Whenever I hear this my blood turn cold. Do they really want this to happen in this country?

Do they want our police agencies to pull up in large latino neighborhoods and try to herd thousands into paddy wagons? It would not be pretty. There would be resistance and the police would be vastly out numbered.

Do they want to deport US citizens? Many immigrants have US born children with the same rights as the bigots who want them to "get out of my country".

They want to treat them as felons. Did these people get together and work up a plan to undermine the economy? No they came here to have a safer life for their children. There is no criminal intent there. If the legal way in was fair they would come here legally.

Who will mow your grass, mop your floors, build your exclusive housing developments, watch your children, wash your humvee, pave the road it rides on. change your diaper when you get old, and dig your grave when you die?

Who do they think will do all this rounding up if it ever happens? The police know that it would be as risky as taking away handguns in Texas. The army maybe? Many soldiers are latino and they will not capture grandmas and little children to be taken away.

To capture and detain 12 million people would cost billions. More than the Iraq war I would guess. But the human cost would be greater. Sending all of these people away with nothing but the clothes on their back would be similar to making thousands of indians walk to Oklahoma. What about the possessions they would be forced to leave behind? Seized by the government and resold would be my guess.

Now assume it has been done. There are 12 million pissed-off people on the other side of the border with no money, food, or a place to live. What happens then. Will they attempt to re enter in mass? Will our national guard have to repel them by force? Bet mr. conservative likes the thought of that.

I am a life long carpenter. The flood of cheap mexican labor has had a serious effect on my wages. But I do not blame them for coming here. If I could sneak into Canada and make 50 times the money I do now I would go. I blame the businesses who have made this a reality. I blame the insurance companies who have made it impossible to pay a working American a decent wage. In other words I blame the business community at large for this mess. Why not punish the greedheads who sold us out for a hand full of cash.If they cared about America so much why did they put so many out of work to hire these wage slaves with no rights and no say? I think that question answers itself.

500th post. Thank you all for putting up with me.

I've posted a couple of comments lately concerning conservative militia groups and the very real threat of domestic terrorism after the expected democratic victory in november.

I truly believe that these people who now say that the president should be trusted in all matters will go back to hating the government and in some cases plotting against it.

I go to the conservative sites for a peek every now and then just to see who they want to wipe out now and the rhetoric gets more hateful every day. The things they say about all of the democratic candidates leads me to the conclusion that we may see homegrown suicide bombers within months after the new president is sworn in.

They call all of our candidates traitors for wanting to end the war. The traditional punishment for treason during war time is death. These hate filled persons are incapable of feeling patriotic unless we have soldiers killing and dying "to keep us free". Ending the war will remove the only thing that they are capable of loving about America. There will be plots against the new president. Will the bureaucracy protect him/her?

Government agencies are full of people who have forsaken their missions in order to promote conservative agendas. Will they protect a democratic president? Certainly not as well as they have B and C. Some may go so far as to sabotage things to make the democrats look bad. We may have to clean house for years to get these real traitors out of the positions of responsibility that they have already used for selfish gain at the expense of the American people.

In closing I wonder if any of the candidates have thought about this potential danger to themselves and what they should do about it. If they haven't they should start now because the darkside does not suffer defeat gracefully.

I may get totally flamed for this but the idea has stuck in my head and will not go away.

How Conservatives Are Like God

Both can see terrible things happen and do nothing.

You can talk to either and never be entirely sure they have heard a word you said.

Both let evil men control the world.

Both punish those who don't agree with them.

Both do terrible things and call it good.

Both love power.

Both will lock you up and throw away the key.

They both want your money.

They both require sacrifice.

When the shit hits the fan all you see are the people who work for them.

My uncle served with distinction in the first gulf war receiving numerous commendations including the bronze star. He was put out at the end of the war before he qualified for full retirement benefits. He has been receiving a yearly stipend from the army since he got out. This apparently keeps him in the ready reserve.

Two days before x-mas he got a letter telling him to report for active duty in mid Jan

They must be desperate to draft A 50 year old grandfather back to be a sergeant.

They are calling up the men at the bottom of the list. There is nowhere else to get more men other than bringing back the draft.

My family is totally dumbfounded, he was about to start building his retirement home on a new piece of property they had just bought. His third child has gotten married and moved out. He runs two businesses and has for years.

Now what?

may this year be better than the last.
Happy new year from Florida.



illegal codesmilie_remote(' ')
illegal codesmilie_remote(' ')

MY FIRST SMILIE EVER.

Other than themselves.

They say that they love this country. But they want us to turn into a global monster that dominates the world through our military.

They say that they love their families. But they fill their kids heads with hate and ignorance and teach them only how to consume.

They say that they love God. But they use god as a club to beat people over the head with, enjoying the self righteous hatred that seems to be the core of evangelical belief.

they say that they love our troops. But they want them to die to protect the bottom line.

It's easy to see what they hate. But what do they love? Can you love hatred?

As you can tell from my code name I am A carpenter with 25 years on the job. I am an expert woodworker as well a very proficient builder.

Recently I have learned that I may be laid off by the new year.

