Why is anyone pretending that it makes any difference from whom a question to Rumsfeld comes from if it is in fact a legitimate question? If our troops have a serious lack of adequate armor then they have a serious lack of armor regardless of who formulated the question.

This is yet another example of the insidious detailed consideration of the inconsequential taking the place of actually examining, reporting on, discussing and resolving real issues. It needs to end and quickly.


Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Pitting wits against Rumsfeld

In my opinion this is the military that we pay for intentionally being sloppy with its systems in order to claim more radio frequencies exclusively. Consumer systems are on the edge of these frequencies because Congress allowed them to be agains the military's insistence that it have exclusive huge of increasingly large ranges of frequencies. In todays world such exclusively use is not even remotely necessary. The military has some of the best knowledge around of how to tune its radio frequency gear appropriately to its needs without interference and by extension without interference with "civilian" usages.

We should demand the military we pay for which includes the military cleaning up its own messes.

CNN.com - Military signals may jam garage-door openers - Dec 6, 2004

American Born, Addicted to Happiness

The author of this piece tells the American people to not think about fixing the many wrongs, which I agree very much are wrongs, but simply "prepare to suffer". NO! It is not to late to think about a change of course that can prevent countless deaths and near-endless suffering. It is only that "can-do" spirit that can possibly be of help.

To throw away the Enlightenment principles this country was founded on with some cynical rewrite of history is beyond contemptible. As is the implicit guilting of Americans as not having had our fair share of suffering. It is true that we have caused much suffering in the world, suffering that we have ignored and not experienced ourselves. But it is time to acknowledge the suffering and do some things radically differently, not to take on great suffering ourselves.

I have heard the bad news. But hearing bad news doesn't mean you simply give up and "prepare to suffer". While there is any energy or opportunity to make things better at all you fight on for a different outcome.

There is nothing so negative in the current circumstances that we cannot set it right given vision and will enough. To just give up now or preach doing so to receive our "just desserts" of suffering is about as EVIL as it gets.

I do agree with the author on one thing. Total transformation is demanded of us. Unlike the author I don't believe we have to embrace a lot of suffering to get there. Given human nature it may well take that but it is not inevitable.

Where To From Here? by Ron Paul

There is much in this piece I greatly respect and agree with. But it is beyond contemptible that Ron Paul takes a simplistic line utterly against abortion or any right of women over their own bodies should they get pregnant when they did not wish to. He uses the pathetic suggestion that "an abortionist" might abort one minute before birth. Almost no abortions were ever done in the final trimester except for the most extreme of reasons. Ron Paul knows this so this is purple rhetoric unworthy of him or anyone of his stature and deserved reputation.

Calling abortion the "most important issue of our age" shows a collosal contempt for what is really important. Abortion debates hinge greatly on the undecidable question of when a collection of cells, a fetus, is a human being with full human rights. By its formulation this question is undecidable. Long arguments on both sides have not resolved it. There is one thing for sure though, the women carrying the fetuses are certainly fully human and should have rights to control their own lives. They are not slaves to a fetus within them. I am no fan of abortion. I believe instead we should perfect our birth control and thus greatly eliminate any need for such. But most of the same voices that utterly condemn abortion are against sufficient sex education and easily available birth control. This is an abomination.

Ron Paul seems also to see the rights of 10% of the nation to marry to be against good "family values" and to be a moral issue. How can a man who has fought all of his life against tyrannical government turn around and support the right of any majority to limit the happiness and life of any minority? Surely he doesn't buy into the notion that homosexuality is by its very nature immoral depravity.

That said, I deeply agree with what he has to say concerning our economy. I deeply agree with his point that we cannot claim to be motivated by morality and be involved in unjust horrid wars like Iraq. I do not agree with his claim involving "for centuries the Christian definition of a just war.. has guided many nations in making this decision." First of all, the notion of when war is just has nothing to do with being Christian. Many Hindus, Moslems, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists and so on also have this notion. Nor was it invented per se by Christians. As a matter of fact not many centuries back Christians were rather infamous for very unjust wars and international actions as well as for bloody pogroms against their own. Lastly, only a very small handful of wars were remotely "just" by any such alluded to criteria in the last few centuries.

I deeply respect Ron Paul and deeply appreciate many of his points. But this divisive mud slinging against my own people (I am lesbian) and against women making very difficult decisions is reprehensible. While I agree with most of his other points I have to speak out against "the package".

He is very right that we must speak up before this adminstration believes it has a mandate to expand war into Iran and/or Syria. We will be lucky to survive the full fallout from Iraq. Expanding the madness would be econmic, political and yes, certainly moral suicide.

Greetings from Falluja, L. Reichard White

My God! What an utterly unholy mess. As I read this I had to stop many times because I was crying to hard and I could not see out of my glasses. What can we do? How can we stop this atrocity, this senseless bloody war? That it is being done with my money makes me sick to my very soul! What can we do? How can we stop this? NOW?

