Here is a comparison of what should be very similar moments: Senator McCain saying how a decision cost him more years in a prison camp at 10:04 of Part 2 of the  Saddleback forum where he just said,

But I wasn't in good physical shape. In fact, I was in rather bad physical shape. So I said no.

Note that there is not a grimace of pain, nor even a furrowed brow, and not a sign of stress in his voice for what he describes as the "toughest decision I ever made". Contrast this with the image of Nikali Schartz, who was in a Nazi war camp, who found out that he was almost sent to the Dora camp, an almost certain death sentence at 6:33 on CBS Holocaust I . The voice of Nikali Schartz drops. His brow furrows. You can tell the pain, even after all this time!

For once, we can play Budget Hero and change the federal budget in this high quality game from MPR, seeing if we could do better than the current federal leadership, other Democrats and especially Republicans. Basically, Republicans do poorly just like in real life. Republicans like to pretend that war does not cost that much, so they don't cut war. Then the next biggest factor is the Bush tax cuts. So stopping the war and taxing progressively goes a long way toward solving our budget crisis.

From Teddy Roosevelt:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the [wo]man who points out how the strong [wo]man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the [wo]man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends him[her]self for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if [s]he fails, at least [s]he fails while daring greatly, so that his[her] place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Updated because Teddy Roosevelt would not have excluded women, Eleanor Roosevelt would have seen to that!

Republican John McCain blames deadly Minnesota bridge collapse on pork-barrel spending.

... McCain, while campaigning in Pennsylvania, told reporters: "The bridge in Minneapolis didn't collapse because there wasn't enough money. The bridge in Minneapolis collapsed because so much money was spent on wasteful, unnecessary pork-barrel projects."
(StarTribune)

And here is the pork, from McCain's potential Vice Presidential Candidate, it is Republican Minnesota Governor Pawlenty Pork: The New Minnesota Twins Stadium

This fall, we are expecting a tons of media ads with deceptions with a ton of money behind them that we can't possibly counter in a reasonable time for any reasonable amount of money. So what do we do?

The idea is inoculation against deception.

Officially the inoculation theory is

1 Warn the receiver of the impending attack.
2 Make a weak attack.
3 Get the receiver to actively defend the attitude.

Inoculation Theory

All steps can be used, although just using step 1 of the above is effective.

Political change needs the force of social movement to happen! For example, Lyndon Johnson, the great political power needed Martin Luther King, the great social movement power to make the changes of civil rights happen. And Martin Luther King needed Lyndon Johnson to also be there, to politically use that social movement power. Right now, we have a peace social movement that has 70% of the American people with us. Yet we need a peace committed president instead of the war committed President Bush or the the war committed John McCain, to end our American initiated wars. We need the joint force of social power and political power.

St Paul is constrained in possible parade routes for the Republican Nation Convention(RNC) on September 1-4 by a number of factors: the river, cliffs, bluffs, major highways, and limited bridges. In addition, fast access must be maintained to hospitals, secure access to the XCEL center and access for all the people who live here to continue living here. We have limited traffic capability and limited parking as well, so that means we have arrange places for buses to park and wait, similar to the system used for the state fair. By law, the parades need to be in sight and sound of the XCEL center, which I interpret to mean one side of the XCEL center has to be on the parade route. Our restrictions are so tight, that basically there will have to be just one parade route for the whole convention. With one parade route, streets can be set aside and local people will know how to navigate. The main route can then be announced prior to the earliest permit time, which allows planning for all the groups who wish to come.

Republicans do not know how to win a war, they think if you have a gun on someone that you have won. Republicans do not know how to provide security, they xray people at airports while whole giant containers come into this country unchecked. Republicans are so bad on security, that they they invaded a whole country and did not capture the one target person - Osama Bin Laden. Republicans are so bad on security, that they then  invaded Iraq that had nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden. Republicans are so bad on security that if soldiers, with no weapons, with no organization and no training came into this country, we could not repeal that invasion.

Oh, wait, that has already happened. They are called immigrants

Every meet the guy in high school who is trying to do the grossest uber guy jokes to impress the girls? And when it fails, he works on a grosser "more impressive" joke? Well, the US is trying make friends and influence people by smacking them better with our military might. Republican thinking: Is Iraq unstable, well more military might applied longer should do the trick! People who believe this say "We are in this for the long haul" or "If we leave, it will get worse". Unhappy Republican thought goes like this "That the Iraq War was a good idea, but that we lost only because of botched implementation by the Bush administration"(from WayneNight's diary). Every Democrat should be clearly saying wrong strategy not wrong implementation!

