If you want to catch a mouse in your house then use peanut butter for the bait and not cheese. We finally caught our mouse. It was sad and I’m glad I didn’t see it. The teen found the poor little guy when she went to make some cereal for breakfast the other day.
My teen is is out in the driveway at 9:36 AM cleaning out her car, vacuuming it and do Lord knows what for Lord knows why? She had cheer practice this morning and came home to dive right into cleaning her car. Hmm.. I wonder what she wants?
I have a doctor’s appointment today. Fun Fun! My doctor wants to see me because I had to go to the ER on Saturday. I guess I had a terrible horrible no good migraine for FOUR days. I couldn’t take it any more. So I went to the local urgent care center of Omaha where they ran blood work. That all came back normal. The PA didn’t feel comfortable just sending me home so she sent me to the ER.
I guess sometimes super painful headaches can be due to lots of different things like viral meningitis or even west nile virus. WOW!! I had no clue. So off we went to the ER where they hooked me up to an IV and gave me three pain medicines to see if my head ache would go away. You know you have it bad when every time you walk or take a step the pain shoots right up your back and straight to the top of your head.
The nurse couldn’t get a vein to work so after two tries she called in her reinforcement. I just told the reinforcement to go in on my right arm right where they went in to draw the blood at the Urgent Care Center of Omaha.
Thankfully I don’t have any of those horrible viruses and don’t even get me started on the differences between viral meningitis and bacterial meningitis. I don’t want either and hope I never get them (knock-on-wood).
In the World of Politics
I don’t understand what Obama was trying to accomplish by going overseas to speak to the Germans and to the rest of Europe. Is he running for office over there? What a condescending donkey’s butt.
I’m sorry but the first stop I would have made would have been to see the troops at the hospitals. The press would have been barred from following me there too. So instead he goes and gets his morning workout in?
Who’s he trying to convince in Europe? Does he think if he impresses the Europeans that they will somehow put pressure on us to vote for him?
When is he going to admit that the surge is working and that we’ve put a major dent into terrorist operations overseas?
What’s this I hear about our government sticking their noses into our businesses again and giving out more cash breaks? How crazy is that? People that don’t want to work are going to get a couple G’s so they can go buy a house AND the government is going to take that money from the rich to bail out the poor because lenders gave out money that they new the poor couldn’t pay back?
I’m sorry but the last time I checked if you couldn’t afford your house payment then you shouldn’t be living in a house. I lived in plenty of apartments to know that rent is much cheaper and do what you can get by with. What’s wrong with this people?
Work hard, pay your dues, and please leave my bank account alone thank you very much! So tired of people looking to the government for a handout.
The Pentagon advised Obama not to go see the troops at hospitals. It wasn’t his idea. Blame the Pentagon for him not visiting them, not Obama. Also, I think it would be in bad taste to do it just to garner press, which some people could say politicians do with those visits. While it is good to visit our injured military heroes, you need to make sure you do it in a way to honor them.
Ugh, the only reason there is terrorism is Iraq is because we invaded their country. While the surge is doing a lot to cull terrorism, none of it would be occurring had we not invaded in the first place. We should be focusing on Afghanistan as well, a place where the Taliban still is a major threat. Combat casualties in Afghanistan recently surpassed those in Iraq. The surge may have put a band-aid on the situation for now, and may be working, but it will not do much to combat global terrorism.
I also have a beef with the Bush administration using taxpayer money to bail out banks and big organizations like Bear Stearns. Why should the poor and middle class pay for their poor decisions? Yes, people making bad decisions on mortgages causing foreclosure is a terrible thing. But banks and other lending facilities pushed bad loans on people too. I can’t defend all bad decisions. A lot of those people just were idiots with their money. But the large companies took advantage of them unethically and now the government is using taxpayer money (yours and mine) to bail the big companies out.
The fix for the economy isn’t easy. I don’t have the answer, but I do think a lot of people (on both sides) are going about the situation wrong.
Actually, the reason why Obama didn’t go and see the troops was because he was warned that he should not make it as part of his campaign.
If I were running for President OR was just a little ol’ politician you can bet I would want to see the troops at the hospital before my speaking engagements, before my social luncheons, and certainly before my work out at the local gym.
Our presence in Iraq does A LOT to combat global terrorism.
Our presence in Iraq combats the terrorism that we helped create in Iraq. Iraq was a much more stable nation (regardless of how evil Saddam was Iraq was not a hotbed of terrorism) before we attacked without a post-invasion plan. That started the chaos and insurrection, adding to terrorism worldwide. It would have not existed without our invasion. I can’t put the full blame on America or other outside nations, it was also because of Iraqi historical sentiments. We just provided the opportunity and violence.
We already had a secure presence in the Middle East with other allies (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait). That was a secure way we could combat terrorism in the Middle East. We were fighting global terrorism in Afghanistan (and other places) before Iraq, which is legit. How was Iraq contributing to Al-Qaeda and global terrorism? Oh that’s right, as a country it wasn’t! Of course Saddam Hussein was evil. But we did not invade because of that!
Anyway…
I agree with you that visiting troops for political purposes is a terrible thing. I think Obama realized that some news organizations would spin it that way and his aides probably didn’t want that. I do think that he should do more for them. Does Obama think that visiting the troops would be a visual only for his campaign? I doubt it. If he does, then so does McCain. The sad part of our media is that we take things like visiting troops and put a bad context on it.
