an exhortation to ALL Christians in this country needs more than that kind of dumbed-down statement.
Topic: Religion & Spirit

         An open letter to any Christian preacher who tells me what God wants me to do.

In 2004 Reverend Jerry Falwell declared

 

"It is the responsibility of...every evangelical Christian, every pro-life Catholic, every traditional Jew...to get serious about re-electing President Bush." - Jerry Falwell, The New York Times July 16, 2004

I think that such an exhortation to ALL Christians in this country needs more than that kind of dumbed-down statement.

Two years later we have even more Christian Celebrities stepping into the spotlight, selling books, expanding televangelist ministries as well as the usual pretenders who claim and act as if God is prompting their every word and deed.

It is to all of you I respectfully request a purpose driven and honest exposition, scripturally or otherwise.

No individual, no Christian church and no Christian alliance of like-minded evangelicals, fundamentalists, traditionalists or liberals has any right or responsibility to define for me how I should exercise my consciousness of Christ in how I practice citizenship.

In fact, as a citizen, and in the tradition of American free-market sharing of ideas and concepts, I see it not unreasonable to invite those blowing the hardest to tell me more about God and Politics. Not believing that my own Christian outlook is absolute and inerrant, I'm willing to be more informed.

So to you big time Brothers and Sisters and all of you born-again politicians, you owe it to the Christian American audience made captive by media, technology and social conformity to please elaborate on the following issues raised by the apparent conflict between teaching and reality:

Are ALL of your political and economic policies divinely inspired? Are they based on and do they include the precepts taught by Christ as written in the Bible, which most fundamentalists insist is inerrant?

Based on the Christian roots of my faith, should I ever believe that opposing Mr. Bush and Republican political policies is opposing God's will? Speak plainly here because when you guys imply that it's so those who think you're smarter than they are in God talk will conform.

Do ALL of your policies enhance human life? In that regard, do the families of the evil-doers - parents, spouses and children - fall into the category of deserving the sword? As a matter of fact, if God has placed you at the head of this country, what is God's position on collateral damage?

Jesus was outspoken in advocacy of human dignity in clear and unambiguous terms. How does God justify your ambivalence about torture as a means of exporting righteous American freedom worldwide?

What does God say about the justifications from your administration ministers that sexual debasement is justified in pursuit of said exportation?

Has God declared that our processes of education and scientific study are of the devil and that to encourage responsibility around human sexuality is sinful and displeasing to Him?

Is social justice important to God?

Did Jesus believe that profit was more important than compassion? Has God repudiated Jesus' declaration that the laborer is worthy of his hire?

Is it God's will that working against gay marriage is more important than working to put people back to work?

Is it God's will that Republican economics - voodoo or otherwise - is the one and only sacred economic approach to feeding and sheltering the people?

Does God support deception as a political tool?

Does God endorse a policy of political mud-slinging rather than reaching agreement with those who disagree with you? What about yea yea and nay nay?

Does God want our politicians to put our elderly at economic and health risk? Does God believe that generating massive profits to drug companies is a greater good than relieving human suffering?

How does that align with honoring father and mother?

And finally, is Jesus really going to come as a thief in the night? Or has he revealed to you and the rest of the Christian Right that He cannot come until American Christians maneuver Israel into a circumstance that unlocks the Key to the End Times?

Christian practice as taught and exemplified by Christ is not something complex nor is it something that requires convoluted logic and ideological twisting in order to ponder treasure in Heaven.

Christ said directly, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's."

He did not say that Caesar and God are one and the same.

Until you teach the difference, you and your sheep remain a primary cause of the lack of harmony, lack of social conscience and absence of real moral outrage in this country. When it comes to moral outrage, your hypocrisy and failure to reflect social conscience on a comprehensive and all-inclusive level generates legitimate moral outrage.

You do it deliberately and apparently by arrogant ignorance.

Your sheep do it with apathy.

Too many Americans were smelling the rot coming out of the stewpot of exxagerated fear-mongering.
Topic: Civic Duty
Is an administration with no mandate whatsoever for needless killing preparing to continue the slaughter in Iran?

Should we continue to look the other way and pretend that Survivor, CSI and Desparate Housewives are more important; or that the truth omitted from our largest broadcast programs must not be relevant if they are not talking about it.

