Army-Navy Game

Every year, I always try to watch the Army-Navy football game. However, this year, I did not really expect to see it because of the shutdown. Due to the shutdown, all of the games that the military service academies' athletic programs would participate in were threatened to be cancelled, because the service academies use federal money to help pay for games, which was rightfully considered a nonessential expense. As we all know, a temporary budget agreement was reached, the shutdown ended, and athletic events carried on as normal. This week, a bipartisan budget deal passed the House and is expected to pass in the Senate. This deal would ease spending caps and lessen across-the-board spending cuts, and would prevent another shutdown for at least 2-3 years. Some Senators are against this bill, and the bill will either be narrowly passed or narrowly defeated. Hopefully, this bill is a sign of more congressmen being willing to work together, and the beginning of more bipartisan deals to come. But, by looking at the history of this Congress, this bill may pass just because midterm elections are coming and congressmen are doing anything to keep their jobs. Either way, if the bill passes, this game would not be in jeopardy for another couple of years.
In the meantime, in the words of my grandfather... Go Navy! Beat Army!

Obama Shakes Castro's Hand

On Tuesday, while attending Nelson Mandela's funeral, President Obama shook Cuban President Raul Castro's hand, and created a media firestorm. Many politicians and prominent media attacked the move, saying that it was a sign of Obama backing down against Cuba, and that Obama should not have shook hands with Castro because he was a "thug" and was denying Cubans basic freedoms. While I agree that Castro either needs to change many things about the way he runs Cuba or be put out of power, I cannot comprehend why the handshake was such a big deal. They were at a funeral, where you're supposed to put aside your differences for a short while to celebrate someone's life. It's not like they were agreeing on anything, they were just being polite. Also, they were at the funeral of Nelson Mandela, a man who devoted his life to fighting for basic freedoms and for reconciling his country. To bring up disagreements and to fight at the funeral would have been hugely disrespectful to Mandela's legacy.
The media and many politicians are forgetting about the times where US presidents shook hands with dictators and terrorists, like Nixon did with Fidel Castro, or when Reagan shook hands with Spanish dictator Generalisimo Francisco Franco. Honestly, a handshake is a way of greeting someone, and it shows that you are grown up enough to at least show some respect, and are not childish enough to bicker and not put aside differences for a short while. A handshake does not mean that you support someone or agree with what they are doing. All of this talk is just distracting people from what's really important: coming together to celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela.

Six Year Old Suspended for kissing classmate

In Colorado, a six-year-old boy has been suspended from school for kissing a girl in class. This is just another example of political correctness gone way too far. The school has a zero-tolerance policy for unwanted touching; however, considering that the boy was only six, and that neither the girl nor the girl's parents complained to the school, or to anyone else for that matter, the school had no right to suspend him at all, much less for several days. While I understand the need for a strong policy for what to do in case of, as the school put it, unwanted touching, there should be some discretion on the victim's part, and on the parents' part. Also, the boy was only six, yet the school administrators were discussing charging the boy with sexual harassment, again without any say so by the girl's parents, and all the boy did was kiss his "girlfriend", as he put it, on the hand when they got in a group for reading time. The boy had no idea what sex was! He is now questioning his mother about what sex is, what harassment is, and other questions that no six year old should be asking. Schools in general nowadays are overstepping their bounds in order to protect their students from not-so-serious threats, and are doing more harm than good by trying to stay politically correct and sticking to rules exactly, without using any logic whatsoever, and this story is a perfect example of that trend.