Response to Military dot com article on returning gays from Afghanistan

The history of human progress is the history of liberal actions. Consider this - in the late 18th Century, the status quo was monarchy, hence conservatives wanted to 'conserve' rule by monarchs. The liberal action was to fight to achieve democracy; both America and France fought that fight and won.

In the mid-19th Century, the status quo in the American south was slavery, hence conservatives wanted to 'conserve' labor provided for free by slaves. The liberal action was to abolish slavery and the irony is that it was forwarded by a Republican US President.

From the establishment of the United States through the early-20th Century, the status quo was that women in America had no right to vote, hence conservatives wanted to 'conserve' the second-class status of women. The liberal action was to grant women suffrage so that they could vote.

This could go on and on backwards and forwards, but the key issue is that people and societies evolve. You can choose to be a noun or you can choose to be a verb; opt to sit and hold on to what will be The Past as soon as it occurs, or you can adapt to what will be The Future when the Now becomes The Past. You can choose to drive the ship of state by looking forward off the bridge, or you can try to avoid icebergs navigating from the stern staring longingly at Where You've Already Been.

We no longer fight with swords and shields and it's time for the current thinking to get shelved along with them.

Gays have been in the military since human time began, and we're better off for it. Any person's desire to serve his or her country should be respected, not denigrated.

What We Will Do If Climate Deniers Are Wrong

I've said consistently for the past couple years that if the climate change scenario was put into an 'off the cliff' scenario, we would fight to get the car under control and then worry about who was wrong later. But we're not because Big Money has paid scientists, the conservative media, and anyone else with influence to deny climate change. Criminally so.

So, when climate change gets to the undeniable point, here's what we will do: We will find the responsible parties. We will find the wealthy financiers. We will find the paid denier scientists. We will find the corporate executives. We will find major investors. And then we will have a trial. And then we will require them to build their own gallows. And then we will hang them by the necks until they're dead. In the public squares. And it will serve as a warning to generations to follow, in perpetuity, that if you lie and your lies affect the planet, humanity, our lives, or our livelihoods, we will find you, your family, and anyone who profited from your lies and we will execute them publicly, painfully, and to the last member of their families.

This is what we will do, and no power on Earth can stop us. You are warned.

A Must Read

If you only read one long-form article on politics and the economy, read this one. After that, you'll know how to answer the conservatives who keep serving up bullshit and trying to make you think it's cake.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-gop-became-the-party-of-the-rich-20111109

Bring Public Enemy #1 to justice

Typically, in US politics, we don't go after the liars, because we understand that politicians ARE liars by nature. But the current crop of conservatives, many of whom are Tea Partiers, have gone beyond simple politics and have engaged in treasonous behaviors. For example, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said after the infamous 2011 debt ceiling increase debacle that the US's credit rating was "a hostage worth ransoming". By that admission, he stated that he and his fellow Republicans knew, and approved of, the coming credit downgrade, and that they approved of it as long as it resulted in political gains for him and his cronies. Of course, the creditworthiness of the US doesn't affect his real constituency, the wealthiest 400 people in the nation, it only affects those who can't secure loans from other sources and so end up paying more in interest than they would have if the nation's credit rating hadn't been downgraded. McConnell and his buddies screwed the entire nation in order to support the ones who least needed it. By any other name, that is treason. And treason is a capital offense. More on that later.

McConnell isn't alone in Washington, D.C., he has friends like Eric Cantor who seconded the charge on the national prestige and who helped him put the shaft to the country for political capital. And others from the sidelines included Sarah Palin, the usual radio trash like Limbaugh and Beck, Newt Gingrich, and a plethora of middlemen who sought to ride the Tea Party Express to fame and fortune. Instead, they rode the train off the tracks in the fashion of the 1970s-era poster which adorned the walls of many of us who were teenagers then and featured the two gentlemen standing aside and looking at the derailed train with the caption, "Oh, shit!"

The United States's 'Oh, shit' moment came when our credit rating was downgraded.

