Bush re-tool time

Bush is talking about Iraq today:

Now there are over 120 Iraqi army and police combat battalions in the fight against the terrorists, typically comprised of between 350 and 800 Iraqi forces.

Of these, about 80 Iraqi battalions are fighting side by side with coalition forces, and about 40 others are taking the lead in the fight.

But didn't we hear only last month from General Casey testifying under oath before Congress that only one battalion of Iraqi soldiers was trained and ready to fight on its own. Did they train that many Iraqi army battalions in one month and if so, why couldn't they do better in all the previous months?

The White House is supposed to be giving us a re-tooled war strategy. I think they are only giving us a re-hashed marketing strategy. Why doesn't the mainstream press call the administration on this obvious stuff?

Here is the booklet passed out by the White House. I decided to focus on the economic track because it seems logical that if people have economic justice, they aren't so likely to make war or terrorism. There are assumptions and some vague references to rebuilding, but no specifics. The only articulation of a strategy at all in the economic track is this paragraph:

The rebuilding of Iraq’s infrastructure and the provision of essential services will increase the confidence of Iraqis in their government and help convince them that the government is offering them a brighter future. People will then be more likely to cooperate with the government, and provide intelligence against the enemy, creating a less hospitable environment for the terrorists and insurgents.

There is no mention of giving jobs to Iraqis or Iraqi companies over the corporate mercinaries hiring or forcing work from the lowest paid foreign workers. There is no mention about how we will improve the terrible rate of reconstruction or what resources will be put to the job.

They have a long list of progress points, but I find them suspect as the figures on oil production again do not jive with the congressional testimony heard last month. From my October 20, 2005 post:

Here is the report on the reconstruction effort. Basically, little of what was promised has been furnished and the quality of what has been furnished is not as promised. The administration bragged and Kirk repeated the notion that Iraqi oil production was going to pay for the reconstruction. This is what the report said about oil production:

However, oil production and export levels have actually dropped below pre-war levels. In March 2003, Iraq produced 2.6 million barrels of oil per day and exported 2.1 million barrels per day. By August 1, 2005, production levels remained below 2.4 million barrels per day and export levels remained below 1.7 million barrels per day. From January 1, 2005, through August 1, 2005, Iraq had to spend $3 billion to import fuels because it still cannot produce enough refined petroleum products, like gasoline, for domestic use.

UPDATE 11:15 CST: Feingold responds:

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI): “While today’s speech by the President was billed as yet another attempt to lay out a plan for finishing the military mission in Iraq, the only new thing the administration gave the American people was a glossy 35-page pamphlet filled with the same rhetoric we’ve all heard before. Today’s action by the White House isn’t a step forward, it’s a step back. In fact the booklet the administration released to accompany the President’s speech is described as a “…document [that] articulates the broad strategy the President set forth in 2003…” That alone makes it clear that the President seems more dug in than ever to the same old “stay the course” way of thinking. This is not a strategy, and it certainly is not a plan to complete the military mission in Iraq.

Think Progress responds:

The problem is, it’s not a new strategy for success in Iraq; it’s a public relations document. The strategy describes what has transpired in Iraq to date as a resounding success and stubbornly refuses to establish any standards for accountability. It dismisses serious problems such as the dramatic increase in bombings as "metrics that the terrorists and insurgents want the world to use." Americans understand it’s time for a new course in Iraq. Unfortunately, this document is little more than an extended justification for a President "determined to stay his course".

No time table, no time frame, no new ideas, stay the course and keep the money flowing to Halliburton, Blackwater, CACI etc. That has always been the plan and always will be their plan.

Girl Talk

No, not hair, not clothes, not babies nor boys...war.

Teresa Heinz Kerry and Hillary Clinton both made statements about Iraq in the past couple of days.

Teresa's statement was about the attack by Jean Schmidt on 37-year Marine Vietnam War Veteran, John Murtha. My opinion: Not to mention the tiresome smears of anyone who dares disagree with Bush, Schmidt was a dummy in the Linda Tripp sense. She let them use her and abandon her when their carefully framed comment for their carefully chosen audience proved to be a dog in the world of media sound bytes. So very carefully framed by the republican talk machine, but tell me are they so mired in groupthink that they don't even bother to do any research before making their arguments and stating them on the floor of congress, like maybe a simple google search on Murtha that would have shown he was just the wrong guy to attack that way? They proved themselves to be not only wrong is a very deep sense of American values, but incompetent in making their argument as well. Schmidt shouldn't have been so trusting of the folks who fed her the sound byte and as a congressman, should have done her own research and should have had better judgment. She needs to be shown the congressional door in 2006.

Anyway, Teresa called out all those behind the failed smear of Murtha:

That is Jack Murtha’s history, and the summer soldiers and the sunshine patriots who attack him cannot rewrite it.

That’s why they resort instead to the most reprehensible type of personal attacks.

We’ve seen this before. I know and love another Vietnam veteran who served our country with distinction and honor – who suffered the slings and arrows of distortions, half–truths and falsehoods.

Scoundrels who would stifle debate and smear dissenters weaken our democracy and diminish our nation’s ability to make decisions and change course when circumstances demand.

This war is hard – hard to win, hard to support, and for most, hard to figure out. We all want the best for our troops, our country, the Iraqi people and what is best for the Middle East. Much is at stake.

But if we want the best outcome, the best minds we have must be free to express their strongest beliefs and best advice.

Murtha has earned our respect. His right to speak out is an intrinsic component of our democracy. It should be honored – we should hold that right sacred – even if his words deviate from the party line, the president’s talking points, or public opinion.

I think Murtha did our country an enormous public service for speaking out as he did, and I support for him for exercising his right.

A courageous person is always to be admired.

Teresa wants your comments, so email her: teresaheinzkerry2006@yahoo.com. Hey, Teresa, are you running for something in 2006 or starting a think tank or foundation or something like that to support those who are running? No, dear readers, I am not in the know about something, but if she is running for or planning something for 2006 as the email address indicates (to me anyway)...You go girl!!!

Hillary definitely is running for something in 2006, and her statement was about her vote on the war resolution in 2002 and her thoughts about how the war and the dialog about the war has been conducted by the Bush administration and her hopes that the December 15th elections in Iraq signal the start of true democracy. She also calls on the president for a real war plan. Hillary, I am glad you are speaking out about the sale of the war, the war plan and speaking out about speaking out, but don't hold your breath. Democracy in Iraq and a real war plan, winnable and endable, was never the Bush administration plan from the getgo and is unlikely to make in into their plan unless they are somehow forced by reality to do so.

Since the Hillary statement was in an email and not on a website that I know of, I print it below so you can read it for yourself.

The war in Iraq is on the minds of many of you who have written or who have called my office asking questions and expressing frustration. When the President addresses the nation tomorrow on the war, the American people want and deserve to know how we got there, why we are still there, how we have executed the war and what we should do now. In short, the President must explain his plan for the war in Iraq.

There are no quick and easy solutions to the long and drawn out conflict this Administration triggered that consumes a billion dollars a week, involves 150,000 American troops, and has cost thousands of American lives.

I do not believe that we should allow this to be an open-ended commitment without limits or end. Nor do I believe that we can or should pull out of Iraq immediately. I believe we are at a critical point with the December 15th elections that should, if successful, allow us to start bringing home our troops in the coming year, while leaving behind a smaller contingent in safer areas with greater intelligence and quick strike capabilities. This will advance our interests, help fight terrorism and protect the interests of the Iraqi people.

In October 2002, I voted for the resolution to authorize the Administration to use force in Iraq. I voted for it on the basis of the evidence presented by the Administration, assurances they gave that they would first seek to resolve the issue of weapons of mass destruction peacefully through United Nations sponsored inspections, and the argument that the resolution was needed because Saddam Hussein never did anything to comply with his obligations that he was not forced to do.

