Smokey the Bear Showed Up, where was Uncle Sam?

Lt. David Shand and Lt. Matt Udkow piloted H-3 helicopters out of Pensacola, Fla., having been ordered to deliver emergency food, water and other supplies to Stennis Space Center in Mississippi on Tuesday, August 30, the day after Katrina.
After dropping their loads they picked up a Coast Guard call for helicopter assistance in New Orleans. They rescued 110 people.
When they returned to base they were reprimanded.
I think their superior should be stripped of his rank and they should both be promoted.
What do you think? Why don’t you let your government representatives know how you feel?
Why not question why the vast resources of the American military (which has been held in reserve because the National Guard was sent to invade and occupy Iraq) were not put in use to assist in the immediate aftermath of the Hurricane disaster?
Advantages to the nation would have been an exercise for the military which is presently pretty much sitting around doing nothing and it would also have shown to the world the ability of the United States to respond effectively anywhere anytime in a compassionate manner. Did you know that the Mexican military has entered the United States and is bringing aid to the Gulf Coast?
It is a fact that within three days a very effective force of helicopters from as far away as Camp LeJeune could have reached the stricken areas and swooped thousands of people out with mind numbing swiftness. It is also a fact that the Navy helicopter ships that were sent from the east coast could have launched their helicopters to fly over Florida, refuel and arrive at the disaster area a week before their ships did. Instead their helicopters remained secured and they still have not been put into the field.
I am afraid that what happened in the Gulf Coast is a direct result of the political ideals of what this Administration feels is the role of the Federal Government in such cases. This might have been fine had the three stricken states (and their neighbors) had their National Guard units at full strength rather than occupying and rebuilding a foreign nation and if more than 10,000 Americans had not lost their lives.
Now they tell us it might not be 10,000. It could be much less. They have also forbidden photographers. It is a foolish set of circumstances.
If this is a failure of their ideals what will they do to us next?
More information about the role of the military for peacekeeping duties inside our borders is at :
globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1995/SLP.htm
It is written by Major Stawicki of the United States Marine Corps.
I wonder what use George Washington would have put our military to following Hurricane Katrina considering he invaded Pennsylvania because a bunch of backwoodsmen didn’t want to pay tax. I also wonder what President James Madison would have done to repay the action on behalf of the United States by the ancestors of these people who have been so devastated by this natural disaster. I also wonder what President Andrew Jackson would have done had he known that President George Bush was going to abandon the men and women who helped him secure victory during the war of 1812.
Finally – the cities. Mobile, Biloxi and New Orleans. I can’t believe some of the chatter about New Orleans. I remember being taught in elementary school that New Orleans was important as a shipping port and because it guards the mouth of the Mississippi. Grocery prices are inching up now because imports have been halted or redirected. Natural gas prices are spiking and fuel oil and gasoline have been affected. The drought on the Mississippi has caused massive problems this year because the soybean, corn, wheat and other crops can’t be moved properly but after Katrina, now that the harvest is coming on there is going to be a bigger problem if New Orleans port is not operational. There will be starvation and hardship around the world because of the slow down.
I don’t think the enormity of what is happening has settled in yet. I am horrified by the lack of response. Did you know that it appears that the Louisiana Fish and Wildlife service saved more people than any other group? They brought people in from as far away as Kentucky and they just did everything they could. The Forest Service was called in to put out the fires and they did their job.
Smokey the Bear showed up but where was Uncle Sam?
What will happen if North Carolina needs help? There have been hurricanes so fierce through there that islands were moved around and the coastline changed. (see Oregon inlet)
What will happen if California needs help? Or Kansas? Florida? - oh, sorry, Florida is okay. The President’s brother is the governor. They were already settling insurance claims there as Katrina raged through the Gulf Coast.
I myself called the Red Cross and about eight other relief agencies on behalf of my company looking for ways to help. The people here wanted to volunteer and help out the volunteers that were being overwhelmed. You know what I was told? Either the agencies rejected the offer outright or they rejected it and asked for cash.
But it doesn’t end there. One my co-workers located 200 families near our company and another 3 in another town. After talking with local representatives we found out that those folks needed EVERYTHING domestic we could give them. So now we have things going there and I am trying to find out if they need other services we could render.
As I consider what is happening and what I have seen (a lady I know was at two hotels in Arkansas and the only people that came around were local churches to see about the families and kids) I am beginning to believe that the reality of this bungled mess has been driven by a high level racism or some kind of sick and out dated class division where the rich not only refuse to help the poor they refuse to acknowledge that they exist at all.
I have heard and read and talked with people that have said that New Orleans was 80 percent black. As if that makes it okay. As if that makes it alright to ignore them. As if the plight of these Americans stuck in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana were not deserving of immediate action because of the color of their skin.
When I have not heard the stink of racism raised I hear some sort of American Apartheid argument whereby they are judged unworthy of aid because they had no money. Their pocket books were not green enough to warrant concern.
Some of these people had no money, sure. Others did. Why did they stay? Things happen. I am sure that not all who stayed intended on staying. They had a short time to get out. The people going out on Highway 10 missed a massacre by 4 to 6 hours when the massive traffic jam was finally broken up (by private citizens using cell phones).
Some of these people had no cars. Some of my friends have no car. Does that mean they are less entitled to common human decency and the effective action of our expensive and mighty military forces?
What happened there? What happened?
I am so outraged myself that if I could raise my voice to a hurricane wind I would blow this nation clean.
As for the ethnic makeup. It was an American city. It was all mixed up and everyone was there. Generally living in peace. Generally good and decent people. :
Wikipedia tells us this about New Orleans :
As of the census2 of 2000, there were 484,674 people, 188,251 households, and 112,950 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,036.4/km² (2,684.3/mi²). There were 215,091 housing units at an average density of 459.9/km² (1,191.3/mi²). The racial makeup of the city was 67.25% African American, 28.05% White, 0.20% Native American, 2.26% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 0.93% from other races, and 1.28% from two or more races. 3.06% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

Starvation and Loss Follow Katrina

The American harvest season for wheat, soybeans, cotton, corn and other major commodities begins shortly. The farmers that will be pulling in this year’s harvest in the central states rely on barges to carry their corn, soybeans and wheat down the Mississippi River to the Port of New Orleans.
New Orleans is a crucial link to export markets but was badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Local officials are hopping mad from Minnesota all the way down to Mississippi.
The Midwest has experienced the worst drought in 20 years.
The storm destroyed sugar cane and rice fields across the southeast.
As a result of the damage to pipelines, oil platforms and refineries in the Gulf Coast farmers are forced to pay more for fuel to harvest and transport crops. This has impacted their profits and the financial markets.
Commodity exports and imports are slowed. Bananas, orange juice, apple juice and other materials imported from Central and South America are delayed in pick up or delivery. The ships are turned away because the secondary ports cannot accommodate the ships. Prices are already rising in supermarkets.
Midwestern farms have been shipping stored corn and soybeans to make room for this year's harvest but damaged waterways and grain handling facilities have left the barges stuck on the river.
Secondary markets and aid shipments of grains and beans will not be moving any time soon and will worsen the hunger crisis in Africa and southeast Asia.
There has been no response from the White House.

American Apartheid

American Apartheid

“Hello? I’d like to volunteer to work for the American Red Cross and help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.”
“Sorry, we have all the people we need. You can send cash, though.”
This exchange and many others like them take place frequently in the United States.
My friend works at a large international company. Hundreds of her co-workers want to do something to help the victims and our neighbors.
These feelings of neighborly love and patriotism however are cast aside with alarming frequency.
She contacted several different national agencies.
All of them without fail either rejected her offers of assistance or rejected the offers and asked for money.
Meanwhile public calls from Mississippi and Louisiana and some parts of Alabama continue to be sent out to the nation.
Why aren’t offers of assistance and aid getting through?
Why was the American military ordered not to help?
Lt. David Shand and Lt. Matt Udkow are Navy pilots. After using their multi-million dollar helicopter to drop off food and water to a damaged base in Mississippi they answered a call for help from the Coast Guard in New Orleans and rescued 110 people.
They were reprimanded by their commander.
Why did so many Americans die?
They were living under American apartheid.
The racism that America used to swear by has given way to economic racism.
Whether you live or die, enjoy life or suffer is determined by how green your wallet is.
The bodies are appearing above the waters now.

Tom Delay Afraid

Tom Delay, representative from Texas, has been complaining about local officials in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
He says Hurricane Katrina is their fault.
Why is Tom Delay saying these things?
He is afraid.
Across the nation phone calls offering support and volunteers to national organizations like the Red Cross are met with this response : ‘No thanks, we don’t need any help, but we’ll take money.’
Donations pour in and Americans are still being evacuated from the Gulf Coast and resettled around the nation. The local officials in Louisiana have put out a call for assistance and goods. Why are national agencies not helping?
Hundreds of thousands of Americans are helping their neighbors Tom Delay and the Bush Administration don’t seem to be among them.
Just after the storm passed two Navy pilots brought food and water to a damaged base in Mississippi and then answered a Coast Guard call for help in New Orleans. They labored over 14 hours and rescued 110 people. When they arrived back at base they were reprimanded.
Back to those local officials – Tom Delay has led the effort by the Bush Administration to keep money away from engineering projects in New Orleans for years while showering federal money on bus stops in Alaska. The Bush Administration has most of the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama National Guard in Iraq getting shot at.
Lt. David Shand and Lt. Matt Udkow are American heroes.
Tom Delay and President Bush do not deserve the respect due their office.

