On Being Ignorant AND Wrong

Published: Monday, December 27, 2010, 4:24 PM     Updated: Tuesday, December 28, 2010, 9:14 AM

By Letters to the editor 
 
In Gordon Fulks' "In My Opinion,"  Climate science: The real reason we need to worry' - he enlightens us about his worldview that global warming is made up. In doing so he impeaches the majority of the world's climate scientists as scammers. By what credentials does he do so -- because he thinks so?
Without knowing it, he also impeaches over 100 Nobel laureates who, as far back as 2001, jointly published a letter warning of the dangers of global warming.
Four years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that global warming is unequivocal and that human activity is the main driver. I could go on. Better just to say this:
Feeling strongly about something does not make you right. Opinion must be based on fact, not just conviction. Discovering fact takes hard work and preparation. Everyone has an opinion -- few earn it. Even fewer are right. Climate scientists have earned their opinions through years of education and hard work. Fulks has not.
And he is wrong.

John McCain - R.I.P.

I used to think John McCain was an old curmudgeon - he had his points - but was an old grouch about it all.
After the Palin fiasco it was clear that somewhere along the way he'd become more like a political whore.
But after his staunch opposition to the repeal of Don't Ask - Don't Tell it's clear he's really so very out of touch, bigoted, and just plain mean.
Sad to say he's no longer to be taken seriously.

Our Media is Controlled

On December 16, 2010 Daniel Ellsberg along with 131 others protested the war in Afghanistan in front of the White House and were arrested and carried away. Has anyone seen this on the corporate 'mainstream media'?

U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson, a George W. Bush appointee, was the judge that ruled the individual mandate provision in Obama health care reform that requires everyone have health care insurance “exceeds the constitutional boundaries of congressional power” and ordered that it be removed from the health care reform law. This was widely reported. What was not reported was that he is a major shareholder in a political messaging firm that gets paid to argue that health care reform's individual mandate is unconstitutional. Since 2003 Hudson has earned between $32,000 and $108,000 in dividends from his shares in the firm (federal rules only require judges to report ranges of income).

Our mainstream media is controlled. Whereas we rarely get outright lies we frequently do not get the entire truth. What is particularly concerning is that the decisions regarding what gets reported does not appear to be made at a local level. It's not the decisions of individual editorial boards. So who is controlling our information and is their overall agenda as conservative as it seems?

To answer that I think we need only follow the money. 20 years ago media outlets were owned by over 40 different parties. Today it's 6 corporations each controlled by only one or two individuals. For the most part these individuals are overwhelmingly ultra-conservative corporatists.

Of course it is impossible to control all the news. And it would be unwise to even try. But select events do in fact get blacked out - universally as regards the mainstream media - and THAT is pretty darn scary.

Excuse me there is an elephant pooping on your head.

If Obama is truly for change - real change - change that he says has to be brought TO Washington why has he not discussed or even acknowledged the rather large elephant in the room. This country has become a corporatocracy. Campaign finance and big money influence has rendered Washington so dysfunctional one can hear our forefathers all rolling in their graves. Our democratic system of government in broken -  all but dead in the water - and yet - silence. No one is talking about it in Washington - not even Obama.
Silence is complicity.

Our Government is the Best Money Can Buy

In this day and age members of congress must begin fund raising for their next election cycle on their first day of office. Big money then clearly has the advantage and greatest influence over them.

Members who play ball get re-elected – but perhaps even more enticing they get the multi-million dollar salaries at the largest lobbying firms or corporations upon leaving congress.

Imagine a political system where candidates for congress and the US Presidency are limited to 6 month campaigns and defined pots of money given to them solely by the taxpayers. Say 5 million for the presidential campaign, proportionally less for the senate and congress.

And imagine that only candidates could run political advertising in the media during an election cycle – no one else.

Imagine what Washington would look like if anyone who served in congress or as President could not accept lobbying positions for at least 10 years after serving or accept positions with any organization or corporation that their voting record had aided for at least 10 years.  

Might we then see people in the government interested in governing?

Might we then see people in the government held accountable only to their constituents?

Might we then not see what our forefathers intended - a democracy and not a thoroughly corrupt corporatocracy?

Professionalism at the Oregonian

I think people and editorial boards need to wait until they get ALL the facts as regards the Mohamed Osman Mohamud sting at Pioneer Courthouse Square before rushing to defend or criticize the FBI or the man. Too late for the editorial board of the Oregonian - too bad for them.

Tax Breaks for the Ultra-wealthy Letter

Published: Wednesday, December 08, 2010, 8:02 PM

Letters to the editor  


The Republican leadership keeps talking about how the Democrats want to take away tax breaks from Americans during a recession. When pressed that it is really only the top 2 percent wealthiest Americans that the Democrats want to take tax breaks from, the Republicans start referring to these ultra-rich as the "job makers." We can't take away tax breaks from the "job makers" during a recession.

But the vast majority of these top 2 percent are not job makers; they are corporate executives, corporate attorneys, investment bankers, Wall Street moguls, real estate tycoons. These are the exact same people whose greed in great part contributed to causing this recession. Of course, the Republican leadership knows this. They are trying to protect their major supporters -- the ultra-wealthy -- and just don't care. Their irresponsibility and greed during the Bush years is what set the stage for this recession, and this is just more of the same.

Fear and Civil Liberties

Airport 'security' and it's intrusiveness and abuse of civil liberties reminds me of a Henry David Thoreau quote -  "Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it"  
Lets put this terrorist threat in perspective.
Your one year odds of dying in a car accident are about one out of 6500. Your lifetime odds of dying in a car accident are about one in 83.
Your one year odds of being struck and killed by lightning  - one in 6.2 million with a lifetime odds of one in 80,000.
Your odds for being killed by terrorists in a any given year - one in 30 million; lifetime odds of one in 400,000.
That is roughly the same risk as getting cancer from the full body x-ray scanners at airport security checkpoints.

