Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Militias, Tea Parties, and Right-Wing Populism
Immigration? Broadcasters haven’t a clue … but these folks do.
We need less bureaucrats! Hey, how come the trash is still out in the can?
This is the (Ferris) Beuller guy!
Bueller ... Bueller?
CBS news video. Ben Stein Defending Bureaucrats.
Thank you Ben.
Washington State conservatives taking whacks at bureaucrats can be some of the most misinformed folks you'll meat.
When asked where I work and what I do I have to begin with ...
"You pay me to do stuff you refuse to do, have no ability to do or are downright afraid to do. If we didn't do our stuff for you, you would be too busy advocating for more public services to worry about global politics and the one true conservative religion.”
Monday, March 29, 2010
You’re asking for dough and that’s your reason? Give me a break!
Phone solicitation from Dems for cash to compete with Corporations who are now free to give millions to Reflubs.
I won'tt do it ... spent too much two years ago to then see White House deals made with health insurers and big pharma prior to health care legislation.
That was no bang for my bucks.
We'll see how many Reflublican A.G.'s are real constitutionalists and how many are partisan constitutionalists
Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell wrote his state's Republican Attorney General Tom Corbett on Thursday asking him "to refrain from taking any legal action."
Rendell said that because the state's budget is already "at least half a billion dollars out of balance, incurring the costs of a federal lawsuit on this matter is simply not in Pennsylvania's best interests."
Washington State's A.G. McKenna of course can't be bothered with the state's budget priorities ... he has an RNC to satisfy ... them same RNC patriots that are too busy to notice cause they are bar hopping in L.A.Sunday, March 28, 2010
Sunday … thinking allowed
Now looky here. We biblical literalists will tell you what the correct God talk is. We believe in the Bible and we call it verbal-plenary inspiration. That means we take it all literal cause God said it. Otherwise …
Er … I was only kidding. Wasn’t I Sarah?
the first period of geological time shaped by the action of a single species.
Threatened by the anti-war instincts of their own people
I'm trying to focus on American Idol, my upcoming Fantasy Baseball Season, who's religious and who ain't, and my HMO-dominated retirement in a year and a half.
Why would I disturb my beautiful mind with this kind of anti-merikin crap?
“He exposes the mechanisms used to divert us from confronting the economic, political, and moral collapse around us.”
A culture that cannot distinguish between reality and illusion dies. And we are dying now. We will either wake from our state of induced childishness, one where trivia and gossip pass for news and information,
Who wrote Empire of Illusion?
"Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, is the former Middle East Bureau Chief of The New York Times, and a Senior Fellow at The Nation Institute. He is the author of several books, including War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America, I Don't Believe in Atheists, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey."
More about the 7 habits of highly gullible people.
"positive thinking had become ubiquitous and virtually unchallenged in American culture.
It was promoted on some of the most widely watched talk shows, like Larry King Live and the Oprah Winfrey Show; it was the stuff of runaway best sellers like the 2006 book The Secret; it had been adopted as the theology of America's most successful evangelical preachers; it found a place in medicine as a potential adjuvant to the treatment of almost any disease. " – Barbara Ehrenreich
Brightsided: When Happiness Doesn’t Help
On Stephen R. Covey, the mormon business evangelical:
Covey might be good for individuals unconnected with a large employer and who seek a sense of empowerment through personal introspection and note-keeping.
However, I see in his presentation the sort of stuff Ehrenreich and Chris Hedges (in Empire of Illusion) wrote about.
I used to teach Covey as replacement priesthood lessons in my younger years in the LDS church. Not 7-Habits stuff but a book called Spiritual Roots of Human Relations. Thought it was great.
However, after surviving an attempt by my employer's (State of Washington) managers and many co-workers to force me to attend a 7-Habits Workshop, I observed and listened when they returned and reported how changed and inspired they felt.
I read the materials they were given and noticed what many considered to be personal power quotes high-lighted or printed on sheets of paper stuck to cubicle walls.
