oneworldatpeace's blog

In "Conservatives Without Conscience" John Dean laid out the Republican Base of about 24% of any given population as being "authoritarians" that would follow a "leader" no matter thier better interests if the "Leader" took strong positions of "moral certitude". Bush was sure good at that even as his stance was based on lies he was fed and because he was such a simpleton he never challenged the sources. Why does Obama and his Administration lack similar resolve in making thier case that as far as I can monitor, is based on FACTS! Outright Republican lies go unchalleged or addressed in the "frame" manufactured by Frank Lutz or by insipid apolitical terms like "misinformation" "disingenous" or "ill informed"?

What will it take for them to realize that Conservatives and Republicans can ONLY WIN WHEN THEY LIE because they don't have anything to offer! Lieing about Health Care, Financial Regulation, The Deficit, Social Security, The Economy, Immigration, Crime in Arizona, Medicare Advantage, Medicare, Don't Ask Don't Tell, The EFCA, UNIONS,  The 2nd, 10th, and 14th Amendments and just about everything that comes out of thier mouths are all lies and have to be STRONGLY CHALLENGED IN PLAIN JOE WILSON LANGUAGE! YOU LIE!!!

I was hopeful that Congressman Wu's emotional demeanor at the picnic was a harbinger of new fortitude in our party and was heartened by Weimars challenge to King to "observe procedure and SIT DOWN!" last week, but this week it appears we're back to appeasement. I cringe when the President refers to the intentional obstructionists as "some in Congress" and Kathleen Sibelius decribes the Republican Lies about Healthcare as "misinformation" and failed to challenge the PBS interviewer, Judy Woodruff, of misrepresentation of the facts when she used the Republican issue framing Lie,as fact.

I was heartened by reports in the Oregonian that the parameters of claims for "post traumatic stress" will be adjusted for VA claimants without the requirement of "stressor events".

For most americans, the thought of having to participate in military service would be stressful and counter productive to the career path they hold as most inviolate. Hey! They've got to pay off the tariff they incurred in thier passage to the maybe middle class  with the loans they had to get to earn the "rite of passage", maybe.

However, all studies over the last hundreds of years is that service in the military abrogates the socio-economic blocks that limit class and affords some military veterans access to the Political and Economoc elite. You can see these results on CNN and FAUX News as these ex military guys prattle on about things that us "Grunts" know is total baloney.

The reality is that all the equipment of WAR is lethal, whether or not it is directed at an "ENEMY"! When "tactical equipment" is deployed it usually ends up killing or mutilating humans that happen to be stupid enough to get in the way, and that includes the soldiers that have been trained in that specialty.So one question might be "WHY DO WE DO THIS ?"But the most important querie might be, HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?

As an unemployed construction guy (18 months) and a Viet Nam decorated Veteran, and after 30 years of anti-labor off shoring, the erosion of worker rights, Nafta, Cafta, the IMF, "Welfare Reform" Telecommunication "Reform" Act of 96, the Graham Rudman Act, and a host of similar sell outs, a reluctant Democrat, I am renewed as an AMERICAN!

My wife and I attended last Saturdays "America Speaks" national Town Hall meeting that I had feared in prior postings, might be another "Tea Bagger Scam" and was amazed and gratified by the experiance.

America still has a long way to go as it tolerates homelessness of children and veterans and idolizes rich people but if you check out the results of our 3500  member National Town Hall Meeting you might join in our renewal of grattide and faith in our "better angels".

I invite you to the website www.usabudgetdiscussion.org to check out the actual data, or email me at oneworldatpeace@comcast.net and I can FAX you a copy because this was a wide spread demographic proof of Americas better Angels and we need to get the word out before it is disapated byCorporate propaganda!

The profound reality of this data is that on isue after issue, from conservative to liberal, tha majority of Americans realize that the bus we're riding on is heading for a cliff, but throwing people under the wheels won't slow it down and that the people that own the bus should bear the majority of the costs to fix the brakes! Please check the DATA!   On Social Security funding 85% voted to increase  the limit on taxable EARNINGS so it covers 90% of TOTAL earnings in America! Am I kidding? NO! Thats the TRUTH!!!

