News broke yesterday, right before Obama’s Congressional Speech, that a decision has been made about Iraq. Obama campaigned on a 16 month withdraw date. Since taking office, apparently, he feels that 16 months is too soon and wants to extend it to 19 months.
Some may think, oh it’s just three months, that’s fine. I don’t. Obama is going back on one of his campaign promises to get the troops out of there. Furthermore, Iraqi leaders have already agreed to Obama’s timetable (which no doubt gave him a lot of kudos). Obama is basically giving the same time of withdraw that Bush gave (2011).
I know not many liberals will get on him about this decision, but I feel he went back on his word, and he deserves flack for it. I understand that until he got in there could he fully understand the severity of the situation. However, I feel that since he is going back on his word, it brings us back. It brings us back to the Bush days of “oh a few more months”, “give it another six months”, “we’ll know by X date”.
Also, I would like to point out that even after “withdraw”, we will still have residual (“non combat”) forces there. Estimates are as much as 50,000 troops. In my opinion, this is completely unacceptable.
To me, this decision is major, as I’ve been strongly against the war since its beginning. I don’t want to go back to the days were our leaders keep pushing withdraw back and back. I want to see our troops come home. I voted for Obama to bring them home.
Let’s even forget about how us antiwar folks feel for a second. The Republicans are going to have a field day. Yes, they love the result (more time in Iraq) but the bottom line is it gives them ammunition against Obama saying he went back on his word.
I hope K O does a special comment or something about this news. I’m pretty mad right now. I hope others get mad about this decision as well. We need to hold Obama accountable. I know he can’t fulfill every campaign promise, but this one is major.
So Bri and I recently moved to an area that is FiOS ready. To those who haven’t heard of FiOS, it’s supposed to be the bomb as far as internet, phone, and TV go.
Bri and I wanted to keep the same number we had at the apartment. That required us to wait two weeks before Verizon installing it, so they can port the number. Also, it required us to keep our Comcast account active (even though we couldn’t watch TV, Internet, etc). We made an appointment with Verizon and they were scheduled to come out on a Friday. Brian took the day off to get it installed, along with Brinks.
Verizon never showed up. Nor did they call to tell us they weren’t showing up. Supposedly, there was an error in their system saying we couldn’t get FiOS. Come to find out, they also could not port over our number, which they claimed they could do. Hours on the phone later, we set up a new appointment. And, no, they couldn’t pull some strings and get dispatch out there early for us, nor could they install it on the weekend or on Monday.
We now had an appointment for Wednesday between the hours of 8 and 5. I didn’t want to take the day off because leave is very important, and I have to save it for Dad stuff. I bribed one of my friends to come up and spend the day waiting for Verizon.
They showed up, I guess, around 1PM and proceeded to install FiOS. I get a text saying it would cost $55 per TV to run wire so we can have cable. The house CAME wired with Coax. According to the techs who were installing it, it wasn’t Coax, but a thicker wire. Whatever, Bri and I weren’t home so we couldn’t tell.
When I got home, I let them do their thing, thinking they are professionals and wouldn’t mess anything up. Was I wrong. When the guys left, Bri and I walked around the house to see what they had done. They had CUT our wire to our current Coax system. Not only that, they INSTALLED Coax! The very thing we had wired throughout the house!
Brian called Verizon (yet again). They are supposed to call him back sometime today. We are NOT paying for the Coax installation which we already had. It’s been ridiculous. If they say we still have to pay, we’re probably going to take them to small claims court or something. We can also, hopefully, get the dudes in trouble who installed the stuff. They did a horrible job anyway. They even left their twisty ties on the floor so my cats can choke on them. Nice, right?
Needless to say, I laugh every time I get off the phone with these assholes and they say “recommend us to family and friends”… Yeah, right.
My opinion so far, I watched around 3 hours of TV. Picture is fine. HD is fine. More HD channels than Comcast. Internet is very fast. Honestly, it’s the same as Comcast. I see no real difference. It is NOT the bomb like it’s made out to be.
Bottom line, don’t get Verizon. They’re jerks. I’ll update later about how it all turns out.
With all the discussion about in vetro going on because of the octuplets debate, I had an interesting thought. This woman knew that all of the six embryos the clinic implanted were successful and developing, and she chose not to get any of them aborted… the whole pro life argument… “It’s God’s will”.
My thought is that if it’s God’s will to have a life be created, it’s also Gods will to have life NOT be created. Let’s face it, Nadya Suleman should have never been a mother because she’s infertile. Thanks to technology and in vetro, she is… It’s choice.
How can anyone claim it’s God’s will when they can control the situation? Was it God’s will to have Ms Suleman have in vetro? No. She chose it. If God makes someone infertile, it’s not meant to be, if you following the whole pro life argument that it’s God’s will to have a life be born. You can’t have it both ways.
It draws the conclusion that people who are pro life should NOT be pro in vetro, following God’s will.