... particularly about taking personal responsibility.
Implicit or implied - their general interpretation was that if the agency fails at a large or small task or the office doesn't do well in some endeavor, the worker could or should always be much more to blame than wise management.
The idea of taking on one's self a personal responsibility for a failure of the parent organization is strictly out of a line-authority notion that higher-ups are usually not be blamed or held accountable.
... because it is unreasonable to believe that they do not know what they are doing at all times
... that it is being negative to doubt their wisdom
... which is what Covey's church (and he is active LDS) teaches about it's prophet/president and line leadership.
LDS membership is taught and encouraged to trust and accept subjection to priesthood authority and leadership who ... in God's true church ... would never be led astray by God.
Covey's business model teaches essentially the same thing.
A common mormon cliche goes like this: “When the prophet speaks discussion has ended.”
So for 7 habits of gullible employees there is this: Listen up by god!
Management could never be wrong or mislead or incorrect. If your organization fails or goes out of business it's YOUR fault and you owe it to truth and personal responsibility to admit and accept the blame.
Perhaps not openly taught in Covey seminars but heavily implied at least in the government agency that paid Covey’s people to sing that song where I work.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Goofin with the Bees odds & ends
I put on my knee braces and went out to try my new lawn mower on our beach house landscape in Bay Center.
Now I’m back in the kitchen tired, sweaty, sipping lime juice and writing without critical thought each thing that pops into my head.
Sliping into a broken record hymn .. "bringing in theliteralist sheep" or "nearer my LaHaye/Jenkins Literalist Fantasy to thee."
We believe in JEEEEEZUSSSS! Yeah?
Reverend Jabba the Falwell (R.I.P.) once solemnly declared to humanity: "You're a failure as a human being if you're not a born again Christian" - i.e., if you haven't accepted Jesus as your personal savior.
So that must mean that Jesus has to accept Himself as His personal savior to meet the Born Identity?
and Jesus has to acknowledge Jesus as his personal savior to avoid being left behind in the clouds while the Pastor Hagee and the rest of the born-agains are snatched into heaven when the end times begin?
and Jesus rightfully intended that early followers should found - not caring communities - but cadres of conservative capitalist Christians intent on plowing up the lilies,
strip mining the Mount of Olives,
clear cutting the Garden of Gesthemene
and stoning all heretical "failures as human beings" as defined by St. Falwell?
... so that 2000 years later self-righteous and self-aggrandizing fatheads could tell millions of the hypnotized on worldwide television ... "me and Jesus were talking last week.
Now J didn't say the word 'nuclear' but he did say that His favorite country was going to get some hellfire and damnation cause of its on-going practice of tolerance of gays and failure to condemn liberals."
Yeah?
Well Pat me boy, I was talking to Jake (my Aussie Shepherd) last week and wow! Jake barked his dog talk, but I heard the voice of JEEEEEZUSSSS in those woofs!
And Jeeeeezusss told me that I needed to start paying more attention to him cause there was a trinitarian broadcast fathead who couldn't see past the halo on his nose and who was saying some dang stupid stuff but leaving out all the "verily verily's" that are supposed to introduce prophecy when proclaimed.
But I ramble ...
The prime directive probably included tax cuts for all alien civilization members with income equal to 1000 times the average working alien's earnings, eh?
Of course what they didn't tell us wasvthe dilithium crystals originally were renewable but a company named Monsanto figured out how to change their internal structure into something more battery-like -- called them genetic dilithium crystals that could not be re-energized the old fashioned way ...
and that for every prime directive violated, the Enterprise carried a contingency crew for easing the impact and cleaning up the mess: It was called the Federation Enterprise Mop-up Authority: FEMA
Awe ... here we go again .....
More of that hard-to-read intellekchal stuff that me and George was aginst.
They have a saying in Texas ... and I'm sure it's out here somewhere in the Washington Payloose or down in the Kindergarten Konservate Choir of Utah ... "fool around me once and ... er,"
"fool me around once or twice ... er, "
"fool around with me or my wife ..."
