote the constitution, including the 2nd amendment in a time of hostility, in a time when guns took more time to load than shoot. Automatic weapons were not even a part of their wildest dreams. They had no idea what their predecessors would create. And if they had I believe they would have made stronger regulations.

I am not against the right to bear arms. I do believe as citizens we should have the right to protect ourselves, especially in our time, and if your choice of doing so is a concealed weapon, so be it. But should that go as far as thirty machine guns in a household with small children? Should gun laws be so lapse they are sold and traded illegally on a daily basis? No. I don't see how anyone, especially our Congress, sees this as okay.

Who Will Build Democracy in Cuba?

El Malecon
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I was 4 when I came to the United States from Cuba. My memories of the island are short, vignetted fragments; bits and pieces that I’m not entirely sure I completely recall or I’ve imagined them from stories. If I close my eyes I can see my “circulo infantile”, or day care, and I remember how much I hated the food there. I remember the rocking chair that my father brought from the Soviet Union for me, and frying an egg with my cousins in my grandmother’s tiny kitchen. I am Cuban but I am not entirely Cuban, a double life juxtaposed between rice and beans and McDonalds. Cuba is where I was born, but America is the way I think, the anthem that brings me to tears, and the land I call my definite home.

Going to visit Cuba has always been as surreal as visiting a safari. From the standpoint that I need a visa to get into the country where I was born, a place where visiting should be my birthright, things are bizarre. The people there face impossibilities that I can’t imagine every day. I can’t imagine a world without the Internet, without Twitter and YouTube and Google; a world without credit cards and fast food chains, liberties that are “self evident”, and air conditioning.  It’s a place where when you compare what the people make to the price of necessities, it might just be the most expensive country in the world. The island of my parents, with its classic cars, pot holed streets, deteriorating buildings, has always been in my mind a place stuck in another time that I don’t entirely understand.  I am just another tourist in my own country.

Too Green To Be True

(Image Source: Truthdig)

After a term on the back burner, climate change is making its much needed comeback to the political stage. America’s energy dependency is declining while her energy productions increase, putting us on a path towards energy independence. During President Obama’s first state of the union of his second term he addressed climate change, reminding us of the West coast wild fires that were forgotten, on a national level, as quickly as they engulfed too many homes. In his address, Obama gave Americans two options referring to the increase of natural disasters; believing in “freak coincidences” or believing “in the overwhelming judgment of science".  Science. Could anything be farther back on the back burner?

Beyonce vs. Barack

(Image source: The Blaze)

While this is old news, weeks old now, it is still something that’s been on my mind. I’m sure everyone remembers Beyonce’s big lip-syncing debacle at the Inauguration, because I sure do, and it fills me with dread. But it’s not why you’re thinking. I don’t look back on this moment in shame because I was disappointed that one of my favorite artists, and one of the world’s most talented women, was lip-syncing- I think about this moment and shake my head because what our nation took away from President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden’s second inauguration, the second inauguration of the first black president to ever run this country (and even if that was not the case this situation would bother me), a moment that will go down in history, is that Beyonce Knowles decided to lip-sync.

Marco Rubio, the Future of the Republican Party?

Image Source: Business Insider

After an election that humbled the Republican Party and hopefully made its members look within themselves for some reinvention, the GOP have picked Marco Rubio as the person to respond to the President’s State of the Union address. Marco Rubio shines like a beacon of hope in a bleak GOP that has realized that the America they knew and loved has left them behind. With the percentage of African American and Hispanic voters increasing in every election, Marco Rubio seems like the most obvious answer. His name is everywhere these days. Already an early favorite for the 2016 elections and a cover on Time Magazine on the way, the national spotlight is officially on.