Ah, Those Southern Trees & Their Strange Fruit

Shit like this makes me nostalgic for them good, ol' days when us Whaht fokes could jist lynch any nigra what pissed us off:
Black High School Students in Louisiana Threatened With Lynching

"In September 2006, a group of African-American high school students in Jena, Louisiana asked the school for permission to sit beneath a 'whites only' shade tree. There was an unwritten rule that blacks couldn't sit beneath the tree. The school said they didn't care where students sat. The next day, students arrived at school to see three nooses (in school colors) hanging from the tree ....," writes Rick Perlstein of TomPaine.

Jena's up in the 'cracker-barrel/po'-whaht traish' part of the state, north of Cajun country; around Alexandria, where Barksdale AFB is. I wouldn't live there on a fucking stipend. Here's Wikipedia on "race relations" in Jena:

Racial tensions surfaced in Jena on September 1, 2006, when hangman's nooses were discovered in a tree on the high school campus. Despite the school head recommending the noose-hangers be expelled, the board overruled him and the three white student perpetrators were suspended from school for three days, what some called a mere "slap on the wrist"[2]. On November 30, an arson fire destroyed the main academic building at the school. On December 4, a fight broke out on campus, after which six African-American students were arrested and charged with attempted second-degree murder. Law enforcement officers told the Alexandria Daily Town Talk they have found no links between the noose incident, the arson fire, and subsequent fights. The six accused of attempted second-degree murder are black and were fighting a white student after a week of intimidation by white students, including the one who was assaulted.[3].

On june 26 the first day of trial for Bell, one of the defendants, the prosecutor agreed to reduce the charges for Bell to aggravated second degree battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated second degree battery.[4] As of june 26 there is no word as to whether the charges of the other 5 (for which the trial date is later) will be reduced.
Hence, the town has gained international notoriety as an example of the alleged "new 'stealth' racism" that lives on in America

I have been told by several black folks they prefer living in the South, where the bigotry and racism are obvious, to living places where it's less evident, but not less toxic or pervasive.

WASF...And Everybody (Now) Knows...

...That the fix is irrevocably in, the deck is irreversibly stacked, the dice are totally loaded, the money’s invisibly marked, the dealer’s OBVIOUSLY cheating, and the fucking house knows???

The reason that the Bushviks don't seem to care about Abu Gonzo, and the corruption of the DoJ is that they know that with the present composition of the SCROTUS, they don't hafta worry about a Constitutional Crisis, cuz the Opus Dei majority will decide in favor of the Unitary Executive. The decisions announced this week only make the obvious point...

The Dems also know this, anbd this is why they will NOT provoke one...


WASF: We Are SOOOOOOOO Fucked.

You Coulda Knocked Me over Widda Fuckin' Feather

Oil spikes above $70 a barrel

By JOHN WILEN, AP Business Writer 18 minutes ago

NEW YORK - Oil futures spiked above $70 a barrel on Thursday for the first time since Sept. 1 on a government report that showed gasoline inventories dropped unexpectedly as the summer driving season neared its peak.

Retail gasoline prices, meanwhile, broke a monthlong decline and held steady overnight at a national average price of $2.975 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Gas prices had been falling steadily since their May 24 peak of $3.227 a gallon.

I for one would NEVER have fucking imagined that there would occur a fucking spike in the fucking cost of oil, just in fucking time for fucking Fourth of July holiday driving, would you?

The Opus Dei Five Just Reversed Brown v. Tulsa

About two hours ago, the motherfuckers did it...
So much for Stare Decisis...but we already knew that, din't we?

Schools Must Ignore Race in Placing Pupils, Justices Say

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: June 28, 2007

Filed at 1:53 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected integration plans in two major public school districts but left the door open for the limited use of race to achieve diversity in schools.

The decision in cases affecting how students are assigned to schools in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle could imperil similar plans in hundreds of districts nationwide, and it further restricted how public school systems may attain racial diversity.

The court split, 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts announcing the court's judgment. The court's four liberal justices dissented.

''The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,'' Roberts said.

We Are SOOOOOOO Fucked!
You think it's an exaggeration? Wait 'n' see, folx...
Ya see what happens when the gutless fux who are SUPPOSED to be an Opposition party refuse to stand up and actually oppose the Regime?

