Mother Jones and the children of Ludlow

Posted on April 20, 2009 by NMT

APRIL 20 MARKS THE 95TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LUDLOW MASSACRE.
From her 1925 autobiography, Mother Jones wrote about the UMWA strike in Ludlow Colorado, over the harsh winter of 1914.

From Chapter 21:

No one listened. No one cared. The tickers in the offices of 26 Broadway sounded louder than the sobs of women and children. Men in the steam heated luxury of Broadway offices could not feel the stinging cold of Colorado hill-sides where families lived in tents.

Then came Ludlow and the nation heard. Little children roasted alive make a front page story. Dying by inches of starvation and exposure does not.

On the 19th of April, 1914, machine guns, used on the strikers in the Paint Creek strike, were placed in position above the tent colony of Ludlow. Major Pat Hamrock and Lieutenant K. E. Linderfelt were in charge of the militia, the majority of whom were, company gun-men sworn in as soldiers.

Early in the morning soldiers approached the colony with a demand from headquarters that Louis Tikas, leader of the Greeks, surrender two Italians. Tikas demanded a warrant for their arrest. They had none. Tikas refused to surrender them. The soldiers returned to quarters. A signal bomb was fired. Then another. Immediately the machine guns began spraying the flimsy tent colony, the only home the wretched families of the miners had, riddling it with bullets. Like iron rain, bullets’ upon men, women and children.

The women and children fled to the hills. Others tarried. The men defended their home with their guns. All day long the firing continued. Men fell dead, their faces to the ground. Women dropped. The little Snyder boy was shot through the head, trying to save his kitten. A child carrying water to his dying mother was killed.

By five o’clock in the afternoon, the miners had no more food, nor water, nor ammunition. They had to retreat with their wives and little ones into the hills. Louis Tikas was riddled with shots while he tried to lead women and children to safety. They perished with him.

Night came. A raw wind blew down the canyons where men, women and children shivered and wept. Then a blaze lighted the sky. The soldiers, drunk with blood and with the liquor they had looted from the saloon, set fire to the tents of Ludlow with oil-soaked torches. The tents, all the poor furnishings, the clothes and bedding of the miners’ families burned. Coils of barbed wire were stuffed into the well, the miners’ only water supply.

After it was over, the wretched people crept back to bury their dead. In a dugout under a burned tent, the charred bodies of eleven little children and two women were found-unrecognizable. Everything lay in ruins. The wires of bed springs writhed on the ground as if they, too, had tried to flee the horror. Oil and fire and guns had robbed men and women and children of their homes and slaughtered tiny babies and defenseless women. Done by order of Lieutenant Linderfelt, a savage, brutal executor of the will of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. The strikers issued a general call to arms: Every able bodied man must shoulder a gun to protect himself and his family from assassins, from arson and plunder. From jungle days to our own so-named civilization, this is a man’s inherent right. To a man they armed, through-out the whole strike district. Ludlow went on burning in their hearts.

Everybody got busy. A delegation from Ludlow went to see President Wilson. Among them was Mrs. Petrucci whose three tiny babies were crisped to death in the black hole of Ludlow. She had something to say to her President.

Immediately he sent the United States cavalry to quell the gunmen. He studied the situation, and drew up proposals for a three-year truce, binding miner and operator. The operators scornfully refused.

A mass meeting was called in Denver. Lindsay spoke. He demanded that the operators be made to respect the laws of Colorado. That something be done immediately. The Denver Real Estate Exchange appointed a committee to spit on Judge Lindsey for his espousal of the cause of the miners.

Rockefeller got busy. Writers were hired to write pamphlets which were sent broadcast to every editor in the country, bulletins. In these leaflets, it was shown how perfectly happy was the life of the miner until the agitators came; how joyous he was with the company’s saloon,. the company’s pigstys for homes, the cornpany’s teachers and preachers and coroners. How the miners hated the state law of an eight-hour working day, begging to be allowed to work ten, twelve. How they hated the state law that they should have their own check weigh-man to see that they were not cheated at the tipple.

And all the while the mothers of the children who died in Ludlow were mourning their dead.

A Colorado coal mining family

What became of Ludlow DEATH SPECIAL

Posted on April 12, 2009 by Eric Verlo

One of the weapons deployed against the striking miners of Ludlow, was an early armored car nicknamed the “Death Special.” Its steel plated sides emboldened mine guards to run their mounted machine gun through the union camps. What became of the intimidating machine? Does it sit in a prairie museum, or was its metal armor recycled? Recycled, definitely.

The Death Special was improvised by the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency who were the hired strike-breakers, and built at CF&I’s own steel works to use against its striking employees. At Ludlow the steel-plated vehicle was driven alongside and through the tent colony, its searchlight used to harass the sleeping strikers. Its guns took shots at the tents which left haphazard victims killed or maimed.

World Wars One and Two produced many armored vehicle designs, but the Baldwin-Felts model was unique for being a civilian model. You can recognize its lines in the modern urban assault vehicles which metropolitan police departments have determined to arm themselves, in the war against what, meth-lab pill-boxes?

No, these armored police cars are deployed against public protest, in the name of riot-control. By their paint jobs, neither camouflage nor emergency neon, they are obviously intended to intimidate. If the Baldwin-Felts and Pinkertons are going to reinvent themselves as Blackwater and Triple Canopy, why not also their weapons of choice?

This one was used to mark the line over which the A.NS.W.E.R. marchers were not to cross, when they marched against the Pentagon and its weapons suppliers in Washington DC.

This vehicle was bought by the Aurora Police Department, out of the $50 million allocated to Denver for security for the 2008 DNC. Notice on its intimidating black sides, it says “Emergency Rescue.”

Here it is aimed at you.

St. Paul at the RNC.

Denver.

Ludlow Massacre or unhappy incident?

Posted on April 11, 2009 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO COLLEGE- CC is holding a symposium on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre. Actually, it’s only called the Ludlow Symposium. True to Colorado Springs form, several among the audience want to call it an “incidence,” instead of a “massacre.” One of the participants, author Scott Martelle, is willing to oblige, explaining that if the militia hadn’t known that women and children were taking shelter beneath the tents which they were putting to the torch, then the soldiers were guilty only of criminally negligent homicide.

(*Note 4/12/09: this article has been revised in light of helpful comments offered by symposium participants. Also: Differences of opinion aside, I am remiss if I do not praise the scholars who were very generous with their time and encyclopedic memories to enrich this symposium.
1. CC’s own Professor David Mason authored an evocative narrative of lives caught up in the 1914 events, written in verse, entitled Ludlow.
2. Journalist Scott Thomas researched the most recent definitive account to date, the 2007 Blood Passion: the Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West.
3. Thomas Andrews, Associate Professor at CU Denver, enlarged the context in 2008 with his award winning Killing For Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War.
4. Zeese Papanikolas represented his authorative Buried Unsung: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre, written in 1984.)

Does it matter what it’s called, or with what certainty? The symposium is filled with public school system educators looking for an angle with which to approach Ludlow with their kids. One of them expresses her doubt about teaching about Mother Jones, having just heard from the panelists a probably too-nuanced assessment of the labor hero’s tactics. The political climate of our age can’t find any purchase with moral nuance.

I’m stuck thinking that in recording social history, scholars cannot avoid writing the victor’s narrative. In particular as regards the history of labor, because neither academics nor even middle class hobbyists in the symposium’s audience can look at the events from the perspective of the working class.

Even the scholar’s objectivity is middle class. The opinion was expressed by the panel that the Ludlow aftermath was one of the few occasions when the story was spun to the benefit of labor interests. But this does not account for why authors and educators find themselves having to resurrect the tale of Ludlow these many years later. When it occurred, Americans may have swallowed the hyperbole, but since that time they’ve internalized its internment, effaced by a corporate culture so as to have disappeared from even our school textbooks.

I think this may have been something of the question posed by symposium organizer Jaime Stevensen to the panel, when she asked how the authors insulated themselves from the fictions woven into their own perspectives of history. She didn’t get any takers.

The very concept that history adds up to only so much trivial pursuit, is inherently a view from the ivory tower. Do the Ludlow scholars not recognize that common people today face the same foes as did the miners of Ludlow? With the added impediment of a corporate PR system erasing its malevolent deeds. Have not American unions been maligned to the point of extinction? Yet at the same time, capitalists have thoroughly reprised their Machiavellian ways. History can be a tool, not only for statecraft, but for the common American to protect his hard-fought democratic gains.

The United Mine Workers of America having successfully spun the deaths of the striking miner families as a “massacre” may have made an unmerited impact on the public’s sympathies, but likewise, deciding to call Ludlow “not a massacre” will be falsely charged as well. Is there a valuable lesson in unlearning that unbridled corporate greed can be unthinkably inhumane?

Historians can fancy themselves objective to ambivalence, but is that a luxury their readers and in particular the schoolchildren can afford? As we witness today the gloves coming off of the globalisation taskmasters?

How I prefer the emotional truth of earlier chroniclers like Barron Beshoar, author of OUT OF THE DEPTHS, a 1942 account of Ludlow, whose preface included this gem:

“If the mine guards and detectives, the mercenaries who served as the Gestapo and the coal districts appear to be scoundrels who sold themselves and their fellowmen for a few corporation dollars, the author will consider them adequately presented.”