Their assurances turned out to be empty ones, as the Administration refused repeated requests from the U.N. inspectors to finish their work. And the "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction and links to al Qaeda turned out to be false.

Based on the information that we have today, Congress never would have been asked to give the President authority to use force against Iraq. And if Congress had been asked, based on what we know now, we never would have agreed, given the lack of a long-term plan, paltry international support, the proven absence of weapons of mass destruction, and the reallocation of troops and resources that might have been used in Afghanistan to eliminate Bin Laden and al Qaeda, and fully uproot the Taliban.

Before I voted in 2002, the Administration publicly and privately assured me that they intended to use their authority to build international support in order to get the U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq, as articulated by the President in his Cincinnati speech on October 7th, 2002. As I said in my October 2002 floor statement, I took "the President at his word that he will try hard to pass a U.N. resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible."

Instead, the Bush Administration short-circuited the U.N. inspectors - the last line of defense against the possibility that our intelligence was false. The Administration also abandoned securing a larger international coalition, alienating many of those who had joined us in Afghanistan.

From the start of the war, I have been clear that I believed that the Administration did not have an adequate plan for what lay ahead.

I take responsibility for my vote, and I, along with a majority of Americans, expect the President and his Administration to take responsibility for the false assurances, faulty evidence and mismanagement of the war.

Given years of assurances that the war was nearly over and that the insurgents were in their "last throes," this Administration was either not being honest with the American people or did not know what was going on in Iraq.

As a member of the Armed Services Committee, I heard General Eric Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff, tell us that it would take several hundred thousand troops to stabilize Iraq. He was subsequently mocked and marginalized by the Bush Administration.

In October 2003, I said "In the last year, however, I have been first perplexed, then surprised, then amazed, and even outraged and always frustrated by the implementation of the authority given the President by this Congress" and "Time and time again, the Administration has had the opportunity to level with the American people. Unfortunately, they haven't been willing to do that."

I have continually raised doubts about the President's claims, lack of planning and execution of the war, while standing firmly in support of our troops.

After my first trip to Iraq in November 2003, I returned troubled by the policies of the Administration and faulted the President for failing to level with the American public. At the Council on Foreign Relations, I chided the President for failing to bring in enough international partners to quell the insurgency.

I spoke out often at the Armed Services Committee to Administration officials pointing out that the estimates they provided about the war, its length and cost lacked even basic credibility. And I challenged Secretary Rumsfeld more than once that he had no benchmarks to measure actual progress which would lead us to believe we had a strategy that was working.

Last month, I signed a letter with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and dozens of other Democratic Senators voicing strong concerns that, without a solid plan, Iraq could become what it was not before the war: a haven for radical Islamist terrorists determined to attack America, our allies and our interests. The letter asked the Administration "to immediately provide a strategy for success in order to prevent this outcome."

Just a few weeks ago, I joined a bipartisan majority in the United States Senate in voting for an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill calling upon the President and his Administration to provide answers and a plan for the war.

It is time for the President to stop serving up platitudes and present us with a plan for finishing this war with success and honor – not a rigid timetable that terrorists can exploit, but a public plan for winning and concluding the war. And it is past time for the President, Vice President, or anyone else associated with them to stop impugning the patriotism of their critics.

Criticism of this Administration's policies should not in any way be confused with softness against terrorists, inadequate support for democracy or lack of patriotism. I am grateful to the men and women of our armed forces and have been honored to meet them twice in Iraq. They honor our country every day with their courage, selfless dedication, and success in battle. I am also grateful to the thousands of unknown men and women in our security forces and around the world who have been fighting the larger war against terrorism, finding terrorists’ cells, arresting them and working to prevent future attacks. And I applaud the brave people who have been risking their lives every day to bring democracy and peace to Afghanistan and Iraq.

I recently returned from visiting Israel and Jordan, seeing first hand the tragedy of spreading terrorism. As a New York Senator, I believe New York has a special bond with the victims of such terrorism, and we understand both the need to fight terrorism and the need for a clear plan in Iraq so that we can focus our resources in the right ways to prevent it from again reaching our shores.

America has a big job to do now. We must set reasonable goals to finish what we started and successfully turn over Iraqi security to Iraqis. We must deny terrorists the prize they are now seeking in Iraq. We must repair the damage done to our reputation. We must reform our intelligence system so we never go to war on false premises again. We must repair the breach with the Muslim world. And we must continue to fight terrorism wherever it exists.

Like all Americans, I hope the Iraqi elections are a true expression of democracy, one that is committed to majority rule, minority rights, women's rights, and the basic rule of law. I hope these elections will finally put the Iraqi people on the road to real security and independence.

If these elections succeed, we should be able to start drawing down our troops, but we should also plan to continue to help secure the country and the region with a smaller footprint on an as-needed basis. I call on the President both for such a plan and for a full and honest accounting of the failures of intelligence – something we owe not only to those killed and wounded and their families, but to all Americans.

We have to continue the fight against terrorism and make sure we apply America's best values and effective strategies in making our world and country a better and safer place. We have to do what is right and smart in the war against terrorists and pursuit of democracy and security. That means repudiating torture which undermines America's values. That means reforming intelligence and its use by decision makers. That means rejecting the Administration's doctrine of preemptive war and their preference to going it alone rather than building real international support.

I know when America leads with its values and fearlessly faces the facts, we make the best decisions. That is what is missing at the highest levels of our government, and what we desperately need now – answers to the questions about Iraq that only the President can provide. I hope he will level with the American people and provide us those answers in his Annapolis speech and give us the plan that has been sorely lacking.

Sincerely yours,



Hillary Rodham Clinton

Politics makes strange...

The interests of the Religious Right and Corporationists came together to elect (sort of, if you don't count the election fraud) George W. Bush and his republican congress. Sometimes, the relationship just doesn't work out:

Example 1: In Kansas, social conservatives and fiscal conservatives are having a battle of the conscience over a proposed tax on sexually oriented businesses. Lots of them signed a no new taxes pledge, but are getting pressure from religious groups to impose this tax. Gives a whole new meaning to H.W. Bush's "read my lips, no new taxes" quote.

Example 2: I just heard that some companies are now requiring their female employees to plan their preganacies. There is no maternity leave, only short term disability in which an employee must enroll during annual enrollment that occurs only once each year, usually in late fall to take effect January 1 for the entire year. So much for God controlling the womb. Now, your employer does.

The Religious Right is finding that the real fundamentalist religion of the Bush administration is money.

There has never been an administration in Washington before in history that has so dramatically favored the extremely rich people in this country at the expense of poor and working class families. Every major tax change has been to take taxes away from the rich and put it on the poor and working class people. And this, I think, was vividly demonstrated when you saw the aftermath of Katrina. It just shows what's always been there. And that is that poor people are the ones who suffer most.~~Jimmy Carter on CBS' Early Show

Then there are the religions that don't have that much in common after all, go figure. It is important to read someone's book cover to cover before you buy into the premise.

Maybe its just fundamentalism to any idea that's the problem and we need more understanding and more balance. Separation of church and state was a good idea after all, wasn't it?

Failing New Orleans again

Last week, the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran an editorial practically begging the nation not to forget New Orleans calling on readers to write Congress, particularly members of the Environment and Public Works and Appropriations committees in the Senate, and Transportation and Appropriations in the House, asking them to fund projects to make the New Orleans area safe from future storms.

Yesterday, Times-Picayune editor Jim Amoss followed up with an op-ed in the Washington Post:

What New Orleans needs is no extravagance. Our city must help itself in rebuilding its neighborhoods and reforming its institutions. What is lacking is political will in Washington and the determination to bring our engineering know-how to bear upon the problem. Without a substantial levee system, homeowners won't muster the confidence to rebuild, and businesses will not see fit to invest.

