Joe Poyfair – Houghton STAR

On November 8, 2016, the United States starts its’ 58th presidential election. Taking place every four years, presidential campaigns and elections have evolved into a series of fiercely fought, and often times controversial, contests that are now played out in news medias throughout the United States and the world.

At least a dozen Republicans and a handful of Democrats have expressed an interest in running for their party’s 2016 Presidential nomination. With each passing day the list gets narrower. With President Obama being unable to seek re-election in 2016 due to constitutional term limits, he’ll sit in the back seat for this ride to paving history for the United States.

For the Democratic Party there are twenty-one individuals who have announced their candidacy. There are still twenty-three possible candidates who have filed and are waiting on confirmation. This is making the Democratic Party with forty-four possible candidates.

The Republican Party on the other hand has thirty-seven announced candidates who have already announced their candidacy and fifty-four possible candidates who have filed for the elections but are still waiting for their confirmation. This gives the Republican Party ninety-one possible candidates.

Running for the Democratic Party in the 2016 presidential election is Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former Secretary of State. Clinton has started campaigning in the last few weeks. Clinton would need to win over the Obama coalition of the black community and the young, college-educated voters who support President Barack Obama. Clinton would also need to maintain her base of support among the white working-class women. In order to win crucial states like Florida and Colorado, Clinton will need to convince Hispanics that she is with them every step of the way when it comes to immigration laws and other issues that are becoming more of an issue in politics.

Clinton’s message to all Americans is this, “Expect a nearly constant emphasis on leaving a better country to voters’ children and grandchildren. Clinton will weave in her own experiences as a mother and grandmother to try to persuade voters that she is best positioned to address income inequality and to aid the middle class. Her economic message will highlight issues that resonate with women in particular, including a higher minimum wage, paid family and medical leave, early childhood education, and affordable child care.”

Running under the Republican Party is United States Senator, Ted Cruz. Cruz has opened his presidential campaign headquarters in Houston, Texas. To win the republican nominations, Cruz will have to bring together the party’s anti-establishment wing, which is made of separate-but-overlapping voter blocs, including Christian conservatives, libertarians, and Tea Party voters that are angry with the leadership of both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.

Senator Cruz’s message to the citizens of the United States of America is this; “Mr. Cruz will seek the Republican nomination by running not just as the most conservative candidate, but also as the boldest one in the field. He will emphasize his hardline stances against President Obama, particularly his attempt to defund the health care law, which made him a deeply unpopular figure among his party’s leaders.”

He goes on to state, “ He argues that in recent political history, Republicans have won only when they run as conservatives. Mr. Cruz’s message will be that he represents the most emphatic turn away from Mr. Obama and liberalism.”

As time progresses, the spot for President of the United States of America will be sought after by a multitude of highly qualified individuals. It is our job to determine “who” that right person is to lead this nation we call the United States of America.

The Iraqi military, alongside thousands of Shiite militia fighters, began a wide-scale offensive on Monday March 2, 2015 to retake the city of Tikrit from the Islamic State.

This was not the first time the Iraqi military has sought to retake Tikrit in the months since the city, Saddam Hussein’s hometown and a Sunni stronghold, fell into rebel hands during the Islamic State’s blitz through the country after seizing the northern city of Mosul in June of last year.

Several times since then, the Iraqi army and allied Shiite militias have begun counteroffensives, only to abort them shortly after. These counteroffensives were sometimes in the defiance of objections from American officials, who would warn the Iraqi military of a blood bath should they try and enter Tikrit.

By sundown Monday, March 2, 2015 fighting raged in the areas surrounding Tikrit, but the army and militia fighters had not yet pushed on the city’s center. ISIS, during this time, released a video that was intended to terrify the citizens who were considering aiding the advancement of the Iraqi military forces.

The video clip showed the execution by gunshot of four men dressed in orange jumpsuits. These men were said to have been local tribesmen collaborating with the Iraqi Military.

In a speech Monday to Parliament, Mr. Abadi echoed the words of President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trades Center, saying that the residents of Tikrit were either with Iraqi or with ISIS. “There is no neutrality in the Battle against ISIS. If someone is being neutral with ISIS, then he is one of them.”

The fight against ISIS has brought the United States and Iraq into an awkward alliance in Iraq. While the United States’ effort has been in airstrike campaigns, Iraq has taken the most prominent role on the ground.

In a statement that addressed the worries over militias taking retribution on the local population, the United Nations representative in Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, said Monday that “Military operations reinforced by international and Iraqi air support must be conducted with the utmost care to avoid civilian casualties, and with full respect for the fundamental human rights principles and humanitarian law.”

Rebels undertook a series of attacks in and around the Iraqi Capital Baghdad on Thursday, March 5, 2015 killing at least 16 civilians. These attacks by armed insurgents were mostly targeting civilian areas as Islamic State militants (ISIS) in the country’s north, set oil wells ablaze in an attempt to slow the Iraqi Government forces that were battling to reclaim territory.

In separate attacks on an outdoor market in the Baghdad suburb of Nahrawan, thirteen civilians were killed. At least thirty-nine individuals were wounded in a residential area in the southern district of Dora and in a market in Mahmoudiyah only twenty miles south of Baghdad.

An attack targeting a military patrol in a northeastern district, a bomb killed three soldiers and had wounded seven.

These armed attacks continue to come as government forces, Iranian-backed Shiite militias, and Sunni volunteers continue their fight to recapture areas around Saddam Hussein’s hometown, Tikrit, which fell to Islamic State Militants in June of 2014.

On Thursday, March 5, 2015 militants set fire to some oil wells outside the city. The smoky fires were apparently meant to obscure targets from government bombing raids. The Iraqi government took part in wide-scale operations that began Monday, March 2, 2015.