Breakdown

I recently finished a book entitled Breakdown written by William Johnstone. It basically was about Conservatives nearly overthrowing the USA government over grievances such the right to bear arms, homophobia and racism. In the end, there was compromise amongst liberals and conservatives. The liberals who were in charge of the government did not anticipate the scope of divisions within the nation until civil war had already broken loose. A vast majority of the nation literally were apathetic to whom controlled the nation politically; proceeding along with their normal lives while the nation was being ripped apart.

One would think ideas of real change in American are unrealistic conversation. Ideas however can bring about real change. America was built on the shoulders of a revolution and this method maybe the sole means for correcting countless broken systems.

Fundamental changes in to addition to reversals of certain governmental and political conditions in healthcare, education, military & defense, and the hypothetical glass ceiling are required. In 2006 alone $500 Billion federal dollars was spent on Military and Defense, $67 Billion on Health & Human Services and $56 Billion on Education. These facts are taking directly from the White House

(http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2006/budget.html).

The first change I am calling for is a permanent cut in U.S. military spending.

Random Thoughts: Budarin

• W gave up alcohol and turned to faith. Now he is a faithoholic.
• Treason is not failure to support the President. Treason is supporting the President above the Constitution.
• I can point out my wife’s mistakes and love my wife. I can point out my country’s mistakes and love my country.
• Moral absolutism makes one a sinner and a hypocrite.
• You can’t make a foreign policy out of “kicking ass”. There are simply too many asses.
• I am not a socialist. I am a social-regulation-ist.
• Never base decisions on your “gut”, like W. Your “gut” is never as smart as your brain.
• Abstinence is just another contraceptive.
• Conservatism is defined by its inhumanity.
• If God is loving and just and concerned for all our welfare, God is not a conservative.

Alex Budarin

Advice for Republicans

For the past 6 years, Republicans have been very generous in giving advice to us Democrats. They said we should, for our own good, line up behind the President and support the war in Iraq. They warned us that we were out of the mainstream with respect to social policies. And they told us that our failure to heed their advice would cause us to continue to lose elections.

Surprisingly, from their perspective, Democrats gained the advantage in the elections of 2006. And the Republican Party - the Party of God! - has been hit with a number of scandals relating to sex offenses, bribery and fraud. I believe it is now our responsibility, as Democrats, to offer Republicans sympathetic words of political advice. So here are some things I suggest Republicans do for the good of their party during their time of trial.

• Keep Larry Craig in the Senate as long as possible. It’s important to demonstrate loyalty and resolve whatever the circumstances. Remind the public that he is a man of God whose worst curse is, “Jiminy!”
• Look for cases where the government can intervene in private lives for the sake of conservative values, like the Schiavo case. The American public will appreciate your invasion of their privacy for the sake of righteousness.
• Repeatedly remind the American public that George W. Bush is our “Commander Guy”, and what happens in Iraq happens under his command. Like that stuff at Abu Ghraib.
• IOKIYAR – “it’s OK if you are a Republican.” When we Democrats are involved in sex scandals or financial scandals, that’s a reflection of our permissive culture and moral relativism. Point out that it’s different when Republicans get caught up in a sex scandal or financial scandal. Then it’s a private lapse, and any attention the media gives it is a partisan attack by Democrats and proof that the media is run by liberals.
• Why defend steep tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the rich? Just declare, like John Jay, “Those who own the country ought to govern it.”
  
• What the terrorists want is for our population to be constantly terrified. You’ve been doing that instead. Keep it up. You’ll rob the terrorists of their objective.
• You know that the worst problems our country faces are homosexuals, Spanish-speakers, liberals, Democrats, stem cell research, and folks who disagree with you about the Iraq War. The voting public needs to be told this, as often as possible.

That’s all I can think of for now. No need to thank me. I’m just returning a favor.

ALEX BUDARIN

Bush Jr. Vetoes Child Health Care Bill

“There certainly does seem to be a legitimate argument that the president only objects to new spending when Democrats are doing it, because he certainly wasn't objecting when Republicans controlled Congress.” Dan Mitchell, Cato Institute

"Morning Edition, October 3, 2007 · President Bush on Wednesday vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have dramatically expanded children's health insurance, after saying the legislation was too costly and had strayed from its original intent.

It was only the fourth veto of Bush's presidency, and one that some Republicans feared could be used against them in next year's elections. The Senate approved the bill with enough votes to override the veto, but the margin in the House fell short of the required number.

The State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, is a joint state-federal effort that subsidizes health coverage for 6.6 million people, mostly children, from families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford their own private coverage.

