Redefined War On Terrorism

How do we pick and choose when we want to fight terrorism?
In the 90's, Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh laid a plot and successfully bombed at Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City. Lots of women and children were killed. It was a direct attack on "The People" of the United States - striking at the very fabric of our Federal Government. The two seemed to have ties with right wing extremists in the United States, and preached a message of hatred toward the United States and our Government. They were clearly terrorists - terrorists representing an extreme anti-government hatred from within our own borders.
Clinton could have declared a "War on Terrorism", I suppose, and spent hundreds of billions of money that we didn't have on trying to create a myth of security. But that didn't happen for two reasons:

• I think he was wiser than that, and not reckless with trying to scapegoat one particular group in order to take our eyes off of the real problems that we should be working to correct.
• The right wing in this country, and the vast media empire that they control, would never have allowed it, as it would have struck at the heart of movements that they actually seem to support.

Then, the next big terrorist attack occurred. This time they didn't strike at "The People" of our nation as represented by our government and our government agencies. Instead they struck at the symbol of corporate greed and the emerging Plutarcy that is taking control of our nation. This time, the death toll was much bigger, and the financial impact was even bigger. This time, the terrorism didn't come from the right wing cancer within our own country, but instead from the right wing cancer within the Islamic world - extreme Islamic Fundamentalism. This time, the right wing within our own country was firmly in power, and they pounced on the event to galvanize the sort of "demonization" that they could rally people around. They did a great job of manufacturing a "War on Terror", and using this guise to rape the public treasury of hundreds of billions of money that belong to The People.
Sure, we may have created some short term security gains in our country as a result. We seem to have been able to continue to thwart potential threats that were related to the right wing Islamists. However, just last week, a nut-case of another brand successfully executed another terrorist attack in our country. This time, there was not the great loss of life as the terrorist flew his plane into the IRS building in Texas, but the symbolism was the same as the McVeigh terrorist attack on OKC. This was an attack directly on The People of the United States of America, as represented by our government.
And where is the right wing and their giant media machine in this country?
I know that it is hard to believe, but now, instead of supporting a War on Terror, they actually appear to be supporting the Terrorists. They have kept the story very low-key in their media, and they have actually begun to spin up support for the "underlying causes" of this attack.

Hard to believe, I know, but apparently true. I continue to see media pieces focused on the sympathy for the sorts of frustration with the actions of our government that would lead to an outcry like this bombing.

Now, I'm no great supported of the IRS, or many of the ways that our government operates. But our government continues to be YOU AND ME. When someone attacks us in this manner, it is an act of terrorism, plain and simple. Our response should be the same in all cases. If we think that the appropriate response to 9/11 is to spend a trillion dollars on invading a couple of countries, then why isn't an appropriate response to OKC and the IRS bombing to spend at least a few hundred billion inside our own borders rooting out and destroying the sort of anti-government rhetoric and fundamentalism that makes this sort of thing happen?
Let me be very clear - I do not thing that is an appropriate or productive response, just like I don't think that what we have done in Iraq and Afganistan is appropriate or productive.

My point is very clear - the right wing in this country continues to control the message that gets to us, and grows ever more effective in their "big brother" role of thought control. Nobody seems outraged at this terrorist attack, and even worse, the right wing media seems to have done a GREAT job of getting us all to think that maybe what happened was OK - maybe we should open our minds to having a little sympathy for the underlying causes of the attack - the sense of oppression and injustice that seems to have been there.
Where was this sort of open-minded thought process in 2001? Those who suggested it were crucified.
All three attacks were equally wrong. They all three deserve similar response on our part. The people who carried them out, and the people who supported them, should be prosecuted. Period. I sympathize with none of them. However, in all cases, we SHOULD look at the underlying causes, and do what we can to correct the real problem. More on that later...

I'm just saying...
We need to wake up and see what the right wing is doing to manipulate us. Big Brother grows more effective every day, and this little example demonstrates it so very clearly.

Any Other Health Care Ideas?

As a conservative, I am curious about how the public will punish the right wing for their gross obstructionism and complete bankruptcy of ideas regarding health care. This is an area where the Republican Party, run by the extreme right wing, demonstrates again just how far they have strayed from core conservative principles.

The fiscal conservative wants as much as he can get for his dollar. He doesn't like wasteful spending. So, when it comes to healthcare, there are a couple of really simple facts that should drive every conservative in America to support radical change in what we do.

First, healthcare costs us twice as much as it costs the rest of the developed world. Absorb that a minute, because the media would have you believe think that we have reasonably priced healthcare in this country. There are several sources of information on the cost of healthcare - the REAL COST is what I am looking at - what does it cost us as a country to deliver healthcare to our citizens - regardless of how that is done? In 2007, Congressional Research Service, (remember congress was still controlled by the right wing in 2007 when this report was published), reported that in 2004, the US spent just over $6000 per person on healthcare. This is twice the average of other developed countries, (1st world big economy countries), and about 20% higher than the next most expensive nation.

So that's the first half of the equation - we pay WAY more than everyone else in the world for healthcare. Not just a little more - TWICE AS MUCH! The fiscal conservative in me doesn't like this at all. But wait, maybe healthcare in the country is just so good - just so much better than everywhere else - that this is one of those places where I need to just cool my jets, and accept that our culture wants to spend way more in order to get really really really great healthcare.

So I look around, and start asking the question. Just how much better is healthcare in the country than in the rest of the western world? Not for the ultra rich who can afford anything they want, but for the entire country - for all of us - because at the end of the day, one way or the other, we are all paying that $6000+/year to get this really cadillac healthcare, right?

Well, come to find out that we don't deliver healthcare that stands out head and shoulders above the rest of the developed world.

But wait, it's worst. We don't deliver healthcare that is better than all the rest of the countries at all.

But wait, it's worst. We don't deliver healthcare that is as good as the top western nations in the world.

In fact, the quality of the healthcare that we deliver in this country is worst than the entire western world. The key here is to measure some objective metric that applies across the population, and demonstrates overall health levels of the population as a whole. You can be unfair about this if you want, and look for only those measurements that either prove this as an understatement if you are one side of the argument, or those that prove this as an overstatement if you are on the other side of the argument. A good article in the Christian Science Monitor tries to put the best face possible on it I think - from the same year that the cost numbers above are quoted - 2004.

I don't want to split hairs. I am paying twice as much as the rest of the developed world, and I am not getting healthcare that is better than the rest of the world. THAT is indisputable regardless of what you want to argue.

So, the fiscal conservative in me says what we have is clearly the WRONG way to deliver healthcare, and we should be looking at the rest of the developed world to see what we can learn from them on how to do this better than we have been doing it.

Don't know the answers yet, all I know is that the Republican Party has been hell-bent throughout this debate on making sure that nothing changes. They haven't been offering alternatives plans or other ways to think about it - they have just been playing good lackeys to the corporate medical world, and doing all they can to prevent change.

And me, as a conservative, is disgusted once again at how far the Republican Party has strayed from true conservative principles.

Again.

And will the public punish them in any way? So long as the media keeps up their outstanding work of keeping the wool pulled down low over our eyes, and moving those shells around, they might just get away with it.

How incredibly sad...