The same posse of incomprehensible, treasonous behaviors continues to ride and its now lead by Grover Norquist, a man whose concern for his country is devoid of reason, thought, or rationale that doesn't include cutting taxes. The fact that the nation has prospered when the tax rate was higher eludes him, not that he would care to acknowledge the fact, anyway. He has callously thrust aside historical truths which show his idol, Ronald Reagan, acting prudently 11 times in his 8 years in office by raising taxes in order to pay the nation's bills. That's an immutable fact, yet Norquist tries to spin it in his favor. He has held the intent of reason of GOP lawmakers in contempt and has forced them to sign his treasonous pledge not to raise taxes. If you want to point to a single person who's most responsible for the collapse of our nation's infrastructure, the rust of American industry, and the common sense that says if a bill is due, you must have the funds to pay it and you can't continue to pay the bills by simply cutting funding for other projects. It's crazy. It's insane. It's treason. And he needs to pay the ultimate price for his treason.

Our nation holds treason as a capital crime. Norquist's crimes are treasonous. He has single-handedly brought down the house that great Presidents have engineered and the sweat of American workers built. The great edifice of American strength has been crumbled by a single traitor, and the Republican party has hoisted him onto their shoulders for doing so.

You'll know this is true by this sign, that our great republic is weaker today than it was 20 years ago.

And you'll know the traitor by name by the proof of his authorship of the one document that he alone has championed and which has lead our nation to ruin.

His name is Grover Norquist, and he is Public Enemy #1. Demand that he be brought to justice and when found guilty, and he will be, demand that he pay the price for treason with his life.

America the Dumb

As I watch the daily news cycle, I'm constantly amazed at how Americans are talked down to by the media; this is even more true about the conservative media who consider themselves smarter than the rest of us. How can you tell? How many conservative radio schlock jocks are there compared to liberal ones? They even have their own TV network. While talking down to voters has been true for a while in politics, it's taken a new turn with the inclusion of national conservative figures like George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, and Rick Perry. Collectively, these three aren't capable of being a dog catcher in a progressive industrialized country like Finland.

So how did we get here and where are we going? Well, we got here when the GOP decided that it was better to say whatever they needed to say to get elected, but to then do whatever they wanted to do after getting into office. Politics ceased being about the candidate who's best suited to fulfill the duties of his office and started being about whom the party cognoscenti could coach and get elected. In our lifetimes, it began with Ronald Reagan, an actor given lines to read and who put on an Oscar-quality performance for 8 years, even when he was unfit to lead due to the Alzheimer's that Nancy and her coterie kept from the public.

Why would the GOP want to dumb down America? Because smart people can see through the lies and would never allow them to wrest power from the electorate. The GOP had an image problem after Nixon soiled the office of President, and along came Ronnie RayGun riding a white horse into the White House. He was the perfect foil; he sounded genuine, he talked like Joe Six-pack, and he was a true believer. All they needed to do was to paint Jimmy Carter as an elite, something that they're trying to do again with Barack Obama,  and they had their man with the plan.

So who did they go after first? Well, if you're in the United States and you're looking for a body of people who have absolutely no critical thinking skills, who act in lock-step, who are monolithic in thought, you go to church. American Evangelicals are reared into a religion that stifles creative thinking, critical thinking, and just plain old thinking, period. Why? Because the guise of Christianity is so thin that having people think is tantamount to having them ask questions about the inconsistencies in the bible, and in their 23,000+ denominations. By the way, why ARE there 23,000+ Christian denominations? And each one thinks that only they have all the answers. Yet, when pressed, they'll clump together like so much fecal matter and shout down anyone who questions their beliefs. They'll scream that it's they who are being repressed if you complain that their religion is in your face every day, and that it's their demagoguery which has brought America to its knees. They've fought science at every turn to the point that science is taught in schools with a bent toward their mythology, Creationism, rather than the true path of Evolution. Is it any wonder that American school kids lag behind the rest of the industrialized world in math and science when what they're taught is at odds with the truth? It's shameful. And they've been duped into thinking that they're right. America lost its way the day we stopped following intellectuals and started following myth.

