Archive for the ‘Political’ Category
Is Obama making things safer? Did you see the recent post on CNN.com where Cheney is saying that Obama’s policies are actually making American’s less safe and more likely to invite terrorist attacks? The post is here: Cheney Interview
I do find it interesting that within less than 6 months in office, Obama will have actually created more of a deficit that the entire term of the Bush administration… Think about it, the deficit is said to be about 1 Trillion plus dollars when the Bush administration left. While the stimulus packages are going to amount to well over 1 Trillion dollars… and those Stimulus packages really weren’t about any kind of stimulation to the economy. It has just left the US in a worse jam than we were already in…
The bubble was sure to pop sometime, so why not let the markets take their course and let the irresponsible parties suffer… it might be hard for a while, but not nearly as bad as it will be…
As to the other parts of the article dealing with security.. it’s all a facade anyway… we’re aren’t any safer because of any policies… how stupid do they think we are? Do you honestly believe any of the things we have done have really made us any safer. Now I don’t think are response to the attacks was as harsh as it should have been… We did prosecute a war on Iraq, that while needed, because Saddam was an evil man, that needed to be stopped… it was surely done improperly and not like the Generals that knew what should be done, advised doing.
With Guatanamo Bay… well, the CIA should be following the rules set by the Army interrogation manual… We have a moral obligation to do it and as I myself have been through some advanced resistance training, I can tell you that information received through torture is usually unreliable and there are far better ways to get information. When I was in training, I used to wish the interrogator would beat me or do something stupid like that. Not that I like pain nor do I want to die, but it is far easier to deal with physical pain, than it is with mental or emotional pain or with someone that is too nice and acts like they want to be your friend.
I have a business partner that was very good at his job in the Army, which was an interrogator… he knows what works and what doesn’t. He even says, that there are things you do that are pretty extreme, but you can get into a suspects head without some of the severe treatments we have heard about. The whole situation was blown out of proportion though… it should have never cause or been part of the media frenzy that it was.
But truth be told, I don’t trust the CIA and they often do way more than is necessary to do a job, that most of the time, they aren’t very good at… That is an agency that I don’t have much respect for…
As to the Eavesdropping… well, that has been going on for a long time… but to think that we are stomping on our own Constitution in the name of security, that sickens me. It also angers me… the Patriot Act I and II were both a bunch of BS… they are not good for America. Yes, our legal system needs some work… but our Constitution is the most important governing document we have and it shouldn’t be stomped on every time we turn around.
Is terrorism really a military deal? Yes it is more military than it is a law enforcement and it should be treated as such. But when are we going to take care of our own problems at home? When are we going to not give so many people a reason to hate us…? The oath of every person that enters the military is to protect this country against enemies both foreign and domestic… We need to clean up or own streets. We should be declaring war on gangs and organized crime… This should be a priority. A strong America is a safe America… lets show the rest of the world that our system works and that our Constitution means something to us. Let’s provide hope…
Then and only then can we help anyone else… and not be hypocrites. Then when those who harbor terrorists and those that actually do attack this country and our people, we make the response swift and unproportional… By unproportional I mean, we use the full and unrestricted force of our military to reign down on those that attack us, we obliterate them with no mercy. We make it so that no other country will ever want to harbor a single terrorist ever again. We make it so that it is unsafe for anyone to terrorize us or anyone else… so they won’t attack us, out of that fear and no one else will protect them if they do.
If we are a moral country with ethics and we respect our own Constitution, then others will respect us and want to join us… because they will want that too…
I probably could go on and on, but I’ll save it for another post or perhaps another blog…
Well, I just found a writing site for those wanna be book authors and other writing types. I haven’t had a chance to use it too much yet, but the concept seems sound and there is a thriving community already established. I did take a few minutes right after I signed up to read some of the book projects that other members have started. I looked through the Childrens Book Section and there were several listed. The entries I read were written by a teenager and a child. I have to say the writing wasn’t half bad either.
The name of the site is WEbook. It’s a community writing, reading, editing and collaborative book writing site. You can join or set up a new project to have feedback as you write a book, chapter by chapter or you can collaborate with other people to write a book. It is all about WE… you know as in all of us. Then they have voting and submissions to actually turn the best books online into real books in print. They act as the publisher of books to, paying royalties to the actual authors of any books they publish. As I said, I’m still researching the ins and outs of how it works, but if you are a writer, it’s well worth checking out. It’s free to join and you might meet some like minded people to help you or give you that little extra push you need. I know I’m going to attempt to have it help me with some of the projects I have in my mind. I’ll see if I do better than I seem to be doing on here… (:
This seems like it will be a great way to really inspire people of all ages to let their creativity lose. I think writing in some ways, is become a rather lost art, because too many people treat their writing like they treat Instant Messaging or Texting. They don’t pay attention to sentence structure, spelling or many other rules of grammar that are there to help other people actually understand it… and they often don’t seem to care. Many people use so many different acronyms now that it has become a language of it’s own.
I’m not saying that IM’ing or texting is a bad thing… or that we having quick simple ways to say the things we say a lot, isn’t nice. But the art of actually writing for the normal every day person is being lost. We have so many of our youth that are graduating High School without many of the basics skills of reading and writing. Two skills which are perhaps the most important skills in today’s world.
We are in the information age, which is full of reading and writing… although that might be the reason for the newest trend, which is going to be bigger than the initial phases of the blogging, article writing or common every day ebooks… and that trend is video. Unless you are writing a script for one or have to read that script, video is a no brainer. All you have to do is watch and listen… nothing more. We already have children being raised by the TV, we have a generation of people that get most of their information from what they can see and hear, but not from what they read. We barely read and/or understand the classics and what about Illiad or the Odyssey or other great works. How many have read them?
I’m not saying there aren’t some great writers still do today, I’m happy to be alive when have as many great writers as we do. I’m just saying, I think that any site that encourages writing and reading to give chances to more than just the select few, can’t be a bad thing. I’m also saying I would like to see better writing come out of our school systems. I often wonder, how even today some people graduate, that can’t actually read or that can write well enough to create a resume or convey a thought in a report or article well enough to have people want to listen to them.
