WTF? I just got done talking to my dad. Somehow our conversation devolved from my SO's aunt dying to my hatred for the "man's burka" aka suit. I said my company doesn't appreciate/pay me enough...he said buy 5 suits. I said I wouldn't "lick asshole" (really) to get more pay
Any moron can buy a suit and any thief can buy a better suit...it is one of my little sayings.
Am I right or wrong?
Either way, I'll take less pay for genuineness before I give in to "the man"
That is all.
PS - apparently we both have enough alcohol in us to have had this conversation
PPS - he ripped on my friend for no reason. Compared myself and said friend as if I did something great. The fact is I lucked out (still don't get the pay/appreciation I should)
Monday, November 20, 2006
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Senseless War by Kevin Tillman (Pat Tillman's brother)
After Pat’s Birthday
Digg
Email
PrintPosted on Oct 19, 2006
 |
| Courtesy the Tillman Family |
Pat Tillman (left) and his brother Kevin stand in front of a Chinook helicopter in Saudi Arabia before their tour of duty as Army Rangers in Iraq in 2003. |
Editor’s note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.
It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we got out.
Much has happened since we handed over our voice:
Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.
Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.
Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.
Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.
Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.
Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.
Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.
Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.
Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.
Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.
Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.
Somehow torture is tolerated.
Somehow lying is tolerated.
Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.
Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.
Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.
Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.
Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.
Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.
Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.
Somehow this is tolerated.
Somehow nobody is accountable for this.
In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.
Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.
Kevin Tillman
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
I say anyone who has blindly followed this guy should go. Democrat or Republican
(AP / CBS)
Iraqis walk past a car bomb wreck in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday Oct. 18, 2006. A parked car bomb blast wounded seven bystanders in Baghdad's central Alwiya district. (APBAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 18, 2006
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Iraqi police officers secure the site of a car bomb attack in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday Oct. 18, 2006. A parked car bomb blast wounded seven bystanders in Baghdad's central Alwiya district. (AP Photo/Samir Mizban)Monday, October 09, 2006
Firefox Shorcuts
Mouse Shortcuts
This is a list of the most common mouse shortcuts in Firefox, and the equivalents in Internet Explorer and Opera. The shortcuts are for Windows, but most of the Firefox shortcuts should work in Linux too.
| Command | Firefox | Internet Explorer | Opera |
|---|---|---|---|
| Back | Shift+Scroll down | Shift+Scroll down | Shift+Scroll down |
| Close Tab | Middle-click on Tab 1 | Feature Not Available | Shift+Left-click |
| Decrease Text Size | Ctrl+Scroll up | Ctrl+Scroll up | Ctrl+Scroll up |
| Forward | Shift+Scroll up | Shift+Scroll up | Shift+Scroll up |
| Increase Text Size | Ctrl+Scroll down | Ctrl+Scroll down | Ctrl+Scroll down |
| New Tab | Double-Click on Tab Bar | Feature Not Available | Double-Click on Tab Bar |
| Open in Background Tab | Ctrl+Left-click 2 Middle-click | Feature Not Available | Ctrl+Shift+Left-click Middle-click |
| Open in Foreground Tab | Ctrl+Shift+Left-click 2 Shift+Middle-click 2 | Shift+Left-click | |
| Open in New Window | Shift+Left-click | Shift+Left-click | |
| Paste URL and Go | Middle-click on Tab 1 | Feature Not Available | Feature Not Available |
| Reload (override cache) | Shift+Reload button | Shift+Reload button | |
| Save Page As | Alt+Left-click | ||
| Scroll line by line | Alt+Scroll |
1: A Middle-click on a tab closes it on Windows by default. However, in Linux it pastes whatever is currently in the Clipboard and visits that site (or performs a search). This can be changed by setting the middlemouse.contentLoadURL pref to either true (for the Content Load URL feature) or false (for closing the tab).
2: By default, Ctrl+Left-click opens the link in a background tab (which will keep you navigating on the page you clicked the link on) and Shift+Ctrl+Left-click opens the link in a foreground tab. In order to reverse this behavior, select Tools > Options..., click on Advanced and check the Select new tabs from open links option.
