Still hoping for the best

Pics of My Girls

nobody@vox.com(Indiana) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:53:57 -0400

News & Politics QotD: Media Coverage of Fallen Heroes

nobody@vox.com(Indiana) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 07:38:33 -0400

The ban on media coverage of returning war dead was recently lifted, as long as family members of the fallen heroes give permission. Do you agree or disagree with this decision?
Disagree, unfortunately the family doesnt always respect the wishes of the deceased, and in most cases the media turns what is a solemn respectful time of mourning into a side show representing political beliefs.
Personally i believe when someone joins the service they should be asked then and there, if something happens, if they would want the media to be allowed.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Obama the Centrist

nobody@vox.com(Indiana) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:01:45 -0500

By Ruben Navarrette Jr.
Special to CNN

Editor's note: Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a nationally syndicated columnist and a member of the editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Read his column here.
Ruben Navarrette says President Obama is making the right choice by moving to the center.

SAN DIEGO, California (CNN) -- President Obama has clearly drifted to the center, even if neither the right nor the left wants to acknowledge it.
Conservatives will take one look at his economic policies -- most notably, his support for the $787 billion economic stimulus bill -- and insist that there is no way that the president can be called centrist. Liberals are just as adamant in resisting the idea that they got duped and voted for someone who doesn't seem sufficiently liberal, so they're no more eager to label Obama a centrist.
Yet, it should be obvious to the rest of us that, having been on the job a little more than a month, Obama and his administration have spent much of that time in the middle of the road. For the most part, this is a good thing. Politics is much too complicated for those who practice it to adhere to rigid goals, refuse to compromise or eschew nuance.
Obama's alignment in the center began with his Cabinet picks. There was his decision to retain Defense Secretary Robert Gates (one of the people responsible for carrying out President Bush's policy in Iraq, which Obama had labeled a failure).
There was his nomination of Eric Holder as attorney general (despite the fact that Holder had at one point urged Congress to reauthorize the Patriot Act, which many civil libertarians abhor) and his choice of Arne Duncan to serve as education secretary (despite the fact that he supports No Child Left Behind while left-leaning teachers unions give the accountability law a failing grade).
And there was his nomination of Tim Geithner as Treasury secretary (despite the fact that, as head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Geithner helped midwife President Bush's disastrous banking bailout), and his decision to name Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano head of the Homeland Security Department (where she is responsible for immigration enforcement, despite being criticized by liberals in her home state for signing the toughest employer sanction law in the country and declaring a state of emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border).
More recently, we've had a glimpse at some of Obama's policies, which look an awful lot like those of his predecessor.
For one thing, the Obama administration recently carried out its first work-site immigration raid in Bellingham, Washington, despite the fact that immigrant activists despise such raids for dividing families and turning lives upside down.
Then there are Obama's anti-terror policies. While Obama ordered closed the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he also kept alive the CIA's authority to carry out "rendition," the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to other countries where they can be tortured. That outraged civil libertarians.
So did the position of the Obama Justice Department that 600 prisoners at the U.S. air base at Bagram, Afghanistan, cannot use U.S. courts to challenge their detention. That was also the Bush's administration's view.
The third strike for many on the left was the attempt by the Obama Justice Department to quash -- in another echo of Bush policy -- a lawsuit challenging the government's rendition and warrantless wiretapping programs.
Last week, a federal Appeals Court in San Francisco rejected the Obama administration's request for an emergency stay in the case. Government lawyers signaled that they would continue fighting to keep the information secret on national security grounds.
That sparked an angry response from Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the plaintiffs in the case.
"This is not change," Romero said in a statement. "This is definitely more of the same. ... If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long and arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again."
Let's not get carried away. There is a lot that we can be proud of now. I understand where Romero is coming from, and -- in light of how compliant the media has been toward the Obama administration -- I'm glad that someone is holding the president accountable for what some consider defective and dangerous policy. But, as the commander in chief, Obama has responsibilities that most of us can't fathom, including the ultimate responsibility to safeguard the country and prevent another terrorist attack.
Maybe the problem isn't with the president but with those who supported him on the naïve assumption that every single policy would radically change. That's obviously not going to happen, and that's OK. Although the left won't admit it, not everything the Bush administration did was wrong.
It didn't take Barack Obama long to figure out that it is much more difficult to be president than it is to run for president. Now, all his supporters have to figure out is how much disappointment they're willing to put up with, and for how long.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ruben Navarrette. LINK

I wondered how long it would take someone to figure that out.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

QotD: If I Were a Teacher...

nobody@vox.com(Indiana) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 17:26:17 -0500

If you had to teach something, what would you teach?

Empathy, its almost a forgotten element of humankind.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Christians gather in celebration ... of Darwin

nobody@vox.com(Indiana) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 10:04:17 -0500

by Nancy Haught, The Oregonian
Monday February 16, 2009, 5:15 PM
This week marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, and this year the 150th of "The Origin of Species" and the fourth in a campaign to proclaim -- from the pulpit -- that religion and science are not sworn enemies.
More than a dozen Oregon faith communities are among 980 congregations taking part in Evolution Weekend in all 50 states and 14 countries.
"People assume that a large portion of Christianity is opposed to science," said the Rev. Daniel E.H. Bryant of Eugene, who was polishing his sermon earlier this week. "We aren't," said the pastor of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). "We are not literalists in our approach to Scripture," he said in an interview. "We take creation seriously, not literally."
Bryant is one of more than 246 Oregonians out of 11,800 Christian, Jewish and Unitarian Universalist clergy members who have signed one of three versions of "The Clergy Letter" since 2004. The letter declares that "the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth" and that rejecting it or portraying it as "one theory among others" amounts to embracing "scientific ignorance" and passing it along to the next generation. LINK