At Colorado College the consensus of contemporary historical synthesis, embodied by CU Denver’s Thomas Andrews‘ excellent book KILLING FOR COAL, seems to conclude about Ludlow, “we may never know exactly what happened.” This may reflect the Factual Truth, but it does so at the expense of unrecorded oral accounts, by depreciating their traditional path to us through of folklore.

Another author made pains to debunk the lyrics “Sixteen tons, and what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt,” a cultural indictment of the “company store,” which was one of the grievances of the Ludlow strikers. He postulated that modern readers could be prone to let folklore color a predisposition against the company store. Perhaps a company store was in fact a convenience, derided because it was an arbitrary restriction against which human nature bucked. Trying to be helpful, another panelist suggested: “Imagine if the company store was 7-11, and you were told you could only shop there.” I believe both of these gentlemen are overlooking the much grosser complaint which the miners were protesting, that of insurmountable debt, systematically forced on them by their employers. That’s a phenomena on the rise today, if maybe not among college professors. Around the world, indentured servitude has never abated.

In our ivory tower we can debate which side, the union or the militia, fired the first shots on April 20. Who was at fault, seemed to be what that question would decide. At least panelist Anne Hyde had the presence of mind to lay some of the responsibility on the mine owners, who weren’t there of course, but whose stubborn greed played a not unsubstantial part in what the other panelists were attributing to “macho intransigence.”

That expression was in vogue to describe Cowboy presidencies. What an effete put down of militant activism. Are we to blame the striking miners for holding firm to their demands?

Thank goodness someone in the audience brought up recent efforts to deny the Sand Creek Massacre, which two panelists quickly weighed in to say “that was a real massacre,” discrediting Ludlow, obviously, and failing to grasp her point that indeed some Colorado Springs locals are rewriting Sand Creek as a battle, and not a massacre.

Another isolationist luxury has become to judge every action as it compares to a nonviolent ideal. It was noted that UMWA union leader John Lawson always recused himself from violent tactics. During the symposium’s opening reception, someone performed a song dedicated to the Ludlow martyr Louis Tikas, which lauded him for choosing to fight with words not guns, as if guns would discredit him.

I’ll play devil’s advocate and suggest that the miners fired the first shots. They saw Louis Tikas bludgeoned in the back of the head and then executed as he lay on the ground unconscious, they saw the National Guard move a machine gun into position above their tent city, and they probably began to fire at the soldiers lest a rain of bullets descend on miners’ wives and children before they had a chance to flee the camp.

The miners were asking that their union be recognized, that the Colorado eight hour work day be enforced, that the scales which determined their pay be verified, that their full hours be compensated, etc. The mine owners clung to their profits, and ordered the miners’ tent city, their only shelter and all their worldly possessions burned to the ground. Women and children were hiding in underground pits dug to escape the sniper fire which the mine guards sporadically aimed at the tents. The guards drove an armored car around the perimeter of the union camp, at all hours, for that purpose.

Ultimately this climate erupted into the violent clash on April 20, 1914, in which the miners battled with the far better equipped soldiers. The casualties were 25 to 1. I call that a massacre.

ADDENDUM: Photographs from visit to the Ludlow Memorial.

LUDLOW MEMORIAL, COLORADO- Day three of the Colorado College Ludlow Symposium featured a bus ride to the site of the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, then on to Trinidad to the grave of Union leader Louis Tikas. A reporter for Colorado Public Radio interviewed the symposium panelists at the U.M.W.A. memorial grounds.

David Mason is interviewed by a freelance reporter for Colorado Public Radio.

Scott Martelle and Thomas Andrews are interviewed above the fatal cellar.

TRINIDAD, COLORADO- Masonic Cemetary.

Zeese Papanikolas spoke about his protagonist’s gravestone and its reference to Tikas as a “Patriot.”

Ex RMN columnists stuck to their guns

Posted on March 28, 2009 by Eric Verlo

DENVER- Considering the villainous role the Rocky Mountain News played in the vilification of Ward Churchill, their insinuations having been thoroughly discredited in this trial, you’d think the RMN columnists now writing for the Denver Post would be self-conscious about taking the same mocking stance. But they are not. Attorney David Lane chats with them most amicably, but still they file the typical anti-academic hit pieces. Columnist Vincent Carroll summarized Churchill’s recent testimony as: Ward’s world of brazen claims.

In an earlier piece, Carroll recaps Churchill’s alleged misconduct, but where an objective reporter would say “alleged,” Carroll writes “gross.” Don’t think the RMN vets aren’t well aware that a vindication for Churchill means a repudiation of their libel.

Mike Littwin is no better. For him, yawns in the audience are not a sign of defense attorney Patrick O’Rourke’s pedestrian presentation, but of the discussion’s irrelevance. Of Native American history in dispute, of genocide still denied by CU in this example, Littwin concludes: the World has moved beyond Churchill.

The Bolsheviks had the right idea…

Posted on March 21, 2009 by Brother Jonah

As far as ending World War One.

Since the issue was raised that the United States intervention in 1917 was what ended the war.

Silly on the face of it and sillier still the further you delve into the idea.

Britain and the rest of the Triple Entente (although there were far more than three of them) had the propaganda going about “That Small nations might have the same rights as the Great Powers”.

Just not nations like Ireland, India, China, Kenya, VietNam (only “our” French allies were calling it “Cochin China”… Cochin is French for “pig”) the Congo, the Sudan, South Africa… you know, the Small Nations inhabited by those the European Royalists considered “inferior”.

So while the Band of Cousins, related by blood and by their arrogance, sent “their” subjects to do bayonet charges against poison gas and belt-fed water-cooled machine guns, eventually, the worst of the lot, Cousin Nicholas Romanoff, pissed off his ~~Peasant Slaves~~ errr Lawfully Appointed Subjects to the point that they got sick of it, and gave him and his Demon Spawn family exactly what they deserved..

If it had spread much further, and the American intervention was the only thing the “free” nations had to end it…(Free to Obey Your King as though he were anointed by God) (and the Royalists still believe that they ACTUALLY ARE anointed by God)

If there were no American intervention the general mutiny that was building in ALL the trenches, French, Belgian, English, Turkish, German, Austrian… the same way it had amongst the Russian Conscripts, would have reached it’s natural apex, and they would have gotten rid of THEIR parasite class the same way the Russian people had.

The war would have ended a lot sooner, and even the Spanish Influenza epidemic might have been averted.

And since it wouldn’t have ended on terms imposed by the “victors”… it would actually have been over.

Instead of, you know, our generation still fighting the same war, different battles.

I see the Minutemen are once again claiming not to be Racist…

Posted on March 16, 2009 by Brother Jonah

Lying their asses off in other words.

The Former Border Patrol now I.C.E. claiming to not be racist is along the same lines, but hey, when you have guns shoved in your face for the “crime” of Looking Mexican by the unrepentant Pigs, and then told both by the Pigs in question and their supporters that it’s Your Fault for looking Mexican, the Racism becomes obvious.

The Minutemen are much the same, just no accountability, and strangely, none of the I.C.E.Racists are stopping their Hate Militia from committing Aggravated Assault against People.

The fact that some of the PEOPLE they round up, and murder if they resist, happen to be American, that doesn’t make a difference to me.

People are people and assaulting anybody is a Crime.

But there’s “Patriots” who believe that somehow the Crime isn’t a Crime unless it’s committed against an American.

Then again, the Americans that get assaulted by these Terrorist Thugs were dark-complected so it’s OK with the “Patriots”.

Same with the American PEOPLE murdered by the Private Army “Blackwater” in New Orleans.

With the full cooperation of the (non racist, of course) U.S. Army and the Louisiana Police in their various departments.

“Pain Compliance”

Posted on February 28, 2009 by Brother Jonah

…and they wonder why people would deliberately crash airplanes into their buildings…

On Teevee right now there’s a Smug Arrogant PIG demonstrating how to use one of those Airsoft pellet guns to inflict severe pain on somebody to make him “Comply”… meaninng Grovel To His Imperialistic Cowardly Uniform and Badge.

“Do as we say or we cause great pain, then we handcuff you and make you suffer MORE pain once there’s no chance of you fighting back and possibly putting Our Coward Arses in any danger”

That’s why the CSPD targeted elderly and disabled people at the St Paddy’s Day Massacre two years ago.

They enjoy causing pain but are too yellow to take any chances doing it.

Semper Fi, Ollie- Again…

Posted on December 31, 2008 by Brother Jonah

You know, this whole scene in Israel and Palestine right now has the marks of Bush double dealing again, playing all sides against the middle.

The cowboy-looking swarthy fellow who identified himself as a Jew AND a Marine. last night as he was cursing us…

…brought this back to mind.

I wonder, sometimes, how much guilt does the U.S. government share, in our name and with our tax dollars of course, and our kin on the ground… and under the ground.

Why, exactly, did the “smart money” give arms to Hizbollah?

Knowing of course that Hizbollah doesn’t like them and would do their level best to strike, but you notice, the so-called Patriots who struck the deal, they didn’t get killed.

Over 300 Marines, mostly the scions of the “lower” classes, got killed.

Likewise, when the deals were struck with the Medellin Cartel, same time, yeah? There was a “Massive Crackdown” on the southern borders, for those of us who smoked marijuana, it was a Famine in the Land.

Suddenly, though, “black tar” and smokeable cocaine were everywhere.

You might say, tongue firmly in cheek, there was a massive “smack” or a “crack”, down on the southern border.

When I was stopped by the Border Patrol and they were waving guns in my face, screaming in Spanish, there were actually death squads in El Paso at the same time.