© 2002-2005 David Tenser.| Command | Firefox | Internet Explorer | Opera |
|---|---|---|---|
| Add Bookmark | Ctrl/Cmd+D | Ctrl/Cmd+D | Ctrl/Cmd+T |
| Back | Backspace Win/Linux Alt+<- Win/Linux Cmd+<- Mac | Backspace Alt/Option+<- | Backspace Alt/Option+<- Ctrl/Cmd+<- Z |
| Bookmarks | Ctrl/Cmd+B Ctrl+I Win | Ctrl/Cmd+I | F4 Ctrl/Cmd+Alt/Option+B Ctrl/Cmd+1 |
| Caret Browsing | F7 | Feature Not Available | Feature Not Available |
| Close Tab | Ctrl/Cmd+W Ctrl/Cmd+F4 | Feature Not Available | Ctrl/Cmd+W Ctrl/Cmd+F4 |
| Close Window | Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+W Alt/Option+F4 | Ctrl/Cmd+W Alt/Option+F4 | Ctrl/Cmd+W Alt/Option+F4 |
| Complete .com Address 1 | Ctrl+Enter Win/Linux | Ctrl/Cmd+Enter/Return | Enter/Return |
| Complete .net Address 1 | Shift+Enter/Return | Feature Not Available | Feature Not Available |
| Complete .org Address 1 | Ctrl+Shift+Enter Win/Linux | Feature Not Available | Feature Not Available |
| Copy | Ctrl/Cmd+C | Ctrl/Cmd+C | Ctrl/Cmd+C |
| Cut | Ctrl/Cmd+X | Ctrl/Cmd+X | Ctrl/Cmd+X |
| Decrease Text Size | Ctrl/Cmd+- | 9 | |
| Delete | Del | Del | Del |
| Delete Individual Form Auto-Complete Entry | Shift+Del | Del | |
| DOM Inspector | Ctrl+Shift+I Win/Linux | Feature Not Available | Feature Not Available |
| Downloads | Ctrl+J Win Ctrl+Y Linux Cmd+J Mac | Feature Not Available | Ctrl/Cmd+Alt/Option+T Ctrl/Cmd+5 |
| Find Again | Ctrl/Cmd+G F3 | F3 | |
| Find As You Type Link | ' | Feature Not Available | , Shift+/ |
| Find As You Type Text | / | Feature Not Available | / . |
| Find Previous | Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+G Shift+F3 | Shift+F3 | |
| Find in This Page | Ctrl/Cmd+F | Ctrl/Cmd+F | Ctrl/Cmd+F |
| Forward | Shift+Backspace Alt/Option+-> Win/Linux Cmd+-> Mac | Shift+Backspace Alt/Option+-> | Shift+Backspace Alt/Option+-> Ctrl/Cmd+-> X |
| Go Down One Line | Down | Down | Down |
| Go Up One Line | Up | Up | Up |
| Go Down One Page | PageDown | PageDown | PageDown |
| Go Up One Page | PageUp | PageUp | PageUp |
| Go to Bottom of Page | End | End | End |
| Go to Top of Page | Home | Home | Home |
| Full Screen | F11 Win/Linux | F11 | F11 |
| Help | F1 Win/Linux | F1 | F1 |
| History | Ctrl/Cmd+H | Ctrl/Cmd+H | Ctrl/Cmd+Alt/Option+H Ctrl/Cmd+4 |
| Home Page | Alt/Option+Home | Alt/Option+Home | Alt/Option+Home |
| Increase Text Size | Ctrl/Cmd++ | 0 | |
| Move to Next Frame | F6 | ||
| Move to Previous Frame | Shift+F6 | ||
| New Mail Message | Ctrl/Cmd+M | ||
| New Tab | Ctrl/Cmd+T | Feature Not Available | Ctrl/Cmd+N |
| Next Tab | Ctrl+Tab Win/Linux Cmd+Opt+Tab Mac Ctrl/Cmd+PageDown | Feature Not Available | Ctrl/Cmd+Tab Alt/Option+PageDown Ctrl/Cmd+F6 2 |
| New Window | Ctrl/Cmd+N | Ctrl/Cmd+N | Ctrl/Cmd+Alt/Option+N |
| Open File | Ctrl/Cmd+O | Ctrl/Cmd+O | Ctrl/Cmd+O |
| Open Link | Enter/Return | Enter/Return | Enter/Return |
| Open Link in New Tab | Ctrl/Cmd+Enter/Return | Feature Not Available | |
| Open Link in New Window | Shift+Enter/Return | Shift+Enter/Return | Shift+Enter/Return |
| Open Address in New Tab 1 | Alt/Option+Enter/Return | Feature Not Available | Shift+Enter/Return |
| Page Info | Ctrl+I Linux Cmd+I Mac | Ctrl/Cmd+8 | |
| Page Source | Ctrl/Cmd+U | Ctrl/Cmd+F3 | Ctrl/Cmd+F3 |
| Paste | Ctrl/Cmd+V | Ctrl/Cmd+V | Ctrl/Cmd+V |
