The Kansas Higher Education Budget Slash

From Representative Paul Davis, yesterday, from his Facebook page:

"Republican House leaders said yesterday that higher education can handle a $29 million cut. They said the concerns of hardworking middle class taxpayers are just 'rhetoric' and 'have no merit.' 

Fact: Higher education has been cut 40% per pupil since 1999, and for the first time in Kansas history, tuition comprises more in college funding than state aid."

Are not our children the best reason for wanting them to get a great education?

Is this not one of the best and smartest things we can do for them, let alone our state and nation?

Since when does wanting a good education not benefit everyone involved? 

If you haven't had a chance to sign this petition yet, please go here and do so:  http://bit.ly/Y8N0EQ.

Links: House Speaker Merrick OK with 4 percent cut to higher education LJWorld.com

Paul Davis | Facebook

Who would Jesus help?

The latest "Star Trek" movie and the US

Far too many people in America, it seems, think this is either where we here in the US are now or where we're headed, very shortly, politically:

Happy 3rd birthday, "Obamacare"!

And, of course, it's actually the Affordable Care Act.

Just a few of the benefits we Americans have, because of this important and so-necessary, long-overdue legislation:

• Provides Coverage to Americans with Pre-existing Conditions: You may be eligible for health coverage under the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan.
• Protects Your Choice of Doctors: Choose the primary care doctor you want from your plan’s network.
• Keeps Young Adults Covered: If you are under 26, you may be eligible to be covered under your parent’s health plan.
• Ends Lifetime Limits on Coverage: Lifetime limits on most benefits are banned for all new health insurance plans.
• Ends Pre-Existing Condition Exclusions for Children: Health plans can no longer limit or deny benefits to children under 19 due to a pre-existing condition.
• Ends Arbitrary Withdrawals of Insurance Coverage: Insurers can no longer cancel your coverage just because you made an honest mistake.
• Reviews Premium Increases: Insurance companies must now publicly justify any unreasonable rate hikes.
• Helps You Get the Most from Your Premium Dollars: Your premium dollars must be spent primarily on health care – not administrative costs.
• Restricts Annual Dollar Limits on Coverage: Annual limits on your health benefits will be phased out by 2014.
• Removes Insurance Company Barriers to Emergency Services: You can seek emergency care at a hospital outside of your health plan’s network.

• Covers Preventive Care at No Cost to You: You may be eligible for recommended preventive health services. No copayment.
• Guarantees Your Right to Appeal: You now have the right to ask that your plan reconsider its denial of payment. 

You can find yet many more benefits to us Americans from this legislation linked here: 

Small Businesses

Learn about tax credits to help cover the costs of covering your employees.

Seniors
Read about new annual wellness exams and prescription drug discounts.

Women
Learn about how the Affordable Care Act benefits women.

Young Adults
You can now stay insured under your parent’s plan until age 26.

Gonzaga loses?? To who??

Number one seed Gonzaga loses, that's big news but to whom??

Wichita State knocks out top-seeded Gonzaga

Kansas, in the news

Kansas in a commentary, anyway.

This one:

Human Stupidity Is Destroying the World 

"In sum and all averaged out, it’s safe to say about 37 percent of Americans are just are not very bright. Or rather, quite shockingly dumb. Perhaps beyond reach. Perhaps beyond hope or redemption. Perhaps beyond caring about anything they have to say in the public sphere ever again. Sorry, Kansas."

Largely, we can thank the Republican takeover of the Statehouse in Topeka for this along with, now, Governor Sam Brownback and his goal/desire to run for the Presidency in 2016 on the backs of the middle-, lower- and working-classes of his state.

I post this here not to insult Kansans but partly to lament the loss of what was, the intelligence that used to come out of the state and partly to challenge Kansans to take their state back from these ignorant, selfish, corporate troglodytes.

Corporate Condescension

I can hardly believe it:

The latest in men's fashion

I saw this ad in The New York Times last week and was stunned.

Besides being stunned at how dull and awful this "fashion" is, I was stunned at the idea that a designer would create something that looks so clearly, I don't know, what? Stereotypically Communist? 