The War in Iraq was a post 9/11 fraud foisted on a fear-driven electorate as the commander-in-chief truly worshipped a higher father; a father of lies, greed and imperialism.

Too many Americans were smelling the rot coming out of the stewpot of exxagerated fear-mongering. Too many Americans became aroused these past two years.

Too many Americans began questioning the reason for troops in harm's way and too many families started questioning the deception proclaimed arrogantly and with a straight face.

Are we about to hear things that should arouse in us the most intense indignation one can imagine - an indignation that we as a people truly did not authorize a president to do? Is the president once again going to try to fool most of the people most of the time?

Only the sleepiest among us believe fair and balanced campaigns from Foxy liars are going to lead to a fair expression of what should be done about Iran that's in the best interest of corporate America.

Only the blindest followers of a misunderstood code continue to insist the citizens are not patriotic if they don't blindly accept the unchallenged political self-interest of its commander-in-chief aand his doofus decisions.

Perhaps the sleepiest among us are those who thought they were doing God's work by voting George another term.

Why? Because only the most outrageous Christian hypocrites make mountains out of moral molehills at the expense of the heart and compassion of the real teachings of Jesus.

The President's definition of "freedom" to his faith voters is in fact fraud against all American voters.

Calling ourselves heroic spreaders of "freedom" who are doing battle with amoral Muslim killers who are driven primarily out of a hate of our own corporate-driven consumer freedoms is another fraud.

Why do we let these people sell us bridges and worthless stock in pseudo-American ideals that no majority of us ever endorsed?

Why do we let this administration embarass our returning soldiers maimed for life by being chintzy with treatment, benefits and support?

Why do we robot-like jerk to attention when leadership waves the flag at the same time it blames the problem of inadequately-protected troops on someone else beneath their pedestal?


The majority of the electorate did not authorize the president and his subordinates to continue a needless waste of American and Iraqi lives and the wasteful exploitation of the environment and national economy.


But then, maybe worrying about liberal attacks on Christmas, about the Super Bowl and about which film will win the Oscar ARE significantly more important.

Why Your Medicare D is So Dang Dumb
Topic: Health & Science

Thinking that congress had your best interests in mind when they legislated the new Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit?

Think again.

I susbscribe to The Nation and take it to work to read during breaks and at lunch. Trudy Lieberman wrote a good explanatory *article about the Medicare D program - a boondogle that has stumbled right out of the gate in its implementation.

To understand why your new Med D prescription benefit is so complicated, confusing and expensive for your budget, you must understand one thing about the economic theory of the elected Republican majority at the national level.

"What's good for corporate capitalism is good for the country."

Medicare D is modelled on one of our classic corporate capitalist national failures: our commercial health insurance system. That's the vaunted one that under the most powerful economic force in the world has left us in 37th place globally in terms of effective and quality national health care.

That's the vaunted one that any system modeled after Britan or Canda or any other country where EVERYONE is covered would never exceed the vauntedness of corporate America's capitalist dream.

Here's how they did it ... and you must remember the power of lobbying in this country and how senators and congress persons can't decide how to vote until a corporate capitalist prompts their wisdom with cash.

These wise lawmakers chose some 260 private insurers (corporations who supported this scheme with lobby money given primarily to - you guessed it - Republican lawmakers. Republicans, you surely remember, are the majority in congress and therefore have the power to turn the scheme into law). These wise partisan lawmakers have forced you to choose one of those elite insurers.

Who are these chosen 260?

Why they're private pharmacy benefit insurers, HMO's, pharmacy organizations like Walgreen's, Long's and Wal Mart. You surely didn't think they are social-minded or populist organizations like the Grange did you? Naw ... these aren't social minded do-gooders. They're the profit-minded self-interested.

Our economically "wise" lawmakers have now made it legal for our government to send YOUR medicare money - I mean it, the actual money that would be used as your individual medicare benefit - to the corporation you have to pick from among the 260.

It's an automatic revenue the corporation will spend advertising or marketing costs for in order to out-muscle the competition and will include as part of the additional premiums you'll pay out of pocket in order to pay less for your medicines.

This is a free-market system run amok.

