I’ve always had a hard time with this day. I’ve always had a hard time with the military, understanding my own feelings about those who, with the power of government behind them, put guns in the hands of young men and women and teach them how to kill.
Here we are in the 21st Century, and we are still doing this, putting weapons in the hands of young men and women, sending them out to kill human beings.
We hear the usual sayings, “they chose to serve,” “to protect and defend,” “those who died are heros,” all those things.
I wonder what Americans really want when it comes to protecting and defending.
Memorial Day has become in our modern world a day to remember those who died for the sake of protecting and defending our country.
I see the names, I read the IGTNT diaries over at Daily Kos, showing the pictures of those killed in war, showing their families and friends, telling of their lives, their interests, dreams, ambitions.
Being a series of gross oversimplified generalizations written in various stages of being on both pain and painkillers, with a happy ending:
I spent five hours in the Las Vegas airport Saturday night. I can’t think of a better reintroduction to America.
A pleasure city built in the middle of the desert to serve the repressed desires of puritanical Americans, who would deny themselves and others pleasure. An illusory mirage of freedom from the constrictions of self imposed illusory moral rectitude. Sin City, it is called. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas….because you aren’t allowed to have fun anywhere else! Built in the middle of the desert…where no body will notice it, lol. A pleasure city to which, in part the mighty Colorado River has been sacrificed. The Colorado River, in case you did not know, no longer reaches the sea. Every drop of it is diverted now, so that Americas can have fountains and golf courses and swimming pools in the middle of a dessert.
Truly a symbol of Americas power. Americas indisputably great power, and Americas indisputably VERY odd use of its great power.
Bob Barr, member of the US Congress from Georgia’s 7th Congressional district from 1995 to 2003 was nominated Sunday by the Libertarian Party as the nominee for the Libertarian Party Presidential candidate in 2008.
Of course, Bob Barr, Jr. is NO Libertarian, but a very questionable Wingnut that has a couple of Libertarian leanings, such as opposing the war in Iraq as well as being critical of the BushCo abuses of civil liberities here in the USA after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Since he didn’t agree with King George W. Bush on EVERY thing King George wanted, in Barr’s last term in Congress he was branded by the “walk-in-lockstep-follow-like-a-sheep” Republicans as a Maverick and Jekyll-and-Hyde.
“The Golden Voice of the Great Southwest” sings no more. Bruce “U. Utah” Phillips who, tongue firmly in cheek, billed himself that way, died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Nevada City, CA, May 23. He was 73.
Phillips was one of the deans of American folk music, a crucial link to the working class movement and history of western North America, and a cheerfully subversive social critic.
A proud, card-carrying Wobbly, Bruce made the songs and stories of the American West his own. As indeed they were. When he returned home from the Korean War, Phillips was broke in purse, body and spirit, riding the rails, until he landed at Joe Hill House in Salt Lake City, a shelter run by anarchist Ammon Hennacy of the Catholic Workers movement. Hennacy’s Marxism made sense of Phillip’s experience, and from it grew the knowledge and imagination Phillips subsequently put on stage.
Starting in the late 1960s, “U. Utah Phillips, The Golden Voice of the Great Southwest” sang the old, radical songs of the Little Red Song Book, and told the old organizers’ stories, working class yarns, rants and tall tales. He performed them with the skill and panache of Hal Holbrook doing Mark Twain – and thereby rejuvenated them. At hundreds of folk festivals and thousands of concerts, through a dozen recordings, he passed the lore on to two generations of new listeners, including young musicians like Ani De Franco.
When the the U.S. government finally released Joe Hill’s ashes, it was to Phillips that they gave them.
In his own words:
“Listen,” Phillips wrote in 1995, when first forced to cancel his extensive touring schedule, “for 25 years now, I have been part of a family which has given me a living – not a killing, but a living – a trade without bosses, in which I could own what I do, make all of the creative decisions, be free to say and sing whatever I chose to… Front porch, kitchen, back yard, drunk and sober, young and old, coast-to-coast folk music, a world in which I discovered that I don’t need power, wealth, or fame. I need friends. And that’s what I found and still find.”
“To hell with the mainstream,” Bruce concluded. “It’s polluted. What purifies the mainstream? The little tributaries up in the wilderness where the pure water flows. Better to be lost in the tributaries known to a few, than mired in the mainstream, consumed with self-love and the absurdity of greed. Please. Don’t give our world up. It needs to grow, yes – but subtly, out, through, under, quietly, like water eroding stone, subversive, alive, happy.”
It seems everyone is in uproar over Hillary Clinton’s remarks about her staying in the race for the Democratic nomination to run for president through the month of June, and her ill-chosen example of Bobby Kennedy-the senator and brother of John F. Kennedy who, like his presidential sibling, was assassinated. The remarks were, of course, in the poorest of taste and they have received all the scorn they deserve. But are the commotions raised by those remarks, the sheer outrage and disgust, for the right reasons?
Clinton could just as easily been talking about herself, and the potential threat of assassination to her own person, as about her rival for the nomination, Barack Obama. That few, if any, seem to realize this is yet another attack on her for all the wrong reasons. Yes, it was insensitive and divisive, hurtful and potentially dangerous, for Clinton to invoke the trauma of Bobby Kennedy’s murder in 1968 in making the case that she must remain in contention for the nomination to run for president.
On December 12, 2000 the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Florida Supreme Court’s plan for recounting Florida’s ballots was unacceptable, and that no constitutionally valid recount could timely be completed by the December 12 deadline. This decision ended the recounts, and effectively installed the loser of the popular vote as President of the United States of America. The vote was certified according to Florida state election law by Katherine Harris, the Republican Secretary of State who had been the Florida co-chair of Bush’s campaign. Bush’s younger brother, Jeb Bush, was the governor of Florida. Though it was obvious to all that Harris and Jeb Bush had manipulated the election to favor the governor’s brother, it was too little, too late. Gore was eventually found to have won Florida by 543,895 more popular votes than Bush.
Below the fold is a graphic account of the tragedy and legacy of the worst president in history.
Once again Veterans are living with the apathy of the country they served!
Remember Agent Orange or the many other ailments and Government using Military Personal to test the effects from Nuclear Explosions and Drugs, probably not!
Look them up, or search out the Vets, using this technology, who are still trying to Educate you too!
Remember the 1st Gulf War?
How about the Veterans from, with questions about, their rapidly deteriorating health after serving, many having died since, coming under the obscure name of ‘Gulf War Syndrom’, look that one up as well!
It’s my sad opinion that were he still alive, my grandfather… a life-long Democrat who often referred to African-Americans using the derogatory Yiddish term that is this diary’s title… would have gone into a voting booth in Fort Lauderdale and chosen Republican Senator John McCain over Democratic Senator Barack Obama.
Energy firms routinely abusing carbon offset fund, US studies claim
Billions of pounds are being wasted in paying industries in developing countries to reduce climate change emissions, according to two analyses of the UN’s carbon offsetting programme.
Leading academics and watchdog groups allege that the UN’s main offset fund is being routinely abused by chemical, wind, gas and hydro companies who are claiming emission reduction credits for projects that should not qualify. The result is that no genuine pollution cuts are being made, undermining assurances by the UK government and others that carbon markets are dramatically reducing greenhouse gases, the researchers say.
The criticism centres on the UN’s clean development mechanism (CDM), an international system established by the Kyoto process that allows rich countries to meet emissions targets by funding clean energy projects in developing nations.
