There's been a few comments about my misspelling of Hillary Clinton's first name. Sorry about that but some Freudian slip has caused me to add an extra letter i to her name.
Somehow when I first noticed my spelling error I wanted to hold onto it because it seems so very appropriately misspelled. I mean Hillary doesn't do for me what Hilliary does. So I think I'll just keep on with the incorrect version of Ms. Clinton's first name with tongue placed firmly in cheek.
For Hillary supporters I can only suggest looking up the record of the Senator to determine if Hilliary isn't a better suited spelling. Oh, I know I'll be accused of misogyny because I've continued to rant about Clinton's chameleon like qualities. And no doubt I'm a racist because I've continued to rant about Obama's disingenuous attempt to be both black and white.
The truth is both candidates of the Democratic Oligarchy have failed to give this nation hope for anything but more of the same. It don't matter if one is female and the other black because both belong to the out of touch political systems that allow the rich to become ultra rich like the new laundry soaps become 2x more powerful. It only takes half as much bullshit from either of these two and/or John "Wane" McCain to max out my bs meter and trigger my gag reflex.
I drive around my neighborhood which is the number one area code for home foreclosures (80219) in the state and rated very high in the nation and I see the effects of what Hilliary and Obama have been part of achieving. My local city councilman, Paul Rodriguez (former SEIU organizer) put it best in a recent interview about my community's number one status. He told the reporter when he looks at the empty houses with the foreclosure signs in front he sees a home where a family once lived.
Hell, I'm one paycheck away from being at the crisis point of missing one payment or the other caused by my foolish phase of materialism. One illness, one accident or one emergency can financially wreck my wife and me. The odds are pretty good one of these things will happen. If I keep things in perspective I still live a better life than 80% of the people in the world. Senators Obama and Clinton, on the other hand, have it better than 99% of the world and I have to ask what they've given to make it better...or as Hilliary might say, a better village.
Disaffected and disillusioned? Damn right! The millions of dollars spent on the ruse of democratic elections in this nation is as immoral and sinful as it gets. Everybody bitches about the sham of sound bites and attack ads during elections but it never changes.
I noticed Ken Gordon recently wrote of the importance of voting or not voting. Does anyone feel empowered when they go to their local precinct to cast a vote or when sendin in the mail ballot? Does anybody think it will be a "new day" in America because of the results of the 2008 election?
I think it will be a new day in America as a result of the 2008 election. When John "Wane" McCain takes over the Presidency this nation will slip even futher down the moral slippery slope. The United States of America will slip even closer to becoming a third world nation. But, then, I've always been a cynic about this nation's leadership since the days of Vietnam. If one of the other two win, the prognosis seems the same to me.
We've been blessed by wealth of resources and personal wealth in this nation. We thought it would never end. When the rest of the world needed our guidance we've betrayed them with wars and the propping up of tyrants. For some ungodly reason this nation is responsible for arming much of the world for war but has failed in helping the world live in peace with justice.
Hilliary and Obama have continued to support the killing in Iraq and Afghanistan as evidenced by their votes or their failures to stand up for what's moral and just. John "Wane" McCain has continued to vote for funding these wars and has no plan to withdraw the troops. He seeks the illusive victory of war. The problem with that mindset is there is no fucking victory in war! There are winners, however. The rich and powerful.
And that, my friends (and hopefully not too many enemies), is why I spell Hillary's name incorrectly. And intend to continue doing so.
Wm. Terry Leichner, RN
VVAW member -Denver
Disaffected combat veteran
.
Wednesday, April 30
Tuesday, April 29
Bullshit Observations
Sometimes it just seems there’s so much bullshit in the news that trying to comment on any of it seems futile. But why should I be sane when I can join the millions of bloggers who have an opinion about everything. And we all know what opinions are like. No? Like assholes we all have them.
First off, I wonder when the mainstream media will actually start talking about the racial coding the Clintons are getting away with toward Barack Obama. Don’t get me wrong about defending Obama. I’m not enamored with him since he seems to want to overlook being a black man in hopes all us white racists will also do the same. Barack, you’re black, brother! Live with it and celebrate it! And call out the overtly racist comments of Billiary.
Code, what code? Does anybody get it other than the independent press and every black and brown brother and sister who hears it? The recent flap over Obama saying Americans were bitter and disaffected and therefore seek solace in their religion and guns is an example of what starts the coding. Hilliary and Bill immediately start calling Barack an elitist out of touch with the people. In other words, he’s uppity…right Hilliary?
What’s so outrageously stupid about their statements and those of John “Wayne” McCain is that all of you people are out of touch!! C’mon Bill is a Rhodes Scholar, Hill is a Yale grad after a tour of Wellesley and John “Wane” is a Naval Academy grad. How long has it been since any of these people drove themselves around town or gone grocery shopping on a weekly basis? How long has it been since any of them have mowed a yard or fixed a leaky faucet? How long since any have lived in a roach infested place with bad plumbing and inefficient heating system? How many of them will live on a fixed income in their later years. No, a cushy pension from Congress and as an ex-President doesn’t count.
Obama is the most likely to have experienced any of the real life situations the average American faces on a daily basis in the past twenty five years. He’s more likely to have contact with folks who have experienced them in the last ten years.
But Barack has shown his true “roots” in his recent handling of the remarks by his former mentor and pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Wright was figuratively thrown under the bus by Obama when white AmeriKKKa objected to his remarks about the terrorism of our wars and the continued racism here in the homeland.
Obama disavowed himself from the Reverend Wright after the remarks became public in convenient YouTube formats which take them out of context. Of course Clinton wasn’t to blame. The code here is she doesn’t mind that the remarks became public and created the racial firestorm that led Obama to giving a speech on the racial divide in this country. The remarks just can’t be traced back to her or Bill in their origin.
The problem with throwing someone under the proverbial bus is sometimes that bus fails to stop long enough to make sure the victim is dead. Reverend Wright gloriously tipped the bus over and came back to haunt the Judas, Obama.
