Grudge against a Dead President

Gerald Ford did a monumental disservice to my country when he pardoned Richard Nixon.

By so doing, Ford prevented any investigation and thorough public discussion of the Nixon atrocities. Worse, he negated any deterrents that such an investigation would have had on future Presidential misdeeds. This has serious ramifications at the present. I firmly believe that Ford has given comforting precedent to the people who subverted the workings of our Constitutional checks and balances...And...I believe that the future of our Country depends on us enduring the investigation of the many transgression of the Bush and Cheney years.

We have been lied to repeatedly. We have been harmed.

The suppression and harassment of scientists and their warnings have lost us precious years in the fight against global warming. Climate meltdown will be far more severe than we were led to believe and Bush knew it. He did the same thing with the scientific reports telling him that the Southwest United States face serious and permanent dewatering by 2050 as he did with his briefing, "Osama Bin Laden determined to strike inside the United States."

Now we are finding out that Bush simply lied about his domestic Spy program. Bush stated that only Americans who have been talking with terrorists overseas were eavesdropped on without a warrant. That is as bold a lie as a President has ever told the American people. Who was targeted?

...Everyone, but especially journalists and news organizations.

It is a fundamental tenet of American democracy that the electorate must be informed. Without accurate information, we the people cannot make good decisions and cast our votes responsibly. Anyone who stands in the way of telling citizens the truth is a traitor.

The time has come to shine a light into the crevasses that the Bush Administration has hidden the truth, not so much that we may punish George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, however deserving, but so that we may deter the most powerful people in the entire world from lying to us ever again.

Let the investigations begin. Let the chips fall where they may. There is no reason on earth why we should know more about a stained blue dress, than we do about our stained Constitution.

This will be a test of our strength as a Nation.

Peace,

Steve

The damning NSA Whistleblower interview on Olbermann

In the spirit of the gift...

...Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit...

...We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.

From Franklin D. Roosevelt's Inaugural address

A January Sunday

Constituent Service?

As my Junior Senator from Tennessee spirals off into the land of unbridled conservative ideology, I am a bit amazed at his ability to remain in his alternate universe where he works against the best interests of his own constituents.

After we dutifully paid our taxes for the billions of dollars spent to rebuild New Orleans, Mississippi, Texas, and Florida, Goldman Sachs, AIG, etc. etc. etc., Senator Corker wants us to pay for our own damages from an entirely preventable disaster that was an act, not of god, but of his own chosen conservative ideology. Corker seems to applaud the cronyism of the Bush Administration's packing of the TVA Board of Directors (including a director whose qualification is that he is Chairman of the Republican National Committee...Isn't that a bit obvious, guys? Where's the finesse?) which led us in a straight line to the devastating event of 12:20 am, December 22, 2008. Cut costs, increase profits, increase bonuses, blame someone else and get out of town when disaster strikes.

Where is the competency and professionalism? Where is the concern for people's health...Their lives?...Concern for anything except profit and personal gain? It's the manifestation of the "I've got mine so things are fine" creed that has us in our present National condition. What I don't understand is who deserves a bailout and who doesn't? Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton when it became the target of an avalanche of class action suits involving its subsidiary's asbestos liabilities. When ehe became Vice President, one of his major successes was to get Congress to bail out Halliburton by assuming the liability for thousands of mesothelioma cases.

Republicans have no problems with bailing out rich people and corporations, but they go all outraged if anythings looks like it will actually help, you know, people. And if those people belong to a Union, Bob Corker will be the point man in the attempt to bring them to ruin. In Corker's world unions are bad. No reason except that they are Unions and Unions are bad. Forget the fact that unions are simply groups of people working together for better working conditions. This goes directly agains the conservative mantra of cut costs, make more money. Treating people like human beings is bad for business. Bob Corker is all against it.

Unions want things like humane working conditions, which is really bad for the coal business. Unions want things like proper training for workers and adequate safety precautions and adequate planning for emergencies and trainging and proceedures installed so that when something DOES go wrong, the aftermath is minimized. Lives are saved. Screwing people should not be a good business plan. Unions are the primary entities that keep corporations from screwing workers. Senator Corker hates Unions. He was willing to let millions of jobs be lost in order to get the United Auto Workers Union. Nice guy, Mr. Corker.

