Oct 20 2010

invisible

(2PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

If we could see it as the most obscene example of the hijacking and theft of government revenue in American history, there would be historically high turnouts in the midterms and for every election after that for at least a generation.

I dont have time or brain focus today to embellish but I did want to point you to this piece: War rages. Soldiers suffer. America sleeps.

While less than 1 percent of the population does the heavy lifting in our tragically expensive, but invisible, wars, the rest of us can celebrate our freedoms by rushing to the theaters to make “Jackass 3D” the No. 1 movie in America. Yes, we’re doing our part for the war effort by remaining as stupid and morally unperturbed as possible.

He stresses the fact that vets aren’t exactly comfortable.

“60 Minutes” interviewed a range of homeless veterans, from an Army medic who served this country in the 1980s to a homeless young Marine veteran of Iraq who would willingly fake a drug addiction just to have a roof over his head. One sailor told of losing her marriage and child because of her addiction to meth and alcohol.

Unemployment among returning vets is twice the national average. Over the past decade, more than 800,000 troops have been deployed to combat. Multiple deployments scar these veterans in unimaginable ways.

That there is a single homeless soldier in America should provoke national outrage, but it doesn’t because these vets and the wars they fight are invisible. Al-Qaida isn’t throwing these warriors to the street. “We, the People” are the culprits.

same link as above

Ah but the snooze button seems to be working just fine. Still.

In a little more than two weeks, a nation suffering from willful amnesia about Iraq and Afghanistan will either vote for new representatives who share their myopia — or retain those incumbents most skilled at exploiting it.

If polls are to be believed, these wars are too low on the list of voter priorities to prompt much turnout on Election Day. Although more than a trillion dollars has been spent on the wars, that’s an unthinkable abstraction to the vast majority of us.

One more. Then I gotta get back to work. 🙁

6 comments

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  1. to that last tune.

    its long…

    The king’s taken back the throne,

    The useless seed is sown,

    When they say they’re cutting off the phone,

    I tell them you’re not home.

    No place to hide,

    You were fighting as a soldier on their side,

    You’re still a soldier in your mind,

    Though nothing’s on the line.

    You say it’s money that we need,

    As if we were only mouths to feed,

    I know no matter what you say

    There are some debts you’ll never pay.

  2. 3,040 hits in the google for “France strike” news.

    At Charles de Gaulle airport north of Paris, the nation’s biggest, protesters sang the French national anthem before pushing through a police barricade.

    The CGT transport union says protests also shut down the Clermont-Ferrand airport in the south and disrupted airports in Nice and Nantes.

    With nearly a third of France’s petrol stations dry, authorities stepped in without incident overnight to force open three fuel depots blocked by striking workers for days, Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said.

    Mr Hortefeux warned that the blockades threatened emergency services and could have grave consequences for the entire French economy and public health and safety. “The right to strike does not give anyone the right to prevent people from working or the right to block things, or the right to prevent travel,” he said.

    “The right to protest is not the right to break things, the right to set things on fire, the right to assault, the right to pillage. We will use all means necessary to get these delinquents.”

    Over the past week, 1423 people have been detained for protest-related violence and 123 are facing charges. Police are looking at video surveillance to find more perpetrators.

    we should at least be taking notes.

  3. Photobucket

  4. …and Tony Norman’s op ed is good.  Thanks.

  5. discontent in France is being reported here. But remember we have an ENTERTAINMENT media, with almost all news riddled with advertisements and presented by pseudo serious entertainers. The vast majority of our “news” is encapsulated in programs that are nothing but soap operas and self promotions.

    People don’t know the difference between an ad for a new movie and actual news. And if they do, they’re so numb it doesn’t matter. And the n in numb is interchangeable with the letter d. If the vast majority of Americans know jack shit about their own country’s history, how much can they know about France? …………And Iraq, Afghanistan?

    And I certainly know that our MIC doesn’t care about anything more than keeping our tax dollars rolling in.

    I’m not sure than even “understanding” is relevant in this age of material hedonism.

    LL, I wasn’t going to be cynical today. LOL

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