Outside of the con job of getting enough Americans to believe his lies about the reasons for the military invasion/occupation of Iraq, W. Bush's veto (his 4th veto) of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is one of the more symbolic acts of his mis-leadership in the White House.

US Congress passed the SCHIP legislation to add $35 billion over five years to allow an additional 4 million children into the program. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100307A.shtml

Contrast that to the quagmire in Iraq where W Bush wants another $200 billion in the short term. He's supports 100s of billions of dollars in social-spending on military operations for the big military welfare machine - that fills the pockets of defense contractors like Haliburton and makes our world more dangerous with the bullying-tactics - but he can't support healthcare coverage for 4 million more kids.

Imagine if our government was paying out bonuses (like they are doing with the military recruits) to people to become nurses so our country could provide healthcare in every school across the nation. Why not- at schools you've got a captive audience. I bet it would be a small fraction of the $750 billion we spend annually (in overall costs) on the Military-Industrial Complex.

Police, fire, roads, education are all handled by social spending... what's the hang up with these Republicans. US-based businesses are at a competitive advantage with other countries that have a national health care insurance.... due to our wasteful healthcare system... yet the GOP faithful are too ideological bent to ever figure it out.

What a complete tragedy for Americans to watch this type of third rate leadership we have at the White House. W. Bush is backing his buddies at Big Pharma, in the insurance industry, and in the War-making industry... at a major expense to working families across America.

Todd Erickson, NE Mpls

The polls show how out of touch W Bush and Dick Cheney are with the American people. The escalation of violence by our US military occupation in Iraq is unacceptable but that train is coming down the tracks.

The fact that the W Bush administration was able to sell the American people a war based on lies and misinformation after 09-11-01, is the result of the huge failure by our mainstream mass media here in the USA. They failed to expose the deceptions of the Bush administration in the lead-up to that invasion/occupation.

There was no reason we should have attacked a country that had a third-rate military and a country that its neighboring countries weren't afraid of. The result of the media's failure helped cause the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, 3,000 US troops, and 100s of billions of US taxpayer dollars.

Some US citizens are saying that the US Congress need to use their control of the purse strings to get W Bush in line when it comes to funding the war machine. I think they should do that, but as a nation, we need to do more than that because things could get a whole lot worse. For example, US or its junior military partner, Israel, could end up launching attacks on Iran.

The severity of the lies, crimes, and abuses of power committed by this president and his administration, demands the impeachment process. It is time that we return to the rule of law and to hold those who have violated the Constitution accountable for their actions.

Thomas Paine once said, "It is the duty of the patriotic citizen to protect his country from its government." Let's get serious about protecting our country from W Bush and Dick Cheney, and get these crooks out of office.

Todd Erickson, NE Mpls

===============================================

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012207S.shtml
Poll: Most Think Country on Wrong Track
By Darlene Superville
The Associated Press

Monday 22 January 2007

Washington - Americans are in a dark mood about the state of the union, the administration, Congress, Iraq and even some personal traits of President Bush, a poll finds.

Most believe the country is on the wrong track - a complete flip from five years ago, according to an AP-AOL News poll that finds little to cheer about in advance of Bush's State of the Union speech Tuesday night.

Americans see the president as likable, decisive and strong - but also stubborn. Only a minority think he is honest - 44 percent, down from 53 percent two years ago.

And people seem to have little confidence Bush and the Democrats who now control Congress and share responsibility with him for running the country can work together to solve its problems. Only four in 10 think the country will be better off with Democrats in charge of the House and Senate, the poll suggests.

Bush's speech will come nearly two weeks after he told the nation he is sending 21,500 additional U.S. troops to Iraq in a new effort to end violence there.

The White House says the speech will focus on a few issues, energy and health care among them, on which Bush might be able to reach agreement with Democrats, who control the House and Senate for the first time during his two-term presidency.

Two-thirds of Americans, 66 percent, think the country is on the wrong track. That's about the same as a year ago, when 65 percent thought so, the poll found.

That's a stark reversal from mid-January 2002, when 68 percent said the country was on the right track and 29 percent said it was not. Then, the nation was still coming to grips with the terrorist strikes four months earlier on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people. And, U.S. troops Bush sent to Afghanistan had toppled the Taliban government that harbored the terrorists believed responsible.

After the U.S. led an invasion of Iraq in March 2003, public support for the mission there began to slide as the war continued, the U.S. death toll climbed and the violence raged on.

John Raab, 77, of Allentown, Pa., a conservative Republican, said the United States can change course "if people rally around the president and he can get this fiasco in Iraq under control."

Kerry Moore-O'Leary, a 31-year-old Democrat from Boston, said it will take new leadership.

