AOL Tech

MrsMom

Member since: Sep 2nd, 2006

MrsMom's Latest Comments

Blog Activity
Blog# of Comments
Cinematical1 Comment
AOL Elections Blog9 Comments
News Bloggers3 Comments
Switched2 Comments

Recent Comments:

Another One Bites the Dust (News Bloggers)

May 14th 2007 10:04AM The bottom line is this: your mom was right - there's no substitute for good manners. If you diss someone, you should expect a response. And let's not forget that these shows are broadcast on public airwaves, so the producers are obliged to obey the law and abide by FCC standards. Fomenting hatred, encouraging lawlessness, making personal attacks, and denigrating people for their beliefs is out of bounds... sorry. Expressing opinion about actual evnts and issues is fine, but let's not wallow in schoolyard name-calling and whining any longer.

Republicans Demand Honesty From Bush (AOL Elections Blog)

May 11th 2007 9:40AM As our Congress tries to come up with solutions to this disaster and put an end to Bush's refusal to see reality, let's never forget that this is Bush's war and no one else's. He broke it, he owns it. Afghanistan was the right war, with actual terrorists and the Taliban based there, but Bush left that unfinished to undertake his Iraq adventure and now Afghanistan is in danger of slipping back to the terrorists. There were never Al Qaeda in Iraq till we invaded and caused the Arab world to form an insurgency against us, but there sure are now. Al Qaeda and other splinter groups now have a happy home there where they can enforce their weird brand of political Islam. All Bush has accomplished in Iraq is to hand victory to Iran in the long war between those two countries -- good thinking, George!

Earth Day's Tech Losers (Switched)

Apr 19th 2007 9:04AM Oh, so because poorer countries are making messes we don't have to clean ours up? That's just infantile reasoning. This is America, for heaven's sake, and we can lead again despite the whiny crybabies who say we can't change our ways or can't innovate or can't trust science. Of course we can have a high living standard, but we don't have to be wasteful to do it. There's a lot we can do individually if we aren't too lazy to make some simple changes. And China and India point to us as an excuse to keep polluting, so if we get a move on and set an example, others will follow. Sheesh! Turn off Rush Limbaugh and read a newspaper for a change!

Not-So-Earth-Friendly Tech (2) (Switched)

Apr 19th 2007 8:52AM The thing is, there've been a lot of environmental successes, and each one was initiated despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth of industry. We outlawed DDT and saved the pelicans, we outlawed CFCs in lots of products and saved the ozone layer, CA required fuel and emissions standards and cleaned up its air. Each time we were told it would be the end of the car or air conditioning or deodorant industries. We can do these things, but we have to accept change and act responsibly with a will to do what's right, not what's convenient.

The Al Gore backlash -- you ain't seen nothing yet (News Bloggers)

Mar 17th 2007 11:32AM I'm tired of hearing that we shouldn't enact the Kyoto treaty because other developing nations don't have to. I'm sorry, but what a childish response! What's the alternative? To do nothing, make no lifestyle changes, and accelerate the problem? We're roughly 5% of the population and generate about 25% of the greenhouse gases worldwide. If we take steps it will make a big difference and in the meantime we can work to bring India and China on board... and perhaps sell heaps of new pollution control technology to them! The European Union has already benefited from tightened environmental standards and now have the leading economy in the world. I'm no big fan of Al Gore, but he deserves much credit for his efforts here. The guy put together a PowerPoint slide show and it was turned into an Oscar-winning documentary. Of course it's not the complete scientific picture, but it goes a long way toward illustrating the situation. There are a handful of scientists who dispute the climate evidence, but there are thousands whose findings strongly suggest that there is cause for alarm. Let's not be so lazy and get going on this!

Has the Backlash Begun? (News Bloggers)

Mar 14th 2007 9:08AM Even if it's not a 100% certainty that human activity is contributing to climate change, maybe the scientific consensus is only somewhere in the 90th percentile. Still, wouldn't it be a good idea to clean up after ourselves and pollute less? Every Boy Scout learns to leave a campsite cleaner than he found it, yet we seem to enjoy dumping our personal and industrial waste into the air, water, earth, and ocean. It's not a human right to drive a giant SUV, or to use wasteful layers of packaging, or to ride two-stroke snowmobiles in national parks. This is America, for heaven's sake! We can innovate our way out of bad habits and make big bucks on the process. All that's lacking is the political will to begin, at the government level and at the personal level.

Dems Actually Pass Legislation, What's Next? (AOL Elections Blog)

Jan 20th 2007 10:02AM The first 100 hours was accomplished in about 50 hours, and it was a major success. Those who are griping are just embarrassed Republicans whose own majority party did more of nothing than any Congress in history. Yes, these first items passed were important but not earth-shaking, but it's a good idea to get the easier stuff out of the way first. They potentially could have big impacts on the lives of everyday Americans. And just you wait and see, the Democrats will give the Republicans FAR more opportunity to speak than they ever gave the Democrats! One last thing, the new Congress didn't get us into Iraq and is not responsible for coming up with a plan to get us out. This is entirely Bush's war and it's HIS job to get us out successfully, no one else's.

Bush Speech Reax (AOL Elections Blog)

Jan 11th 2007 9:58AM I can understand why some people view this speeach as a home run. At least he got through it without stuttering too much or mispronouncing too many words. And in sharp contrast to his first term, he is actually capable now of stringing more than a few words together at one time. He wore an appropriately somber expression and he sorta kinda took responsibility for mistakes. In this way, cosmetically, this was one of Bush's best performances.