This morning, I watched a series of videos filmed in a small town in Minnesota. The interviewer was unbiased and was very neutrally trying to understand what people thought about government entitlement programs. The interviewer pointed out that those drawing Social Security today bring in 3 times more, adjusted for inflation, than they paid into the system. And in every case but 2, the people interviewed believed that they were exceptions to the rule, and that they had somehow earned the 3x payout. And in every case but 1, they considered themselves conservatives. I would like to see a similar set of interviews where people are asked who voted back in the 1980s for Social Security privatization. How would they feel today with no income? What? That's right, no income. Why? Because with two major recessions - that caused by 9/11 and then the Great Recession - their income would have been wiped out. Completely. The politicians who proposed that Social Security be privatized - and they're still at it - have cleverly avoided pointing out that they proposed that it would not be regulated by any government agency, that it would be governed by the free market. In that case, small investors, who would make up the vast majority of a privatized Social Security, would have been among those who lost everything in the Great Recession, and that the earlier 9/11 recession would have taken some out then. Ask people what they think about that and you get stony silence. I know. I've asked. I asked people at my mother's doctor's clinic when I've taken her to appointments. I've asked at the VA hospital when I've gone to my own appointments. Someone always blurts out that the government wouldn't have let them go without income. But that's wrong; the politicians - conservatives - who proposed privatization have all also proposed a laissez-faire system, letting the market rise or crash as it would with no oversight. None. And there are far too many people for the government to have picked up from the crash since Social Security would have been de-funded when privatization took effect. People get very quiet when you point this out, although there's always someone who thinks that he's outsmarted reality. IN reality, those people have to ignore some iron rule or another to arrive at their conclusions.

In those videos, this morning, there was person after person justifying why they should get 3x more than they paid into the system. All conservatives. All claiming that there were too many people with their hands held out. All ready to jerk the rug out from under someone else. All good, solid citizens. And every one of them was a hypocrite. Or as I refer to them, "Good Christians".

Journalistic Integrity Weekly Cable News Magazine

Every day, I read the news, watch the news, listen to the news, and I try to get news from a variety of sources so that I get a good cross sample of what's going on. I read the traditional sources, the newcomers; the liberal, the conservative; the sane, the not-so-much; the rational, and the irrational. I've always felt, about a great many things, that the truth isn't sequestered on the extreme, but exists somewhere in the logical center. 

Increasingly, I find the logical center harder to find. Or more correctly said, harder to define. The lines get blurred and the small, hard center of truth which once existed has now become a large, fuzzy bullseye with annular rings of varying truth-saturation. One journalist might sound sane until you get right to the end of the article, then he blows it with an off-the-deep-end assessment or prognostication. Some are just bat-shit crazy, and for the instant recognition of that their writing brings, we thank them. 

It's those who are 95% right, and 5% crazy old cat lady unbalanced that concern me most. Because they SOUND like they're making sense; I mean, the first 1950 words of their columns will be dead-on accurate, but suddenly Pee Wee Herman channeling L. Ron Hubbard takes over and the reason we have 10% unemployment is that aliens are informing the current administration's economic policy. 

Um...whiskey tango foxtrot, over?

The truth is always being means-tested by various organizations. Manufacturers claims get tested by organizations like Consumers Union and Underwriters Laboratories. Food producers face the truth test via the USDA; drug makers by the FDA. Boeing and Airbus must run their truths through the Danger Zone at the behest of the FAA, and for politics we have PolitiFact and FactCheck. Snopes.com puts urban myths' feet to the fire and all of the above deserve our thanks when they do their jobs right.

But where's the Gong Show for journalism? Yes, there's the Peabody awards and the Pulitzer, but those look to find the apex of reporting and writing, not the bottom dwellers. We need a cable show along the lines of Hillbilly Hand Fishing that sticks its varied and sundry appendages into the dark, muddy recesses of reporting, pulls out the 250-pound shitsucker, and throws him on the bank for the blistering light of public scrutiny to wither to jerky. 

There needs to be a highly visible public panel or discussion group or such - I'm thinking McLoughlin Group as the paradigm - where the dirtbags who soil our bandwidth get called to Jesus for an On-Air behind-the-woodshed dressing down when they fuck up. A Tim Russert-sort, beaming from ear to ear, to put them in an electronic full-nelson and give them noogies until they 'fess up would be my go-to guy as moderator. Air it on Sundays along with the other political magazines and make it high profile. Drag the bastards through the same mud they ooze onto otherwise inoffensive media and castigate the liars publicly.

Hell, it might even draw ratings, who knows?