The Democrats who control Congress, with significant support from Republicans, passed the legislation to add $35 billion over five years, allowing an additional 4 million children into the program. It would be funded by raising the federal cigarette tax by 61 cents to $1 per pack.
The president had promised to veto it, saying the Democratic bill was too costly, took the program too far from its original intent of helping the poor, and would entice people now covered in the private sector to switch to government coverage. He wants only a $5 billion increase in funding. Bush argued that the congressional plan would be a move toward socialized medicine by expanding the program to higher-income families.
The president faces a possible rebellion by Republican lawmakers who back the bill. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) berated Bush on the Senate floor for having labeled the legislation "irresponsible" in his radio address Saturday.

"If you want to talk about the word responsible and whether Congress is responsible or not in this bill, I would say that anybody that wants to leave the program the way it is — and that's what's going to happen with a veto — that's an irresponsible position to take," Grassley said.
House Democratic leaders have said they will wait until next week or later to try to override a veto. They are hoping by then to peel off some 15 Republicans to get the two-thirds majority they need for an override. Texas A&M presidential scholar George Edwards says that lawmakers who stick with the president could pay for it in next year's elections.

"I think in a widely supported policy like the SCHIP bill, that the risks are substantial for Republicans," Edwards said. "It's difficult to take the case to the voters on something specific like that when we're talking about health care for children and explain the complex rationale for opposition."
Asked why the president has also issued veto threats against almost all the spending bills this year, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the president has a role to play in the legislative debate.

"One of the things the president can do is say, 'I'm not going to sign a bill that comes to me with extraneous spending. I'm not going to sign a bill that has policies in it that should not be a part of the United States policy,'" Perino said. "And so I would hope that we wouldn't have to do veto threats, but I think that the Democrats have shown that these are the types of legislative angles that they're going to take, and that's why the president has to send some veto threats up."

At issue is the fact that, added together, the spending bills exceed the president's own budget by some $23 billion.
But Dan Mitchell of the libertarian Cato Institute says that amount is paltry compared with the amount of excess spending that Bush signed during the Republicans' control of Congress.

"There certainly does seem to be a legitimate argument that the president only objects to new spending when Democrats are doing it, because he certainly wasn't objecting when Republicans controlled Congress," Mitchell said.

On Tuesday, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee said that if there is a spending problem, it is the White House asking for nearly $200 billion in war funding.

"If the president is really concerned about stopping red ink, we are prepared to introduce legislation that will provide for a war surtax for that portion of military costs related to our military action in Iraq," Rep. David Obey (D-WI) proposed.
If President Bush does not like that cost, he added, he can shut down the war.

Most Republicans derided the idea of a war surtax.
"You pay for the war by winning the war," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). "This is not an accounting exercise. How did we pay for World War II? Everybody rolled up their sleeves and did the best they could."
They also paid a war surtax.
But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave the idea a thumbs down; so did Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
"The speaker said that is not what she wants," Reid explained. "That's good enough for me."

Facing a spate of veto threats, Democratic leaders show little appetite for a separate fight over raising taxes.
With additional reporting from The Associated Press"

Cultural misconceptions empirically verified

Black Students Face Harsher Discipline

"Government data shows black students face much harsher discipline and are out of school more often than any other ethnic group for the similar offenses. Chicago Tribune reporter Howard Witt analyzes the report. Witt speaks with Andrea Seabrook."

FL Orchestra faces restraints

National trends favoring privatization (for example of prisons, social services, and hospitals) added together with tax cuts driven by conservative fiscal principles, which have caused cuts in spending especially in Florida where Republicans lead. Such budget restraints are trickling down to cultural and community expenditures such as parks, social services, non-profits, and the arts. These trends are traveling a road our local communities must avoid. In Tampa Bay, there is an essential need to balance priority amongst municipal and social services in addition to investment in cultural enhancement that in turn bring tourism dollars including attracting newcomers generating tax revenue. Tampa Bay is no New York, San Francisco or Miami however being situated along the I-4 corridor and the bay it possesses such potential. The restraints surfacing within the Florida Orchestra is an alarming economic indicator. Tampa Bay without a doubt is in a well-built position supportive of a thriving arts sector.

The Florida Orchestra is a strapping cultural pillar within Florida and its wealth of Arts; supported by a modest endowment valued at $10 million. Orchestra musicians now as stated in the St. Pete Times “are far from harmony on a contract. There is no labor contract between the musicians and board of directors, as a result orchestra members voted to give its negotiation committee the authority to call a strike if that was deemed necessary. The Orchestra’s board is pushing to cut expenses from its budget. The musicians payroll is the largest part of the budget.” Sources say approximately $450,000 federal, state and local government funding was slashed from the Orchestra’s overall budget.

Source: St. Pete Times 09/20/07

FOMA: http://www.floridaorchestramusicians.org/

Dan Rather Sues CBS

Rather says "CBS wanted to pacify the White House" "Government is influencing newsrooms".