Oh what the hell ...
Concepts are fungamental ... you don't need to go read no phillysophicles plays and dial-a-prayers to figure out the basic stuff.
If this Socrater guy and Aristophupperlips came into the bar where I'm drinking and start spoutin all that foreign-illegal-Greecey-immigrant talk, I'd know how to put em in their place ... me and my brush-cuttin chain saw.
you dang intellechal's are presickley the reason why statecraft and good governance should come out of the end of a beer bottle and not some dang misoverestimated thespian-knickers class at UW, Tabernacle Tech or them other Kudzu-League schools.
You know which ones I'm talkin about - those schools where lots of thinking gets done but ain't none of them won a Rose Bowl in my lifetime.
Your's Truly fer me 'n George (now THERE was truly the mind of God or was it Tom Delay?)
If the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is against it, it must be good for the rest of us.
Jesus Reconsiderd: Book Sparks Evangelical Debate
Brian McLaren, an influential evangelical leader, suggests in a new book that Jesus is not the only way to salvation. Traditional evangelicals fiercely object to his ideas. But McLaren is tapping into a generational divide between young evangelicals and their parents.
The long-time fundamentalist Moody-Bible message that says we got the truth and you ain’t is fading in the minds and hearts of the young … even inside the churches.
How dare those young people think for themselves?
'My Jesus is not your Jesus. My Savior is not your Savior. I own the true redeemer and you can only call Him Savior & Redeemer if I agree with you.
You can only call Jesus your friend if I agree with what you mean by that.
You can only resist evil as I define evil.
Any other resistance to an evil of your own perception is heresy and God will punish you for that and for not believing me.'
And, of course, the implied ... "Me and God. Ain't that right God?"
"Mohler says McLaren and others like him are trying to rewrite the Christian story. And what alarms Mohler is that young believers are attracted to this message. ...surveys show that nearly two-thirds of evangelicals under age 35 believe non-Christians can go to heaven, but only 39 percent of those over age 65 believe that. That's because young evangelicals have grown up in a religiously plural society.
"And, it's really hard to condemn someone to eternal damnation on the basis of their religion when you know them well and have come to love them," he says.
Campbell adds that young believers are more flexible about Christian doctrine in general. "We also know that — particularly within the evangelical community — the younger you are, the less likely you are to take the Bible literally, to believe that the Bible is the inerrant 'word of God,' as compared to a book of moral precepts," he says.
Surveys by Campbell and others show young evangelicals differ from their elders in a lot of ways. They pray less often, read the Bible and go to church less often. And they're more open to culture and social issues, such as evolution and gay rights."
Get a civic grip. The Constitution don’t say nothin about Democrats, Republicans or Teabaggers.
"Although the two party system is almost as old as the Republic, other organizations of parties are possible. We could have no parties, as the founders envisioned. We could have many parties, as is the case in most democracies around the world. Or we could have a single party. The Constitution doesn't care."
"In the behavior of the Democrats, the public got a taste of what a parliamentary democracy would look like under the US Constitution.
Philosophical differences and intramural politicking become more prominent. It's a bonanza for cable news outlets. It is not clear whether it is better or worse governance, but it is different.
Oddly, the choice of whether to continue or abandon this experiment lies with the Republicans.
The Democrats did what they had to do, proving that they can govern either way.
The Republicans could go back to historically normal two-party behavior, and undertake what would likely be a long, hard slog back to power.
Or, they could double-down on the bet on tactical opposition, hoping against hope to bring down Obama and the Democrats. If they take that path and fail, the Republican Party risks complete marginalization. America would become even more of a parliamentary democracy.
We could be locked into a single party for decades, suffering from institutional arteriosclerosis, like Japan. Or we could have ever shifting coalitions of many parties, suffering constant instability, like Italy or Israel.