Living in fear is exactly what the terrorists want. Doing so unnecessarily while relinquishing your civil liberties is what some in government want.
Millions have died in wars precisely to protect the civil liberties we now so causally relinquish for a false sense of security against exaggerated threats.

It is time to buck up, toughen up and get on with the business of living without giving into irrational fear and without giving up dignity, privacy and our basic civil liberties.

Embarrassment is Usually the Fault of the Red Cheeked

A Letter to the  US Government

If you don't want to be embarrassed by wikileaks stop doing things to be embarrassed about. If you have to do ugly things on our behalf - explain to us what you are doing and why - stop lying and hiding behind 'national security" concerns because it’s easier. We can take it.

If you're going to torture, abuse power, and disregard international law, then you create in your actions the very need for a wikileaks.Wikileaks may prove to be very inconvenient for you, but in this age of the internet, it or something like it,  is going to exist from now on. I would say to you, get used to it.

Your outrage at wikileaks is, at least in part, a reflection of your own arrogance and testimony that you've gotten used to getting away with clumsiness, inefficiency, lying, cheating and cutting corners. If you've got secrets to keep - keep them. You can't expect the media to keep your secrets for you - stop blaming them. It is time to change the way you do business - less of the way you've been doing it and more of the way you've always told us you were.

Our Digital Selves

Published: Friday, November 26, 2010, 6:38 AM

Letters to the editor

Technological growth is exponential. After centuries of what seemed to be linear growth, we are now on the cusp of massive expansion. The growth curve is about to go nearly vertical. The assumption is that we will eventually need to replace our biological brains just to keep up. When that occurs, humans will have evolved into something else. I think this is inevitable.

What we will look like is difficult to say. For along with expansion of technology will come an exponential expansion of intelligence. Intelligence a million, a billion, a billion billion times our present level in the next 100 years is likely to evolve, but is simply something we can't comprehend, making speculation about it difficult. But between now and then will first come some very interesting adaptations. For not only will we begin to incorporate non-biologic enhancement, but our brains themselves will attempt to adapt.

Today's teenagers are the world's first digital generation. "The average teenager sends hundreds of text messages a day. Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task, but for jumping to the next thing. The worry is we are raising a generation of kids in front of screens whose brains are going to be wired differently," says Michael Rich, executive director of the Center on Media and Child Health in Boston.

I would take it one step further. Even adult brains are plastic and we now know we continue to make new neurons and to develop new neural nets our entire lives. All of us who are constantly surfing the net, texting and/or interacting with digital media are already rewiring our brains, making us a little more like our computers and digital devices and a little less "human." Not necessarily a bad thing.

Imagine where this could go.

Opinion is Earned

Feeling strongly about something does not make you right or even entitle you to be heard. Opinion simply must be based in fact not just conviction. Discovering fact takes hard work and preparation. Everyone has an opinion - few earn it. Even fewer are right.

Moving On

Polarize, inflame, agitate, and make fearful seems to be THE political landscape of our country these days.  It's how Fox News and MSNBC make their money and how the extremes of Right and Left  keep us distracted. And much of it is supported by the ultra wealthy who seem to erroneously believe that giving opportunity to the middle class, or caring for the environment, or establishing more peace in the world means less for them - and really don't want to see it happen. And hence the anger and rhetoric has become a means to distract and limit government oversight and regulation, and as a way for media to make money.

If all sides simply stop reacting and just quietly started to demand governance from those we elect to govern we'd go a long way to improving all of our lots.  Doesn't mean those guilty of fear mongering and distortion should not be called out for what they are, and the facts set straight.. But John Stewart is right - somewhere along the line it has become all about calling each other out and less about moving on and fixing things.

I personally plan on doing both.

Tax Breaks for the Ultra-wealthy

The republican leadership keeps talking about how the democrats want to take away tax breaks from Americans during a recession. When pressed that it is really only the top 2% wealthiest  Americans  that the democrats want to take away tax breaks from, the republicans then start referring to these ultra-rich as the 'job makers'. We can’t take away tax breaks from the 'job makers' during a recession.

But the vast majority of these top 2% are NOT job makers. They are corporate executives, corporate attorneys, investment bankers, Wall Street moguls, real estate tycoons. These are the exact same people whose greed in great part contributed to causing this recession. And now the republicans want to reward them?

Doing away with these entitlements, these special tax breaks for the ultra-rich, will not affect job creation, nor will it hurt the economy. On the contrary, it will help pay for the tax breaks the democrats want to keep for everyone else who really need it.

Of course the republican leadership knows this. They know extending these tax breaks will further widen the gulf between the rich and the middle class, a gulf that is already wider than it has been since the 1930's, and that it will cause further damage to the economy. They don’t care. They are trying to protect their major supporters - the ultra wealthy – and just don't care. Their irresponsibility and greed during the Bush years is what set the stage for this recession to occur in the first place - this is just more of the same.

Time to Heal

Keith Oblermann I'm sure feels he is a voice of sanity in a desert devoid of rationale thought, truth, compassion - a desert created by right wing rhetoric, hate, fear and really - insanity. But right wing rhetoric is designed to divide, to be divisive and derisive, to stir fear and thus hate in order to distract. And Fox News ratings depend on it. Its not about a unified country, not about a healed country working together in common purpose for the betterment of all. Last thing they want. A better more unified country is simply not going to be good for Fox News ratings and is not in the interest of big money and corporations - or so they think.
But in order to become a better country we simply must unify and find common ground. Our ultimate goal is to improve the lot of ourselves and of the world in general is it not?
Perpetual argument, hate, fear will not get us there.
Keith Oblermann - while seemingly a voice of truth in the desert of right wing rhetoric - really only accomplishes expungement of frustration. And in the process he creates more anger and divides even further.
It is time to focus on common ground. It is time to demand of our elected officials that they work together for the betterment of the country - not their personal and political agendas.
It is time to resist hate and fear - to buck up.
It is time for this country to begin to heal.