My wife attends a lot of Washington County Functions because of her work and a couple of weeks ago a presentation was given about the upcoming National Town Hall on June 26 by a non profit organization called "America Speaks" about the Federal Budget and the "Deficit." Seeing as how they needed facilitators and I'm a Construction Victim of the Bush Wall Street Ponzi mill collapse and they'll provide a 100 Buck stipends, we both applied. Strangely I was selected and the Masters Degree in Peace and Social Justice from a College of Theology was not, Hmmm.

So, Two online Trainings and an onsight run through at the Oregon Convention Center are required and on Tuesday I participated in the first online training. The material was presented as a broad brush rendering of several issues going into the budget and a lot of relevant issues were not covered, so I typed in a couple of questions like, "Does your 30 year Social Security projections allow for the die off of us Baby Boomers"? No answer. After 3 tries at other questions I asked, " Do you care about our opinions about this information?" Whereupon I recieved a "private" reply "The information was provided by our advisory staff and is complete as the program."

Well I went onto their site to see who these people might be and was chagrined to see a list of mostly right wing think tanks and a couple of liberals. The most alarming was to see that the Peter G Peterson Foundation was listed as the primary funder of this effort. What is that smell?

Peter G Peterson is the primary proponent of eliminating  Medicaid and privatizing Social Security and he has spent MILLIONS setting up other foundation fronts that always seem to agree with him. He's a zealot that believes that abject poverty and misery is good for business and I'm fearful that this National Town Hall will be used to perpetrate this zealotry and I got suckered into helping, but we can turn this around!

I attended Senator Wydens town hall Monday night and was disappointed that it bogged down over the so called health care reform and immigrant hating. I have to admit that the lottery method of selecting participants kept the Republican acrimony under some control. However, I took exception to the Senators' back slapping about our participation being a demonstration of our founders democracy. In their definition, participation in our Representative Democratic Republic would have entailed an open mike until every opinion or question had been addressed by our elected representative.

So as I left the meeting I was thinking that maybe I'm crazy to think that as an elected PCP I should worry about some of the issues that some people have concerns about and maybe the Senator would share my opinion about myself being crazy, if he was challenged to commit to full publicly funded elections or share his concerns why that is not a good idea and a lot of other questions about financial re-regulations, the filibuster and democracy, politicizing the Justice Dept. and political prosecutions, and other mundane topics.

The current status of corporate-care in the "House of Lords" points out the depravity of our elected system and we are partly to blame.
Every election we provide the county and state platforms, put out our signs, contribute our money, get out the vote, win an election and then we are ignored. We are effectively dis-enfrachised by money and the politicians it buys on just about every issue that gains any benefit to our population if it costs the rich anything. Check out any number of studies by institutes from People for The American Way to The Cato institute if you need any substantiation on my view or your "gut" knowledge.
President Status Quobama exemplifies this charge in his oratorical exhortations in public and his backroom deals with Big Pharma where he was willing to maintain the egregious gouging we get in filling our prescriptions, as many are forced to choose in rolling the dice on staying alive, or choosing between medication or rent. This is chumping us for change, nothing else.
The bidding war in the Senate for the extortionate cloture vote and the abandonment of true Health Care Reform for all of us, as Insurance Company stocks approach the stratosphere makes the smell of the money hard to ignore. The smell of this tawdry activity affords the opportunity to take the needed course of action by demanding the end of politicians for sale by enacting truly clean publicly funded political campaigns. We should demand commitments from any politician that we support, to support that goal or they're on their own.

As a veteran of the Viet Nam war who served for a year as a helicopter Pilot in the Central Highlands in Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia I came to understand that our commanders, advisors and diplomats above the military operational field level and village or hamlet civilian equivalent, have no idea what the hell they're doing. The speech last night by President Status Quobama shows the same "oldthink" that wasted our lives and enonomy in RVN that is propagated by command prejudice that see's every problem as the need for more force. This prejudice gets transferred to the civilian cohort by intimidation and timidity to challenge the strategies that the military proposes because, hey! they've got their actual skin in the game and their bare faces in the lead element! But in truth, that primarily is only true at the grunt level of both efforts and politicians have a tendency to ignore the body bags as they hang out with the Generals at the Staff Club.

The commonalities between Afghanistan and RVN while many, are mostly similar in the fact that in both conflicts, past and future, the outcomes will and have been decided by the people who live in every small village, town or city, not anything that any foriegn diplomat, politician or General does or thinks no matter what their motive, be it democracy, war profiteering or a pipeline.