So, today (April 29, 2008) Obama is back out on the road trying to get the bus to back up and run over the reverend one more time with his disavowals of the content of the remarks made by Wright. Testicle implants seem to be needed by the Senator from Illinois at this time.
All these folks are elitists and we’d be fools to think otherwise. I’m with the rock singer, Prince, who says in his song, Writing a Letter….”I’m tired of y’all”.
Another example of the bullshit is the recent joke of the Israeli Ambassador to the U.N., Dan Gillerman, calling Jimmy Carter a “bigot” because he met with a leader of Hamas in an attempt to broker compromise and some semblance of peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Can this fool be real?
He represents a country that has systematically attempted to rid the area around Israel of the indigenous peoples of many centuries. The land grab of Palestine from Palestinians was well conceived by Ben-Gurion and others well ahead of the overthrow of the British in 1948. Ben-Gurion is quoted extensively about ridding the area of the Arabs. Moshe Dayan is quoted as carrying out a terroristic program of collective punishment any time an Israeli was killed by an Arab.
The purge of Palestinians has continued to this day with walls being erected to create a ghetto much like the ones so vividly described by survivors of the holocaust in Warsaw and other Nazi held areas of Europe during World War II. There’s no hiding the contempt and disregard for Palestinians by the Israeli government’s Zionists. They’ve continued a policy of dehumanization and violence against all dark skinned Semites since before 1948. And to equate Zionism with Judaism is the doublespeak of liars and imperialistic power mongers. The Zionists could care less about Judaism except when it helps further their movement.
There are several references to David Ben-Gurion stating the holocaust was a defining moment to create the Jewish state of Israel. He felt it was probably good it happened so Zionism could be brought to fruition in the Middle East.
So, Dan Gillerman has the audacity to tell the world what a bigot an ex-President is when that person tries non-violent negotiation with a radical branch of Palestinian. The notion Hamas and the radicals can’t or won’t be part of any settlement is absurd.
The refusal of the Zionists to include them is a definite sign of the need for the Zionist movement to have the scapegoat to continue conflict in the area. Why continue conflict? It keeps Zionism in power with a huge military budget and the Israeli population in fear of the dark skinned Semites who lived for centuries on the land Israelis now control. It keeps the U.S. military funding coming in and continues the duped American public’s collective guilt about the Holocaust. It keeps the dupes thinking Zionism is Judaism and to question the actions of the government of Israel is anti-Semitism.
If the American people weren’t so damn ignorant and intellectually lazy they might realize Israelis are not the only groups of Semites existing on this planet. The knowledge of American people about the history of the Palestinian and Israeli conflict seems to be only what is put out by the Israeli political action committee, AIPAC. That message is “megaphoned” by every mainstream media group existing in the U.S. and abroad.
The occupation of the lands of Palestinians is akin to the occupation of the lands of the indigenous peoples of the Americas by the Europeans in the 1400’s. Violence and terror were used to displace those people from the lands occupied by a hundred generations of their people. Despite the revisionist attempts of Gellerman and Zionists across the world, the displacement and eventual ghettoizing of the Palestinian people in refugee camps and occupied territories is as racist as the Native Americans being placed on reservations. It is as racist as the enslavement of Africans by white Europeans in North America.
The characterization of bigotry by Gellerman toward Carter is nothing but the continued obfuscation of Zionists to throw the world off the trail of their continued bigotry aimed at Semites of color such as Palestinians. The constant use of the Holocaust to justify the oppression of the Israeli government has worn thin and cannot excuse Israeli government use of the same tactics used by Hitler against Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and other “deviants” defined by the Third Reich.
Meanwhile back in the U.S. New York City cops have been absolved of shooting a bride groom in Harlem who exited a strip club with a friend following a bachelor party. The use of fifty plus rounds by the cops to contain the groom was seen as a justifiable use of force. The fact the groom was black isn’t a big surprise in the annals of American police shootings. The fact the groom was unarmed isn’t a surprise. The “whitewash” by the court exonerating the undercover cops isn’t a surprise either.
I can’t help but wonder why Bill and Hilliary Clinton, beloved citizens of the black community of Harlem, haven’t spoken out about this shooting. It would seem the Rev. Butts of the Abyssinian church of Harlem would also be front and center. He’s the recipient of Queen Pork Hilliary’s 1.5 million dollars in private grants. He recently repaid that bacon with his endorsement of the white female candidate over the black male candidate.
I also wonder where Obama is when it comes to the violence of police toward people of color. Surely living in the Chicago area he’s heard many stories from constituents about police brutality. Is this dirty little secret of serving and protecting by means of racial profiling and constant rousts of the non-white communities something we should continue to allow in this nation? Is the criminalization of young blacks and Latinos for petty offenses or inequitable sentencing something that should be allowed to continue? Where are the questions of candidates about such things in the “race” for the presidency?
But the whole incident is huge code by the AmeriKKKan society concerning the police brutality toward the black and non-white communities in this nation. Had the victims in Harlem been two whites walking out of a strip club in Manhattan shot by black cops, there is no doubt in my mind those cops would have done time and the public outcry would have been continuously loud. Code is words but it is also deeds, reactions and lack of reactions. The code of police shootings by white cops of black and non-white victims is loud and clear when there is such lack of response by the white community.
Of course the racist will point to affirmative action and black anger as the same thing as what they are accused of in their racism. There’s no doubt a white man is looked upon with suspicion when he enters a black community or encounters a group of blacks. Why the hell shouldn’t he be suspected is the question that needs to be asked.
Affirmative action is the favorite racist target today, also. I was recently asked to sign a petition to do away with racism in government when I exited my local grocery store. My first impulse was “sounds good to me”. But, I asked what the petition really meant to accomplish. It turned out the petition was an attempt to do away with “quotas” (code for affirmative action). My angry response to the petition stooge took him by surprise. It seemed almost every white person that stopped to listen to them signed the petition.