Our Minds Are Made Up - Now Let's Find Some Facts

Elisabeth Hasselbeck from the View made a blanket statement today that 40% of Americans support the Tea Party and kept repeating it as if it was fact. It reminded me of someone who has found a passage in the bible forbidding homosexuality in order to support their hostility towards gays and then keeps repeating it as if its indisputable fact. Imagine if scientists did something similar in their research - using 'facts' to support preconceived beliefs.

Ok, who cares what this bobble head says? Well I most certainly do not but it exemplifies so much of what is occurring in the media today. There is a real dishonesty in how 'polls' and 'facts' are being used - clearly mainstream media and political pundits often attempt to prove agendas handed down from on high with their 'facts' rather than facts defining their agendas. And no surprise even well done polls are being completely misinterpreted and distorted. 

So Ms. Hasselbeck  is basing her statement that 40% of Americans support the Tea party on two surveys released last week by ABC News and the Washington Post and by CBS News and the New York Times.  As is true so often the two surveys give very different impressions. The CBS/Times poll finds 17 percent of adults rate the movement favorably and 13 percent unfavorably, but their question offers the option of saying they are undecided (12 percent) or don't know enough to have an opinion (24 percent) even after they take out the 34 percent who say on a previous question that they have heard "nothing" about the Tea Party movement. The ABC/Post poll, on the other hand, finds far more who rate the Tea Party movement favorably (35 percent) or unfavorably (40 percent) because they present all adults with just those two answer choices.

What is interesting is that both polls found that many Americans know precious little about the Tea Party movement. On the ABC/Post poll, only about a third say they know "a great deal" (13 percent) or "a good amount" (22 percent) about "what the Tea Party stands for." On the CBS/Times survey, slightly more say they have heard something about the movement and believe they know "a lot" (13 percent) or "some" (27 percent) about what it stands for.

The CBS/Times survey finds only 18 percent who describe themselves as "supporters" of the Tea Party movement, and the ABC/Post survey finds just 14 percent who say they "strongly agree" with the movement's issue positions.

The ABC/Post poll found that nearly half of Americans (45 percent) say they at least "somewhat" agree with Tea Party positions on issues based on the general impression of the Tea Party movement is-- conservative, anti-Obama and anti-government. That support was greatest among conservatives (63 percent), strong Republicans (67 percent), those who disapprove of Obama (65 percent), and those who say they are angry about the way the federal government works (69 percent).

So what these polls show us is that most know relatively little about the Tea Party, that strong support is given  by only 14%, and a total of 18% describe themselves as supporters. 45% share an anger at government and disapproval of Obama -  but that can hardly be counted as strong support of the Tea Party itself. A far cry from '40% support the Tea Party'.

Bush's Worst Day

Letters to the editor   

Published: Friday, November 12, 2010, 8:06 PM

Bush's book tour
George Bush's worst moment as president was when someone said he didn't care about black people.
It wasn't the day he watched terrorists kill 3,000 people on 9/11.
It wasn't the horrible human suffering and his disgraceful response to it after Hurricane Katrina.
It wasn't discovering that his war in Iraq -- a war that has displaced more than 1 million Iraqis, killed more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops, and has wounded and crippled 500,000 more -- was a mistake. For not only weren't there any weapons of mass destruction, but perhaps even more important, he went to war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and at the time had nothing to do with terrorism.
It wasn't that his economic policies led to financial collapse and record deficits -- and have caused a worldwide recession we are still in.
No, his worst day was when he got his feelings hurt by something someone said about him.

Fear is Alive

Witness now even the democrats using fear for their purposes in this election cycle much as the republicans have done for years. Vote for us or billionaires will take over everything. Vote for us or the end of our system of government is at hand. Vote for us or depression and suffering will come to pass.

How about everyone - both republicans and democrats and even Fox "News" - stop trying to scare us and instead inform us. What will the republicans DO? What will the democrats DO. What is the plan? How will things be made better. How will each side cooperate with the other to make America better?

Racial Hatred , Greed , Ignorance, Corporate Backing - Our Tea Party

From the outside this Tea Party 'movement' seems almost inexplicable. What in the world? -  bizarre - unexplainable. But let's take a closer look. The average Tea-bagger is white, low to upper middle class, 60 or older, retired or soon to be, and angry. Imagine for a moment you are that person. Why might you be angry?  And what would be in your self interest?

Well to start with the idea of seeing a black man in the role of commander in chief of our armed forces - armed forces that you very well may have served in  - a black man in that role is not going to sit well with you. I mean this racial equality stuff is fine as long as your daughter doesn't bring a black man home or as long as a black man doesn't dare to assume a role of real authority. Do you remember the anger several of our southern republican leaders in the senate exhibited upon seeing pictures of Obama in the oval office shortly after he assumed the job? They pretended to be enraged that he dared to remove his suit jacket in the oval office and thus was desecrating that hallowed space - but what was really enraging them was that some uppity black man dared to sit there as if he were truly their equal or worthy. Remember how their public outrage immediately ceased when the media showed dozens of pictures of Bush senior, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush junior in their shirt sleeves in that same office, pictures that these same republican leaders had not seemed to have minded at the time - oops. Remember the outrage when it was learned that Obama was to go into our public schools and encourage our children to work hard? No black man was going into a predominately white school in Tennessee and hold himself up to be important and worthy of respect - oh no way - not to OUR children. And remember the Glen Beck rally attended by 100,000 - 300,000 predominately white people, many of them tea partiers? He chose his rally on the exact same day and exact same spot Martin Luther King gave his I have a dream speech. Accident? No - message - WE are taking back OUR country - and we're sending the black guy home with his tail tucked after we do.

Okay the Tea Party movement is fueled in part by racial hatred  - but what else? Well how about greed.
These are retired or nearly retired white people, their children grown. They have no need to fund public schools - they've gotten what they needed out of them. They have lived for years in their predominately white neighborhoods and feel safe - no need to fully fund police. They have their medicare - no need for pesky expensive health insurance plans for the rest of us. They are  approaching the end of their lives - they can comfortably deny or ignore global warming and environmental issues. They want to decrease or abolish  taxes because they figure they don't need nor do they want to pay for public schools, police, infrastructure, or government oversight in these last few years of their lives.