Let's think about Unions and the debt we owe them, shall we? Particularly some customers of a large corporation that was forced to provide training to its workers by their unions...Training that gave them proceedures and equipment to react and save lives when bad things happen. Some people are calling it a "Miracle". Well miracles happen when people lay the ground work for miracles to happen. Here are some of the unions involved in this miracle:

Seafarers International Union.
National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Patrolmen's Benevolent Association
Uniformed Firefighters Association
Uniformed Fire Officers Association
Association of Flight Attendants-CWA
Airline Pilots Association
US Airline Pilots Association

In yesterday's miracle where the lives of 155 people were saved after the US Airlines crash into an icy river, there were no CEO's or Senators flying planes, piloting boats, jumping out of helocopters, guiding people out emergency doors, deploying lifejackets and inflatable chutes, or co-ordinating the efforts of the massive New York response organization. Every one of them was a union member.

Bob hates Unions. Well, except for the one he belongs to...The Republican Party.

It looks like he doesn't much like his constituents, either.

Peace,

Steve

A better look at the Unions involved is here

This is totally uncalled for, and I apologize in advance

Therre are scores of unanswered questions about who did what in the Bush Whitehouse. Did Cheney commit treason in the outing of a covert CIA agent?

Where is the "Undisclosed location"?

How well did Georege W. Bush actually know Osama Bin Laden back in his business days with Osama's big brother?

Well sure, those are important but other events are happening that will bring up the opportunity to ask some other questions...

Former Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe is returning from exile in Poland.

Now will someone ask the question enquiring minds want to know the answer to?

Who was fake reporter/real male prostitute, Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert being paid to visit in the WhiteHouse?

Or maybe fill us in on this one?

Senator Corker: Roane County should Pay for its Own Rape Kit

Tennessee Senator Bob Corker has just pissed me off.

Rarely does anyone try to take me for a fool in such a juvenile way as he just did. For Corker to make the statement that the people harmed by the TVA Disaster do NOT deserve to get help from the Federal government might be the most transparently asinine statement by a Tennessee politician ever…And Tennessee has set the bar higher than a Beale Street hooker when it comes to asinine statements by politicians. I don’t get it. Why would Corker make the mother of all irrational statements by a person previously thought to be coherent is beyond me, but he did.

If a utility in another state had a similar problem, "certainly I think we would expect (the utility) to deal with that," Corker said. Corker noted that many efforts have been made to make TVA a self-standing entity that runs independently and has a corporate-like board.

First of all, TVA IS in another state…Several of them in fact, but it primarily serves Tennessee, or rather it is supposed to.

Second of all...This not about TVA. It is about the people, tens of thousands of us, that TVA has harmed emotionally, physically, and economically.

At any rate, TVA is NOT a Tennessee utility. We don’t run the damned thing, Bob Corker and his fellow Senators do…And for 10 more days, George W. Bush.

Hey Bob…Take a moment and read this:

The nine-member TVA Board of Directors sets policy and strategy for TVA. The members are nominated by the President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve five-year terms.

That's from the TVA Board of Directors web site.

The operations people on the ground, including CEO Tom Kilgore, are hired hands doing the bidding of the TVA Board of Directors whose appointments are blessed by Senator Corker and his fellow Senators. And you would have to be a fool to think that our Tennessee Senators didn’t sign off on the SIX new Directors created and installed by the Bush Administration, so that they take over TVA policy from the three members of the Clinton era Board. So check out who is now on the TVA Board:

Chairman William B. Sansom of Knoxville, Tenn., is chairman and chief executive officer of The H.T. Hackney Co. and has held that position since 1983. Hackney is a diversified company involved in wholesale grocery, gas and oil, and furniture manufacturing. His term expires May 18, 2009.

Howard Thrailkill of Huntsville, Ala., recently retired as president and chief operating officer of Adtran, Inc., in Huntsville, which supplies equipment for telecommunications service providers and corporate end-users. Previously, he was president and chief executive officer of the firm Floating Point Systems. His term expires May 18, 2010.