It's as though the designer thought, "Oh, what the hell, the corporations are breaking the lower- and middle-classes and impoverishing them, let's just dress them like the poor, the Proletariat, the workers, too and be done with it." 

Happy birthday, Albert Einstein, belated

"The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible."

--Albert Einstein, 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955

Link: 

Albert Einstein Official Site

Albert Einstein - Wikipedia

Albert Einstein - Biography

Albert Einstein Quotes 

The local KCMO Vet on the 2nd Iraq War

Link to original post:  I Dare You Watch This Clip From A Dying Veteran

Things Americans don't do

Things we Americans don't do but Australians, wisely, do.

From economist Robert Reich's Facebook page last evening:

"Besides the other positive attributes I listed several days ago when I came to Australia, I should add several others -- 

a requirement that everyone votes, one of the best and most responsible safety nets for Australians who fall into poverty, including 

an efficient system of universal health care and 

public pensions, 

an excellent civil service, 

a carbon tax, 

a financial sector that hasn't become a casino, 

and a business community committed to improving living standards of Australians."

While it's true that Australia doesn't spend nearly as large a portion of its GDP on the military as we do, that's true of every other nation in the world. What makes Australia stand out is a strong sense of civil society, evident in almost all its institutions. (For example, Aussies don't like the current Labor government mainly, it seems, because Prime Minister Julia Gillard was put in place via a back-room deal that replaced Kevin Rudd, the Labor Leader they thought they were voting for in the last election.) The challenge here in future years is to move from a commodities-based export economy to a high-tech one -- but it's a challenge the nation seems fully aware of, and, given the strength of its civil and economic institutions, seems fully capable of pulling off."

The thing is, we Americans don't work together any longer. Congress doesn't. The political parties don't. We're broken and a lot of it, at least in government, is because the wealthy and corporations have bought our representatives. They legislate for them--for those wealthy and corporations--first and us second, if even then.

We have to go back and work together again. We have to be Americans, first and last. We have to work together to fix our problems. We have to compromise.

It's really not a dirty word.

Links:  Robert Reich

Robert Reich | Facebook

Robert Reich - Wikipedia

Entertainment overnight

The Iraq War, by the numbers

Number of years since the U.S. invaded Iraq: 10

Number of Iraqi civilians dead as a consequence: At minimum, between 123,000 and 134,000

Number of Iraqis internally displaced or who fled the country: 2.8 million (that’s one in 12 Iraqis)

Number of U.S. troop casualties: 4,484

Number of coalition troop casualties: 4,803

Number of U.S. troops wounded: 32,223

Number of non-Iraqi contractors killed: at least 463

Number of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder diagnoses in U.S. service members: 103,792

Number of bombs dropped in Shock and Awe Campaign: 4,845

U.S. financial cost so far: $1.7 trillion

Amount owed to U.S. veterans in benefits: $490 billion

Predicted cost to U.S. over next four decades: $6 trillion

Cost of U.S. reconstruction efforts: $60 billion

Amount of reconstruction effort funds wasted: over $8 billion

Halliburton overcharges classified by the Pentagon as Unreasonable and Unsupported: $1.4 billion

Number of WMDs discovered: 0

Sources: Costs of War Project, Congressional Research Services, News Sentinel, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction .

With thanks to Matt Payton's Tumble-o-rama for bringing this to our attention.

The Letter--from the local Iraq Veteran to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney

The previous post pointed out that a local, Kansas City, Missouri veteran wrote a letter to now former-President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney.  Herewith, the entire letter:

A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran

To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney

From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness. 

Veteran from KCMO pens letter to Bush, Cheney

From The Huffington Post yesterday and TruthOut earlier:

Tomas Young, Dying Iraq War Veteran, Pens 'Last Letter' To Bush, Cheney On War's 10th Anniversary

Days after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Tomas Young, then a 22-year-old from Kansas City, Mo., made a decision repeated by many other Americans around the country: He was going to enlist in the military in hopes of getting even with the enemies who had helped coordinate the deaths of nearly 3,000 men, women and children.