In some areas seniors have 40-50 choices of plans. The plans have confusing choices of options, many of which involve differing monthly premiums (ranging from $0 to $60).

There are combinations of deductibles.

There are combinations of co-insurance (your percentage/their percentage of the medicine's price).

There are options to try cheaper generic drugs.

There are "tiers" (levels of priority and/or allowability) based on copays, generics, preferred brands, non-preferred brands, specialty drugs ...

and whether you buy from an "in-network" pharmacy with discounts or "out-of-network" pharmacy with no discounts.

There is no standardized nomenclature (no set of names, concepts, options and plan definitions that are standard among all of the 260 chosen corporate medical monopolists.) One uses the phrase "co-pay"; another calls it "deductible".

What if we folks have questions?

Well, we can go on line to a web site with a complicated web answer-giver. If you're one of the 75% of seniors who have never gone on line - well, chin up! A whole new cyber adventure is out there just waiting for you to invest in another corporate hog-trough sector by buying a computer and joining the internet surfer society.

What's going to happen with this pick-your-pocket-because-you're-over-a-barrell scheme?

Remember, the Republicans got this doofus plan passed with a projected price tag of $400 billion - a little less than the current sub-total for war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan by the way.

But wait! We then learned that the Bush Administration told Medicare officials - in the tradition of Bill O'Reilly - to SHUT UP. They were told to keep the real cost which is in excess of $550 billion a secret.

What about the sacred chosen 260? All vendors are not expected to remain "competitive." That means that not all vendors are expected to survive in the free-market system.

No, the biggest sharks with the biggest teeth and the biggest lobby dollars will win the survival of the health insurance fittest. We'll see the 260 reduced to perhaps 10 survivors; mega-innsurers who will slug it out for all the leavings of those other 250 who just couldn't make it.

And instead of free-market capitalism we'll have closed-market monopoly based on sending Medicare tax dollars to friends of the Republicans.

Who might that be?

Well, United Health Group is spending 75 million on marketing and operations for this new Republican give away.

Aetna= $50 million Cigna: $40 million Humana (a midwest regional insurer)= $80 million. Pfizer's in there too. You know Pfizer ... Bob Dole sold his Viagra perspective for Pfizer.

But those investments are chump change compared to what happens when all the Medicare clients sign on to automatic directed payments to the chosen hog-trough recipient. This is the Republican American Way of course and whatever premium you pay to your chosen insurer will include recovery of that marketing money.

Then there's this: You'll hear words of wisdom from the Medicare RX Education Network and may receive mailings in envelopes bearing a return address of the U.S. Chamber of COmmerce.

You are forgiven if you mistakenly assume these are official government communications to you. They are not.

They have been allowed by Republican free-marketer politicans to use the government's official logos.

And if you run into something called "Medicare Today," you'll be seeing a creation of the Healthcare Leadership Council. Who's that you ask?

Well, a group of hospitals, drug companies, medical equipment makers and academic medicate centers joined up some 300 members. They then raised millions of dollars for "outreach" to get seniors to sign up and authorize one of them to receive government Medicare dollars earmarked in your name.

The 37th best medical care system in the world is 37th because that system functions in the tradition of Exxon-Mobil's double-digit billions of dollars quarterly profits. However, the 37th best medical care system is #1 in what is the truest priority: Turning billion-dollar profits while at the same time failing to adequately treat and protect all of its citizens.

That's the linkage between corporate lobbyists and corrupt politicians. That linkage and system is more and more revealing itself as foundational to the failed economic politics of contemporary corporate conservative Republicanism.

*Reference: The Nation, January 30, 2005 - KILLING MEDICARE by Trudy Lieberman who writes about healthcare for The Nation.

Windstorm Closes Down Willapa Bay
Topic: Rural Living
It was a dark and stormy night .... yeah, yeah, yeah.

I got up yesterday morning, read the news, the blogs, worked on my fantasy basketball team and a Washblog entry until just before 9:00 AM.

One flicker ...
two flicker ...
three flicker gone.

Power went out and would stay out for close to 12 hours.

Now 2-3 weeks ago Bay Center suffered a power outage when trees fell on powerlines in South Bend (right next to the Pioneer Grocery Store) and cut power to everything south of that South Bend street all the way to Nemah just north of the Columbia River.