Hooray for John Roberts

When John Roberts is made the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States there will be a great reason to celebrate.
Finally there will be four Catholics on the Supreme Court at the same time. If everything proceeds normally President Bush will nominate a fifth Catholic to the position vacated by Sandra Day O’Connor.
That will mean that there will be a majority of Catholics on the Supreme Court.
This will finally break the evil Protestant stranglehold that has been dragging down the United States for nearly a century and a half.
With the cool considered experience of the Catholic Church behind them these justices will be able to clear away the evil webs of abortion and corruption that the Protestants have filled this nation up with.
The evil protestant influence has given American abortion on demand, leisure drugs, organized crime and legalized gambling.
The evil Protestant influence has allowed our government to deteriorate and lose the power to protect our citizens. Guns have become commonplace and even welcomed in Protestant churches.
Our borders have been abandoned and remain unguarded as Protestant judges and politicians continue to sell the land out from under our feet.
The protection of the Holy Roman Catholic Church can now descend upon the people the United States. The people can now turn their eyes away from the Protestant abominations. They can now hear the voice of reason and close their ears to the Protestant lies.
Finally John Roberts will set us free.

Underprivileged Anyway - Barbara Bush

The last I heard the reverend George W. Bush had refused offers of international aid to help with relief effort following Hurricane Katrina.
He turned down offers of assistance from Germany and Venezuela as soon as they were made – so the story goes.
Apparently Pastor Bush hasn’t been as honest with the American people as he has led many of them to believe or he didn’t have any concept of what was going on in his own country.
As of this writing the United States government has requested aid from Europe and NATO.
The Vatican is preparing to coordinate Catholic aid.
The president of Jefferson Parish in Louisiana had this to say, “We have been abandoned by our own country.”
Great Britain is sending 500,000 military ration packs. Over the past 2 decades British companies have extracted tens of billions of dollars from Louisiana in oil and gas.
Germany and Italy prepared military shipments of their own that can help alleviate the crisis.
The United States, which is occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, has requested blankets, first-aid kits, water trucks and food.
Condoleezza Rice, who was raised in Alabama stated, "Nobody, especially the president, would have left people unattended on the basis of race."
The response to Ms. Rice : Truly, many times in history people have been slaughtered based on race. In this case it seems that some people were left unattended on the basis of race, but the vast majority were left unattended on the basis of income and wealth.
Barbara Bush, former first lady and mother of the President said that the relocation for those Americans forced out of Louisiana is "working very well" in Texas. She said many of the people at the Astrodome were "underprivileged anyway."
There is no response for Ms. Bush.

High Tone Bush

Hurricane Katrina ran through Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.
It left tragedy and horror behind.
President Bush flew over the disaster area.
He flew in at a very high altitude.
He said, "It's totally wiped out. ... It's devastating, it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground."
His next action as Commander-in-Chief was to appear on ABC's "Good Morning America" to discuss the tragedy and recovery efforts.
Not long ago he said, ‘I am optimistic that we can change the tone in Washington, D.C."
What tone was he talking about?
The other day George Will wrote in the Washington Post about the ‘shrill’ voice of the Democratic Party. It seems people like George Will, were under the impression that George Bush intended to lower the tone. George Will has offered little in the form of news for some time - he’s Rush Limbaugh with a typewriter.
Bush was born with a silver spoon in his mouth though. Americans didn’t notice this one came with a top hat and cane.
Bush is what is known as high toned. That is, for all of you high-brow conservatives, affectedly stylish or genteel.
For everybody else we get an idea of what high-toned is from Hank Williams (Sr). from his song ‘Mind Your Own Business’.
‘Mindin' other people's business seems to be high-toned, I got all that I can do just to mind my own. Why don't you mind your own business. If you mind your own business, you'll stay busy all the time.’

Hastert Wants to Bulldoze New Orleans

Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House of Representatives, just said that it makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's seven feet under sea level.
"It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed," the Illinois Republican said to The Daily Herald of Arlington, Ill.
Hastert said, "We ought to take a second look at it. But you know we build Los Angeles and San Francisco on top of earthquake fissures and they rebuild too. Stubbornness."
He didn’t mention the fact that legislation that he had sponsored and signed had given money to the Army Corps of Engineers to build the ‘Industrial Canal’ in the center of the city.
The Industrial Canal was the first structure to fail.
He also did not mention that other legislation he has sponsored and signed helped to cut funding to the Army Corps of Engineer by nearly 40% over the past two years.
Maintenance of the levees, pumps and other systems has been neglected.
Loss of coastal areas that usually reduce the impact of such storms was due in no small part to legislation that Hastert sponsored and signed that loosened development rules along the Gulf Coast.
Hastert said nothing as thousands of technicians and engineers were sent to rebuild the entire country of Iraq.
It seems to me that Dennis Hastert makes no sense.
He also assisted this President in sending over 245,000 National Guard troops out of the country.
Instead of chipping in to help he has hindered. What‘s with Hastert?

Katrina and Money

Apparently there have been racial differences in police searches around American according to a report published by the Justice Department.
The results were apparently going to be tampered with but the author, a Mr. Greenfield, refused to change the data or censor the report to make the politicians in charge happy.
The report noted that it had "uncovered evidence of black drivers having worse experiences - more likely to be arrested, more likely to be searched, more likely to be have force used against them - during traffic stops than white drivers."
Mr. Greenfield has been forced to move to another job as a result of his refusal to cover this information up.
At this time Hurricane Katrina has devastated large parts of the Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana coastlines.
Most not ably it has nearly destroyed New Orleans.
New Orleans is a predominately black city.
The response from Washington has been agonizingly slow. Even though nearly 18 percent of American oil production has been impacted and nearly 25 percent of American refining capacity has been affected by the disaster the response has been lackluster.
The levees in the center of the city have failed and due to no small coincidence that money to maintain them has been reduced in recent years.
Millions of Americans have seen their lives disrupted and the nation’s fuel supply has been threatened. The response has been slow and fraught with incompetence already.
Where hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and equipment and personnel were made nearly immediately available to the predominantly white and Cuban neighborhoods impacted in Florida (where the President’s brother is governor) the process for relief and action has stagnated in the Gulf Coast region and predominantly black and lower class neighborhoods.

Billy Sunday

"Our Lord Jesus Christ does not stand for peace at any price. . .Every true American would rather see this land face war than see her flag lowered in dishonor. . .I wish to say that, not only from the standpoint of a citizen, but from the standpoint of a minister of religion. . .I believe there is nothing that would be of such great practical benefit to us as universal military training for the men of our land." -Rev. Dr. William T. Manning, Rector of Trinity Parish, New York City.
Up until that point in time that Billy Sunday began actively deriding Christians that believed in peace and not war Christians would go to war with a heavy heart. They knew that they were doing wrong but they knew they had a job to do that had to be done. When those soldiers and sailors returned from some such duties, their churches and their neighbors would open their arms and doors to them and welcome them back.
They would be congratulated and loved and honored for what they had done –what they had given up and sacrificed in order to preserve our union, our strength and our gallant nation.
When Billy Sunday began his vicious oratory and actually had military recruiting stations set up outside his tabernacles where he was preaching the line between church and state was crossed.
Billy Sunday once had a 16 year old Billy Graham in his audience – Sunday’s shrieking paranoia frightened the young Billy Graham – frightened him so much that the scared young boy has turned into a frightened old man. He is churning out the same message of hatred and anger and militarism disguised as faith that Sunday did.
It is time to rip up the line of hatred that was sown during World War I. It is time to rip up the clinging and grasping association of evangelical churches to our government. It is time to rip up the regimentation provided by the military which turns men into killing machines but is not able to turn them back into men.
A Christian can never be a soldier first.
Sometimes a Christian needs to suspend Christian beliefs and take up soldierly duties – but a Christian will never do those things willingly that a soldier needs to do.
When a man or woman returns to home – and this has happened more often since Korea and Vietnam – they never really come home. They are always in battle. There is no harbor for them to find shelter from the blasting winds of guilt or from the raging fires of fear.
They were sent off from their churches – who ‘remember’ them, and who ‘support’ them and who pretend they never really left and that all is well in the world.
It is time to rip up the paranoia and the shrill hatred that sends these men off to war and has no means of bringing them back.
The way things are now these men and women in Iraq will come back with their minds and souls shredded and many Christians will want to help them but they will find it to be impossible – because after all – they are Christian soldiers and can take care of themselves – all they need do is accept Jesus Christ as their Savior.
Men and women that joined the National Guard to find something interesting to do in their boring lives or to earn money for school were sent into the military and accepted there as doing their Christian duty.
Your Christian duty is to be a good Christian – not to earn money for school or fill in your spare time playing with guns.
So – there is a big job ahead of us.
This field of ours is filled with weeds – the weeds of hatred, and neglect, and sorrow, deceit and lies.
We must clear this field in the manner that we know in our hearts is the correct way.
We must clear out these noxious weeds and plant and let grow kindness, sincerity, forgiveness, patience, charity and love.
Else we shall all die of starvation and our churches will fall to the earth like so much powder – to be taken up by the mighty and the violent and stuffed into cannons that they will turn upon us in our homes.
There is a great work to do.

Sir Cyril and the Arabs

I read recently a long winded complaint by Sir Cyril Townsend.
He wrote about the situation in Sudan and came down heavily on the side of his
Arab friends in Khartoum.
At one point he accused John Garang of using child soldiers and then stated that the Lord’s Resistance Army was glad to be rid of him.
Sir Cyril Townsend then blamed the United States for problems in Sudan because of ignorance and prejudice and that there were rumors of American ‘Special Forces’ operating in southern Sudan.
Sir Cyril Townsend made an attack on Africans by stating that the nation of Sudan must be put before the tribe and the region.
I got the feeling he believes everything could be put right by handing out some beads and chocolates to the Sudanese Africans on behalf of his Arab masters.
Cyril is the Director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding and has loudly denounced Israel on several occasions. He says nothing about his own countries strong ties with the backward Arab rulers that have been causing grief and strife in Africa for centuries now.
Sir Cyril is one of those stuff shirts who believes that an active diplomacy is an effective diplomacy.
Where does he get his support?
CAABU was founded in 1967.
Their website tells us this : “In 1998, CAABU came near to closure due to dwindling funds. After appeals for help in the Arab press in particular, we were saved mainly through two very generous and anonymous donations.”

