Content by Trelaina
Posted at 1:04pm on Dec. 20, 2006 Full Disclosure - NOW
By Trelaina
In response to demands that Laura Bush inform the media of minor medical procedures, then follow that up with a PSA to educate the public on whatever ailment she might have, I feel the following is necessary:
I want full disclosure, right now, of every member of Congress who has had a skin cancer incident. Every single one, with dates, current status, and WHY THEY DIDN'T TELL ANYONE. I want every SPOUSE of every member of Congress to do the same. Then, I want every member of Clinton's administration, and everyone who was a member of Congress during his administration....and so forth.
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Posted at 10:48am on Jun. 27, 2006 It's My Mother's Fault
By Trelaina
I was sent this story from BBC News today. Apparantly, someone has done research suggesting that a male child's chances of being gay increase if his mother has had several male babies before him. It's not only genetic, it's MOM'S fault!!
More below...
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Posted at 9:31am on Apr. 20, 2006 Poll Numbers and the Political Landscape
By Trelaina
Wednesday afternoon, I tuned to my local afternoon-drive talk radio show. The host was, uncharacteristically, talking politics....specifically, Bush's latest poll numbers. He stated that the polls show Bush has a 36% approval rating (RCP averages show 38.2%).
The explanation given for the low numbers is that Bush has obviously lost:
- "all moderates"
- "all independents"
- "all independent thinkers" (apparantly a different category)
- "democrats, liberals, progressives"
He then said something I found very interesting: that "all Bush has left" are the right-wing conservatives.
Okay, let me follow those comments through.
- Bush's only support right now is from right-wing conservatives (who apparantly aren't capable of independent thought, but that's another story).
- Bush's approval rating (those who say he is doing a good job, and I would assume therefore support him) is at 36%.
So, 36% of the country is right-wing conservative!
When call #2 to his question "what, if anything, can Bush do to get moderates back" was from someone claiming that he voted for Bush twice but felt the only solution was impeachment, I turned off the radio. However, I smiled all the way home. It's nice to hear hopeful information among the left-wing drumbeating...
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Posted at 10:39am on Mar. 27, 2006 Illegal Immigration
By Trelaina
I started this as a comment -- but I think perhaps a diary is in order.
We have a problem with illegal immigration. Few, I think, would disagree, although some would differ on what the problem IS.
There's an easy solution. Round 'em up, send 'em home, build a wall. Problem solved. Sounds great -- if we had a couple hundred miles of border and a few thousand illegals. Well, the reason this problem ISN'T solved is that there are THOUSANDS of miles of border (and lest anyone forget, we have another one up north) and MILLIONS of illegals. The easy solution may be the right one, but it's no longer easy.
Has anyone calculated how much a wall along the borders (both of them) would cost? Design, construction, maintenance? Ouch!! Has anyone done the analysis on a plan to deport millions of people from our country? How do we identify them? How do we transport them? What will we do if Mexico and Canada line up THEIR soldiers on the borders and say, no way you are bringing them back?
Why are we arguing over such solutions? I think we need a compromise plan.
First of all, we do need to secure our borders. Doing anything else without secure borders is a waste of effort. As my son is very fond of Tom & Jerry, I equate this to the cartoons where Tom confidently throws Jerry out the door, only to have him sneak in a window or an electrical outlet. While I'm not sure a wall is the answer, I feel strongly that we need something.
Secondly, we need a way to allow the immigrants we WANT here to enter legally. Yes, they can probably do so today, but given what I've heard about the process...I wouldn't want to do it legally either! A reorganization of the process seems to be in order. If nothing else, perhaps we should consider a different process for those in countries that share our borders.
If we can do these two things, the problem (to my mind) becomes far easier to manage. You're allowing in the good and filtering out the bad.
Now, there's one last issue to resolve. How about those who are already here? There's a tough one. I think there are a lot of solutions out there worth consideration. Those ideas, and any others out there, need a lot of discussion and planning.
The reason we have millions and millions of people residing in our country illegally is, in no small part, due to our own lax enforcement of the laws and insane application processes. As my father likes to say, locks were made to keep the honest people honest. We didn't keep our doors locked. The argument that we should not reward them for breaking the law is understandable, but in truth every day that they stay here is a reward for them. They receive income/jobs, health care, education, etc. It is time to take them to account; it is time to make them decide if they want to work to be legal or work their way home.
We may not all like the solutions that are put in place. That's life. The fact of the matter is that it is time to stop bickering and stonewalling and find the solutions that work best for all concerned.
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Posted at 8:07pm on Mar. 24, 2006 I am ANGRY
By Trelaina
I am fed up...angry....livid!
I can no longer stand these bloggers who feel the need to be the first to start the blogstorm, the first to lead the charge, the one who was right. Facts? Who the hell needs facts? The charge is what matters, and the fact that I end up the star when the game is over.