"Collateral damage" are the words that are used to describe the situation where US soldiers are killing Iraqi civilians - men, women and children. The words "collateral damage" have no emotional impact, no sense of urgency and no sense of something wrong. If those same words, "collateral damage" were to describe U.S. police killing U.S. civilians - men, women and children, would we accept that? When a person, drunk beyond the ability to walk, drives a car into many people, killing them, do we call that "collateral damage" or "murder"? Yet all of these acts are unintentional death.

We can end the Iraq OCCUPATION, there is no winning or losing, only ending. So lets start calling it the Iraq Occupation, every Democratic Senator and every Democratic Representative could easily get on board with this request. A simple step to please us, peace makers. An occupation has a police force, a war has soldiers and armies. An occupation has a homegrown ruling government, where a war ignores the occupied people's government. The phrase "Iraq Occupation" would be a framing win for our peace side of the political conversation. So lets ask everyone to call it the Iraq Occupation!

Imagine a football game strategy where you could only go left or right directionally. It would make it very hard to have a good strategic game. Yet we have done this with the thinking strategy for good government, there is only left and right. I think we should get off the line and have good three dimensional good government strategy, more on the par of good three dimensional football game strategy. So I nominate the new direction for progressives: forward!

Left should mean "left out" as in all of us left out of the current Republican party power structure and their decision making discussions. Not only Democrats are left out, so are Greens, Independents, Libertarians and those not of any party. I think people inside the Republican party are left out, like Goldwater Republicans, like fiscally responsible Republicans, like salvation (Do unto others...) Republicans, etc. Does anyone feel listened to by government or politicians, on any government level? The "left" means all of us feeling left out.

I hate to see money wasted. It is a simple fact that Republicans control the executive - the management part of our federal government. So, yes, "waste" and "mismanagement" have to be directed to who is in charge of the executive - the management, in this case Republicans!

Yesterday, I was watching local news about a bus rollover. Every news station is working this story for maximal emotion content. The school bus is shown on its side, next to the very mangled car. The young kids are interviewed, talking about how frightened they were, expressions dancing across their faces. Even a father is interviewed talking about this has happened twice and how that makes him feel. Major emotional impact, yet no one had died and yet no child had been majorly hurt.The accident occurred on a dangerous bit of road, so it would be hard to say someone is to blame. Yet here it is, major emotional coverage for something that requires no public policy change nor consideration. While this is a true and painful for story those involved, the story should be ranked in coverage with the importance in everyone’s life. Yet we know that news service likes sensational emotional news. That is why the coverage of the Iraq war is so different from normal news. So why is Iraq news, without heart and without compassion?

Last night, I unexpectedly heard one of our local candidates on national television, it was Keith Ellison on Tavis Smiley. The first statement from Keith was about peace. I was in shock and I could not figure out why for awhile. Then I realized why: no one ever talks about peace on national TV. It is always war on terror, the Iraq war, the Afganistan war, the war on drugs, war for this and war for that. When did we become such a war embracing culture?

(Fill in candidate name) is associated with a group that is
· dedicated to torture and secret prisons
· dedicated to holding US citizens without charges or arrest for years
· dedicated to not following the law
· dedicated to government spending on credit - in spend now pay later policies
· dedicated to reducing and removing civil rights
· dedicated to awarding government contracts without bidding or accountability
· dedicated to lying and deceiving the American people
· dedicated to starting multiple wars without the capability or skill to wage war successfully
· dedicated to taking funds from education, homeland defense, health care, social security and spending that money in chosen wars aboard

It is the quiet before the storm in August. We are feeling it. When everyone looks around at the calm quiet, yet the change of air pressure and that prickly feeling tells us a storm is coming. Since we are feeling it without having a specific target, we beating up on little things that irritate us, like a fly in the kitchen, or a small offense.

The current people in power have now started three wars, would they stop at another war? The current people in power gave away $9 billion dollars in government corruption, would they stop at any corruption? The current people in power have tortured innocent people for years even on to death, is there any offense they would not commit? So is anyone really expecting that the people in power will just allow an electorial change of power. Oops, I have said it. There is a storm coming, we just do not know how or when. So we have to be ready.