jacob news

The topic of this week�s blog is something that is long overdue in being discussed. We need to talk. Ever since I started this blog in December of 2016, I have kept this platform relatively impersonal and I have not told anybody about my vision for this thing and whether or not I am gaining traction and finding success. I have simply been putting out an article every week without any explanation or exposition and it was intentional. I wanted to make something of my own that is completely my own that would give me a platform to talk about politics. I did not want to contribute to a paper because I wanted to publish things on my own terms and cover topics that I wanted to cover. I wanted to build my own media outlet where I was the sole person in charge and did not have to show stuff to the world through a separate entity.             For a sixteen-year old with no experience in the field of journalism and a pretty surface level knowl...

If me from a year ago were here today to craft this week�s blog, he would probably write about the  drama involving Sean Hannity being the mysterious third client of President Trump�s lawyer, Michael Cohen. However, present day me is tired of the tabloid-esque culture of the news that has become commonplace ever since Donald Trump became the centerpiece of our society. Watching the nightly news has become the equivalent of standing at the check-out line in a grocery store and looking at ridiculous magazines detailing rumors of various celebrities while unloading groceries onto the conveyer belt. It is simply noise and it used to be exciting, but I have stood at the check-out line so many times over the past few years that I have become numb to anything I see as I unload my cart. It is tempting to talk about it but it is in no way productive because it changes nothing about the situation and it will change nobody�s mind. In more important news, I have discussed two bills at the Sta...

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan It has been a rough week. But the news does not stop. One of the bigger news stories that broke today came from the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. He  announced that he will not be seeking reelection this November and people on both sides of the aisle are freaking out about it. One side is more panicked and trying to remain calm as alarms sound all around them. The other side is nervously excited, thinking, �What if?�             This is the 37 th Republican in the House that will not be running for reelection. Combined with the three senators who will also retire,  40 Republican Congressmen will not be returning to Capitol Hill in 2019. Compared to the last two elections where 22 retired in  2016 and 27 retired in 2014 , this number is much higher. Ryan is also the leader of the Republican party. While he cited family matters causing his departure, there is no doubt that the possi...

****** Author's note I wrote previously about the unaccredited year-long peer counseling program that I took part in called Interchange Counseling. The program was a major piece of the journey that I�m on to increase my social comfort, boldness, and emotional literacy. I greatly benefited from learning the basics of counseling and getting 40 hours of practice as a counselor. But as so often happens with personal growth organizations, the outer shell of happy testimonials concealed rot in the core. At the time, I criticized the radical politics of Interchange. Influenced by those politics, Interchange developed an unsustainable ideology and community of sexual liberation. Only a few months before the end I told friends interested in the program �It�s great, but you should do it now before it blows up in a sex scandal�. That�s exactly what happened. The following analysis I wrote and published to the Interchange Grads Facebook group after the founder Steve Bearman publicly admitted ...

One of the things that has angered me since the Parkland shooting is the treatment of the survivors who have become activists for gun reform, specifically David Hogg. Perhaps my specific anger at the hate towards Hogg is related to the fact that we are similar people. We are both tall, lanky high school seniors who take AP Government and consider ourselves journalists because we write articles and interview people. When I see the hatred shown towards him, I see a hatred shown towards myself because I hold the same beliefs as Hogg when it comes to gun reform. However, I remind myself that the basis of this hatred is fear. People are scared of Hogg and the fact that he is still relevant almost two months after the Parkland shooting.             Following the shooting, Hogg started turning heads in interviews on the ground in Parkland on cable news channels where he vented his anger and called for action on gun control. The composure of his statements and his ...