Less than three years later, Young's Army service placed him not in Afghanistan -- where then-President George W. Bush had told the nation the terrorist plot had originated -- but in Iraq. On April 4, 2004, just five days into his first tour, Young's convoy was attacked by insurgents. A bullet from an AK-47 severed his spine. Another struck his knee. Young would never walk again, and in fact, for the next nearly nine years, he would suffer a number of medical setbacks that allowed him to survive only with the help of extensive medical procedures and the care of his wife, Claudia.

The incident turned Young into one of the most vocal veteran critics of the Iraq War. He has, however, saved his most powerful criticism for what he claims will be his last. Young says he'll die soon, but not before writing a letter to Bush and former Vice President Cheney on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War.

From Young's letter, published on TruthDig:

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Young goes on to attack the "cowardice" of Bush and Cheney for avoiding military service themselves, and to encourage them to "stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness."

(Read Young's entire letter here.)

Young was the subject of the 2007 documentary "Body of War," which was about his recovery process and the Iraq War. At a February screening of the film, Young told the audience that he planned to end his life in April.

According to the Ridgefield Press, Young announced that he would stop taking all nourishment and life-extending medications at that time. He's since said that the deterioration to his body from the injury and ensuing complications would make it physically impossible for him to commit suicide in any other way.

"It's time," he told the audience over Skype, while seated beside his wife. "When I go I want be alert and aware."

Young spoke more about his decision in a recent interview with journalist and Iraq War critic Chris Hedges.

“I made the decision to go on hospice care, to stop feeding and fade away," he said. "This way, instead of committing the conventional suicide and I am out of the picture, people have a way to stop by or call and say their goodbyes. I felt this was a fairer way to treat people than to just go out with a note."

For the rest of Hedges' interview with Young, click here. For the rest of The Huffington Post's coverage on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War, click here.

On Mayor James speech today

Can we now get the kind of security for the mayor of Kansas City that we ought to already have?

Thank goodness nothing more serious--or worse--happened.

Because it certainly could have.

On the 10th Anniversary of George W Bush's Iraq War

President George W. Bush lied to us, ladies and gentlemen.

As did his Vice President Dick Cheney and now-former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, at minimum.

And the worst thing about it is that at least 4,488 Americans soldiers died because of it while a minimum of 32,021American soldiers were wounded. Added to that are the estimated 122,000+ Iraqis that were killed, let alone those wounded and/or made homeless.

It was and is a huge tragedy and debacle, besides being against our own, internal, national laws as well as against external, international laws.

It should never have happened and many, many lies were told and deceptions created in order to have it take place.

It happened. It took place.

And it took place on our watch.

We should absolutely explore who was responsible for it happening.

We should explore who lied.

And we should prosecute those that did, without question.

More than anything, we must make certain it and nothing remotely like it ever takes place again.

That's why this is so vitally important.

Links:  Iraq Body Count

Casualties in Iraq 

Casualties of Iraq war go beyond those who died in action

U.S. lacks mechanism to accurately track troops wounded in Iraq

Entertainment overnight

Kansas City Sports 2013

Tony's Kansas City may say what he will but this year looks as though it will be at least good for Kansas City, if not very good or even, possibly, great. 

The Kansas City Royals are undefeated in the pre-season and that's nothing to be totally 

ignored, by any means. The players don't go out there in those pre-season games not to win. It seems they should go at least better than 50% of the games won this year and that's a huge improvement over last year and the last few years.

Meanwhile, the Kansas City Chiefs have virtually, if not actually, gutted the team and

from top down. Say what you will about Clark Hunt and the management but these people a) know football and b) want to win, quite unlike David Glass and his discount management and ownership.

Sure, as ever, Tony and/or the pessimists (realists?) may be right but actually, this should, likely, be at least a good year for the home teams--including, of course KC Sporting soccer. 

Me? I think it's an entire possibility that either and even, possibly, both teams--the Royals and Chiefs--may end up in the playoffs, if only wildcard spots.

You have to admit, that's a heck of a lot better than we've done in past years.

Go Royals. Go Chiefs.