Middle class and working class whites need to get it together. They somehow think they’re victims of quotas and illegals in the loss of jobs and livable income. They need to get the shit out of their brains so they can see they’re the victims of greedy multi-national corporations taking jobs to third world countries for the cheap labor costs. They need to wise up to the fact they are victims of the military industrial complex that continues incessant wars costing billions of dollars. I fail to understand why these sheep don’t get the connections between the costs of war and the price of tuition, groceries, gas and all other so-called “essentials” of their lives.
Fear makes sheep group together and sacrifice one another to the wolf. The wolves of war have asked the sheep to give more, more, more. They give their sons and daughters in exchange for a fake security. They give their rights to the wolves hoping they can live a fake life of freedom. They give their souls for the materialistic garbage of a shallow and empty life. None of this will ever give the sheep security or safety or happiness. They live a fairy tale world of Disney, Survival, NASCAR, NFL, NBA, NHL and expend more energy and passion there than for starving children in Darfur or Iraq. They live a lie while the majority of the world lives the true game of survival.
I can’t say for sure but maybe this fairy tale world is what Reverend Wright is talking about when he says “God damn America”. For surely God will damn this immoral life we’ve sold as the benchmark of living.
It’s really all bullshit. A person can go crazy thinking about such things. Wonder what’s on HBO.
William Terry Leichner, RN
Combat veteran – Vietnam (67-69)
VVAW member - Denver
First off, I wonder when the mainstream media will actually start talking about the racial coding the Clintons are getting away with toward Barack Obama. Don’t get me wrong about defending Obama. I’m not enamored with him since he seems to want to overlook being a black man in hopes all us white racists will also do the same. Barack, you’re black, brother! Live with it and celebrate it! And call out the overtly racist comments of Billiary.
Code, what code? Does anybody get it other than the independent press and every black and brown brother and sister who hears it? The recent flap over Obama saying Americans were bitter and disaffected and therefore seek solace in their religion and guns is an example of what starts the coding. Hilliary and Bill immediately start calling Barack an elitist out of touch with the people. In other words, he’s uppity…right Hilliary?
What’s so outrageously stupid about their statements and those of John “Wayne” McCain is that all of you people are out of touch!! C’mon Bill is a Rhodes Scholar, Hill is a Yale grad after a tour of Wellesley and John “Wane” is a Naval Academy grad. How long has it been since any of these people drove themselves around town or gone grocery shopping on a weekly basis? How long has it been since any of them have mowed a yard or fixed a leaky faucet? How long since any have lived in a roach infested place with bad plumbing and inefficient heating system? How many of them will live on a fixed income in their later years. No, a cushy pension from Congress and as an ex-President doesn’t count.
Obama is the most likely to have experienced any of the real life situations the average American faces on a daily basis in the past twenty five years. He’s more likely to have contact with folks who have experienced them in the last ten years.
But Barack has shown his true “roots” in his recent handling of the remarks by his former mentor and pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Wright was figuratively thrown under the bus by Obama when white AmeriKKKa objected to his remarks about the terrorism of our wars and the continued racism here in the homeland.
Obama disavowed himself from the Reverend Wright after the remarks became public in convenient YouTube formats which take them out of context. Of course Clinton wasn’t to blame. The code here is she doesn’t mind that the remarks became public and created the racial firestorm that led Obama to giving a speech on the racial divide in this country. The remarks just can’t be traced back to her or Bill in their origin.
The problem with throwing someone under the proverbial bus is sometimes that bus fails to stop long enough to make sure the victim is dead. Reverend Wright gloriously tipped the bus over and came back to haunt the Judas, Obama.
So, today (April 29, 2008) Obama is back out on the road trying to get the bus to back up and run over the reverend one more time with his disavowals of the content of the remarks made by Wright. Testicle implants seem to be needed by the Senator from Illinois at this time.
All these folks are elitists and we’d be fools to think otherwise. I’m with the rock singer, Prince, who says in his song, Writing a Letter….”I’m tired of y’all”.
Another example of the bullshit is the recent joke of the Israeli Ambassador to the U.N., Dan Gillerman, calling Jimmy Carter a “bigot” because he met with a leader of Hamas in an attempt to broker compromise and some semblance of peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Can this fool be real?
He represents a country that has systematically attempted to rid the area around Israel of the indigenous peoples of many centuries. The land grab of Palestine from Palestinians was well conceived by Ben-Gurion and others well ahead of the overthrow of the British in 1948. Ben-Gurion is quoted extensively about ridding the area of the Arabs. Moshe Dayan is quoted as carrying out a terroristic program of collective punishment any time an Israeli was killed by an Arab.
The purge of Palestinians has continued to this day with walls being erected to create a ghetto much like the ones so vividly described by survivors of the holocaust in Warsaw and other Nazi held areas of Europe during World War II. There’s no hiding the contempt and disregard for Palestinians by the Israeli government’s Zionists. They’ve continued a policy of dehumanization and violence against all dark skinned Semites since before 1948. And to equate Zionism with Judaism is the doublespeak of liars and imperialistic power mongers. The Zionists could care less about Judaism except when it helps further their movement.
There are several references to David Ben-Gurion stating the holocaust was a defining moment to create the Jewish state of Israel. He felt it was probably good it happened so Zionism could be brought to fruition in the Middle East.
So, Dan Gillerman has the audacity to tell the world what a bigot an ex-President is when that person tries non-violent negotiation with a radical branch of Palestinian. The notion Hamas and the radicals can’t or won’t be part of any settlement is absurd.
The refusal of the Zionists to include them is a definite sign of the need for the Zionist movement to have the scapegoat to continue conflict in the area. Why continue conflict? It keeps Zionism in power with a huge military budget and the Israeli population in fear of the dark skinned Semites who lived for centuries on the land Israelis now control. It keeps the U.S. military funding coming in and continues the duped American public’s collective guilt about the Holocaust. It keeps the dupes thinking Zionism is Judaism and to question the actions of the government of Israel is anti-Semitism.