And so energized by racial hatred, enticed by the idea of paying less taxes, and just plain lazy when it comes to informing themselves, they allow themselves to be manipulated by big money - be it foreign or domestic - and corporate interests. Who do they think is paying for all of this? Their political 'leaders' are almost all one issue charlatans willing to do the bidding of big money interests in exchange for power and wealth.

Racial hatred, greed/selfishness, ignorance and big money funding - without all four the Tea Party would be nowhere. How sad for this country that it appears to be somewhere.

The Petroleum Broadcast System Owes Us an Apology

Read this
Greg Palast

Damn Immigrants

"My great-grandfather did not travel from Ireland across 4,000 miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see his adoptive country overrun by a bunch of immigrant's".
Stephen Colbert

Global Warming and Worldview

In February 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “concluded for the first time that global warming is unequivocal and that human activity is the main driver." Despite this only 13% of Congressional Republicans think human activity is contributing to it. Few Americans doubt global warming is real, but about 30% think it's 'just an evolution of nature' - human activity playing no role. Ok, great. So it's ok to ignore it because it's natural? Well, no.

Is it ok to ignore a hurricane? How about the flooding of our coastal cities? How about global famine due to extreme drought? How about the death of billions? Global warming, no matter the cause - be it human or "natural" - will cause significant changes in our weather that will result in all of these things happening. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has recently published a report authored by climatologist Aiguo Dai stating amongst other things that "most of the western two-thirds of the United States will be significantly drier by the 2030s...that the United States and many other heavily populated countries "face a growing threat of severe and prolonged drought."  It's not just that our air conditioning bills will go up. Global warming will cause an interruption in food production worldwide - just as a start - that will affect all of us - and it will happen much sooner than you think.  You don't get to ignore global warming because you've decided that it is being blamed on humans by a bunch of whinny liberal soft-headed hippies that want to implicate progress and would have us all return to living in grass huts.

Global warming is real. If we don't do something about it there will be a global catastrophe in our children's lifetime, perhaps in ours. And here's the real kicker - we will need to completely change the way we interact with the world if we are to survive this. We're not going to be able to protect our families with walls, or underground shelters, or a super-powerful military machines. A unilateral search for security will simply not work. The problem is global.  There will be no shelter behind walls.

To survive global warming we will have to learn to think in a new way. As never before, the future of each of us depends on the good of all, worldwide. It will require decades of cooperative international effort to solve. We cant simply scoff, stopping at denying that mankind has caused it. We have to join in a worldwide effort to temper it's devastation. And to do that we have to become citizens of the world.

It's Déjà vu all over again

A Grim Portrait of Civilian Deaths in Iraq
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and ANDREW W. LEHREN
Published: October 22, 2010 in the NYT

Well big surprise. WikiLeaks has revealed another dirty little secret of the Iraq war. The civilian death toll is  considerably more than what has been reported in Iraq. Now they are saying 100,000 - 150,000. It will probably be closer to 500,000 when the truth is finally revealed.
Don't believe that?  Vietnam may be a good historical example. At the time civilian death wasn't reported as it isn't being reported in Iraq. At the time estimates from our government put civilian deaths in South Vietnam at around 200,000. They didn't report on North Vietnam casualties. We now know that approximately 2 million civilians died in the south and another 2 million in the north. 4 million innocent civilian lives - babies, children, women, old men - died as a result of our asinine foreign policy. And to what end? We lost, and Vietnam prospers. Oops.
Why do we learn so little from past mistakes?

Mr Obama and Mr GO

The Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal (Mr. Go) is a 76 mi (122 km) channel constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers in response to pressure from Chevron and in part paid for by Chevron  that provided a shorter route between the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans inner harbor for oil tankers.  In 2005, the MR-GO channeled hurricane Katrina's storm surge into the 9th ward contributing significantly to the failure of the levies. 

Before the hurricane it was called  the Hurricane Highway. Three months before Katrina, Hassan Mashriqui, a storm surge expert at Louisiana State Univ Hurricane Center, called MR-GO a "critical and fundamental flaw" in the Corps' hurricane defenses.  Prior to Katrina environmentalists and others, including voters in St. Bernard Parish whom the channel was intended to help, called for its closure. When Katrina hit - and by the way it actually didn't hit New Orleans directly - the damage and loss of life was caused by the storm surge - not the wind and rain. Scientists now believe that the channel dramatically increased the storm surge, creating a funnel effect that contributed to the scouring that undermined the levees and flood-walls along the Gulf Outlet, the Intracoastal Waterway, and the Industrial Canal. Most have accepted the destructive contribution of Mr-GO to the disaster and it has since been closed to maritime shipping - and a permanent storm surge barrier is being built within the channel.

Despite knowing about the dangers of MR-GO for years, and despite knowing that most feel it caused a great deal of the damage and loss of life with Katrina, the Federal government, lead originally by George Bush, refuses to accept any blame or responsibility for the excessive damage caused by the channel. Since it was entirley an act of God the federal government has no responsibility to compensate loss. 

This was challenged in federal court in a law suit brought by the people of New Orleans against George Bush, the federal government and the Corps of Engineers. The judge who heard the case agreed with the people of New Orleans in a decisive, historic decision.

Bush resisted and appealed. Apparently it wasn't enough that he delayed emergency aid to the primarily poor democratic black victims of Katrina for days despite the floating bodies and cries for help  - a true international disgrace.

And now President Obama, despite overwhelming evidence of the Federal Government's and the Corps of Engineers' poor planning and lack of response to repeated warnings as to the damage that Mr-Go was causing to the protective marsh lands surrounding New Orleans prior to Katrina and to the overwhelming evidence that Mr-Go dramatically increased the severity of the damage and  loss of life caused by Katrina - despite all of this - Obama  has chosen to take up Bush's fight and is appealing the ruling. Obama doesn't want the Federal government to accept any responsibility for the Katrina disaster or to compensate the people of New Orleans  - the 9th ward especially - for the damage years of Federal government blunder and the channel caused. 