And since they didn’t offer any badge or insignia type evidence to the contrary, at least primarily, yeah, I thought that was who it was.

The idea that these Drug Militia were financed at least partly by Yankee Government donations crossed my mind more than once.

Fortunately, a bullet hasn’t crossed my mind, not yet at least.

Then, Bush comes off with the strangest ever response to the 9/11 strikes… his operatives start saying that the Colombians in particular were funneling money to al Qa’eda…. and no explanation of why exactly they would know that.

The one that fits most perfectly is the connection between Saddam Hussein and Bush, Manuel Noriega and Bush… as in Bush the Elder and “Saint Ronnie the Incredibly Teflon Nice”…

USMC Lt. Colonel Oliver North.

I would say, and Mr North should listen, he’s been playing with some incredibly BAD boys.

North is now the biggest link left between Bush Junior and al Qa’eda.

He should look to what happened to the Other Major Links.

Probably with his assistance. Because he’s not averse in any way to lying, stealing, killing or betrayal…

Perhaps his “loyalty” to the Bu’ush Regime lies in his innate cowardice, he’s scared to testify.

How about it, Ollie? You’ve got ~~friends~~“associates in town here who monitor this website and our activities, and our writings.

Somewhere under all that slime with which you coated yourself, maybe there’s a little bit, a spark, if you will, of actual Patriotism.

Truth, Ollie, truth… it’s the only path left for you,
I’ve looked down the barrels of your comrades guns before. The only way I survived was by standing my ground.

Semper Fi.

You know what it means. “faithful forever”.

You haven’t been faithful yet, not to the Marine Corps, nor to America nor to God Himself.

Nor to yourself. You’ve let yourself become the Lap-dog of the Empire.

Make that stand for the first time in your life.

The good news for America’s economy!

Posted on December 31, 2008 by Tony Logan

For the year 2008, the Dow fell 33.8 percent, for its bleakest year since 1931; the S&P skidded 38.5 percent; and the Nasdaq posted its worst year ever, with a 40.5 percent drop. That’s the good news!

Capitalist world stocks as a whole did even worse, falling more than an average across all countries of slightly more than 43% in value. Wall St closes out worst year since Depression Some countries, including China, did yet worse (over $3 trillion in losses) from the paper stock exchange values at the beginning of 2008.

So is there more good news for America’s capitalist economy this year? YES, that would be the election of Barack Obama and Obama’s commitment to carry on the US military-industrial welfare system exactly as before. War is the growth part of the world capitalist economy and Barack is committed to keeping the ball rolling right along! You can transfer economic collapse to foreigners easier with a big military on hand to enforce that! Aren’t you glad you live in America?

Look? If you are a hardworking and fearless man with a gun, there is always military-security-policing work out there, and especially in economic downturns! Hospitals are actually closing down in parts of the US, but the police force merits the best!
Don’t look for their supplies and numbers to go down. Likewise, there is always some place needing occupation, and the Pentagon clearly will have the lobbying power, with operatives like Lockheed backing them up, to get what they need to make their world safe! Corporate Security…

So don’t get down on economic prospects (most good Americans aren’t!). Have faith! Go with the guns is my economic advice for 2009. More growth is expected ahead and bombs are where it’s at! America’s got them, too, so there really is no reason to feel so grim about the near future!

Arab dictator allies of US line up in support of Israeli terrorism against Gaza

Posted on December 28, 2008 by Tony Logan

Silence. Or worse yet even, efforts to blame Hamas instead of Israel for the new slaughter in Gaza. That’s what the US allied Arab dictatorships imposed on the Arab world offer their people. Complicity. Many of these Sunni Arab elites (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, et cetera) are eager for the US to hammer the Shiite led Iranians, and have no solidarity at all with their own poor let alone the Palestinian poor of Gaza…. or Palestinians elsewhere for that matter. This is the opening battle of the war to bring about regime change in Iran for the Washington, D.C. rat class, and the Arab dictatorships controlled by the US government are fully behind the effort.

Meanwhile the corporate media in the US and Britain keep a tight lid on the spin of the actual news, all in support of their own imperialist ruling cabals. At least, the European Union and the United Nations have had the decency to tokenly oppose this slaughter by this Jewish/ Christian Corporate Alliance centered in the US, Great Britain, and Israel. Everybody around the globe pretty much knows who holds the big guns, and it is the US government and its immediate side kicks that do. Everybody realizes that there is always the big price to pay if one gets too out of line with what these gangsters want from them.

The US antiwar community, dominated by phony ‘Peace’crat types, are immobilized. It seems that the script promised by the ‘Peace’crats with an Obama victory were as false as they come. They all voted for Obama and now don’t know what exactly to do? Really going out and protesting against their rulers is something that might make them embarrassed and scares them no end. Locally, not a word from the office clowns of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace De-Commission, with them only wanting to turn the other cheek from reality, though reality just keeps on beating them about their public face.

So now we know why the Arab World hates us so? It has to do with their own gang of thugs kept in power by the US government. The US and Israel have even turned the Arabs into hating the PLO, now that the leader of the PLO, Abbas, is totally controlled by our sorry leaders in Washington, D.C. What a mess! And the world keeps on just getting more and more dangerous, more and more messed up, day after day. Nobody has any ‘national security’ these days, thinks to the Democratic and Republican gangsters that almost all voting Americans backed in the last election.

This Israeli bombing of mainly children Arab youngsters living in the most horrible poverty and isolation in Gaza, is their work. Aren’t you proud you voted for this, if in fact you did? Haven’t heard a word from Obama, have you? What does he care if a community of overwhelmingly young children is shut off, starved to death, and then bombed? He’s not for change at all. He’s simply for allowing the Jewish community of Israel to be allowed to steal yet more land from the Arabs that owned it.

Liability and the value of a human life…

Posted on December 26, 2008 by Brother Jonah

How much does one person or all of society owe for injuries, deaths or other damages caused by actions that an individual or the representatives of Society take?

(I posted this on another forum, alfrankenweb.com. This hits at the core of a few issues that have been brought out in the forum recently.)

For instance, this time last year, an Insurance Agency, Cigna, made the decision to allow a young lady to die, even though there was a transplant liver available for her, under the notion that she only had about a 50% chance of surviving such an operation.

This mirrors the Terri Schiavo case, in several important ways.

George Bush, Jeb Bush, Karl Rove, Pat Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, just a representative sampling of Republican “Leadership”… not only didn’t condemn the decision but some actually applauded it.
(A Mirror doesn’t show the same image as a photograph, the orientation is that Left and Right are reversed.)

Mrs Schiavo had, apparently, about a zero percent chance of survival or ever recovering from her coma.

Richard Cheney, even though his company has surpassed Microsoft as the richest corporation in America and therefore the world, had a life prolonging surgery done, at Taxpayer Expense, even though:

his age, condition and personal habits will nullify the surgery within a decade anyway…

He has never contributed anything to Society in his entire sojourn on our planet…

And has himself denied and been an accomplice to denying the same types of life-prolonging surgeries not only to his own employees but also to any Americans who weren’t smart enough to be born, like him, with silver spoons in our mouths.

And he’s an accomplice to more than a Million murders.

Then there’s the issue of Guns.

The “Swimming Pool” analogy was brought up, and having car seats for kids too small to effectively be protected by seatbelts, and the issue of Seat-Belts themselves.

But it’s the Insurance Underwriters who brought legislation that ordered the Seat Belt and Car Seat laws, also not allowing people to burn toxic waste in their backyards, or burn anything that will set their neighborhood on fire or even their own houses.

Insurance companies = not social liberals.

In Texas, which the Frightened Wing love to proclaim as their primary territory, you can’t operate a motor vehicle without Fiscal Responsibility. You either have to have 50,000 dollars in a bank account specifically set aside for the purpose, for each vehicle, for liability claims… or purchase insurance for each vehicle.

If you own dogs which are prone to bite, your homeowners insurance goes up.

If you have a history of driving like you’re stupid your car insurance premiums go up, AND you have to carry more liability coverage.

Here’s where the disconnect begins… If you own a business,even if it’s a business like Construction which has a very high attrition rate among the workers (the ones who do the actual building both of the properties and the profits of the company) you DON’T have to carry basic Workman’s Compensation insurance. and there’s even moves afoot to Decrease employer contributions to Social Security, the ONLY disability insurance available to the vast majority of non-union Workers.

You’re also not required to carry insurance on firearms in case you, your kids, your spouse etcetera decide to do something either deliberately evil or blatantly STUPID and get people killed.

The “Poster Child Case” for this attitude was India v Union Carbide for damages done including Human Lives Lost (and yes, for those right wingers who hate being called Baby-Killers, a lot of the people killed or crippled for life were in fact infants.)

The Right Wing argue that the judgment was excessive because the “Third World” meaning dark brown people would never in their lifetimes earn more than $30K (conveniently ignoring the FACT that these were the families of Union Carbide’s ~~Corporate Slave Labor Pool~~errr… “Valued Employees” yeah, that’s the ticket) and thus the value of their lives was not equivalent to the lives of American White Collar Workers

They also, in cases of Capital Murder, or the global “war on terror” trot out the Old Testament law of “eye shall go for eye, tooth for tooth, stripe for stripe and life for life”

So, here’s an interesting theory of how that would work.

Say you’re responsible, through arrogance and ignorance, for your employee being crippled for life.