Monday, CSIS brought together a panel for a discussion of emergency response including former FEMA Director James Lee Witt, former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating, and former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army General Dennis J. Reimer (Ret.). All of the panelists agreed that non-partisan relationships between professionals is what is needed in FEMA for disaster response.

Keating was the Governor of Oklahoma when the Oklahoma City Federal building was bombed. The first thing out of his mouth was that any disaster agency needs professionals in charge, not buddies. He added that as a republican, he also hired Democrats for his response agency and included the private sector. While they never foresaw the disaster they were going to have to handle, it was important when the disaster struck that people who needed to work together knew each other and communicated with each other and helped each other.

James Lee Witt, FEMA Director under Clinton, discussed the professional staff that he built during downsizing the political staff in favor of professional staff. Witt also discussed funding and needed rethinking of how the Stafford Act funds these large disaster recoveries that no state or local government could ever fund.

The Bush administration failed New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of Katrina and Rita by filling FEMA leadership positions with buddies and ignoring it's funding. It also failed New Orleans before the hurricanes by rejecting funding for needed levee projects.

Now, New Orleans needs non-partisan relationships of professionals working to rebuild the city and reconstruct a better levee system to provide the security needed to make rebuilding worth the money and effort. Problem is that republican-controlled Washington is still busy playing partisan politics, sinking our tax dollars into a free-for-all corporate trough of a war and lavishing tax cuts on the wealthy and subsidies on profit-rich oil companies. Maybe they don't want to see a city of Democratic voters rebuilt or maybe they simply have no idea how to do it and are too bogged down in their pet projects to think or care about it.

As New Orleans flounders, the big news out of the White House today is that there is no news. Scotty is missing. Ran out of double talk, I guess. The big news out of Congress today was the blubbering resignation of republican house member and admitted criminal, Duke Cummingham.

Unless something changes soon, it seems that the Bush administration and this republican congress are willing to give up an entire American city to partisan politics and nonsense. Bush will be the only American president to have lost, no...thrown away an entire American city.

You can help Katrina victims right here from the IL Tenth. One of our fine residents Debi Gordon is going to be going down to Mississippi and wants to bring a carload of shoes, jackets, sweaters and sweatshirts for all ages. I don't want to give out this woman's phone number on the blog, so if you have something to donate, please call Moraine Township 847.432.3240 or W. Deerfield Township 847.945.0614 or email me at ebgill@aol.com.

I'd like to thank my....

For once in my life, I won something. A good reference to aliens never hurts.

Check it out at DCP (scroll down to THE CONTEST: PUTTING WORDS IN CHENEY'S MOUTH).

Thanks DCP!!!!

Would you light my candle?

525,600 minutes (yup, I checked the math) how do you measure a year?
In daylights
In sunsets
In midnights
In cups of coffee
In inches
In miles
In laughter
In strife...
How about love?

This afternoon, I saw the movie Rent, the movie version of Jonathan Larson's 1996 Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning rock musical about eight New York friends from 1989 to 1990, living in the Reagan/H.W.Bush world of joblessness, homelessness, HIV, alternative lifestyles and struggle for success on your own terms. The story is based on the 1896 Puccini opera La Boheme which was about a Parisian starving artist community. While the styles, choices and diseases are different in each story, no one can afford to buy food or pay the rent in either.

You'll have to read about La Boheme somewhere else. I'm not an opera fan.

The characters of Rent are:

• Mimi, the beautiful exotic dancer with a heroin problem played by Rosario Dawson;
• Roger, the sad, ex-junkie, HIV positive musician with writer's block played by Adam Pascal;
• Mark, the documentary producer who is afraid of both failure and success, but cannot go home played by Anthony Rapp;
• Benjamin Coffin III, the sell out landlord/businessman played by hottie Taye Diggs;
• Angel, the too good looking to be a man and too sweet to be a New Yorker, cross dressing (and boy does he look good) street musician played by Wilson Jermaine Heredia;
• Tom Collins, the unemployed college professor and lover to Angel played by former Ally McBeal boyfriend Jesse L. Martin;
• Maureen, the drama queen performance artist lover of Mark and Joanne, played by Idina Menzel of Broadway's Elphaba/Wicked fame; and
• Joanne, Maureen's lesbian lover, a lawyer who is not all that bohemian, but hasn't found another world in which to fit.

The movie begins on a stage with the players singing Seasons of Love in which they ask how to measure the year in a life. They talk about how someone lives and how someone dies and settle on the measurement of love. Then, the action moves to a very dark and dank neighborhood full of graffiti and garbage with fire escapes and plenty of fire as neighbors burn their eviction notices.

Roger and Mark are roommates who cannot pay the rent to former roommate and new property owner Benny, but Benny had promised them free rent in his more idealistic days. They call Benny a sellout, but he is happy to be the only one really living his dream. He's building a cyber studio so he can produce his art and get paid. Maureen, is losing her performance space because of Benny's real estate project and stages a protest performance. Benny promises Roger and Mark the free rent if they talk her out of it.

Meantime, lovely Mimi stops off at the boys apartment one night seeking Roger and asks him to light her candle because her heat is out and she is cold and sick from not eating. Roger keeps lighting the candle and Mimi keeps secretly blowing it so she can stay. Roger tells Mimi that he knows that her real problem is heroin and tries to warn her off it from his past experience. Mimi and Roger sing and fall in love, but Roger is afraid to tell Mimi his HIV status.

It's Christmas and Tom visits Roger and Mark, gets mugged and meets Angel with whom he forms an immediate relationship. Angle has some money from his street performing and a strange job of eliminating a rich person's neighbor's barking dog. Angel promises to always take care of Tom in a song, I'll Cover You.

Live in my house, I'll be your shelter
Just pay me back
With one thousand kisses
Be my lover--I'll cover you.

Maureen's show goes on and it's pretty strange...police end up starting a riot and arrests are made. Benny is blamed and they all go out to eat...on Angel. They celebrate La Vie Boheme in the restaurant.

I won't tell you the rest, or it will be ruined for you.

I wasn't sure what to think about the movie when it was over, but after discussing it and thinking about it for a while, I think it represents a microcosm of the way the world should be. No, not AIDS or drugs, hunger or unemployment, but people who care about and take care of the poorest and weakest among us, people who will cover each other when they are down and accept cover when they need it. Barack Obama once said:

Alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga. A belief that we’re all connected as one people. If there is a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child.

We should start measuring our country not in phosphoros bombs, corporate mercenaries, dollars of profit, gas prices, SUVs, cell phones or video games, but in they way we love each other.

My favorite scenes were Light My Candle and Tango Maureen. Maureen's performance piece could be lost and not missed and the big celebration scene was not all that special. The set was too dreary and over the top with garbage and graffiti. I couldn't stop thinking that Mark and Roger should clean their kitchen now and again and I would have liked to have heard more singing from Idina Menzel but...

Rent gets 2.9 cat treats from me earning extra points for the characterizations and performances.

Why Obama is right on the mission, but republicans are wrong for the job

On November 22, 2005, the 42d anniversary of the murder of President John F. Kennedy, Illinois Senator Barack Obama spoke before the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and set forth his proposal for the continued mission in Iraq. Obama was against the Iraq war from its inception, but now calls for a plan that maintains a reduced military presence, steps up the economic presence and does not call for troops out now.

I was at work on November 22, and was supervising a large transaction wherein all the attorneys kept asking the date as they signed documents and then answering their own question by saying “oh, yeah” and writing in November 22, remembering the sad anniversary.