Source: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hUVO6cyEPAt-CaWVsvqXELJ0_DCw

St. Pete Times 09/20/07

Analysis of Iraq War

As of late a majority of the resources of this organization have been devoted to ending the War in Iraq. I encourgae my fellow bloggers to follow suit.

I sincerely write about this topic in neither hope nor anticipation of my country, the United States loosing the Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and on Terror. However, because I believe that in our Democracy it is the duty of American citizens to entertain such a discussion to pledge support on the challenge of our generation.

Excerpts from the essay How the Weak Win Wars are the basis of this paper. Since the start of the War in Iraq, five items have repeatedly appeared on the media and discussions amongst the public.
1) The Motives for Going to War2) Justifications for the Iraq War3) Information provided to the American People and International Governing Bodies in regards to the War4) The legalities of charges and subsequent conviction of ousted Iraq President Saddam Hussein.

Rational leads one to question the validity of these charges based on humanitarian incursions occurring in 1982. This being the second instance the U.S has waged War in Iraq based on these identical charges. Secondly, allegations that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), now known to be to be a false claim. Therefore one would induce charges being brought against Saddam Hussein are at the least questionable. Furthermore, there is a deeper theoretical concern; these indictments are nearly spurious unless all the citizens of Iraq equally are instituted in the opportunities manifested by a stable democratic government. Subsequently more questions arise; how can these charges be justified in light of faulty intelligence. Moreover, how are these charges justified when the motives, ethics and credibility of certain U.S. political leaders are in question?

5) The War on Terror. The readers of this paper don’t to be enlightened however the fact that Al Qaeda moved to wage war against the U.S.A. and not Iraq is worthy to be restated. It is fact not partisan rhetoric the War in Iraq has diverted government resources (law enforcement, FBI, CIA), funding, military, diplomatic resources from eliminating Al Qaeda. Great Britain, the closet ally of the United States for example has endured multiple terrorist attacks coordinated by Al Qaeda and their sympathizers. To paraphrase the words of Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair “an attack against Great Britain is an attack against America“.

Below is a summary and excerpts from an essay entitled:How the Weak Win Wars“With the U.S. military engaged in armed conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ivan Arreguin-Toft’s How the Weak Win Wars is a timely contribution to the ongoing debate over U.S. defense strategy in the post-September 11 security environment. First, Arreguin- Toft provides a well-structured discussion of existing theories in the literature on how weaker actors have won wars against substantially more powerful states and articulates his own hypothesis to explain this phenomenon, which he calls “strategic interaction theory.”
He postulates that intuition would tell us “power matters most,” but notes that history tells us otherwise. In fact, not only have weak actors had sporadic successes in asymmetric conflicts, but the trend of their successes is increasing.
His argument is constructed on the premise that there are four competing explanations for weak victory in asymmetric wars, each of which has weaknesses in predicting outcomes or explaining the trend of increasing weak actor victories. The first of these hypotheses focuses on the nature of the actors. In this theory, authoritarian strong actors are said to have a greater probability of success in asymmetric conflict because they tend to lack the political vulnerability of a democracy. The second theory states that the diffusion of arms, particularly since the Second World War, has closed the aggregate power gap between weak and strong. In other words, even a weak power has a chance of success when equipped with modern weaponry. The third theory is that of interest asymmetry, which asserts that asymmetric wars tend to be fought with limited means for limited ends by the strong actor, but with unlimited means for the unlimited ends by the weak. Theoretically this interest asymmetry is more important to the outcome than relative power.
The final competing explanation is Arreguin- Toft’s own theory of strategic interaction. He postulates that the interaction of the strategies employed by the actors in an asymmetric conflict is the most likely predictor of outcome. His method of proof begins by dividing military strategy into two general categories. These categories are direct, such as conventional attack or defense, and indirect, such as counter-insurgency or guerilla warfare. His thesis is that when asymmetric actors employ similar strategies, as in the cases of direct versus direct or indirect versus indirect, the conflict favors the strong. On the contrary, when the strategies are of dissimilar types, the conflict favors the weak. The bulk of How the Weak Win Wars is dedicated to five case studies chosen from the statistical sampling. They include the Russo- Murid War of 1830- 1859, the Boer War, the Italo- Ethiopian War of 1935 - 1940, the Vietnam War, and the Afghan Civil War of the 1980’s.

Finally, he refers to the current conflict in Iraq as a “costly quagmire.” Arreguin- Toft means to convince the reader that when the very strong meet the weak in asymmetric armed conflict, strategy matters more than power. His work is extremely relevant in the current geopolitical context and serves as a warning to US policy makers to get military strategy right, regardless of relative power. Arreguin- Toft’s argument makes perfectly clear the perilous consequences of neglecting the importance of strategic interaction. ( Excerpts taking from a Review Essay found in the Harvard International Review Vol. 27 # 2, pg. 78 ) ”.