I have already looked and there little in the way of residential building going on. The only jobs left around here are low paying.

Is this how conservatives are made, being personally hurt by Illegal immigration? Latino labor has turned my hard learned trade into a cheap commodity where my next job may mean a $5 pay cut. The housing slowdown has made the local construction business grind to a halt.

Many in my position would be sitting here cursing the people who bought the biggest house that they could just barely afford and are now losing them thereby causing the housing slump that will put me out of work.

I could be stomping back and forth cursing the immigrants who came here looking for a better life only to become wage slaves. Their willingness to work for peanuts putting a big squeeze on the wages that I can get When I find another job.

Instead I will put the blame squarely where it belongs, on the greedy bankers selling ruinous loans to a lot of people who clearly could not afford them. On the large builders who brought immigrant labor in to build mini mansions by the thousands where more modest houses would have been affordable even during recession.

Can't forget the Insurance companies. Workers comp has gone up at a much greater rate than can be sustained without having a negative effect on wages, driving them down to the point that the only alternative is to hire Mexican labor just to stay in business.

I actually found myself angrily wishing the illegal immigrants would be sent home so that my job would be worth something again, is that the thoughts of a progressive? After a reality check where I reasoned that it was not really fair to blame them, it got me to thinking. If enough people get put out of work then the idea of rounding them up and sending them back will gain momentum. Hitler blamed the jews for the ruined state of Germany's' economy. The conservatives have the mexicans.

Soon we may all have to choose sides in how this mass expulsion will happen. Will you blame the Wal-mart business model that has screwed the American worker out of a future and have some sympathy. Or will you blame the poorest most helpless population this country has known since the end of slavery and removal of native-americans. Don't let THEM victimize the mexicans for the short sighted business practices of banks/builders/insurance companies.

Anyway wish me luck cause I am going to need it.

In the for profit nursing industry there is a constant battle between the administration of the home and the corporate bosses. The main issue is just how long do you want these people to live? Most nursing homes have a large percentage of medicaid patients who are only profitable if their medical needs are modest. Corporate knows that the better and more comprehensive the care is the longer patients will live in the later unprofitable phase where they need extensive medical care.

For the most part I do not blame the individual nurses for neglect. They work much too hard taking care of too many patients and the burn-out factor is ever present. The system they work in is always trying to get more work for less and nurses are nearly always overworked and have very long hours.

The saying "One bad apple can spoil the whole barrel" is so true in the nursing home. A single nurses aide not doing her job can make a whole hallway go bad.

But the main culprit is an administrator that is not willing or able to go to war with corporate over how things are run. If they can cut budgets without complaint they will always do it. A nursing home administrator needs to be tough as nails and stubborn as a mule and genuinely care for the patients under their care. One that rolls over to corporate pressure for greater profits will turn a nursing home into a dismal dungeon rather than a safe and clean place for people to live the remainder of their lives.

are one of the most disruptive things in American politics.

I have a gun but I do not love it, it is a tool that really has only one purpose, killing.

There are too many guns in the world as it is and fighting any attempt to bring sanity to the situation is in my opinion counter-productive. What good is a gun? Maybe to hunt for food, but the sport of hunting is so expensive that any "free meat" is more than offset by the cost of license and equipment.

When some one wants to make a law concerning guns they are not trying to take your guns away. No one wants to take your guns away unless you are a convicted felon. They want to do something about the epidemic of gun violence in this country. If you don't agree with it suggest something better. But automatically voting no to any gun law no matter what is short sighted.

when looking at the power elite of the world they seem to have little or no concern for the least of humanity, namely the poor of the third world. They die by the millions due to the lack of simple things like sanitation,water, immunizations,and so forth.

I think that the richest people in the world have decided that poorest must go.

They have retreated behind walls and layers of security for the widespread chaos that will occur. The seeds have been planted. AIDS and other diseases, mid-east war, loose nukes, global climate change, things that could have been prevented if the powers that be had acted in a timely manner.

I believe much of the turmoil in the world is a deliberate attempt to set populations against each other. So far it is been on a small scale, a war here a famine there, we are being primed to kill off a Large fraction of ourselves. All it will take is the right spark.

So what will it be? Global warming is my guess. The rise of sea level will result in a refugee crisis that will put billions on the move to areas where food is getting harder to grow because of depleted soil and lack of rain. Populations will naturally move to protect themselves from being over run by starving people.

In the midst of this man made Armageddon the one who can lay their hands on fuel, food, and weapons will be firmly in control. The US government has huge stockpiles of almost everything. If the shit hits the fan these stockpiles will not be for us but for the right people to consolidate power. The only employment will be as security goons or as slave drivers for the surviving population.

In the end they will have what they want, the power of life and death over a frightened and starving population and negative population growth.

To many this scenario may seem far fetched, but I think that it will happen because mankind has always forced out or killed the people he sees as a drag on society and as there is nowhere to flee to death is the only thing left.

God I hope I am wrong but I don't see humanity changing its ways any time soon. Life is becoming cheaper every day. There may come a time when the deaths of millions is an abstract concept when compared with keeping your family alive for one more day.