Or, after some time, a viable second party would emerge, and the 220-year American experiment in two party democracy would continue, albeit with different players.
My money would be on door number three."
Read this if you can think critically. If not, go give more of your blood to your HMO
Ambrose Bierce ... now there was my kind of Amerikin.
The Unbearable Lightness of Reform – Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
Arthur, want to debate a little religion?
I recently decided to read (you know who Thomas Paine is, right? Founding Father who wrote Common Sense?) Paine's Age of Reason.
Wow!
To all fundamentalist Bible-verse-quoters who have recently asked me to engage with them in a discussion of religion: Read Age of Reason, write a 3-page rebuttal/summary and send it to me.
Then we'll talk.
Betcha can't guess which parts of the country will still be visible from space.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Conservative partisanship pretends that pinching the people’s pennies is good for business ...well of course it is!
Slaughterhouse 10: The Gutting of state and local government
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Rufus Jones on Liberal Religion
"Pursuit of truth, appreciation of beauty, dedication to the welfare of others, love for another, are all religious agencies.
They all enlarge and liberate the personal life, they all bring it into closer unity with the whole of reality,
they all give it a touch of consecration and bring a genuine experience of joy, and yet each one of these agencies and all of them combined may fall short of the complte meaning of religion.
The reason why they may, and sometimes do, fall short of the real goal is that men draw too narrow a circle and to terminate the aim on an object which is not rich and inclusive enough to meet all the needs of the human soul."
Free market capitalism … after the biggies have forced out our Mom & Pop farmers
What the heck is a “farm factory?”
Well, here is what we know:
Factory farming is an attitude that regards animals and the natural world merely as commodities to be exploited for profit. In animal agriculture, this attitude has led to institutionalized animal cruelty, massive environmental destruction and resource depletion, and animal and human health risks.
Chickens running around the barnyard and farm in their “chicken-ness” laying eggs contentedly … the highest from of health for any living thing.
Nope … now we have “factory-contented chickens” laying eggs the likes of which we ought to appreciate what it cost to get laid.
There are more than 325 million egg laying hens in the U.S. confined in battery cages — small wire cages stacked in tiers and lined up in rows inside huge warehouses.
In accordance with the USDA's recommendation to give each hen four inches of 'feeder space,' hens are commonly packed four to a cage measuring just 16 inches wide.
In this tiny space, the birds cannot stretch their wings or legs, and they cannot fulfill normal behavioral patterns or social needs.
Constantly rubbing against the wire cages, they suffer from severe feather loss, and their bodies are covered with bruises and abrasions.
Is this what free-market capitalism stands for? If not why do we support these outfits by purchasing the eggs they’ve obtained through torture?
How about a little bacon with them there eggs?
Modern breeding sows are treated like piglet-making machines.
Living a continuous cycle of impregnation and birth, each sow has more than 20 piglets per year.
Gosh, when America goes to war and needs more military bodies maybe them sabre rattlers and corporate trough-suckers could figure out factory birthing for our patriotic mothers and sperm-donors.
After being impregnated, the sows are confined in gestation crates – small metal pens just 2 feet wide that prevent sows from turning around or even lying down comfortably.
At the end of their four-month pregnancies, they are transferred to similarly cramped farrowing crates to give birth. With barely enough room to stand up and lie down and no straw or other type of bedding to speak of, many suffer from sores on their shoulders and knees.
When asked about this, one pork industry representative wrote, "…straw is very expensive and there certainly would not be a supply of straw in the country to supply all the farrowing pens in the U.S."
Right! No self-respecting corporate trough-sucker would want to waste money on straw for God’s sake.
Got milk?
Traditional small dairies, located primarily in the Northeast and Midwest, are going out of business.
They are being replaced by intensive 'dry lot' dairies, which are typically located in the Southwest U.S.
Regardless of where they live, however, all dairy cows must give birth in order to begin producing milk.
Today, dairy cows are forced to have a calf every year.