The catfish-processing workers Mr Bush declared to not be worthy of any compensation for their Carpal Tunnel injuries, for instance, every person who was crippled by that policy and the practices of the Catfish farms and their processing plants, should be able to demand that one person in the corporate heirarchy or amongst the investors in those operations should be taken out, and made to stretch his hand out across a cement block, and have it smashed irreparably with a large heavy object.

Because, you see, stripe shall go for stripe.

That refers to the seriousness of a wound.

The War on Terror, should have ended immediately at the time 3,000 of the people responsible had been killed.

Oh, wait, me ams forgot, instead of going after the ones actually responsible the Bush-Cheney people chose to go after civilian targets.

As Gilda Radner used to say, “never mind”.

Instead of the Right Wing screaming and howling about the victims and their families at Bhopal being compensated at a rate of One Years Salary for one of the Office Workers who were their ~~Overseers on the Union Carbide Plantation~~ errr … Supervisors and managers… yeah, that’s the ticket… for each HUMAN LIFE LOST and for those who merely had injuries that would cripple them for life, less money than it would take to have their injuries treated at anything other than a Third World hospital.

You know, the hospitals the same Right Wingers say are so very inferior to Our System…

Instead of that, for every life lost, starting from the CEO, the Board of Directors, on down, the Corporate Officers and shareholders, from the ones who own the most shares in the company on down, being taken out and asphyxiated in a Gas Chamber, just like their victims.

I think the Right Wing would scream very loudly about something like that.

Let’s turn it to a more pleasant subject.

If you have a Swimming Pool you have to have insurance on it. And routine inspections and random inspections.

If you don’t you get fined. That’s the way it is and even that wasn’t brought about by “Those Librul Elitist Latte-sippin’ Prius-Drivin’ Khaki pants-wearin’ sissy-boys” but instead as a cold, analytical business decision.

So, since that was the standard argument trotted out to counter the notion that gun owners should be held responsible for their TOYS

Let’s see the Masculinity Challenged Ones put their money where their mouths are.

Or at least find out, because, you know, unlike the freaks hanging out at the local firing range or the gun shop, Insurance Companies hire persons called “Actuaries” who maintain statistics like the number of accidental drownings per number of swimming pools, the number of Automobile fatalities as compared to the number of automobiles, the number of dog-bites by breed,…

Number of accidental and/or intentional gunshot wounds compared to the number and types of firearms…

Go to an Insurance Company Website.

And get the price quotes for Liability on your guns.

You’ll be asked questions, answer them honestly.

How many firearms you own.

How much ammunition you typically keep on hand.

Do you have a secured gun rack or safe for your firearms?

Keep in mind that your idea of secure probably isn’t as stringent as that of people who actually keep track of such things and actually know what the hell they’re doing.

Do you keep your ammunition inside your house?

If you do, you’re storing EXPLOSIVES in the same area where your family lives.

Buy some extra fire insurance, life insurance for every person in the house, and liability for your neighbors who might also perish or be seriously injured if you’re not SUPREMELY careful.

How many children do you have living with you or who typically visit?

How many of them are disabled and not as likely to survive without injuries if the Unthinkable Happens.

Hell with that, it’s not Unthinkable, if you don’t THINK about this you have absolutely no business whatsoever owning firearms…

Since bullets typically go through the wall of a house, even a BRICK wall, and into the neighboring house, get life insurance for each person living around you.

Answer all the questions honestly…

When you get through all the questions click the “Calculate your Liability” button or the “Calculate your Rate” button…. doesn’t matter which, and see what you’ll pay… IF YOU REALLY ARE HONEST AND ACTUALLY GIVE THREE QUARTERS OF A FAT RAT’S ARSE ABOUT ANYBODY.

If you can’t afford the premiums you sure as hell can’t afford the potential liability.

For those too lazy or not honest enough to go through that, if you shoot somebody, accidentally of course, BECAUSE I SIMPLY KNOW YOU WOULDN’T DO IT DELIBERATELY and the guy isn’t killed, just oh, let’s see, what’s a common occurrence with gunshot wounds, hey, I know, permanent brain damage where the person is on life support for the rest of his life…

Or simply made paraplegic or quadriplegic… that happens a lot too.

Your liability for his or her medical care could run into the MILLIONS, plus the cost of him to survive with as much normalcy and dignity as possible.

What’s that you say? You DON’T HAVE a few million laying around?

Hmmmm…….

Mexico’s headless Drug War soldiers

Posted on December 24, 2008 by Tony Logan

Mexico’s current Right Wing government has been duped into fighting a US ‘war on drugs’ inside Mexico. Actually it has been paid money big time to do so. Mexico also is fighting D.Cs war on immigrants, too, as its own treatment of Central American immigrants entering Mexican territory is abysmal, and yes it too is mainly being paid for by US dollars. The daily casualties in Mexico just yesterday from this war were 33 nationwide, 14 of them in Ciudad Juarez alone, the city right across from El Paso, Texas. And then there were Mexico’s headless Drug War soldiers.

If the US wants to give Mexico a Christmas gift of a different type, it might ought to call off this nonsense, and change the whole way it deals with drugs? If not, we may soon see headless American soldiers from this war, not from the idiotically US government named ‘Global War on Terrorism’. How many wars against shadows can the Right Wing nuts running the US lose at one time? On to Afghanistan, Obama! You’ll be bigger losers than even Cheney and Dubya were when it’s all said and done.

The press doesn’t cover in the US the real results of the US sponsored and run Drug War on Mexico soil. There’s basically nothing about the headless Mexican soldiers this week in the papers here, but instead we get treated to pictures of the photos of the Sinaloa beauty queen busted for supposedly riding in a vehicle full of gang members and guns. The stop was made by Mexican soldiers who still have their heads attached. MESSAGE- The Drug War is effective. REALITY- The Drug War is a ongoing disaster.

TopGun saves self sooner than SanDiego

Posted on December 10, 2008 by Eric Verlo

COS- Having our own Air Force jets flying overhead constantly, I’m surprised more of Colorado Springs isn’t reacting to the F-18 crash in a San Diego residential area. The pilot ejected safely, but left his plane to plow into American homes.

Where did the skin-saving ingrate think he was? Iraq? Our schools have got to place more emphasis on Geography.

This pilot’s military mindset was clear: the plane may be expensive, but the most important piece of ordnance is himself. More specifically, his TRAINED self. The time and training invested in him. In San Diego, the Marines saved a pilot, the multi-million dollar plane was lost, and there was some collateral damage. But this time it was AMERICAN.

Is that just like a video game player, press SAVE GAME, without regard to averting catastrophe? Because you don’t get any credit for saving the health points of other players, especially not the lives of the non-players in the simulated background. Outside virtual reality, it’s the same thing: in American wars, usually those background lives are foreign anyway. Collateral.

Where are we supposed to train our Top Guns? They need open skies like those of Afghanistan, where they can experience the real combat environment, where they can bail out and abandon their flying bombs into people who don’t matter.

Or have University City non-combatant Americans living too close to the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar become that too?

In fact, the only one whose life seems to matter is fighter jet pilot. Investigators can find a fourth body in the home, can find three homes and four vehicles destroyed, and find the F/A-18D Hornet suffered a loss of power, but investigators can’t identify the perpetrator beyond that he’s a 20-something lieutenant with an Attack Squadron.

Going down with the ship means accepting responsibility. Do they do that anymore? Going down with a plane is even more vital. It means using your last breath to steer the dangerous projectile you’ve become away from others.

Have I read somewhere that the military has lowered its requirements for who can be a pilot? Before Top Gun, film audiences were led to believe to be an officer meant you also had to be a gentleman.

They had to condemn several homes just for the toxic residue. Support the Troops.

The no-less-combatant support services

Posted on December 4, 2008 by Eric Verlo

LEXINGTON, NEBRASKA- Along I-80, we stopped to see the Heartland Museum of Military Vehicles. While visitors cannot help but be drawn to the tanks and guns, the large collection of jeeps and trucks make clear the tremendous resources and personnel required behind-the-lines to support any combat operations, their function every bit as lethal.

Buffalo Bill Lives at Fort Cody Nebraska

Posted on November 25, 2008 by Eric Verlo

FT CODY, NEBRASKA- On I-80 as you pass North Platte, sits the Fort Cody Trading Post, home of the Free Buffalo Bill Museum Emporium. What had been the Ogallala, Neb, Sioux Trading Post, moved in 1969 to follow the travelers rerouted from Hwy-30 to the new interstate, and changed its focus from the Native American to the Ugly American.

Buffalo Bill Cody earned his moniker by eradicating America’s buffalo herds. Over a million buffalo were killed each year during the 1870s. According to the museum, Mr. Cody labored to feed a sudden East Coast appetite for buffalo tongue, and a fad for buffalo fur coats. The display confessed: “Unfortunately the buffalo carcasses were left to rot on the plains.”

History books had been less forthcoming. They record that Cody was hired by the railroad builders to supply food for their workforce. He and his team were contracted to supply twelve buffalo a day. Does that come a little shy of a million? Accounts also wink at the risk Cody ran of coming against unfriendly Indians while engaged in the task.

When BB Cody wasn’t scouting for the railroad and the US cavalry, he was touring the world to exhibit the red skinned savage. Fort Cody featured a miniature 20,000 piece, hand-carved, animated model of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.

On an opposite wall, among a fantastic collection of western guns, clothing and cowboy gear, was an undated tintype depicting Bill posing with fellow scouts, cradling his favorite rifle which he called “Lucretia Borgia.”

