I love the way Israel blackmailed us this week to give them warplanes, so they wouldn't build more homes in the Gaza.
Nice.
Good friend.
I'm so glad we give this good friend so many millions of dollars.
My thought was, instead of having them blackmail us to stop the additional settlements, we play hard ball and tell them--meaning it--that if they began the additional settlements, we'd withdraw all financial support until they a) cancelled them and b) sat down to earnestly discuss a true, long-lasting, meaningful peace with the Palestinians. Meantime, tell the Palestinians the same thing--they have to sit down and earnestly work out a peace deal or 1) no financial support of any kind (if, in fact, we give them any) and 2) they must no longer officially call for the elimination of Israel.
And it wasn't because of work or bad things happening, either.
I had to go across town in Independence, Missouri for work and saw the wierdest things.
First, I'm driving and saw this bumper sticker on an old, foreign, piece of junk car that says "My child is an honor student. My president is a MORON."
My first thought is, I hope it's a holdover from 2000-2008.
I doubt it but I can hope.
I mean, can you get a bit more ugly without being arrested?
Then, I pass a church sign, of all things, and can't believe what I see. Seriously. Here's what their sign said, in all caps:
WHEN TYRANNY BECOMES LAW RESISTANCE BECOMES DUTY
Right.
Uh-huh.
Got you on that.
Say, reverend, where, exactly, in the Bible did Jesus say that, anyway? What chapter and verse is that?
That's what my first thought was.
What does that have to do with "God"?
Second thought: What does that have to do with love? Or forgiveness?
Third: What does that have to do with Jesus?
Doesn't it seem to suggest that the guy who put that sign up has some issue with the very secular amd worldly government of the country right now? And doesn't that seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with any deity?
Nice priorities there, fellas.
I can imagine what kind of redneck, right-wing, "Christian", conservative, closed-minded group that is. they just scream it.
Having done a Google search for this saying, I see jacques_usa had it made into a bumper sticker to purchase online. Yeehaw, huh? I wonder if he came up with it, again, during Dubya's reign of terror. You can bet he didn't. Oh, and it also lead me on a path, from there, to a bunch of redneck, right wing mentions and references to overtaking government, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah, 'cuz they're such tough guys.
What really got me, though, was that, according to Answers.com, the original phrase came from--wait for it--wait for it---the Civil War.
Man, this gets tiresome.
I'd really bust out laughing but for the rampant and pitiful ignorance in the country.
The actual, original phrase was from Thomas Jefferson and it was "When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty."
But they wouldn't want to deal with truth, accuracy or intelligence.
John Boehner and Mitch McConnell cancelled the planned meeting President Obama had requested this week with these guys "because they were too busy and would hold it later this month". Check it out:
WASHINGTON – The White House has postponed a meeting with Democratic and Republican congressional leaders to Nov. 30 after top Republicans said they had a scheduling conflict.
It seems the Republicans may have originally agreed to this day and time and only later changed their minds but I don't know. I can't verify that. Hopefully this doesn't presage how they intend to treat this President.
It seems to indicate that these guys have little or no respect for this President and indicates no willingness to work with him for the benefit of the country. They were too busy to meet with one of the most powerful men in the world. Right.
Additionally, it's apparent the Republicans have every intention of killing a new arms control treaty with Russia--which we, the US, and the world needs and the Soviets want: "the chief Senate Republican negotiator moved to block a vote on the pact, one of the White House’s top foreign policy goals, in the lame-duck session of Congress. "
It looks as though we can expect nothing constructive from these gentlemen separately or together, or from this next Congress or from our government, as I suspected, expected and predicted--probably for the next 2 years.
--Anyone who screams for less and less regulation of business should, once again, take a lesson from life--and China--today after reading that a 28-story apartment tower caught fire while under renovation yesterday. It ended up burning most of the building and killing "at least 42 people and injuring at least 90 others..." Less regulation. Right. As though oil spills and skyscraper fires aren't enough. Personally, I'm also fond of clean air, water and soil, too, but that's me. Oh, and I also don't like my world financial economy collapsing, either. Call me picky.