| Previous Tab | Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Tab Ctrl/Cmd+PageUp | Feature Not Available | Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Tab Alt/Option+PageUp Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+F6 1 |
| Ctrl/Cmd+P | Ctrl/Cmd+P | Ctrl/Cmd+P | |
| Redo | Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Z Ctrl+Y Win/Linux | Ctrl/Cmd+Y | Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Z Ctrl/Cmd+Y |
| Reload | F5 Ctrl/Cmd+R | F5 Ctrl/Cmd+R | F5 Ctrl/Cmd+R |
| Reload (override cache) | Ctrl/Cmd+F5 Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+R | Ctrl/Cmd+F5 | |
| Restore Text Size | Ctrl/Cmd+0 | 6 | |
| Save Page As | Ctrl/Cmd+S | Ctrl/Cmd+S | |
| Save Link Target As | Alt/Option+Enter/Return | ||
| Select All | Ctrl/Cmd+A | Ctrl/Cmd+A | Ctrl/Cmd+A |
| Select Location Bar | Ctrl/Cmd+L Alt+D Win/Linux | Alt/Option+D F4 Ctrl/Cmd+Tab | F8 |
| Select Next Auto-Complete entry in text field | Down | ||
| Select Previous Auto-Complete entry in text field | Up | ||
| Select Next Search Engine in Search Bar | Ctrl/Cmd+Down | ||
| Select Previous Search Engine in Search Bar | Ctrl/Cmd+Up | ||
| Select Tab [1 to 9] | Ctrl+[1 to 9] Win Alt+[1 to 9] Linux Cmd+[1 to 9] Mac | Feature Not Available | |
| Stop | Esc | Esc | Esc |
| Undo | Ctrl/Cmd+Z | Ctrl/Cmd+Z | Ctrl/Cmd+Z |
| Web Search 2 | Ctrl/Cmd+K Ctrl+J Linux | Shift+F8 |
Win: This shortcut only works in Microsoft Windows.
Linux: This shortcut only works in Unix/Linux.
Mac: This shortcut only works in Mac OS X.
1: This shortcut only works in the Location Bar.
2: Web Search moves the cursor to the Search Bar and only works if the Search Bar is visible. If the Search Bar is hidden, this keyboard shortcut has no effect.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Something about buttons - No time
- Digg.
http://digg.com/submit?phase= 2&url=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>&title=
<$BlogItemTitle$> - Reddit.
http://reddit.com/submit?url= <$BlogItemPermalinkUrl$>&title=<$BlogItemTitle$>
- Del.icio.us.
http://del.icio.us/post?v=4&noui&jump=close&url= <$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>&title=<$BlogItemTitle$>
- Yahoo MyWeb.
http://myweb.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?t= <$BlogItemTitle$>&u=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$> &ei=UTF
- Fark.
http://cgi.fark.com/cgi/fark/edit.pl? new_url=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>&new_comment= <$BlogItemTitle$>
- Furl.
http://www.furl.net/store?s=f&to=0&ti= <$BlogItemTitle$>&u= <$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>
- Magnolia.
http://ma.gnolia.com/beta/bookmarklet/add?url= <$BlogItemTitle$>&title= <$BlogItemTitle$>&description= <$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>
You can put some images inside link tag and in the end you’ll get something like this:
Monday, September 25, 2006
Who's out of touch...?
| Newsweek Home » International Editions |
 |
Saturday, September 23, 2006
This was a president
FULL TRANSCRIPT: Clinton Takes On Fox News
Today, President Bill Clinton taped an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, which is scheduled to be aired Sunday. He was told the interview would focus on his nonpartisan efforts to raise over $7 billion to combat the world’s biggest problems.
Early in the interview, Wallace attempted to smear Clinton with the same kind of misinformation contained in ABC’s Path to 9/11. Clinton was having none of it.