The picture below shows part of this channel. As others have pointed out, looks a lot like a rifle barrel pointed at New Orleans - heh?

Stupid is as Stupid Does

No Islamic center near ground zero as it is hallowed ground?

Muslims died at ground zero too on 9-11.

Let me say that again - Muslims died at the world trade center on 9-11.

But their lives don't count?

And just who's hallowed ground is it?

Ground zero and lower Manhattan is a desecrated burial site and sacred ground of enslaved Africans and African descendants.

Hallowed ground desecrated by our European decedents.

Before becoming Manhattan, it was called “Mannahatta” by the Lenni Lenape people who were the original inhabitants - who buried their dead there.

Hallowed ground desecrated.

The A-bomb dropped on Nagasaki ignited directly above the largest Christian church in Japan

No churches at their ground zero? 

Hallowed ground nuked.

Should construction of Churches near the Oklahoma City bombing site be prohibited since McVeigh was a Christian?

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Use The Net

Twenty-five years ago media outlets were owned and controlled by over 50 separate companies.
Today it's six. And all are owned by ultra-rich, ultraconservatives who do not appear afraid to impose their own bias.
Don't believe that or in their collective power? - ask Dan Rather.
Just about the time they figured out how to control TV, radio, newspapers and magazines with media consolidation - along comes the internet.
- Insert the Hallelujah Choir here -
I don't think anyone will ever be able to completely control it - so we must all learn how to use it to its fullest.
I encourage you to abandon old habits - TV, newspapers and get your information elsewhere
at the very least supplement it with the net.
Sounds easy - but I find that it actually takes discipline and a conscious effort
Old habits die hard but new ones can be oh so rewarding

Charity, Love, Brotherhood

Many Christians feel they are better than you because they are Christian.
Fundamentalist Christians think that God thinks they are better than you.

We Are Being Fleeced

How do you get a retired person dependent on social security to vote for a candidate who wants to do away with it?
How is it possible that an otherwise intelligent person can get so worked up and confused  by a well funded campaign of lies and misinformation as to stand up in front of national media and say "Keep government out of my medicare"?
How do you get rationale middle class conservative America to seriously consider doing away with the minimum wage, public schools, fire departments, police, and government oversight?
I don't know. All I know is the movement is well funded and supported by renegade media such as Fox "News" and not seriously challenged by 'mainstream' media. Who is behind this? A major clue may be found in asking  who is to benefit by it. Corporate big money interests - not the people supporting it.
I also know that if this continues many of these same people will wake up one morning and realize they no longer have social security, medicare or schools for their grand children to go to. Millions will not be able to obtain even the bare minimum of a living wage and will not have the tools available to them or their children to ever do so. Their food water air and land will have no protection or oversight. What will follow will be suffering , disenfranchisement and eventually civil unrest on a massive scale.

It's a Beautiful, Amazing Universe

                                             Aurora Borealis from space

 

Aurora Borealis from the ground

.

Chris Dudely - Attacking the Minimum Wage

Can you imagine going after the minimum wage as a political candidate with a straight face? Especially if you yourself are wealthy? Chris Dudley can. Oregon enjoys one of the highest minimum wages in the country. But even at that, full time comes to ~ $17,000/year or $5000 less than the poverty line for a family of four. Where exactly will the corporate greed and the contempt for those less fortunate end? In the last 20 years Chris Dudley has gone from 16 years of being highly paid in the NBA, to Vice President of M Financial Wealth Management to partnering with Filigree Advisors in managing wealth. Mr. Dudley manages ultra-wealth - his and others - minimum wage earners unlikely to be his clients or apparently, even worth his compassion.

Pamela Geller - Hate, Fear, Money

Pamela Geller and her Atlas Shrugs blog.
Hate, fear, bigotry and  money.
I wonder if she ever feels like all she's done is given in to temptation.
Built into each of us is a paranoia,
an evolutionary strategy selected for survival.
Fear of the unknown, the different, the 'strange'.
Allowing our cerebral cortex to temper and contain these instincts -
to control them with humaneness and tolerance
is part of what makes us human.

It's not clever to exploit the instinct - she's just a thug.

A Small World is a Beautiful World

Published: Saturday, October 16, 2010, 10:00 AM

Letters to the editor  

Charlie Phillips

 

Whenever I could I watched the rescue of the Chilean miners live throughout the day. I was struck that no matter how long I watched I could not help but get tears in my eyes whenever a man stepped out of his rescue capsule. Amazing. Beautiful. The best of us all, the power of us all, the grace, the hope and humaneness of us all.
As I thought about it later I  realized that I had watched it all on the internet, never once turning on the TV. It was a video feed, no announcer - I felt like I was there watching and hoping and feeling the joy of those there and of the billions watching with whom I was sharing this with worldwide.
We now have the means to experience each other as fellow humans on this planet on a daily, intimate level in a way devoid of outside interpretation, bias, hate, nationalism. On the day of the rescue humanity in the billions, from all corners of the planet, experienced each other simply as humans - and it was good.

We're All Bozos On This Bus

I wrote this for my medicine colleagues - I think  it applies to so much in life

We need to balance our need for overwhelming clinical evidence with the need to proceed as best we can in all that we do in the ICU - or we'd do precious little indeed
But we also must resist the urge to apply 'common sense' dogmatically - which as Einstein has told us is just really our lifetime cumulative bias
We must also resist the urge to always "know" what to do
Please see attached link
 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20502866

I'm struck that even nutritional strategies can potentially cause harm
But I'm even more struck by the sheer volume of conflicting data
And ultimately at how little we really know

Some People

I can't tell if some people are intelligent or not because they're such dumb-asses.

