Tidelines: Civics & Society

That Chinook Salmon you say got away: How big was it?

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:50:10 -0800

Click here for full story at Mongabay.com

Debt to veterans is ongoing: Each generation must renew our obligations to those who serve.

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:09:37 -0800

President-elect Obama and Military Veteran Tammy Duckworth (Keep an eye on Duckworth. We haven't seen the last of her.)

The following is a Veterans' Day Editorial in the Fresno Bee.

I endorse it fully.

11/11/08

Abraham Lincoln concluded his second inaugural address, as the Civil War wound down, with the words that have come to define the nation's obligations to its veterans:

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."

Caring for those who have "borne the battle" is a year-round, ongoing duty. We recall it, and celebrate the service of veterans today, on Veterans Day, but the obligation stretches out years from now. It's not just about today's veterans, but about those yet unborn who will wear the nation's uniform, fight its battles and defend its liberties.

We haven't always treated veterans as well as they deserved. The original GI Bill -- officially the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 -- was transformational for millions of World War II veterans and for the nation itself. They used its benefits to attend college and trade schools and to buy homes. In the process, they created a vastly larger American middle class.

Some form of GI Bill has been in place ever since, though the benefits have varied over the decades. A new GI Bill, affecting veterans in the post-9/11 period, will take effect in August of 2009, and offer expanded education benefits. It's an improvement over the current program, which pays a flat sum over four years, and isn't enough to finance a bachelor's degree at many colleges.

Funding for veterans health care is also going up, partly in response to media coverage in recent years of abysmal treatment for some veterans returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mental health care must have a particularly high priority. That's crucial, because adjusting to civilian life after military service is difficult for many veterans. The enormous psychological and emotional pressures of combat must be addressed, and that's hard for many veterans, and their families, because of the stigma that's still attached to mental health issues.

It's worth remembering that veterans benefits -- particularly for education -- have a way of paying dividends to the nation all out of proportion to their cost. It's estimated that every dollar spent on the original GI Bill for World War II veterans was returned seven-fold to the nation in economic growth.

It's also worth remembering that Veterans Day began as Armistice Day, celebrating the end of World War I -- the "war to end all wars." There have been more wars since then, of course, and we must expect still more in the future. We will always have veterans among us, and we must always remember the debt we owe them. But mere remembrance, though essential, is not by itself enough. These men and women have earned special consideration, and we can't let that be forgotten either.

Fair Use Notice: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Campaign and Media "consultants" - an unnecessary evil.

Sun, 9 Nov 2008 08:36:38 -0800

The News & Observer in North Carolina has an article about the losing Dole senatorial campaign and their explanation of why the famous "godless" ad was necessary.

Dole's campaign thought it would run such an ad only as a last resort. And then it would be the mildest version of the ad.
So says Fred Davis, the Hollywood-based media consultant who produced the ad, which became one of the most discussed TV commercials in the nation during the past election.

Critics of the ad from the right and the left accused Dole of questioning Hagan's faith.
Hagan, a Sunday school teacher and elder in her Presbyterian church in Greensboro, called the ad "despicable" and ran her own ad accusing Dole of "bearing false witness against fellow Christians."

A candidate thus reveals the presence of a sufficiently clear and present ~~danger to~~ failure of the campaign as to justify hiring a spin doctor to empasize the trivial at the expense of the important.

But Davis insists the commercial was not designed to question Hagan's faith. He said it was about her decision to attend the fundraiser.
"It was about her judgment," Davis said in a telephone interview last week. "I never questioned her faith. A lot of people questioned that in hindsight. But that's not the point."

"That's not the point?"

How appropriate. The point is that all over this country candidates keep shallowly trusting consultants and advisors, effectively handing over their own sincerity and honesty in asking for votes based on reality.

Instead, they bring into play hired mind-slingers to create and promote the shallowest of messages using Viagra or Cialis tactics.

They hand over their own integrity regarding political ethics. They do not encourage thoughtful civic participation by bringin a fast-talking narrow-minded snake oil sales person into the game.

They declare then that civics takes a back seat to deceptive marketing.

This elevation of suppossed 21st century political and media sophistication to a pedestal defined by 30-second messaging is a sacrament of worship that will not make us a better nor wiser society.

That is what "the point" is.

This guy Davis produces an insulting piece of ad-trash that assumes a tremendous stupidity and gullibility of voters

- an ad that lowered the civic standard in an entire state

- and calls it a meaningful piece about judgment.

It was a meaningful piece about judgment .... his employer's Mrs. Dole's.

There has to be a more honest living than being a professional manipulator.

Sarah P is a good example of why civics education matters

Sun, 9 Nov 2008 09:02:18 -0800

Post-election, Sarah Palin is talking like a pageant entrant who only understands that she lost but not that she did the campaign harm nor turned the electorate against her party.