ThinkProgress has obtained a transcript of the interview. Here are some highlights –
Wallace repeats Path to 9/11 misinformation, Clinton fights back:
WALLACE: When we announced that you were going to be on Fox News Sunday, I got a lot of email from viewers, and I got to say I was surprised most of them wanted me to ask you this question. Why didn’t you do more to put Bin Laden and al Qaeda out of business when you were President? There’s a new book out which I suspect you’ve read called the Looming Tower. And it talks about how the fact that when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, Bin Laden said “I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of US troops.” Then there was the bombing of the embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole.
CLINTON: OK..
WALLACE: …may I just finish the question sir. And after the attack, the book says, Bin Laden separated his leaders because he expected an attack and there was no response. I understand that hindsight is 20/20.
CLINTON: No let’s talk about…
WALLACE: …but the question is why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?
CLINTON: OK, let’s talk about it. I will answer all of those things on the merits but I want to talk about the context of which this arises. I’m being asked this on the FOX network…ABC just had a right wing conservative on the Path to 9/11 falsely claim that it was based on the 9/11 Commission report with three things asserted against me that are directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report. I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say that I didn’t do enough, claimed that I was obsessed with Bin Laden. All of President Bush’s neocons claimed that I was too obsessed with finding Bin Laden when they didn’t have a single meeting about Bin Laden for the nine months after I left office. All the right wingers who now say that I didn’t do enough said that I did too much. Same people.
Clinton takes on Fox News bias:
WALLACE: Do you think you did enough sir?
CLINTON: No, because I didn’t get him.
WALLACE: Right…
CLINTON: But at least I tried. That’s the difference in me and some, including all the right wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try and they didn’t…I tried. So I tried and failed. When I failed I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke… So you did FOX’s bidding on this show. You did you nice little conservative hit job on me. But what I want to know..
WALLACE: Now wait a minute sir…
CLINTON:…
WALLACE: I asked a question. You don’t think that’s a legitimate question?
CLINTON: It was a perfectly legitimate question but I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked this question of. I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked: Why didn’t you do anything about the Cole? I want to know how many you asked: Why did you fire Dick Clarke? I want to know…
WALLACE: We asked…
CLINTON:…
WALLACE: Do you ever watch Fox News Sunday sir?
CLINTON: I don’t believe you ask them that.
WALLACE: We ask plenty of questions of…
CLINTON: You didn’t ask that did you? Tell the truth.
WALLACE: About the USS Cole?
CLINTON: Tell the truth.
WALLACE: I…with Iraq and Afghanistan there’s plenty of stuff to ask.
CLINTON: Did you ever ask that? You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch is going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers for supporting my work on climate change. And you came here under false pretenses and said that you’d spend half the time talking about…
WALLACE: [laughs]
CLINTON: You said you’d spend half the time talking about what we did out there to raise $7 billion dollars plus over three days from 215 different commitments. And you don’t care.
Clinton on his priorities and the Bush administration priorities:
CLINTON: What did I do? I worked hard to try and kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still president we’d have more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him. Now I never criticized President Bush and I don’t think this is useful. But you know we do have a government that thinks Afghanistan is 1/7 as important as Iraq. And you ask me about terror and Al Qaeda with that sort of dismissive theme when all you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s book to look at what we did in a comprehensive systematic way to try to protect the country against terror. And you’ve got that little smirk on your face. It looks like you’re so clever…
WALLACE: [Laughs]
CLINTON: I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get Bin Laden. I regret it but I did try. And I did everything I thought I responsibly could. The entire military was against sending special forces into Afghanistan and refueling by helicopter and no one thought we could do it otherwise…We could not get the CIA and the FBI to certify that Al Qaeda was responsible while I was President. Until I left office. And yet I get asked about this all the time and they had three times as much time to get him as I did and no one ever asks them about this. I think that’s strange.
Read the full transcript (rough) HERE.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Let's talk
FIRST - Our Government
Let me tell you...Republican, Democrat, it doesn't matter. Our political system is in shambles. It is true; our 2 party system amounts to 1 party. We're getting nowhere. I have to say perhaps we're better with the likes of Jesse "the mind" Ventura, Pat Buchanan, Ralph Nader, etc. (personally, I vote for Ventura).
Please folks, weigh in.
To continue....