Article published Checks & Balances Org 07/25/05 by Anthony T. Brooks

Image Source: http://ancapistan.typepad.com/unfairwitness/2004/12/dramatic_photos.html

U.S.A. in Iraq

Reports proving that American presence in Iraq is recruiting terrorists give further justification to an immediate end to the War in Iraq.

This is substantiated by Donald Rumsfeld’s statement, "Foreign troops in a country are unnatural, and the goal is not to keep them there” ( http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2003&m=November&x=20031102202110aegi0.4442713) .

9-1-1-07

"By AMY WESTFELDT, Associated Press Writer 5 minutes ago
NEW YORK - Relatives of Sept. 11 victims bowed their heads in silence Tuesday to mark the moments exactly six years earlier when hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. The dreary skies created a grim backdrop, and a sharp contrast to the clear blue of that morning in 2001.
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"That day we felt isolated, but not for long and not from each other," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said as the first ceremony began. "Six years have passed, and our place is still by your side."
Construction equipment now fills the vast city block where the World Trade Center once stood. The work under way for four new towers forced the ceremony's move away from the twin towers' footprints and into a nearby park for the first time.
As people clutched framed photos of their lost loved ones, Kathleen Mullen, whose niece Kathleen Casey died in the attacks, said the park was close enough.
"Just so long as we continue to do something special every year, so you don't wake up and say, 'Oh, it's 9/11," she said.
On this sixth anniversary, presidential politics and the health of ground zero workers loomed, perhaps more than any other.
The firefighters and first responders who helped rescue thousands that day in 2001 and later recovered the dead were to read the victims' names for the first time. Many of those rescuers are now ill with respiratory problems and cancers themselves, and they blame the illnesses on exposure to the fallen towers' toxic dust.
For the first time, the name of a victim who survived that towers' collapse but died five months later of lung disease blamed on the dust she inhaled was added to the official roll.
Felicia Dunn-Jones, an attorney, was working a block from the World Trade Center. She became the 2,974th victim linked to the four crashes of the hijacked airliners in New York, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pa., where federal investigators say the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 fought the hijackers on the rallying cry "Let's roll!"
A memorial honoring Flight 93's 40 passengers and crew began at 9:45 a.m., shortly before the time the airliner nosedived into the empty field.
"As American citizens, we're all looking at our heroes," said Kay Roy, whose sister Colleen Fraser, of Elizabeth, N.J., died when the plane went down.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff also spoke to the mourners, telling them: "You have my promise that we will continue to work every single day to protect the people of this country, all in the name of those who perished heroically on Flight 93."
In New York, drums and bagpipes played as an American flag saved from the collapse was carried toward a stage.
Firefighters shared the platform with former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who many victims' families and firefighters said shouldn't speak at the service to keep from politicizing it.
Giuliani, who is running for president, has made his performance after the 2001 terrorist attacks the cornerstone of his campaign, but he has said his desire to be there Tuesday was entirely personal.
"It was a day with no answers, but with an unending line of people who came forward to help one another," he told those gathered.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, seeking the Democratic Party presidential nomination, also attended the ceremonies. Republican Mitt Romney, another presidential contender, issued a statement describing the attacks as the day "radical Islamists brought terror to our shores" and paying tribute to U.S. troops sent to Afghanistan and Iraq in the aftermath.
In Washington, President Bush paused for a moment of silence outside the White House, while at the Pentagon, Gen. Peter Pace spoke at the wall where the hijacked plane broke through.
Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the victims' families that their loved ones will always be remembered.
"I do not know the proper words to tell you what's in my heart, what is in our hearts, what your fellow citizens are thinking today. We certainly hope that somehow these observances will help lessen your pain," he said.
Pace also spoke of the military, calling the anniversary "a day of recommitment."
At the main U.S. base at Afghanistan, service members bowed their heads in memory of the victims.
National intelligence director Mike McConnell said U.S. authorities remain vigilant and concerned about "sleeper cells" of would-be terrorists inside the United States.
"We're safer but we're not safe," McConnell said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Even though the World Trade Center ceremony gathering was moved out of ground zero, thousands of family members descended briefly into the site to lay flowers near the twin towers' footprints.
Among the first family members down the ramp was Marjorie Miller, whose late husband Joel worked at Marsh & McLennan. She said the rain was almost welcome after five consecutive years of Sept. 11 sunshine.
"A lot of tears coming down from up there," she said, gesturing toward the sky, "and a lot of tears down here."
In all, 2,974 victims were killed by the Sept. 11 attacks: 2,750 connected to the World Trade Center, 40 in Pennsylvania and 184 at the Pentagon. Those numbers do not include the 19 hijackers. "
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