Have Your Carcass!

$5005.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth

My truck (1999, f-250 superduty, 110k mi) is worth more than I am...

(Via scienceblogs.com/pharyngula)

"...(I)f it's constitutional, then I'm a banana."

The Bush White House man who wasn't there isn't the president. It's Vice President Dick Cheney, who, if you believe in karma, may be returning in the next life as an especially pernicious mildew. Or, if the gods are feeling larky, decorative kale.
--Michael Winship, TruthOut contributor

Re: Cheney's bizarre claims to be apart and/or above normal Congressional oversight.

Support TruthOut...

Another Great Afghan Success Story

Warlords Celebrate Record Poppy Harvest

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Afghanistan produced dramatically more opium in 2006, increasing its yield by roughly 49 percent from a year earlier and pushing global opium production to a new record high, a U.N. report said Tuesday.

Opium production in Afghanistan increased from 4,100 metric tons in 2005 to 6,100 metric tons in 2006, according to the 2007 World Drug Report released by the Vienna-based United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Opium is the main ingredient for heroin.

In 2006, Afghanistan accounted for 92 percent of global illicit opium production, up from 70 percent in 2000 and 52 percent a decade earlier. The higher yields in Afghanistan have brought global opium production to a new record high of 6,610 metric tons in 2006, a 43 percent increase over 2005.

Progress, at last!!!

WASF!

(sOTto voce:)
Weeeeeee

Are

Sooooooooooooooooo

Fucked!

Opus Dei and the CorpoRats have staked an irrebuttable claim to OWN the SCROTUS...

The Bushevik SCROTUS today castrated the Endangered Species Act, McCain-Feingold, and strengthened the claims of the Fucktards that, "Tinker" notwithstanding, students do shed their rights at the school-house door...

The latter, of course, only confirms the various critical observers' claims that the primary curriculum of the schools is orthodoxy and the purpose is indoctrination...

(SLAP!) THIS IS NOT FUNNY, PUNK!

There is no hope for liberty, for openness, for at least 20 years...or 'til syphillitic senility serendipitously overtakes the abysmal Uncle Thomas (though, as with Raygun, how would one tell?) Scalito played to form, and Roberts authored two of the majority decisions.

Under the penumbra of the doctrine of imprimatur...that speech-at-school carries the impress of the authority of the state?

I do not want to start on the EPA revision. Scalito? phagh!!!!

And it will be through these expedients--through packed courts and polluted agencies--that the Busheviks will continue to perpetrate their predations on the ability and the will of the People for self-governance long after their (presumptive) removal in 18 months.

The next regime, even if it were Dem, will not expunge the fascist sympathies embedded in the fundamental institutions of the Nation. That's the work of attrition...

If you pray, pray for John Paul Stevens...

Addendum @ 22:04, MDT: I was going to publish this as a comment at FDL, but was abashed, because i imagined it would likely be read/moderated as vulgar, or distracting, or something. It's what they call 'the chilling effect.'

Supportin' Them Troops: Extended Deployments and Crappy Treatment

(Both of these stories were collected by TruthOut.Org, which deserves your support, even a small donation.)

Repeat Deployments Lead to Long-Term Mental Disorders

With troops facing extended combat tours without relief that are unprecedented in US history, experts say even the expanded health care proposed by the Army will not prevent significant numbers of soldiers from suffering life-changing mental disorders.

Gov't Struggles to Care for Wounded GIs

America's war wounded number between 35,000 and 53,000. More of them are coming home, with injuries of a scope and magnitude the government did not predict and is now struggling to treat.

Ya think there's any dots to connect here?

The Country Will NEVER Return To The (More) Innocent, Pre-Bushevik Days

If you pay attention to history, one of the things you learn is that when events occur which undo major facets of popular sovereignty, those elements of popular sovereignty are NEVER restored to their previous strength, power, or authority. Revolutions decay into tyrannies, always. It is just a matter of time. The USer version is no exception.