In recent years, government documents have revealed a different story. It turns out the white men leading the charge westward were frustrated that the Plains Indians had what looked like an unlimited food supply. The buffalo kept them clothed and fed, and the nomadic tribes followed the herds like their own moveable orchards. One of the strategies to force the Native Americans from their land was to eliminate their source of food, and basically their livelihood.

Most Americans have been kept oblivious to this version of history. Should we doubt that most of the participants were keenly aware of the strategy, if perhaps indifferent to the fate of the red savage? Does it matter?

Under the pretext of building a security wall in Palestine, Israel is separating the Palestinians from their olive orchards, often by uprooting the orchards outright. American troops in Iraq have destroyed date palm orchards using the excuse of having to clear the populated areas of cover for insurgents. In Vietnam, defoliants were used to despoil large areas, rendering them incapable of yielding food. Troops also poisoned wells. It’s called the scorched earth policy, and by the way, it’s a war crime.

If Americans don’t come to terms with the crimes we committed here, or are committing elsewhere, how can we expect our soldiers to find cause to refuse the orders next time? The public’s consent is always being manipulated by having to hold a certain regard for the soldiers. Out of respect for the memory of its veterans, in current events, to “support the troops.” After a point, we have to lay the blame with both commanders and perpetrators. Vietnam was genocide. Iraq is genocide. Those over there are doing it.

WUO terrorized government property

Posted on November 21, 2008 by NMT

To clarify, the terrorist acts for which Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground are being demonized targeted only property damage and resulted in no casualties. Here is a list of 25 bombings attributed to the WUO, with notes from the FBI files, and the original communiques.

BOMBINGS BY WEATHERMEN / WEATHER UNDERGROUND

October 7, 1969
Haymarket Police Statue in Chicago. The Weathermen later claim credit for the bombing in their book, Prairie Fire.

December 6, 1969
Chicago Police cars parked in a precinct parking lot at 3600 North Halsted Street, Chicago. The WUO claims responsibility in Prairie Fire, stating it is a protest of the fatal police shooting of Illinois Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark on December 4, 1969.

May 10, 1970
National Guard Association building in Washington, D.C. is bombed.

June 6, 1970
San Francisco Hall of Justice. (WUO claims credit for bombing although no explosion occurred. Months later, workmen locate an unexploded bomb).

June 9, 1970
New York City Police headquarters. The Weathermen state this is in response to “police repression.”

July 27, 1970
United States Army base at The Presidio in San Francisco, on the 11th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution.

September 12, 1970
California Men’s Colony prison break for Timothy Leary.

October 8, 1970
Marin County courthouse. WUO states this is in retaliation for the killings of Jonathan Jackson, William Christmas, and James McClain.

October 10, 1970
Queens traffic-court building. WUO claims this is to express support for the New York prison riots.

October 14, 1970
Harvard Center for International Affairs. WUO claims this is to protest the war in Vietnam.

March 1, 1971
United States Capitol. WUO states this is to protest the invasion of Laos.

August 29, 1971
Office of California Prisons, allegedly in retaliation for the killing of George Jackson.

September 17, 1971
New York Department of Corrections in Albany, New York. In protest of the killing of 29 inmates at Attica State Penitentiary.

October 15, 1971
MIT research center, William Bundy’s office.

May 19, 1972
Pentagon. “in retaliation for the U.S. bombing raid in Hanoi.”

May 18, 1973
103rd Police Precinct in New York. WUO states this is in response to the killing of 10-year-old black youth Clifford Glover by police.

September 28, 1973
ITT headquarters in New York and Rome, Italy. WUO states this is in response to ITT’s alleged role in the Chilean coup earlier that month.

March 6, 1974
Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare offices in San Francisco. WUO states this is to protest alleged sterilization of poor women. In the accompanying communiqué, the Women’s Brigade argues for “the need for women to take control of daycare, healthcare, birth control and other aspects of women’s daily lives.”

May 31, 1974
California Attorney General office. WUO states this is in response to the killing of six members of the Symbionese Liberation Army.

June 17, 1974
Gulf Oil Pittsburgh headquarters. WUO states this is to protest the company’s actions in Angola, Vietnam, and elsewhere.

September 11, 1974
Anaconda Corporation. WUO states this is in retribution for Anaconda/Rockefeller’s alleged involvement in the Chilean coup the previous year.

January 29, 1975
State Department. WUO states this is in response to escalation in Vietnam.

June 16, 1975
Banco de Ponce, NYC. WUO states this is in solidarity with striking Puerto Rican cement workers.

September, 1975
Kennecott Corporation. WUO states this is in retribution for Kennecott’s alleged involvement in the Chilean coup two years prior.

WUO COMMUNIQUES:

Communiqué #1, May 21, 1970

Hello. This is Bernardine Dohrn.

I’m going to read A DECLARATION OF A STATE OF WAR.

This is the first communication from the Weatherman underground.

All over the world, people fighting Amerikan imperialism look to Amerika’s youth to use our strategic position behind enemy lines to join forces in the destruction of the empire.

Black people have been fighting almost alone for years. We’ve known that our job is to lead white kids into armed revolution. We never intended to spend the next five or twenty-five years of our lives in jail. Ever since SDS became revolutionary, we’ve been trying to show how it is possible to overcome the frustration and impotence that comes from trying to reform this system. Kids know the lines are drawn revolution is touching all of our lives. Tens of thousands have learned that protest and marches don’t do it. Revolutionary violence is the only way.

Now we are adapting the classic guerrilla strategy of the Viet Cong and the urban guerrilla strategy of the Tupamaros to our own situation here in the most technically advanced country in the world.

Ché taught us that “revolutionaries move like fish in the sea.” The alienation and contempt that young people have for this country has created the ocean for this revolution.

The hundreds and thousands of young people who demonstrated in the Sixties against the war and for civil rights grew to hundreds of thousands in the past few weeks actively fighting Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and the attempted genocide against black people. The insanity of Amerikan “justice” has added to its list of atrocities six blacks killed in Augusta, two in Jackson and four white Kent State students, making thousands more into revolutionaries.

The parents of “privileged” kids have been saying for years that the revolution was a game for us. But the war and the racism of this society show that it is too fucked-up. We will never live peaceably under this system.

This was totally true of those who died in the New York townhouse explosion. The third person who was killed there was Terry Robbins, who led the first rebellion at Kent State less than two years ago.

The twelve Weathermen who were indicted for leading last October’s riots in Chicago have never left the country. Terry is dead, Linda was captured by a pig informer, but the rest of us move freely in and out of every city and youth scene in this country. We’re not hiding out but we’re invisible.

There are several hundred members of the Weatherman underground and some of us face more years in jail than the fifty thousand deserters and draft dodgers now in Canada. Already many of them are coming back to join us in the underground or to return to the Man’s army and tear it up from inside along with those who never left.

We fight in many ways. Dope is one of our weapons. The laws against marijuana mean that millions of us are outlaws long before we actually split. Guns and grass are united in the youth underground.

Freaks are revolutionaries and revolutionaries are freaks. If you want to find us, this is where we are. In every tribe, commune, dormitory, farmhouse, barracks and townhouse where kids are making love, smoking dope and loading guns—fugitives from Amerikan justice are free to go.

For Diana Oughton, Ted Gold and Terry Robbins, and for all the revolutionaries who are still on the move here, there has been no question for a long time now—we will never go back.

Within the next fourteen days we will attack a symbol or institution of Amerikan injustice. This is the way we celebrate the example of Eldridge Cleaver and H. Rap Brown and all black revolutionaries who first inspired us by their fight behind enemy lines for the liberation of their people.

Never again will they fight alone.

/May 21, 1970/

Communique #2, June 9, 1970

SLIP NR 12 / 1909 / JUNE9-70 / POLICE HDQTRS / 77 BOMB EXPLOSION-240 CENTRE ST-POLICE HDQTRS-UNK

DAMAGE AND INJURIES AT THIS TIME — DETAILS LATER

Tonight, at 7 P.M., we blew up the N.Y.C. police headquarters. We called in a warning before the explosion.

The pigs in this country are our enemies. They have murdered Fred Hampton and tortured Joan Bird. They are responsible for 6 black deaths in Augusta, 4 murders in Kent State, the imprisonment of Los Siete de la Raza in San Francisco and the continual brutality against Latin and white youth on the Lower East Side.

Some are named Mitchell and Agnew. Others call themselves Leary and Hogan. The names are different but the crimes are the same.

The pigs try to look invulnerable, but we keep finding their weaknesses. Thousands of kids, from Berkeley to the UN Plaza, keep tearing up ROTC buildings.

Nixon invades Cambodia and hundreds of schools are shut down by strikes. Every time the pigs think they’ve stopped us, we come back a little stronger and a lot smarter. They guard their buildings and we walk right past their guards. They look for us—we get to them first.

They build the Bank of America, kids burn it down. They outlaw grass, we build a culture of life and music.

The time is now. Political power grows out of a gun, a Molotov, a riot, a commune … and from the soul of the people.

WEATHERMAN

Communiqué #3, July 31, 1970

From the /Berkeley Tribe/, July 31, 1970. The Red Mountain Tribe.

July 26, 1970
The Motor City

This is the third communication from the Weatherman underground.

With other revolutionaries all over the planet, Weatherman is celebrating the 11th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. Today we attack with rocks, riots and bombs the greatest killer-pig ever known to man—Amerikan imperialism.