"I really think the only time we are going to see some real changes is when we elect a new president," she said. "Even people who are moderate Republicans are going to say that we need someone who's a breath of fresh air."

Lawmakers in both political parties have promised more bipartisanship and comity since the November elections, when voters took away the reins of Congress from Bush's Republican Party.

But the public appears largely skeptical of those pledges.

Nearly two-thirds, 60 percent, have no confidence that the political institutions at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue can work together to solve the nation's problems. Overall, the public has grown less confident since the days after the election when nearly half, 47 percent, expressed confidence that Bush and Congress could work together.

Four in 10, or 42 percent, think the country will now be better off with Democrats controlling Congress, while 18 percent think it will be worse off. Thirty-nine percent think it won't make much difference.

Iraq remains the public's top concern, with 65 percent disapproving of Bush's handling of the situation.

Support for sending more troops to Iraq grew slightly after Bush's speech, although the idea is still unpopular.

Almost one-third of the public - 31 percent - favor the plan, an improvement from 26 percent in a survey done almost entirely before he spoke to the country Jan. 10. Thirty-five percent now believe additional troops will help stabilize the situation in Iraq, also up from 25 percent.

Bush's overall approval rating inched upward to 36 percent, from 32 percent early in the month. Despite that low score, 53 percent of Americans say he is likable; 58 percent, decisive; and 58 percent, strong.

In the eyes of 83 percent of Americans, he also is stubborn.

"Mainly it's his 'stay the course' attitude," said Bill Basher, 21, a Republican from Angola, N.Y.

In other survey findings:

Americans rated health care, the economy and Iraq and terrorism the issues they care about most. When asked to choose the issue most important to them personally, 24 percent named Iraq, the top choice.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the first woman in that office, scored a job approval rating of 51 percent, significantly higher than that of Congress, at 34 percent approval.
The telephone poll of 1,005 adults was conducted Jan. 16-18 by Ipsos, an international polling firm. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

AP Manager of News Surveys Trevor Tompson and Associated Press writer Ann Sanner contributed to this report.

Star Tribune
Letters to the Editor
opinion@startribune.com

January 7, 2007

I agree with Tom Obert from Alexandria that people more concerned with the social good of our society would be more generous in general. Blue-state Minnesota is a good example of this.

Minnesota invests more in the common good because Minnesotans are more involved with social movements and see the need for collective action at all levels to protect our social health.

As an individual involved in social movements, it is quite apparent to me that non-profits need funding to do what governments are unwilling or unable to do. I hope we can get more studies of the generous nature of us secular-giving people who are active in non-profits and with our civic responsibility.

Just because most of my giving is non-church related, it shouldn't be discounted which is what I suspect has happened with the source of Jonah Goldberg's information in Professor Arthur Brooks. I see giving at the state and individual level equally important for our common good.

Todd L. Erickson
NE Minneapolis, MN
todd9500@msn.com (e-mail)

======================================
Letters in a batch for Sunday, Jan. 7, 2007
CHARITY IS APPARENT

The common good

Regarding "Joe Churchgoer is better than Sam Secular" (Opinion Exchange, Jan. 5): Would someone please explain to Jonah Goldberg that the so-called noncaring secular blue states provide welfare to the so-called "better" religious red states by paying more in federal taxes than they receive back in return? The opposite is true, of course, for the subsidized red states.

Maybe he and his "better" friends can remember that the next time they, with a sneer on their lips, refer to liberals as bleeding hearts.

TOM OBERT, ALEXANDRIA, MINN.

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Last update: January 04, 2007 – 6:12 PM

Jonah Goldberg: Joe Churchgoer is better than Sam Secularist
Why? Because, a new book implies, he's more likely to donate his time and money.

Jonah Goldberg

Americans are better people than Europeans. Hold on, it gets better. Religious Americans are better than nonreligious Americans. And religious Americans tend to be politically conservative.
This admittedly tendentious rendering of reality is how some on the right are interpreting "Who Really Cares?" by Arthur Brooks, a professor of public administration at Syracuse University. Brooks doesn't really deal with what makes one person "better" or "worse" than any other. But it's fair to say that how much a person gives -- of either his money or time -- is usually considered an important indicator of character.

The further to the left you are -- particularly to the secular left -- the less likely you are to donate your time or money to charity. Imagine two demographically identical people, except that Joe goes to church regularly and rejects the idea that the government should redistribute wealth to lessen inequality, while Sam never goes to church and favors state-driven income redistribution. Brooks says the data indicate that not only is Joe Churchgoer nearly twice as likely as Sam Secularist to give money to charities in a given year, he will also give 100 times more money per year to charities (and 50 times more to nonreligious ones).

