Some of us voice the yearning but most do not register feelings until someone in prominence - this cycle it's Obama - touches that tender nerve of idealism.

Some of us voice the yearning but most do not register feelings until someone in prominence - this cycle it's Obama - touches that tender nerve of idealism.

Obama seems to be the only candidate who has offered anything that looks like a return to that mythical blend of tough self-sustained idealism combined with Nightingale compassion and Lincoln equality that supposedly composes "America's core values."

Yes yes ... baseball, Mom and apple pie are internally reinforced images, but they constitute merely the gate to the family homestead. The homestead itself is where the house, the property and the family members sustain themselves by mutual trusting dependence on a value system based on love, tolerance, economic equality, industry and opportunity.

That homestead has never existed in this country.

However, as an internal visualization, it has driven the grandest, most successful and most popular events, changes, adjustments, creations and repentances that we've seen in our history.

That idealized homestead never included a unanimous endorsement of supposed free-market economics. It never included subordination of individual rights and freedoms to the priorities of corporate dominance and certainly did not include evolution of the government into a source of camouflaged corporate welfare.

In that regard, a pure and successful free-market society has never existed, has never proven itself a successful nor universally beneficial system for public well-being.  

When pondered and considered honestly; when valued for what they truly represent, our mythical core values reflect the undeniable rebuttal to politicians who declare that government should be run as a business.

At best, that notion reflects a very narrow view of economic reality in this country and is perhaps best exemplified by the candidacy of Mitt Romney.

Romney typifies most politicians who have come to equate their personal financial success as a blend of entrepreneurial wisdom fortified by civic understanding of the laws of economics which somehow generate a natural entrepreneurial compassion for the less successful.

Most of these prominent megaphones want you to believe that justice for all is found on the back of a dollar bill more so than in any Constitution.

We seem to hear this nonsense more from conservatives and/or the Republican Party who have for the last 50 years portrayed themselves as economically wise fiscal conservatives.

In reality, once unleashed by their political successes beginning in the 1990's, with great fanfare they put on the Mitre of reform and picked up the Scepter of change to affect a "fiscally responsible makeover " that in reality represents today's most powerful contemporary economic embarrassments.

For example we saw a welfare reform in the 1990's that has only marginally resolved even half the problems of poverty in this country. We also saw a rebuttal of the Clinton presidency's attempt to address national health care inadequacies. Resistance to the Clinton efforts was foolish, ideological, partisan and primarily greed-based. These were un-American refusals to reform or change health coverage in this country.

We saw how the "fiscally responsible" party of change actually changed many American core value freedoms into unprotected vulnerabilities subject to the whims and greed of corporate capitalism.

These same fiscal hypocrites continue to campaign as if they were successful self-made representatives of a mythical American Dream available to all voters.

In this state, we have a candidate who has already commenced his sniping at the incumbent governor, implying that as an unverified business success, he somehow knows that the individual citizens in our state will be better off once he pretends to run the state like a real estate agency.

Republicans have never satisfactorily explained at a national or state level how running the government as a business specifically benefits and protects the physical and economic well-being of the majority of citizens.

One simple example is that any effective business will look at its bottom line and look for ways to refuse to spend money as a means of generating greater profits. They HAVE to look for ways to say No.

What does a government do with "greater profits" created from denials and refusals to spend on the social infrastructure that supports and protects all citizens?

Are refusals to expend funds to the needy or most vulnerable in the name of "fiscal responsibility wise and good public policy?  

If not the citizens, then who are the shareholders to whom government business-runners owe their highest allegiance?

What is to be done with those profits generated by an elected government run as if it were the same sociopathic "person" based on self-interest inherent in the non-human entity in this country known as a "corporation?"

Having taken some whacks at Republicans, I'm not about to imply that even a victorious Democrat like Obama would be able or even willing to reverse many of the legislated mistakes of the past 20 years in this country.

It is obvious to those who are not blinded by partisan advocacies that neither party's victories in the future will guarantee any movement for genuine reform unless among those victories a specific mandate is included. It must be a mandate that reflects the will of the people; a mandate opposed to bought-and-paid-for civic policies enacted at the behest of monied lobbyists.

Voters must simultaneously have opportunity or means of formalizing a mandate to remove, severely restrict or equalize the playing field when it comes to lobbying our representatives for change.  We need to intervene and force corporate lobbyists out of our elected official's waiting rooms.

In this regard, any pretend apologetics from Hilary or other candidates trying to justify accepting corporate donations is worthless.

Read this blog and others like it  and you will frequently encounter an almost mindless and tragically immature assumption - rarely expressed but always the basis of attitudinal and tactical thinking - that pragmatism usurps any desire or commitment to an ideal.  

Partisan activists who consider themselves wise and who are intimately involved in the campaigns of their most beloved candidates almost always belittle ideal thinking. They use the chestnut that you have to play the game in its forever-deteriorating manner in order to win power.