Everywhere we see the growth of revolutionary culture and the ways in which every move of the monster-state tightens the noose around its own neck.

A year ago people thought it can’t happen here. Look at where we’ve come.

Nixon invades Cambodia; the Cong and all of Indochina spread the already rebelling US troops thin. Ahmed is a prisoner; Rap is free and fighting. Fred Hampton is murdered;

the brothers at Soledad avenge—”2 down and one to go.” Pun and several Weatherman are ripped; we run free. Mitchell indicts 8 or 10 or 13; hundreds of thousands of freaks plot to build a new world on the ruins of honky Amerika.

And to General Mitchell we say: Don’t look for us, Dog; We’ll find you first.

For the Central Committee, Weatherman Underground

Communiqué #4, September 18, 1970

From /San Francisco Good Times/, September 18, 1970. /San Francisco Good Times/.

September 15, 1970. This is the fourth communication from the Weatherman Underground.

The Weatherman Underground has had the honor and pleasure of helping Dr. Timothy Leary escape from the POW camp at San Luis Obispo, California.

Dr. Leary was being held against his will and against the will of millions of kids in this country. He was a political prisoner, captured for the work he did in helping all of us begin the task of creating a new culture on the barren wasteland that has been imposed on this country by Democrats, Republicans, Capitalists and creeps.

LSD and grass, like the herbs and cactus and mushrooms of the American Indians and countless civilizations that have existed on this planet, will help us make a future world where it will be possible to live in peace.

Now we are at war.

With the NLF and the North Vietnamese, with the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Al Fatah, with Rap Brown and Angela Davis, with all black and brown revolutionaries, the Soledad brothers and all prisoners of war in Amerikan concentration camps we know that peace is only possible with the destruction of U.S. imperialism.

Our organization commits itself to the task of freeing these prisoners of war.

We are outlaws, we are free!

(signed) Bernardine Dohrn

The gilded age and the police nightstick

Posted on November 10, 2008 by Eric Verlo

A legacy institution of the Gilded Age is the Waldorf=Astoria Hotel. Most of us only know it from the nutty salad, the mysterious Red Velvet Cake recipe, Thousand Island Dressing and Veal Oscar named for the famous maitre d’ hotel. I encountered the book of recipes collected by “Oscar of the Waldorf” and its cover illustration caught my eye. The coachman and carriage don’t look so opulent to us today, but do you recognize a timeless trapping of affluence? There’s nothing else in the picture but the policeman and his nightstick.

We almost dismiss the incongruity of the attendant police officer. That’s because he’s Officer Friendly to us, circa the 1950s egalitarian economic boom, earned post New Deal and post WWII, when law enforcement began to serve and protect the middle class share of the pie. Before those times, whose order did the police enforce?

Could the Waldorf diorama have featured some other occupation at the curb? A newsboy, a shoeshine, or a traffic director? If the cabbie is picking up late night revelers, why not depict a doorman or lamplighter?

If this scene did not include the policeman, he’d be missing.

The Gilded Age of the soaring wealth of bankers and industrialists, of the steel, coal, and rail robber barons, came at the expense of poverty wages for all the rest. The homeless of America’s eastern cities died in the streets, if they crossed the paths of the leisure class at all. As in London, where the bobbies were celebrated for carrying no guns, cops on the beat didn’t need more than a nightstick to beat back beggars and riffraff.

Just as in the Waldorf illustration, the policeman’s nightstick isn’t holstered, it is fingered idly like a baton. We’ve seen it in countless Chaplin, Keaton, and Keystone reels. The policeman’s baton might be carried idly, and animated mindlessly as a clerk might twirl a pencil, but the gyrations telegraphed a swinging function meant to be understood.

Today, a modern financial crisis has finally hit the post industrial era, and unemployment is taking a precipitous plunge. The repercussions for the American middle class are yet unclear to most, their comforts still too tangible to fathom gone. But our modern times have already seen the resurgence of the Rich And Famous, (to even beyond the lunge of our Super-Lotto winners, who always chose the sub-six-figure annuity). Exclusive cars, toy submarines and tickets into space cost multi-millions, but the rich have that money to burn. Common Americans have also watched the armoring of their police, using weapons which offend us, but which protect the security of institutional wealth. Para-military police forces are the natural escalation of the right-to-bear-arms arms-race, the equivalent of nightsticks to quell our social disquiet.

Already aren’t we seeing the police block the public’s way, lest we soil the red carpet of the well-heeled? Aren’t police blocking free speech in public spaces, when the monied media has decided it wants the backdrop to serve their message? Wait until we are gazing covetously upon the gilded extravagances, from the alley side of the gilded wrought iron gate.

Wiki notes:
Thousand Island Dressing came to the Waldorf from the so-named Lake Ontario waterway where New York’s super rich had their summer homes. The $100 recipe for Red Velvet Cake was the urban myth which resurfaced as the $250 Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookie.

The original Waldorf Hotel was built by an Astor whose middle name was Waldorf, next door to an aunt with whom he was feuding. Later another Astor convinced her to move uptown and replaced her home with a taller hotel named the Astoria. The two luxurious hotels hyphened via the Peacock Alley, inspiring the popular song “Meet me at the hyphen.” In 1931 the landmark was moved to accommodate the Empire State Building, and was purchased in 1949 by Conrad Hilton who added the double-hyphen flourish, completely in the spirit of gilded ornamentation.

If McBush and Obama were in collusion all along…

Posted on November 6, 2008 by Brother Jonah

They sure were sloppy about it. Logic, people, logic.. why would an intelligent group of people condone and inflame a very large group of very heavily armed very stupid people, like the McPalin Supporters, who are somewhat to the right of Attila the Hun?

McPalin of course weren’t the brightest bubbles in the bath.

Aren’t. They’re still alive.

Nutjobs with guns don’t make much good for anything or anybody.

Even Hitler had to get rid of his version of Our Dear Friends here who, amongst other lovely tokens of peace, threw a rotten deer head at an Obama rally.

Palin’s BrownShirts might not be as easy to get rid of from the P.O.V. of either an Obama or McCain administration.

And many of these FruitBaskets simply and plainly stated intentions to Kill President Obama.

Assuming a small amount of rational thought processes and attributing them to a man, who, unlike our current President, actually went to Harvard on his own merit, rather than Legacy Points, or “Affirmative Action for Stupid Rich Kids”…

…and assuming that he had the intelligence AND the calm determination to see it through all the way to even being nominated, far less elected,…

These are the actions of a Rational, Intelligent, Educated man.

NOT somebody who would either take one gun and place it against his temple, and pull the trigger in a game of Russian Roulette, much less place thousands or even tens of thousands of Lunatics carrying fully loaded, round in the chamber, finger on the trigger guns against himself.

Somebody who would do that would be either an Idiot or a Lunatic or Both.

I could see, you know, Palin believing that she could control a herd of Armed Lunatics, but she IS an idiot.

McCain’s concession speech should be an eye opener.

These weren’t the usual Street Rabble who throw bottles at us from their moving cars when we stand vigil, you know, not the Shock Troops…

Hand-picked, more thoroughly vetted than Sarah Herself was, …

And they were ready to go for the throat.

The first round of cat-calls and boos, when he shut them down, then said a couple more sentences, they started booing and cat-calling again and chanting John McCain John McCain John McCain, then he shut them down again, and at the conclusion the boos were louder, and this time they verbally abandoned him, in response to his making the first really rational attempt to calm their blood-lust he made since before the convention… they started chanting USA USA USA USA USA

Ask Palin to take her COS fans with her

Posted on November 2, 2008 by Eric Verlo

MONDAY NOV. 3RD brings another chance to see Sarah Palin. Can we pray it please be the last? Palin will hold court to the Colorado Springs’ Holy War freaks in the same private airplane hanger she used before, so that her campaign can splice footage from the previous rally.
Jet Center Aviation,
1575 Aviation Way.
Event starts at 5:15pm,
doors open at 3:30pm.
(Meet outside earlier.) Let’s bid them ALL best success with their God/guns/greed elsewhere.

As we learned from the Palin Sky Sox rally, wear RED because that’s what Palin’s supporters are being urged to wear. They will be dressing to look like a team, and they’ll arrive feeling like they’ve unwittingly donned YOUR colors!

At right is a black & white version you can print on red card-stock, as large as your printer can handle. Then use White-Out to brighten the eyes and teeth. Or visit A Frightening Prospect to download a PDF of the original color version.

Another depressing lesson from the previous rallies was how many supporters brought their kids. School day or not. From their cars, and in front of traffic cops, many held their tongue, attributing it to their children being present. Standing in line, with younger ones or without, the insults flew fast and furious.

I’m still unclear whether it’s cricket to mock Palin supporters in front of their children. What -they should save face in front of offspring who without our help will grow up as ignorant as their parents?

What do you say to parents who are going to raise bigots?

No seriously. Here are some ideas to target the Fundamentalist crowd which PRAYER FORCE ONE wll be busing to the rally. Let’s speak their language!

For the more well behaved, there’s this great election flier. On Monday, meet at NOON at TOONS for the plan.