The PNAC/Zionist/Fascist coup d'etat, mid-wived into the world by Sandra Day O'Connor (may her innards turn to feculent jelly and may she reek of corruption such that her presence may not be borne in any society!), has corrupted, weakened, disabled, or undermined EVERY instrument and institution of democratic self-governance to which it has set its attention. Every branch of government, every department within every branch, every bureau within every department within every branch, every single aspect of what used to set the USA apart from its peers in the world: everything they have touched they have turned to shit.

Vide: The Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches are all irremediably corrupt at their very top-most reaches , and since "democracy" in the USA has become a top-down project, we may not expect to see their renaissance. The army and marines are devastated by the ICORP in Iraq and Afghanistan. The DoJ is a laughingstock, the SCROTUS has betrayed its partisanship for all to see, the vote is poisoned by electronic fraud and theft, the regulatory agencies which might occasionally have been counted on to rein in the excesses of the corpoRat oliogarchs all meekly accede to their masters' wishes.

This was no accident. This was in fact their orders, their agenda, and their instructions from the CorpoRats and pollutocrats who are their paymasters and censors.

It is delusional in the extreme to think/hope a 'new' president, cabinet, etc.--no matter who: Obama, HRC, Edwards, Dodd, Richardson, any of 'em--will set things to rights and restore the country to the status it held prior to the Bushevik reign. The interests of the corpoRat/national security state will NOT be denied.

As I think it was Santayana who noted, we are totally fucked. All that's left is to get over it.
./

A Dog Story, by PanamaRed

PANAMA HEARS A DOG STORY
(H/t to m'pal, JT in Santa Fe, and to Red for his humanity)
Rockvale, TN, June 2007 - -
I took a ride a couple of days ago and picked up some cement blocks from a nice old man I'd met at the VA. There were a lot of them, well over one hundred, and it took me two trips over two days, so I kinda got to know my block benefactor a little bit.

The guy I got them from, a fellow VA client, went in the Army when he was 19, in 1967. He was a sniper, and he says that being a sniper kinda distances you from your comrades, what with you hiding up in trees for days at a time and, sniping being kind of unsavory and sneaky and just plain not honest, hell, it's murder plain and simple, so you don't develop many close buddies in the service.

In 1967 I was 22. So I got just a few years on him. This poor f*cker looks about twice my age, has had five heart attacks and after the last one tried to commit suicide, which they saved him from and put him in the nuthouse out at VA, which the denizens often call Club Meds.

His name is James. James is, like a lot of those we refer to as "lacking in social skills", somewhat of a misanthrope. That much contact with first the Viet Cong and now the Veterans' Administration will do that to you.

His social outlet, the thing that keeps his groove thing going the little bit that it does, is that he keeps a bunch of animals, mostly dogs but a few goats and turkeys and the odd interloping wild thing, upon whom he lavishes all the overflowing goodness of his f*cked up and failing heart that the world wants nothing to do with.

He told me a dog story, and that, finally, is the subject of this note.

A coupla years back, there appeared on James's land a pit bulldog who would hide at the edge of the woods and watch all that was going on in the yard. But when James tried to approach him he would run away.

James ultimately did become his trusted friend, though, and got him to the vet and he was full of scars. The vet said he thought the dog had been used as a "training dog" for bringing out the beast, which they call "blooding" around here, in fighting pit bulldogs. Thus he had gotten all physically f*cked up, as well as developing a deep and keen mistrust of anything on two or even four legs.

I'm jumping ahead in this part here as a set up to the story, so you can get some idea of the total desperation, desolation and sadness of this critter before he found his way to James's.

Around here we got a lotta goats. In some places the ground is rocky and you can't run cows there, so goats is it. Some folks keep sheep as well. Which brings us to the Great Pyrenees breed of dog. What a noble creature! The complete opposite of the pit bull prototype, the Pyrenees is innately nurturing and caring for all around him. They live with their charges, adopt the herd as their pack and, looking pretty much the same as the creatures they care for, provide total protection for sheep and the famous Tennessee fainting goats.

Around the time the pit bull showed up and was hiding at the edge of the woods, James had just acquired a couple of Pyrenees pups to run with his goats and turkeys. He kept the pups in a cage in his yard; wanting
them to stay outdoor dogs he didn't bring them into his house.