Liberal, left-wing blogs? I wish.
I'm talking about these so-called-conservatives with stars in their eyes and a line to a base desperate for action. These people who throw out the term moonbat when it suits them and then act just like them.
The left won a battle today. They are charged up and ready for more....and none of us are safe now. A number of "conservatives" contributed to that win.
One of them is now off my blogroll. If I run across other blogs that did the same, I'll remove them too.
Do I care about the charges levelled? Of course I do. The problem is that it NO LONGER MATTERS. The charges are now true by default. Why? Because people chose to accuse before all the evidence was presented. Because certain people wanted to be the PowerLine of this issue -- the one who got the knife in first. The one who "stood up for principle" even if the nature of that principle hasn't even been fully defined yet.
All members of the political alternative media will pay for this day. We got our knuckles smacked for the Dubai ports deal. This is a target painted on our collective chests.
I pray that those of you who may find themselves in the crosshairs had goof-free childhoods.
(cross posted at Jo's Cafe)
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Posted at 10:21am on Dec. 5, 2005 What Would You Change in 2005?
By Trelaina
As we enter the last month of the year, we see all sorts of "year in review" stories. It will be interesting to see how the 2005 reviews are presented by the MSM. As I thought about this, I wondered what people would choose as the story they would most like to alter or eliminate from 2005. This brings me to the following "poll question":
If you could go back to any national news story in 2005 and change it -- eliminate it entirely, change the outcome, change the players, etc -- what would you pick, and what would you change?
To keep things simple, you can only alter what actually happened in 2005. For example, if you've chosen a murder trial, the murder itself is only "changeable" if it happened in 2005.
As I've only just thought of this, I don't have my own submission yet. Will add that later.
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Posted at 12:08pm on Sep. 3, 2005 Suprise, suprise....
By Trelaina
NO generally only issues voluntary evacuation orders for hurricanes. This time, they issued a mandatory order. Why the change? Well, because someone (I guess at the governor's office) got a phone call with a plea to do so....
...from PRESIDENT BUSH.
So, does anyone have information on what the historical evacuation rates in New Orleans are during voluntary evacutation orders?
What would the New Orleans situation look like now if 40% or less of the population had left, rather than 80%?
Only 100% would have been perfect -- but to think that could have happened is to be living outside reality.
Things could have been handled differently...but Bush deserves some credit here. He probably saved thousands of lives with a single phone call.
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Posted at 3:46pm on Sep. 2, 2005 Government Response
By Trelaina
I have heard more and more comments & stories about how slow the government was to respond to the disaster, specifically in New Orleans. This drives me up the wall, and I just have to rant.
On Monday, the hurricane came through. Nothing the Feds could do at that point. There were already complaints that the NO mayor didn't call for mandatory evacuations soon enough. Okay, fine. I personally think evacuation notices should be given even if there's a threat of hurricane impact -- but given all the crying about how many couldn't leave anyway and how many refused to go, would it have made a tremendous difference?
By Monday evening, everyone was shaking their heads wondering what the big deal was (in New Orleans specifically I mean). They dodged the bullet, no big deal, shutup and go concentrate on Mississippi.
Tuesday morning, all hell broke loose when the levee was breached.
Now somebody explain to me how anyone was supposed to be prepared with an immediate response to a disaster that happened ONE DAY AFTER the actual disasterous hurricane?????
Thirty-six hours later, they say things are really moving and they'll have most of the Superdome emptied today. Huge tanker trucks of food and water have arrived. Money is pouring in.
I'm not here to claim that the response is perfect. It's obvious that more law enforcement was/is needed to keep order. They underestimated the need for food & water in the Superdome. No one is even talking about Mississippi, where whole towns have been destroyed.
Why is 36-48 hours response time so horrible? There was a time when you couldn't have expected such response at all, or if you did it would take weeks or months. There was a time when a levee breach such as we saw would have meant certain death, either immediately or later via disease, etc, for anyone still in the city. These improvements have happened within my lifetime (and I'm in my 30s). We have come a long way in terms of disaster response.
Should the government have had thousands of National Guard troops mobilized on Monday, standing in NO, to get washed away by the same floods that took so many innocent lives?
Should we have had trucks of food sitting idly by waiting, to possibly also be destroyed if they were inadvertantly placed in the path of the storm?
Should we have evacuated an entire city (over 400,000 people) on the basis of a maybe?
What would the critics have done if we had done all that, and NO hadn't flooded? They would have screamed about the waste of money and the overreaction. They would have accused the government of doing all that "staging" for political purposes. They would have blamed Bush -- oh, wait, they always blame Bush. Scratch that.
We have become a society where if it doesn't happen within seconds, it's cause for screaming. It's a damn shame.