Dumb dads with guns kill children because guns are inanimate by themselves

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Tony Logan

kent state ohio guardsmen People kill people, and dumb dads with guns accidentally kill children. Dumb gun laws also kill people and too much military and too many military people kill children using too many guns. 8-Year-Old Brings Father’s Gun to Day Care, Shoots Classmate and the most recent case of Doctor Daddy Uzi

Colorization of the Grapes of Wrath

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Eric Verlo

I think it’s time to colorize The Grapes of Wrath. And I don’t mean the Turner Classics process exactly. It may help to dumb down the artistic contrast of the black & white for a contemporary audience palate of splashy Disneycolor, but how about trying to make Steinbeck’s theme more accessible to today’s spoon-fed viewers? Let’s colorize the skin of the poor migrant workers to reflect the inhumanly-treated populations of today’s displaced im-migrants of color.

I can’t remember where I come down on colorizing the old movies. No one’s insisted on infusing CMYK into Ansel Adams or Picasso’s sketchbook, why are masterpieces filmed in black and white supposed to be pigment deficient? We don’t presume to dub dialog over the silent movies made before the age of the talkies. As yet. Of course, Ted Turner was concerned for reviving interest in old intellectual properties, many of which were already in-artful. And perhaps his salesmanship maneuver has been proven effective. When my family sat down to watch Grapes of Wrath, the grey image tuned a number of youthful eyes away.

Like Dorothea Lange’s famous photographs, John Ford’s film depicted disadvantaged Okies with whom the American audience could identify. We may not know what it feels like to be forced off our homes, but how the families cope with the hardship, we all can recognize. I’m curious how the film was received by Californians in 1940, coming less than ten years after the original plague of destitute Oklahoma refugees. How would the characters have faired with our sympathies if they had been played as coarse hillbilly Crackers with guns and a poor person’s chip-on-the-shoulder desperation?

The poor protagonists of The Grapes of Wrath were weakened skinny po-folk, who staked their relief on the strength of a single hopeful job listing flyer, who protested their oppression without resorting to violence, and who accepted hardship as their lot. Seeing into their daily lives, viewers were shown a dignified, earnest people who treated others with respect and compassion. Antagonist characters in the film were less charitable, taking advantage of the hard-luck migrants with guile, violence and authority. People into which the Oklahoma refugees traveled, New Mexico, Arizona and California, treated the migrants like vermin. Even as onlookers might express admiration for the Okies’ determination to cross Death Valley, the better fed Californians held them in disdain for not knowing enough to be in such a predicament. The Okies were blamed for their own poverty. They threatened to burden everyone’s already depleting resources. Only the viewers understood the unfair actions which had landed the otherwise self-sufficient sharecroppers to have to leave their livelihoods.

The circumstances of the Dust Bowl cum great depression era forced removal of the small Oklahoma farmers is eerily familiar to today’s economy and its foreclosures. Homesteaders find themselves made homeless, as a consequence of business decisions between corporations, banks and regulators. The Oklahoma farmers wanted to point their shotguns to warn the financial disruptors from their land, but found the conduits of the dirty work were their own neighbors and relatives. Everyone was merely following orders from someone higher up. That the system could be at fault, left the victims with no clear recourse.

Here’s the classic eviction exchange.

THE MAN
I can’t help that. All I know is I got my orders.
They told me to tell you you got to get off,
and that’s what I’m telling you.

MULEY
You mean get off my own land?

THE MAN
Now don’t go blaming me. It ain’t *my* fault.

SON
Whose fault is it?

THE MAN
You know who owns the land–the Shawnee Land and Cattle Company.

MULEY
Who’s the Shawnee Land and Cattle Comp’ny?

THE MAN
It ain’t nobody. It’s a company.

SON
They got a pres’dent, ain’t they?
They got somebody that knows what a shotgun’s for, ain’t they?

THE MAN
But it ain’t *his* fault, because the *bank* tells him what to do.

SON
All right. Where’s the bank?

THE MAN
Tulsa. But what’s the use of picking on him?
He ain’t anything but the manager, and half crazy hisself,
trying to keep up with his orders from the east!

MULEY
Then who *do* we shoot?

THE MAN
Brother, I don’t know. If I did I’d tell you.
But I just don’t know *who’s* to blame!

There was a lot more in The Grapes of Wrath which could inform a modern world view. The dreaded “Cats” for example. These were the Caterpillar tractors which were shown ravaging the land like locusts, arriving to demolish the houses of the reluctant dispossessed. Bulldozers are still used for that function today. In fact, Caterpillar manufactures armored versions to deploy in war zones for the destruction of houses. Palestinians have shown to be less reluctant than the poor Okies about trying to shoot the bulldozer drivers who are taking aim at their homes. Israel is expanding its settlements in Palestine with the aid of Caterpillar tractors which clear the land of its recalcitrant invadees.

Likewise, the union busting strategies portrayed in Grapes of Wrath are the same used today. Police officers are called in when work supervisors encounter workers who show too much skepticism for the employer’s scam. Troublemakers are arrested lest the workforce succeed in organizing itself. Instigators are paid to infiltrate a social event and start a fight, to give law enforcement the excuse to break in and make its calculated arrests. Casual viewers may think the famous 1939 film depicts a bygone age. Not at all.

Director John Ford made sure that the Okie migrants were deathly skinny, while everyone else, from gas station attendants to deputized union-busters, was immaculately dressed and well fed. But the audience could identify with both sides, because both were white. Imagine if the displaced peoples were not the same color.

Today’s migrant workers are hispanic. They are illegal immigrants, just like Okies passing through the Arizona checkpoint in Steinbeck’s novel.

GUARD
Where you going?

TOM
California.

GUARD
How long you plan to be in Arizona?

TOM
No longer’n we can get acrost her.

GUARD
Got any plants?

TOM
No plants.

GUARD
Okay. Go ahead, but you better keep movin’.

Could a modern audience appreciate the travails of a Mexican family in an exact same predicament? Mexican farmers have been forced from their land in an even less polite manner today. They have similar claim to their homesteads, some of them even have indigenous claims. But American and Mexican corporate interests have been forcing the Mexicans to flee. The migration north is not about seeking fortune; picking lettuce it most certainly is not. The work our illegal immigrants are willing to do is out of desperation and subsistence. Corporate America reserves our agricultural work for migrants because it’s cheaper. Otherwise American citizens have devised unions to ensure that workers are paid an honorable wage. Exploitation of the illegal immigrant is simply a bypass of decent labor practices meant to protect everyone.

In selfish, protectionist terms, hiring illegal immigrants undermines the strength of unionized labor. Ultimately the exploitation of others dehumanizes us all.

I wish Americans could see The Grapes of Wrath as a projection of the ongoing injustices suffered by all exploited migrants. As well-fed American citizens leading prosperous lives, wouldn’t it be our responsibility to help the victims of our system? Instead, we are those cold-hearted leather-jacketed Californians herding them into lives of slow death by hard labor and starvation.

The Grapes of Wrath offered a strong Socialist message, disguised in a protagonist who did not yet have all the answers. Before setting out to light the way, Henry Fonda’s character says this to his mom:

TOM
…maybe I can do sump’n. Maybe I can jus’ fin’ out sump’n.
Jus’ scrounge aroun’ an’ try to fin’ out what it is that’s wrong,
an then see if they ain’t sump’n could be done about it.
But I ain’t thought it out clear, Ma. I can’t.
I don’t know enough.

MA
How’m I gonna know ’bout you?
They might kill you an’ I wouldn’t know.
They might hurt you. How’m I gonna know?

TOM
Well, maybe it’s like Casy says, a fella ain’t got a soul
of his own, but on’y a piece of a big soul–the one big soul
that belongs to ever’body–an’ then…
Then it don’t matter. Then I’ll be all aroun’ in the dark.
I’ll be ever’where–wherever you look. Wherever there’s
a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there.
Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there.
I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad
–an’ I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re
hungry an’ they know supper’s ready.
An’ when our people eat the stuff they raise,
an’ live in the houses they build, why, I’ll be there too.

I had to see The Grapes of Wrath in high school. It was required. Are schools today trying to infuse students with social wisdom? How about a Grapes Redux starring people of color? Imagine this closing line, spoken by a dark skinned mother, about the hardship that is her people’s fate:

MA
…Maybe that makes us tough. Rich fellas come up an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good, an’ they die out. But we keep a-comin’. We’re the people that live. Can’t nobody wipe us out. Can’t nobody lick us. We’ll go on forever, Pa. We’re the people.

The American ghost city, Mogadishu

Posted on October 16, 2008 by Tony Logan

If you have ever visited Tombstone, Arizona, you have been urged to see the reenactment of gunslingers duke it out in the streets. While Tombstone is barely a real American ghost town since tourism keeps it alive (somewhat), there is another ghost town –Made in USA– and that is Mogadishu. Somalian ‘ghost city’ wracked by war … excuse me, I meant ghost city, not town. Millions of ghosts, and yet no American tourism?

Many Americans say that they have seen ghosts? Millions of Americans say that. Yet they can’t seem to see the ghosts in the ‘ghost city’ called Mogadishu. Why is that, I wonder? Why is it so hard to see these ghosts, America?

Bank steals roof from over the head of a 90 yr old woman who lived in her house for 38 years!

Posted on October 4, 2008 by Tony Logan

How many years do you need to pay a mortgage off in the US to make it go away? When this woman in Ohio first started making payments on her mortgage she was 52 years old, and yet at 90 the banks were stealing her property from her! Outrageous! The story turns even more tragic as the woman now has tried to commit suicide with a gun. Ohio woman, 90, attempts suicide after foreclosure

One wonders just how it might have been, too, if the gun loving nuts had worried more about mortgages and banks instead of their stupid guns? We might have control over the banks and control over gun proliferation both and it would be a better world altogether!