Each day he'd look out at the sad pit bull at the edge of the woods and wonder if maybe he shouldn't put some food out for him. But he decided against doing that, because then the dog would have no incentive to come closer, would simply continue to hang out, fed but unloved and unsocialized, at the edge of the woods. So
he hoped hunger would bring the dog to him.

But he began to notice a strange occurrence.

Every morning, the Pyrenees pups' dish would be outside their cage. He couldn't figure it out. Meantime the pit
showed no sign of being hungry, was gaining weight in fact.

And then accidentally James got up early one morning and was looking out the window of his doublewide, and he saw the pups pushing the dish under the mesh of their cage to the pitbull waiting outside. So they were sharing their food with this strange sad little guy.

Well, it nearly broke James's heart of course, this display of altruistic behavior on the part of these little pups, no more than three months old. "Just part of the way Pyrenees is, I guess," he said to me.

So of course there was no point now to withholding food from the pit so James started feeding him, first at the edge of the woods, then bringing the food dish ever a little closer to the house, until he finally won him over.

Now the Pyrenees pups are grown and watch over his goats and ducks and turkeys. Their names are Rocket and Comet.

The pit bulldog is still there, too.
James named him Pretty Boy.

In Peace and Love
Panama

Medical Marijuana: "Kaneh Bosum" Sanctioned by Biblical Texts

Jun-14-2007 00:02
Dr. Phillip Leveque Salem-News.com

For those afflicted, there is no escaping PTSD, but sufferers may have some relief in sight....

(The Money Quote)

..Many veterans with PTSD, especially those from Viet Nam, discovered that marijuana was better than any of the aforementioned medications. However, the official position of V.A. doctors under government regulations are not even allowed to discuss with patients that marijuana might help.

Medical marijuana acts as a homeostatic modulator, which means that it is used to help patients get back into a normal state almost to the extent and cause of their PTSD and many other physical/ mental/ psychological conditions.

Medical marijuana reduces pain and memories of pain, modulates emotional reactivity, modulates negative affect (depression), relaxes skeletal and smooth muscle, modulates mood decreasing anxiety and insomnia and acts as an antidepressant without adverse effects.

The most important feature of medical marijuana is the lack of or minimal adverse effects. It is true that overdoses can cause panic or anxiety effects but patients soon learn to avoid them by inhalation of marijuana medical fumes with a vaporizer.

The most useful attribute of vaporizers is that a patient can easily determine the titration of his inhalation dose within seconds to the dosage which provides relief. The country of Israel, which has been in near constant warfare for fifty plus years, has recognized the benefits of medical marijuana for the treatment of PTSD. It is hopeful that their experience will soon get to the U.S. Of course, the Israelis have the Hebrew bible to fall back on. Kaneh bosum (cannabis) was used in biblical times as medicine.

There's more of the story here.

Too Many Medical "Professionals" Assume Mantle Of Moralists

Dr. Who? or Dr. Who-da-fuck-do-you-think-you are?

This is just fucking outrageous.
First it was pharmacists.
Some of this bunch of over-rated pill-counters started to interpose their 'religious/moral' codes between their clients and legally prescribed medicines, refusing to fill prescriptions for both birth control scrips and abortifacents on the grounds that the use of such products offended their anti-choice 'principles.'

Now, according to a story running on MSNBC today (linked in the headline, above), physicians are beginning to intrude their 'principles' on abortion into their care for rape victims seeking 'the morning-after' treatment to prevent their bearing their rapist's child.

The story is admittedly anecdotal. One ass-whole MD in DumbFuck, PA, does not make a national emergency. Still, the hospital at which these events occurred is associated with Penn State University. To the extent that such a trend occurs and even increases, it is a concern; an even greater concern when it happens in a teaching hospital. In general, any paper in any decent-sized city with more than one hospital, and a half-decent city-desk editor, oughta put a team of reporters on such a story, because-in my humble opinion--a doctor who refuses to administer or prescribe abortifacents for a rape victim who requests them is guilty of gross ethical violations and should be stripped of the license to practice medicine.

I believe the same to be true about pharmacists. If they cannot do the jobs their licenses entitle them to do, then the licenses ought to be suspended. I do not think Wal-Mart--which was officially in sympathy with its pharmacists who refused to fill certain prescriptions--has rescinded that policy. A customer boycott of Wal-Mart and any other retailer which supports such actions is warranted until and unless they rescind the policy and fire the fucking asshole retail moralists behind their pharmacy counters, and replace them with people who will do their fucking JOBS.