However, the content of the speech was more of the same baloney he's been feeding us for six years. The war on terror should have stayed focused on Afghanistan. (Remember Afghanistan? Where Bin Laden is hiding and the Taliban are rebuilding?) The war on terror will never be won militarily but by winning the hearts and minds of the disaffected who live in poverty and ignorance. There is no justification whatsoever for invading Iraq, and there never was. It has caused irreparable harm to our national security and and the world's, and vastly spread the war on terror to places it never existed before.

Bush may have said the responsibility for mistakes rests with him, but that's not the same as saying the war was a mistake and he's sorry. The guy dismissed intelligence that he didn't like and only wanted to see reports that supported his plan to invade Iraq. Generals who disagreed were "retired" and disgraced. His first Secretary of State, Colin Powell, famously told him when they were planning the Iraq war that if "you break it, you own it" and Bush ignored that sage advice.

Some war! He can't give us the big picture and tell us who we're fighting, why we're the ones doing the fighting, what we're fighting for, what the overall plan is, what the general timeline is. And if he can't articulate the general idea, he certainly has never given any specific plans. Instead he gives elementary school answers by saying things like, "The strategy is to win in Iraq" or "The plan is to stand up the Iraqis." Once he came close to an actual strategy when he said, "We're sending two brigades to al Anbar province." OK, that's good, I thought. Now what will their exact mission be, who will they be fighting, how will they approach the problem tactically? His response? "We're sending two brigades to al Anbar province. That's the strategy." Uh, right...

Bush may well be a good man, but who cares? That's no qualification for being president of the United States! Lots of people are good, but that doesn't make them smart or wise or competent. He may have meant well and really believed his own rhetoric when he took us to Iraq, but meaning well doesn't make it a good idea. And staying with a strategy that has failed at every turn is just plain insane.

Democrats: Fighting Terorrism Is Bad (AOL Elections Blog)

Jan 10th 2007 10:04AM I understand perfectly well what the new Congress is doing, Rick. They're starting to ask questions, something the last two Congresses failed to do. I don't see that as harassment of the Executive branch at all, but as long-overdue functions of their oversight duties. And if we're talking harassment of the Executive branch, who the heck decided that it was a good idea to impeach Clinton basically for a failure to keep his zipper zipped and lying about it? And this after years of investigations into his failed real estate investment in Whitewater, where no wrongdoing was found?

I also realize that Afghanistan and Iraq have nothing to do with each other. Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan, not in Iraq. Al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11, not Iraq. The war we should be fighting is the war on terror, not deposing one among many ugly dictators around the world who horribly mistreat their people, especially not one who was essentially in a box and irrelevant on the world stage. Bush, who apparently never spent much time on school playgrounds and thus never heard "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me," got sucked in by Saddam's bluster and empty threats. Yes, he spread propaganda and false information and, yes, world intelligence services didn't have the picture right, but that's the case with lots of other leaders for whom we also don't have the full picture. Was that anything close to a good reason for invading a country that was no threat to us? Even if we did see a threat and needed to take action, did we have to jump to a level 10 response -- invasion and war -- when a level 5 response would likely have achieved our goals?

When the invasion of Iraq was being discussed, my family was against it and unconvinced of the "evidence" against Saddam and his purported threat to us, although we supported the war in Afghanistan. When the Iraq war was announced, my husband and I looked at each other, turned to our children, and said, "We just have to trust that our president knows more than we do and is making this choice because there are no alternatives." We tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, but within a few weeks it was clear that this had been a huge mistake. And I'm a nobody who has access to no information other than the news media reports. If we, so out of the loop, knew enough about Middle East issues to recognize the trap we were walking into, why didn't the president and his advisors realize these things? And why oh why did they insist on ignoring contradictory indications in favor of information that supported their rationale for invasion? (Which was high on their to-do list upon taking office, according to several reports.)

I'm no scholar of Islam or Middle Eastern politics, but I know enough to realize that the sectarian strife between the Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam has been going on for about 1000 years, despite all attempts to reconcile them and across all geopolitical interests since the Middle Ages. Did no one in the White House know this? Could they not anticipate that, with Saddam's iron fist gone and a destroyed infrastructure, Iraq would unwind again into sectarian violence?

But my biggest complaint is with the prosecution of this war. If the commander-in-chief thinks it's necessary, fine. But take it seriously and wage a real war, not a sorta-kinda war like we've got. When Gen. Shinseki (sp???) testified that at least 100,000 troops would be needed, he was "retired" and disgraced. When the joint chiefs wanted one plan and Rumsfeld wanted a "war on the cheap" Rummy won. Our guys are still out there in substandard armor and using patched-up equipment, four years into this war. What's the rationale for that?

Sorry this isn't fully threshed out, but I gotta go to work...

Democrats: Fighting Terorrism Is Bad (AOL Elections Blog)

Jan 9th 2007 9:23AM Who the heck are you? Aren't you getting a bit carried away with your name calling and finger pointing? Everyone hopes Bush was sincere in his attack on Iraq, that it was meant to protect America, but it's hard to ignore the blatant falsehoods his folks circulated to get us there. If we had kept our focus on Afghanistan, where the real terrorists were, that country would likely be stablized now and serving as a base of operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban. Instead Bush somehow confused oil-rich Iraq with al Qaeda -- surely an honest mistake. And it sounds like you're glad the Republicans never asked any questions about Iraq and gave Bush carte blanche to wage his war. And if this really is the war of our time, why did we give it such a lukewarm effort and send in far few troops with no plan for the aftermath? Why aren't we asking Americans to sacrifice some tax cuts to fund the war instead of this sneaky supplemental bill stuff? Why are we asking our brave military to carry this alone with no solid plan for winning in Iraq and a mission that's fluid at best? In the future, you might want to give your fellow Americans the benefit of the doubt and allow that we are all fighting against terrorism even if we have honest disagreements.