Like human beings, cows have a nine-month gestation period, and so giving birth every twelve months is physically demanding.
The cows are also artificially re-impregnated while they are still lactating from their previous birthing, so their bodies are still producing milk during seven months of their nine-month pregnancy.
With genetic manipulation and intensive production technologies, it is common for modern dairy cows to produce 100 pounds of milk a day — ten times more than they would produce naturally.
As a result, the cows' bodies are under constant stress, and they are at risk for numerous health problems.
Not to mention the moral problems of a society that sustains this kind of dominion over God’s creation.
When’s the last time you heard a sermon on this extremely vile form of human evil against what God has created.
Remember what God told Peter when he looked into the dream sheet?
Yeah yeah, Arthur. So where’s the beef?
Since the 1980s a series of mergers and acquisitions has resulted in concentrating over 80% of the 35 million beef cattle slaughtered annually in the U.S. into the hands of four huge corporations.
Accustomed to roaming unimpeded and unconstrained, range cattle are frightened and confused when humans come to round them up.
Terrified animals are often injured, some so severely that they become "downed" (unable to walk or even stand). These downed animals commonly suffer for days without receiving food, water or veterinary care, and many die of neglect.
Others are dragged, beaten, and pushed with tractors on their way to slaughter.
… Most beef cattle spend the last few months of their lives at feedlots, crowded by the thousands into dusty, manure-laden holding pens.
The air is thick with harmful bacteria and particulate matter, and the animals are at a constant risk for respiratory disease.
Feedlot cattle are routinely implanted with growth-promoting hormones, and they are fed unnaturally rich diets designed to fatten them quickly and profitably.
Because cattle are biologically suited to eat a grass-based, high fiber diet, their concentrated feedlot rations contribute to metabolic disorders.
That’s what I (as well as you) agree to every time I buy raw or cooked beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and whatever else is factory farmed.
We have an addiction quite hard to abandon as long as we are able to put awareness out of our minds.
“You want fries with that burger that was dead before the cow died – or died while the cow was still on its feet?”
Can you see Mr. John Wayne as a modern American cattleman in a contemporary version of the old western movies in which he was an all-American hero?
I know, I know.
We can’t be bothered with these kinds of moral considerations when there are more important moral issues facing our country:
… abortion (where we tear our garments and consider ourselves heroic because we sanctify at least one form of life)
LGBT … what some have called the single greatest threat to America.
Socialism … where pursuit of profits might have to suffer a bit in deference to the common good and pursuits of other than
money.
We are all guilty of this kind of blind long-term indifference.
At some point one of us ought to wake up … don’t ya think?
Capitalism: a love story has a new chapter in America’s ongoing courtship with corporate welfare
New Fraud Cases Point to Lapses in Iraq Projects
“Investigators looking into corruption involving reconstruction in Iraq say they have opened more than 50 new cases in six months by scrutinizing large cash transactions
— involving banks, land deals, loan payments, casinos and even plastic surgery
— made by some of the Americans involved in the nearly $150 billion program.”
Gosh, that kinda makes yer flag-wavin chest-beating arms of patriotic capitalism sprain at the shoulders (if not at the brain.)
“Mr. President, it’s the old Pottery Barn rule, if you break it you own it.”
“… some of the cases involve people who are suspected of having mailed tens of thousands of dollars to themselves from Iraq,
… or of having stuffed the money into duffel bags and suitcases when leaving the country,
… millions of dollars were moved through wire transfers. Suspects then used cash to buy BMWs, Humvees and expensive jewelry, or to pay off enormous casino debts.
… ‘there is ongoing fraud that we have not been able to nail down,’ said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., who leads the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent oversight agency.
… Mr. Bowen’s office agreed to answer general questions on the new inquiry but declined to divulge the names of the suspects, who include private contractors, military officers and civilian officials.
… Mr. Bowen said that many of the new cases involved bribes and kickbacks for awarding lucrative work to contractors, and that in a number of cases, spouses or other relatives of the suspects are accused of setting up fraudulent companies to hide the illicit gains.