"A Domestic Breed Disappears Every Month"

The UNFAO sounds the alarm over a global threat to farm animal diversity as the pressure of food product industrialization and homogenization erases one breed of chicken, beef cattle, pig, or even rabbit from the surface of the globe every month.

Under pressure from the industrialization and homogenization of food products, one breed of chicken, beef cattle, pig, or even rabbit is now erased from the surface of the globe every month.

This trend deeply worries the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) which sees these disappearances as "the biggest global threat to farm animal diversity," which, at the same time, reduces the ability to confront natural catastrophes such as global warming and the emergence of new diseases, the international organization indicates in a report made public last week.

With the first genetic portrait of breeding stock animals in the world in hand, the FAO is, in fact, sounding the alarm: by always wanting to produce more at lower cost, intensive agriculture is in the process of speeding to its ruin. How? By concentrating on a too-limited number of animal breeds, like the Holstein in the milk-production sector, the Duroc pig for pork-breeding and the Rhode Island Red and Leghorn chickens, with, as an inevitable consequence, "a risk of extinction of several other indigenous and heirloom varieties," but also an "erosion of genetic diversity" that today's children risk paying for tomorrow, as one may read in the 500-page document.

Entitled, "The State of Zoogenetic Global Resources for Food and Agriculture," this report was unveiled last Thursday by the Commission of Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture during a meeting in Rome, Italy

The same forces that are arrayed to overthrow all NATURAL diversity in the name of homogeneity and industrialized predictability are now threatening the sphere of domesticated life. The narrowing of diversity among domestics echoes and exacerbates the effects of the same process occurring concurrently in nature as humans exterminate one species after another, and fuck up the remaining ecosphere so badly that the remaining creatures go extinct.

There's MUCH more, and none of it encouraging, if you follow the link in the headline here.

Toxic, the Tank Engine

On Slate (and elsewhere) today:

By Christopher Beam
Posted Wednesday, June 20, 2007, at 6:55 PM ET

The manufacturer of Thomas the Tank Engine trains recalled some of the toys last week after discovering that they were decorated with lead paint. Like many other toys that have been recalled in recent months, the trains were made in China. Don't toys have to pass safety tests before they hit store shelves?

No. Toys sold in America are required by law to meet safety standards, but all presale testing is voluntary. Some of the biggest no-nos—selling a toy that's a choking hazard or using lead paint—are covered by federal laws like the Federal Hazardous Substances Act and the Child Safety Protection Act. When it comes to other safety matters, the federal government and local governments will often look to the voluntary standards set by ASTM International (originally known as the American Society for Testing and Materials).

I take it that USers aren't gonna appreciate higher tariffs on cheap shit we import from China and elsewhere to conduct safety tests. But otherwise th cheap shit will continue to be dangerous.

For the record: NPR reports this morning (6/22) that inspectors did not discover this for at LEAST two years.

Schlozman Decrees Minority Female DoJ Employees 'Not American Enough'

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer (via TruthOut.org)
Thursday, June 21, 2007; A01

Karen Stevens, Tovah Calderon and Teresa Kwong had a lot in common. They had good performance ratings as career lawyers in the Justice Department's civil rights division. And they were minority women transferred out of their jobs two years ago -- over the objections of their immediate supervisors -- by Bradley Schlozman, then the acting assistant attorney general for civil rights.

Schlozman ordered supervisors to tell the women that they had performance problems or
that the office was overstaffed. But one lawyer, Conor Dugan, told colleagues that the recent Bush appointee had confided that his real motive was to "make room for some good Americans" in that high-impact office, according to four lawyers who said they heard the account from Dugan.

In another politically tinged conversation recounted by former colleagues, Schlozman asked a supervisor if a career lawyer who had voted for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a onetime political rival of President Bush, could still be trusted.

Schlozman has acknowledged in sworn congressional testimony that he had boasted of hiring Republicans and conservatives, but he denied taking improper actions against the division's career officials. That account was challenged by six officials in the division who said in interviews that they either overhead him making brazen political remarks about career employees or witnessed him making personnel decisions with apparent political motivation.

