RogerAncona JOUR 4250

Roger Ancona JOUR 4250 November 15th, 2018 Another shooting has occurred before we could even recover from the last shooting.  This time it took place in a bar in Thousand Oaks, California.  The gunman, Ian D. Long, a Marine Corps veteran killed 12 people at the Borderline Bar and Grill.  The night this occurred was disgusting as the only thing on people's mind was not the victims but rather the ethnicity of the shooter.  Since Long had a beard, it was initially believed the shooter was of middle-eastern descent and it was disturbing seeing the glee of many republican pundits who were believed to be proven right of their fears of people of brown skin.  Those tweets and posts were then deleted once the shooter was shown to be a white male who was formerly in the Marines.  As if that was ever the issue that was important when the lives of a dozen innocent people were lost in that kind of fashion.  Gun control continues to be a reoccurring issu...

Roger Ancona JOUR 4250 October 31st, 2018 Another shooting has occurred, this time in a Synagogue in Pittsburgh.  The hate crime was committed by neo-nazi Robert Bowers who was known for targeting Jewish people online and who shouted anti-Semitic slurs during the shooting.  It is very important to understand just how much antisemitism is still present and the world and our country.  This attack left 11 worshipers dead, all of who were on the elderly side.  Bowers was known as an open racist and had 21 guns registered to him, and this easily shows what is wrong with our gun system in this country.  How could somebody who speaks so openly about hating and wanting to kill Jewish people acquire so many weapons?  The semester prior to this I took Rabbi Geoffrey Dennis' Hebrew bible class, and to imagine a holy service interrupted with such a heinous crime disgusts me beyond belief.  We must not forget about this crime when the next shoo...

Roger Ancona JOUR 4250 December 4th, 2018 After a shooting in an Alabama mall left one innocent man dead, it has been revealed that Emantic "EJ" Fitzgerald Bradford Jr. was shot multiple times in the back in a case of a "mistaken identity" that left the actual gunman at large at the time.  This marks another senseless killing of an innocent African-American man and the number of times he was shot and how he was shot just goes to show the lack of compassion and the shoot-first ask questions later mentality that has been all too familiar in our police forces across the country.  Of course this is a case where an officer is searching for an active shooter and emotions and instincts are high, but this is simply not a situation where an officer can make the wrong decision as the lives of innocent people are at stake.  One must wonder had Bradford Jr. been a white male or white woman if the same thing would have taken place.  It is extremely disheartening to imagine...

Roger Ancona JOUR 4250 November 8th, 2018 Senator Ted Cruz has defeated Democratic candidate Beto O'Rourke for a seat in the Senate in Texas.  On a personal level, this is the first time I ever voted for a mid-term election and as election night went on I felt as though my vote really mattered, however O'Rourke eventually fell victim to many of the small counties across Texas that voted red.  One of the most telling things about the election was the difference in advertisements between the two candidates.  This time of the year basically floods televisions across the countries with a pointless amount of political advertisements and this midterm season was no different.  O'Rourke went out of his way to create advertisements that were positive and spoke only about what he would accomplish for Texans and human beings in general.  Ted Cruz created advertisements that fear-mongered Hispanic people to the white majority of Texas voters and gave me hint...

Roger Ancona JOUR 4250 December 1st, 2018 Over the last few months there has been talk about a "Migrant Caravan" that was marching through Mexico towards the United States in search of refuge from the terrible conditions in South American countries such as Honduras and Guatemala.  Once many of them reached the US-Mexico border, our border patrol tear gassed the Caravan, filled with children, and caused them to suffer more than they already were.  The reaction to the event was vast, even FOX news personalities such as Geraldo Rivera came forward with their own disgust over the actions that transpired.  A country built upon the back of immigrants and slaves now rejects these people looking for a better life and I personally cannot think of something less American than turning these people away and tear gassing them.  Over the months we had seen increasingly hostile advertisements from politicians such as Ted Cruz and because of this some people are seemingly fine...