So, I was unable to attend the event at CCFR, and only heard the media sound bytes of Obama’s speech. I heard Obama quoted, “Notice that I say ‘reduce,’ and not ‘fully withdraw’,” and “we need not a time-table, in the sense of a precise date for U.S. troop pull-outs, but a time-frame for such a phased withdrawal.” At first, I was not sure how I felt about Obama’s comments having been an advocate of Senator Russ Feingold’s S. Res. 171 which, along with Senator Feingold’s comments about total withdrawal by 2006, seemed to require a specific time-frame for such, and had agreed with John Murtha’s call for withdrawal.

The demand for a quick total withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq comes from frustration over the dishonest way in which the Bush administration sold the war to Congress and the American people and disgust over the way the war is being maintained including torture, secret Eastern European gulags, slow rebuilding of Iraq’s infrastructure, war profiteering and ineptitude that gets more of our soldiers killed every day and brings little progress. When I visited Obama’s DC office on September 26 with United for Peace and Justice, Chicago Peace Action and NSPI, his aid, Mark Lippert, saw our frustration (see my September 27th post). He told us that Senator Obama was very concerned about our continued presence in Iraq including the unchecked spending with no oversight and its negative effect on our own military. He added that Obama was willing to become a leader in creating an exit strategy once it becomes clearer what is the "right thing to do;" his concern being the manner in which we leave and what we leave in its place with apprehension about increased anti-American sentiment in the region and creation of a failed state. I hoped at the time that Obama would conclude that our continued presence in Iraq was increasing anti-American sentiment and fueling the insurgency, so it was time to schedule an expeditious full withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

But, here on November 22, 2005, our beloved Illinois Senator, Barack Obama called for a continued U.S. presence in Iraq, so I downloaded his speech and began my analysis. Obama is calling for a reduction of the American presence, clarity regarding our rejection of the idea of permanent or long term military bases, a realistic vision for the structure of the government, improved implementation of infrastructure reconstruction, encouragement of international participation and an increased effort to confront terrorism in Afghanistan and the rest of the world all to “take steam out of the insurgency”. Obama thinks that there should still be an American presence in Iraq, but that the presence should be more constructive and our actions more strategic to realistic goals.

He’s right.

It has always been a realistic fear that a sudden withdraw of all American troops would be followed by a bloodbath. Many war critics have answered that the bloodbath would happen anyway. It doesn’t matter, though, if the bloodbath would happen anyway because if it follows an American withdraw, it would be blamed on the US. Also, a sudden withdraw without completion of the reconstruction of the physical infrastructure would reinforce anti-American sentiments as regular folks just trying to live their lives and run their businesses would suffer.

We made a mistake entering Iraq in 2003 and exacerbated the mistake through subsequent mishandling of military operations and rebuilding efforts. Forty-one years earlier, John F. Kennedy made the mistake of publicly challenging Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and then finding himself in the situation of having to back down or put his nuclear weapons where his mouth was just weeks later. That was the summer of 1962 when Kennedy issued a public warning to the Soviet Union about placing offensive weapons in Cuba and then found that he soon had to deal with that very situation when in October 1962 high-altitude photographs taken from U-2 planes flying over Cuba showed Soviet soldiers setting up nuclear-armed missiles.

Back then, Kennedy finessed the ending of the Cuban Missile Crisis by sticking to American principles, and using diplomacy and basic principles of negotiation over military force. Kennedy rejected George Ball’s proposal of a Pearl Harbor-type attack against the missile site in Cuba and Bob McNamara’s suggestion of signaling a Soviet submarine escorting equipment ships to the missile site in a way that could be interpreted as an attack. Instead, Kennedy favored a quarantine of the area to prevent delivery of additional supplies and negotiation. With this plan, Kennedy slowed down the situation, diffused tensions, reduced harsh rhetoric, showed that the United States would follow all international rules of diplomacy and protocol and looked at the larger picture including the situation in Berlin that seemed to be escalating. By showing that the US would act slowly and responsibly, play by the rules and give something up to gain the security it sought, even if only the small concession of the obsolete bases in Turkey, Kennedy shifted the onus of starting nuclear war onto Khrushchev while allowing Khrushchev to save face while backing down.

What Obama is suggesting now for Iraq is a way to finesse the situation in a similar manner to the way John F. Kennedy finessed the Cuban Missile Crisis. Obama’s plan of reducing the military footprint of the US, setting the time frame for withdraw and clarifying our position that there will be no permanent US bases in Iraq would diffuse tensions by taking away the strongest arguments of the insurgency placing the onus of increased attacks on the insurgents rather than American troops or civilian workers. His plan to improve the reconstruction of Iraq would show American good faith and reduce the suffering of the average Iraqi who would never favor an insurgency over a happy and secure life and livelihood. His plan to increase international participation would show that the US will play by international rules and diffuse international tensions caused by our present belligerent behavior in the overall war on terror. Through Obama’s plan, the US may actually achieve its stated goal of a more stable Middle East and Persian Gulf and allow it to save face and the Iraq government to save face as well and start real self governing.

There is one thing I would add to Obama’s plan: attention to social and economic justice for Iraqis. Currently, jobs that should be going to Iraqis are being taken by American corporate mercenaries hiring international cheap labor. That has to end and reconstruction jobs should be given to Iraqi workers over imported workers. Currently, women are also under increased risk when exercising their civil liberties. Security for women trying to live their normal lives has to be increased and their rights secured.

The problem with Obama’s plan is not in the plan itself, but the execution thereof under current circumstances. Our republican controlled government does not seem to be interested in diffusing tensions, reducing rhetoric and slowing down the situation to assess new options. The fear and disunity caused by harsh words and high tension are their campaign tools which have worked well for them in the past. The money coming into its corporate contributors from war profiteering and energy price gouging means more to them than a stable Middle East and Persian Gulf.

republicans like Mark Kirk use talking points like "stay the course" and increase hate rhetoric on ethnic Americans and visitors avoiding a real dialogue on the problems in Iraq and possible solutions. The Bush administration and Delay's cronies accuse anyone with another idea about how we should conduct the war of being unpatriotic or cowardly and used that silly Jean Schmidt to attack a 37-year Marine veteran, later abandoning her when it didn't play well.

So, to best implement Senator Obama’s plan for success in Iraq, it is imperative that Americans replace the republican government with one controlled by Democrats. We have to work very hard in 2006 to elect Democrats to the House and Senate so we can implement Obama’s very farsighted plan for our future in Iraq. As Kennedy’s fine handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis created a more stable future for Americans, Russians and the world, only careful and proper handling of Iraq will create a positive outcome in our current world and only Democrats seem to be interested in doing that.

Reference information on the Cuban Missile Crisis:

BBC History

Government Archives

JFK Library

JFK's October 22, 1962 speech

My favorite things

OK, I'm not Oprah and I'm not giving away diamond watches, but here are my favorite things in no particular order:

• Buzzflash and Rawstory
• Tenth Dems and DCP and Progressive Democracts of Illinois
• Air America Radio--Ring of Fire and Randi Rhodes in particular
• Thomas Legislative--great for research and you can even read the Congressional Record to see what our representatives are up to.
• The Democat
• Daily Curmudgeon and Deeply Blue
• Steve from Ohio, now known as Blue Meanie who posts on Illinois 4 Hillary and makes sure that even though I am really busy at work, I have all the latest government and political news.
• The Food Network
• AtCenterNetwork.com
• That I live in a state with 2 Democratic Senators and a Democratic Governor and an area with a Democratic State Senator and State Rep.
• That I live in a township with 4 Democratic Trustees.
• My Turbo Cooker (don't laugh, I love it!)
• BORDC and CCCLR--both organizations keeping us informed about our losses of civil rights and liberties.
• The Constitution and Bill of Rights
• Zane Smith and Dan Seals running for Congress in the Illinois Tenth
• That Patrick Fitzgerald in the US attorney in Chicago. I get subpoenas from him all the time in my office--we're a keeper of records. I used to think they were mundane, now they're cool.
• High speed internet access
• Blogger, Bloglet and Blogpoll
• A political cartoon I recently saw: One turkey brags that he was pardoned by Bush, the other turkey says that's nothing, I was given immunity by Patrick Fitzgerald.
• That the rest of the Chicago Metro area got to see what Mark Kirk is all about on CBS News.
• Ovaltine
• Ginny's mailing list--see it on Tenth Dems Yahoo Group
• Articles by William Rivers Pitt or Dave Swanson
• State Rep. Elaine Nekritz for attending the protest against Mark Kirk's support for racial profiling and State Sen. Susan Garrett for sending her greetings and thanks to the protesters demanding an apology.
• my mom who is making all of thanksgiving dinner so I can use all my energy to write this blog and my family which is so great because we have no republicans to argue at the dinner table.
• The smell of the Bloomer Chocolate Factory on a cold Chicago morning despite what the EPA has to say about it.
• Thanks to Soapblox/Chicago for putting my diary entry about Kirk and education on the front page Thanksgiving day!!
• more to come as I think of them......add yours to the comments if you'd like!!!

So he knew George W. Bush

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. John F. Kennedy

Something to really be thankful for

Back in the day, Ben Franklin suggested the turkey as the national symbol. He lost out to John Adams who wanted the eagle, but when you think about it, the turkey won out in the end as more Americans have contact with turkeys than eagles even if they (the turkeys) are usually dead and plucked with gizzards in a wax paper bag. There will be plenty of turkey in the USA on Thursday (except maybe in Indiana, New Orleans and Mississippi--let's not forget those folks--maybe Kirk will send turkey to Houston for them or maybe he'll use the map I made for him and get them to the correct place).

Well, Franklin has probably been rolling in his grave since November 2000, but maybe there is a glimmer of light and he can finally get some rest. Last week spurred on by an overwhelming grassroots effort to stop the legislation currently on the table, a bipartisan group of legislators including Illinois Senator Dick Durbin pledged to filibuster the Patriot Act Reauthorization bill demanding additional civil liberties safeguards and Congress started its Thanksgiving break without further action on the legislation. The group is seeking target notification rules, judicial review for medical, financial, and library records and another four year sunset period. I'd like to see the entire Patriot Act go out with the turkey carcass this Thanksgiving.

republican Senator Jeff Sessions (whose campaign Kirk has contributed to) is convinced that the Patriot Act has made us safer, but he probably means it has made it safer for the Bush administration to hurt Americans without receiving criticism. Of the stalemate and closeness to the sunset of the most intrusive rules, Sessions said that he "can't imagine that we've allowed this to happen" while the rest of America cannot believe the Patriot Act happened in the first place.

The Bill of Rights Defense Committee has some good information on the Patriot Act and pending reauthorization legislation.

Bill of Rights Day is on December 15. Let's hope we still have something to celebrate then.

Grassroots efforts to stop the reauthorization are working, so if you haven't already, call your Senators and Congressman and tell them that you do not want the sunset provisions of the Patriot Act reauthorized, or be bold like Franklin and a winner like the American turkey and tell them to pitch the entire thing and start over.

Anything to be thankful for here?

"A few minutes ago I received a call from Colonel Danny Bubp, Ohio Representative from the 88th district in the House of Representatives. He asked me to send Congress a message: Stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do."~~Congresswoman Jean Schmidt's comments directed improperly under House Rules to Congressman Jack Murtha on the House floor, oh and by the way, Murtha is the first Vietnam War vet to be elected to Congress after a 37-year career in the U.S. Marine Corps wherein he retired as a Colonel, winner of the American Spirit Honor Medal, awared the Bronze Star with Combat "V", two Purple Hearts and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry

Murtha called for a withdrawal of the troops from Iraq. Now, the Schmidt and Bush administration are trying to pretend she never said it and she has asked to have the Congressional Record wiped (sound familiar, Mark?) and the GOP, including the deferral King, Dick Cheney, is smearing him, calling him secretive and a pork barrel politician and looking into his personal life for anything they can get. SOP, but Cheney Of Halliburton and the secret undisclosed locations and secret Eastern European prisons ought be careful who he calls a secretive pork barrel politician and should be more concerned about what prosecutor Pat Fitzgerald of Illinois will be discovering about him with a second grand jury than Murtha's past.

They are probably looking into Murtha's wife too. I hope Joyce works at Dunkin' Donuts or something like that.

What they really should be doing is looking at their own war preparations and war plan and trying to figure out what they did so wrong that a respected military man and usual hawk like Murtha has come out against this war.

Unfortunately, introspection is not part of the Bush administration. Dirty politics is what they are all about.

Here's what John Kerry had to say about Murtha and the GOP attacks.

Is there anything to be thankful for here? It's a stretch, but at least the GOP has become so predictable and obvious that the American people are starting to see them for what they are. They have their talking points all over the web about how Schmidt never really called Murtha a coward, they can wipe the Congressional Record (like Mark did), and try to smear Murtha on the usual political and personal topics, but everyone sees it for what it is.

Jewish group disagrees with Kirk on staying the course

Some readers may remember that I participated in the United for Peace and Justice Lobbying Day against the war in DC. I was part of a group from the Tenth that visited Mark Kirk's office where his aid Patrick Magnuson told us that Kirk's position was "stay the course." Many have said that Kirk takes this position in support of his Jewish constituents. If that is his plan, it is incorrect and unwise. Much of the Jewish community in the Tenth is against the war and many Tenth District Jews are in the NSPI organization and Northbrook Peace Committee. Now, The Union for Reform Judaism representing about 1/5th of the American Jewish community has issued a resolution demanding a "clear exit strategy" from Iraq, condemning detainee abuse, and seeking a bi-partisan commission to study the lessons learned from the war. The LA Times reports that 2/3rds of American Jews oppose the war.

I think that the Tenth District Jewish community has been concerned over Israel, but that concern does not lead to a favorable attitude about the Iraq war. Jews, as everyone else, are disgusted by the lies that led up the the war, the lack of a viable war plan and reports of torture and secret prisons. Many Jews suffered in those Eastern European prisons the first time around and do not want to see them operating against anyone ever again.

Mark, "stay the course" was never a viable plan for the country. It was only the plan for the connected corporations that have been growing rich through war profiteering. Now, the Pentagon's response to all of the calls to change the course and bring the troops home seems to be an expansion of the war. There will be more civilians sent over, more money spent on more corporate mercenaries, but that expenditure has to be approved in the House. The Jewish community along with other religious and secular communities in the district are sure to be watching for that vote.

When Mark met Sally

Got my hair cut today and let one of the trainees blow dry it out. The trainee who gave me the long flippy waives today was Sally from Skokie. She's already graduated from beauty school and is currently at Oakton Community College trying to get a business degree. She'd really like to go to a regular 4 year college, but cannot really afford it, even with the hair washing and drying paycheck plus tips.

I had no good news for Sally because yesterday, the congressman from the District to Sally's north, yup, our current congressman, Mark Kirk voted to cut student loan subsidies and freeze Pell Grants for yet another year, 4th in a row per TomPaine.com. Pell Grants are very important to low income students as they are not loans that have to be paid back. They are given based on need and help the poorest of students.

According to the Des Moines Register, House Democrats who voted against the bill were concerned with student loan provisions that "would mandate a 1 percent insurance fee on guaranteed loans, charge a new 1 percent origination fee on consolidated loans and double the direct loan origination fee." Consumeraffairs.com reports that the change would lead to "loan cost increases of as much as $5,800."