Mike Duncan of Inez, Ky., is chairman, chief executive officer, and director of Community Holding Co.; chairman, CEO, and director of Inez Deposit Bank; and Chairman of the Republican National Committee. He is a director of the regional Center for Rural Development. His term expires May 18, 2011.

There are four more Directors currently listed on TVA’s web site…There are supposed to be Six more. I don’t know why this is but it is a violation of the TVA Bylaws to have less than Nine.

I list those three Directors for a reason. The TVA Board has committees that are charged with overseeing particular phases of TVA operation, such as this one:

Operations, Environment, and Safety Committee

Howard Thrailkill, Chair
Mike Duncan
Bill Sansom

Yes, that’s right, boys and girls, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, good old Bob Corker’s party, sits on the committee that directs TVA’s Safety and environmental actions.

The Republican National Committee Chairman also sits on the TVA ETHICS committee. I totally trust the Chairman of the Republican National Committee to make sure TVA operates in an ethical manner. Don’t you?

And…If there’s anybody in America I trust with the personal safety of my family, it’s a big time pro-corporation, anti-worker, Republican. And if there’s anybody in America I trust to do the right thing for the environment it’s a pro-global warming, pro-coal, big time Republican.

And…If there’s anybody in America directly responsible for the TVA disaster that has ruined Christmas for any number of Roane County, Tennessee families and made thousands of Roane Countians fearful of their family’s safety and preserving a healthy environment in their homes, it’s the TVA Board of Directors and the people who installed them into their positions of power with laws that also make them legally untouchable for putting a bullet in the back of Roane County Tennessee in the name of a Federally owned corporation’s enterprises.

And…If there’s anyone in America who should step up, say, “Hey, wait a minute!” Call out these people and do everything in his power to make the Federal Government correct the deep injustice it has put upon his constituents, it should be Senator Bob Corker, who is the people of Roane County’s voice in the very Federal Government that did this to us.

I hope that somewhere in Bob Corker’s head there’s a voice saying, “Hey…Wait a minute.”

Roane County took a bullet for America… We’re bleeding proof that Coal power has to be phased out. We have subsidized coal with our health, lives, and the safety of our very homes. The least we could expect of a Senator is to go to bat for us against the very people that put us in this fix, which inescapably includes Senator Corker himself.

Peace,
Steve

Please be Thoughtful About the TVA Ash Spill

Headlines that start with hyperbole (Radioactive![Not] Much Worse than Thought![Not]) are as misleading and as wrong as the local Chamber of Commerce saying "There's no problem here."

There is a sorry trail of lax oversight, poor management, and misplaced compensation incentives from the TVA Board over many years that led to this disaster. The blame for this event can be laid squarely at the feet of TVA's corporate mindset, the anti-environment Bush Administration, his appointed TVA Directors, and also, everyone who has ever flipped a light switch into the ON position.

Hysteria may serve a radical agenda but it won't help the community directly affected by this nor will it serve the people on the ground working to make sure this thing gets all the attention it deserves and gets properly re-mediated. Nor does it serve those of us who are working hard to lay the ground work for a healthy and viable community going forward. The TVA Ash Spill is a disaster, a big damned mess, and has health considerations all its own. In addition to the environmental damage caused by mining and burning coal for energy, there is the unpaid economic damage of Coal energy, from cradle to grave. We lose the ears of those we need when we exaggerate.

Publishing a water quality analysis from water dipped out of the soup at ground zero and then screaming about it containing 300 times the arsenic levels allowed in treated drinking water is absurd and simply not helpful to the credibility of environmentalists. That would be like screaming that apples contain an unhealthy amount of arsenic. They do, but very few people eat apple seeds in any quantity and very few people are getting their drinking water out of the soup at ground zero. In fact, most of us who live here feel like we have never had such good testing and oversight of our water supply. Even normal water treatment removes every contaminant associated with the ash spill. As of right now with everybody watching, I would bet that our water processing is as good as there is anywhere in the country.

There have been breathless pronouncements that TVA and TDEC have not been truthful with us. In fact, not one incorrect water testing analysis has been published by TVA or TDEC and they are regularly posted publicly. The delays I have run down have turned out to be due to incompetence rather than any malicious intent, and have been corrected quickly. TVA quickly released a map showing the testing locations and has continually posted their results, as has TDEC. The test results have been completely in line with the results published by some environmental groups, regardless of what you may have read.

