Ebola Precautions

I am critiquing the an article on the Dallas Morning News about stopping the potential spread of ebola in the united states. My opinion of this article is that they are over reacting, as the media tends to do, about Ebola. But I also think they have kind of an interesting outlook on the problem.

The article seemed like sort of a plea to the people who were potentially exposed to keep themselves in isolation. This article calls them heroes for risking their health to try and save this man, and calls upon one more favor for them. They are in a way offering a reward to them if they comply rather than calling upon the government to force them too. I think this is a good strategy I don't hear about being used very often and I think it could be far more effective because they might feel good that they are doing everyone a noble favor rather than just being forced to do something. This could make it more likely for people to co-operate and for other potentially infected people to identify themselves.

They are overreacting in my opinion though. It seems that at this time the expert opinion is that Ebola is not a great danger and there are even many articles on the Dallas Morning News explaining that. The problem is that nowhere in this article is that explained. Someone could pick up the Dallas Morning News, flip to this article and start reading, and think that Ebola was coming for them and that they should walk around with a face mask. I think they should have included in their closing paragraphs how should affect an ordinary Dallas resident. What precautions should they take? What is the threat level? Should they even worry? According to most experts they shouldn't worry and they should carry on with their lives. This article almost seems like it was written to the people that tried to save Thomas, not the general public. It is interesting to the general public knowing what these people are going through, but I just think they should also include a brief take home message for the general public.

So it was an interesting article and the writers took an interesting approach. But as we all know the media likes to blow things out of proportion for entertainment purposes and they certainly did in this article.

Critique of the Texas Fred blog

 I chose to critique the Texas Fred blog article titled Pentagon Official: The facts are in, And Obama's Policy is a Direct Danger to the United States. The article describes a report by the National Defense Panel that states that the president's military policy will leave the military weak and the U.S. vulnerable to attack.

Overall, I disagree with this article even though I think it does raise some good points.
I disagree that the U.S. shouldn't cut military spending. I think this because the national debt is huge and there is also still a huge budget deficit. We cannot keep living this way and something has to give. I think the military is an excellent place to slash the budget since the U.S. spends a way bigger percentage of its budget on defense spending than almost every other country.

I do agree with this article when they make a point about how Obama is talking about potentially invading Iran and Syria while at the same time proposing these budget cuts. This is inconsistent.

However, I feel that we do not need additional wars at the moment and that the U.S. is better off focusing on its economy. Historians say that it is nearly impossible for a nation to stay on top militarily if its economy fails. As far as safety is concerned, the U.S. has a lot of powerful allies, and in addition, proper intelligence is what we need to prevent attacks rather than brute military force. This article doesn't discuss any of that.

Nor does this even give a possible motive someone would have to attack us. It seems like we should consider changing our foreign policy so that there are fewer threats, especially considering that we currently spend more than 600 billion dollars per year on defense spending according to the Department of Defense's website.

Also, the article doesn't explain who the National Defense panel is and why we should trust them to be unbiased. I think that the Nation Defense Panel's opinion on how much money should be spent on Defense is like asking a wine specialist how much you should spend on wine. The U.S. could always have a bigger and better equipped military, but a panel of defense experts aren't going to be informed about the opportunity cost of doing so. Their skills are better suited to critiquing what we're doing with the resources the defense budget has.

So while I think the article did bring awareness to certain inconsistencies with the Obama administration, it failed to consider the big picture.