The ramblings of an inquisitive idiot

Archive for the ‘Political’ Category

Right now we are in the midst of an alarming rate of mortality for sea water turtle in the Gulf Of Mexico. The death rates are up over 300% so far this year. Part of this is probably due to the ecological disaster that was the Deep Water Horizon crude oil spillage that resulted in millions of barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf and it wildlife and pristine beaches. Even taking into effect the extra deaths due to the oil spill we still have something else contributing to their deaths. Signs point to the shrimping industry as the likely culprit. Now I love to eat shrimp as much as the next person but we really need to make a change in the nets that catch the shrimp as they are also catching and drowning our marine turtles. There is supposed to be a simple remedy for this and it is a devise known as a Turtle Excluder Devise or TED. Adding these devises to the shrimp nets would surely help prevent a large portion of the turtle deaths. You can visit Defenders Of Wildlife Sea Turtle Petition
and sign the petition to urge congress to act to enforce the ESA or Endangered Species Act and make it a requirement to place TED’s in their nets. This would be similar to the way they exclude dolphin from tuna nets now. When it was learned how many dolphins were being killed by tuna fisherman people boycotted brands that did not use the safer dolphin strategies. Maybe we need the same warnings on any shrimp we consume. I feel that all creatures are important and should be protected for our children’s future. I urge you to please visit and sign the Defenders Of Wildlife Sea Turtle
Petition

I just finished rebuilding my data base adding quite a number of posts that I had removed while trying to repair my website. Some one who shall forever be despised by me hacked into my site. I may be partially to blame by having a weak password cause it was easy to remember. Now I have one that is a little more complex and hopefully will keep the wolves at bay. I have been on a hiatus as google was marking my site as a threat so i figured there was no reason to do anything else to the site except fix it and then wait on them to clear it which took forever for their approval to clear the sites tarnished reputation. I can’t promise to post everyday but I am going to be more often depending on how much my broken down body will let me. I go back to the surgeon tomorrow and see what he says about my new MRI’s. One surgery seemed enough to me but with no relief he may suggest more. I will get back to you on this.

The house version though adds this to the description of a journalist:

This will eliminate freelance journalists (no boss) anyone who does it as a hobby or public service this includes most blogggers who are not paid. The government then has the right to force you to tell who told you anything that you might report about much like they tried to do with journalist Judy Miller under the Bush Administration.

I wrote about Obama giving an interview to the Muslim nation via Al-Arabiya and neglected to give any credit to former President Bush for reaching out to Muslims. It is not that he did not reach out, far from it. He definitely tried to but he was ineffective for the most part. Average Muslims felt he was talking down to them or was insincere in his approach to them. Maybe I should have gave more details but I was pointing out that the average Muslim is at least paying attention to what our President has to say and giving it some credence. That was the gist of my post. Muslims were very distrustful of President Bush. The few interviews I read from average Muslims though not entirely swung over to our point of view, they are at least listening and keeping an open mind. Right now that is probably the best we can hope for, but not enough they can keep Obama out of their political cartons.

In just a matter of a few days in office President Obama is approaching the matter of Muslim extremists in a way that the Bush administration never tried. He is reaching out to the people. In his very first television interview since being sworn in as President he reaches out to the average Muslim on the Arabic satellite TV network Al-Arabiya which is based in Dubai. Instead of simply talking to government officials he is speaking to the common man, something that hasn’t been done before. I think it is a step ahead to engage the people of the Middle East and the Muslim world. This could go further in the war on terror than guns alone. I think we should let them know that there can be no better friend or worse enemy than the United States. He touched on it a little in his inauguration speech but this goes further and is in their language. He even goes on to talk of him spending time as a child in Indonesia, the Muslim worlds most populous nation, while his mother studied there. That speaks to the commoner that he at least understands some of their world. He points out that he has relatives that are Muslim. Things they can understand. The Arab world is actually two worlds. One in which the people live in, that is a world overwhelmingly poor, under-educated, under-served lacking the freedom of choice and the basic civil liberties denying them, as a result, their dignity as human beings. The other is the happy go lucky world of the elite who may as well live on a foreign planet the conditions are so apart. They are the ones like the Shah of Iran, who we kept up because he was friendly toward us and our eavesdropping on the Soviets from Iran, that oppressed the people with our blessings. Now he is speaking out directly to the Muslim world telling them that we intend them no ill will. Maybe an outstretched hand will be met with a more favorable view than a boot heal of oppression. I see from reading on the english page of Al Arabiya News Channel that they hold optimism also.

