Paul Luvera Journal

Public radio KUOW carried a story, today, about the Idaho Republican party and its transformation from its traditional character. Apparently there are now strong factions within the party at odds with one another. One member of the party was quoted as saying:  "I visualized myself as more conservative than many, and that's what I thought until I was rudely awakened by some of these other people who started calling me a liberal." Idaho has been so Republican that the joke is the Democrats could…

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The first world war lasted from 1914 to 1918. Along the  Western front there were some six thousand  miles of trenches extending from the sea to the mountains. The trenches were subject to cannon bombardment and the fighting involved crossing the area between both sides trenches, known as "no man's land" to the enemy trenches where hand to hand killing took place. The strain of this kind of war and the life in trenches took a mental toll. In WW I it was called…

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Lita and I are in Arizona this week, and like Dorothy I have a feeling we are not in the United States anymore. This is Arizona where reality and fantasy are like distant cousins who hardly meet anymore. Martin Luther King Junior could have been talking about Arizona when he said: "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -Martin Luther King, Jr. A recent article, entitled "Total Eclipse" by Timothy Egan in the New…

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I wasn't going to comment on politics because it is such a waste of time, however I don’t know about you but I am totally fed up with the Republican candidate’s political efforts and their debates as well as a worthless Congress locked in a total stalemate while people suffer economic pain. Who cares about the army of Republican want-to-be-presidents as they continue to debate while the public knows they will say anything to get elected…well with the exception of…

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Here are some viewpoints about President Obama from last Sunday's New York Times which I  think reflect the views of a growing number of people. Michael G Brautigam wrote the paper a letter which I thought was insightful. He wrote: “The headline and the art for Dr. Willenbring's letter suggested that our cerebral and detached president is playing political chess, but I see it more as high stakes political poker. For this vastly different game, the president is ill suited. In…

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Recent Republican and Tea Party debates have revealed much about the lack of compassion of it's members. In the Tampa CNN Tea Party Express debate, moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul a hypothetical question about a young man who elects not to purchase health insurance. The man has a medical crisis, goes into a coma and needs expensive care. “Who pays?” Blitzer asked. “That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risks,” Paul answered. “This whole idea that you…

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After saying everyone is sick of politics I can’t resist speaking about it anyway given the results of the November election. The main reason people are angry is the economy. We are a long ways from the thrill of electing the first black president and who was thoughtful, dignified and a decent man. The slow pace of job replacement and the housing crisis fuel the discontent. While his efforts at the health bill were appropriate he should have waited until…

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It sounds like such a good deal – the proverbial free lunch regarding Initiative 1098.  My friend Bill Gates Sr looks so sincere in those ads and what he says is compelling. You vote for a state income tax on the rich and your property taxes go down and schools benefit plus the only ones that get taxed are the few wealthy. Everyone else gets off "scot free" so let's stick it to the wealthy – right? Well, you remember the classic …

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Edward Gonalez, a emeritus professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times about the position of the Democrats today. He says that the administration and the Congressional Democrats are in deep trouble because they did not concentrate on the economy and loss of jobs, but rather spent a year fighting over a health care plan that only served to further divide politically. He believes it was…

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