Lietta was gone and I had to struggle alone and unprepared for PUD powerlessness. I learned a few things including the harsh reality that when the power goes out, there goes the water ... ALL the water!

The commodes won't flush.

Apparently our water is pressured by an electric pump.

So this past Friday nite after work - all forewarned by newscasts of the coming storm - I filled every large and useable container I could find with water.

Including one multi-gallon plastic water jug that had no lid and was not too clean inside. I filled that one with the express purpose of flushing in mind.

I'd already stored up a modest supply of big D-size batteries for a boom-box CD radio we've had for years as well as two flashlights. Our supply of candles is adequate since we've always had a thing for candle-light dinners and stuff like that.

Yesterday morning after losing power but feeling more prepared, we took a driving tour all around Bay Center; devising detours and alternate routes where the water was over the roads and driving in a slow crawl over wind-blown debris where it was necesary.

After driving in a large loop, we pulled up to the Dock-Of-the-Bay tavern(formerly the Blue Heron Restaurant) where owner Ricki Bayne said she would cook breakfast (the stove is propane).

That idea ran aground when more folks came in to commune about the storm and eat. Ricki's water supply was inadequate to allow cooking for that many customers so only the beer-drinkers got nourished.

We went home and ate spanish omelets Lietta cooked on our own propane stove. With non-useable coffee-maker, we creatively pulled a Guardian Ware coffee pot we bought at a collectibles store off a shelf and made cowboy coffee with grounds in the bottom.

Dang good it was!
Made me want to put on a cowboy hat and some boots.

Visitors from across the street showed up around noon so we gave them each a bowl of Denali Moose Tracks Ice Cream that was getting dangerously soft in our ice-box.

We used the daylight to finally take down the Christmas tree which, since the tree is artificial and is assembled one branch at a time, took a very long leisurely time.

For supper we cooked by candle-light, Lietta working round steak into chunks and a gravy sauce to put on instant mashed-potatoes. She trusts me with cooking instant mashed potatoes and I added heated canned corn (she trusts me to heat up canned corn with a pad of butter on it).

We heated some of my stored drinking water in our teapot which is a fat goose that whistles when the water is boiling and whose head tilts up so the boiling water can be poured out of his neck.

Used that to make tea and clean all the dishes that wouldn't fit in the dishwasher which was full of Friday dishes (which I forgot to wash because I was too busy being a water warrior.)

So in our candle-lit kitchen warmed by cooking heat, we were cozy in a resigned-to-roughing-it kind of way.

Holy moly!
How did our ancestors survive candle-lit nights, an inability to adequately control heating and a struggle for useable water?

When did they find time for the Internet, Survivor, American Idol and CSI?

We surrounded the kitchen table with sufficient candles by which our mid-fifties eyesight could see to play Scrabble and soon became absorbed in out-wording each other.

After about 45 minutes a car drove by outside and Lietta looked up.

"Hey! Our neighbor's yard light is on. He must have a generator."

We looked around a realized that the light in our enclosed porch was on and the dog was glaring at us through the kitchen door window because it was suddenly too bright for him to sleep.

But still no water.

I guess the electric water pressure pump had to be - oh heck I don't know - primed?

So - still invested and engrossed in Combat Scrabble - we finished the game in an orderly manner, updated ourselves with TV news broadcasts and went to bed.

Lance the Dumb Cat woke me up at 3:00 AM and on my way through, I turned on a faucet.

"All day I faced the barren waste ...
without the taste of water ....
cool water ...
Water!!

I was flush with flushing pleasure!

My pioneer ancestors walked across the American Plains on the route of the Oregon Trail in 1856. They were pulling a handcart headed for Utah and went through more hell in two months than I have in a lifetime. (But that is another story.)

And I can just see them shaking their heads at my struggle and whining with 12-hours of no electricity.

With added perspective Lietta continues to contemplate the trials and travails of the Lewis and Clark Expedition which famously ended just down the road.

NOTE: For an excellent report on Grays Harbor and Pacific County storm damage check out today's Daily World (Aberdeen).

Joe Colgan wrote a great guest opinion The killing has got to stop published to the PI this morning.

But some guy named STEFF wrote the first comment to Joe's article and pissed me off. Now I've got to go to work mad.

