Let's get some facts straight...

This is in response to Ms. Conditt's Nov 5 posting
I’m going to go ahead and go down this list point by point.

1) The Affordable Care Act was passed by congress. So if there is a legitimate issue with the content of the law that you have, take it up with the members of congress who had plenty of opportunity (and did) to amend the bill. Now, you might saw that Republicans didn’t vote to support the bill. Then I would counter with why don’t Republicans have more constituents in Congress? It’s because the American people didn’t vote to put them there. So if Republicans have an issue with laws getting passed, they are more than welcome to get more of themselves elected to stop bills they see as unfit. Although I don’t see that happening any time soon after the landslide victory Obama won in 2012.

2) You say he humiliated the US by sending a delegation to Chavez’s funeral and not to Margaret Thatcher’s. I would say to you that you are categorically wrong that we didn’t send a delegation, and I can even go as far as to give you their names: George Shultz and Jim Baker (both former Secretaries of State) along with their staff. So right away your facts are inaccurate. And sending a delegation to Venezuela isn’t a bad move in my opinion. With the death of a dictator, America has a unique chance to reset relations with a South American power (who also happens to have a crap ton of oil). What better than to turn an enemy into a friend?
            a) the Great Depression
            b) Segregation and civil rights
            c) the Vietnam War
            d) the LA riots (Rodney King)
            e) Post 9/11 racism (yes people actually died from that)
And those are just a few of the more pertinent examples. Because to imply that everything was a rose garden from the 1800’s until now just doesn’t make any sense.

4) According to a September 26, 2011 article in Politico, President Obama did use the term "Shovel Ready Jobs" in a plan to fund $50 billion in improvements to highways, transit systems, railways and aviation. The idea was to put Americans back to work by construction upgrades to 150,000 miles of road, 4,000 miles of train tracks, 150 miles of airport runways and the nation’s air traffic control system. Political According to a September 26, 2011 article in Politico, President Obama did use the term "Shovel Ready Jobs" in a plan to fund $50 billion in improvements to highways, transit systems, railways and aviation. The idea was to put Americans back to work by construction upgrades to 150,000 miles of road, 4,000 miles of train tracks, 150 miles of airport runways and the nation’s air traffic control system. Political reported that experts did not see the jobs being as shovel ready as one would think as "A tremendous amount of money and time is needed to get a project through a detailed design process, permitting, environmental hurdles, public hearings and land acquisition." So what they’re saying is that some leg work needed to be done before everything would be good to go. Which if you’ve ever seen a government program happen, is kind of a no brainer.

5) What exactly has the President done to limit your ability to worship as you see fit? Last I checked, I can still go worship the family of squirrels that live in my front yard and nobody is going to arrest me for it. I think what you’re more likely referring to is his attempts to remove religious influence from government; which is a good thing. You can find examples of almost every founding father being categorically against organized religion holding political power. You can go to the Library of Congress and read their letters for yourself if you’re so inclined!

I tried to get to the last one, but I don’t have the space. Long story short, look up William G. Harding (29^th president, republican). THAT is an example of the most corrupt President in US History.

#endrant

Intelligence...

It almost seems like a buzzword these days. You see it on the news every night and you see it in video games. Hell, even CNN now has a section called "Security Clearance". Filled in these musings are feelings of mistrust, conspiracy, and anger. Perhaps that's drives traitors like Edward Snowden to end up where they are now?

As the "leaks" continue to come out of a stolen laptop that currently sits in Moscow, one really has to ask themselves what really is a play here. As of this week, the newest "leak" was that supposedly the NSA was watching American citizens on the popular game "World Of Warcraft". Now lets seriously ask ourselves what the more likely scenario is... The government is spending millions and millions of dollars to covertly watch you level up your Elf Wizard? Or is Snowden simply trying to rile support from an uninformed and easily provoked public? He and a lot of the media would have you believe that the government is paying a small army of people to watch your every move. To which I would ask: Are you really that important? Personally, I think it's a little self centered for folks to think that Uncle Sam spends billions of dollars to know what you're texting someone or what you said on the phone. Isn't it more likely to assume that there are bad guys within our borders that use the same kinds of things you do? Or do we really think that international terrorists, drug smugglers, and other nefarious people just come into the US and not use any of our technology? What the American public fails to understand (though their own lack of motivation to find out) is that all of these supposed "outrages" are all presided over by federal judges and by members of congress. So the idea that Intelligence organizations just run around without a leash on is just flat out WRONG.

As someone who has actually been there and worked in the Intelligence field, I can honestly say that there are REALLY good people that work in that field that take personal privacy very seriously. And the ones that don't are escorted out very quickly. American's need to realize that these people aren't just government drones but their own family members, neighbors, and friends, that work long hours with little thanks to help keep America safe and one step ahead of its adversaries. Traitors like Edward Snowden would have you believe otherwise; but it's hard to take a person who stole something from the American people, traveled to our 2 biggest global adversaries, and suddenly has a nice new house in Moscow, at his word...

This is a response to Ms. Figueroa's blog on sexual assault in the military. The post can be found here!

This response is for Blog Stage 8.

While I think your heart is in the right place, your severe distrust of Military Justice is unfounded. Also, your status as a civilian unfairly limits your knowledge about how the military actually treats this issue outside of what you see on the news. It’s not directly your fault, but it still disables you from knowing all of the facts.

My first bone to pick is with the statement “Women are more likely to be sexually assaulted than to die in combat”. To which my answer (sorry to say) is “no shit”. Women are going to be statistically likely to do just about anything more than die in combat because THEY ARE NOT ASSIGNED TO COMBAT ROLES. Women servicemen can serve in combat zones sure, but they are not assigned to direct combat roles. IE they are not on the front lines fighting people. Do they end up getting shot at sometimes? Sure. But that doesn’t mean they do the same amount of fighting as their male counterparts. So I could also say “Women are more likely to get called a bad name than to die in combat” and it would be equally as true as the statement you cited.

My second issue is with the idea that women that have legitimate issues have to “stay silent”. That is categorically false. They have a myriad of options to report a sexual assault. One would be to come right out and accuse another member, in which a very serious investigation would result. If that investigation was carried out by her command and she feels there is a conflict of interests, she can request her respective service Internal Investigations to conduct one (they are biased since they don’t answer to her chain of command). But say she didn’t want to go through all that and let everyone know what happened to her; there’s something for that too! It’s call a “Restricted Report”. The only people that will know about what happened are the Sexual Assault coordinator, the Commanding Officer, and any medical staff the service member requests for help from. Other than that, nobody else knows. And if at any time she decides to go forward and press and investigation, she can go ahead and do so.

The idea that the DoD takes this issue lightly is absolutely not true. For example, we receive quarterly (every 3 months) training on sexual assault that consists of a (yes I’m serious) 4 hour power point presentation, followed by group discussions and ending with the leadership talking about it with everyone in the command. It literally takes an entire day to complete this evolution and document it all. So over the course of a year, that’s 16 hours of power points, and probably another 6 hours of discussions and speeches, ending us with about 22 hours a year worth of Sexual Assault training… I challenge you to find a civilian organization that does more than that. I highly doubt you’ll find one.