Her responses merely imply that she knew all along that Africa is a continent and the the Vice President does not run the Senate.

This beauty pageant intellect had not idea of the impact of the inflammatory rhetoric her coaches told her to mouth. That she willingly and enthusiastically attempted to combine her hockey-mom winking charm with junior-high style gossip that casually declared Obama to be an execution-deserving traitor underlies the junior-high shallowness of her world view.

If she thought that over-the-top campaign speeches were standard fare because her Party had been successful more than once in doing so, she was either as politically naive as she appears or she flat out slept through any civics class presented to her.

The Telegraph is publishing a story today and I've posted excerpts below. Click on the link to read the entire article.

Anyone pretending outrage at the implication that Palin is the victim in this story is either equally civics-challenged or equally as stupid as Palin herself.

Sarah Palin blamed by the US Secret Service over death threats against Barack Obama

Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign.
The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.
The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.
But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.
The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks.

Whether in photos and films doctored by the pros to look both appealing and intelligent, Mrs. Palin revealed herself as a shallow thinker who has spent most of her life making knee-jerk decisions based entirely on self-interest.

Put such a person in the hands of consultants and image-mongers who themselves have little if any conscience and her own gullibility and world view from the shallow end of the pool only gets magnified.

He late-campaign remarks whining about criticism of her campaign criticisms of Obama revealed just how much Sarah Palin is a small-town rural personality. Nothing wrong with small-town and rural personalities so long as within that environment upbringing necessary skills like critical thinking and an ability to see both sides of an issue are taught or acquired.

... so long as within that rural environment (one in which I also dwell) a dominant us/them either/or attitude is not the overriding norm.

Mrs. Palin seems to be in oblivious denial of the consequences of her own actions. She is too interested in self-promotion to worry about ethics.

Immediate start on hauling out the trash

Sat, 8 Nov 2008 16:24:06 -0800

Good idea ... and please, undo all those signing statements and don't give us any more.

The Constitution vests lawmaking power in the Congress alone. Signing statements are not the President's prerogative to decide what laws he can ignore by mere signature. read here

Washington Post, Sunday, 11/09/2008

Obama Positions Himself to Quickly Reverse Bush Actions on Environmental, Social Issues

By Ceci Connolly and R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writers

[Excepts. Click on link at the top to read entire article]
Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse the president on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.
A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.

"The kind of regulations they are looking at" are those imposed by Bush for "overtly political" reasons, in pursuit of what Democrats say was a partisan Republican agenda, said Dan Mendelson, a former associate administrator for health in the Clinton administration's Office of Management and Budget.
The list of executive orders targeted by Obama's team could well get longer in the coming days, as Bush's appointees are rushing to enact a number of last-minute policies in an effort to extend his legacy.

Still, the preelection transition team, comprising mainly lawyers, has positioned the incoming president to move fast on high-priority items without waiting for Congress.
Obama himself has signaled, for example, that he intends to reverse Bush's controversial limit on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, a decision that scientists say has restrained research into some of the most promising avenues for defeating a wide array of diseases such as Parkinson's.
The new president is also expected to lift a so-called global gag rule barring international family planning groups that receive U.S. aid from counseling women about the availability of abortion, even in countries where the procedure is legal, said Cecile Richards, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

The president-elect has said, for example, that he intends to quickly reverse the Bush administration's decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. "Effectively tackling global warming demands bold and innovative solutions, and given the failure of this administration to act, California should be allowed to pioneer," Obama said last January.

Some related reforms embraced by Obama's transition advisers would alter procedures for decision-making on climate issues. A book titled "Change for America," being published next week by the Center for American Progress, an influential liberal think tank, will recommend, for example, that Obama rapidly create a National Energy Council to coordinate all policymaking related to global climate change.

The center's influence with Obama is substantial: It was created by former Clinton White House official John D. Podesta, a co-chairman of the transition effort, and much of its staff has been swept into planning for Obama's first 100 days in office.

Other early Obama initiatives may address the need for improved food and drug regulation and chart a new course for immigration enforcement, some Obama advisers say. But they add that only a portion of his early efforts will be aimed at undoing Bush initiatives.

Despite enormous pent-up Democratic frustration, Obama and his team realize they must strike a balance between undoing Bush actions and setting their own course, said Winnie Stachelberg, the center's senior vice president for external affairs.

"It took eight years to get into this mess, and it will take a long time to get out of it," she said. "The next administration needs to look ahead. This transition team and the incoming administration gets that in a big way."

