Blog Post #6: Reflection on Practice Paper 1

Before thanksgiving break our class wrote a practice paper 1 similar to the one that we are going to have to write for our final in English class and what we will have to do for our IB exam our senior year. While I was writing my Paper 1 I thought that it was going quite well and was doing some rather good analysis that clearly expressed what my thought process was. It was going well at the beginning but once I had gotten to the end of the class period I found that I had ran out of stamina and just wanted to finish my work. This led to me quickly finishing the last paragraph and not putting very much effort into it. I did finish though and I thought that overall I did pretty well. The next class period we had we decided to take a look at what IB examiners felt was a bad examples of a paper one. This made me feel a little self conscious because I felt that mine was worse than the bad example. Then when we looked at the good example it was clear that it was leaps and bounds ahead of mine.

Once we began to peer edit I found that my largest problem was my format. O had not known that the preferred format for this assignment was a five paragraph essay. I just analyzed both of the texts in separate paragraphs then had another one comparing and contrasting them. I felt that it was able to convey my ideas properly but it was not the format that I was supposed to use. I think it may have been appropriate if I just simply added and an intro and conclusion.

What I learned fom this process was how to properly write a paper 1 and what the criteria is. I also learned that I need to focus on not having stamina in my writing so I do not get lazy towards the end.

Blog Post #5: Bias in the News - ARTICLE ANALYSIS

Article with Annotations:

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/charlie-kirk-democrats-come-out-the-big-losers-in-floridas-election-mess

Charlie Kirk: Democrats come out the big losers in Florida’s election mess

Despite desperate efforts by Democrats to overturn the decision of Florida’s voters – and despite the state’s deeply flawed, mismanaged and corrupt election system – it’s now clear that Republican Ron DeSantis will be the state’s next governor and Republican Gov. Rick Scott will be its next U.S. senator.

While a hand recount is still underway in Scott’s race against incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, “Nelson was left with almost no chance of pulling off a comeback to retain his seat” because Scott was leading by more than 12,000 votes, the Washington Post reported. And Florida’s machine recount of votes showed DeSantis more than 33,000 votes ahead of Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum – a margin too large to mandate a hand recount.

Democrats who refuse to accept that DeSantis will be governor and that Scott is heading to the Senate are refusing to accept reality. Their complaints against Republicans are absurd and simply the whining of sore losers unable to accept responsibility for their losses.

The reality in Florida is that the state’s voting system is badly broken. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, who is presiding in one of several lawsuits arising out of the Nov. 6 midterm elections, was right when he recently said: “We have been the laughingstock of the world, election after election, and we chose not to fix this.”

Why does Florida have so many problems counting votes and determining which votes should count?

There are three issues involved in determining which votes are valid./

The first issue is voter fraud. This can involve someone voting who does not have the right to vote, such as a person who is not a U.S. citizen. It can also involve someone voting more than once, such as a person who moves to a new community but is still registered to vote from his or her previous residence. Fraud can also take place when a person pretends to be someone else – such as a voter who has died – and votes under that false identity.

The second issue is election interference or tampering. This is where a person or entity acts improperly to influence voters or the counting of votes. This can involve many things, such as: foreign interference in an election; computer hacking to alter voter databases; tampering with equipment that records votes; and creating front groups to put out false information on social media, in ads, in mailings, in robocalls and in other ways.

The third issue is voter suppression. This involves efforts to discourage or prevent voters from casting ballots. Democrats accuse Republicans of this because Republicans favor measures to prevent voter fraud, such as requiring voters to present a form of identification when casting ballots. The Democratic claim makes no sense. Requirements for an ID are not voter suppression – they are just commonsense steps to ensure people don’t vote if they are ineligible, don’t vote using false identities and don’t vote more than once. True voter suppression took place in the past, usually by Democrats in the South, to deny African-Americans the vote. And the votes of women were suppressed before they were granted the right to vote nationwide by the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1920.

Historically, Democrats have shown they are willing to do just about anything to win elections. Republicans must quit taking the high road and fight back with everything we have.

Democrats have long been the party of voter fraud. The line “vote early and often” describes the Democratic Party machine in Chicago (the original line has even been attributed to gangster Al Capone, although nobody knows). Chicago has also been a place where the grateful dead have been more of an election force than a rock band. There, as in other major urban population centers, Democrats have used voter fraud as a way to retain and consolidate power.

Today the voter fraud issue centers around letting non-citizens have access to the ballot box. Despite media claims that there is no evidence of this happening, the truth is that there is plenty of observational evidence from around the country that it is. Letting non-citizens vote jeopardizes our principles as a nation. They vote only for entitlement, not for their own responsibility as citizens.

Election interference and vote tampering certainly appear to have occurred in Broward County in Florida in the recent midterm elections.

Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes, a Democrat who has held the position since 2003, has a long history of duplicitous behavior. As NPR – hardly a tool of the Republican Party – recently reported: “Accusations of bias and incompetence have followed Snipes for years.”

And yet Snipes continues to be allowed to serve because a majority of people living in predominantly Democratic Broward County apparently believe the ends justify the means when it comes to counting votes in order to favor Democrats.

The intellectual dishonesty of Democrats trying win elections they actually lost in Florida and elsewhere is staggering. Make no mistake, the only thing that these Democrats care about is winning this election in this moment. They don’t care that by doing whatever is needed to win they are undermining our entire system of government.

Banana Republic is a great clothing store but a lousy place to live. This is the kind of behavior we see in such nations.

Republicans need to understand there is no high road to take here. We need to be as aggressive as we legally can be, and any politician subjected to Democratic tactics designed to improperly win elections cannot ever concede or withdraw.

Democrats know the mathematics of being able to “flip” just a few votes in every voting location. With over 113,000 voting sites in the United States it doesn’t take much.

We should all be grateful to the Founding Fathers for our electoral system. We need to be vigilant in protecting it in the face of attacks by Democrats that are stronger than ever.

Purpose: To show the world that democrats are solely responsible for voter fraud.

Connotative Diction:

When the author says, “the state’s deeply flawed, mismanaged and corrupt election”, it makes seem as if this is the Democrats fault that the election system in Florida is so flawed. As they are constantly blaming the Democrats for everything it would only seem fitting that this be their fault as well.

Adjectives:

The words that are used to describe Democrats make them seem as if they are completely evil, sore losers, and are childish. This can be seen when the author of this article say, “Their complaints against Republicans are absurd and simply the whining of sore losers unable to accept responsibility for their losses.” By calling them whiny and sore losers it really shows how bias Fox news really is.

Exaggeration:

In this article it can be seen that the author really exaggerates the negative traits of democrats. This can be seen when he says, “the only thing that these Democrats care about is winning this election in this moment.”  This shows his beliefs that the only thing that Democrats care about is winning, not actually bettering the country and making advancements and improvements in society.

Bias through source:

Fox News is known for taking a very conservative point of view. This would cause them to not take the side of or advocate for Democrats which makes the story one sided.

Bias through word choice:

The word choice that they use makes it seem like Democrats are not fit so society and are not good for the future of the country. This can be seen as early as the title of the article which is, “ Democrats come out the big losers in Florida’s election mess”. By calling them Big losers sort of sets the tone of the standpoint they are going to take in the rest of the article.