We've had the expected positioning by politicians, big and small, and lawyers are swarming over our public meetings like rats at the old dump, and some environmental activists (not all) are running around scaring people. Inaccurate information has appeared in nearly every respected news outlet. It needs to stop. Nobody has been able to find an inaccuracy in any of the published test data and there is a ton of it out there. What it shows is that we have a mess...There are hazards...They are manageable...We have to be vigilant...We have to be truthful! We don't have to exaggerate anything to show what a foobar TVA has given us. We have to look into the future toward the greater long term good for our community.

The next couple of years are going to be harder than they needed to be. We are getting hurt economically with depressed property values and tax base, and it is going to be more difficult to attract the right kind of community based businesses to our area. Particularly if they buy into the hysteria and think those apple seeds are going to crawl out of the lake in the middle of the night and get them. Every community has its problems, but thanks to TVA's monumental mess up, we now know what ours are and what we have to do to fix things. The good news is that this mess can be contained, even though it will take time. Roane County Tennessee is a stunningly beautiful area. The people who have come in here to look at the spill can concentrate on the less than one square mile that is for real a disaster, and they can look around at the rest of our area.

Looking around at what is happening, I see good things coming out of this down the road. TVA's corporate practices are getting a white hot light shined on them. I expect their environmental awareness to jump off the scale. Orders for new coal plants are being cancelled across the country. The myth of "clean coal" has been forever exposed for what it is...a plain and simple lie. The coal waste storage practices will change forever. It is going to cost money to clean this up and it's going to cost money to make people whole. Community groups are being formed to insure that this happens. There is a common bond created when people come together to face a mutual disaster.

With all this said, we need to be aggressively vigilant, holding TVA and our officials to the task of setting things as straight as they can ever be. But even though their motivations may be personal rather than altruistic, there's nothing to be gained from stabbing them in the back when they're headed in the direction we want them to go.

Peace,

Steve

On the ground daily information and links can be found at www.RoaneViews.com

Environmental Justice to All in 2009

We got screwed this year.

Been happening for a long while...We're just now finding out how much and how bad.


So far there has been little discussion of the TVA ash spill on conservative TN blogs. They must be freaked right now. This disaster is absolutely the result of the "rah rah for coal", "burn baby burn", "drill baby drill", lack of ethic promoted by conservatives in their never ending quest for lobbyist dollars.

Right now, Tennessee Republicans are cowering in back rooms wallowing in a mix of fear and ectasy.

On one hand they have to be thinking this is a chance to squeeze Big Coal lobbbyists for a ton of money. Coal energy is looking like really nasty stuff right now. Not only are Republicans backing plans to level the Appalachian mountains and dump the nasty leftovers into the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, but all the world has to look at the TVA disaster and think about that "Free Market" bull crap and what the constant Republican quest to eliminate environmental oversight. Republicans are telling Coal lobbyists that it's gonna take a lot more money for the GOP to keep on taking the "Clean Coal" message out to the public.

On the other hand, this is the perfect opportunity for Progressive Democrats to hang a sign around the neck of Tennessee's GOP that says, "Republican = Murderer". The weakening, in the name of deregulation, of laws that require businesses to operate in such a manner as to not kill people can be laid directly at the feet of the Republican Party.

Republicans have built the current rabid conservative iteration of their once noble party on their absolute conviction that Tennessee voters are stupid. It absolutely worked in the last election.
Can the GOP message that a clean environment is bad and clean coal good?

Public schools are bad and vouchers for rich people to send their kids to private schools are good?

Fair markets are bad and free markets are good?

The environmental callamity that has befallen Roane County, Tennessee can be laid squarely in the laps of Conservative Republicans, who have eviscerated just environmental law, and the weakling who call themselves Conservative Democrats what stood by and watched them do it.

At this very moment, Tennessee Republicans are being told to shut up, say nothing about the environmental aspect of Roane County's disaster. The message is boiled down to "Yes, but...We need Coal!"

Well no we don't...Air and water that won't make you sick would be really nice though.