Crawford Texas

The County Board of McLennan Country has been asked to extend an ordinance that does not allow parking a few hundred feet from President Bush’s ranch.
It’s clear to everyone that he is not officially on ‘vacation’ and is, indeed, carrying on business and government activity at the ranch. He has been leaving the ranch to attend political fundraisers, has had his working assistants visit him and has even, apparently went for a walk holding hands with the King of Saudi Arabia.
Please consider that he should be in Washington DC doing his job and that your ordinance would be a waste of the time and money of McLennan County.
Perhaps prior to extending the ordinance and making more laws for yourself you might ask the President why he is running the government from his ranch in Crawford rather than from the lawfully designated area located at Washington in the District of Columbia.
The McLennan County Commissioners will be doing themselves, McLennan County, the State of Texas and the United States of America a disservice by making laws as a result of whim and mob rule.
Several people have asked that he return to Washington in the District of Columbia to carry out his duties but he has apparently either been afraid or unwilling to go stay there.
It is the right and duty of all American citizens to be involved in their government and when the President decides to hide someone should ask him to knock it off.

Streamlined Sales Tax Project

I understand that in the name of simplification, a group of cash-strapped states is proposing the Streamlined Sales Tax Project (SSTP).
The goal of the SSTP is supposed to be simplification but it does not succeed in simplifying state and local tax laws sufficiently to ease the collection burden on internet or eBay sellers.
The State Simplification Tax Project (SSTP) is a crime against logic. It does not reduce the 7,600 different state, county and city taxing jurisdictions.
The SSTP allows for a different rate for each zip code. Nearly 49,000 different jurisdictions. Does that sound streamlined to you?
Small business owners will be disadvantaged by a distant sales tax collection regime that forces them (and me) to comply with thousands of different tax rates, local laws, filing instructions, and audit
procedures.
Offline competitors being only required to collect and remit taxes in one jurisdiction would then be awarded unfair advantages. This could force tens of thousands of Internet businesses to shut down.
The Congress is being asked to subsidize the Sears and JC Penney catalog business.
There should be no increased tax burden on small business.
Now is definitely not the time to impose new tax burdens on American consumers and small business owners, or do anything to hamper the growth of e-commerce.
Tax administrators and State Senators and Representatives from around the nation are involved in the Streamlined Sales Tax Project. Don’t they have enough work to do without having to try to throw Americans out of work?

John Birch Society

A group of people calling themselves ‘Move America Forward’ has recently been in the forefront of attacks on Cindy Sheehan and her very simple question for the president.
A woman identifying herself as the group founder, Deborah Johns, has a son in the Marines and is featured in an attack ad on Cindy Sheehan and her very simple question.
Deborah Johns says that Cindy Sheehan’s very simple question discredits the soldiers serving in Iraq.
Deborah Johns says, "Cindy Sheehan certainly doesn't speak for me, our military families or our men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan."
The ‘Move America Forward’ website at http://www.moveamericaforward.org/ doesn’t confine itself to attacking Cindy Sheehan and her very simple question. It also features attacks on the United Nations and various activists that have involved themselves in the recall of California Governor Gray Davis and an organization known as the ‘Defend Reagan Organization’ which sells bumper stickers of the ‘Gipper’.
Their attacks on the United Nations are interesting as they resemble the same materials and positions that are posted on the John Birch Society website at http://www.getusout.org/ .
The John Birch Society claims to strenuously defend the original intention of the U. S. Constitution. The group believes America is founded on Christian principles. It has a conspiratorialist view of history. It is anti-globalization and for immigration reform. They advocate the abolition of income tax, and the repeal of civil rights legislation, which it sees as being communist.
Sounds like John Roberts’ resume, doesn’t it?

No One Wants to be an Iraqi

The Iraqi problem seems to be that no one in Iraq wants to be an Iraqi.
With an independent Kurdistan and Shiastan the United States will get the oil it wants and the Kurds and Shiites that have suffered in poverty will get a piece of the action. As for the Sunnis, after their brutal collusion with the Turks and the British they deserve to get a desert kingdom. They will need to learn to cooperate in order to prosper. They will no longer be able to rely on weapons, violence and intimidation to get their way.
The area known as Iraq has been under foreign control for a long, long time. Much longer than the United States has been in existence.
In the north are the Kurds. In the south are the Shiites. In the west are the Sunnis.
The Kurds want to declare independence and form Kurdistan.
The Shiites think that is a great idea and want to form Shiastan.
The Sunnis used to run Iraq and they are hopping mad about being invaded – they aren’t clear about what they want but if they ended up with their own country they would have nothing to complain about.
Why not let them have their own nations? Why insist on pasting a constitution on them that is offensive to them and to the rest of the world. I think everyone will agree that a national constitution that enshrines allowing a man to have 4 wives is offensive. It’s offensive to everyone who believes in ‘one man, one woman’ as being a marriage and it is offensive to everyone that would like to have more than 4 wives.
The United States is a country composed of 50 states. States as in countries or nations. If the other 49 were removed the last one around would be a country.
Why not have a union of Kurdistan, Shiastan and Sunnistan? Dedicated to their common defense in the event that Iran decides to attack. It would essentially stay out of the way of the activities of the three nations that make up the country.
It is a ridiculous proposition to have Great Britain and the United States impose a democracy based on common experiences between them that the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites have never experienced.
Iraq was cobbled together from provinces that had been included in the Ottoman Empire when the British turned out to be victors in World War I. The British then treated Iraq as a province and strongly put down any hint of independence the people might have had. Winston Churchill even advised using gas against the rebels. That is, if you can call people fighting for independence from a brutal empire rebels.
In the end when independence was granted Iraq was the result. A nation containing three little nations.
The only reason the United States does not support independence for Kurdistan is because of interference from Turkey. The United States is afraid of Turkey. The Kurds are not. The United States is imposing its will on Kurdistan, Shiastan and Sunnistan because of a lack of understanding of the situation.
The backwoods boys from Texas are little interested in the realities in Iraq. They just want the oil.
Iran will be contained by a bunch of greedy and wealthy Kurds and Shiites and the United States can truly say that Iraq has been liberated and our troops can leave.
All it will need is a new name.
Iraq is dead. Long live the KSSA. Kurdish-Shia-Sunni Alliance.

Rep Cox and the SEC

Here comes Representative Cox from California jumping into the Securities and Exchange Commission with both feet.
Who is this guy and what background does he have?
In the 108th Congress Christopher Cox sponsored the following legislation :
Ending Discrimination Against Students Enrolled in ROTC. H.R. 3966
Allowing More Americans to Use EZ Tax Filing.
Commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. H.Res. 655
Restoring the Mission at San Juan Capistrano.
No Double Rail-Tracking Along Orange County Coast. H.R. 2165
Defending Freedom of Thought in Hong Kong. H.Res. 277
Death Tax Repeal.
Repeal the "Luxury Tax" on Beer.
Ensure the Continuity of Congress in Case of Terrorist Attack.
Ensure the Continuity of the Presidency in Case of Terrorist Attack. H.R. 2319 Bob Hope American Patriotism Award. H.R. 2087
Renewal of Successful ‘Smart Metric’ Law. authorizing the use of metric measurements for federal building construction that include both round numbers and fractions.
In the 107th Congress he sponsored :
Ensuring the Government Can Continue to Function in Case of Terrorist Attack.
Cleanup of Contaminated Groundwater at El Toro Base.
Death Tax Repeal.
Educational Use of El Toro Base. Worked with the Department of the Navy to permit Cal State Fullerton to open a satellite campus on the site of the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.
Restoring the Great Stone Church at Mission San Juan Capistrano.
Bob Hope Veterans Chapel.
No New Taxes on Toy Telescopes.
Recognizing the 90th Birthday of President Ronald Reagan.
Honoring the Anaheim Angels's Historic World Series Victory.
In the 106th Congress he sponsored :
Repeal of the “Spanish-American War” Tax.
Cleanup of Contaminated Groundwater at El Toro Base. (Again)
Death Tax Repeal. (Again)
Reduce Death Taxes for Leisure World Residents.
Restore the Mission at San Juan Capistrano. (Again)
Outlaw State Discrimination Against California Wine.
Continued Community Access to the El Toro Base Property.
Prevent Y2K Injuries.
Promote Democracy and Free Enterprise in Russia.
Protect Human Rights in Communist China.
Taiwan Security Enhancement Act.
Combat North Korean Nuclear Blackmail.
No Taxpayer Bailout of North Korea Nuclear Accidents.
In the 105th Congress (1997-98) he sponsored :
Iraq Liberation Act.
Policy for Freedom in China.
In the 104th Congress (1995-96) he sponsored :
Increased Deportation of Illegal Immigrants.
Demilitarization of Russian Troops in Kaliningrad.
Mexican Peso Bailout.
Boy Scout Land Swap.
Helium Reserve Privatization.
In the 103rd Congress (1993-94) he sponsored :
Abolishing the Government-Run Strategic Helium Reserve. (Again)
Reuse of the El Toro Marine Base. (Again)
Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Death Tax Repeal. (Again)
Make the Losing Party Pay the Winner's Attorneys' Fees. H.R. 2880
Promoting Iraqi Freedom.
Creation of Radio Free Asia.
Turbocharged Enterprise Zones.
Incentives for Earthquake Insurance. H.R. 3756
Retired FBI Agent Self-Defense Act. H.R. 3971
In the 102nd Congress (1991-92) he sponsored :
Helping Orange County Aid in the Reconstruction of Kuwait.
Commending Hungary on its Transition to Democracy.
Aid to Former Soviet Nations.
In the 101st Congress (1989-90) he sponsored :
Allow Local Control over John Wayne Airport Noise.
Aiding Lithuania's Transition to Democracy. H.Con.Res. 257
Encourage Private Capital Investment in Businesses in Hungary and Poland.