--There's a very small, brief article describing Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki saying yesterday that "an Iranian arms shipment intercepted in Nigeria was a 'misunderstanding' that had been settled." It goes on: "Nigeria says the shipment of artillery rockets and other weapons, which were labeled as building supplies and found in Lagos, Nigeria, last month, may have been on the way to politicians intending to use violence if they lose forthcoming elections." Get that? "Building supplies"? Yeah, right. We're convinced.
--There is a terrific review of what sounds like a wonderful and funny book by one Christian Lander that lampoons "being white". It's called "The Whiter Shade of Pale". The author of the review did his best, it seems/I think, to be on par with the humor of Mr. Lander. I have to quote one line in it for you: "When white people think about regular salt, all they can think about is sodium and poor health. When they think about sea salt, they think about France." I loved that line. (You're welcome).
--Finally, for the "true believers" or true followers out there of "everything Babs", I see in a full-color, full-page ad on the back of section C--naturally the Arts section--that Barbara Streisand has come out with a book on design. (Ugh). It's called, of course, "My Passion for Design" and quotes Ms. Streisand as saying "My whole life, in a sense, has been a search for beauty." Well, it has ever since she got her first big checks, anyway.
In what is surely a major blow to fashion in general but men's fashion, specifically,
I don't suppose you saw a picture of Mark Zuckerberg during his big Facebook presentation on their proposed email offer, did you?
Did you see him? Did you see what he was wearing?
I mean, sure, he's what? 26 years old, right? But he is, after all, a billionaire and the head of a large and ever-growing, seemingly important corporation but what did he dress up in, for his presentation?
A t-shirt.
True. A t-shirt. No message on it, thank goodness but a solid colored "t".
Holy cow.
How much of a beating is men's fashion going to take? How far down on the "business casual" spiral are we going to go?
And don't get me wrong here, either. I'm not saying he had to wear a suit or tie or get all dresssed up but really, would a polo shirt have killed him? I've always said a polo is just a t-shirt with a collar.
Mr. Zuckerberg, I have to ask, is a polo shirt too much to ask?
Apparently, the answer is yes.
Take it from me, you don't want to be selling men's retail clothing.
“How can hedge-fund managers who are pulling down billions sometimes pay a lower tax rate than do their secretaries?” ask the political scientists Jacob S. Hacker (of Yale) and Paul Pierson (University of California, Berkeley) in their deservedly lauded new book, “Winner-Take-All Politics.” --Frank Rich, in his column "Who Will Stand up to the Superrich?" Sunday, The New York Times
The US' demand for drugs out of Mexico fuels their drug wars and now it comes out that our extremely lax gun laws and gun sales here in the States--both--are fueling and feeding the violence in Mexico.
Many Mexican politicians view the current drug war — which has claimed roughly 30,000 lives over the past four years — as one more curse foisted on Mexico by their rich neighbor to the north.In this worldview, the incredibly violent conflict is fueled by U.S. demand for narcotics, fought with weapons from U.S. gun shops, and funded by U.S. cash that flows freely across the border.
At the chamber of the Mexican Senate, Sen. Sebastian Calderon Centeno says the United States hasn't done anything to curb demand for drugs or to diminish the flow of guns into Mexico. He says the drug war is actually increasing weapons trafficking.
The criminals are getting desperate, he says, and are trying to get more and more guns to attack the Mexican government. The senator says most of the guns in the hands of Mexican drug traffickers are bought legally in Texas, Arizona and California. And, he says, the U.S. has little incentive to stop the smuggling.
"This is a growing business in the U.S.," Calderon says. "They are in the gun sales business, and it doesn't benefit them to stop."