… Wayne White, who until 2005 was a senior intelligence official with the State Department focused on Iraq and is now a scholar with the Middle East Institute in Washington, said he was not surprised that new cases were still turning up.
‘That’s been very disappointing, and we’ve seen it in Afghanistan as well,’ Mr. White said.
“Now now Colin. You don’t understand. We want to loot that barn before we break it, then let the foxes in to get their profits once we do own it and can put in the fix , I mean fix what we broke.
… like slumlords.”
Sorry about the terms of your student loan but shark lenders need jobs too.
“… it would cost the students less and the government less, if private companies were not permitted to act as middlemen profiting off public loans to students.”
That’s the problem with the corporate welfare that masquerades as free-market capitalism in this country.
Anything can be declared a commodity … access to which allows someone to demand a profit as an inalienable right.
Now take Sallie Mae, for example.
The Republican Senator from Virginia, Mr. Warner, and the Democrat Senator, Mr. Webb, know how to take care of their constituents at the expense of my kids and grandkids (yours too) with no regard for anything but what’s in it for their re-election.
Precisely the things Tea and Coffee parties should be discussing rather than who’s a Nazi and what meat head and his ditto heads had to say.
From my friend David Swanson.
Go ahead and read it.
I won’t tell Squawk Hannity you read an article written by a liberal.
Friday, March 12, 2010
The man wants to sell his book of fairy tales and Brokaw to help him
“We got the Bush Regime, arguably the most incompetent, corrupt and outright-treasonous Administration in American history. A regime so reckless, savage and gleefully bestial that it made the career-Nixon-hating Hunter Thompson actually pine for the good old days of Tricky Dick:
‘I miss Nixon. Compared to these Nazis we have in the White House now, Richard Nixon was a flaming liberal.’
---
“In four days, one of the principle architects of this depraved Administration will be on teevee.
Pimpin' a book.
He will be interviewed for approximately 30 minutes by Famous Journalist, Tom Brokaw.”
Frost/Nixon = Brokaw/Rove?
reading stuff and asking questions leaves the koolaid sippers uncomfortable
Years ago when I was questioning some of my own personal assumptions about the religious world view inside which I was raised, someone inside that world told me, “Arthur, one of your problems is that you think too much.”
Probably true from his point of view. If you read stuff you get more things to think about. If you think about more things you ask more questions.
If you ask more questions you’ll get answers from lots of sources.
Leaves those in a koolaid mindset uncomfortable.
Take for example what I might learn from a non-koolaid approved person like Noam Chomsky …
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Joe Wilson on Karl Rove … I agree with Joe
date Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 9:06 PM
subject Official Statement from Ambassador Joe Wilson & Valerie Plame Wilsonre Rove Book
Ambassador Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame Wilson have asked that I send you their official statement regarding Karl Rove's new memoir "Courage and Consequence":
Karl Rove’s book “Courage and Consequence” is less memoir than hoax.The chapters that relate to the CIA leak scandal are yet another attempt to deflect attention from his central role in the betrayal of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity as a covert CIA officer.
His distortions and fabrications are consistent with his approach throughout this sordid and criminal affair.
Wasting his opportunity to tell the truth, he offers absolutely nothing new, and his selective use of facts and quotes are a transparent effort to continue his long campaign to confuse people, unfortunately consistent with his past behavior.
His book is a pathetically weak defense of the disastrous policies pursued by the Bush administration, involving our country in a war of choice based on false intelligence and badly tarnishing the good name of the United States of America.
Nothing in Karl Rove's book refutes those facts.
His book, however, is illuminating in further exposing his political methods, especially his reliance on personal insults, not simply towards Valerie and myself, but also towards all those who opposed his unprincipled behavior.
If any additional proof to the irrefutable historical record were needed, Rove's book demonstrates once again the actions of a vindictive, angry and petty man.