Only then - once in power - can the victor look up the core values even he/she have probably forgotten and restore America to its mythical former glory.

Such thinking neither proves nor wins anything but individual personal advocacy duels.  It also demonstrates and reveals a cynicism that fuels the ever-increasing loss of a civic appreciation for how things work in this country.

That's why too many of us - and I mean this literally - are too stupid to see through political tactics generated by polls and political consultants.

Candidates wearing real or memorized earphone prompters so as to conceal their inability to think on their feet and give genuinely honest answers are not the candidates who believe in America's Core Values.

We're losing our trust in whatever the Mythical American Core Values ever were. Nothing is taking the place of that trust except perhaps cynicism and an ever deepening self-absorbed behavioral pattern; a pattern that only underlines what historians will eventually describe as the reason for the fall.

A future mythology may be only a speculation about an American Dream once believed to exist.

Since you are a former AF brat, wife of a Viet Vet and mother to soldiers still serving, I would appreciate it if you would contact me. You have been gravely mislead by a bunch of frauds about DU.

What made you even go looking for them (or did they come to you) -- you are the perfect person for them to make a dupe as they have made Congressman McDermott who was sent a forged document that is purported to be from 1943.

He is LTC. Roger Helbig, USAF (ret). and is not and has not been an on-going member of our Washington Veteran's Google group. Rather, Helbig seems to have made it his practice to insert himself into every anti-DU rally, debate, symposium and forum including and primarily those on line.

For those interested in the use of Depleted Uranium in military weapons, I make no apology for this lengthy update.

In the spirit of Fair Use, I'm posting the entirety of the following piece from the Axis of Logic Site

"April 11, 2005 -- (Oklahoma City) "Individuals on web sites throughout the United States have complained over a period of months about the abusive and aggressive actions of an Air Force Lieut. Colonel named Roger Helbig," stated Project Censored Award Winning writer Bob Nichols.

"Col. Helbig has consistently misrepresented himself and his participation, voluntarily or on a paid basis, as a "minder" or enforcer for the DOD lie about Uranium Munitions in direct contravention of US Army Regulations and Orders," Nichols stated.

"Col. Helbig apparently is fervently following the Secret Los Alamos Memo about Uranium Weapons (UW), aka so-called "Depleted Uranium," instructing personnel to lie about Uranium Weapons to maintain the political viability of continued use of the Genocidal Weapons: "weaponized radioactive and poisonous ceramic uranium oxide gas and dust" in Iraq and throughout Central Asia," added Nichols.

[Ed Note: They are not kidding. A copy of the actual memo encouraging lies and misinformation is online. AR]

Nichols stated "Dr. Doug Rokke, Ph.D., is the former Army Officer in charge of the Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project. Dr Rokke is a career officer, loyal to the Constitution of the United States of America, not to any political party. He is the man the people of the United States can turn to for "on the level information" about the true nature of Uranium Weapons (UW.)

Dr. Rokke commented, "LTC Roger Helbig, United States Air Force: I would suggest that since you claim to be so knowledgeable about DU and my specific activities during Gulf War 1 and while I was the Director of the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium that you produce the actual official documents, not some comments by Bob Cherry or Ed Battle or Mike Kilpatrick, your bosses up the line, verifying your comments."

Rokke added "Unless you can do so, please cease and go away. But before you go away you still have not answered; why you, as an United States Air Force officer, refuse to support my / our actions to ensure that United States Department of Defense officials provide medical care to all DU casualties and clean up all environmental contamination as required by AR 700-48 and TB 9-1300-278; and, that medical care is provided to all DU casualties as required by Lt General Ron Peake's April 29, 2004 order."

"Will you provide us a public endorsement supporting full compliance of these mandatory actions?"

"Yes" or "No"?

Dr. Rokke concluded "It is time for you to decide. The question is not about me, but whether or not United States Department of Defense personnel comply with their own requirements to provide medical care and clean up all environmental contamination as specified in AR 700-48, TB 9-1300-278, and all of the orders mandating medical care for DU casualties."

Copyright 2005 by AxisofLogic.com

Lietta,

Since you are a former AF brat, wife of a Viet Vet and mother to soldiers still serving, I would appreciate it if you would contact me.

You have been gravely mislead by a bunch of frauds about DU. What made you even go looking for them (or did they come to you) -- you are the perfect person for them to make a dupe as they have made Congressman McDermott who was sent a forged document that is purported to be from 1943.