Update: In a moment of rare mental clarity, I had an epiphany. Matt Taibbi for moderator. If anybody can spot a canard in the coal mine of journalism, it's him. 

For America, it's 'Make Stuff or Die'

I'm not really a fan of Apple, but I do understand why their products are manufactured and assembled in China. We, as a nation, have allowed religion to trump science in our nation's schools. God has become more important than advancing the human condition. As long as we allow that to continue, we will always ride backseat to China. 

Going back to the mid-80s, I've watched the US become a services-based economy. Services feed the need for domestic consumers, but largely aren't exportable - diners from Beijing, Tokyo, and Munich aren't coming to Wichita or Macon or Sioux Falls to eat dinner. They're not coming from Sao Paolo to get a tan in Ithaca. We don't export enough services to bring in foreign dollars.

Maybe the problem is that we're too busy entertaining ourselves, or perhaps distracting ourselves, to focus even momentarily on the issues that are tanking our nation. Even if we manage to pull out of the current economic morass, our economy will remain fragile until we begin to build and export. A nation's economy depends not on domestic consumption of goods and services but rather on how much money it can earn from other nations.

Take this analogy:  Suppose you have 4 teams of 3 people each. Each person has $10, so each team has $30 available to it. Let's say that Team A's people, Members 1, 2, and 3, each have to eat, but Team A doesn't produce food, it provides services, but only to one another, not to other teams. So they have to go to Team B, which produces food, and buy their groceries. Assume that those groceries cost 1/3 of Team A's funds, so it ran them $10. Now Team A only has $20 while Team B now has $40. Now imagine that Team A is the United States and Team B is China. See where this is headed? 

Pretty soon, the Team (nation) that has the most PRODUCTS that other Teams (nations) need has the most money. (Yes, you can export some services, but it's much easier for another nation to step in and underbid you, taking your clients). Remember who we've been borrowing money from? China. Which makes things. We provides services, they provide THINGS. 

We need to rebuild our heavy manufacturing base; ships, planes, heavy mining and earth moving equipment, trucks, cars...THINGS! Some economists have been warning us since the early-80s that what has happened would happen. Obviously they were right. And we're still not doing anything about it. In fact, we're digging a deeper hole by propping up the house of cards that collapsed, the financial sector, causing the Great Recession. 

Our great hope just might be green technology, but if we're going to export better, more efficient, cheaper products than other nations, we MUST get the ball rolling. We MUST focus on manufacturing exportable, durable goods. We MUST!

Failing that, the future doesn't look so bright.

Make employers pay their own way or tax the shit out of them if they move overseas

Maybe it's time that employers ponied up and spent some money on training the people they need rather than profiteering on taxpayers. Corporations pick and choose locations based on how little it will cost them to operate there. Politicians give them the store - tax breaks, donated land or buildings or both, immunity from prosecution for violating environmental laws - and the moment they find themselves needing something, in this case trained workers, they get ready to close shop and move on to the next highest bidder.

Fuck 'em! Let them pay to train the people they need. If we got tough with corporations rather than caving to their whims, we would tell them, "Move your operations offshore and we will tax your imports to the US equal to the value of your products". See how they like having the world's largest economy essentially off limits to their products by virtue of not being able to compete. See how long it takes 'em to get the message. (Hint: Until the first stockbrokers meeting where they see how much money they've lost)

Stock markets = economic leeches

The world's economy has been trashed because people who contribute NOTHING shift money from buyer to seller, raising the cost of virtually everything that those who DO AND MAKE THINGS must buy in order to live.

The stock market is a pariah, a leech, a vampire. It sucks the blood and life out of our lives. Life's necessities especially - food, shelter, clothing - should NEVER be subject to speculation. The leeches have ruined our economy and then rewarded themselves and their cronies for a job poorly done...to the tune of tens and hundreds of millions of dollars.

When are we going to stop this? Why AREN'T we stopping this? Occupy was a step in the right direction, but what we really need is ACTION, not talk. A day will come when we are forced to evict the leeches and that day will be the Second American Revolution. Like the first one, this one will necessarily involve force, and it will be led by men and women blooded by 2 unnecessary wars. Men and women who went and fought so that the stockbrokers could sit back and laugh that they had it so easy while someone else's kid went to give his life or lose her limbs. This will not be allowed to continue.