Karl Rove betrayed his nation; now he has betrayed history.
If you have an inquiry, please do not reply to this email. My contact information is provided below.
JustynWinner
Executive Vice President & General Counsel
Winner & Associates, A Publicis Consultants Company
2029 Century Park East, Suite 1750
Los Angeles, CA 90067
Tel: 310-432-7770 Fax: 310-432-7771
jwinner@winnr.com
www.winnerandassociates.com
Sunday, March 7, 2010
American global might: Do foreign children pay for the sins of their parents?
Fallujah doctors report rise in birth defects
The BBC has not formally indicted the U.S. Military nor does the cautious Iraqi leadership.
Given the abusive history of America’s wedded relationship with Iraq, would you blame the Iraqis for not wanting to make the mighty mad?
The use of depleted uranium is an issue now 7 years in existence.
How mighty does America’s military need to be to defend our borders?
Is there a justifiable need for the kind of dangerous weaponry wielded against a civilian population in the name of war?
What is America’s attitude regarding collateral damage abroad when human beings who have never declared war nor aided and abetted terrorism against the Imperium are still forced to pay the ultimate price?
Why do we wage wars of revenge baring our self-inflated muscles over collateral damage suffered here but hyper-critically refuse to acknowledge our own crimes against humanity now in much greater numbers than the attacks of 2001?
Some defenders of the faith will tell you that depleted uranium (DU for short) - a prized toy in the arsenal of invasion and occupation – is not and has not been what it’s effects suggest.
So humor me. I’ll agree if …
Well, let me start by acknowledging the possibility that DU is no more dangerous do an enemy’s villagers than a bow and arrow .
Let’s ask experts and defenders of the imperial foreign policy to respond honestly, openly and reasonably to honest, open and reasonable questions.
(1) Ethically, why would anyone say that any weapon - possessed of DU or not - is safe for civilian bystanders?
(2) Unless someone can justify/defend America's need to involve nuclear crap in our tactical (non-strategic) weaponry as vital to the defense of the nation, should we not be concerned about non-combatants anywhere when we ponder the use of DU?
(3) Is then it true that without DU our military is somehow emasculated and insufficiently potent to get the job done?
(4) Or do we need to go around shooting field mice with elephant guns because our generals and defense contractors need the economic stimulus offered by sales of weapons that include DU?
As a Veteran with a big mouth and an opinion I'm entitled to, I'll admit to the following biases and concerns:
- 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 five 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.
I don’t think this country will get past the psychology of war criminality in the Middle East until we do something about those who murdered innocents in our name more than 60 years ago and called it patriotism, creating in effect a rationale for justifiable homicide.
It’s the same psychology of guilt our parents bear when that Democrat Mister Truman decided that collateral damage (death by A-bomb) to two entire cities was an okay crime to commit in the name of America’s defense.
- 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 was 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.
Can its defenders and promoters 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 that do not include DU?
Defenders do acknowledge that original intent don't they? To clarify, blowing up people and things?
- If doctors in Fallujah where DU was used extensively are advising mothers not to have children, can defenders of the DU faith guarantee that my family and I and all who read here can absolutely sleep at night without concern about DU cause they’ve done our homework for us?
– Do 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?
- Will American military and civilian leadership formally declare 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?
If those who authorize this monstrous dis-use of science can't make that guarantee then perhaps they should go do more homework.
And perhaps we should re-read our school texts on civic responsibility and membership in a global humanity.
If we intentionally kill or maim all non-Americans who annoy us, what will that do the the customer base for a global McDonalds, Disneyworlds and the labor base for Walmart products?
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Silly Section Nomination here ... The Lord talks to Cliven Bundy? When the Cliven speaks the discussion is over ... far as he's concerne...
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Could some very clever people be using this movement to strengthen the Republican Party rather than transform the political syst...
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I prefer a strong foundation in ethics moreso than a society founded on morality. Morality is much more subject to subjective opinions. ...