Roger Helbig Vietnam Era vet Retired USAF (5 years active; 20 Guard/Reserve)
DoD Civilian (ret)

grew up with the Army Reserve (my Dad was both reserve officer and civilian employee
- I helped him run preenlistment tests when he got over run by applicants in 1965)
Geologist - that makes me a Geoscientist too --
Trained to recognize and protect against nuclear fallout Contracts Director, Navy Nuclear Shipyard - got to befriend nuclear engineers and technicians, people who know their stuff, not frauds who pretend that they do
Tireless researcher (that's the real me, not the Axis of Evil variant perpetrated by Rokke and Nichols
-- they made me so mad, I FOIAed Rokke's records and have been on his tail and the entire anti-DU crusade's tail ever since -
lying about me was a big mistake on their part)

There is one major flaw in this study ..
Uranyl Acetate does not exist in nature and thus is unlikely to ever contaminate a soldier or civilian bystander's lungs.  

Another major flaw is that the material that was used in the study contains natural, not depleted uranium.  If anyone wants to write me or come to DUStory in Yahoo Groups, I will put you in touch with chemists who have analyzed this.  

I am surprised that it was funded by a grant and intend to ask questions of the granting organization about why they funded this flawed study which seems made to order for the anti-depleted uranium crusade that wants to convince you that your soldiers are in danger, that you are in danger and that your children are in danger when their real goal is convicting your soldier of a non-existent war crime for intentionally poisoning the Middle East.

So, aroused from my aging veteran reverie, I knocked over my coffee, forgot to feed that cat and pounded on my keyboard.

On major flaws ...

(1) Uranyl Acetate - whether or not it exists in nature - "is unlikely to ever contaminate a soldier or civilians bystander's lungs."

Chemists have analyzed this you say?

So what is it we are discussing, the legitimate danger of depleted uranium or why the hell we are using it or need to use it in the first place?

And why would you say that any weapon - possessed of DU or not - is safe for civilian bystanders? What kind of doofus statement is that?

(2) Unless someone with an impressive educational and vocational pedigree (such as yours) can justify/defend America's need to involve nuclear crap in our weaponry as vital to the defense of the nation, what's the problem with crusading against the use of DU?

Are you trying to say that without DU our military is somehow emasculated and insufficiently potent to get the job done?

Do we need to go around shooting field  mice with elephant guns because our generals and defense contractors need the viagra effect of DU to effectively rattle sabers?

(3) I'm not aware of any accusations of war crimes against soldiers  for being in a war zone where their own government has authorized the use of depleted uranium. Who is doing the accusing of our troops? I'll help you smack them.

Actually, it sounds like you're on your own narrow and biased justify-the-use-of-depleted-uranium crusade.

Bottom line is that you can call everyone else's opinion flawed as hell, but in all honesty should you not state and clarify your own particular bias?

As a Veteran with a big mouth and an opinion I'm entitled to, I'll admit to the following biases of concern:

- I am the patriarch of our particular military family with it's own tradition going back decades. My deceased WWII father's flag sits on the wall in my study. My own medals and uniform fruit salad ribbons are in the special box I put them upon receipt of an honorable discharge thirty two years ago.

- I don't wear a silly little flag on my lapel nor stick cheap metal ribbons on my vehicle to prove how patriotic I am. I leave that to gullibles who think Fox News is honest broadcasting.

- I was against Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq from the get-go.

- I still am. Bush is the one most guilty of war crimes. More innocent civilian "bystanders" have been killed on Bush's orders than those killed by the dictator Bush lied about to justify an invasion that included the DU viagra.

- My family is not anti-war nor part of that political crowd. But we are also nobody's gullible puppets and nobody's pretend patriots conforming to false logic.

- Invading Iraq was never justified, necessary and is a false prop for Bush & Company's flawed definition of what a "war on terror" is or should look like.

- In that context, using depleted uranium - serious as that may be in terms of risk -  is secondary to blowing up our soldier family members and innocent by-standing civilians based on what does or does not naturally occur in nature.

As a Veteran with a big mouth, you owe us clarification, not rhetoric.

- Your position regarding the invasion and occupation of Iraq is what?

- your position regarding the reality of a "war on terror" and whose definition of that "war" is drinkable bathwater is what?

- you absolutely promise that depleted uranium has no lethal side effects based on nuclear radiation - being  essentially then harmless except for the traditional lethal intent of those weapons with or without DU inclusion?  You do acknowledge that original intent don't you? Blowing up people and things?

- You guarantee that my family and I and all who read here can absolutely sleep at night without concern about DU cause you've done our homework for us? We have absolutely no reason to worry about DU as the cause of any potential "agent orange" kind of illness or sterilization in our  military sons and daughters? DU absolutely will not be the reason if our soldier families become parents of grandchildren with birth defects?

- You can guarantee that any increased incidence of sterilization and birth defects in the innocent by-standing Iraqi civilian population is not going to be a consequence of DU and that America should have no guilty conscience about DU's inclusion among the rotten eggs we've laid and left laying around in the Middle East?

If you can't make that guarantee then perhaps you should go do more homework before calling anyone or anything flawed.