We are in the final leg of a long and arduous journey. One that feels much longer than it really was. It is only days away that Obama will be sworn in and Bush will leave the White House forever. What havoc the last 8 years have been for the country. When Clinton left office we had a budget surplus and were on track to be totally debt free by 2009. Well that is shot to hell. We are now so deep in the hole our grandchildren will be paying for our debts years from now. Excitement mounts amongst the country knowing that soon Bush will be a private citizen again and not in charge of anything more than cutting brush at his Crawford home in Texas. Tonight Bush is supposed to be getting time from the networks to tell us all goodbye. Myself I am glad to hear it though I don’t care to hear his track record repeated, especially with his spin on it. For myself I say bye bye Bush, the only thing that could be better than this would be if I could pinch myself awake and it be November 2000 again and Gore had just won the election.

I got myself way covered up trying to work out some problems with rss feeds yesterday and never got around to what I had on my mind to speak about. That is the fact that December 7 is the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I guess it touches me more having lived there as a young pup and seeing first hand some of the signs of destruction that were still there. Like a pair of battleships with their hulls to the sunshine like beached whales or visiting the Arizona Memorial and reading over the names of the men who perished there. We could even visit Ford Island and see bullet holes in some of the old hangers there. On the anniversary I will query people old enough to remember the day and they always remember what the were doing that day. Like the elder woman a few years ago who told me all about coming home from church and her mother frying chicken for Sunday dinner or my mother in law who remembers vividly going to the movies and walking two miles home the night of the attack. Try it for yourself and see what you learn from our elders. It might surprise you.

Even though I was up early I am still dragging around today. Still trying to recuperate from yesterday it seems. It was a rough day physically on me as I was really hit hard by my fibro and barely even got out of bed all day. After two weeks my insurance finally authorized my lyrica for me.They don’t have to suffer when they refuse to pay, and I didn’t have a few extra hundred dollar bills lying around unused to buy it with. The only thing I actually accomplished was getting my daughter from work at 11:00. I never got around to posting or even reading my news and emails. I did look at my blog and Connies
trying to determine why we are stuck in the html mode when we write in our wordpress blogs. Hopefully today will be a better day for me and possibly a fruitful one as well cause I miss using the visual mode. I myself write and edit all my posts in Nvu and then paste the finished post into the write new post page and all the links or other formatting I have done pastes right along with it and there is no need to use the wonky html functions of wordpress.

Yesterday was a historic day with Obama winning the election so handily. I myself even though I was voting for him still held a secret fear that hidden prejudices would rear their ugly head and him not get the votes that everyone expected. I am so happy and proud that we as a nation rose above that and chose the candidate by the content of his heart rather than the color of his skin. We have came so far since I was a kid where I was made fun of and called names for even having a black friend. And it wasn’t just whites that openly showed their prejudices it was black also. I never dreamed we would come so far in my lifetime. But we have and it speaks volumes for us, the American people. Now we can count down the days until Bush, who has ran this country to the ground, leaves office and is replaced by Obama. ?I couldn’t stay awake last night and fell asleep not long after Ohio was placed in his column but woke back up around 11:30 to see they had called the election in his favor. It is very difficult for me with all the meds I have to take everyday to stay up late anymore. This is a complete turnaround from me in my younger days. I used to go weeks at a time with very little sleep but no longer. I can’t even make it through the day without a nap much less stay up all night. Anyhow we have a brighter prospect in the White House and Congress to look forward to. Lets hope they live up to our expectations.

The time for elocution is over and we are down to the brass tacks. Election day is upon us and everyone should be heading off to the polls. Our family went to Slater Marietta Elementary, our local polling location, and let our voices be heard by casting our ballots for president, local officials, 3 constitutional amendments and senate. Bob Inglis ran unopposed for congress. I have heard of long lines and long waits but we didn’t see either of them. The line was a little longer than usual but we have seen it longer at later hours in the past. It was my daughters first time to vote and she was excited. Plus it made her feel grown up for the first time she said. She has been 18 for less than a month and is still in school. It doesn’t seem so long ago that she was my little princess toddling around. I talked to my niece and she had about the same time in line waiting as us, forty five minutes give or take. She has moved out of our district and now votes at the police station in Travelers Rest.
I also talked to one of the poll workers and she told me they had a very long line waiting on them to open up the doors at 7 am this morning. I didn’t think to count the voting machines but apparently they had enough as we moved right along. We use touch screen machines and I am no fan of those as I am sure you know. Plus they had portable machines to carry curbside to anyone who was not able to come in and vote. I don’t know how the long the lines will be when workers get off work and come vote in the afternoon. It can get long then in a normal election, and this one may be a record setter for turnout, but everyone who is in line at 7 pm will get to vote they say. Well I have done all I can do voting my conscious. I hope all of you get out and do the same.