The following quote, from Alternet, shows three things to me. First, it shows me, yet again, how and why we need to cut defense spending. Second, it proves further that we need to get out of Afghanistan. Finally, it shows me what a crazy "military-industrial complex" we've become as a nation and how we need to somehow undo that. The quote:
The Associated PresscoveredU.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry's announcement that a $511 million contract had beenawardedtoCaddell Construction, one of America’s “largest construction and engineering groups,” for a massive expansion of the U.S. embassy in Kabul. According tothe ambassador, that embassy is already “the largest... in the world with more than 1,100 brave and dedicated civilians... from 16 agencies and working next to their military counterparts in 30 provinces,” and yet it seems it’s still not large enough.
Half a billion dollars, ladies and gentlemen, to make what is already the largest "embassy" in the world, according to this, even larger. As if that weren't bad enough--remember the huge "embassy" we built in Iraq? From the same article, read on:
On 104 acres of land in the heart of the Iraqi capital (always referred to in news reports as almost the size of Vatican City), it was slated to cost $590 million. (Predictable cost overruns and delays -- see F-35 above -- would, in the end, bring that figure to at least $740 million, while the cost of running the place yearly is now estimated at $1.5 billion.)
But wait, there's more. They aren't done yet:
By May 2009, with Barack Obama in the White House, I knew as much. That was when two McClatchy reporters broke a storyabout a similar project for a new “embassy” in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, at the projected cost of $736 million (with a couple of hundred million more slated for upgrades of diplomatic facilities in Afghanistan).
A third nearly one billion dollar "embassy" right next door, in Pakistan.
Does this make sense? Any sense? Do you like how your taxes are being spent? Is this the country we want to be? Surely, clearly the answer to all these questions is no. We need to change this. We need to fight for these huge changes so we quit this, as a country. And we need to start today.
"My initial reaction was disgust. And then sickness. And shame. Because I, I felt kind of embarassed for myself. It's almost living your whole life in a lie. Like you're lying to yourself and you're being lied to. And you feel like you're, you're being sheltered from everything that is real. So I, I got, I got frustrated and I got pissed and I got bitter and the more that I got bitter and the more that I learned, I should say the more I learned and the more I experienced in the Army, the more bitter I became and the more angry and frustrated I became with growing up in a family that wanted to shelter me from reality, a society that wanted to shelter me from reality, a government that wanted to shelter me from the disgusting, immoral and illegal things that they do.
Now I know what I want to do with the rest of my life. You know, I want to focus on making sure that another kid doesn't make the same mistake as me. I don't want our country and our government and our Congress to be sending kids off to war to fight and die for oil or economic colonialism and military bases around the world. And I feel it is my duty no matter what I do with my life, no matter what my job is, what my career is. I feel it is my duty to constantly, constantly work to change that.
I do have hope. I mean, I have hope, um, in the people of this country. I don't have hope in the government."
Of course it was "W"--George W. Bush--who got us started on this path.
President George W. Bush, at the time, took us from budget surpluses, as we know, to the deepest budget deficits this country has ever known and we're too selfish, short-sighted and out-and-out stupid to get off the path we're on.
Yet with all that knowledge, information and experience, the Republicans still want to make sure we make absolutely no sacrifices at all--any of us but particularly and especially the rich, the wealthy and their overlords, the corporations--so they want to make sure that we extend all of W's ignorant, costly tax cuts, even for the most wealthy of the country. The headline and story out yesterday:
GOP lawmakers take tough stand on Bush tax cuts
WASHINGTON – Fresh off big victories on Election Day, Republicans in Congress feel empowered in their fight to extend tax cuts that expire in January, including those for the wealthy. President Barack Obama has said he wants to compromise with Republicans to ensure that tax cuts for middle-income families continue, suggesting he's open to extending all the tax breaks for a year or two. Republican leaders say it's a nice gesture by the president, but some key GOP lawmakers want more. "It should be permanent," said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. "We've got to get this economy to pick up and if you raise taxes you're going to stifle the economy significantly. I'm sure that somebody's explained that to the president." Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, who's in line to be the next House speaker in January, also played down talk of a compromise.