Here's what I wrote in the PI:

I don't know who Steff is but the writing sure sounds like someone with a theory and not much real-time and real-place perspective.

Joe Colgan is a friend of mine and one who is writes from a place of knowing and feeling. He does not speak theoretically nor rant as Mr. Steff just did. Colgan is not alone.

What Joe Colgan has written has little to do with the Republican swagger, prance, and posture as the world-wide tough guy whom everyone owes obeisance and fear-driven respect. Such is not the American Core Value nor American Dream nor true American Patriotism.

Who has earned the right to speak about serious stuff with a veterans's wisdom? One group are those of my generation who've been there and done that. Twenty pages of rants from readers like Mr. Steff account for very little when contrasted with speaking from the knowing of experience and the wisdom of Veteran American heroes like Jack Murtha.

Our sons and daughters in the military serve honorably, deserve our highest respect and devotion. It should be recognized that the following are the conditions under which Americans expect their family blood to serve:

(1) The integrity and honor of the commander in chief of the military and that CIC's skill, wisdom and understanding of all reasons when and why military citizens are to be placed in harm's way.

Troops are at the mercy of that individual, his party and their combined priorities - with a strong expectation that those priorities extend beyond a desire to remain in the driver's seat.

(2)Our troops are also at the mercy of your own fellow citizens (including your own family) whom you trust to be willing and supportive in making sure the leadership does not waste your vital blood, devotion and patriotism in pipe dreams, self-interested agenda's and ideologies; That leaders are driven by a genuine desire to involve the country in on-going mutual participation and compromise regarding foreign policy before resorting to force as a last resort.

(3) Volunteering to become a soldier is volunteering to preserve and protect - with your own power and will - the country, its borders, its citizens and its institutions. It isn't volunteering to keep a political party in power. The only way to avoid that circumstance is for the citizens to assume their rightful role in the triangular relationship with the troops and the CIC.

The troops are expected to trust the CIC's wisdom as well as the patriotic participation of the Citizens who will keep the CIC honest.

The CIC is expected to trust the troops to follow orders and expects to sustain by honesty and integrity the support of the Citizens.

The Citizens expect the troops to do their duties and expect the CIC to sustain by honesty and integrity his political authority. The Citizens must be willing to hold the CIC accountable and willfully resist when the honesty and integrity of leadership is absent.

That is what is going on right now. The President has demonstrated his lack of what it means to serve or lead warriorsat a time when leadership is needed. The killing continues daily and folks like Steff talking like John Wayne in a junior high school locker room doesn't get it.

Whose Side is the DLC on?
Topic: Politics

An email from the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) was forwarded to me yesterday. The following excerpts reveal why those in this country who are smart but remain political spectators need to turn off Survivor, Lost, Nascar, Monday Night Football and step onto the playing field.

 

DLC: Idea of the Week: What To Do Now In Iraq While the Bush Administration has committed a long series of mistakes in the aftermath of the removal of Saddam Hussein, America must remain committed to success in Iraq.

 

From Democrats who think they have their fingers on the pulse of everyday working America? The Republicans have yet to define what that success looks like - and much of what they've instigated still smells of a permanent presence in Iraq. If the DLC refuses to tell Americans what that "success" looks like, it sure looks like they are in bed with the Republicans.

A failed state in Iraq would destabilize the entire region, hand our jihadist enemies a major victory and result in a devastating blow to our national security credibility and interests.

Come again? Are you DLC'ers telling Democrats, progressives and independents that if we don't fight them over there we'll be fighting them here? And you supposed politically astute geniuses are flat out stating that "our jihadist enemies" are not primarily trying to extricate a nation from the consequences of America's self-interest at the expense of the national security credibility and interests of Iraqis themselves?

But the right course now is neither to give the terrorists a victory by withdrawing, nor to continue Bush's failed policies. We urge progressives to place maximum pressure on the administration to reverse its mistakes and pursue a new strategy linked to clear benchmarks for success in Iraq and in the broader war on terror.

That is neither the talk of an opposition party nor the supposed wisdom of progressive thinking. No, it's pure unadulterated neocon ideology - the sort of thing we expect to here from the Republican National Committee and the Weekly Standard. But for God's sake, not someone pretending to be the heart and voice of Democratic wisdom. You jokers are not speaking for or with the best interests of the people of this country at heart.

