Oklahoma Democrats

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I recently had the chance to go to the national World War II museum in New Orleans. There they have a new 4-D movie that does a fantastic job of telling the story of America’s role in the war, while keeping everyone  in the theater totally involved. I looked at the faces of the young people in the crowd as we exited the cinema. Some had been crying, others had that look that says “I never realized..”-the young woman in our group wanted to hear more stories about my Dad, who served in the Pacific for four long years. It was history done right, and it is needed now more than ever.

A recent study said that half of our college graduates cannot tell who was on what side in that greatest of all world struggles. That is bad enough, but it is a disaster for a Republic that counts on informed decisions by voters. We have had a lot of stressing of the need for math/science in schools since sputnik, but  civics and history are must-haves in a country that votes on foreign policy decisions. Too often they are taught as an afterthought, often by someone for whom it is not their primary focus. I was lucky-the football coaches that taught history at McAlester back in the day were almost all veterans, and they took their jobs seriously in the classroom. Others I have talked to were not so fortunate.

Other people have told me that “the semester ended before we even got to World War I ” or that some teachers didn’t want to stress war or conflict…as if this nation was  born or  has endured without war or conflict. Yes, to study that is sometimes unpleasant, and involves value judgments as to right and wrong. Deal with it…and as effectively summed up by Nathan Forrest (himself a controversial part of history) “war means fighting and fighting means killing”. Sometimes evil must be stopped by valor. Our students and young people appreciate it when they are finally not fed feel-good pablum or a suger-coated version of what happened.  My Dad, and many others, spent their best years in a world at war.  But in doing so  they stopped  mass murderers in their tracks.  We are in  similar struggles today. History and civics matter, because the life of this Republic that stands for freedom matters. Teach them well.-Ben Odom

-Ben Odom

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Anyone who remembers my races for Congress  will know I always talked about the need to invigorate our space program, which I have called the “gifted/talented program” for government. Since the new Obama budget came out this week, many have asked me what I thought about the grounding of our Moon/Mars mission capabilities. Let me answer on three levels.

First, the good news is that the NASA budget actually goes up, with some needed R&D funds for better robots and life science. But that is offset by the fact we  in effect wasted 9 billion dollars  over the last six years building and designing new rockets and spaceships that we are not going to launch. This administrations new reliance on the private sector for that vital “getting people off the ground” aspect of space is shocking, considering their lack of faith in the private sector to do  right by our public in so many other ways!

Second, it is never good to stop your program at a time when rival nations are ramping up their programs. We are at risk of being dependent on the Chinese and Russians to get astronauts to the space station or other  earth orbit missions for possibly a decade.  Looks like we are trying hard to become the Portugal of space development.

Third, and perhaps the most amazing thing to me-this is bad politics coming from a team that sure knew how to win in 2008. Not only does this go against the grain of the space platform that was campaigned on in the last election, it shows no dramatic vision for the future-and a lot of people wanted to vote for Obama because they felt he had vision.  To those who say we can’t afford to do both the increase Obama has planned AND continue the work in place-how silly. We are talking about 10-20 billion dollars out of a budget in the trillions. We have shoved money by the bushel at a host of projects to protect jobs or create jobs.  Doing both does that too, preserves our aerospace technology lead, and gives us national pride and security.

Count me in with my fellow Democrat Senator Nelson from Florida. This is a mistake, and is what happens when bean counters with no vision are the policy wonks you put in charge of a budget.  Blue ribbon panels and commissions or committees never have grand visions. But thank Heaven JFK and LBJ  did. This is penny wise and pound foolish.

-Ben Odom

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No to health care, no to veterans benefits, no to Obama policies on everything from foreign policy to the environment-it is clear opposition at all costs is the plan of the GOP for victory in 2010. On the state level, the agenda is a  bit different-push a far right agenda until the people realize that the GOP has gone too far, but in the meantime try and talk about Obama as much as you can to deflect attention from the extremism of it all. The sad part of it is we live in a time when people are  getting their “news” from whatever pre-screened ideological source they want, so critical thinking skills and real debate are at a premium.

Real problems almost never have an easy answer. Failure to find a middle-ground is not the point of our system.  Just voting “No” is not a solution. Do nothing on health care and watch premiums keep going up, and some folks will  die. Do nothing on the environment and watch climate change get worse, and our planet will slowly die.

Tough choices demand real leaders. Real leaders act. Anyone can throw an ideological hissy fit. The only advantage to doing that is it seems to get you elected to a US Senate seat from Oklahoma.

-Ben Odom

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