Working on the Railroad

Phil Anschutz is on the Board of Directors of the Union Pacific Railway.
His company operates the Los Angeles Lakers and many other sports teams.
AEG will take over the Millenium Dome in London and turn it into a pleasure palace.
AEG is the second largest concert promotion and tour company in the US. They also own many of the American soccer teams.
The deal is with Meridian Delta Ltd. - a consortium between Lend Lease and Quintain. Anschutz has bought many newspapers around the country.
One story you probably won’t see in those newspapers is that Lend Lease is an Australian company.
In January, 2005 the U.S. Department Of The Navy chose Actus Lend Lease for the Marine Corps Military Housing Project.
In February, 2005 The United States Air Force as Actus Lend Lease LLC concluded financial closing and operational commencement of the Phase 1 Privatization of family housing.
In May, 2005 Actus Lend Lease and the U.S. Army reached financial close on family housing projects in Hawaii and Fort Drum, New York as part of the Military Housing Privatization Initiative.
They are to develop family housing and communities for a period of 50 years the Marine Corps.
Ron Oakley was appointed to the Board of Lend Lease in 2003. He worked at Fluor Corporation since 1979. (Fluor has billions in contracts in Iraq.)
Lend Lease is named in a lawsuit by workers at the 9/11 cleanup site that claims workers were unnecessarily exposed to asbestos and other toxins.
Just last spring Union Pacific slipped $25,000 to the political committee that is promoting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's "People's Reform Program."
Back when the Union Pacific was just beginning to move across the nation like a giant octopus and snuffing out the fires of competition a man by the name of E.H. Harriman ran the Union Pacific Railroad.
Prescott Bush, George Bush’s grandfather, did business with Brown, Harriman especially regarding coal mines and other concerns in Europe owned by the Nazis and run with slave labor.
During the Civil War Brown Brothers (later joining with Harriman) handled 75 percent of the cotton sent to England through blockades which enabled the south to get arms and money and prolong the conflict.
Plenty of problems.
Time to fix them.

Bush Quacks Early

President Bush had a 50 minute press conference.
He claimed it is important for the US to reform the United Nations for corruption in its oil-for-food program for Iraq and abusive behavior by some of its peacekeepers in Africa.
The oil-for-food program was corrupted by American oil companies who brought oil to the United States of America.
As for the abuses of the peacekeepers in Africa – it’s long been acknowledged that the United Nations under the insistence of the United States has employed as ‘peacekeepers’ soldiers from countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan. These countries are ‘preferred’ for the duty because it is an indirect way for the US to provide them with aid and also get them to buy weapons.
In any case – a country that sponsored Abu Ghraib, the prisons in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has no moral voice to correct others.
He said, "It's an organization that is beginning to lose the trust of the American people, if it hasn't already, and it's important to restore that trust."
Was he talking about his administration or the UN? I trust Kofi Annan more than I trust Dick Cheney.
He went on, "The reason I picked Bolton is he's a no-nonsense kind of fellow who can get things done."
When speaking about Iraq, Bush blamed the violence on "a group of frustrated and desperate people who kill innocent life."
Was he was reading off the same cue cards Billy Graham and Tom DeLay use to describe America’s judicial system?

Combat Mommy

It’s questionable at least to send men over to combat if they have children at home that they should be caring for and raising.
It’s unforgivable and offensive to send women into combat areas when they have children at home they should be caring for and raising.
For all the arguments of equality and opportunity there is a serious question of the mental fitness of any individual that would abandon their children in order to go to a foreign land and help kill people.
The example these mothers and fathers give to their children is bad enough without adding to it the cult of death that they spread throughout our entire nation while away and upon their ‘triumphant’ return.
What exactly are these mommies and daddies doing over there? We got an idea of what they have been up to when the stories about Abu Ghraib surfaced. Little Miss England was apparently acting quite the pervert and unlike other mommies that started their families at home she did so out of wedlock in a disease ridden prison. The daddy of her child is marrying another woman who also ‘served’ in the prison.
When I see a picture of a woman in uniform holding her child in her arms and smiling for the camera and I read the story underneath telling me that she is in Iraq or Afghanistan I am not filled with patriotic fervor. I am filled with disgust.
The same goes for any parent that leaves their children.

Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence of the Citizens of the United Nations
The Declaration of Independence of the Citizens of the United Nations
The Declaration of the Citizens of the United Nations,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that people are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. It is also their right to call upon the protections and assistance of the United Nations in order to make right these securities.
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present rule of nations is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over some States, inadequate or incompetent rule over others, false rule over still others and general anarchy mixed with militarism over others. Where nations do exist which are stable and do not offer offense to their people they are often unable or unwilling to provide aid and succor to their neighbors who may be put to toil for starvation wages or used cruelly in or for wars of conquest or control.
It is therefore necessary to declare to all people the coverage and guarantee of the United Nations in face of the fact of some nations having been governed in an unfit manner to which their citizens have no means or right to complain.
It is To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world and all the peoples living upon it no matter what nation they may be in now or whatever race they may cling to or whatever religion they may worship or not.
Several of these governments have refused Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good and have ruled by the whim and caprice of their rulers or day to day in a way that is nothing short of anarchy.
Some of these nations have completely forbidden and others partially forbidden representatives of the people to freely pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till the Assent of the tyrant or the nation’s powerful neighbors or trading partners should be obtained; and when so suspended, they have utterly neglected to attend to them allowing in some instances wholesale slaughter of their inhabitants through purpose or neglect.
Some of these nations have refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
Some of these nations have called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with the measures put forth by their particular tyrant or the nation’s powerful neighbors or trading partners.
Some of these nations have dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with inhuman firmness trampling on the rights of the people.
Some of these nations have refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within including but not limited to starvation, genocide, slaughter, war and disease.
Some of these states have endeavored to prevent the population of these nations or their neighbors; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands in order to keep from the natural order of people those rights they have been provided.
Some of these nations have obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing their Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
Some of these nations have made Judges dependent on the Will of tyrants or the nation’s powerful neighbors or trading partners alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
Some of these nations have erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass their people, and eat out their substance.
Some of these nations have kept among the people, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of their legislatures.
Some of these nations have affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
Some of these nations have combined with others to subject their inhabitants to a jurisdiction foreign to their constitution and unacknowledged by their laws; giving a perversion of Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among them:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these nations:
Some of these nations by caprice alone cut off Trade with certain parts of the world:
Some impose Taxes without Consent:
Some nations deprive their inhabitants of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
Some nations transport their inhabitants beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
Some take away Charters, abolishing valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of local Governments:
Some of the nations declare Protection of another and wage war against them..
Some nations plunder our seas, ravage Coasts, burn towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
Some nations have wantonly stolen or otherwise contrived to acquire the raw materials of other nations without due process of law and for wages and prices well below market value.
Some nations at this time are transporting large Armies to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy a nation wishing to call itself a civilized nation.
Some nations have interfered with other nations and have excited domestic insurrections, and endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of their frontiers in an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
Be it known that wherever people have gathered and in every stage of these Oppressions the people have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms that their repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. Nations whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people and its free people must therefore maintain for themselves and independent and public office to which they may call for support and relief - that office being the United Nations.
Nor have these people been wanting in attentions to our international brethren. They have warned them from time to time of attempts by their illegal governments to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over people. They have been reminded of the circumstances of the migration of people and settlement throughout the world. The despots, tyrants and greedy nations have been appealed to for their native justice and magnanimity, and have been conjured them by the ties of our common kindred in humankind to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence and disrupt the normal business of the world and cause harm to our children. For too long they have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. Therefore be it declared that human kind must acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold any of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of humanity, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of this world, solemnly publish and declare, That this humanity is, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent individuals and that all governments are subject to their inhabitants and the citizens of the world joined in the United Nations; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the present government unless it is providing for the common good, and that all political connection between them and the states which they inhabit, is and ought to be secondary to their union as members of humanity and citizens of the United Nations; and that as Free and Independent people, they have full Power to call on and expect relief and support from the United Nations and its forces and all departments for whatever reason presents itself. No nation at any time may secure its borders from the United Nations and hereby take their secondary position to the rights of humanity in order that all people may be free from want and war.
For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
This document now declares the reader and all known to that person the title of ‘Citizen of the United Nations’.

War on Terror

As time goes on and Bush echoes the words that spill from Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, Dennis Hastert and even his brother John Ellis Bush (Jeb), governor of Florida. Instead of their losing their meaning we begin to lose the meaning of the men speaking them.
‘The War on Terror’.
A definition for terror is intense, overpowering fear. Are you experiencing intense, overpowering fear? I am not.
Do you go to bed at night believing that only President Bush and Supreme Court Justice Scalia are standing between you and intense, overpowering fear? I don’t.
Terror is as a title for one that instills intense fear such as a spoiled kid that became the terror of the neighborhood.
However – Bin Laden has been out of the loop for some time now but still the idea of terror is reflected over and over on television, the radio and newspapers – but the source is always the same. The messages of terror and fear and anger are in my opinion coming from President Bush, the Vice President and several members of the House of Representatives (and a couple in the Senate).
Now there we come to the meaning of the word terror that we live with every day. It is the ability to instill intense fear like the terror of exposed weapons or harping politicians. President Bush seems to take his pleasure attempting to instill intense fear into the heart of America.
When will he get back to work and out of our lives?