If the American people weren’t so damn ignorant and intellectually lazy they might realize Israelis are not the only groups of Semites existing on this planet. The knowledge of American people about the history of the Palestinian and Israeli conflict seems to be only what is put out by the Israeli political action committee, AIPAC. That message is “megaphoned” by every mainstream media group existing in the U.S. and abroad.
The occupation of the lands of Palestinians is akin to the occupation of the lands of the indigenous peoples of the Americas by the Europeans in the 1400’s. Violence and terror were used to displace those people from the lands occupied by a hundred generations of their people. Despite the revisionist attempts of Gellerman and Zionists across the world, the displacement and eventual ghettoizing of the Palestinian people in refugee camps and occupied territories is as racist as the Native Americans being placed on reservations. It is as racist as the enslavement of Africans by white Europeans in North America.
The characterization of bigotry by Gellerman toward Carter is nothing but the continued obfuscation of Zionists to throw the world off the trail of their continued bigotry aimed at Semites of color such as Palestinians. The constant use of the Holocaust to justify the oppression of the Israeli government has worn thin and cannot excuse Israeli government use of the same tactics used by Hitler against Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and other “deviants” defined by the Third Reich.
Meanwhile back in the U.S. New York City cops have been absolved of shooting a bride groom in Harlem who exited a strip club with a friend following a bachelor party. The use of fifty plus rounds by the cops to contain the groom was seen as a justifiable use of force. The fact the groom was black isn’t a big surprise in the annals of American police shootings. The fact the groom was unarmed isn’t a surprise. The “whitewash” by the court exonerating the undercover cops isn’t a surprise either.
I can’t help but wonder why Bill and Hilliary Clinton, beloved citizens of the black community of Harlem, haven’t spoken out about this shooting. It would seem the Rev. Butts of the Abyssinian church of Harlem would also be front and center. He’s the recipient of Queen Pork Hilliary’s 1.5 million dollars in private grants. He recently repaid that bacon with his endorsement of the white female candidate over the black male candidate.
I also wonder where Obama is when it comes to the violence of police toward people of color. Surely living in the Chicago area he’s heard many stories from constituents about police brutality. Is this dirty little secret of serving and protecting by means of racial profiling and constant rousts of the non-white communities something we should continue to allow in this nation? Is the criminalization of young blacks and Latinos for petty offenses or inequitable sentencing something that should be allowed to continue? Where are the questions of candidates about such things in the “race” for the presidency?
But the whole incident is huge code by the AmeriKKKan society concerning the police brutality toward the black and non-white communities in this nation. Had the victims in Harlem been two whites walking out of a strip club in Manhattan shot by black cops, there is no doubt in my mind those cops would have done time and the public outcry would have been continuously loud. Code is words but it is also deeds, reactions and lack of reactions. The code of police shootings by white cops of black and non-white victims is loud and clear when there is such lack of response by the white community.
Of course the racist will point to affirmative action and black anger as the same thing as what they are accused of in their racism. There’s no doubt a white man is looked upon with suspicion when he enters a black community or encounters a group of blacks. Why the hell shouldn’t he be suspected is the question that needs to be asked.
Affirmative action is the favorite racist target today, also. I was recently asked to sign a petition to do away with racism in government when I exited my local grocery store. My first impulse was “sounds good to me”. But, I asked what the petition really meant to accomplish. It turned out the petition was an attempt to do away with “quotas” (code for affirmative action). My angry response to the petition stooge took him by surprise. It seemed almost every white person that stopped to listen to them signed the petition.
Middle class and working class whites need to get it together. They somehow think they’re victims of quotas and illegals in the loss of jobs and livable income. They need to get the shit out of their brains so they can see they’re the victims of greedy multi-national corporations taking jobs to third world countries for the cheap labor costs. They need to wise up to the fact they are victims of the military industrial complex that continues incessant wars costing billions of dollars. I fail to understand why these sheep don’t get the connections between the costs of war and the price of tuition, groceries, gas and all other so-called “essentials” of their lives.
Fear makes sheep group together and sacrifice one another to the wolf. The wolves of war have asked the sheep to give more, more, more. They give their sons and daughters in exchange for a fake security. They give their rights to the wolves hoping they can live a fake life of freedom. They give their souls for the materialistic garbage of a shallow and empty life. None of this will ever give the sheep security or safety or happiness. They live a fairy tale world of Disney, Survival, NASCAR, NFL, NBA, NHL and expend more energy and passion there than for starving children in Darfur or Iraq. They live a lie while the majority of the world lives the true game of survival.
I can’t say for sure but maybe this fairy tale world is what Reverend Wright is talking about when he says “God damn America”. For surely God will damn this immoral life we’ve sold as the benchmark of living.
It’s really all bullshit. A person can go crazy thinking about such things. Wonder what’s on HBO.
William Terry Leichner, RN
Combat veteran – Vietnam (67-69)
VVAW member - Denver
Wednesday, April 23
Can I Get A Waiver?
It is a proud day in AmeriKa. The military has finally adopted a “total” diversity program in which convicted felons may now enlist. Under the Orwellian term “moral waiver”, the program is meant to take up the slack of recruiting shortages.
Apparently the youth of AmeriKa has seen enough of their brothers and sisters going on repetitive deployments to combat zones in Afghanistan and Iraq to realize the damage that’s been done to the troops.
In the beginning there was the “back door draft” and the “stop loss” troops that filled the ranks to fight the dastardly and godless terrorists (aka Muslims, hajji, Arabs, immigrant, rag head, sand ni**er etc.)
The back door draft is the ruthless and unethical recruitment of small towns and urban corridors lacking employment and opportunities for the young people living in those areas. Recruiters don’t so much lie about enlistment as they conveniently forget to tell all the facts about enlisting.
The “stop loss” troops continue to be held prisoner by “executive” order of the President which allows for an undetermined time of keeping troops due to discharge in the military at a time of “emergency”. Approximately 82,000 troops have been “stop lossed” since 2003.