From a posting yesterday at Truthout (http://www.truthout.org/) because we haven't learned, collectively, and we need to, badly:
A Small Fraction of a Man
Saturday 13 November 2010
by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t
Op-Ed
This is the guy, I thought to myself when I saw his face or heard his voice. This is the guy.
This is the guy who took a massive Clinton administration budget surplus and gave it away to his friends at the top of the tax bracket, a move that laid the groundwork for our current economic calamity.
This is the guy who breezed past a pointed warning about Osama bin Laden, terrorism and airplanes on August 8, 2001, because he was on vacation and couldn't be bothered.
This is the guy who parlayed that massive failure into a constant goad of fear to be wielded with impunity against the people he purported to lead. Plastic sheeting and duct tape, anthrax under your pillow, and of course, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
This is the guy who, not even a month after the Towers came down, looked into a television camera and said, "We need to counter the shockwave of the evildoer by having individual rate cuts accelerated and by thinking about tax rebates."
Oh yes, this is the guy who stood before the American people in January of 2003 and proclaimed that Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile biological weapons labs, uranium from Niger for use in a "robust" nuclear weapons programs, and that Iraq enjoyed connections to al Qaeda that led directly to the attacks of September 11.
This was the guy who presided over the outing of a deep-cover CIA agent after her husband had the temerity to call him a liar in the public prints. That agent was running a network for the purpose of thwarting any person or group that might try to deliver weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.
This is the guy who strutted like a bantam rooster under a banner reading "Mission Accomplished," bragging about the end of a war that was to grind on for seven more years, and grinds on even to this day, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
This is the guy who said "Bring it on" and put a target on the backs of tens of thousands of US troops. This is the guy who is personally responsible for the death and injury of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings. The body count from his administration is breathtaking in size and scope.
This is the guy who allowed the intelligence services of this nation to violate the Constitutional rights of its citizens in a way never seen before.
This is the guy who turned the entire world against America after that same world embraced us so completely after September 11. World leaders could not stand to be in the same room with him, and openly mocked him, thus humiliating us all.
This is the guy who literally fiddled while Hurricane Katrina devoured the city of New Orleans.
This guy actually said he considered dropping Cheney from the administration? It would be comic if it were not so pointedly fraudulent. Cheney ran the government, ran roughshod over every right he found meddlesome, and Bush sat by and let him do it with that same simpering smirk on his face.
This is the guy who set stem cell research back more than a decade because of his overarching fealty to "snowflake babies" over living, breathing, suffering people.
This is the guy who unleashed all the horrors of the torture chamber because the lawyers said it was OK. If the president does it, it's not illegal, right? Nixon came up with that line, but this is the guy who took it farther than it has ever been taken before.
This is the guy, and now he's back on my television again, and it makes me want to eat my own teeth. I endured him for eight long, brutal years, and have often thought since that no matter how bad things get - and they have, indeed, gotten pretty damned bad - I don't have to endure his face or his voice or his abject serial failures anymore.
But now he's back, and it is like returning to a nightmare.
I don't know what this George W. Bush Reputation Rehabilitation Tour will actually accomplish in the end. The same 20% of the country that kept his approval ratings from slipping into single digits - said group now being known as the "Tea Party" - will go out and buy his book. They will lap up his mealy-mouthed pabulum like cats into the cream, and some of our "mainstream" commentators will try to shoehorn the idea that he is missed into the national conversation.
He is not. George W. Bush was, and likely will forever be, the single worst American president in the nation's history. To outstrip his remarkable record of failure, criminality and disgrace, a future president will have to personally cause the Earth to crash into the sun.
All I can do for now is avoid the TV, stay away from the newspapers, and pray to God on High that this small fraction of a man will soon retreat back into the ignominy from which he has emerged. There is no salvaging him, and thanks to him, there may be no salvaging America in his aftermath.
We are all children of this bastard fool now. The least he can do is stay in the shadows where he belongs, while we toil and sweat to repair what he wrought.