ILLfare

Let us take that next glorious step into the development of modern America and throw off the bondage of that class which has held us back and held us down for so long.
Let us slip the surly bonds of this welfare state and set in motion those processes and programs that lead us into the heavenly new democracy and make this republic strong.
Slide off the yoke of oppression that holds you and stock options down. We must push aside the weak and the weary and send the poor away so that we can hire more Mexicans at a lower rate.
We must no longer be asked to provide public schooling for our children – in fact let us kill two birds with one stone and turn the children over to the pastors and the ministers and shower them with tax money.
Then our life of ease and plenty and shopping at the mall can continue.
We can build a new monument to government and a new bureaucracy.
The Department of Illfare will rule over all and above the marbled hall’s entry we will carve the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Do not tell me of my obligation to all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent that I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.”
Then maybe the Americans will wake up.

GM and Africa

General Motors, in a tailspin of financial misdeeds and morality officially told the Kenyan government that anyone importing second-hand cars are ripping them off by under-valuing imports.
The senior General Motors official said further that besides denying the Government revenue, under-valuation also created unfair market competition.
"From the perspective of a vehicle manufacturer, the implementation of tariffs on used motor vehicles — mitumba — has many inconsistencies that can defeat their purpose," said Maureen Kempstone, head of GM operations in Africa and Latin America.
"Under-valuation, in particular, works against the objectives of the policies that have been put in place."
Things have been working out in Kenya where a scarcity of motor vehicles has led to shortages of food and medicine throughout the country.
As Kenya continues to grow and General Motors continues to shrink GM has tended to do what most bullies do – try to push the little guys around.
Kempstone’s remarks are typical of GM. In order to squeeze a few coins from the third world Kempstone brought the boot down on free trade in East Africa.
She said GM won’t advise the banning of used-car imports but wants the Government to level the playing field.
"We are concerned with the unconstrained importation of substandard, undervalued used products that hurt the environment, undermine local industries-and more often than not, fail to meet the needs and expectations of the consumer," she said.
Too bad they didn’t feel that way when they were advocating NAFTA and preparing to undermine the American economy.

Who Is Winning

There are soothing words coming out of Sudan. The Sudanese minister for humanitarian affairs, Ibrahim Mahmud Hamid, said that peace is slowly returning to Darfur.
As the United States continues to blunder through the occupation of Iraq it is becoming evident to Americans that news reports out of the middle east and muslim controlled north Africa aren’t really worth believing – excepts reports about the deaths.
Morocco says tha religious tolerance is their main goal even as non-Muslims are raped, beaten and murdered.
Libya has said that freedom is a most important goal even as they set up a tin colonel to run the place.
Sudan bleats about peace as their army attacks and kills African Sudanese in a continued effort to spread Islam by the sword (and the rocket propelled grenade).
In Afghanistan murderers talk about democracy as they mail out the largest crop of heroin the world has ever seen.
Pakistan talks about liberty under the oppressive regime of a power crazy general.
Saudi Arabia allows a King to marry anyone he wants and to commit atrocities in public squares every day.
Egypt prepares to hold ‘free’ elections where only one candidate will run.
Each war that America has brings home some influence from the enemy country. In this case despotism, lies, torture, corruption, perversion and waste seems to be coming home from Iraq.
Who is winning this war?
Three American soldiers were killed recently in Iraq and the largest Mosque in America was just opened in Dearborn, Michigan.

Frist Malpractice

The Oil for Food Programme has been giving Washington, DC Senators like William Frist of Tennessee a bit of entertainment lately.
So much so, that he has seemed to forget what it is he is supposed to be doing in the Senate.
He gave his hand away recently however when on May 16, 2005 the following exchange took place in the Senate.
“Mr. FRIST. I ask unanimous consent the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 143, which was submitted earlier today.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the resolution by title.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
A resolution (S. Res. 143) to authorize Senate Legal Counsel to appear in legal proceedings in the name of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in connection with its investigation into the United Nations' ``Oil-For-Food'' Programme. “
What happened was that Senator Frist – unsure or unable about how to do his job – involved himself and the United States Senate in a spurious investigation of the United Nations.
The outcome of the investigation was that the United Nations filed a suit in the court of Washington, DC to silence a witness who had started to sing like a parakeet into Senator Frist’s ear.
Senator Frist, having a long history of listening to anyone who will talk to him (like certain corrupt murderers in Iraq) cheerfully gave the fellow his ear.
However – the words he was hearing weren’t for his ear.
So, about to be sued for malpractice, he hired a lawyer.

Frist at Recess

On April 28, 2005 Senator William Frist from Tennessee rattles the walls of the Senate with these words :
“I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess until 2 p.m. today.”
Not exactly the fiery rhetoric of past Senators or Representatives from the Great State of Tennessee but these days Tennessee isn’t what it used to be.
It used to be a land of patriots and American citizens you could count on to stand in on the side of good and righteousness – but these days it seems to have reverted back to those dark days around the time when they voted Davy Crockett out of office and ran him off to Texas.
That brave man was killed in the Alamo.
Senator Frist is intending no such ending for himself.
The slick haired Senator from Tennessee will spend his time out of office clawing at a chance to become our next President.
I hope to God that never becomes the case.
It seems he hasn’t paid a nickel’s worth of attention to his people back home in Tennessee and with a record like that you know he won’t be playing the tune for the nation but he will have us dancing for his whimsy.
This nation was made great by men and women who lived their lives to the fullest in the hopes and dreams of liberty and freedom.
Senator William Frist is turning the Republican Party into a lynching party to violently throw our glorious Lady Liberty over.

Frist and the Portrait Gallery

On May 18, 2005 Senator Frist displayed his earnest wit and leadership ability in the United States Senate by taking up the weighty problem of what to do with the portraits of the Senators.
“Whereas the objective of the Senate Leadership Portrait Collection is to commemorate the distinguished service to the Senate and the Nation of those Senators who have served as Majority Leader, Minority Leader, or President pro tempore: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That (a) portraits in the Senate Leadership Portrait Collection may be displayed in the Senate Lobby at the direction of the Senate Commission on Art in accordance with guidelines prescribed pursuant to subsection (d).
(b) The Senate Leadership Portrait Collection shall consist of portraits selected by the Senate Commission on Art of Majority or Minority Leaders and Presidents pro tempore of the Senate.
(c) Any portrait for the Senate Leadership Portrait Collection that is acquired on or after the date of adoption of this resolution shall be of an appropriate size for display in the Senate Lobby, as determined by the Senate Commission on Art.
(d) The Senate Commission on Art shall prescribe such guidelines as it deems necessary, subject to the approval of the Committee on Rules and Administration, to carry out this resolution.”
Just as he speaks the word freedom but means slavery you can clearly see that the primping Tennessee Senator speaks with a double meaning and if he tells the whole Senate to go hang that’s not really what he’s saying.

Frist and State Mediation

On April 21, 2005 Senator William Frist of Tennessee did put forth in the Senate a bill to reauthorize State mediation programs.
This program is a secretive and highly volatile program which destroys the rights of farmers from coast to coast.
He had it quietly read into the record three times and passed back into law after it had expired.
As if this nation does not have enough laws and interference Senator William Frist is taking his line of business a little too far and is breathing life back into dangerous laws.
I guess the families of those spared his particular type of carving may be happy is in the Senate and not the operating room but for thousands of farmers across the country he has cut the heart out of their rights as farmers and business operators.
Senator Frist in one swift move of his legislative knife has sliced away any hope farmers have of opposing the tyrannical and bureaucratic decisions of the USDA or the Farm Service Agency (FSA).
In public he cries out against a welfare state but when he is hidden in the cloak rooms of the Senate he is quick to build a wall of government interference that no farmer can climb or get around.
This program intrudes on many different areas of agricultural disputes, including farm loans, wetland determinations, conservation compliance, and pesticides.
Once the process starts the farmer cannot get out. The secrecy extends to mediation documents which drive farmers into the earth.

Santorum and Hitler

Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania recently said this about changing the Senate rules to outlaw the filibuster, "The audacity of some members to stand up and say 'How dare you break this rule. It's the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying, 'I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It's mine.' "
What was Senator Santorum talking about?
The filibuster is a debating technique that is arguably unique to the United States Senate. Senator Frist doesn’t like it because it takes up time and he is on his way out of the Senate.
For an example of what it really is you can watch ‘Mr. Smith Goes To Washington’ starring Jimmy Stewart.
For an example of what World War II was about you can visit any of the Holocaust Museums in the United States or stop off at the World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Clearly Senator Santorum can’t tell the difference between a debating technique used in civil and democratic societies and the war which involved nearly 80 percent of all mankind alive at the time.
Perhaps now we can see how it is that Senator Santorum would believe that spreading democracy is done through war and spreading liberty is done by being friendly with tyrants like the Saudi Arabian King and his many wives.
It seems Senator Santorum’s behavior is more fitting to a drinking house tavern rather than the halls of justice and liberty.
What’s his problem?

Lasers in the Darkness

On May 21, 2005 a new system of laser beams will be operational in Washington, DC. Bright red and green lights will beam up into the sky warning pilots to ‘stay away’.
Recently a small plane flew within three miles of the White House and politicians went scurrying in every direction. Tens of thousands of people rushed around in circles. President Bush was bicycling in the country. Dick Cheney took charge and ran away in a escort of limousines leaving first lady Laura Bush and Nancy Reagan in the White House basement.
F-16’s eventually showed up.
Cost for scrambling just one fighter jet is between $30,000 and $50,000.
Currently airplanes are not allowed to fly in the Air Defense Identification Zone - an area of about 2,000 square miles unless they have a special code (on most commercial airlines) and maintain radio contact with the FAA.
They are barred within the Flight Restricted Zone, about a 16-mile radius around the Washington Monument.
Airliners fly at about 500 miles per hour.
Smaller jets not much slower and some even faster.
An area of 2000 square miles might be about 45 miles by 45 miles.
Travelling at 500 mph an airliner is moving at about 8.3 miles per minute. It would be able to get to the center of the restricted zone within 3 minutes.
It took nearly 15 minutes to get a plane into the air to intercept the most recent stray towards the White House.
What are we paying for?