It still remains a mystery what emergency exists. There is little risk to AmeriKa from the nations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Both have ruined infrastructures and lack capability of being a danger. Still the masters of war persist in trying to tie the events of September 11, 2001 to Iraq and Afghanistan even though the great majority of the bombing conspirators were from Saudi Arabia, ally of the AmeriKan power structure.
The newest policy of the military allows “moral waivers” for convicted felons so they might enlist. Close to 900 have enlisted so far. Among that group were nine or ten convicted sexual offenders. I’m sure the female troops find that reassuring along with the continuous sexual harassment and assaults that already occur with greater frequency than most would guess.
The other issue of this new moral waiver policy is exactly who comes into the service after felony convictions. If we’re to look at the demographics of AmeriKan gulags the large number of non-white inmates would suggest a likely similar percentage will turn to enlistment because of their limited choices on leaving prison. So the newest maneuver of the military to fill the ranks has become the open cell-door diversity draft. Blacks and browns to the front.
For some AmeriKans, I’m sure the use of felons to fight their wars is acceptable since the bias against any convicted felon has become one of blood thirsty retribution and vengeance. So, to have them go to a war zone to be maimed or killed seems like a perfect way to solve the problem of too many felons on the streets without jobs and desperate enough to reoffend.
It still remains uncertain how the new felon soldier fits in with the unit. Since trust is a key concept of the combat units in war it will be interesting to see how much trust there will be for the new “few and the proudest” and “Army strong” troops. Perhaps the military is planning on some form of the “dirty dozen”.
Sadly, the concept of rehabilitation and redemption has never been real big in the AmeriKan prisons. Ex-cons are expected to have gainful employment as part of parole yet few employers will hire them. Just recently a convict here in Colorado was released after many years in the “joint”. During his imprisonment he became a success story for rehabilitation. He earned a Master Electrician’s license from the State of Colorado. His skills were used by the department of corrections to repair electrical problems all over the state. He gained the trust of prison administration and the guards he worked with. Once released, however, the state decided to revoke his license as a matter of policy. They cited the possibility of danger to anybody whose house he might enter to perform the duties of electrician. Prison authorities and the employer the con worked with before the revocation are outraged by such stupidity. I’m sure the Army or Marines would be interested and care less about the license.
There could also be a possible recycling of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans from prisons back to the military. Since there’s an 800,000 waiting list at the VAMC and the mental health care of the returning veterans has been abysmal a large number of veterans end up imprisoned. The symptoms of rage and acting out behaviors caused by PTSD often leads the vets to breaking laws and going to prison at a greater rate than the percentage of vets in the general population. About 25% of the inmates of AmeriKan gulags are veterans.
So, once these vets are released and should they remain young enough they do have job skills needed by the military. And maybe their PTSD symptoms have been treated by the penal system mental health team. Not likely but maybe.
Another good place for recruiters could be the youth corrections programs. Maybe they could even set up tables at the schools of the programs as part of the No Child Left Behind law enacted by the Bush and Cheney team. Why wait for the young offenders to enter the adult penal system when they could be trained to kill in one of the wars?
If the military is looking for a really quick fix for their manpower problems they might also set up recruiting centers near public hospitals. Since there are about 30-40% of the AmeriKan population lacking health insurance the military could enlist the uninsured still healthy enough to fire weapons. It would be a win-win situation. Chemotherapy for humvee patrols. Insulin for sniper school. And since the terminally ill have nothing to lose anyway, they’d make great combat soldiers. Especially if they happen to be in the anger cycle of Kubler-Ross’ theory of dying. And the military could avoid paying life insurance for this group by using the “pre-existing condition” clause of their discharge policies. And should this group get killed in action they would leave behind the legacy of being one of the “heroic” soldiers or Marines who gave their lives to protect our freedom. Their family could receive a folded AmeriKan flag as a memento. The other good part of this plan would be the family being able to deny the illnesses of their loved ones and feel the patriotism other families feel when they sacrifice a son or daughter to the wars.
No doubt some will find these suggestions inappropriate but I’d argue if we are to continue killing one another in these endless wars, why not use the people who are a burden on society or their families? Like Dick Lamm once said, those who have serious and terminal illness should have some duty to die for the sake of the rest of us. Why waste those deaths when they could be used to protect our freedom?
As a grandparent I also think the military should enact a substitution waiver wherein grandparents can take the place of their grandkids on the battlefield. Since it is mostly grandparents who begin the wars anyway, why not let them fight them?
All in all, I believe the troop shortages can be alleviated with some creative thinking such as the “moral waiver”. But if we amp it up just a little there can be even more done so all of us get a chance to take part in the wars we’ve all come to love so much we can’t seem to ever stop them. And a bonus will be a thinning of the weaker, an economic stimulus for the arms industry and a return to a whiter and brighter AmeriKa.
And speaking of whiter, Doug Bruce here in Colorado gave me another idea on a source of troops to fight our wars. We can have a guest worker program of some “illiterate peasants” come up from Mexico and other Latin nations to help out our seasonal businesses but instead let them go to the wars to fight and let the troops there now do the field work the peasants would have done. That will also be an excellent way of getting rid of the non-English speakers who have invaded this nation. They won’t have to learn to speak English. They’ll be told they need to learn Farsi, Arabic or some other language of the Middle East. And maybe Doug Bruce will go with them as an interpreter in case they do need some English?
I’m sure there are some who feel I’m being callous and disrespectful but haven’t we already accomplished that with our lust for wars while forgetting the sick and frail of the world. In reality the whole idea of the military having a moral waiver at this time is disrespectful to humanity. AmeriKa has given itself a moral waiver for some time in most of its foreign policy and policies toward other humans. From water boarding and torture at Gitmo to the School of Americas to the endless wars for no other reason than to bully and conquer, morality has disappeared. Bush and Cheney have certainly made it worse than recent memories of most; except those my age who remember Johnson and Humphrey and Nixon and Kissinger.