I found this article interesting for many reasons, one because lately ive seen a lot of jibber jabber about what all christians are suppose to believe when it comes to Darwin's Theory and Creationism which mainly has been based on atheist/agnostic misconceptions. I also found it interesting because some christians felt the need to define thier beliefs with a "letter". What a sad state of affairs when people cant believe in science and religion without having to explain it to a narrowminded populace who wants to keep sticking them into stereotypical rolls.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Obama Trying to Appease on Abortion Issues

nobody@vox.com(Indiana) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 09:00:43 -0500

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 6, 2009; Page A05

President Obama is trying to blunt the edge of perhaps the sharpest, most divisive wedge issue in the country: abortion. In a series of moves, he is attempting to nudge the debate away from the morality and legality of abortion and toward a goal he hopes both sides can endorse: decreasing the number of women who terminate their pregnancies by addressing the reasons they might choose the procedure. LINK

This is the President i voted for, most of you know im strictly anti-abortion but you also may realize by now im also completely pro-contraception. This is one of those issues that worried me when i cast my vote for President Obama, in the past his stand on this issue has been so-so and i just wasnt sure he would keep his word once in office. Fortunately he is more then keeping his word at least partially on this debate. Ive heard about his funding for foreign groups that provide abortion and no im not happy about it but i realize there is more to that story then just abortion, its one of those issues that you have to accept the bad with the good and he really couldnt get around it. On the other hand he recently called for the senate to remove the expansion of medicaid services to cover abortions out of the stimulus package. Im sure he got a lot of flack from pro-choicers on that one but the government has no business funding abortion and considering his words to us pro-lifers during his campaign days he would be going against his words if he allowed it.It seems as if President Obama understands that the abortion issue will never end because those for and against all have valid reasons they support or dont support abortions, to me its a life to someone else its a group of cells and no matter how long or hard we debate those views are not going to change so the only logical reasonable way around the abortion issue is to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place and thats a whole different debate.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

A Few Thoughts about the Stimulus

nobody@vox.com(Indiana) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 08:29:33 -0500

I havent wrote much about President Obama since he was elected mainly ive just been sitting back watching to see what he would do. I cant say ive been happy with everything he has done lately but i do have to say he has managed to at least get things going. The first things that caught my eye and allowed me to give a hat tip to him was his continueing refusal to allow the republican economics of the past into the new stimulus bill. While unlike others i dont have that warped view that everything Republican is bad but i do know that thier tax cut system of the past has failed because I see the evidence everytime another worker is laid off. Personally i prefer a bill thats been hammered out by Republicans and Democrats, why you may ask considering i think Republican economics is such a failure, the answer is easy, Republicans have a tendency to cut the little people off at the knees often forgettting they are the bread and butter of this country, Democrats on the other hand tend to want to coddle the little people often setting up programs that actually set people up to fail simply because the programs dont allow for transistion from government help back to the work force. When you get both of them togeather and can actually get them to compromise you usually end up with just the right amount of empathy and tough love.

Right now the stimulus plan is being hammered out in the Senate, its basically been handed over to Moderate Democrats and Republicans and since if first appeared on the table it may actually get somewhere and be what this country needs it to be a program that spends but spends in the right places. I found out this morning its went from the original 800 billion dollar plan to well over a 900 billion dollar plan since the senate got its hands on it. Ive looked over the stimulus bill from one end to the other and even in my moderate estimate we can and should cut at least 100 billion out of it thats completely unnecessary spending with no added benefit and does nothing but cater to special interests.

If Republicans and Democrats can actually come to an agreement on the stimulus then thats part of the change i voted for but if either side pulls a my way or the highway approach, then its just more of the same junk weve been seeing for years.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

QotD: Bad Break Ups

nobody@vox.com(Indiana) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 09:25:39 -0500

What's the worst way you've ever been broken up with?

Ive never been in that situation. Ive always been the one who has did the breaking up but that could be because ive been married most of my adult life and dated my first husband from the time i was a sophmore in highschool until we married.

Sheesh, come to think of it when it comes to dating ive not really lived much, oh well thats life i guess.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

QotD: Draw Your Own Conclusion

nobody@vox.com(Indiana) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:01:35 -0500

Which cartoon character best represents you?
Maxine, she and I have one main thing in common neither of us are very social.

Max43

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

QotD: This QotD is Making Me Hungry

nobody@vox.com(Indiana) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:26:23 -0500

What's the best thing between two slices of bread?
Submitted by Eric.
Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato, i totally admit i love BLTs but the problem is a absolutely hate frying bacon. One little pop from the grease and im cussing a blue streak.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Still hoping for the best

Pics of My Girls

News & Politics QotD: Media Coverage of Fallen Heroes

Obama the Centrist

QotD: If I Were a Teacher...

Christians gather in celebration ... of Darwin

by Nancy Haught, The Oregonian Monday February 16, 2009, 5:15 PM

Obama Trying to Appease on Abortion Issues

A Few Thoughts about the Stimulus

QotD: Bad Break Ups

QotD: Draw Your Own Conclusion

QotD: This QotD is Making Me Hungry

by Nancy Haught, The Oregonian
Monday February 16, 2009, 5:15 PM