Wolfowitz in Lamb's Clothing

Dr. Geoffrey Lamb, vice-president for concessional finance and global partnerships of the World Bank appeared before an audience of Pennsylvania High School students at the ‘World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh’ hosted at a Ramada Inn.
Look at what he told the kids, “By 2015, most of Asia and Latin America are going to be OK. Bangladesh is going to be OK." He said most of Africa will remain mired in despair with dire effects for the rest of the world.
He also gave this rousing speech to a bunch of kids over at North Hills High School in Ross, Pennsylvania and took a step up by rattling the cages of some college kids at La Roche College in McCandless, Pa.
The good doctor went on with, "There are 700 million people in sub-Saharan Africa. There will be a billion in 20 years.”
Doctor Lamb roared on, “If you think you can leave a billion people out of a functioning world economy, you're mistaken."
Who were these world shapers that Dr. Lamb was shaking up? La Roche College was founded in 1963 by the Sisters of Divine Providence as an independent, private, Catholic college for religious sisters.
Lamb told them that extreme poverty and political chaos are breeding grounds for the al-Qaida terror network and international drug rings.
He didn’t mention the West African Oil Wars financed chiefly by America’s largest oil companies and World Bank loans
He commented on health issues. "Malaria is the biggest killer of children in Africa and it has gotten worse in the last 10 to 15 years."
He didn’t seem to mention anything about the interest on loans from the World Bank eating up money African governments have to spend on malarial and AIDS medicine. His statement about malaria seems wrong as well.
What is the World Bank going to do about these problems?
One topic for conversation on their web site is “How to Tackle the Problem of Rising Informality?”

Red Republicans

If you didn’t think the short-sighted Texas-Maine connection wasn’t selling the nation out from under your feet you don’t have to look any further than your local bank to see the truth.
Somebody in the Bush administration finally got up on their back legs and issued a warning to Communist China today saying that its currency policy were "highly distortionary".
In fact Communist China is affecting world trade. The Bush Administration pretended to threaten retaliation if the Chinese Communists did not change their ways within the next year.
Bush has turned the paper tiger into a reality.
It was only pretend because they stopped short of outright stating that the Communist Chinese are manipulating their currency. You see – it’s too late for Bush. He’s in up to his neck. He wouldn’t even give them a sock in the jaw when they downed one of our planes and took the crew hostage.
That yellow rose in Texas is really yellow. If he had actually called a spade a spade that would have started direct negotiations with the Communist Chinese and assured retaliation if those talks failed.
International relations are just not one of Bush’s strong points.
His weak response to the Communist bullies doesn’t sit well with manufacturing companies getting driven out of business by China's foreign-exchange policies. The Communists are subsidizing their exports on purpose.
The Communist Chinese trade surplus with the United States soared above $162 billion last year.
To make matters worse and the reason I am writing at this time is that the Communist Chinese central bank has bought more than $250 billion in dollar-denominated securities in just the last year and holds more than $600 billion in total.
The Chinese Communists aren’t afraid of any paper rattling from Bush – they warned the United States of America on Monday that they would not be pushed into decisions by other governments.
It that is all not bad enough the Republicans have shown their true Red color this year by pushing through a $295 billion highway bill, arguing that massive spending on bigger and better roads was necessary to fight congestion and unsafe roadways.
The highways and roads of the United States of America are being funded by the Communists.

John Ellis Bush

John Ellis Bush was born in Midland, Texas where his father, George Bush ran an oil drilling company.
He went to a public elementary school, but, was removed and sent instead to a to a private school.
When in eighth grade, his father was elected to the House of Representatives, following in his grandfather’s footsteps.
His father moved to Washington, DC.
John Ellis Bush was left behind in Houston with another family and finished the school year.
He was then sent to live at Andover, a private high school in Massachusetts.
He has said that during that time he was "a cynical little turd in a cynical little school".
John Ellis Bush has apparently admitted openly smoking marijuana.
At age 17 he went to León, Mexico, as an exchange student.
He went to a motorcycle race where he met a Mexican girl named Columba Garnica Gallo. Three years later he married her.
Who is John Ellis Bush?
Why he’s the Governor of Florida.
He was called by his JEB during his babyhood.
These days they refer to him as Jeb Bush – that’s right – John Ellis Bush Bush.
During his time in Florida nearly as little about illegal immigration and protecting the rights of Americans than his brother did when Governor of Texas.
Some of the terrorists that crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York City while his brother was President had lived and trained in Florida while he was Governor.

Deep Impact

Next Fourth of July will put a lump of copper into the path of an onrushing comet – taking pictures all the way. They will take pictures of the resulting crater. A hole photo.
The project is called Deep Impact. The deep impact on taxpayers is $330 million.
Richard Grammier, manager of the project for Jet Propulsion Laboratory has this to say about the project, "Blow things up? I'm there. Yeah, I don't have any issue with that."
Deep Impact is name after a 1998 Hollywood second rate movie about a comet headed straight for Earth.
Recently NASA employed a Hollywood team to grab a capsule called Genesis that had collected samples of solar wind. The capsule’s parachute failed to open and the helicopter pilot was unable to grab the device. Result 280 million dollars of junk.
NASA is on a rampage of spending even after killing several astronauts in recent missions “as they slipped the surly bonds”.
Why isn’t space left to private enterprise?
Pyromaniacs like Richard Grammier and the Genesis Mission Circus waste lives, money and time.
NASA burns up money, equipment and people. Technologies like space planes and lighter than air craft that can sail out of the atmosphere are bypassed.
Imagine giant catapults throwing boulders across the Atlantic being used to explore the world. If Columbus had presented Queen Isabella a scheme like that he would have had a one way trip to the dungeon.
Would this have been a cute idea in the 1960’s? And now?

Bush Kicks Roosevelt

President Bush went out of his way to visit the ‘Baltic States’ (Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania) while he was on his jaunt to Red Square to worship the Russian military at the side of his friend Putin.
While there he made his friend Putin (who gave him flowers when he finally showed up to the date) really angry by saying that Russian occupation of eastern Europe was “one of the greatest wrongs of history”.
Then he went on to give vent to his family’s hatred for America. He claimed that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had betrayed eastern Europe himself when meeting with Stalin at Yalta.
He didn’t mention Churchill’s role and Bush skipped the part where Roosevelt, who was swiftly approaching death, handed the nation to Harry Truman who went on to conduct one of the bloodiest wars against Communism this country has ever faced in Korea.
President Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, was involved in a serious scandal just prior to World War II. His personal assets were seized and his company was forced out business because they had been financing slave labor camps (coal mines) in Poland for the Nazis in Germany. They had also been arranging for financing for the Nazis in a big way.
The people of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Poland might find that to be of interest. Americans don’t seem to care that we have a man who would degrade and denigrate this nation and the office of the President in order to get revenge.

Boston University

Boston University officials admitted that the workers handling the tularemia vaccine did not follow safety procedures. They removed the principal investigator, Dr. Peter A. Rice, from his post as chief of infectious diseases but he’s still hanging around looking for a handout. Rice was supposed to be the one training workers for a new high-security laboratory that will work with much more lethal creatures – right in Boston.
The tularemia vaccine researchers thought they were working with a harmless "vaccine strain" of the Francisella tularensis bacterium but was really a manufactured mutant that was combined with a dangerous bacteria.
Dr. Thomas J. Moore, acting provost of the university's medical campus did not report anything to state health authorities until Nov. 9 even though infection was confirmed on October 29, a delay he said he could not explain. But he defended the decision not to tell the public.
"I feel comfortable about the decision not to make a public announcement because there wasn't a public risk, since tularemia can't be passed from person to person." Dr. Moore said. The only problem with that statement is it wasn’t tularemia but a mutant that had infected the workers.
It is my opinion that Dr. Thomas J. Moore is an incompetent who has placed not only the campus of Boston University at risk but the entire city of Boston and indeed the United States. His immediate resignation would be welcomed and his retirement is recommended.
He obviously demonstrates no concept whatsoever of the imminent dangers posed by microbial, viral and recombinant work.

Liberty Dogs

Remember ‘Freedom Fries’?
Looks like the Bushmen aren’t as imaginative as they seem - except when it comes to spending our tax money.
In World War I anti-German propaganda fueled support for the war and set off intolerance on the home front.
Dachshunds were renamed liberty dogs.
German measles were renamed liberty measles.
The City University of New York reduced by one credit every course in German.
Fourteen states banned the speaking of German in public schools.
In Van Houten, New Mexico, an angry mob accused an immigrant miner of supporting Germany and forced him to kneel before them, kiss the flag, and shout "To hell with the Kaiser."
Over in Illinois, a group of zealous patriots accused Robert Prager, a German coal miner, of hoarding explosives. Though Prager asserted his loyalty to the very end, he was lynched by the angry mob. Explosives were never found.
Several rich men became very much richer.
Several million innocent people had their lives ripped apart.
Today - several rich men are becoming very much richer.
Several billion innocent people are having their lives juggled by clowns like Frist, Rumsfeld and Bush.
Somewhere along the line here why don’t we throw him out of office and let prosperity and freedom return to the United States of America?