God bless AmeriKa – more than any other place, please, God. And if you could, Lord…can we get a waiver to get into heaven?
William Terry Leichner, RN
USMC combat vet
Vietnam ’67-69
Thursday, April 17
Ivy Leaguers and John "Wayne" McCain, Hero
On an episode of M*A*S*H, the television comedy about a mobile hospital near the front lines of the Korean war, a pilot was brought into the hospital. The pilot had forgotten his real name and was confused after an apparent head wound. He was telling the medical staff he was Jesus Christ.
Despite attempts to reorient the pilot he continued to insist he was Christ. One of the doctors disliked by others accused the pilot of trying to get out of his military duties by faking he was Christ. He reported the pilot to an insane military intelligence officer who was a gung ho stickler for rules.
The intelligence officer demanded the doctors release the pilot to return to his “duties” as an elite weapon of the USA. The other doctors resisted and called for a psychiatric evaluation.
A sympathetic military psychiatrist saw the pilot and determined the pilot sincerely believed he was Christ. Despite protests by the intelligence officer, the psychiatrist stated the pilot had lost himself after participation in numerous bombing raids. He believed the pilot could no longer accept the death and destruction he participated in leading him to take on the personality of Christ. The psychiatrist is asked if the pilot would ever fly in combat again. He says the pilot may reclaim his identity but would likely never be a pilot again.
During the show the pilot was told he was actually a pilot with duties of bombing the enemy. He looked at the psychiatrist with saddened face and tells him “Christ could never do such a thing”.
I keep thinking of that episode of M*A*S*H and find it ironic the fake Christ objects to the war. Since 9-11 and the beginning of the war in Iraq in 2003, there are many followers of Christ that seem to have no problem with pilots dropping bombs on areas with civilian populations. Some seem to think it is the duty of American men and women in the military to take on the “new Crusade” against god-less Muslims. In Vietnam, many clergy felt the war was justifiable because of godless communists.
The likely successor to George W. Bush is John McCain, alleged “hero” of the Vietnam War. With Obama and Clinton skewering each other in their lust for power ,the Democrats seem to have once again found a way to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. In their attacks on one another they have given Republicans all the ammo they need to defeat either one of them.
Of course the differences between the three, besides the obvious anatomical, racial and age, are really minimal. All three belong to the elitist power structure despite all their attempts to portray themselves as candidates of the blue collar worker, the non-white community and the young and old. Recent attempts to attack Obama for telling a relative truthful fact about Americans being “bitter” and falling back on their religion and guns for relief are the theater of the absurd when Clinton and McCain call a black man elitist because he is a Harvard grad.
Clinton wants to have us to believe she hasn’t been part of the American “royalty” despite being a grad of Wellesley and Yale, a former first lady and current New York Senator. Clinton has run a campaign full of distortions, outright lies and a sense of entitlement to be the next President based on the experience she claims.
John McCain wants to play the humble ex-POW of Vietnam, whose son has been deployed to Iraq as a Marine. He plays down the role of “hero” but not enough to keep it from being a factor in his candidacy. He also plays the grandfather figure that Ronald Reagan made famous in his role of President of the U.S. And like Reagan, McCain may well have the onset of senility but keeps it well disguised with the help of campaign staff. And in the continued revisionist history of John McCain’s life, the American people are supposed to forget he was one of the “Keating Five” in Congress that were in bed with the robber barons of the 1980’s stock scandals. The five were joined by Neil Bush in ripping off the savings of the “common people” McCain, Obama and Clinton now try desperately to woo with lies about their own common people roots.
McCain, son of a higher ranking Admiral in the Navy, was appointed to the Naval Academy. To have us believe his father’s influence had nothing to do with the appointment is a bit much to expect. Just as the elite get their kids into Ivy League schools, military brass get their kids into the academy of the various services.
Is John McCain a war hero? No doubt in the eyes of Americans a man who enjoyed shooting rockets, dropping bombs and shooting off guns in war is the real deal. And after 22 bombing raids over North Vietnam in which he released bombs onto civilian areas as well as reported military targets, the hero was shot down and spent 5 ½ years as a POW.
Because his father was an Admiral, McCain spent a number of years being treated better than most POW’s. After some years of this preferential treatment, McCain did a heroic thing. He refused an early release so others held longer than him would be released. After that time McCain was no longer treated differently and endured violent interrogations.
McCain has been most vocal in his opposition to water-boarding and other “torture” techniques endorsed by the Bush people since 9-11. He uses the Geneva accords as his reason to oppose such actions. Like cafeteria Catholics or Baptists with only an Old Testament view, McCain fails in his Geneva accords test. He forgets the use of bombing raids on civilian populations is considered a violation of these accords. John McCain took part in such actions 23 times before being shot down.
As a young pilot for the Navy McCain would go on missions, drop his payload of bombs on areas without knowing the number of innocent civilians killed and return to his carrier. He could be drinking beers in the Officers’ Club after dinner. After a couple of weeks of flying he’d spend every third week carousing by his own report.
While John McCain may be seen as a hero to Americans, there are many in Vietnam who would say he is a criminal responsible for the deaths of their family members who were innocent civilians. Dropping bombs on North Vietnam wasn’t anything other than terrorism against the North Vietnamese in an attempt to get them to capitulate to American force. There weren’t tactical targets that presented as imminent or immediate danger to American troops in these bombing runs.
The bombing of North Vietnam was the same tactic Americans first started in World War II during the incineration of Dresden. In that campaign, engineers were assigned to develop bombing patterns that would create the terrorizing and deadly firestorms that killed hundreds of thousands of the civilians in Dresden. Firestorms were a familiar scene to residents of Hanoi and other North Vietnamese cities.
As a common grunt on the ground I loved hearing the bombs of American bombers thudding in the distance because I knew it would reduce the possibility of me and my fellow grunts getting killed.