I Finally Understand Capitalism, Wall Street, Government, and Their Relationships

Let's see if I understand this correctly.

A) Wall Street is the bastion of capitalism.
B) Government is evil.
C) Public companies whose stock trades on Wall Street, ergo capitalists, believe that the private sector does a better job at virtually everything than the 'inept' evil government does.
D) Wall Street's actual ineptitude and real felonious behaviors led to the stock market crash which tanked our national economy and threatens other economies worldwide.
E) The 'inept' government or as we prefer to call it, We The People, rode to the rescue of the private sector and Wall Street, but for only those who made enough money to actually afford to play the market, leaving our nation with a debt which will take over a decade to pay off.
F) Publicly traded companies whose stock is traded on Wall Street reward actually inept and truly felonious CEOs with, in some cases, money that belongs to We The People,  while simultaneously decrying the ineptitude of the evil government.
G) Wall Street is still considered the bastion of capitalism.

Huh! Well I'll be damned, I figured it out. And by 'figured it out', I mean, 'understand that capitalism is the real evil'.

Got it.

Response to fascinating Addicting Info article

Overthrowing Carter @ Addicting Info




For 30+ years, I've been telling people that Ronnie RayGun was NOT the President they thought he was. The proof is everywhere, but it's been painted over to make him seem godlike. I was at the free world's anti-aircraft school, the US Army Air Defense Artillery Officer's Basic Course at Ft Bliss, Texas, in the Fall of 1979. We were being instructed in, an training on, the new Patriot missile system. Ronald Reagan wasn't elected President until 1980, took office in January 1981. So how is it that he got credit for the Patriot? By the simple expedient of his followers lying, that's how.

Jimmy Carter got more done in 4 years than Ronnie RayGun got done in 8, and that's a easily-proven fact; you need look no more than the Congressional Record which will PROVE it. No bias, no party affiliation, just the truth...ma'am. 

Jimmy Carter was elected to bring openness and common sense to Washington, DC, attempting to air out the stench left behind by Richard Nixon and, to a lesser degree, Gerald Ford. He warned us 36 years ago about the problems of relying so heavily on imported oil. He put solar panels on the White House. He tried to bring transparency to the Federal government just as he had done in Georgia when he was Governor, although subsequent administrations in Georgia have succeeded in closeting any information they felt was too sensitive for the public's eyes. Jimmy Carter told us we had to tighten our belts for just a little while, and then we'd be OK, but no, we wouldn't have that. Jimmy Carter left office with a TINY deficit, but Ronald Reagan would balloon it 100 times larger. Carter, a Democrat, told us we had to cut waste in government and especially in the military, and he should know - he was a US Navy nuclear officer. Ronald Reagan was an actor. Reagan, the man whom Grover Norquist would have us believe was an anti-tax hero, actually raised taxes 11 times in his 8 years in office. He presided over 2 recessions beyond the one he inherited, which itself was a result of failed residual Conservative policies. Every real increase in GDP and the economy which resulted in real growth, not that growth resulting from inflation upon borrowing, that Ronald Reagan took credit for, even in his second term, was a result of policies that Jimmy Carter enacted into law.

Reagan's administration was a sham and was the genesis of the current economic destabilization. Jimmy Carter is a national treasure, and if you still have trouble believing that he was the far better leader than Reagan, then you need to study them side-by-side in order to see the truth. I have. 

Conservative policy failures and the failure of the two-party system

It has been the agenda of the GOP since Ronald Reagan's administration to broaden the gap between the rich and poor. This serves the purpose of preventing more people from achieving ultra-wealthy status and separates the Haves from the untouchables, the Have Nots. Be objective. Look for yourself. Read everything whether you agree with it or not, and do so with an open mind. I come from a long line of fiscal conservatives, many of whom have since left the Republican party, as I have. Members of our family were in Henry Hudson's expeditionary party, fought in every war from the Revolutionary war on. We have always been conservatives, but for the last 30 years, and even then it has been a slow exodus from the GOP. But you can't call yourself a fiscal conservative and simultaneously believe that the policies of Reagan, Bush 41, & Bush 43, as well as those of the Do Nothing 112th Congress are conservative. They're not. They have created a welfare state, but not one which helps those in need. They've created a welfare state which has served the ultra-wealthy. Trickle-down economics is a myth, such as it's portrayed. Twenty years worth of conservative administrations hasn't created the jobs they boast. It's all been a lie. As for the Democrats, they're not significantly better, either. It's time to abolish the two-party system and urge other parties into the mix. We also need to enact legislation which will force candidates to accept public campaign funding to remove money from the equation, and we need to ban lobbying completely. When wealthy concerns alone have the ears of lawmakers, individual rights get trampled.