"In the earlier days of history, kings and leaders went to the battlefield with their men; but today, those who determine that a nation will go to war remain safely behind.
The next time leaders talk of warring, all the people should get together and send those leaders to the front lines. Give them a big arena with wonderfully effective ammunition, and the war will be finished in a day." — Parmahansa Yogananda, January 17, 1943
"...peace does not rest in the charters and covenants alone. It lies in the hearts and minds of all people. So let us not rest all our hopes on parchment and on paper, let us strive to build peace, a desire for peace, a willingness to work for peace in the hearts and minds of all of our people. I believe that we can. I believe the problems of human destiny are not beyond the reach of human beings." —President John F. Kennedy
Are we not still the people who desire and work for peace?
If not, why not?
If we are, what are we doing to get us out of these wars?
"Alcohol makes you feel better and then makes you feel worse and then remorselessly very bad indeed, but then alcohol will make you feel better again. It is the cure for the dog that bit you, and how easily you forget it is also the dog. Good Doctor Schlichter told me, 'It is the one relationship you have learned to count on, with the bottle.'
Thank God I found sobriety. I could sustain myself with my work, my reading, the movies, my friends. And walking, walking, walking. Of all the purposes of education, I think the most useful is this: It prepares you to keep yourself entertained. It gives you a better chance of an interesting job. Those who stare at the TV for hours might as well be sitting on a stone under a tree in a primeval village; indeed, that might offer more interest and variety." --Roger Ebert, from his journal, literally, "Roger Ebert's Journal"
If you weren't familiar with Mr. Ebert's writing and journal before now, you might want to check it out. His writing is frequently as good each day as it is with this entry. (See link below)
I post this line because I liked it and think it somewhat important. The rest of the column is really much more personal about loneliness, possible loneliness, computers, the internet and our modern age. He writes beautifully, very personally and with terrific insight.
I post this today because it was written as a comment on Tony's KC Blog today and because it likely won't get the readership and coverage it deserves, given the tragedy and tragic blunder and scope that was and is the nightmare we call the Iraq War and the lies from the previous administration that created it.
A local writer and follower of TKC whom I only know as "chuck" (in blue on the site, :) ), wrote the following and with the one exception to it that there were, in fact, a small group of us who saw through the lies from W's administration and publicly protested the war, before it happened, Chuck is right on target, no pun intended. Please note that, yes, there are some grammatical errors. In the first place, as Chuck says, he gets "worked up" about this subject--as do I--but he gets his point across very well, I think, and if perfect English has to suffer, so be it. Also, finally, be forewarned, it also has some profanity in it. I leave it in here and don't censor partly for Chuck's free speech rights and partly to emphasize what a profane situation the Iraq War is and has been since we allowed it to happen--because we did allow it to happen, people--back in 2003.
The unmitigated disaster that is the Iraq war, is an abomination.
A galactic blunder, fostered on the American and Iraqi people by think tank Republican apparatchiks who aquired superficial and temporary power and gravitas through the Bush ascendancy.
Hundreds of thousands of people, including 4,000 Americans (Not including 250,000 wounded, when including Iraqis.) now lie dead next to the failed policies and legacy of the Bush administration.
Bush's new twist (See Interviews this week.) on WMDs is a disgraceful excuse for a 21st century "fantasy, and a trick of fame".
Charley Sheen, drunk on his ass, could have prepared, thoght out, and executed a better strategy.
I know hindsight is 20/20, but the laundry list of stupidity related to this bloody endeavor is lengthy and were it not so horrifying, laughable.
The blowback from this international adventure will hang like an cheap incense cloud over any mideast efforts for decades to come. No matter what is being discussed, the smell of our failure is always there.
I remember Cheney on Meet the Press, and Colin Powell at the UN. Hell, I believed them. All of America believed them.
They were lying. I get that, if you win, if it works out, ok.
Trillions of dollars later, we didn't win, and chaos when we leave, is our legacy.