Public schools - who believes they are worthwhile? I assume no one does. What I found most disturbing in school was not the fact that college was easy, nor the fact that people were semi-illiterate, no, it was the fact that the people I saw had no critical thinking skills. It took a philosophy class to open my eyes. Specifically, it was the "philosophy of Ethics" class. Yes, it was a sad situation; people had no idea how to think...Disgusting.
Weigh in.
Thanks
Let me tell you...Republican, Democrat, it doesn't matter. Our political system is in shambles. It is true; our 2 party system amounts to 1 party. We're getting nowhere. I have to say perhaps we're better with the likes of Jesse "the mind" Ventura, Pat Buchanan, Ralph Nader, etc. (personally, I vote for Ventura).
Please folks, weigh in.
To continue....
Public schools - who believes they are worthwhile? I assume no one does. What I found most disturbing in school was not the fact that college was easy, nor the fact that people were semi-illiterate, no, it was the fact that the people I saw had no critical thinking skills. It took a philosophy class to open my eyes. Specifically, it was the "philosophy of Ethics" class. Yes, it was a sad situation; people had no idea how to think...Disgusting.
Weigh in.
Thanks
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Monday, September 11, 2006
As I am always quick to mention...driving around will kill you before anything
By Ryan Singel
Sept. 11, 2001 was undoubtedly one of the darkest and deadliest days in United States history. Al-Qaida's attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center killed 2,976 people, and the country recoiled in horror as we witnessed the death of thousands of Americans when the towers fell.
In the five years since that shattering day, the government has spent billions on anti-terrorism projects, instituted a color-coded alert system that has never been green, banned fingernail clippers and water bottles from airplanes, launched a pre-emptive war on false pretenses, and advised citizens to stock up on duct tape and plastic sheeting.
But despite the never-ending litany of warnings and endless stories of half-baked plots foiled, how likely are you, statistically speaking, to die from a terrorist attack?
Comparing official mortality data with the number of Americans who have been killed inside the United States by terrorism since the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma reveals that scores of threats are far more likely to kill an American than any terrorist -- at least, statistically speaking.
In fact, your appendix is more likely to kill you than al-Qaida is.
With that in mind, here's a handy ranking of the various dangers confronting America, based on the number of mortalities in each category throughout the 11-year period spanning 1995 through 2005 (extrapolated from best available data).
| S E V E R E Driving off the road: 254,419 Falling: 146,542 Accidental poisoning: 140,327 |
| H I G H Dying from work: 59,730 Walking down the street: 52,000. Accidentally drowning: 38,302 |
| E L E V A T E D Killed by the flu: 19,415 Dying from a hernia: 16,742 |
| G U A R D E D Accidental firing of a gun: 8,536 Electrocution: 5,171 |
| L O W Being shot by law enforcement: 3,949 Terrorism: 3147 Carbon monoxide in products: 1,554 |
---
Sources: National Highway and Safety Agency (.pdf), National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 50, No. 15 (09/16/2002) (.pdf), US Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Insurance Information Institute.
Friday, September 08, 2006
1927, 2006: History repeats itself?
Drowning of New Orleans »
Tags: .
THE YEAR THE LEVEES BROKE
Published by Greg Palast August 24th, 2006 in ArticlesBy Greg Palast in New Orleans
What is the unreported cause of the majority of the 2,000 deaths that occurred after the levees broke last year on August 29? Catch Greg Palast’s investigative expose this Monday on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! And on Tuesday, watch his one-hour Special on LinkTV. Listings at LinkTV.org.
The Year the Levees Broke
America went through a terrible year. The levees broke in New Orleans. When bodies floated in the streets, the Republican Congress saw an opportunity for more tax cuts and consolidation of the corporatopia they had created for their moneyed donors. The Democratic Party was clueless, written off, politically at death’s door.
The year was 1927.
Back then, when the levees broke, America awoke. Public anger rose in a floodtide, and in that year, the USA entered its most revolutionary period since 1776. The thirty-four-year-old utility commissioner of Louisiana, Huey P. Long, conceived of a plan to rebuild his state based on a radical program of redistributing wealth and power. The ambitious Governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt, adopted it, and later named it The New Deal. America got rich and licked Hitler. It was our century.
It’s 1927 again.
Years from now, in Guantanamo or in a refugee relocation “Enterprise Zone,” your kids will ask you, “What did you do in the Class War, Daddy?” We may have to admit that conquest and occupation happened before we could fire off a shot.
The trick of class war is not to let the victims know they’re under attack. That’s how, little by little, the owners of the planet take away what little we have.