These documentaries are paid for by the defense industry and run with virtually no commercials. They present war as a merely technological problem that can be won by ever more complex systems.

They have weapon systems in the works that take the soldier or pilot out of the equation. These systems allow fewer and fewer actual humans to kill many more enemies. It may get to the point that warfare is as automated and permanent as mail delivery with only the joint chiefs gathered around computer screens directing attacks against humanity in a cold godlike manner.

Another thing they like to show is population control. They have developed many powerful tools for scattering or subduing crowds of people. Heat rays, sonic pain beams, stink bombs, even sticky foam that glues crowds in place. They are doing everything they can to make protest ineffectual and dangerous.

when watching the military channel one thing becomes clear. There is rarely ever pictures of the enemy dead. They talk about killing all day long but use words that dehumanize the act. In fact you hardly see humans at all. Mostly what you see is hardware built in automated factories blowing up other hardware.

when you see actual soldiers they are in training exercises rather than actual combat and highly gung-ho about killing cardboard cutouts.

But one thing they never show is the human aftermath of the weapons that they love like a dog that does an amazing trick. I can never watch it for long as it is a bigger cheerleader for war than any channel but it gives a good idea what the defense industry would like to see in the future. an automated state of constant war where the enemy dead are only blips on a screen that go from green to red.

I have been coming here for a few months and I have resisted posting an anti-bush rant. But it is almost a requirement here. So here goes.

I watched his dead face and empty eyes on tv the other night. I heard him say the same old lies and come out with some new ones.

When Presidents get near the end of their terms they start worrying about a legacy. Can that be the source of the hideous worry lines that have appeared on his face ? Is he staying up late thinking that the world hates him and is out to get him? That he may go down in history as the man who triggered WWIII? That he is the worst president ever? I really hope so.

In recent months he has become very haggard and worn looking with the hunted,haunted look that Nixon used to get. With all his buddies gone or going the pressure must be crushing. I wonder if he is having the paranoid delusions that Nixon had. Maybe he is even now talking to the portrait of Ronald Reagan asking him "where oh where did I go wrong".

I can imagine him pacing the oval office wishing to god for a drink. Filled with anger and fear and suspicion. Muttering to himself. While every five minutes someone comes in and asks him a stupid question. Or sagging behind his desk during another meeting with high pressure people who are trying like hell to get what they can get out of it before the whole thing falls apart.

As for me I have little sympathy for his plight other than he will be the hated one while the people who put him where he is will keep on making bombs and bullets and literally making a killing.

As a rant this post is kind low key but I am more weary than outraged.

When and where will it all end. I am so tired and the road is so long.

Apathy is the grease that allows evil to spread.

It is the back that is turned on starving people.

It is the curse that allows people to be easily lead.

It is the blind eye and the deaf ear.

It sits in the pews and preaches from the pulpit.

It Hides behind gated communities and sits on the board.

It sits in run down mobile homes watching wrestling instead of the news.

It stays home on election day.

It loves the pain of others.

It is the only thing worse than evil.

The last two days we have watched the hearings on the war and a word we have heard much of is reconciliation. people want to know how we can make the warring sects of Iraq come to an agreement where they will stop blowing one another up.

Now it is time for the stupid question. Do you think we as progressives could ever come to terms with the conservatives or they with us? Of course not. The answer is no.

The American civil war is still going on today in politics and the south seems to be the source of the conservative revolution. They want to turn back the clock to some magical time where America was white, crime didn't exist, and you could call a spade a spade. While progressives want to unite all people under freedoms you would think are self-evident. There is no reconciliation for us. This conflict in ideals will be here long after we are dead.

The Iraqi people almost wrote the book on being difficult. There is no reconciliation for them. We disagree on politics, they disagree on the very nature of god. To think that anyone can bridge that divide is foolish. Look at what the reconstruction did to the south. There are still hard feelings to this very day that show every time a conservative opens his mouth to utter a broad general statement with little basis in fact.

There is no plan we can offer the Iraqi people that will unite them, we cannot even unite ourselves. We have only our prosperity keeping us from each others throats. Should the establishment collapse for some reason we would be killing one another in a matter of days if not hours, road side bombs and all.

This particular phrase is really starting to bother me. I hear it all the time especially when people protest the war. I've heard it applied to democrats who are critical of the president, I've heard conservatives say it about welfare recipients. In fact I've heard it said about anyone who frightens or angers these people.

If you look at the history of massacres by armies,police,mercenaries or anyone in power you will find that most of them are directed at powerless people trying to gain or protect their freedom from oppression.

Do these people really want a country where political action by the people is put down by gunfire?

You can also carry this reasoning further to countries themselves. These people who say "they should be shot" are the same who say "we should bomb them back to the stone age". Will the deaths of millions really make them feel better? I don't think so, once the mass killing starts there will be no one to say "that's enough." There are always threats, real or imagined, and simply dropping bombs on brown people will not make the fear and anger go away.

So next time you hear this hateful phrase ask these people if they really want to see the piles of bodies, people killed by our government for the crime of standing up for a better, more peaceful way of life.