As I look back, I can’t help but wonder how pilots knowingly dropped payloads on areas without thinking who would be killed by their actions. Unlike grunts that had to see the result of their destructive actions, pilots flew high above their victims and returned “home” after releasing their bombs. It was just a job. They never got to see the “crispy critters” grunts got to see after a napalm run. They never got to see kids after large pieces of shrapnel decapitated them.
Looking back, I remember grunts being called baby-killers as a result of My Lai and other actions with innocents being killed either intentionally or by accident. As I hear about similar events happening in Iraq and Afghanistan I now understand it’s always innocent that suffer most in wars. On John McCain’s missions, just one of the many bombs dropped could be capable of killing more than were ever killed in My Lai. Only one of the bombs dropped on Baghdad or Fallujah could kill more than ever were killed by Marines on the ground in Fallujah in one week.
The grunts are called baby killers. John McCain is a hero. Even if McCain had not been taken prisoner, he’d never have been held as responsible for the deaths of civilians as Privates, Corporals and Sergeants in an infantry unit killing them out of rage or fear or by accident. And McCain was responsible for more death of innocents than any of the grunts. This is the nature of heroism in America.
Walking the jungles or riding the streets in dangerous combat zones is tedious, exhausting and boring right before it becomes deadly. There are seldom times when the grunts can leave the war zone and carouse for a week before having to go back out. They certainly don’t have the thousands of feet between them and the deadly ground of the war zone the pilots have. And yet those who have to go face to face, gun to gun and sometimes bayonet to bayonet against their declared enemy also become villains much easier than the true dealers of death from the skies.
John Wayne and John McCain are heroes people associate with wars. One was a fictional war hero of the screen and the other fictitiously declared a hero after he failed his 23rd mission to drop bombs on a nation’s people whether they were combatants or not.
Here are a few excerpts of an interview with McCain from John McCain: Biography and Much More from Answers.Com
“As a young navy pilot, McCain was in his element. "I enjoyed shooting rockets and dropping bombs and shooting off guns," he recalled to Esquire's Charles P. Pierce. "Nobody in their right mind wouldn't enjoy that. . . . You're a young, single guy, and you go out and you fly for a couple of weeks, then you come in for a week and carouse . . . Nobody deserves to get paid for that." He gave up the single part of the equation in 1965, when he married Carol Shepp and adopted her two children (the couple later had a child of their own, too), but the lure of adventure was more difficult to abandon. So McCain volunteered for service in Vietnam.
Vietnam
In June of 1967, McCain (by then a lieutenant commander) set out for Vietnam from Norfolk, Virginia aboard the USS Forrestal. The carrier was in the Gulf of Tonkin on July 29, its crew preparing for the second launch of the fifth day of striking enemy targets in North Vietnam, when one of its own bombs detonated on deck. McCain narrowly escaped the resulting conflagration that killed 132 crewmen, with two others missing and presumed dead, and injured 62 more. It was one of the worst military accidents of the war.
A little less than three months later, on October 26, McCain was making his 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam when his plane was hit by antiaircraft missile. Forced to eject, breaking both arms and a leg in the process, he landed in a lake near Hanoi and was captured. He spent the next five and a half years as a prisoner of war (POW) at the sarcastically nicknamed "Hanoi Hilton."”
http://www.answers.com/topic/john-mccain
William T. Leichner, RN
USMC combat veteran
Vietnam 1967-69
Despite attempts to reorient the pilot he continued to insist he was Christ. One of the doctors disliked by others accused the pilot of trying to get out of his military duties by faking he was Christ. He reported the pilot to an insane military intelligence officer who was a gung ho stickler for rules.
The intelligence officer demanded the doctors release the pilot to return to his “duties” as an elite weapon of the USA. The other doctors resisted and called for a psychiatric evaluation.
A sympathetic military psychiatrist saw the pilot and determined the pilot sincerely believed he was Christ. Despite protests by the intelligence officer, the psychiatrist stated the pilot had lost himself after participation in numerous bombing raids. He believed the pilot could no longer accept the death and destruction he participated in leading him to take on the personality of Christ. The psychiatrist is asked if the pilot would ever fly in combat again. He says the pilot may reclaim his identity but would likely never be a pilot again.
During the show the pilot was told he was actually a pilot with duties of bombing the enemy. He looked at the psychiatrist with saddened face and tells him “Christ could never do such a thing”.
I keep thinking of that episode of M*A*S*H and find it ironic the fake Christ objects to the war. Since 9-11 and the beginning of the war in Iraq in 2003, there are many followers of Christ that seem to have no problem with pilots dropping bombs on areas with civilian populations. Some seem to think it is the duty of American men and women in the military to take on the “new Crusade” against god-less Muslims. In Vietnam, many clergy felt the war was justifiable because of godless communists.
The likely successor to George W. Bush is John McCain, alleged “hero” of the Vietnam War. With Obama and Clinton skewering each other in their lust for power ,the Democrats seem to have once again found a way to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. In their attacks on one another they have given Republicans all the ammo they need to defeat either one of them.
Of course the differences between the three, besides the obvious anatomical, racial and age, are really minimal. All three belong to the elitist power structure despite all their attempts to portray themselves as candidates of the blue collar worker, the non-white community and the young and old. Recent attempts to attack Obama for telling a relative truthful fact about Americans being “bitter” and falling back on their religion and guns for relief are the theater of the absurd when Clinton and McCain call a black man elitist because he is a Harvard grad.
Clinton wants to have us to believe she hasn’t been part of the American “royalty” despite being a grad of Wellesley and Yale, a former first lady and current New York Senator. Clinton has run a campaign full of distortions, outright lies and a sense of entitlement to be the next President based on the experience she claims.
John McCain wants to play the humble ex-POW of Vietnam, whose son has been deployed to Iraq as a Marine. He plays down the role of “hero” but not enough to keep it from being a factor in his candidacy. He also plays the grandfather figure that Ronald Reagan made famous in his role of President of the U.S. And like Reagan, McCain may well have the onset of senility but keeps it well disguised with the help of campaign staff. And in the continued revisionist history of John McCain’s life, the American people are supposed to forget he was one of the “Keating Five” in Congress that were in bed with the robber barons of the 1980’s stock scandals. The five were joined by Neil Bush in ripping off the savings of the “common people” McCain, Obama and Clinton now try desperately to woo with lies about their own common people roots.