Here are three ways the U.S. can do exactly that: First, we should formally disclaim any interest in permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq; clearly shift the primary responsibility of defending the country to the Iraqi military (with embedded Coalition troops), and adopt a joint military strategy based on proven principles of counterinsurgency. The last point means abandoning Vietnam-style "search and destroy" missions against the insurgency and instead focusing on progressively securing territory where reconstruction can proceed and normal civic life can resume.

Tell me, how is it that we can justifiably recruit our own young flesh and blood and within less than a year train them "adequately", ship them to Iraq right smack dab into harm's way and task them with the primary responsibility of defending the country - yet we have failed to justifiably accomplish the same objective with Iraqis themselves - who have to be more invested in the sacrifice on behalf of their own nation. And why haven't we accomplished this with the more-motived Iraqis also in less than a year? This logic no longer holds water. You DLC'ers are singing a neocon song as we have been aware for some time now.

Second, we should launch a new political strategy aimed relentlessly at winning Sunni support for the new government, and at isolating jihadists. We still have considerable leverage among Shi'a and Kurdish leaders; we should use it to push for confidence -- building measures like the integration of communal militias into the Iraqi army and police forces; a blanket amnesty for former Baathists not implicated in atrocities; and for intensified talks with Sunnis on supplemental protocols to the proposed constitution that would ensure a viable central government and minority rights.

We have lost the ability and justification to accomplish this in any meaningful way. Without your neocon assumptions, this also does not hold water. This situation is Colin's Powell's "If you break it, you own it" philosophy. Except that the real owners have seen that you cannot fix it to the ideal you propagandized before walking into the establishment with shock and awe thinking of flowers in your paths. It is screwed up so badly, they just want and need you to leave.

Third, we should muster all our diplomatic resources to create a more supportive international environment for the new Iraqi government. It should not be that hard to establish a UN-authorized international contact group to coordinate political support and economic assistance.

Now you're talking! ... and that more supportive international environment for the new Iraqi government needs to have ceded to it all authority and credibility necessary to create trust inside Iraq and throughout the Middle East. Neocon's have made of America the mean drunk whose behavior has been so poor that the drunk needs to walk away and stop trying to fix it by making it worse.

We should cash our sizable chits with Saudi Arabia and Egypt to work directly with Iraqi Sunni Arabs, using economic incentives where possible, to undermine support for insurgency and encourage political engagement. These Arab states should also push Syria (in conjunction with potential U.N. sanctions) to finally close off travel routes into Iraq for jihadists.

We should come clean with our own populace as to what those sizable chits with Saudi Arabia and Egypt are - how they became sizable and why they have value. We should come clean with the American public as to what our true investment risk and expected outcome is in these relationships. Our government should come clean about the relationship to oil, torture and permanent bases is in connection with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the rest of the Middle East.

We should formally push for indictment of chief terrorist Zarquawi for crimes against humanity in Iraq, drawing worldwide attention to the vicious anti-Shi'a ethnic cleansing campaign that characterizes the insurgency. All these steps are politically feasible, but there's no evidence the administration is taking them.

We should do whatever it takes to acknowledge and then take all necessary measures to address the global indictment of our country's indictment for crimes against humanity in Iraq, drawing worldwide attention to our vicious anti-Iraqi nationalist cleansing campaign that characterizes our foolish neocon attempt to impose an American control. These steps are politically feasible but there's no evidence that neither the administration nor the DLC is interested in taking them.

In calling for this new strategy, we acknowledge that we are asking brave Americans to sacrifice still more for a crucial goal under the direction of an administration that has failed so often to pursue that goal competently or honestly. We share the anger of most progressives towards Bush's blunders, even as we urge them not to let that anger obscure the very real national stake we all have in taking every step possible to leave Iraq in a condition where it will not become a failed state and a terrorist base for global operations.

As usual, Tony Blair best articulated those stakes, for our people and his, just this week:

"This is a global struggle. Today it is at its fiercest in Iraq. It has allied itself there with every reactionary element in the Middle East. Strip away their fake claims of grievance and see them for what they are: terrorists who use 21st century technology to fight a pre-medieval religious war that is utterly alien to the future of humankind."