Staff writers Juliet Eilperin, Spencer S. Hsu and Carol D. Leonnig and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

Talk online with us at Washblog about this election day

Tue, 4 Nov 2008 06:43:36 -0800

I invite you to click on the following link and live blog your thoughts to the Washblog.com site. Washblog is a statewide progressive blog in need of more opinions from South West Washington State.

If you're watching the election returns tonight, join in our conversations.

Click here:Washblog.com

Live blogging throughout the day ...

... news, thoughts, predictions, bets, hopes and fears.

Multiple entries desired ... shout outs, high fives, moans & groans.

Join Us.

I lean toward KOS's predictions ... what the country needs is Obama at or above 400 electoral college votes.

I think it's in the best interest of the country to express a total repudiation of Bush Republican politics and a complete sweeping out of office of every rubber stamp politician who put party above country.

King 5 news reported late last night a Gregoire poll lead of 42% to 36%. Okay, but even in solidly Democratic Pacific County there are a powerful lot of Rossi signs on front yards.

Are there enough stampeded individuals in this Blue state to elect Rossi against their own best interests? If a cold emotionless stare and blank face when talking serious stuff ever suggested a Manchurian Candidate devoid of genuine sincerity and a desire to communicate honestly it's Mr. Rossi.

I repeat what I've said before. I see and talk with them every day. I listen to their concerns and fear for their personal health and well-being.

Any citizen of this state on a fixed income who votes for Dino Rossi has been blinded by something other than a light.

Any small business owners who think Rossi will shoulder-to-shoulder with them about the things which really make a difference in their prosperity - or even survival - have sucked on the kool-aid big time.

where voters are renewed, re-aroused and willing to insure that never again will the bamboozle trump the truth

Sun, 2 Nov 2008 11:11:44 -0800

Two unrelated articles caught my eye this morning in a way that relate to what I have been thinking about in my current state of political fatigue.

MSNBC has an article on its front page entitled "Praying for election miracles". It's about politically active priests and preachers exhorting their faithful to petition God to vote on Tuesday.

Then there's The New York Times article about the organization, Media Matters, entitled An All-Out Attack on `Conservative Misinformation that includes a complaint from Republican pollster and talking point framer Frank Luntz.

Let's start with the God who will be shirking civic duty if HE does not vote.

In some instances the prayerful petition appears to focus somewhat on an innocent desire to get out the vote. The underlying assumption however seems to be that those "gotten out to vote" by God will be voters aligned with those who are making the politically prayerful petition.

On the other hand there are those who are openly asking God to forget about freedom of agency or choice; asking instead that HE impose HIS will on the people. This in some sort of spiritual puppet string-pulling and mind control that will cause a majority of the American electorate to vote in harmony with the God-and-Politics stampeders.

These preach values that demand personal subordination to a religious party line. They are not values of fairness, compassion, peace, charity nor understanding. These are values based on an assumption of a punitive and judgmental God that looks, talks and acts like Pat Robertson or John Hagee.

In these final moments of this election season, they are pleading with God to confirm and validate their own assumptions as to what God and religion are supposed to mean in the United States of America.

Of an impartial civic mind they are not. But they do want to get out the vote.

Then we have Frank Luntz on Media Matters:

"I think they are one of the most destructive organizations associated with American politics today," said Frank Luntz, a pollster forRudolph W. Giuliani and Newt Gingrich who this year has led on-camera voter focus groups on Fox News, a frequent Media Matters target.
"They are vicious. They only understand one thing: attack, attack, attack."
"If I were a Democrat, I would tell them to shut up," Mr. Luntz said. "If I were a Republican, I would tell my candidates to ignore them."

If you've ever listened to Luntz in person (I've watched him spar with Bill Maher on Real Time several times) you will see an almost smug declaration of how Democrats would be more successful if they would listen to his interpretation of the perceptive gullibility of the American electorate.

But currently Luntz has his career at stake with this election. His words attempt to hide the fact that if the American electorate gets uppity and starts insisting on something more than sound-bite and talking-point campaigns, he's done with his fame, fortune and cosmetic high-regard on cable TV.

I've long held a view that when a political candidate hires a campaign consultant of the Frank Luntz spin doctor ilk - that candidate has robbed his/her potential constituency of a relationship of trust.

Such an act places a manipulative gate-keeper smack dab between the citizen and the elected representative. If we accept that sort of arrangement with our candidates the common denominator of civic intelligence is dramatically lowered.

Luntz can't deny that. No spin doctor can deny that. These folks do not raise civic intellectual awareness in this country any more than the do purveyors of American Idol, Survivor or Heroes who merely want you to watch and buy.

I've appreciated what Media Matters has done in helping the curious cope with a conservative radical partisan stampede tactic.

Rather than agreeing with Luntz and his whine about destructive organizations, I believe that so long as there are any ideologically driven information predators communicating with voters, organizations like Media Matters and Fact Check are necessary.