McCain, son of a higher ranking Admiral in the Navy, was appointed to the Naval Academy. To have us believe his father’s influence had nothing to do with the appointment is a bit much to expect. Just as the elite get their kids into Ivy League schools, military brass get their kids into the academy of the various services.
Is John McCain a war hero? No doubt in the eyes of Americans a man who enjoyed shooting rockets, dropping bombs and shooting off guns in war is the real deal. And after 22 bombing raids over North Vietnam in which he released bombs onto civilian areas as well as reported military targets, the hero was shot down and spent 5 ½ years as a POW.
Because his father was an Admiral, McCain spent a number of years being treated better than most POW’s. After some years of this preferential treatment, McCain did a heroic thing. He refused an early release so others held longer than him would be released. After that time McCain was no longer treated differently and endured violent interrogations.
McCain has been most vocal in his opposition to water-boarding and other “torture” techniques endorsed by the Bush people since 9-11. He uses the Geneva accords as his reason to oppose such actions. Like cafeteria Catholics or Baptists with only an Old Testament view, McCain fails in his Geneva accords test. He forgets the use of bombing raids on civilian populations is considered a violation of these accords. John McCain took part in such actions 23 times before being shot down.
As a young pilot for the Navy McCain would go on missions, drop his payload of bombs on areas without knowing the number of innocent civilians killed and return to his carrier. He could be drinking beers in the Officers’ Club after dinner. After a couple of weeks of flying he’d spend every third week carousing by his own report.
While John McCain may be seen as a hero to Americans, there are many in Vietnam who would say he is a criminal responsible for the deaths of their family members who were innocent civilians. Dropping bombs on North Vietnam wasn’t anything other than terrorism against the North Vietnamese in an attempt to get them to capitulate to American force. There weren’t tactical targets that presented as imminent or immediate danger to American troops in these bombing runs.
The bombing of North Vietnam was the same tactic Americans first started in World War II during the incineration of Dresden. In that campaign, engineers were assigned to develop bombing patterns that would create the terrorizing and deadly firestorms that killed hundreds of thousands of the civilians in Dresden. Firestorms were a familiar scene to residents of Hanoi and other North Vietnamese cities.
As a common grunt on the ground I loved hearing the bombs of American bombers thudding in the distance because I knew it would reduce the possibility of me and my fellow grunts getting killed.
As I look back, I can’t help but wonder how pilots knowingly dropped payloads on areas without thinking who would be killed by their actions. Unlike grunts that had to see the result of their destructive actions, pilots flew high above their victims and returned “home” after releasing their bombs. It was just a job. They never got to see the “crispy critters” grunts got to see after a napalm run. They never got to see kids after large pieces of shrapnel decapitated them.
Looking back, I remember grunts being called baby-killers as a result of My Lai and other actions with innocents being killed either intentionally or by accident. As I hear about similar events happening in Iraq and Afghanistan I now understand it’s always innocent that suffer most in wars. On John McCain’s missions, just one of the many bombs dropped could be capable of killing more than were ever killed in My Lai. Only one of the bombs dropped on Baghdad or Fallujah could kill more than ever were killed by Marines on the ground in Fallujah in one week.
The grunts are called baby killers. John McCain is a hero. Even if McCain had not been taken prisoner, he’d never have been held as responsible for the deaths of civilians as Privates, Corporals and Sergeants in an infantry unit killing them out of rage or fear or by accident. And McCain was responsible for more death of innocents than any of the grunts. This is the nature of heroism in America.
Walking the jungles or riding the streets in dangerous combat zones is tedious, exhausting and boring right before it becomes deadly. There are seldom times when the grunts can leave the war zone and carouse for a week before having to go back out. They certainly don’t have the thousands of feet between them and the deadly ground of the war zone the pilots have. And yet those who have to go face to face, gun to gun and sometimes bayonet to bayonet against their declared enemy also become villains much easier than the true dealers of death from the skies.
John Wayne and John McCain are heroes people associate with wars. One was a fictional war hero of the screen and the other fictitiously declared a hero after he failed his 23rd mission to drop bombs on a nation’s people whether they were combatants or not.
Here are a few excerpts of an interview with McCain from John McCain: Biography and Much More from Answers.Com
“As a young navy pilot, McCain was in his element. "I enjoyed shooting rockets and dropping bombs and shooting off guns," he recalled to Esquire's Charles P. Pierce. "Nobody in their right mind wouldn't enjoy that. . . . You're a young, single guy, and you go out and you fly for a couple of weeks, then you come in for a week and carouse . . . Nobody deserves to get paid for that." He gave up the single part of the equation in 1965, when he married Carol Shepp and adopted her two children (the couple later had a child of their own, too), but the lure of adventure was more difficult to abandon. So McCain volunteered for service in Vietnam.
Vietnam
In June of 1967, McCain (by then a lieutenant commander) set out for Vietnam from Norfolk, Virginia aboard the USS Forrestal. The carrier was in the Gulf of Tonkin on July 29, its crew preparing for the second launch of the fifth day of striking enemy targets in North Vietnam, when one of its own bombs detonated on deck. McCain narrowly escaped the resulting conflagration that killed 132 crewmen, with two others missing and presumed dead, and injured 62 more. It was one of the worst military accidents of the war.
A little less than three months later, on October 26, McCain was making his 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam when his plane was hit by antiaircraft missile. Forced to eject, breaking both arms and a leg in the process, he landed in a lake near Hanoi and was captured. He spent the next five and a half years as a prisoner of war (POW) at the sarcastically nicknamed "Hanoi Hilton."”
http://www.answers.com/topic/john-mccain
William T. Leichner, RN
USMC combat veteran
Vietnam 1967-69
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