We want to create a national medical insurance program for the benefit of low and middle income families who can not now obtain subsidized medical care. To pay for a national medical insurance program, we would have to (a) raise their taxes along with everyone else's, (b) lower medical costs (c) make people who can afford medical insurance pay also for someone else, (d) take money from other entitlements and programs, and/or (e) borrow against the possible future earnings of our children. (a) sticks it to the people who can't afford it now, (c) is just unfair, (d) is unlikely, and (e) is just dumb. That leaves (b). We can't raise the river. Why aren't we doing a better job lowering the bridge?

You hear it all the time: the best thing to do for our troops is to bring them home from Iraq now. Actually, the best thing to do for our troops is to being them home in victory. Bringing out troops home in defeat will undermine our national resolve and the perceived strength of our military, verify for rogue and potentially rogue nations that we can be easily defeated, and make any future international military action in which our military is involved far more dangerous. 

We call it a "surge" to make it special, but the surge of troops in Iraq that has achieved such positive results is nothing more than an increase in military resources available to stabilize the country. You have to ask: what would Iraq be like today if we had more resources in Iraq from the beginning? Joe Lieberman blames our lack of success in Iraq on Congressional underfunding. Congress will likely rationalize their funding levels on modest requests from the Military and the President. If the Senate and the House were as wise as they claim, they would funded the war from the beginning according to what was actually needed, not what was requested.

Sure, we want our troops home soon. If that is the end of the story, it is because we have been convinced by the Left and the Liberal media that victory in Iraq is impossible. The "surge" suggests otherwise, that persistence and sufficient resources might allow us to be successful in Iraq.

I'm a firm believer in walking softly in the world but carrying a big stick. Defeat in Iraq will with certainly whittle down the size of that stick, diminsh our influence in the world, make the world in general a safer place for tyrants, despots and terrorists, and return the world economy to bullets and blood rather than products and services.

So my question is: why did we not - and why have we still not increased State Department resources and access to temporary work visas for South American workers? If we really do need million of service workers, why haven't businesses and their representatives in government come together by now to make it easy for a foreign national to legally enter this country. It seems to me, if it were easy to do so, a family or worker in this country illegally would willingly return to their homeland if they knew they could enter legally in short order.

Practical legal access to foreign workers is as important to border security as border guards and fences. Assuming additional resources would be required to process the increased number of visa applications, the cost of those resources should be born in the form of worker import application fees by the businesses employing foreign workers.

It was reported the other day that China was building schools and engaging in other hands-on assistance activities in Africa in order to communicate the message that they were not in Africa just to acquire the continent's natural resources. Hands-on assistance is so much better than cold cash. The source of financial assistance can easily go unnoticed. It is difficult not to notice and acknowledge foreign nationals in your country building infrastructure.

So perhaps we should take a more hands-on approach to foreign aid. Perhaps, along with funds, we should send manpower and expertise appropriate to their needs. I don't think we currently just send money. But we do need to make our generosity more concrete.

An anchor on TV just blamed Roe v. Wade for dividing our country. This makes as much sense as reporting that an SUV has run over a bunch of people at a shopping mall.

Saying the Roe v. Wade divides our country implies that there are two groups, one for and one against abortion, and that the cited court decision is responsible for the division. Roe v. Wade isn't dividing our country. Roe v. Wade simply represents our government's current law relative to abortion. The country would be divided about abortion without Roe v. Wade. And there aren't just two groups: pro abortion and anti abortion. Some people accept some types of abortions. Some people accept certain timeframes for abortions. Some people accept abortions but don't want them to be paid for with government funds. Some people accept abortions but don't want them to be too easy to obtain. Some people don't want anyone to be able to obtain an abortion under any circumstances at all, no way, no how. Making abortion rights a simple, dualistic, up or down issue inhibits our ability to consider our varying postions on this important question, understand the reasons behind our current laws, and make rational future decisions about abortion rights.

Rudy Guliani has a very reasonable position relative to abortion rights. I share his position. If I have it right, he is against abortion, concedes that it should be legal, but wants the government to do everything in its power to make it unnecessary. 

It is amazing how many people find it hard to understand Guliani's essentially conservative postion on abortion simply because they can't put him in either the pro or anti abortion camps.

So laws don't make issues divisive. If we didn't have any abortion laws, would abortion be less important?

