Normalizing Relations with Cuba

The White House made the decision to normalize relations with Cuba.  The embargo that kept the U.S. from having any relations with Cuba for over 50 years is finally dwindling as public polls show favor for it.  More than a decade ago a poll was taken and two-thirds of Americans favored moderate relations with Cuba.  Secretary of State John Kerry will be the first in his position to visit the country in over 60 years.  Soon, Talks with Cuban president, Raul Castro, will begin about opening a U.S. embassy.  Republican representatives like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are against Obama's move on Cuba.  Rubio said that the consequences of the this act will be the growth of power for the Castro family.  

ISIS: U.S. vs. Iran and an Iraq that does not care

Iranians have abandoned their secretive military operations and bombed Iraq openly.  they used 1970s jet-planes.  They are not openly saying that they are allies with the U.S. but rather they are expanding their shiite influence into the sunni dominated iraq. Different areas of the middle east show their support for Iran's military operations.  The U.S. worries that Iran's  Shiite military involvment will deepen sectarian divisions, and make themselves unappealing to Sunnie Iraqi's in the region.  Iraqi leaders have often been faster to help with the fighting than the U.S. operations.  In the same way they view Iranian forces that did not step into the fight against ISIS or ISIL when they attacked Baghdad.  Iranians see Obama's letter as weak and if they would have written a letter of the same fashion to them to tell them of their caution to intervene with the ISIS conflict, they would have deemed themselves weak too. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/world/middleeast/iran-airstrikes-hit-islamic-state-in-iraq.html?_r=0

Too Much Law Enforcement and Too Little Crimes

Citizens of New York are in uproar after the police officer who killed Eric Garner was not indicted.  Protests like those of Ferguson formed in the streets of New York.  The police officer was accused of having murdered the 43 year old Garner through a tactic learned in the police academy but which many people claimed it was a choke hold.   In the video of the incident the officer who brought the man down to the ground with the help of other officers deliberately jumped on him and used his weight to bring him down. The grand jury decision has caused the country to go into major unrest because it is the latest in a series of incidents in which Caucasian police kill unarmed black men and have not been convicted of murder.  It has been an ongoing trend that has diminished the public's trust in peace officers.  President Obama addressed the issue in a general manner by stating that the events of Ferguson and New York are extremely unfortunate.  He wishes for the relations of the public and law enforcement to mend because there is a stigma that has been created towards police officers.  They are the enforcers of law and without them there could be chaos.  Reading articles from about a year ago, I remember how the Stop and Frisk policy worked superbly at bringing down crime, but after a while police officers were frisking the same individual on multiple occasions.  The problem may be with the allocation of officers and the fact that they have nothing better to do.  The article shows clips of the video in which it can be seen a dozen officers at the seen.  Is America headed in the direction of being a police state?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2014/12/03/8dc55084-7b2b-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html