War is Not Inevitable

There are people who believe war is inevitable. It is in our nature, rooted in the more primitive, ancient aspects of our makeup and cannot be overcome. The territorial imperative. We are animals after all - and these instincts so deep, so ingrained we cannot hope to control them.
Comforting thoughts for those who have killed in war or for those trying to make sense of what is in the end  completely senseless - war. Comforting thoughts -  but untrue nonetheless.
The primitive brain from which  our more basic reflexes and drives come from represents about 7% of the entire brain by volume. The more highly evolved cerebral cortex - where higher order thought processes occur - massively dwarfs it. We are not ruled by our primitive brain. It is not the seat of evil and temptation that eventually wears us down to face the 'truth' about our aggressive natures and makes war inevitable.  It is our cerebral cortex that evolved to make us human. The more primitive aspects of our brain contribute to who and what we are but it is our cerebral cortex that makes us human, gives us sentience, and the ability to permanently avoid war and self-destruction if we so choose.

Our Government is Broken

Published in the Oregonian: Thursday, September 30, 2010, 8:00 AM    

Guest Columnist

By Charlie Phillips

The political struggles of our modern times are illusions. Democrats vs. Republicans, tea partiers vs. socialists -- all are false divisions maintained and propagated by the corporate media and the powers that be in order to polarize, anger, frustrate and distract -- anything to keep us from focusing on the sad truth that our government, that our democratic system of government, is broken. It's been overrun by corporate interests and big money and has long since morphed into corporatism -- a form of fascism. Our system of government is broken, and few in the mainstream are talking about it.

OK. So what? Capitalism is at the heart of our heritage, so isn't this just it's natural extension?

Well, here's the so what. We face far-reaching problems such as global warming that threaten our entire planet. Problems that will require decades of cooperative international effort to solve. Problems that require commitment to something other than profit and consumption. Corporatism has no mechanisms to address such problems. We desperately need a way to overcome the ever-growing influence of corporate and extreme ideological concerns that threaten the world's economy, international relations and peace, the environment, the very ability of our system of government to function as it was meant to with checks and balances and meaningful debate. And no one is talking about it.

We're at a crossroads in this country. In its essence, it's corporatism vs. democracy – greed, short-sightedness and eventual self-destruction vs. prosperity and sustainability through responsible government and balanced empowerment of all. And no one is talking about it.

Our government is broken. Fixing it should be Job One. And no one is talking about it.

Charlie Phillips lives in Southwest Portland.

God's Speed

I fought pretty hard for this patient. Day and night, I tried to help him in his fight for his life. After 5 days and 5 nights he died. He died as I withdrew care from him when we finally, sadly, realized we were only prolonging death.

He was 10 years younger than myself. I watched the last of life leave him, his young wife gently kissing him goodbye. Incredibly - the end of an entire lifetime.

As I wrote his death note I wrote that he died quietly with his family by his bedside. And as I have come to do I signed it – God’s speed. 

God’s speed means safe journey. It has no special religious meaning. Good since I am an agnostic. 

I think concerning death, we as care givers can relax the shackles of absolute political correctness and introduce at least a little humanity. At least that was my intent.

I'm quite certain that in the beginning political correctness was meant to heighten self-awareness and increase sensitivity and fairness. It has long since morphed into a form of mind control and it more often than not robs us of part of our humanity. Experiencing each other as we are - faults, edges, smells and stumbles can only result in deeper more meaningful human interaction. Experiencing each other behind the cold walls of extreme political correctness leaves us hollow, more isolated, and less human.

He and his wife touched me deeply. I will carry them in my heart all my life.

Gods Speed John

Sarah Palin for President

Published in The Oregonian: Sunday, September 19, 2010, 8:05 PM

Judging by the quality of some of the tea party-backed Republicans who are winning in their congressional primaries, I'm starting to think that the tea party may be the best thing to happen to the Democratic Party in a long time.

Islam Is Not Spelled With a T

Timothy McVeigh was a Christian. 
Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta was one of the masterminds of 9/11 and a terrorist pilot on American Airlines flight 11 that flew into the north tower of the world trade center - he was a Muslim.
Timothy McVeigh was angry at the federal government - fearful of government "take-over" of our civil liberties. Atta was angered by U.S. policy toward the Middle East, particularly the Oslo Accords and the first Gulf War. He did not hate us 'for our freedom' as  the conservative right are so fond of saying.
Islam does not call for acts of terrorism, war or even violence. It is not 'in their religion' for Muslims to fly planes into buildings anymore than it is Christian to bomb federal buildings in Oklahoma City.
Radicalism is an individual interpretation - not an indictment of culture, race, or religion.
So what does burning Korans have to do with Islamic centers in New York?
If we're going to go to war with the entire Islamic world  because some terrorists call themselves Muslims then we must also go to war with the entire Christian world  as McVeigh called himself a Christian.

One World

My mother, as a representative of southern republican thinking, would call the statement below extreme. She might even go so far as to use her favorite word - weird. She would dismiss it as the ramblings of the extreme left, while denying the existence of global warming, and along with my father, scoff. Never-mind that neither of them have really done their homework as regards global warming, and neither have come to grips with the idea that nationalism, war, oppression and us against them mentality is obsolete - made so by our ever growing international interdependence and the destructive potential of our technology. Yes both my parents would scoff as would the millions of like-minded conservatives they represent - world unity, world peace indeed - until that is - hopefully - they realized who composed and signed this statement.  Here it is.

The most profound danger to world peace in the coming years will stem not from the irrational acts of states or individuals but from the legitimate demands of the world's dispossessed. Of these poor and disenfranchised, the majority live a marginal existence in equatorial climates. Global warming, not of their making but originating with the wealthy few, will affect their fragile ecologies most. Their situation will be desperate and manifestly unjust.
It cannot be expected, therefore, that in all cases they will be content to await the beneficence of the rich. If then we permit the devastating power of modern weaponry to spread through this combustible human landscape, we invite a conflagration that can engulf both rich and poor. The only hope for the future lies in co-operative international action, legitimized by democracy.
It is time to turn our backs on the unilateral search for security, in which we seek to shelter behind walls. Instead, we must persist in the quest for united action to counter both global warming and a weaponized world.
These twin goals will constitute vital components of stability as we move toward the wider degree of social justice that alone gives hope of peace.
Some of the needed legal instruments are already at hand, such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Convention on Climate Change, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. As concerned citizens, we urge all governments to commit to these goals that constitute steps on the way to replacement of war by law.
To survive in the world we have transformed, we must learn to think in a new way. As never before, the future of each depends on the good of all.