The ratio of grants to loans has gone down to 20/80 from 80/20 back during my college years. This increase in loans over grants leaves students with huge debt when they graduate.

Currently we are experiencing a worst-case scenario for students,” said Jasmine Harris, United States Student Association legislative director. “First, you have an increasingly small portion of the cost of college being covered by grants, and second, students are forced to take (out) increasing amounts of loans. Their disproportionately high debt upon graduation prohibits them from participating in the economy and all it has to offer. It’s a lose-lose situation.”

Sally's representative Jan Schakowsky voted no to the budget bill rejecting cuts to student aid, but Sally has to suffer because of ours...his was the deciding vote against higher education funding including the Pell Grants he supposedly wanted to see increased under his Main Street agenda. So, if Sally really wants to get her bacherlor's degree from a 4 year college or university, she'll have to wrack up a lot of debt that she will have to pay off and tips from giving women flippy waives probably won't do it.

Roadtrip

According to the Waukegan News-Sun, Mark Kirk is going to Afghanistan and Pakistan "to evaluate foreign assistance programs in the region." After the devistating earthquake in Pakistan, several members of congress are going to determine how the US can help and help is desperately needed in Pakistan. I have a friend from Pakistan who lost 3 family members and he told of terrible horror and death.

Problem is we are sending a bunch of congressmen like Kirk who just voted to deprive Americans of needed relief when the Pakistanis need real help, not marketing slogans.

Kirk is also going to Afghanistan to visit the troops. The troops he wants to underfund and underfund again when they come back as veterans. Remember, Kirk voted against an amendment to National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006 that would have expanded access to the military's TRICARE health insurance program to all reservist and National Guard members for a low fee (Roll Call No. 221). Then, Mr. Kirk voted Against an amendment to the Military Quality of Life and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act, 2006 which would have added veterans health care funding for combat-related trauma care to support wounded troops returning to their homes, including medical and prosthetic research. (Roll Call No. 224).

Why is Mark going to Pakistan and Afghanistan when he will provide little help or comfort? He probably wants an excuse for staying out of his district after an inexcusable yes vote on H.R. 4241.

More on H.R. 4241 tonight if technology holds out....

Breaking....Kirk takes credit for no vote then votes yes

The Tribune ran with a story that the House voted down the GOP spending bill giving Kirk credit as having been one of the republicans voting it down. However, what they don't say is that another bill squeaked by with Kirk's yes vote. That bill is H.R. 4241 which won 217 - 215. A no vote from Kirk in accordance with the wishes of his district would have created a tie.

The Washington Post said of the H.R. 4241:

The House narrowly approved a broad five-year budget plan early this morning that squeezes programs for the poor, for college students and for farmers, handing Republican leaders a hard-fought victory after weeks of resistance in GOP ranks.

The plan, which would save the government just under $50 billion, passed 217 to 215, with 14 Republicans joining all House Democrats in opposition....

The House measure would cut about 220,000 people off food stamps, allow states to impose new costs on Medicaid beneficiaries, squeeze student lenders, cut aid to state child-support enforcement programs and trim farm supports....

Under the bill, health care programs would be cut by $976 million, including a $249 million reduction to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the smallest percentage increase for the National Institutes of Health in 35 years.....

Education funding would decline for the first time in a decade, with Pell grants frozen for the fourth year in a row. Infuriating many lawmakers from Northern states, funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which subsidizes heating bills, would remain stagnant.

Who lost? Students, poor, hungry, farmers, elderly, sick, people who have heating bills to pay this winter and everybody if Bush's warnings about bird flu are correct.

Mark Kirk, why did you change your vote?

Intelligent beings by design

Reader, Anne Wedner, drew my attention to this, a discussion of Tom Paine's essay The Age of Reason by David Morris of Alternet. It seems Paine's essay got him in trouble because his contemporaries interpreted his comments as atheistic, but what he was really saying was that he believed in God and intelligent design, but that God intentionally made people intelligent too so they could take care of themselves:

All the knowledge man has of science and of machinery, by the aid of which his existence is rendered comfortable upon earth, and without which he would be scarcely distinguishable in appearance and condition from a common animal, comes from the great machine and structure of the universe. The constant and unwearied observations of our ancestors upon the movements and revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in what are supposed to have been the early ages of the world, have brought this knowledge upon earth.....

Paine was not an atheist, but against the control of organized religion. While his words were strong, they boil down to a rebellion against control of man by the organized religions of his time. To Paine, it would be antithetical to intelligent design to distort the scientific method, as the Kansas school board has done would actually be contrary to God's intention for mankind and refusal of his everyday lessons displayed in the universe for us to study.

In The Universe in a Single Atom, the Dalai Lama discusses the creation of the universe as described by scientists. Evidence from light emitted by distant galaxies indicates that the earth is curved and expanding and that expansion, scientists believe, began with a huge explosion of matter and radiation which is called the Big Bang. After the Big Bang, temperatures immediately cooled and reactions occured that created all of the elements from which all matter is comprised. All matter in the universe, including us, is made from the same stuff that created the universe.

Buddhists do not concentrate on the creation of the universe. The Buddah did not delve into the origin of the universe in his teachings. He responsed to the question by asking if a man wounded by an arror should have the arrow removed or question the details of the arrow and the man who shot it at him. It was more important to work on ending suffering in the world. Later Buddhist scholars talk about the creation of the world in terms of multiple world systems constantly being created and dying off, cause and effect, karma and the interdependence and connectedness of everything in the universe. That would be in basic agreement with the notion that we are made of the same material that created the universe .

Tom Paine could not have know about the Big Bang Theory or much about Buddhism, but he had a similar idea. We are a part of the creation, so why would be not have the intelligence to think and learn, using science to explain our world.

Whether one believes in intelligent design, the Big Bang and evolution or karma, we all basically agree that we are part of the entity that created us. So we should be able to learn through observation of the world, the lessons on display all the time found and measured by science. So, why are we arguing over grade school science classes and stem cell research? Not because of religion, but as Paine experienced in his time, the misuse of religion by some to gain political control by controlling science and our ability to learn more about our world.

If we allow one group to appropriate our religions, we will be allowing them to deny us our universal right created by the creator to study and learn about our world.

If at first...

If at first you don't succeed, try try try again.

So it appears that National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley told Bob Woodward that Valerie Plame was a CIA analyst. This is supposed to clear Libby making him the 2d and not the 1st to out Plame. I don' think so. First, Woodward was only told she was an analyst, not covert. Second, it only shows that the white house wanted to out Plame but wasn't feeling all that bold at first. Maybe Hadley was smart and did not want to go to prison for treason. So, they started out small...outing her as an analyst to Woodward. He said nothing and reported nothing. Maybe the story wasn't interesting enough at that point or maybe Woodward was too smart to be used in that way.

Shucks

So, they got a little bolder and upped the ante by revealing that Plame was covert and tried again through Libby to Miller and it all somehow gets reported by Novak, loyal to his white house bosses, but not smart.

Success!

This doesn't help Libby one bit and it doesn't say anything about Fitzgerald's investigation. He said the perjury made it difficult to investigate the case. More lies and lies by omission would certainly make investigation even harder.

The white house can only grab bragging rights to being persistent in their smear of Joe Wilson and hiding their lies about the Iraq war.

Religion in the orange groves and an epiphany

republicans just handed me a story for science and religion week on the blog. It's out of Florida where taxpayers have discovered that republican congresswoman Katherine Harris, when secretary of state, in addition to fixing elections for her party, spent state tax dollars on blessed water for orange trees.

huh?

Yup, the orange trees were watered with blessed water that was claimed to have healing powers against citrus canker. It didn't do much more for the citrus than the news did for her tanking 2006 Senate campaign.