What does divide us are the efforts of some people in our two political parties to claim ownership of specific positions and attribute a dicotomous opposing position to the opposing party. They must think that we are incapable of answering anything more complicated than a yes/no, true/false question, want to simply sort us into one of two large piles, or be so unintelligent themselves that they can't respond appropriately to multiple choice and essay questions.

In a recent interview on 60 Minutes, rock star Bruce Springsteen justified the anti-Bush political message in the lyrics of his latest album by saying he wanted to share his political opinions with his audience. He actually compared himself with the class of American protest artists: Woodie Guthrie and Bob Dylan.

First, to paraphrase LLoyd Bentson's famous comment to Dan Quayle, Bruce is no Bob Dylan. Springsteen makes the same mistake in his music that other pop artists today, who want to make a political statement, are making in theirs: they are rudely attacking President Bush as a person. The elder Guthrie and Dylan sang about great causes, such as peace and justice, freedom, and alleviating hunger and poverty. Though he has become more crass and stident recently, folkie Pete Seeger was more like his mentors back in the day. Artists like Springsteen, Norah Jones and John Mayer probably should write about larger causes or stick to more traditional themes lest they appear to be people with big heads but small minds.

Second, artists like Guthrie and Dylan were protest singers first and entertainers second. Their social and political ideas and the way they captured them in their lyrics is what made them popular and famous. Springsteen rode to the arena stage as a rock and roll entertainer in a hot car along Jersey mean streets and beach front arcades. What could possibly make him think his audience wants to stand in line to hear him sing about the Liberal agenda. Does he really think his fans are going to leave the show humming anti-Bush songs?

Finally, when entertainers like Springsteen or Jones, or Penn or Streisand become associated in the minds of their audience with an absolute socio-political position, they risk having all of their future work interpreted in terms of their positions instead of their art. To enjoy art, you have to be able to suspend judgement. You have to be able to ignore that this is not the old west, that drooling monsters have not invaded the space ship, that spies don't usually survive being shot at forty times from one gun ten feet away. Going to a show put on by someone with a political agenda makes it impossible to suspend judgement. It makes you want to look for the wires holding up the dinosaur, search for the political message imbedded in the music or the plot. Audiences tire of the "where's Waldo" game after a while.

Bertold Brecht wrote politically oriented plays in Germany at a time when his ideas could have gotten him persecuted or killed. When called on the carpet by the authorities, he denied an intentional political orientation to his writings. He explained that he just wrote plays and said some people apparently read more meaning into them than he had intended. Great art is not obvious. Perhaps Springsteen and the other wanna-be political artists of today should emulate Brecht, and make their messages a little less apparent.

There is one more thing to keep in mind as you watch or listen to today's politically operational celebrities. Artists like Brecht, Guthrie and Dylan championed the unfranchised, the downtrodden, the powerless. With the exception of Dennis Miller and a few country singers who lean to the Right, today's protest singers lean strongly to the Left. As much as it claims otherwise, the Left is not powerless (it owns Congress), unfranchised (it owns the media) or downtrodden (it owns the universities),  and it is not about obtaining control so that it can help the little people.

To quote John Lennon, who Bruce Springsteen also is not:

You say you got a real solution
Well you know, we'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well you know, We're doing what we can
But when you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait
Don't you know it's gonna be alright
Alright Alright

The Washignton Post published a piece by Brit Geoffrey Wheatcroft questioning the trend in American politics to nurture political dynasties where other countries are working to smother them. His point is that, given her lack of skills and experience, Hillary Clinton is not likely a choice for the Whitehouse except for her dynastic qualities. Bush - Clinton - Bush - Clinton ... there is a certain dynastic symetry to it.  

What Mr. Wheatcroft needs to know, is that it is not about Dynasty the multi-generational ruling family, it is about Dynasty the former nighttime television soap opera. 

We Americans love drama, especially scandalous drama. And what would be more fun than to give potential First Spouse Bill Clinton, who we anticipate will be whispering sweet international policy nothings in Hillary's ear, another turn at the interns without the threat of impeachment hanging over his head?

Entertainment is the new Gravitas. We erased the line between news and entertainment. Now we need to erase the line between politics and entertainment.

We are worried today about the symbolism behind Obama wearing or not wearing an American flag pin on his lapel. Why doesn't someone just ask him? Wait. We would then have to worry about the meaning of his response. Better not to ask.