This was written in 2001 and signed by 100 Nobel laureates.

The SIGNATORIES can be found here

Perputual War is a Trillion Dollar Industry (so far)

Can someone please tell me what the HELL we're doing in Afghanistan? I truly do not know - can't even understand the reasons given.
We have now spent over 1 trillion dollars on Iraq and Afghanistan.
What does that mean exactly?
Well in part it means that we have redistributed wealth from the average taxpayer to the 'average' defense contractor. I mean the money goes somewhere - right?
Subtract payroll to the average military grunt and it's still hundreds of billions handed over to people and corporations making money off perpetual war.
Is that why we are still in Afghanistan?

We're Still There

Bush Declares Victory in Iraq

US President George W Bush has said the US has prevailed in the Battle of Iraq in a speech on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. 
BBC May 2, 2003
 
Obama to Announce That 'American Combat Mission in Iraq Has Ended' 
NYT August 31, 2010

And yet we're still there

Beck and His Rally for Honor

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney deliberately lead us into an unprovoked war for reasons since proven to be deliberately phony - where is the honor in that?
where was Beck then or since?
George Bush took office with a national surplus - he left us billions in debt actually almost a trillion dollars in debt
where was Beck
Bush destroyed our economy leaving us in the worst recession since the 30's ?
Bush and Cheney ordered the illegal wiretapping of thousands of U.S. citizens -- before 9/11 - and Congress granted retroactive immunity to the phone companies that abetted them in these crimes - and where was Beck and his concerns for following the constitution then?
Bush and Cheney ignored the cries for help of primarily poor Afro-American Democrats after Katrina - leaving dead bodies floating amidst cries for help for days - a national disgrace
where was Beck and his honor then?
Bush and Cheney violated the constitution repeatedly with illegal renditions, suspension of Habeaus Corpus, illegal domestic spying, torture, indefinite imprisonment without formal charges
and where was Beck?
Cheney committed treason with his deliberate outing of a covert CIA agent in an act of political revenge during a time of war
where was Beck and his honor then?

There are 365 days in a year - Glen Beck chose the exact day, the exact spot, where Martin Luther King delivered his defining speech - and he hasn't the honor to tells us the real reasons why he did so. The 300,000 who showed up draped themselves in religiosity, the bible, and righteous indignation, while knowingly sending a signal to Afro-Americans that they're taking 'their' country back. With the Glen Becks and Sarah Palins willing to capitalize on the fear and bigotry of white Christians - the word Christian takes on a whole new meaning worldwide - and it has little to do with charity, brotherhood or honor. The last time hate and bigotry were so cleverly draped in honor was Nazi Germany.
And now even Christian has become a dirty word.

Three Letters to Save the World

Standing outside a neonatal nursery gazing in on 20 newborns in their bassinets - which lives are the more important? You don't get to meet their parents or learn their last names or discern their skin color - which babies lives are the more important and which the less? - go ahead choose.
We don't even bother to count numbers of civilian death in Irag and Afghanistan and truth be told most in this country don't care - so who here gets to die in some obscure foreign war that we have instigated with their death not even counting?
Who gets to be poor, under privileged, and uneducated and then ignored and even scorned as inferior by we who have everything?
Who gets to be the immigrant worker - working at subsistence levels so our tomatoes remain cheap and plentiful while they suffer, while we look down at them as inferior and unimportant?
Who in this room is it that their pain, suffering, and death is somehow not as real, not as important, as ours - because they are foreign, poor, uneducated, of a different "race" of a different color, practice a different religion - who is it that we can essentially ignore and mistreat because they are 'inferior' and less than human?
Go ahead - you pick.
If you start with the assumption that all human life is equally as important as all other human life then artificial human constructs - political, economic, social, and cultural - that attempt to place a hierarchy on the importance of human life, that stratify 'equal'- cannot stand. If we simply accept that we are all equal - that all human life is as equally important as all other human life - and it is - fairness, peace and prosperity simply must follow. Duh.

Of politics, power, greed, fear of mortality and pissing on the wall.

I had a friend recently tell me of an interaction he had with a department chief in a major medical academic center. In 15 minutes the chief carefully illustrated his ever expanding sphere of control, influence, and power within the hospital and university - as if they were ends. He then moved on to tell my friend how he wakes every day at 5:30am and how he has biked to work everyday for the last 4 years - apparently badges of honor to exemplify his self discipline, import and superiority within his construct, his world.
So there is the academic medicine construct where it's not who saves the most lives or reduces the most suffering, it's who has the most number of degrees, the most number of publications, the most self discipline, single mindedness, lust for 'power', influence and control.
Then there is the legal construct - again a completely artificial hierarchy of money,lawyers, judges and human suffering.
The Mob construct - money, fancy clothes, big cars, thugs, power, influence and human suffering.
The organized religious construct - priests, bishops, deacons, Popes - power influence prestige - all sins?
The two party political construct
The business executive construct
The terrorist's organization construct
The street gang construct
The seventh grade boys construct - where pissing the highest on the wall buys immortality.
On and on and on and on
At their simplest there are no real differences in these constructs -
pathetically crude human inventions that by their existence quite regularly attract exactly the wrong sort of people and cause the wrong sort of outcomes. Artificial worlds all - us vs them, who's the most important(important will help you avoid death after-all), the most 'powerful' the most in control, the wealthiest, the one with the most cool stuff and on and on - derailing and defocusing us from just experiencing each other as equals, experiencing our world as it really is and robbing us of the inner beauty, prosperity, and peace that can bring.