On Tuesday, your President, George W. Bush, will return to New Orleans, on the anniversary of the levee breach.
There is nothing new under the sun. A Republican president going for the photo op as the Mississippi rolls over New Orleans. It was 1927, and President Calvin Coolidge sent Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, “a little fat man with a notebook in his hand,” who mugged for the cameras and promised to build the city a wall of protection. They had their photos taken. Then they left to play golf with Ken Lay or, rather, the Ken Lay railroad baron equivalent of his day.
In 1927, the Democratic Party had died and was awaiting burial.
As The Depression approached, the coma-Dems, like Franklin Roosevelt, called for, of all things, balancing the budget.
Then, as the Mississippi waters rose, one politician, the state’s electricity regulator, stood up on the back of a flatbed truck rigged with loudspeakers, and said, roughly,
“Listen up! They’re lying! The President’s lying! The rich fat jackals that are drowning you will do it again and again and again. They lead you into imperialist wars for profit, they take away your schools and your hope, and when you complain, they blame Blacks and Jews and immigrants. Then they drown your kids. I say, Kick’m in the ass and take your share of the wealth you created.”
Huey Long was our Hugo Chavez, and he laid out a plan: a progressive income tax, real money for education, public works to rebuild Louisiana and America, Social Security old age pensions, veterans benefits, regulation of the big utility holding companies, an end to what he called, “rich men’s wars,” and an end to the financial royalism of the elite One Percent.
Huey Long even had the audacity to suggest that the poor’s votes should count, calling for the end to the poll tax four decades before Martin Luther King succeeded in ending it. Long recorded his motto as a musical anthem: “Everyman a King.” The waters receded, the anger did not, and, in 1928, Huey “Kingfish” Long was elected Governor of Louisiana.
At the time, Louisiana schools were free, but not the textbooks. The elite liked it that way, but Long didn’t. To pay for the books, the Kingfish levied a special tax on Big Oil. But the oil companies refused to pay for the textbooks. Governor Long then ordered the National Guard to seize the oil fields in the Delta.
It was Huey Long who established the principle that a government of the people must protect the people, school them, build the infrastructure, regulate industry and share the nation’s wealth — and that meant facing down “the concentrations of monopoly power” of the corporate aristocracy — “the thieves of Wall Street,” as he called them.
In other words, Huey Long founded the modern Democratic Party.
FDR and the party establishment, scared witless of Long’s ineluctable march to the White House, adopted his program, albeit diluted, called it the New Deal and later the New Frontier and the Great Society. America and the party prospered.
What happened to the Kingfish? The oil industry and local oligarchs had few options for responding to Governor Long’s populist appeal and the success of his egalitarian economic program. On September 8, 1935, Huey Long, by then a U.S. Senator,
was shot dead. He was 42.
It’s 1927 again.
**********
Excerpted from Greg Palast’s just-released New York Times bestseller, “ARMED MADHOUSE: Who’s Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal ‘08, No Child’s Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War.” Go to www.GregPalast.com.
Friday, August 18, 2006
From FARK - The headline says it all
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Very interesting read about George Bush and war in the Mid-East....George H.W. Bush 1990 that is
New York Times Articles
...And the Horrors of a Desert War
September 23, 1990
Page E21
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ARLINGTON, Va. — President Bush has not only embarked on his own voyage into the Persian Gulf, that Bermuda Triangle of Presidencies. Unlike his two immediate predecessors, he has dragged more than a hundred thousand of our troops with him. And as the President struggles at home, our troops have been learning to cope with a sun that can melt electrical wiring, sand so fine that few filters can keep it out of gear boxes and a growing ennui that seeps through even the most careful monitoring of the press corps.
The debate over our role in the Persian Gulf crisis has focused on national, rather than specific military goals. The fundamental questions, upon which all others inevitably rest, have not been addressed. Why did we send such a huge contingent of ground troops in the first place? And under what conditions are we going to use them or bring them home?
Answers are not forthcoming. Military officials intimate that the question would expose tactical options. Administration officials talk in vague terms: Defense Secretary Cheney is telling us to prepare for a commitment that may take years. Others have been quoted as saying we may be there for a decade. At the same time we are being reassured, amidst many loud calls to initiate a war with Iraq, that the U.S. military commitment is wholly defensive.