Yahoo! News - 'DON'T IMPOSE YOUR VALUES' ARGUMENT IS BIGOTRY IN DISGUISE

It is not wrong to vote your moral convictions. It is unwise and irresponsible to vote as if a few issues your moral convictions make your concern are allowed to overwhelm the full context of your values and what is at stake.

We should vote our convictions, always. However this is quite different from believing we should force others to live by our moral values whether they hold the same values or not. The latter is not about freedom or conscience. It is totalitarian thinking and has absolutely no place in the political life of a free country.

Yahoo! News - THE LOSS THAT KEEPS ON GIVING!

A) Kerry may not have lost at all. Ample evidence that the election was rigged or hacked in substantial ways is emerging.

B) If the majority of the American people did in fact vote for Bush then it is certainly true that the American people did not have sufficient facts and understanding of those facts about the first Bush administration. It would be hard to conceive of an incumbent president who had more real detriments in his record than Bush had going into this election. Of course much of that never made the major media.

If the American people make crucial political decisions effecting all aspects of their lives for four years simply on hot-button issues like abortion or gay marriage then they truly are stupid. Stupid and irresponsible.

Yahoo! News - 2 congressmen think small, leaving nation at risk

This is nonsense. It is first nonsense to call on the people to "rally together" in the sense of rubber stamping initiatives just because they claim to "make us safe". Many things already receiving such a stamp certainly do not make us safer. If we are to remain a free country then we must perserve the full right to disagree with one another about what is and is not in our best interest. Anything less is a move to something very different than freedom.

It is not at all clear to civilians nor to the experts that the 9/11 panel recommendations regarding intelligence are reasonable and necessary. The issues are complex and deserve honest inquiry NOT hysterical disowning of those who remain unconvinced.

The link below is just the latest relatively small addition to the climate of fear this country has been embroiled in since 9/11. The government has increasingly fed that climate and capitalized upon it to push its agenda. That agenda has included virtuallly unlimited powers to military and clandestine action anywhere in the world; the near total evisceration of our incividual rights; hiding the supposedly representative government from the people it represents to an uprecedented degree; huge deficit spending; a tremendous increase in unchecked executive power; and an unwinnable needless war in Iraq. The entire war on terror was defined from the start as unwinnable despite how many times Bush claims we are "winning". Using "terrorism" as the magic word the American people and their representatives are rubber stamping great evil at home and abroad.

9/11 itself was only investigated and then not at all fully years after the event. There are so many questions that were not addressed and answered around this seminal event that supposedly justifies all that has happened since. These are well explored elsewhere. Very seldom explored are the reasons why the US government is sufficiently despised to fuel terrorism. We are led to not question that. We are told that we are "letting the terrorists" win or condoning their actions. Surely it is not condoning terrorism simply to ask whether we are doing despicable or at least highly questionable things in the world and seek to correct them if we are. To not only refuse to examine our own actions but to claim as Bush has that we are hated because we are so good is a level of utter denial and irresponsibility beyond belief. Not only do we not do such examination we claim that 9/11 justifies much deeper and more pervasive opporession, invasion, control of other people and nation's lives and resources than anything that has gone before. We take actions that stir up more quite legitimate dis-ease, anger and hatred. We take actions that even shake our allies' confidence in our sanity or at least rational self-interest. All in the name of "war on terror". All in the name of "making the American people safe".

I will stop here for now. I am so deeply disgusted and horrified by what this once free nation has become and is likely to become that I cannot continue this post. I urge all whose hearts and minds are good to look beyond the rhetoric and the official media sound-bites. Be good to one another. It is deeply odious and painful to look into the heart of this.

Yahoo! News - Ads urge parents to talk terrorism

The below says it all much better than I could. Folks, we have been had. King George is not our leader by the will of the people.

How the Grinch stole the White House . . . again

Ten days after the election I feel stunned. The country seems stunned. The election was much too close for the passive acceptance with so little questioning as I have seen. The voting machines that all reports said were undependable or at least uncheckable were widely used. In truth we have no way to know if they were used honestly or were simply too buggy to be trusted. There were election irregularities all over the country. This was especially the case in important states like Ohio. Thousands of abasentee voters never received their ballots and were turned away from casting even provisional ballots in many precincts. The number of provisional ballots by some accounts topped 250,000. If this was so and if they were predominantly democrat this could have easily tipped the election. Precincts around the country reported vote totals and breakdowns that made no sense given the demographics. Reports of third party candidate tallies varying in the negative direction as the vote was counted have been presented. There is smoke around the election. I believe we need a full investigation of whether there is a fire.

Stolen Election 2004I Smell A Rat