Our candidates should be visiting military personal and other heroes as often as possible. I think we both agree on that.
The Pentagon advised Obama not to go see the troops at hospitals.
No they didn’t Patrick. Please get this right. They never told him he couldn’t or shouldn’t go. They ONLY told him that he couldn’t make it a “campaign stop” and that if he DID go, he couldn’t take his campaign adivsor.
The Pentagon was EXPECTING him to go and the base had already arranged for him to stop there– they just told him he couldn’t take his campaign advisor or any news cameras. And he KNEW that well ahead of time.
I think this only proves that the only reason he wanted to go in the first place WAS to make it campaign stop– to get the cameras in there, showing him hob-nobbing with the troops. And when he couldn’t do that, he didn’t have an interest in stopping.
I think he also knew that in a military hospital, he was going to get a LOT of questions from soldiers about his lack of support for the surge and his promise to start pulling troops out. He didn’t want to answer those kinds of questions with his campaign advisor telling him what to say or not say.
Of course, that’s all my opinion.
But what’s NOT my opinion is what I said earlier. The Pentagon did NOT tell him or advise him not to go– he could have gone as long as he didn’t take his campaign advisor with him, and as long as he didn’t take in news cameras. And he chose NOT to go without them.
Sorry– that was supposed to say “He didn’t want to answer those kinds of questions withOUT his campaign advisor telling him what to say or not say.”
There was terrorism going on in Iraq long before we went to Iraq. There was ethnic cleansing going on. Do you not get that Patrick? Al-Quaeda was already there and Saddam was already thick as thieves with the United Nations and the food for oil program.. or did you not hear about that one?
Terrorism already existed in Europe even long before both Iraq wars. I can remember my father coming home when we lived in Germany telling me about all the places on the economy to avoid because of bomb threats and terrorist activity.. especially when the wall came down.
There has been no evidence of Al-Qaeda existing in Iraq prior to the invasion. Post-invasion we did not find any Al-Qaeda cells or training camps. If they were there, which is not supported, Saddam did not want them there. That reason for the invasion has already been disproved. They probably don’t say that on Fox News, though.
I don’t believe what Bush says about Al-Qaeda being in Iraq prior to 9/11. Bush can say that they were there, but others can provide evidence for the opposite.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/13/news/qaeda.php
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47812-2004Jun16.html
Even the 9/11 Commission said there was no link between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
We did not find a nuclear program or vast amounts of WMDs, either. That reason for the invasion has been disproved as well.
Of course Saddam Hussein was an evil person. I agree with that and I said that. He killed hundreds of thousands of Kurds after the Gulf War. Why didn’t we take him down then? WHy didn’t George H.W. Bush take him down in the first war? Why didn’t Clinton remove him from power? I can put blame on a lot of people, both Democrat and Republican. He was an evil dictator who made the region unstable. We all know that.
But I am saying that Bush did not start the war because of that reason! He never said that we are attacking because he killed the Kurdish people, or that he was an evil person. No, we attacked because Bush said that Iraq was supporting Al-Qaeda and that Saddam had WMDs, including a possible nuclear program. Both of which have evidence to say neither existed. Now if we had said we were removing him from power for killing people, that would have been legitimate since he did do that (though somewhat macabre, since we don’t do the same for other evil dictators).
Of course terrorism existed in Europe and America before both Iraq wars. I agree with that and I never said it wasn’t that way!
Terrorism is a global problem. But going into Iraq just made it worse. We created thousands of terrorists even though we arrest and eliminate thousands all the time. We may be winning the war right now with the troop surge. That may be happening, but we will never fully stop Iraqi terrorism. You can stop people, but you can’t stop a terrible, terrible ideal like that. It’s intangible.
Today, Command Sergeant Major Craig Layton, USA (Ret.) — who served as the Command Sergeant Major at Landstuhl — issued the following statement on Barack Obama’s canceled visit to Ramstein and Landstuhl:
“Having spent two years as the Command Sergeant Major at Landstuhl Hospital, I am always grateful for the attention that facility receives from Members of Congress. There is no more important work done by the United States Army than to care for those who have been wounded in the service our country. While Americans troops remain engaged in two hot wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is a steady stream of casualties to the hospital, and a steady stream of visitors who wish to meet with those troops and thank them for their service.
“Senator Obama has explained his decision to cancel a scheduled visit there by blaming the military, which would not allow one of his political advisers to join him in a tour of the facility. Why Senator Obama felt he needed an adviser with him to visit U.S. troops is unclear, but if Senator Obama isn’t comfortable meeting wounded American troops without his entourage, perhaps he does not have the experience necessary to serve as commander in chief.”
You can read that here
And there you have it….
I’m telling you– it’s exactly what I said earlier. Obama REALLY WASN’T interested in visiting wounded soldiers– he was just interested in the attention he would get if he did. But with no camera allowed in there to film it, and no one to take pictures of it for the press, he wasn’t going to GET that attention- so why bother?
Additionally, without a campaign advisor being allowed to accompany him into the hospital, he wouldn’t have anyone to “advise” him on what to say or how to answer, when the inevitable questions would come…
“Mr. Obama– why didn’t you support the surge?”
“Mr. Obama, why won’t you admit that you were wrong, and that the surge DID work, depsite the fact that you said it wouldn’t?”
Oh I totally agree with you Tracy. You and I are on the same page. :-)