Cotton Council

The Bush administration may cut billions of dollars in subsidies to cotton growers. Like every year, the issue has set off a desktop battle as Republican congressmen pretend to fight it out.
If it actually were to be pushed through the Bush plan will take apart an elaborate government system that has crippled the commodities markets since the late 1930’s.
The World Trade Organization in Geneva ruled recently that U.S. cotton subsidies violate global trade rules because they exceed limits agreed to in 1944.
Large producers of cotton and cotton merchants in Republican strongholds of Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia demand the program be continued. Large-scale operators in California and Arizona would also be affected.
Cotton farmers take nearly a quarter of farm subsidy payments each year. Most goes to a few hundred big growers. Half of the crop annually ends up with Communist China at artificially low prices subsidized by the federal government.
Cotton interests include Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), chairman of the Senate agriculture committee. Both expressed reservations about changes in the current farm program, which does not expire until 2007.
Senator Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who represents the cotton trading center of Memphis, which hasn’t traded cotton for decades avoids the issue.
The Cotton Council and Cotton Incorporated sit on the sidelines spending taxpayer money to keep the financial floodgates open. Cotton Incorporated provides marketing services to American cotton producers and is paid by the Cotton Council.

Tom Delay

Enron, Kellogg, Brown and Root, Halliburton – just a few of the names connected with Tom DeLay the salesman / Texas Representative from Sugar Land.
Recently a freakish storm ripped through Texas.
I’m not referring to the last election – I am talking about a snow storm that moved through quickly and dropped snow in place it hadn’t been seen in a long time.
Patricia Lucas, an 18-year-old student from Sugar Land, herself, put a tennis ball sized snowball on sale on EBay.
Potential buyers were told that the snowball was "in great condition, very clean bright white."
Just like her Representative in Congress Ms. Lucas advertised her product sight unseen. She didn’t include a picture with her EBay listing.
Even so, 27 people had bid on the tennis-ball-sized snowball with the highest bid exceeding $200.
There are at least 17 other Texas snowballs for sale on EBay at this time.
Mr. DeLay is selling Americans a snow job. He has been admonished three times by the House ethics committee.
He has askedHouse Republicans Monday change the rules so that if he is indicted he will not have to give up his leadership posts.
Mr. DeLay’s sponsors back in Sugar Land have no need of a salesman with no customers.
His cronies will probably allow Mr. DeLay to skirt the rules and hide from the truth.
In the meantime his snow jobs are still Americans just as fast as he can make them.
I think its time to put the heat on.

Condoleeza Robot

"Alliances and multilateral institutions can multiply the strength of freedom-loving nations," said Condoleezza Rice.
Remember Teddy Ruxpin? He was an animated robot teddy bear that could talk?
He was made by WOW (Worlds of Wonder).
While I watched Condoleeza Rice at her confirmation hearings her parrot words and statistics I have heard all too often – I felt like I was looking at that animated robot teddy bear from the 1980’s.
"Hi! I'm Teddy Ruxpin. Do you want to hear a story?", the bear would say and then the lips would synch up with a tape hidden inside.
"The time for diplomacy is now.", the Condoleeza said and then the lips synched up with the tape inside - at least twice.
Teddy and his caterpillar friend Grubby were from the land of Grundo. Rice and her grubby friends are from the land of West Enron.
Obviously – this bunch isn’t going to change. They forced their way into office and the only way to get them out is to let them have their run.
Unfortunately that means turning our eyes from the men and women trapped into fighting in Iraq.
George Bush wants to get rid of Social Security – his friends are calling it ‘Social Welfare’.
Tom DeLay wants to close down the Internal Revenue Service and avoid indictment.
Karl Rove, the President’s advisor wants to politically realign and diminish the Democratic Party.
Senator Frist wants to be President.
The Time for Diplomacy is now. Do you want to hear another story?

Communist Chinese Aggression

China is getting more aggressive.
Taking advantage of the rules of economic warfare laid down after World War II the Communist Chinese are turning up in America’s backyard more frequently.
As a third world nation ready to go to the ropes with the industrialized West China has few scruples of its own when considering business opportunities.
New factories are opening in Cuba which will produce millions of television sets. Since these sets cannot be sold in the United States they will either end up in Europe or back in China.
Meanwhile – Chinese workers continue to churn out television sets for the American market under the direction of American companies like Motorola or Japanese companies like Sony.
I wonder how this embargo against Cuba really works. I am not allowed to visit there for the weekend and go fishing but a company like Motorola can partner with the Communists to build cheap tv’s in China then share technology and financing so that the same or better tv’s can be built in Cuba for export to markets that are in direct competition with American interests.
We can watch on our Chinese televisions as Cuban workers take more American jobs.
China is also showing up in Canada, Peru and Sudan - taking contracts for oil and gas to be shipped to China to make television sets even though they can’t even feed, clothe, educate or care for their population properly – and there is no sign of their doing any of it for decades.

Cotton Subsidies

President Bush recently announced that he was going to cut back on farm loan programs – most notably – limiting subsidy payments to farmers to $250,000 a year.
This appalls many farmers dependent on the government handout and angered company farms many of which take most of their profit from the Farm Loan and other USDA government assistance programs.
From the board rooms of the American Emu Assocation to the hallowed halls of the National Cotton Council come loud guffaws as cutting farm aid is discussed in the budget Bush threw at Congress.
A majority of Representatives from rural states and several from industrial states rely on the USDA money flood to water their fields. Bush made the annual symbolic gesture towards the programs.
Farm subsidy payments undermine competition, drive illegal immigration and fuel government corruption. Cotton farmers, for example, will never give up their entitlement programs even for the security of the United States.
Berry Worsham, CEO of Cotton Incorporated continues to encourage mammoth shipments of cotton at cut rate prices to Communist China. That country then turns the cotton into clothing which comes right back to the United States. Result – record bankruptcies in American industries – millions of Americans thrown out of work.
The Chinese Communists used their billions to bankroll the Russian state takeover of Yukos.
They also finance communist guerillas and terrorism in Nepal and northeastern India.
Cotton Incorporated continues to use the cotton boll as a symbol but it might as well use the Communist Chinese Red Star.

Kurds

Just who are the Kurds and what are they fighting for?
They have several different types of worship. The central figure is an angel.
An angel at odds with God.
Among the Kurds are the Yezidi. The core religion is worshipped by about 200,000 of them worldwide. They mainly live in North Iraq. Other clerics are scattered throughout Turkey, Armenia, Yemen and Iran. About thirty thousand of them went to Germany for work and because the Turks were killing them.
The Kurds had it bad all around – then along came Bush. If they could give George Bush what he wanted – Iraq – then he would give them what they wanted – money and power.
The Yezidi link four beings with the ‘elements’, water, fire, air and earth.
It is forbidden to beat or spit on he earth, to spit into water or fire, to drink water in such a way that it makes a gurgling noise, or to throw impure matter into fire (Kreyenbroek 148).
Some foods are forbidden, like lettuce; fish; pumpkin; broad beans; cabbage; bamiyye and the meat of gazelle (Sever 94).
They believe that they were created before Eve from the body of Adam.
The angel they worship is the Peacock Angel. That angel said, they believe, ‘Look at the children of Adam. They will become numerous on the earth.’
That angel then went to Adam and offered him the knowledge of the planting of wheat.
We call the dark angel that George Bush’s Kurdish friends worship – Satan.

Weak Hastert

There is a weakness in the chatter we hear dropping from the mouths of men like Representative Dennis Hastert and Senator Frist.
A weakness that reaches back through the centuries to our earliest settlers and echoes a misconception in religion that has infected their ability to make competent decisions and has led to a lockjaw form of representative government that Bush is trying to take for everything its worth.
In the early days of American life the settlers were a strict and severe bunch of folks. In some cases they went too far. The burning of the witches in Salem and throughout New England is a case in point. The flailing and dismemberment of ‘sinners’ in the southeast is another.
Senator Frist’s wild eyed opposition and his ill considered remarks hearken back to an early law in New England that ‘…whoso affirms works, not faith, to be the mode of salvation; or opposes infant baptism; or purposefully leaves the churches when infants are about to be baptized; shall suffer banishment: and that whoso denies any infallibility of the Bible, shall, for the first offence, “be openly and severely whipped by the executioner,” and for the second, may be put to death.’
Idolatry is the worship of any stone idol or graven image – and Frist has taken for his idol the words of our laws and with them he wishes to cast spells upon the rest of us. His manner is so out of date it looks new. It is not.

Faith Liaison Greed

In the face of the mindless greed exhibited by ‘Faith Liaisons’ and deafened by penniless ministers from coast to coast crying for Federal aid and our tax money while they sit in tax free houses running tax exempt businesses we forget as a nation the tortures that birthed our nation.
We forget the pains suffered by the martyrs in the early days of America. The young men and women stripped and gouged and whipped and burned and tortured and hung from the highest bow. We forget the children who were imprisoned or torn away from their parents during decades of religious fighting here in America while our country was forming.
Because these images have faded from our eyes and these sounds have fallen from our ears our nation begins to fall backwards.
Money goes to those who profess the ‘right’ way. Advantage goes to those who worship the ‘correct’ way.
It was attitudes like these that led to the excesses of ignorance that finally forced the necessity of our Constitution and the guarantee of Freedom of Religion. It was death and pain and mindless obedience that led this nation to declare a separation between church and state.
What many forget these days is that the Constitution struck down laws establishing religions and also struck down laws forbidding the free expression of religion.
These days we see a resurgence of the ignorance that led to government sanctioned religions – tying up needed capital and wasting time.
That road is closed by law.