Closer to home, Mark Kirk again avoided constituents and explaining his intended vote on the budget. Watch it on atcenternetwork.com. As the District Director cowered and attempted to avoid questions, one constituent said it all: "I vote, been here a resident for 35 years and why can't my congressman explain to me his position. What is his position today."

I think Americans get it now. They get that mixing religion with government is bad for everyone and every religion because republicans are not true believers of anything but their own power and are using people who really have truly held religious beliefs to keep that power. They get that Kirk is avoiding questions about his votes because he won't know his vote until his boss, Tom Delay, tells him what it is. They get that no matter what legal maneuvers Tom Delay makes to hinder the prosecution of his case, he illegally funded immoral politicking in Texas which is really a blue state forced red. They get that no matter what happens in the Scooter Libby trial and further investigation of Libby, Rove, Cheney and now Woodward and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Bush lied about the war and then conducted it badly. They get that Bush and crew don't want to renounce the use of torture or set a timetable for Iraq taking control of its destiny and withdrawal of US troops because victory was never the plan, unending war was.

That is how bad it is. Americans who would for the mostpart rather have root canal daily than pay attention to politics and government, are finally paying attention and once observed, the Bush administration works about as well as blessed water does on citrus canker.

Kirk wrong on all levels of existence

Remember the line from the old Christmas movie, It's a Wonderful Life? You know the famous one that Clarence the Angel says near the end of the movie; the one everyone quotes at one time or another:

Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?

Well, as it turns out in the study of quantum mechanics (the science of the world at the atomic and subatomic levels), Clarence was correct. Albert Einstein once said:

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 'universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affectation for a few people near us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

In the science of quantum mechanics, we learn that objects do not really behave in a predictable manner as was thought in the days of classical physics. Light can be seen as a series of particles or a waive and under the principle of uncertainty, we can never know what an electron is doing and know its position at the same time. (Which, for all you Star Trek fans out there, is why we cannot actually "Beam [Anyone] Aboard, Scotty!") Matter is just not as solid and definable as we perceive it to be.

The Dalai Lama points out in his latest book, The Universe in a Single Atom, that this is also a teaching of Buddhist philosophy called the Emptiness Theory (emptiness is about this and a lot more things too!).

Basically, the idea in both quantum mechanics and Buddhism is that we look at reality as a series of discrete objects and events. However, that is not true. Our perception of the world fools us. Everything in the world is connected at the smallest levels of existence and our misconception that events, objects, plants, animals and our very beings are separate and discrete from each other and only interact in ascertainable ways, leads to a series of afflictions including over-attachment to things and people we perceive as attractive and aversion to things and people we perceive as unattractive. It also leads to devisiveness, prejudice and discrimination as our incorrect perceptions cause us to think that ideologies exist independent of each other.

So, when Mark Kirk said it is ok to discriminate against young Arab men, he was wrong... even at the subatomic level.

Karl Popper, Falsifiability and Intelligent Design

The Dalai Lama considers himself fortunate to have met and befriended scientist Karl Popper. Popper was a science professor at the London School of Economics. He was one of the fathers of modern scientific methodology, but at the time the Dalai Lama met him, he was embroiled in social and political writing against totalitarian government.

As a scientist, Popper created the concept of falsifiability. Under the concept of falsifiability, a theory cannot be considered a scientific theory if it does not contain within it the conditions under which it can be proven false. An example of a theory that is falsifiable is a theory that all squirrels are gray. Observing a few gray squirrels proves nothing, but if one could observe a squirrel that is not gray, he would be able to prove the theory false, so it is falsifiable (no matter that the theory is really false because there are black and red squirrels too and they can be observed in western Illinois).

The difference between scientific theory and non-scientific theory is important to science because laws of science are created by inductive reasoning using rules of logic and deductive reasoning using rules of mathematics. Using inductive reasoning, moving from a series of true instances to a generalized rule, unless the theory can be falsified, the logic would be faulty. If you could never observe a non-gray squirrel in the world, you could never reach the conclusion that all squirrels are gray by observing all of them. So, the theory that God created the universe in 7 days is not a scientific theory because it is not possible to make an observation in the world to prove that it is false. That does not mean that it is true and does not mean it is false. It is just not falsifiable.

Intelligent design is not a science because its theories are not falsifiable. Simply stating that DNA could not have assembled by chance fails to take into account laws of physics and chemistry that would have existed in addition to chance and thus does not provide a method of proving the theory false. The higher being claimed to have created life in this world cannot be proven or disproven by observation in this world. So, when school boards attempt to put their own fundamentalist religious beliefs into science classes, they not only waste valuable learning time in true science, they also damage the teaching of the scientific method and the use of inductive reasoning which simply does not work on theories that are not falsifiable.

That does not mean that intelligent design should not be taught at all. As the Dalai Lama points out, science is limited to the physical world, but the physical world is not the only important aspect of our world. We also require thought, feeling, ethics, spirituality and aspiration. These are concepts of social studies and humanities and are important, quoting the Dalai Lama "to the richness of our existence." However, they should never be confused with science and should not be taught as such.

Science and religion week

Unless something particularly newsworthy on another subject happens this week, I am going to devote the week to the relationship between science and religion. The reason is that I am reading The Universe in a Single Atom by Tenzin Gyatso, The Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama read the forward to his book at the 35th annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience last week. If I am not mistaken, Mark Kirk also attended that meeting, but he was likely too busy discussing discrimination of Arab men to understand the depths of the Dalai Lama's statement.

The Dalai Lama, curious as any intellectual for the sake of learning, is also interested in science as a means for alleviating human suffering which is the basic goal of Buddhism. In the book, he talks about his growing interest in science starting with an interest in how basic technology worked as he confronted it leaving a very untechnological Tibet in the 1950s for India. First, he learned about basic mechanical science in fixing watches and cars, and then he learned about communications in newsreels and television.

Later, the Dalai Lama learned about the scientific method and empirical study. He related several meeting he had with top scientists of the 40s and 50s who helped him understand complex theories of physics and mathematics and the methods of experiment and thought that led to them.

Unlike other religious leaders in the world, the Dalai Lama does not see science as incompatible with religion, but complimentary in man's attempt to find the truth of the workings of the world. He even said that if science proved a point of Buddhist thought incorrect, he would side with science quoting the Buddah himself when he told his followers that they should not believe his teachings merely out of reverence for him, but to find their truth in their experience in the world. The Dalai Lama is concerned about the lack of compassion in science and religion. He fears that science without compassion will lead to technology ruling mankind rather than the other way around.

My understanding of what the Dalai Lama is saying is that science and religion need each other. Religion needs science in its exploration for truth over dogma and fundamentalism. Science needs religion to ensure the appropriate compassion leads the uses of scientific knowledge. It is very dangerous when religious leaders abandon science because the relationship between science and religion is important for both. Religious fundamentalists in the United States, by abandoning science, both sink into unreasonable dogma and allow science to develop without the necessary ethics and compassion that should lead its use in the correct direction.

Divide et impera

A military strategy made famous by Julius Caesar and Niccolò Machiavelli, and a system mathematicians use to solve complex equations, Divide and Conquer has been the republican political strategy since Reagan. Religious extremists vs. everyone else, Christian vs. Moslem vs. Jew, Democrat vs. republican, rich vs. poor, white vs. non-white, us vs. them...and they are out to get you etc. etc. etc. Unfortunately, that strategy usually works pretty well and when you add some fear of terrorism, fear of religious difference, fear of parakeets into the mix.....well, you can guess.

Mark Kirk tried it last week, probably after he saw the Tenth Dems poll in which Zane Smith and just about any other Democratic candidate could beat him if people in the district knew the truth about his voting record. Mark said that he was ok with discrimination against young Middle Eastern men. Mark likely thought that the Jewish population in the Tenth District would respond favorably to his comments or at least quietly agree and kick up his poll numbers.