Where are our Democrats that can spread the message that We aren't going to get a healthy environment as long as Tennessee voters continue to live up to Republican's expectations of how stupid they are?

Coal is killing us...Republicans (and conservative Democrats) are helping.

Now we get to play the "HOW STUPID ARE THEY?" game as we watch to see if TN voters make the connection that Conservatives have superior marketing "Be afraid, very very afraid, of the scary black guy, (while we kill you slowly for money)".

Superior marketing...But no Product!

Now is the moment for Progressive Democrats to step up and shout loud in the New Year.

Peace on Earth, Good will and Justice to All in 2009!

Might as well start right here in Roane County Tennessee.

Steve

Quote of the Day

From Jay Bookman in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

...when properly harnessed, greed makes an effective, productive servant.

But it makes a terrible master.

The Great Coal Sludge Disaster of 2008

Amazingly, folks have called and emailed from all over the Nation asking about us. We're fine. Whites Creek Gorge faces many threats but this isn't one of them.

We are downstream of the TVA disaster site by 20 miles or so, and the Whites Creek embayment on Watts Bar Lake is large enough that we'll see very little of the effects, even far into the future. The stuff will keep right on going to Chattanooga, or simply settle into the lake bottom, along with vast quantities of other nasty stuff left over from the Atom bomb project. Like megatons of mercury and enough radioactive isotopes to kill everything on the planet several times over.

But would you believe it's in a relatively safe place at the bottom of a huge TVA lake under several meters of mud. The PCB's are the greatest threat and you can just not eat the fish. That's too bad because Watts Bar has produced over forty world record fish.

I'll try to post more later, but you can follow some of the fun at www.RoaneViews.com, our local progressive community site.

We are working to house some of the volunteers who have experience helping communities who have felt the impacts of coal and its disasters. I have to force myself not to say "I told you so"...Aw what the Hell..

As I've said before, "Mining coal is one of the stupidest and most self destructive things humans do."

Peace,

Steve

Will Bush give Cheney a Pardon that includes Murder?

Claims from the actual people who say they worked to fix elections for the GOP say that Obama actually won the election by maybe seven million or more votes than the final tally says he did. One of my fervent hopes is that election fraud gets investigated in heroic depth. Problem is, the people who know what they did to help Karl Rove steal elections...Well, they are dying.

He told—Connell told Spoonamore that one of the primary reasons why he helped Bush-Cheney steal elections was to save the babies.

Michael Connell was about to testify about Karl Rove's illegal involvement in the 2004 election tampering in Ohio that gave George Bush his second term in the presidency. He was afraid that Bush and Dick Cheney were going to throw him under the bus, but he was wrong. It was an airplane.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, he had asked the Attorney General Mukasey for protective custody, because of threats to him and his wife?

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: He reported threats to his lawyer, Cliff Arnebeck, and Arnebeck—also, Velvet Revolution heard from tipsters, as well, tipsters who also claimed that Connell’s life was at risk. Stephen Spoonamore, the whistleblower who was the first—who was the one to name Connell in the first place, also had an ear to the inside. He’s also very connected. And all these people were saying Rove is making threats, the White House is very worried about this case.

Republican IT Specialist Dies in Plane Crash

America Now

The price of freedom is eternal vigilence.

Steve

Legacy

"History will be very kind to me. I intend to write it." ...Winston Churchill

There is some kind of Bush legacy project going on. It must be that conservatives worry that people will look back onthe Bush regime and realize that giving total control to a manifestly selfserving political party is not good for the long term survival of our nation. "Can't have voters realizing we're all crooks, we gotta lie about what happened," must be the whisper going through republican inner circles.

President Bush has yet to take responsibility for one single uncomfortable thing that happened while he was president. "All the decisions that were made" that precipitated the housing crisis? "Made before I got here." It's possible that he believes that, but more likely he's simply lying. The New York Times has done a little study that shows very plainly that the responsibility for the subprime meltdown lies with George W. Bush, who blocked every effort to prevent it from happening. It's like they really really believe that what ever is good for their short term bank accounts is good for the entire country.