Response to post on Military.com

There are 2 problems that could be meshed in order to mitigate each. The first is veteran homelessness. The second is the glut of empty homes, indeed empty neighborhoods. With all the money spent on outreach to homeless vets, it seems that it might be cheaper in some cases to purchase those homes, especially where an entire neighborhood could be purchased so that the vets would be around people with whom they share life-altering experiences. I can envision now-empty neighborhoods filled with veterans and their families (in some areas), with certain homes converted for group living. Veterans are already accustomed to living in barracks, hooches, homeless shelters (in the worst cases), so the transition could be relatively painless. In each neighborhood a central veterans' outreach office could be established in one of the homes with services offered on-site, like transportation to the nearest VA Medical Center, group therapy sessions, transition to permanent living, and so forth. In some cases, this might be permanent housing.

As a veteran, I see my fellow vets on the streets, using, abusing, and basically thrown away once the general public is done with their services. The police rarely know how to respond to veterans and the result is usually jail. That could be prevented with a neighborhood police department that's trained specially to deal with veterans, especially those with conditions like PTSD. It might even be a situation where MP (Military Police) veterans, those who are already accustomed to dealing with their fellow vets, could make the best cops to handle any situations that might occur and prevent troubled vets from from going to jail, incurring a criminal record, and having their problems ignored or left un(der)treated.

I see so much possibility here. Yes, the program would cost a bit to get started, and yes, there would be a cost to run it, but in some situations that might be offset by having the veterans who inhabit the community pay subsidized rent from their veterans compensation or from their wages from private sector jobs. The program could be fine-tuned as it evolves providing that the charter was flexible enough to allow it to progress smartly.

Imagine: An entire neighborhood of veterans surrounded by those they feel comfortable with, by those who don't look down on them, who share the same nightmares. For many veterans, no amount of rehabilitation to reintegration into the general public will suffice to drive away the demons. Let's be proactive, recognize it, and move forward while housing can be purchased at the lowest possible cost.

On Operation Wall Street

These protests have been a long time coming. The abuses by the financial and banking sectors, opaque government, secret wars, police intimidation, and political cronyism have all taken their toll on the middle and working classes. Remember the old Bruce Hornsby and the Range line from their 1986 #1 hit, 'The Way It Is'? "The man in the silk suit hurries by, As he catches the poor old lady's eyes, Just for fun he says 'Get a job'". They were onto the crude undercurrent of classism a quarter-century ago.

The real problem is not that the 1% don't see the chasm that exists between their luxuried lives and that of the street poor. The real problem is not that they don't care. The real problem is that they ENJOY the difference. They enjoy knowing that tonight while the two veterans, one from the Vietnam war and one from Iraq or Afghanistan, sleep under a bridge, they'll be home, warm, fed, dry, and secure. It's that delectation that derives from the suffering of others that is the core of the problem. All else is symptom; this is the disease.

Welcome to the Occupation

I keep hearing and reading people say that the problem with the Occupation is that no one can give them a single reason why they're doing it. But that's the problem right there; there isn't a single reason - there are hundreds of reasons. And yes, it might seem confusing and disorganized at the moment, but as people put their heads together things will get sorted out. The thing about Thinkers, as opposed to the Believers whom Occupation is protesting, is that it's a Big Tent. Far bigger than the Democratic Party. Far bigger than "The Left". We are the 99%, the middle, the left, and even the right. We are us, them, you, I, we, he, she...and even it. So while we communicate with one another and sort ourselves to address all these issues, give us time. Because this isn't just for us, it's for ALL of us. (R.E.M. - 'Welcome To The Occupation' )