If Mark scheduled his own poll around the remarks, I imagine it shows he blew it. The Jewish community is not going for his divide and conquer strategy. The Jewish Council on Urban Affairs has even called on Kirk to apologize.

What Mark just doesn't get is that, while the Jewish community is distressed about attacks against Israel and Jews around the world in the past several years and the far right has often successfully played on that distress, the longterm heart of distress in the Jewish community is the use of discrimination by political leaders to gain power at the expense of the discriminated against minority du jour. The Jewish community in the US has a longterm tradition of fighting for economic justice, civil rights and liberties and the separation of church and state precisely because of its sensitivity to discrimination.

There is an entire social justice movement started by one Jewish community and expanded to people of all faiths called Tikkun. People in the Tikkun community are calling for "social justice, ecological sanity, and world peace, and the inner healing needed to foster loving relationships, a generous attitude toward the world and toward others unimpeded by the distortions of our egos". Followers of Tikkun also call for solidarity:

For us, this principle has spiritual roots in the Jewish commandment to remember that we were all slaves in Egypt; we believe that we are all harmed by oppression directed at any group or individual. This is a message which is common to most of the religious and spiritual traditions of the human race for the past several thousand years, and is part of the tradition also of many secular and even "orthodox atheist" groups that came into existence in the past few hundred years when the religious and spiritual communities that supposedly were committed to these values actually failed to take them seriously and became, instead, embedded in economic and political realities that were oppressive.

Sometimes events of the day cause some to temporarily succumb to the divide and conquer strategy, but ultimately discrimination is just not at the core of the Jewish community. They get that divide and conquer is a strategy used by politicians like Kirk to benefit themselves through the tragedies of others. They've seen it over and over throughout history.

So Mark, it is not ok to call for discrimination against any group of people and you are not going to kick up your poll numbers with the district's Jewish community by calling for discrimination against Middle Eastern men. Playing to temporary fears will not change the centuries old truth that discrimination against any of us is discrimination against all of us.

1089 Days Until Nov. 4, 2008

and the beat goes on:

Again with Harry and Louise in our electric bills
Last week, the Illinois Senate rejected the nomination of Marty Cohen, former director of the Citizen's Utility Board to head the Illinois Commerce Commission. Had Cohen's nomination been confirmed, it would have been the first time a consumer advocate ran the ICC. Illinois Senators claim to have been annoyed over how the Governor made the nomination, but it is a real shame for Illinois citizens that their interests will again have no voice on the ICC. I'd like to know why our leaders always go for members of the industry and commerce when choosing administrators and never look to consumers. Why would anyone think the pawns of industry are fairer to consumers than consumer advocates are to industry. Illinois Senators, I really don't care if the Gov hurt your feelings. We are in the midst of the highest energy prices this state has ever seen with record breaking profits for energy companies. ComEd has created CORE, a fake advocacy organization jam packed with corporate CEOs, to push its agenda. The commercials make it seem as if CORE was a consumer advocacy group that cared about Illinois consumers, but are nothing more than a waste of thousands of consumer dollars on a dishonest sales pitch. It's time for consumers to have a say on the ICC.

Let them eat television
Congress has been at it again working hard to cut student loans, Medicaid, food stamps etc., but they aren't forgetting the people and what the people really need, according to them, is digital television. Part of the deficit reduction bill that is predicted to survive is the allocation of $3 billion to buy digital converter boxes for old televisions. I have an old television and I still think this is stupid. Heck, there was nothing to watch last night anyway. I was too pooped from work to do anything but watch an enjoyable movie. I started out looking for same on my Comcast On Demand, but there was nothing that fit the bill. So, I turned on How to Lose a Man in 10 Days on USA. At least it was free. I found that movie would have been more aptly named How to Lose Audience Interest in 10 Minutes. I mostly turned it off because I was actually embarrassed for actress Kate Hudson as she went through the motions of that awful script. I ended up watching A&E's Biography of the Bee Gees flipping back now and then to watching a bank receptionist learn how to buy better clothes on TLCs What Not to Wear and the newly digitized Wizard of Oz. Dorothy really should have given back the shoes. (See my Sunday July 17, 2005 post).

So, we are going to keep students out of college and, children uninsured (except in Illinois, thanks to Gov. B!) and under fed, but they will be able to watch Kate Hudson embarrass herself and Dorothy steal a poor witch's shoes. I think the real motivation behind the television converter giveaway is that politicians and corporations posing as consumer advocacy groups want us to be able to watch their commercials.

UPDATE: Mark Kirk thinks the television subsidy is just great. Mark probably figures he's going to have to pull out all the stops on television ads to beat any one of the terrific Democratic Party challengers.

Happy Veterans Day

Happy Veterans Day. Here's a picture of my favorite vet, my dad, a veteran of the Korean War.

Hey Mark! Remember you accused your constituents of racism

One of my wonderful readers pointed out in the comments to my previous post that Mark "I'm OK with discrimination against young Arab males" Kirk once accused his constituents, and anyone else objecting to Bush's war, of being racist:

Mark Kirk managed to offend the Muslim and Arab communities by suggesting that young muslim/Arab men from certain countries deserve more scrunity than others. Aside from the idiocy of this comment -- how could he be an "intelligence" officer? -- the comment is even more astonishing in light of a meeting he had before the Iraq war began. In this meeting, constituents went to him to ask him to urge the President not to go to war. Kirk responded that he had important intelligence -- and had met with George Tenet -- and then, he accused the constituents of being racist -- he challenged those present by asserting that they were prejudiced in not believing that Arabs could handle democracy.

I found the quote. He repeated his talking point in his May 6, 2004 BBC radio interview which I linked up in the title link:

That is what we are moving towards here in the Middle East. Every single nay-sayer in the world will say, with a kind of closet racism, that Arabs are not capable of democracy, like they used to say Japanese could never be democrats or the Germans could never be democrats. And I think we have to rise to what Abraham Lincoln called ‘the higher angels of our nature’. That everyone deserves human rights… Who thought that this was going to be easy?~~Mark Kirk

Mark, stop quoting Abraham Lincoln. You're no Abraham Lincoln and your talking point writers aren't either.

Why don't you call on the higher angels of your nature and call for an end to this torture gulag, Plamegate traitorous, phosphorus bombing, costly, wasteful, corrupt and, yes, racist, war.

Watching Kirk Transition from Safe Seat to Tossup

Mark Kirk is getting more heat for his comments on "ok" discrimination, but it looks like his own dogged support of the Bush/Cheney/Rove/DeLay warmongering, deficit-creating, inhuman, inhumane, scandal-ridden agenda is what will bring him closer to congressional retirement:

Democratic victories in Tuesday's elections, plus President Bush's lower standing in opinion polls, have heightened the political stakes in enacting the deficit-reduction bill. Democrats are using it as a tool to target Republicans in tossup congressional districts, such as Rep. Mark Kirk's (R-Ill.).

Rawstory dishonest front page

UPDATE: Raw listened explained, and apologized. Perils of the web. I am satisfied.

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If you click on Rawstory this morning you find the headline:

57 dead in Jordan hotel bombings. Police believe three suicide bombers struck; Israelis evacuated before blasts.

However, if you click on the link to the word evacuated, the story from Haaretz reads:

There is no truth to reports that Israelis staying at the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman on Wednesday were evacuated by Jordanian security forces before the bombing that took place there.

The Israelis were escorted back to Israel by Jordanian security personnel only after the attacks had taken place, contrary to earlier reports.

Says a whole lot more about Rawstory than the Israelis in Jordan.

Email Rawstory and ask them why the dishonest front page headline!