Save money? Don't be silly. "Borrow and spend" has been the mantra of the engineers driving the train right of a cliff. "Sensible regulations?" Why that's big government! They are against big government, for deregulation, and letting people who commit constitutional crimes go...Right after we give them medals.

The whole thing is laid out here.

As we head into this season of renewal, let us not forget who the bad guys are and what we need to do. It is a large task. But as my friend says, when you have to eat a whole elephant the only way to do it is one bite at a time.

Peace,

Steve

No Greater Evil, No Greater Hero

Via Rachel Maddow

Indecent Exposure

I feel as if a white hot spotlight has flashed on with both of our national political parties caught in the glare.

Nothing in my memory exposes the hypocrisy of the Republican Party more than the debate on the monetary bailout of our financial institutions and our lack of a monetray bailout of our auto industry. At the same time, nothing exposes the spinelessness of the Democratic party more, either.

It appears that the GOP is run by very effective managers suffering from moral bankrupcy, while the Democratic party is run by...well, nobody.

A couple of facts intrude...Financial institutions, like the ones we just bailed out with three quarter of a TRILLION freaking dollars, used their bailout money to pay dividends to stockholders and bonuses to their executives, and, to allow the healthier ones to buy up weaker ones, and we still have no credit.

Salaries make up 60-70 percent of the cost of doing business at financial institutions.

My junior senator, Bob Corker, voted for that one.

My junior senator, Bob Corker, is leading the charge to break the United Auto Workers union because the cost of building an American car includes 10-15% labor. Only it actually only includes less than 10% labor, the rest is pensions and healthcare costs for retired workers...Old people who fulfilled their part of a contract and Bob says screw 'em.

(While actively working to undercut America's big three, Corker is squarely behind the $577 million dollar subsidy the state of Tennessee is providing foreign car maker Volkswagen, by the way.)

So Bob...It's the right thing to help an industry with 60% labor costs and a bad thing to help an idustry with 10% labor costs unless the workers agree to work for half what they're getting now?

The Democratic Party will never get a more clear cut delineation between between the two political parties as to which one stands for people and which one stands for corporations. There is a clear line between good and evil here.

It is time for the National Democratic Party to say it loud.

Peace,

Steve

More

Help Plug a Leak in the Ark

I'll be danged...There're my friends right there in the latest issue of National Geographic!
One of my favorite do-gooder projects is the small work I get to do with the folks at Conservation Fisheries, located across the street from the Knoxville campus of Pellissippi State College. These folks toil away, for salaries a teacher wouldn't work for, in relative obscurity doing the work they love and feel called to do...Saving fish species.

It's fascinating to walk around their facility and realize that for some of the most beautiful creatures in our world, this is their last best hope for survival. It may seem to the unknowing that losing a species is no big deal. There's lots of others, right? Well, no. There are fewer and fewer species on this planet and it's our fault. We never know which one is the critical straw that will crash an ecosystem by it's disappearance. Nor do we know which species holds the cure for a dread disease, or even, as one day may be the case, the key to humankind's survival.

The Fish species that Conservation Fisheries Inc. (CFI) work with live in Tennessee's streams and rivers, and they are having a tough time getting by. Of the 4,000 or so Boulder Darters left in the whole world, 15% of them are given life by the aquariums of CFI in Knoxville. Of the less than 6000 Yellowfin Madtoms, a fascinating tiny catfish looking beastie, about the same percentage survive in the tanks that are painstakingly maintained in the ordinary looking building that houses Conservation Fisheries Inc. and the interns and scientists who function as a dating service and nannies to breed and rear thousands of young of these and many more fish species. It looks like an old steel building but it is really an ARK.



Here's your chance to help Noah, by going to the Conservation Fisheries website and donating a few bucks. You'll feel really good about yourself.

Peace,

Steve

President-elect Obama’s transition team LISTENED!

From Renee Hoyos at Tennessee Clean Water Network

Understanding the Big Damned Mess We're In

Conservatives, Republicans, Libertarians, whatever, have no business being anything other than a minority player in the scheme of a democracy. The very idea of letting them gain control of our press and media has had devastating results on this country, as any honest observer must admit.