We are also worried today about a woman athlete who adamantly denied using performance enhancing drugs for years and is now admitting that she did so and is facing exchanging her Olympic medals for some jail time. Along with this report, we hear he saying over and over that she has never failed a drug test. Is saying that you never failed drug test the same as denying you used drugs?

Not long ago, when asked straight out if Iran was planning to attack Israel, Ahmadinejad obfuscated by saying something like Iran had no need to do so. In its coverage of the question and answer, a prominant newspaper later reported something like Iran will not attack Israel.

I blame Bill Clinton for this.

If it were not for Bill Clinton and his defense of his questionable morality while in the Whitehouse, we would still be asking hard, follow-up questions, demanding clear yes or no answers, and not allowing ourselves to aid and abet public deceptions - we could not be as content as we now are to sit up in the booth doing the color commentary.

To find fair-and-balanced on your radio dial, look for it somewhere between your conversative talk radio station and National Public Radio, your liberal talk radio station.

Take the recently released biography of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for example. According to Rush, Sean and Gordon, among others, the book is a must-read, a masterful homage to the benefits of conservative thought and values. The grandfather who raised him is cited as a strong, independent, honorable man, who embued in Justice Thomas the attitudes and skills that took him to his seat on the highest court in the land.

At the other end of my radio dial, NPR posts a review apparently written by Anita Hill's brother, who reports that the book portrays Thomas himself as a less than black sleezebag woman abuser biting the hand of affirmative action that fed him, and his grandfather as a tyranical child abuser.

Did they read the same book? Of course they did.

Fair and balanced reviews? Of course not.

Back in the day, when we listened to news and commentary, we were told basic facts and left to determine for ourselves the meaning and significance of events. Then, for a while, interpretation accompanied the facts, and we added a new word to our vocabulary: spin. Now, we get the interpretation, and a few selected facts that substantiate the interpretation. Sadly, the Cheshire Cat of reality has disappeared, leaving only his spin behind.

It is no longer good enough to program a single news station into your radio, read a single newspaper, or visit a single news web site, even though they all cover the same events. You have to read conservative news outlets, and balance what you get there with news from liberal outlets.

Unless, of course, you only want to hear what you already know.

Clearly, many of us, in spite of our belief in the freedom of speech, want never-the-less to hold people responsible for what they say. Sticks and stones will break my bones, and words will hurt my feelings.

When you study communication, you learn how the locus of communication lies somewhere between between the talker and the listener. A poor communicator will make the listener work hard to understand what is being said. An excellent communicator will phrase the message to fit nicely and easily into the overall knowledge schema of the listener. Probably, good communications puts the locus of communication right between the talker and the listener. I make an effort to tell you what I think. You make an effort to understand what I am trying to tell you. Together we communication.

The recent effort by the Far Left seats in Congress to deliver a public flogging of entertainer/commentator Rush Limbaugh for what he said recently in reference to the Military is simply an embarrassment to communication and the interpretation of the spoken word. These are people who literally talk their way into (and out of) their jobs. Shame on them. They should know better.

Clearly, anyone who believes that Limbaugh was referring to anyone other than individuals who claim to be what they are not is either incapable of understanding the spoken word, unable to understand the spoken word without filtering it through a mental screen of biases and prejudices, or flat out trying to deceive others into believing something that is untrue. Shame on them. They should know better.

In the US today, perception has become everything. Facts, the underlying elements of truth, are irrelevant. Primary research is spun. Investigative reporters no longer investigate events, they investigate and report on one another. What we are presented as the truth is nothing more than rumor, gossip and supposition.

I have my truth. You have your truth. And it matters not a bit that, like matter and anti-matter, both our truths can not exist at the same time in the same place in the same world. 

For members of Congress to try so blatantly to distrort the preceptions of the American People while endeavoring to lynch a private citizen is terrible. Truth, along with Rush Limbaugh, is being dragged down the halls of Congress to a gallows being contructed of lies. 

Do you understand what I am trying to tell you?


 

In the recent media coverage of inequities and anomolies in sentencing guidelines, disparaties in sentences for crimes involving powder vs crack cocaine were cited as a cause for the disproportionate incarceration of blacks, who seem to prefer to smoke rather than snort their coke. Left unanswered are logical questions such as: were crack penalties increased relative to powder cocaine penalties to persecute the poor blacks for whom crack is the drug of choice? and (bizarrely) should criminal penalties be adjusted to ensure prison populations are relatively proportionate to the nation's racial proportions. (If the LA jail is too crowded, you let the white celebrity in and release a poor black instead.)