That's a reality that all of us, whether or not we supported the original invasion of Iraq, need to keep in mind, holding our leaders most accountable not for their blunders, but for their willingness to recognize them and change course now.

This is the pot calling the kettle black. Quoting Tony Blair reveals more about whose agenda the DLC supports. The DLC is voicing the ultimate arrogantly ignorant assumption that we can ask brave Americans to sacrifice still more for a goal it (the DLC) has failed to describe as different from the administration's neocon stupidity.

The DLC does not share the same anger as progressives towards Bush's blunders so long as they offer only a better way to break more things and cause more damage worldwide. Deny it as they may, the DLC is assuming that their anger is the true and truly justifiable anger based on their own reasoning - which does not take into consideration the very real national stake we all have in a peaceful future.

Iraq as a candidate for a terrorist base for global operations is not something that has been proven or validated.

Iraq as a failed state of forced American design needs to go through the failed state transition - with the help of a supportive international community before we can understand how any country seeking its own independence is doing so purely out of an intent to become a terrorist base for global operations.

Republicans and the DLC reflect an arrogant assumption that American wisdom, primarily because America entered the 21st century as THE sole superpower, is the best wisdom for global harmony.

It's an assumption based on sustaining those who have the power, Republican or Democrat, who remain part of a minority working to remain permanently in the driver's seat.

Rejection of the DLC is imperative if progressives and liberals are going to unite and take back the country via election of Democratic politicians. If anything, all citizens should see clearly that groups such as the DLC want a status quo that - precisely as the Republican-controlled government, stays on the wrong course. 

MFSO Pac NW meets with Murray, Smith and the Chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee
Topic: Civic Duty

"Your son volunteered. He knew what he was getting into ..."
Topic: Civic Duty
So did I ... in 1968 five months after the Tet offensive. I dropped out of college and enlisted.

And like the current volunteers who are described by worn-out conservative flag-wearers, I had a rough idea of what I was getting into. That "rough idea" was based on trust ... trust in a system and, ultimately, trust in a specific leader and a specific governing political party.

The specific leader of course was LBJ, the specific party was the Democratic Party and the specific system was and is the system that allows us to hang our political opinions on buttons and sanctimonious drapery of stars and stripes from which we belch our prejudices.

When you sign up you endorse a contract on the bottom line. It's a contract with specified written obligations on the part of both parties, but also with unspecified but powerful assumptions on the part of both parties.

In the case of joining the military knowing what you are getting into is based on very powerful unwritten but nationally accepted assumptions:

(1) The integrity and honor of the commander in chief of the military and that CIC's skill, wisdom and understanding of all reasons when and why military citizens are to be placed in harm's way.

As a volunteer you are at the mercy of that individual, his party and their combined priorities - with a strong expectation that those priorities extend beyond a desire to remain in the driver's seat.

(2)As a volunteer you are at the mercy of your own fellow citizens (including your own family) whom you trust to be willing and supportive in making sure the leadership does not waste your vital blood, devotion and patriotism in pipe dreams, self-interested agenda's and ideologies; That leaders are driven by a genuine desire to involve the country in on-going mutual participation and compromise regarding foreign policy before resorting to force as a last resort.

(3) Volunteering to become a soldier is volunteering to preserve and protect - with your own power and will - the country, its borders, its citizens and its institutions. It isn't volunteering to keep a political party in power. The only way to avoid that circumstance is for the citizens to assume their rightful role in the triangular relationship with the troops and the CIC.

The troops are expected to trust the CIC's wisdom as well as the patriotic participation of the Citizens who will keep the CIC honest.

The CIC is expected to trust the troops to follow orders and expects to sustain by honesty and integrity the support of the Citizens.

The Citizens expect the troops to do their duties and expect the CIC to sustain by honesty and integrity his political authority. The Citizens must be willing to hold the CIC accountable and willfully resist when the honesty and integrity of leadership is absent.

That is what is going on right now. The President has demonstrated a lack of leadership at a time when leadership is needed. The killing continues daily .... and we are witness to a repeat of a leader who is like a deer caught in the headlights ... sitting there ... doing nothing ... pondering what ... while pretending to enjoy "My Pet Goat."