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?

Tyrranosaurus Ostrich Lays an Egg

A series of strange events accompanied the ‘discovery’ of 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex in Montana.
The ‘scientist’ that made this discovery ‘Doctor’ Mary H. Schweitzer has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Communicative Disorders from Utah State University. She got a Certificate in Secondary Education and ‘Broadfield’ Science from Montana State University and a Ph D in Biology from Montana State University.
This Communicative Disorders expert went into what she calls a remote part of the ‘Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge’. The ’remote’ area is accessible by automobile, surrounds a man made lake and attracts over 200,000 visitors a year. That is where they uncovered the bones in the wildlife reserve by blasting them out with dynamite.
‘Doc’ Schweitzer ordered some of the bones broken in half so the helicopter could carry them away.
In Bozeman, Mt, Schweitzer inspected the damaged specimen before applying preserving chemicals and noticed unusual tissue fragments. She concluded fossilization had not completed over the past 70 million years.
She then had a scanning electron microscope examine the bone. ‘Doc’ Schweizeer announced the dinosaur's blood vessels to be "virtually indistinguishable" from those recovered from ostrich bones.
In the last ten years Montana has become a major producer of ostriches and has over 100 ostrich ranches. Bozeman isover 385 miles from the discovery point and deep in Ostrich ranch country.
In my opinion ‘Doc’ Schweizer may either be exhibiting a communicative disorder or may be the brunt of some fossilized Montana humor or may be committing fraud.

US Navy Plans to Sink America

The United States Navy is planning on taking the aircraft carrier USS America 300 miles off the eastern coast of the United States to sink it in international waters on April 11, 2005.
The navy will attack the aircraft carrier to see how many weapons it will take to sink it. They already know it will cost about 20 million dollars.
The aircraft carrier displaces over 82,200 tons. The total tonnage of steel and specialty metals on the ship are worth well over 70 million dollars - especially in today’s constricted steel market.
The US Navy will spend more than 100 million dollars to sink a ship which cost more than 400 million dollars to build.
This particular ship wasn’t put together very well in the first place.
The ship never went through the Navy's Carrier Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) and was falling apart before it was mothballed in Philadelphia. In the early 1990s one of the flight deck elevators fell with S-3B aircraft and several sailors on it.
The ship also experienced steam and fuel leaks. Also in the early 1990s while returning from a cruise - the captain took a shortcut though a hurricane which destroyed most of the flight deck catwalks.
Our national steel industry is in dire straits. Expenditures on weapons continue to spiral up.
The sinking of the USS America at a cost of 20 million dollars and a total loss to the United States Treasury of more than 100 million dollars is being done against recommendations that include having the ship broken up in an American port in order to salvage the steel.
Facilities for this sort of work exist in all of the states on the eastern seaboard of the United States.
The decision to sink the ship in international waters has been condemned as an act of negligence on the part of the United States.
In 2001 Polio National Immunization Days were instituted in rural areas in Africa and Asia. During the course of that work over 27 million children were immunized against polio at a cost of 60 cents per immunized child.
The money saved by not attacking the ship (20 million) could immunize 33,333,333.33 children.
The potential income by selling the ship for scrap (50 to 70 million dollars) could immunize between 83 million and 116 million children.
The USS Oriskany is due to be sunk off the coast of Florida as an artificial reef to attract fish. Globally 40,000 children under the age of five die each day from malnutrition and vaccine preventable disease.

Self Directed Accounts

I have a 401K retirement account.
I have been offered a Self Directed Account.
I looked into it.
I called the company and was told me that I had to call another number. The guy I spoke to didn’t know much about the accounts. I had to read to him the document his company sent me with his phone number on it.
I called the other number looking for some municipal bonds.
I was told that I could not look the bonds up myself. I would need to call on the phone and the clerk would tell me about the bonds in their ‘inventory’.
I asked the fee.
I was told it was ‘built into the cost of the bonds’.
My private account charges 30 dollars.
The clerk told me that the fee for purchasing the bonds ‘varied’.
I asked for 5 triple-A municipal bonds in either West Virginia or Michigan.
He told me that I could get Virginia bonds for 54 hundred dollars.
(I didn’t ask for Virginia bonds.)
He said municipal bonds were not a good idea to put into a retirement fund because they are not federally taxed but that he wasn’t offering advice.
It took 5 minutes to realize that a Self Directed Account would be a rip off.
Individual trades cost $19.95 and dividends go into a money market account. If I didn’t get that cash out fast enough I might lose it all.
What makes you think George Bush’s personal accounts will be better?