Another Gulf of Tonkin bullshit lie.
This group of morons fucked us just as bad as those Captains of Industry on Wall Street (See Great Recession), and the combination of Trillions spent in both cases, is bringing us to our knees.
Money. Halliburton is Goldman Sachs, is Halliburton.
Halliburton had guys pulling down phone numbers driving trucks in Iraq!
Money.
Condy Rice, at this point has the jene se qua of Robert McNamara sans the regret.
11/13/10 7:54 AM Follow-up comment from Chuck:
A clarification here.
Colin Powell didn't actually know he was lying at the UN. He wa bullshitted too.
I get worked up a bit with this subject.
Its like bad Science Fiction its so stupid.
If you we could dig up Ayatollak Khomeini, put the paddles on the scumbag fuck, and tell him that the US destroyed the only real opposition to Iranian Theological hegemony in the entire Mid East, explain the whole story in detail, he would call us liars, then when finally convinced, leap for joy.
Its tough to get your arms around this turn of events.
We didn't shoot ourselves in the foot, we got it blown off with our own home made IED.
So my thanks, Chuck. Not only did you get it correctly and true and with great energy and conviction but you point out what a lot of Americans still need to learn, again, tragically, and what the whole world needs to never forget since "Those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it," paraphrased.
We should have been better, as a people, than to have let this Iraq War begin in our name. We need to be a better people, by far, than to not learn from it and to ever let anything so wreckless and so humanly expensive and even stupid to ever happen again.
We owe our soldiers and the whole nation far better than this.
"The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth. "Ye shall know the truth," says Jesus, "and the truth shall set you free." Now, I've chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam"
Simply replace "Vietnam" with Iraq and Afghanistan
Okay, Conan O'Brien's show is an empty, sad imitation of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, as I said the other day and last evening I discovered that "How I Met Your Mother" is a blatant, shallow, hollow attempt at repeating the success, such as it was, of "Friends".
Really, people.
You can do much better.
It reminds me of the old song:
"Blow up the TV..."
Think happy thoughts and have a great day and weekend.
You didn't get angry when the Supreme Court "Conservative Judicial Activists" Five stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.
You didn't get angry when Cheney allowed energy company officials to dictate energy policy while excluding any environmentalists from that meeting.
You didn't get angry when on Spet. 10 2001, 1 day before 9-11 Rumsfeld announced the Pentagon lost 2.3 TRILLION dollars.
You didn't get angry when Bush's generals let Bin Laden escape from Tora Bora.
You didn't get angry when a covert CIA operative was outed because her husband did his job and exposed Bush's lies about yellowcake uranium.
You didn't get angry when the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the John Warner Defense Bill were passed and our Constitutional rights were shredded.
You didn't get angry when Bush illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.
You didn't get angry when it was revealed that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Rice all lied us into the illegal, unnecessary war on Iraq.
You didn't get angry when Bush spent over 600 billion dollars (and counting) on the illegal, unnecessary Iraq war.
You didn't get angry when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.
You didn't get angry as thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed or maimed in Bush's illegal, unnecessary war.
You didn't get angry when it was revealed U.S. soldiers and the CIA were torturing people, including in former KGB prisons.
You didn't get angry when Bush admitted the government was illegally wiretapping Americans
.
You didn't get angry when it was revealed that Bush ignored many warnings of the 9/11 terrorism.
You didn't get angry when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed Military Hospital while you claimed you "supported our troops".
You didn't get angry when Bush let New Orleans drown.
You didn't get angry when mostly white people were helped in New Orleans.
You didn't get angry when it was revealed Bush ignored warnings about Hurricane Katrina and the levees.
You didn't get angry when Bush gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.
You didn't get angry when Bush turned Clinton's budget surplus into a gigantic budget deficit.
You didn't get angry when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark, and our debt hit the thirteen trillion dollar mark.
You didn't get angry when Exxon earned more in profits than any company ever, but paid zero U.S. taxes.