The man in Nebraska who abandoned his 9 kids at the hospital this week was worried about losing his home, too. Kin of 9 abandoned kids say they would’ve helped

What a country we live in today! These types of stories are going to be popping up soon all over the place. No bailout for the people down below at all. Look, too, at the Gulf Coast. The rich have no compassion for the Common People! They seem to think of us as cattle?

Credit crunch is a symptom of US economic malaise, not the cause of it

Posted on October 1, 2008 by Tony Logan

Taxpayers gifting the rich with $7,000,000,000 will not stop the coming capitalist depression at all, because it simply does not address the root causes of anything. We have been told that this crisis is merely the fault of toxic debts piling up from an American ‘housing bubble’, which happened due the crookedness of a few bad apples. Yes, its true, they add a few more details to this sob story but that is essentially all there is to the story line, with none of the American corporate ‘leadership’ class taking any personal or political responsibility at all. That is not too surprising about these moralizing immoralists at all. It is par for their course.

But the root cause of the capitalist downturn is about much more than a credit crunch cause or a real estate mortgages beginning the collapse. It is actually about the deficit military spending that corporate America has led us into with their stupid and asinine wars against shadows of their own making. Despite the destruction caused on that fateful day termed ‘9/11’, it could have been nothing more than a temporary and unfortunate side show for our country, but instead it was seized on by the military, policing, and corporate communities to justify skyrocketing their budgets, incomes, and profits. They went on a borrowing spree using foreign credit!

They did not buy anything of real value or substance though, and they progressively bankrupted the bulk of Americans by doing their borrowing, all the time while waving Old Glory and talking of American pride and national security, which they were busy undermining. ‘USA, USA, USA’ became the cry of the dunces they had marching behind them. They tortured not only Pentagon held POWs, but the American soul itself. The big guys total control over political life is what got us down into the pit.

Now, the only economic ‘security’ left for Americans is in the seeming ability to drag others down economically with us. Since we were such fat consumers here in the land of milk and honey, many depended on supplying us. However that market is about to collapse. Add to that that the whole world is left holding much of the valueless paper that our ruling class force fed to them at guns length. And, of course, we still have the biggest arsenal around. That almost makes our Federal Government just like any insane neighbor with an insanely huge gun collection, but barely living while dependent on food stamps to eat some fast food Chinese once and a while. Sarah and Dick to go hunting with perhaps?

Look around? The American auto industry just asked and got close to $30 billion in ‘bailout’ loot, too. It’s about to sink. And the biggest economic sink of them all is about to sink in the days ahead, also. Quite simply, our military is not sustainable. That is the cause of our economic malaise, not the housing market getting squeezed. All industry and finance got dragged down together in mass, and not just car sales and real estate.

The idiots of our country continue to want to wave the flag. They continue wanting to pump borrowed money into fighting unnecessary foreign wars like it is all some sort of crazed football game being played on the pro level! They like that corporate logo of Old Glory just as they do not mind all the corporate advertising hanging all over the place at the stadiums they hang out at weekends. They like the political and corporate cheerleaders, same as they like the young coed types with bonbons. at their games. This is their None Entiendo game done ever so Grande. Beep, beep, beep beep… Fireworks display!

The root cause of the economic downturn is deficit spending and deficit thinking by our neighbors, especially so in our White Conservative Christian neighborhoods, church on every other block. To sum it up, throwing $700,000,000,000 of tax money at the failed businesses solves nothing. It’s like throwing more weight on that old football bonfire.

Remember that collapse of the Texas A&M bonfire pileup several years ago? That’s the type of thinking America has on board at present. The economic bonfire stack is merely being set for collapse with this stupid bailout that they will eventually put through, because our nation is too dumb to have stopped it when we could. That picture of the Aggie bonfire before it collapsed is just like the Federal deficit debt pileup that is due to come crashing down on all of us. They constructed it out of vainglory.

Seven hundred times N,OOO,OOO,OOO!

Posted on September 29, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Is the strategy to pay this ransom, then have the robbers intercepted as they make their escape? What other excuse will Democrats Pelosi and Reid offer for coming home with a bag full of 140,000,000,000 wooden nickels? That money’s gone if we don’t STOP THEM! STOP THEM NOW!

We hear pundits say the bailout sum is beyond comprehension. Nonsense. It’s our prosperity, our health, the pursuit of happiness we offer our children and take for granted. Gone. Unless there is still time to shout down the miscreants in Washington. As we see the politicians of every stripe complicit in this heist, and insufficient outcry in the streets, isn’t it hard not to conclude Americans are getting what they deserve? If you have any gut feeling that you DO NOT WANT TO STAND IDLY BY, listen to Michael Moore: (although the DC email/phone connection appears to have been pulled.)

Friends,

Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies — who must soon vacate the White House — are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.

No matter what they say, no matter how many scare words they use, they are up to their old tricks of creating fear and confusion in order to make and keep themselves and the upper one percent filthy rich. Just read the first four paragraphs of the lead story in last Monday’s New York Times and you can see what the real deal is:

“Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.

“Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.

“At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees.

“Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury’s proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions.”

Unbelievable. Wall Street and its backers created this mess and now they are going to clean up like bandits. Even Rudy Giuliani is lobbying for his firm to be hired (and paid) to “consult” in the bailout.

The problem is, nobody truly knows what this “collapse” is all about. Even Treasury Secretary Paulson admitted he doesn’t know the exact amount that is needed (he just picked the $700 billion number out of his head!). The head of the congressional budget office said he can’t figure it out nor can he explain it to anyone.

And yet, they are screeching about how the end is near! Panic! Recession! The Great Depression! Y2K! Bird flu! Killer bees! We must pass the bailout bill today!! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Falling for whom? NOTHING in this “bailout” package will lower the price of the gas you have to put in your car to get to work. NOTHING in this bill will protect you from losing your home. NOTHING in this bill will give you health insurance.

Health insurance? Mike, why are you bringing this up? What’s this got to do with the Wall Street collapse?

It has everything to do with it. This so-called “collapse” was triggered by the massive defaulting and foreclosures going on with people’s home mortgages. Do you know why so many Americans are losing their homes? To hear the Republicans describe it, it’s because too many working class idiots were given mortgages that they really couldn’t afford. Here’s the truth: The number one cause of people declaring bankruptcy is because of medical bills. Let me state this simply: If we had had universal health coverage, this mortgage “crisis” may never have happened.

This bailout’s mission is to protect the obscene amount of wealth that has been accumulated in the last eight years. It’s to protect the top shareholders who own and control corporate America. It’s to make sure their yachts and mansions and “way of life” go uninterrupted while the rest of America suffers and struggles to pay the bills. Let the rich suffer for once. Let them pay for the bailout. We are spending 400 million dollars a day on the war in Iraq. Let them end the war immediately and save us all another half-trillion dollars!

I have to stop writing this and you have to stop reading it. They are staging a financial coup this morning in our country. They are hoping Congress will act fast before they stop to think, before we have a chance to stop them ourselves. So stop reading this and do something — NOW! Here’s what you can do immediately:

1. Call or e-mail Senator Obama. Tell him he does not need to be sitting there trying to help prop up Bush and Cheney and the mess they’ve made. Tell him we know he has the smarts to slow this thing down and figure out what’s the best route to take. Tell him the rich have to pay for whatever help is offered. Use the leverage we have now to insist on a moratorium on home foreclosures, to insist on a move to universal health coverage, and tell him that we the people need to be in charge of the economic decisions that affect our lives, not the barons of Wall Street.

2. Take to the streets. Participate in one of the hundreds of quickly-called demonstrations that are taking place all over the country (especially those near Wall Street and DC).

3. Call your Representative in Congress and your Senators. (click here to find their phone numbers). Tell them what you told Senator Obama.

When you screw up in life, there is hell to pay. Each and every one of you reading this knows that basic lesson and has paid the consequences of your actions at some point. In this great democracy, we cannot let there be one set of rules for the vast majority of hard-working citizens, and another set of rules for the elite, who, when they screw up, are handed one more gift on a silver platter. No more! Not again!

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. Having read further the details of this bailout bill, you need to know you are being lied to. They talk about how they will prevent golden parachutes. It says NOTHING about what these executives and fat cats will make in SALARY. According to Rep. Brad Sherman of California, these top managers will continue to receive million-dollar-a-month paychecks under this new bill. There is no direct ownership given to the American people for the money being handed over. Foreign banks and investors will be allowed to receive billion-dollar handouts. A large chunk of this $700 billion is going to be given directly to Chinese and Middle Eastern banks. There is NO guarantee of ever seeing that money again.

P.P.S. From talking to people I know in DC, they say the reason so many Dems are behind this is because Wall Street this weekend put a gun to their heads and said either turn over the $700 billion or the first thing we’ll start blowing up are the pension funds and 401(k)s of your middle class constituents. The Dems are scared they may make good on their threat. But this is not the time to back down or act like the typical Democrat we have witnessed for the last eight years. The Dems handed a stolen election over to Bush. The Dems gave Bush the votes he needed to invade a sovereign country. Once they took over Congress in 2007, they refused to pull the plug on the war. And now they have been cowered into being accomplices in the crime of the century. You have to call them now and say “NO!” If we let them do this, just imagine how hard it will be to get anything good done when President Obama is in the White House. THESE DEMOCRATS ARE ONLY AS STRONG AS THE BACKBONE WE GIVE THEM. CALL CONGRESS NOW.

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