As one who opposed the Reagan Administration's overt tilt toward Iraq which caused the Persian Gulf problems in 1987 and 1988, I have no desire to give consolation to Saddam Hussein now that he is getting the attention he deserves. But if our experience since World War II tells us anything, it is that justifiable national goals are too frequently lost through unfocused and ineffective military policy. And the strongest likelihood is that our ground buildup in Saudi Arabia is the product not of conscious strategy, but of an initial overreaction that compounds itself with the arrival of every C-5 transport.
The Kuwaiti dilemma is not new. This is the third time since 1961 that Iraq has asserted, militarily, its claim to Kuwaiti territory. As such, positioning U.S. aviation units into Saudi Arabia with ground forces to defend them as appropriate as a short-term guarantee of Saudi sovereignty. But the huge buildup of forces began after it became clear that Iraq had no military design on Saudi Arabia. And couple with escalating rhetoric, it has created an intractable siege, with the survival of the President Bush, as well as Saddam Hussein, handing in the balance.
The U.S., whose interests in the region are far less than Kuwait's, Saudi Arabia's, Israel's, Europe's and Japan's, is carrying the overwhelming burden. True, others are involved in small scale -- the Egyptians, who stand to benefit to the tune of at least $7 billion in forgiven debts, the Syrians, traditional enemies of Iraq, who are sending a few thousand soldiers, other Arab nations whose royal families are also threatened, European and other allies who are throwing in a ship or two here, and a military unit there. We appear to have traded the promise of greater economic help to the Soviets for Mikhail Gorbachev's rather noncommittal statement of support.
And now we are out on the international hustings, asking for financial contributions for our effort. Mr. Bush hastens to assure us that this does not make our soldiers mercenaries, but anyone with a relative or loved one in Saudi Arabia will quickly argue that this is not a fair trade.
And what is the impact, strategically, of the introduction of all these ground forces? In grand sum, it can only be judged as negative.
Those who have called for massive, pre-emptive air strikes against Iraq must now contemplate the detriment of tens of thousands of American soldiers within range of Iraqi chemical weapons, as well as possible terrorist attacks from Iraq and now Iran.
Those who worry about the possibility of crisis in other parts of the world must recognize that a large percentage of American maneuver forces -- including as much as half of the Marine Corps -- are tied down in the waiting game in the desert.
Those who believe we should use these forces offensively should realize that this would galvanize the Arab world, invite chemical retaliation and an expansion of the hostilities, produce great numbers of casualties and encourage worldwide terrorism -- in short, open up a Pandora's box.
This is not to say that our soldiers and marines would not fight well. The Iraqi army is not a very good army; it is also war-weary. But it demonstrated against Iran the time-honored maxim that the armies of totalitarian nations are capable of absorbing huge losses -- recall the 3.7 million German soldiers who died in World War II, and the million Communist soldiers who died in the Vietnam war.
The President should be aware that, while most Americans are laboring very hard to support him, a mood of cynicism is just beneath their veneer of respect. Many are claiming that the buildup is little more than a "Pentagon budget drill," designed to preclude cutbacks of an Army searching for a mission as bases in NATO begin to disappear.
Others wonder about the predominance of Texans in the Administration, and the dual benefit that higher oil prices will bring to the Southwest: a more robust economy and the concomitant salvation of many S.&L.'s. Others, myself included, worry greatly about a military commitment that has taken on a momentum of its own -- or perhaps a hidden strategy.
General Colin Powell is said to have advised the President that the U.S. should take this sort of military action or it would no longer be a superpower. This calls to mind the Suez Crisis of 1956, after Egyptian leader Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. The British were reeling from a budget affected by the military costs of maintaining the Empire. The Suez Canal was vital for transporting oil. And Anthony Eden, the British Prime Minister who had great antipathy toward Nasser for his anti-British rhetoric, wanted him "destroyed."
Britain went forward, largely to preserve its place at the table of the great powers, drawing in the French and the Israelis. Their attack sputtered in the desert. The U.S., their banker, threatened to withhold support for the British pound if they did not cease their invasion. The Soviets moved into Hungary. And sure enough, when the dust settled, Britain was no longer a great power.
Too much is at risk, and too many questions remain for this buildup to continue without the Administration clarifying its direction. And if offensive action is in the cards, it should be taken only after the President receives a declaration of war from the Congress.
James Webb, Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, was a Marine platoon and company commander in Vietnam.
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