You didn't get angry when, using reconciliation, a trillion dollars of our tax dollars were redirected to insurance companies for Medicare Advantage which cost over 20 percent more for basically the same services that Medicare provides.
You finally got angry when Obama decided that people in America deserved to see a doctor if they are sick, but you got angry at Obama, not the insurance corporations and drug companies that wrote Obama's bill. If Obama were white, would you hate him so much?
Illegal wars, killing Americans and Iraqi and Afghani women and children, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you.
But an African-American President taking the first very flawed, very insufficient step to getting health care for all of us?
Hell, no! That's "socialism"! you say, as you depend on Social Security and Medicare.
Socialism for corporations and the rich doesn't make you angry. Only "socialism" by Democrats is "un-American" to you.
Only "liberals" are your sworn enemies.
Are you aware that liberals and progressives fought to get us all: vacations, the 40-hour workweek, weekends off, the minimum wage, worker safety laws, child labor laws, the right to vote for women, environmental protections, food inspections, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, to name just some of the social improvements which are hallmarks of a civilized society?
I have to tell you, if you don't have a Veteran in your life and/or you didn't go to an Applebee's restaurant yesterday, you really missed something.
But first, a little background.
At my office this week, a newer colleague--a Vet--asked me Wednesday if I'd care to go with him to lunch Thursday--yesterday, of course--for Veterans Day as they were giving Vets a free meal. (There really is a free lunch, occasionally, if infrequently).
Naturally, I said yes and we made plans.
So off we went yesterday and I had no expectations for the lunch or experience. I didn't think much of it.
What a payoff I got.
When we arrived, the place was packed. It was nearly standing room only. I had no idea that a) it would be so busy or that b) Applebee's did this annually. I didn't know any restaurant group did this.
Next, what I noticed was that Applebee's--this one, at least--was really ready for this onslaught. Everyone was flying--calmly and under terrific control and organization--everywhere.
And check this out--instead of just printing up a sheet that the restaurant would re-use, year after year, without a date on it, Applebee's had a nice big laminated sheet printed up with the specials for the Vets right on it. That was expensive. They didn't have to do that, either.
After that I noticed that the camraderie was almost palpable. Whoever wasn't just quiet and cooperative was ready and willing to chat nearly anyone else up. It was all "hello" and "how are you?" and "when did you serve" and "where did you serve?" and all that. It was terrific. Really fantastic.
My co-worker and I chatted up another senior Vet who said he served from 1947 on and retired with the service after serving all over the US. He was a really nice, talkative guy.
And the Vets were all ages, too. Most were Seniors but some were young guys in uniform.
The staff got us to our table, took our order and after a little wait, we had our food.
Was it fantastic food? No, not really. But it was good.
And far more than that, it was served to a large and very appreciative crowd. I'd never witnessed such a full house of good feeling before. Really, there was nothing like it.
Sure, if you're cynical, you could point out that Applebee's more than made up for whatever they gave away. I recognize that.
But this "giveaway" and all the work it took was a great way to say thank you to all kinds of Vets, nationwide, and a terrific way for them to impart goodwill that would last all year, for me, at least (and I'm not even a Vet), but for a large number of Vets nationwide, who took them up on their offer.
So kudos, Applebee's. That was/is a terrific idea, a great effort and a really nice thing to do for all the Vets and, who knows? Maybe all the rest of us US citizens, too.
"This is the great tactical triumph of the Republicans Party. It harnessed a wave of grass-roots populist rage, of resentment against fat cats who had brought us to economic ruin, and used it to advance an agenda that would enrich fat cats and hurt people at the grass-roots level." -Robert Wright, The "Opinionator" Column, The New York Times
Am I the only one who thinks Conan O'Brien and/or some executives got together (a few times now) and have said, aloud, that what they need to do is do their best to totally re-create the old Johnny Carson "Tonight Show", right down to the set and the fat sidekick?
I saw his new show on TBS and that's precisely what I came away with.
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