Do we fight terrorism or do we try to end it - hopefully both.

Obama administration officials point to the benefits of bringing the fight against Al Qaeda and other militants into the shadows. Afghanistan and Iraq, they said, have sobered American politicians and voters about the staggering costs of big wars that topple governments, require years of occupation and can be a catalyst for further radicalization throughout the Muslim world'.Instead of “the hammer,” in the words of John O. Brennan, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, America will rely on the “scalpel.” In roughly a dozen countries — from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife — the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists.The White House has intensified the Central Intelligence Agency’s drone missile campaign in Pakistan, approved raids against Qaeda operatives in Somalia and launched clandestine operations from Kenya. The administration has worked with European allies to dismantle terrorist groups in North Africa, efforts that include a recent French strike in Algeria. And the Pentagon tapped a network of private contractors to gather intelligence about things like militant hide-outs in Pakistan and the location of an American soldier currently in Taliban hands.
SCOTT SHANE, MARK MAZZETTI and ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: August 14, 2010 NYT

Yes, yes, yes. Using the fight against terrorism as an excuse to invade sovereign nations as part of an hegemonic agenda has been 'the war on terror' up until now.It is wrong and self defeating. This is how you fight terrorists.
But the Obabma administration must also begin to address the root causes of terrorism and make attempts to fix them so as to begin to stem the never ending supply of terrorists. Fairness and hope need to replace bad policies and greed and the United States needs to take a major role in inititating and causing such change.

War on Wars

Published in the Oregonian: Thursday, July 15, 2010, 8:00 AM    

Guest Columnist

By Charlie Phillips

I get tired of listening to pundits and politicians talk about the "war on drugs," the "war on terrorism."
How exactly do you wage war on a brick of cocaine?
It's ridiculous, as is large-scale military action to fight terrorism. Terrorism is a methodology, and those who enact it -- terrorists -- are everywhere. It only takes a single person, as we've seen. How can you wage war on that?
Drug abuse is a people problem, not a drug problem, and it will only be fixed when the reasons behind the demand for drugs are resolved. And terrorism and drug abuse are both the result – at least in part – of an isolating, dehumanizing world, made worse by poor policy decisions.
So what do we do?
For one, we stop grandstanding and we start dealing in reality and address the root causes that contribute to these problems. We can then develop strategies to fix those causes. And to pay for it we divert monies we currently spend waging "war" on bricks of cocaine and entire countries and instead spend it on fixing the real problems.
The total defense spending for this year will be between $880 billion and $1.03 trillion. If you count one dollar a second, 24 hours a day, it would take you 32,000 years to just count that much money. The 2009 U.S. military budget was nearly as much as the rest of the world's defense spending combined – nearly as much as the entire rest of the world's defense spending combined – and is over nine times larger than the military budget of China.
If we diverted one-tenth of what we spend on our military to our schools and social programs, we could give our children more opportunity and a fair start in life that would go a long way to curtailing drug abuse. If we did that worldwide, we'd go a long way to solving terrorism. If we spent the money we spend waging unnecessary war and instead spent it on programs designed to stimulate economic growth and opportunity for the average person on the street – worldwide – we'd be perceived as less a target of rage and more the shining light we hold ourselves up to be.
Waste, fraud, power struggles and greed in the military-industrial complex suck billions of dollars away from our youth, our security, our infrastructure, our future. It greatly adds to the suffering and anguish of billions of people worldwide, and it does not make us safer – quite the contrary.
It's time to address our problems from a reality base and not from one of grandstanding and disingenuous nonsense. It's time to seriously scrutinize the military-industrial complex, address its waste, fraud and abuses, assess our true defense needs and then redirect unneeded funds to programs that will truly bring us security and lasting peace.

Responsible Biking - A contradiction in terms?

Ive seen
Cyclists on sidewalks
Cyclists on the wrong side of the road
Cyclists in the road
Cyclists on the side of the road
Cyclists that want you to pass them
Cyclist that don’t
Cyclists that blow through red lights, stop signs and pedestrian crossings
Self righteous, indignant cyclists
Fearful cyclists
Stupid cyclists
Dangerous cyclists

Tell me again why we should be spending millions on cyclists?

Sarah Palin is the Paris Hilton of Politics

No not in the sense that she's skinny, dyes her hair blond and releases self made pornography to the media for the attention - close but not it. No Sarah is like Paris in that her celebrity IS her career. Neither has done anything to deserve their fame or their fortune. Sarah is not a famous politician - shes just famous. And besides looking good - what is it that Paris actually DOES? Sarah proved to the McCain campaign and then to us that she was not about to do her homework, not about to knuckle down and accomplish something - Sarah was just going to stand in the spotlight with her hand out. And since then that greedy little hand has collected over 12 million dollars for herself. At least when Paris puts her hand out - as seen on her 'videos' - it sometimes makes someone ELSE feel good.

Perspective

Lying in a field of sweet grass, gentle summer breezes on your face, the sky above almost endless, filled with the sort of bilious, white puffy clouds children spend hours imagining the shapes of our world in.
Slowly rise into that sky turning to look at where you lay.

Higher now, the earth's curvature, the sky almost black, the horizon's blue brilliance lifting towards the stars as the Earth spins on its axis.

Climb ever higher, the immensity of this planet revealing itself to you. Watch as the curved horizon climbs towards the stars as the earth spins and hurdles through space on its 60,000-mph journey around a sun a million times its size.
And in an instant - a hushed, ancient forest. Your hands on the bark of a 1000-year-old giant redwood. Still, majestic, magical. Its trunk more than twice the breadth of your outstretched arms, reaching skyward, a thousand years, dwarfing you. The bark thick, comforting. Moss wet and gently dripping. Branches far above you quiet in their almost timeless observations. It has been so for a very long time. Long before you were born, and all during your life, here was this tree. Through all the drama, hardship and joy, here was this tree. In all this immensity – here was this tree.