Frist Snake Oil

Many so-called Christians forget that our nation was not formed from old English law and the 10 Commandments but as a response to the failings of both of those sets of documents – as well as the failures of the contemporary Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Native American and every other form of government that had come before it and fallen disgraced into the dust of history.
These loudmouths preach retributive justice using the Old Testament as their excuse.
When they do they act in the same way that the crowd did when they condemned Christ to death – because these folks believe that they should preserve their version of the word of God and throw away from themselves God’s own son.
Retribution. We see it every day.
Senator Frist strikes out against his political opponents without thought of compromise or even respect for our American form of government.
Representative DeLay continues to make a mockery of the practice of ethics in the House of Representatives – and that is going a mighty far piece.
Billy Graham preaches that faith and not works is the way to get salvation and each day with each sermon he marches yet another army of souls into the gates of hell both on earth and off it.
War, starvation and disease are all around us. Our economy lies in wrack and ruin. Rich men like Bill Gates call our children stupid and George Bush travels around the country selling Social Security Snake Oil.
We need another response.

Social Security Destruction

Our nation of laws is beginning to look more and more like a nation of men.
These men are fashioning our government into a bizarre religion that closely resembles the church of early Europe.
For example –a rich man could approach any of the churches – Catholic or any of the many Protestant religions – and buy himself a seat or a position of importance within the church.
These days the same thing is done in the United States for positions in government – from local to state to federal.
In the early days of Europe and in the Middle Ages sins could be paid for and salvation granted for a price. Poor people were all condemned to hell – both on earth and in the afterlife.
Here in the United States poor people are still condemned to hell – especially if they end up in court – but like their corrupt predecessors the rich can buy themselves off. Martha Stewart stands out as a minor example. Tom Lay of Enron and Ebbers of Worldcom (now MCI) both stand out as big examples.
Even bigger examples are entire companies that get away with this. Even as poor people have been skewered by George Bush who shut down the bankruptcy window – large corporations like K-Mart, Owens-Corning and others continue to rake in piles of money and dominate their respective industries with corruption and inefficiency.
While bankrupt K-Mart actually went out and bought Sears – one of the world’s largest retailers.
Something is wrong and it’s not Social Security.

Wild Eyed Frist

We owe the wild eyed Christians like Senator Frist a round of applause. Their hijinx and interference has shown us how shattered and out of touch our government has become.
Across the country meeting rooms stand empty as ‘busy’ modern Americans let their elected officials take care of things. Americans have forgotten that those things left to the amateur and sometimes inept hands of these men and women are the things that affect us each on a daily level.
Meetings about roads are boring and uninteresting to citizens until someone you know is involved in an accident.
Meetings about election procedures are of no particular interest until it turns out that a local politician (or a national one) gets into office in an illegal or questionable manner.
We owe it to these frenetic and hopping demonstrators of the worst in human nature for bringing our attention to the fact that we have turned this nation over to a bunch of clowns. As more and more of them get into office it must be obvious to even the most disinterested among us that something is wrong.
As war drags on in Iraq local politicians argue about putting up stone idols graven with the 10 commandments in public buildings.
As trash piles up around the nation and our children can’t even get health care the public debate is on ‘correcting’ social security by getting rid of it.
This has been a hard lesson to learn. We can correct this together. It’s time.

Clear Channel Losses

Clear Channel Communications Inc., the radio broadcaster, which brought the nation the drugged induced rantings of Rush Limbaugh announced recently a 59 percent drop in earnings in the first quarter of this year.
They are getting their hands burned for backing their self styled wild man who apparently was popping pills while he was popping off on national radio.
Clear Channel is also slimming down by splitting up its operations by spinning off its live-entertainment division.
Clear Channel was also in difficulties over the way in which it accepted and paid for recorded music. Many musicians claimed the company was over controlling and did not pay market prices for the music presented and actually limited play time to bands that would agree to their strident demands.
The San Antonio-based company said it plans to sell stock for 10 percent of its outdoor advertising division (highway billboards). Around the nation the company owns thousands of billboards on the highway. A large portion of this company’s revenue is generated by road houses featuring scantily clad women serving alcohol to truck drivers as well as advertising political candidates.
Clear Channel reported a $47.9 million profit in the first quarter, down from $116.5 million in the same quarter in 2004 which was an election year.
The radio company's revenue in this quarter totaled nearly $1.9 billion, down 4 percent from $2 billion in 2004.
The company has begun to expand however in outdoor advertising on billboards, as well as at malls, airports and taxis.

Como Se Dice?

To hold forth that every word in the King James bible is direct speech from God and should be taken as literal and infallible truth is more of a mistake today than it was 100, 200 or 300 years ago.
It is quite widely known that in the first preface to the King James bible that the translators of that master work admitted to translating one word of the original into several different English words. They said they did this because ‘it would be unfair to choose some words for the high honor of being the channel of God’s truth and to pass over others as unworthy’. – (R. D. Owens, The Debatable Land)
Let’s try that with some modern English.
We’ll take the phrase in Spanish, ‘Como se dice?’ (How do you say?)
1. How do you speak it?
2. How does one utter?
3. In preparation which meaning doth fit this item?
4. By God’s name, which is divined that which is known to utter the sounds most careful to breath life into this meaning?
Well – you get the picture.
Let’s try some modern political speech translations.
We’ll do – ‘That’s not wise.’
1. The Iraqis have chemical weapons.
2. The Iraqis have lots of chemical weapons.
3. The Iraqis have lots of chemical weapons pointed at you.
4. The Iraqis have lots of chemical weapons pointed at you and they are about to use them.
5. Enjoy the flag, we’re sorry your son didn’t make it back home alive.

AIDS Continues to Kill

As time goes on it becomes apparent that the AIDS epidemic was not the result of a natural incident but was caused and encouraged by man.
Reading the history of the disease we pick out a man by the name of Gallo - a disgraced scientist who claimed to have isolated the virus but who actually seemed to use his association with the Center for Disease Control to get more funding for his lab.
The confusion that followed Gallo’s selfish behavior allowed the disease to spread further than it might have had something been done earlier. In any case - the disease would still have reached modern proportions because of the way it was introduced into our population.
It seems that, like the polio vaccine of the 1950’s and 1960’s, a hepatitis B vaccine had become contaminated with a virus that causes sarcoma. The polio vaccine actually had been contaminated with a cancer causing virus from Green Monkeys - so something of what Gallo was saying was true - but he was far off the mark. The polio vaccine contamination, originating at Cold Spring Harbor, has never been followed up but it is generally agreed that it caused rapid increase in cancer in the decades following the distribution of these immunizations.
Along with the Hepatitis B vaccine it has been reported that a smallpox vaccine was also contaminated with the sarcoma virus and has been distributed widely by the World Health Organization throughout Africa.
It is time to correct this.

Yemen Polio

Polio has returned to Yemen. It is said it was imported by pilgrims returning from Mecca. The disease was nearly eradicated in early 2004, but has spread to several African countries and across Saudi Arabia.
Four children with polio have been found in Yemen.
The Yemeni government and the World Health Organization are planning immunization drives to get drops of oral polio vaccine into the mouths of all five million Yemeni children.
Polio had not been seen in Yemen since 1999 but a surge of new cases in Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Ethiopia made precautions necessary.
Saudi Arabia – one of the richest nations in the Middle East has brought the United States a wave of terrorism and now has crippled our economy with rising oil prices.
In the meantime – they are exporting death and disease to their neighbors without so much as a peep. This disease and others like it which persist within the borders of Saudi Arabia get less attention from the King than women smoking or men wanting to vote for a candidate of their own choice.
If a women is caught smoking she could be brought to jail and possibly tortured.
In the second case a man may be arrested and even tortured for speaking freely in public about his choices for elected officials – if they are not governmentally sanctioned.
Now the King’s ineptitude is laying children to waste not only in his own nation but across the continent of Africa.
Saudi Justice springs from American money.

Culture of Death

Kathleen Kennedy is a news anchor for CNN Headline and sits beside Stephen Frazier each day. Kennedy rose to prominence in the network's coverage of the war in Iraq in the spring of 2003.
Recently she has become a bit of a questionable character. For example, she has sported a black jewel mounted on a black necklace in an object with the shape of a black star. She has been reporting on the likely death of Terry Shiavo and nearly erupted in exultation when the reports confirming that woman’s death were made public. Kennedy has also been covering the sickness of Pope John Paul with a great deal of enthusiasm and interest.
Her reports concerning H&R Block’s standing in the investment world spill out together with her next startling announcement concerning the sickness, impending death or passing of some prominent figure.
Her most recent target has been the Prince of Monaco.
Her reporting style and the manner in which CNN has drifted away from serious reporting on issues such as the war in Iraq, continued loss of life in Iraq and the deterioration of the national and global economy leads me to believe that Kathleen Kennedy has taken the lead in marching the CNN news coverage team down that very corridor which leads to the culture of death which has permeated our society

National Farmworkers Jobs Program

Thankfully migrant workers in Michigan could have a harder time getting training for permanent jobs under President George W. Bush's proposed budget cuts.
One thing Bush wants to eliminate is the National Farmworker Jobs Program, which gives migrant workers training and support to get jobs as nurses assistants, dental technicians and other jobs.
Michigan leads the nation in job loss and these jobs are well paying jobs, not jobs that Americans ‘don’t want to do’.
45,000 to 65,000 migrant workers come to Michigan mostly from Mexico. Many stay illegally with false documents.
Telamon, Inc. is responsible. They also oversee Head Start. Listed as a ‘non-profit’ it maintains 23 permanent offices in Michigan and hundreds of others across the United States.
Telamon works with the United States Department of Agriculture to spend money through the National Farmworker Jobs Program.
Farms of all sizes are able to hire and employ workers at very low rates that are further subsidized by Telamon and the USDA through housing efforts, training, food stamps and health care.
Food prices rise as competition is stifled and farms are joined in ever larger conglomerates. Americans can’t find work as Mexican laborers step into them eager to do any work after abandoning their homeland in order to satisfy their personal greed.
Why allow Telamon to continue to hand out personal welfare, homes, health care, food and a free ride while Americans are being forced up against the wall and into hunger from coast to coast and border to border?