As for political prayer circles, I don't want God jumping in the middle of American life like an overbearing moral Genghis Kahn who proclaims "Live subordinate to me and my BOOK or you'll hurt my feelings, die in your sins and be sent to hell!"

Preachers who goaded their flocks into American voting booths in 2004 managed to get trusting people to cast purely negative-minded votes for false civic reasons.

In 2004 the pain and frustration for me was not limited to the Kerry loss. Much more than that was the sense that the election - if not stolen - was still severely impacted by information manipulation and outright lying.

I perceived that the majority of those who voted were misled. Non-voters remained off the beaten path because political tacticians wanted them out of sight and out of mind - voluntarily self-suppressed.

We were not even left with the consolation that a definite majority of the American voters had spoken; that the will - wise or unwise - of the majority of American citizens had been expressed.

We were stuck with the realization that the majority of those who had spoken were manipulated and led to the booth under false pretenses (including 14 states with God & Politics initiative ballots put in place by people like Rove and Luntz.)

Civically and spiritually, I counsel that we do not let someone else -in any context - tell us once again what to think and how to vote.

I counsel that we make an effort to perceive the lies and half-truths proclaimed in campaigns.

I counsel an activist - even formally organized - civic campaign to put limits on purchased political ads, sound-bite advertising and contests decided by whoever has the most money available to flood the media with shallow inflammatory nonsense.

I've already made my arguments for and against the candidates of my choice. Repeating any of that is not appropriate to the theme of this opinion.

As we move forward, I intend to advocate more and more for genuine civic wisdom and participation in this country.

"Change" can be a spin-doctor word use to get out the vote. I hope real change means a return to the idea that America is essentially one big town hall.

I'd like to see a circumstance where voters are renewed, re-aroused and willing to insure that never again will the bamboozle trump the truth.

I'd like to see political apathy become as unacceptable as sexual harassment, domestic violence, child abuse, identity theft and belching in church.

I want to move past next Tuesday satisfied that this time voter apathy, ignorance and gullibility has not once again harmed this state and this nation to a much greater degree than another terrorist attack.

God spoke to me that after George W. Bush, America would elect its most ungodly president ever.

Sat, 1 Nov 2008 11:16:16 -0800

Talk to Action has the complete article by Richard Bartholomew

A new email newsletter from James Hutchens and his "Jerusalem Connection" Christian Zionist outfit directs me to "A Prophetic Warning" from Pastor Steve Foss. Foss (a protégé of Morris Cerullo) apparently received a message from God in 2000 that George Bush would just about scrape home for his first term, and that there would be an economic crash at the end of his second term. Now that it's all come true Foss has chosen to tell the world what God revealed to him, including what's in store next:
God spoke to me that after George W. Bush, America would elect its most ungodly president ever.

That is, unless Christians intercede in some unspecified way - like, for example, voting against a particular candidate:
...I had a vision earlier this year. I saw Barack Obama in this vision. He was speaking to a large crowd and being broadcast on television. He was speaking incredible words of unity, peace, and bringing all sides together; the words were elegant, the words were comforting, and the words were inspiring.
But while he was speaking I saw all a powerful spirit of violence coming out of his spirit feeding into the spirits of those that were hearing him. That spirit of violence was directed at anybody who opposed what he was saying. Those who heard his words and received it had the spirit of violence being implanted inside of them. It was a rage like I have not seen before.
It was the rage that would be unleashed against those who oppose and stand in the way of Barack Obama's agenda. We are already seeing the beginnings of this spirit manifested here in America. The vicious attacks against Sarah Palin have been unlike anything we have ever seen before. The sheer hate for this woman from people who knew nothing about her, and who claim to stand up and protect the little people, and women, has been shocking.

The Smartest College Kids in the Country

Sat, 1 Nov 2008 11:16:58 -0800

Editor and Publisher has the story. Read the entire article and find the list of who did and who didn't there.

BMOC: College Papers Back Obama -- By 79 to 1

By Dexter Hill
Published: October 31, 2008 2:20 PM ET
NEW YORK The Obama campaign leads in newspaper endorsements from dailies and weeklies, based on our tally so far (see separate story). The Democratic ticket has an even more impressive lead when it comes to college newspapers — 79 to 1, according to our own list and UWIRE’s Presidential Endorsement Scorecard.

Since Dino Can't Ask Washingtonians to Vote for Obama ...

Sat, 1 Nov 2008 10:44:25 -0800

A candidate illegally fund by sneaky corporate lobbyists cannot really promise "change" by riding the coat tails of Barack Obama and asking us to vote for Barack and Dino ... no, he can't.

Dino is left promoting his own deceptively packaged change as well as hoping we won't recognize the truest friends he has.