When a platform is given to a nut job vice presidential candidate who prayed on TV for god to bless her efforts to get federal money for the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere", and then not be laughed off the national stage as she doggedly repeated the obvious lie, "I told them Thanks, but no thanks", it becomes obvious that something is wrong with our truth detectors at the national press.

I watched with rising anger as President Bush said he regretted that his intelligence was so bad prior to his starting the Iraq war, even though his offices went so far as committing treason and a host of lessor offenses as they gamed the
CIA into doing their bidding and ruined the careers of people who pointed out the lies.

Frankly I think all of our national problems flow from an ineffective press. It was the Pamphleteers, after all, that drove the outrage at British injustice that created this nation. Without them, we are destined for mediocraty or just plain failure.

One of our Nobel Laureates in Economics lays out the big mistakes in our recent history that allowed forces to congeal into the sorry state of the nation as it sits today. He factors in the consolidation of our media as one of the five biggies.

Here's an overview.

Every step we take in rebuilding our country has to reverse these mistakes at every turn.

Peace,

Steve

Quote of the Day

"...(Obama) says we only have one president at a time," (Congressman Barney) Frank said.

"I'm afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have..."

TPM

Grackles and Broadwing

Yesterday morning...

I sat at the breakfast table with the morning light on my back. I felt, more than saw, the shadow near the back of my head. There was a loud smack, I uttered an expletive and ducked reflexively. Turning to look, there was a broadwing hawk recovering itself in mid air, just three feet from my face, and just on the other side of the window. This was the second time the hawk had slammed into it after missing a dove perched on top of the feeder.

So I have to find a new location for it. I can't continue to rely on the screen on the outside of the window to save the hawks life and keep the glass from crashing in on my head. They seem much larger when they are three feet from my face, flapping wildly to keep from falling to the ground. Striking and beautiful, the striped tail stands out in my mind after the hawk glides through the branches of the white oak and off into the woods.

A few minutes later, a gazillion grackles take over this side of Whites Creek Gorge. I tell my wife that it's at least TWO gazillion but I'm going with the more conservative figure for this account. It's way more than a shitload, for sure. The grackles are everywhere, on every branch, constantly moving, boiling three dimensionally to the ground, to the trees, from branch to branch, descending on any tree where one of them looks like it has found something to eat. Suddenly the ground is swarming, suddenly it has only a few birds in it but the trees have grown black leaves everywhere, and a few brown ones. It is like the noisiest locust swarm ever, oozing through the forest, boiling almost. For a half hour I watch them, erratic in their motion but moving, nonetheless, in one direction as a whole, up the creek, and eventually it is still and the noise gets more distant.

The cat is in shock, hiding under my car in the driveway. She is still under there 45 minutes later when I come out to leave for town. Normally she swaggers out to receive adulation but this morning she bolts around the house and under the porch where the dogs have taken refuge. They have gathered closely together to await their fate, the whim of a gazillion grackles.

The Ghost of Thanksgiving Present

Most of the history you were taught in school is a figment of somebody’s wishful thinking, and maybe the desire for happy tales and life in a fantasy world.

For us to learn what actually happened at the so called “First Thanksgiving” is next to impossible, since our information comes centuries later through the letters of people who would have no interest in recording their own worst deeds in those harsh times where the colonies of the New World became the focus of the dark energies created by the marriage of greed, religion, oppressive conservative governments in the Old World, and native peoples who were doing just fine up 'til then without Europeans, thank you.

The first recorded Thanksgiving celebration was probably held in Saint Augustine Florida by Spaniards led by Pedro Menendez, who were thanking their god for not killing them on the voyage over. Since they weren’t destroyed at sea, it apparently meant that they now had God’s blessing to spread venereal disease, smallpox, murder, slavery, and religion amongst the aboriginal peoples who had it way too good up ‘til then, what with plentiful seafood, game, and war practiced mostly as a sport between tribal divisions. History records the date as September 8, 1565.

You were probably thinking that the first Thanksgiving was held by the Pilgrims, but no, it was supposedly December 4, 1619 at the Colony of Virginia settlement of Charles Cittie, by a group of English who were also thanking their God for not killing them on the voyage over, and his apparent blessing for what they were about to do to the locals, et cetera.