Because Brooks is using vast pools of data, and because he's talking about averages rather than individuals, there is no end of exceptions to prove the rule. No doubt there are pious Scrooges and Santa-like atheists. But, basically, if you are religiously observant, a married parent and skeptical toward the role of government, you are much more likely to be generous with your time and money.

You're also more likely to be a political conservative, but it's a mistake to find causation in that correlation. Certain types of people are likely to be conservative and to be charitable. But being a conservative doesn't make you charitable.

The generations-old propaganda of the left depicts the rich right as stingy, unfeeling and selfish. "Blue state" America spends a lot of time talking about how much more caring and enlightened it is. But that's with somebody else's money. When it's their own money, that's a different story.

What's vastly more interesting is what Brooks' data says about America. Our charitableness is a distinct cultural artifact. America's simply a lot more generous than most other countries. Not counting government aid, we give, per capita, 3½ times more than the French, seven times more than Germans and 14 times more than the Italians.

This is not merely a byproduct of our wealth. In fact, one of the most interesting observations of the book is that the most giving Americans, measured as a share of their income, are the working poor. The rich come second and the middle class last.

The difference lies in European attitudes toward God and state. Europeans have largely turned their backs on the former and consider the latter the answer to everything.

Europeans defend their comparative stinginess by claiming that their outsized welfare states, and the taxes they pay into them, amount to charity. Brooks demolishes these and related assertions. But the most basic response is this: Compelling payment by others through high taxes isn't charity.

What's interesting to me is that Europeans are uncharitable for the same reason liberal secularists tend to be. In America, as in Europe, the more you think the state should provide for everything, the less you think anybody else should provide anything.

Brooks, a cautious social scientist, doesn't tie all this together as much as he could. Europe's transformation into what he and others call a "post-Christian" civilization has its roots in the turn-of-the-century switch from religion to statism, when "God will provide" was replaced with "the state will." This vision is a European import, and in many respects the history of liberalism in America is the history of Europeanization. Woodrow Wilson's war socialism, FDR's New Deal, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and Bill Clinton's Third Way were all proselytized as attempts to make America more like "enlightened" Europe.

Maybe such a transformation would make America a better place. But the data suggests it wouldn't make Americans better people.

Jonah Goldberg's column is distributed by Tribune Media Services.

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Star Tribune
Letters to the Editor
opinion@startribune.com

January 7, 2007

CARTOON DEPICTS UNFORTUNATE REALITY WE MUST LIVE WITH

I think Sack's "Blood on the W. Bush administration hands" cartoon (01-05-07) is exactly how many Americans feel about the illegal and immoral warmongering actions of our Executive branch government in Iraq.

In addition to the 3,000 US Soldiers dead and 10,000s of Iraqi civilians dead, we have to live with the fact that our government is also responsible for illegal detentions and torture of innocent people because the feel they are above all laws.

The cartoon captured the results that come from unacceptable criminal war-hawk behavior by our US government with their military occupation of Iraq. We can do better as a nation and it's time to see that the legitimate impeachment process be used to make sure the Executive Branch of our government will think twice before it deceives our nation into war. We must learn from our mistakes and hold people accountable for their actions.

Resources:
http://www.AfterDowningStreet.org
http://www.startribune.com/sack
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010607D.shtml

Todd L. Erickson
NE Minneapolis, MN
todd9500@msn.com (e-mail)

Letters the Editor
West Central Tribune
P.O. Box 839
Willmar, MN
56201-0839
letters@wctrib.com

January 2, 2007

R.I.P...... to the 3,000+ US soldiers who have died in Iraq.

The soldiers serving in Iraq should not be blamed for the quagmire in Iraq. That responsibility rests with the elected and appointed civilian leaders of our Executive Branch of government who used lies and deceptions to sell this immoral and illegal war.

Soldiers defending one another should never be viewed as fighting for nothing. Protecting fellow comrades in combat is an honorable service in itself. Soldiers in combat don't spend much time thinking about policies that got them there, they look after one another.

My condolences goes out to the families of the loved ones lost or injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let's make sure that our soldiers returning get the proper medical care they deserve to deal with physical and psychological injuries.

May this country once again try and learn from its past fearmongering and warmongering mistakes.

Let's make sure we hold accountable the leaders who misled our great nation into a war with lies and deceptions so the office of the President will never be able get away with these types of war crimes in the future.

Let's show support for our troops and cut our losses in Iraq... by bringing our troops home from this quagmire. Let's stop draining our federal treasury with excessive military expenditures that only make us weaker as a nation.

Todd L. Erickson
NE Minneapolis, MN
todd9500@msn.com