But here is my real point:

The criminalization of drug sales and use has clogged our prisons and the judicial systems that puts users in prisons. De-criminalizing drug sales and use would ease prison cost and crowding, but would also place the general public at increased risk from people made stupid, incompetent and crazy by mind and judgement altering substances.

Perhaps a solution lies in eliminating criminal penalties for simply selling or using drugs and increasing penalties for crimes in which drug or alcohol are a factor. Sentences are increased for people who commit a crime with a firearm. Why not simply increase penalties for people who commit a crime - any crime - with drugs in their system? Abuse your spouse or kids with drugs in your system? Stiffer penalty. Run a traffic light with drugs in your system? Stiffer penalty.  Increased drug testing in schools and the workplace would help insure that those environments remain safe and sober. The annual cost of drug tests would certainly increase, but it would most likely be offset by a reduction in the cost of prisons.

Such a policy would provide increased protection from people who use drugs and commit crimes, while protecting the freedom of people to engage in self-destructive behavior as long as it doesn't impact the welfare of others.

In spite of a preponderance the evidence that the Democrats are angry at President Bush for wrangling us into an unjustified war and want to take control of the Executive Branch of government in order to bring our troops back from Iraq and Afganistan, it is possible to reason that Bush-bashing is just flak, an explosive smoke screen intended to divert attention from their real goal which is not to undo what Bush has done but to undo what their real arch nemesis - Ronald Reagan - accomplished.
 
On the left lies socialism; on the right, capitalism. Reagon, the complete capitalist, upstaged the Left with its failed socialistic social engineering programs, using capitalism to end the Cold War, tear down the Iron Curtain, and encourage the world's communist leaders to compete economically instead of militarily. How embarrassing for the Left.

If the Left, the side that denies Terrorism and thinks that socialist tyrants such as Chavez and Ahmadinejad are not as bad as some say, occupy the Whitehouse in 2008, don't look for an immediate retreat from the Middle East. The Left would not mind if Bush loses the war, but could not itself tolerate failure. It will continue the war, blaming everything on Bush, while aiming its big guns on forwarding its socialist agenda.

The problem is: a move on the part of the US toward socialism will most likely serve to destabilize countries moving toward free economies and freer and more open societies, and further entrench in socialism and totalitarianism those too corrupt to do the hard work needed to follow Reagan's lead.

At 62, I have seen a lot of elections. I don't remember a Presidential race as important to our future as the one just ahead.

If Hillary Clinton is elected our next President, she will presumably govern with the assistance of Democrat majorities in the House and Senate, leaving only the Supreme Court with a (for the present) conservative edge. 

Syzygy (the alignment of three bodies) is usually momentous. There is no reason to believe a Democratic Syzygy beginning within the year would be anything less than momentous. Especially with a former President as First Spouse.

I prefer a government that is not controlled by a single party because it means that both parties must pretty much agree to any major changes in our country's laws. "Control" of Congress and the White House by a single party relegates the party out of power to the role of spolier or obstructionist or - worse - abdicator to the will of the party in power.

One thing is for sure should the Democrat Party take all the marbles in the coming elections: they won't have anyone at all to blame but themselves should they blunder. Fear-of-failure might actually make the Democratic Party more conservative should they achieve total power. On the other hand, total power might make them arrogant and even more overbearing than they are now. It will be interesting to see the Dems do with total power - should it be given them - and/or what total power does to them.

An advertisement for an event in San Francisco depicting gays in leather with sex toys arranged (poorly) in imitation of the Last Supper drew the outrage of Catholic Church and subsequent "get a grip" response from government and media. One wonders why the advertisers didn't dress their models in turbans. Perhaps they didn't think they could as easily have blown off an Islamic response?

Along with PC for political correctness, we have to deal today with RC for religious correctness or racial correctness.

No question about it: our country depends for its survival on a free Press. In countries that lack a free press, the cause is a totalitarian government. In our country, it is a press willing to trade slant for access, neutrality for the perceived social welfare. What the members of the press seem to have forgotten is that the function of a free press is to provide the people with the facts they need to make sound decisions. A press that strives to influence the people rather than simply inform the people is not a free press but a shadow arm of government.