The Thanksgiving we were indoctrinated in as we were growing up was the one the Pilgrims apparently had in 1621. Several controversies arise from the accounts of that celebration, which frankly was several days long, as the Indians (as the Europeans referred to them) came and went bringing five deer as their contribution to the seafood, grain, and fowl that comprised the feast.

Probably the main controversy regards the presence, or not, of turkey at that first Thanksgiving. William Bradford, writing in his book Of Plymouth Plantation, says,

“…And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides, they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to the proportion…”

Edward Winslow, writing in the journal Mort’s Relation uses the term “fowl” as opposed to “waterfowl”, which would indicate a wider variety of game birds than duck and goose…

“Our harvest being gotten in, our governor(Bradford) sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labor. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which we brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others.”

It is currently fashionable to call the presence of turkey at the first Thanksgiving a myth, but it appears to be one of those mythological myths that fashion and lazy researchers tend to throw at us from time to time. We do know that a local Wampanoag man called Squanto taught them to catch eel, or the Pilgrims would never have survived to harvest corn.

Another obvious mythological myth I read was that they didn’t have bread, because they had no ovens as yet. This is evidence that certain historians are morons. Hello…They had corn. They had iron cookware, They had corn BREAD! And they had other grains as well. I suppose the historian who wrote that was thinking they popped all that corn instead.

While the Pilgrims and the Puritans ( a noxious breed of religious separatists who seem to have been profoundly disliked by everyone including the sailors who brought them over) were having their Thanksgivings and feasting with the Indians, the settlers in Virginia were being massacred back, for one or more of several nasty things they had done to various natives, resulting in the death of about a third of the White settlers in Virginia and the capture and enslavement of a bunch of their women by the Indians. There was nothing wrong with this in the Indian’s view, since the settlers obviously condoned enslavement by force. Squanto, the savior of the Pilgrims, had been taken as a slave by an earlier expedition and hauled to Europe. He was in the settlement as a translator as a result, and not, as some accounts have proposed, a savage wandered out of the wilderness to befriend the Pilgrims. Anyway, the Indian retribution was repaid by retribution, specifically, inviting the Indian men to a feast and offering them poisoned liquor. 250 or so were thusly murdered by the Virginians. I assume thanks was given by the settlers afterwards.

So…With the religious overtones surrounding the first recorded Thanksgivings come a lot of killings. The spirit of killing continued to go along with Thanksgiving for a hundred and fifty years, when The American Continental Congress issued the First National Proclamation of Thanksgiving, in which Americans gave thanks to the Almighty for blessing their weapons to be used against the British:

FOR AS MUCH as it is the indispensable Duty of all Men to adore the superintending Providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with Gratitude their Obligation to him for Benefits received, and to implore such farther Blessings as they stand in Need of: And it having pleased him in his abundant Mercy, not only to continue to us the innumerable Bounties of his common Providence; but also to smile upon us in the Prosecution of a just and necessary War, for the Defense and Establishment of our unalienable Rights and Liberties; particularly in that he hath been pleased, in so great a Measure, to prosper the Means used for the Support of our Troops, and to crown our Arms with most signal success...

Abe Lincoln solidified the tradition in the middle of the American Civil War with a note of regret for the human sin of war

…they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union…

Thanksgiving is obviously a most conflicted and yet original of American holidays. It evolved out of brutal hardship as well as humankind’s stark brutality to itself. Arising from religious strife and racial war, we now have a Thanksgiving that can stand alone with simple gratitude for human existence as enough reason for feasting.
George Herbert Walker Bush established the tradition of pardoning one turkey while eating another one, though he blamed it on Harry Truman. His idiot son followed suit with great flourish as did recently the malignant governor of Alaska, who made great fanfare of pardoning a turkey even as another one was being beheaded a few feet behind her...well seen on camera by millions of Americans.

No better metaphor for Thanksgivings past can I devise.

But it is Thanksgiving present that now confronts us, and we face one of those periods that are the thing of the curse, “May you live in interesting times”. The real reminder of Thanksgiving is that humankind has faced many many times like this, each unique in its diabolical nature. We have survived them up until now, and will probably survive this one.

For that realization, and for the ultimate benefit of my children and yours, I give thanks.

Let us feast!

Peace,
Steve