Schlozman's efforts to hire political conservatives for career jobs throughout the division are now being examined as part of a wide-ranging investigation of the Bush administration's alleged politicization of the Justice Department. The department's inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility confirmed last month that their inquiry, begun in March, will look at hiring, firing and legal-case decisions in the division.

Is it an accident that all of Abu Gonzo's lackeys and lickspittles have the same kind of immature, undescended-testicle male voices?
Please, lord, if you love me, put me in a room alone with that squeaky lil shitwhistle Schlozman.

The damage done to the body politic by the SCROTUS decision installing the Busheviks will not be easily undone. It won't be a matter of months or even years: It will be decades, even generations before we will be rid of the fucknozzzles and shitwhistles hired by the Busheviks to fill 'career' positions within the Govt.

Sneak Previews of Michael Moore's "Sicko" Set For Saturday In Some Markets

NEW YORK, June 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Due to the fantastic reaction SiCKO received at its premieres and pre-release screenings, the overwhelming demand from audiences who want to see the film, and the early reviews from critics, Michael Moore's highly anticipated and entertaining film SiCKO will open in New York City this Friday, June 22nd, one week earlier than originally planned. Sneak previews of SiCKO will be held around the country on the evening of Saturday, June 23rd (see list of cities below).

Click on the link in the headline of this post to learn if it's gonna happen in your market. In Albuquerque, the showing's scheduled for the Century Rio 24, but I don't have the time yet. 7:30 pm.

Is Congress Getting Ready To Fuck Labor Again?

If you gotta ask, you're not paying attention.

From TruthOut.Org (to which I sent a small, tax-deductible donation yesterday)

Dmitri Iglitzin asserts: "Unless advocates are able to successfully change the nature of the debate about this bill [the Employee Free Choice Act], through reference to the advantages of 'presumed enrollment,' it may not even be passed out of the Senate, where it is currently pending, much less obtain enough popular support to persuade the current, or next, president not to veto it."

This, coupled with the (fucking unanimous) SCROTUS opinion last week requiring unions to have affirmative assent from members for 'political' expenditures, pretty much spells the final demise of organized labor as a force in USer politics.

If you're a wage-slave in this country, you are SOOOOOOOOOOOOO fucked! Company stores, next?

If You Have A Boss, You NEED A Union!

Separation Of Church & State? Not In The Chaplaincy of the USer Military

Via TruthOut.Org:
VIDEO Jason Leopold: My Interview With Mikey Weinstein

TO's Jason Leopold reports:
"More than two years ago, Mikey Weinstein launched the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit government watchdog group that aims to keep a close eye on the military to ensure its adherence to the law mandating the separation between church and state, after his son, a student at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO, was harassed about his Jewish faith and urged by other cadets and Air Force officials to convert to Christianity."
Weinstein said the military has been hijacked by a right-wing, fundamentalist Christian agenda, in what appears to be a clear-cut violation of the constitutional separation between church and state, that has rippled across all four branches of the military under President Bush.
The rise of evangelical Christianity inside the military went on steroids after 9/11 under this administration and this White House," Weinstein said in an interview. "This administration has turned the entire Department of Defense into its own personal faith-based initiative."

This whole story just pisses me off. Take the time and regard the interview. Military chaplains rival in oxymoronity such enduring gems as 'military intelligence' or 'giant shrimp'. At very least, in consequence of the presumption that puts a chaplain in the trenches to begin with, a military chaplain ought to foreswear proselytizing while taking the officer's oath.
And the chaplains seem to be not the worst offenders. The reports of retributive duty assignments for insufficient reverence in the squad bay (or on one's dog-tags) are chilling. Hence it would certainly be logically permissible to bestow on the chaplains, for their rapacious orthodoxy and reflexive proselytization, the responsibility for the outrages perpetrated on non-believers--heretics by definition--by the 'saved' leaders of training platoons or whole, entire fucking air bases and everything in-between.

Perhaps it is not coincidental that Mithras, the deity worshipped by the Roman legions beginning sometime before the start of the Common Era and continuing for some centuries thereafter, is the almost literal template for the post-Constantinian life of Jesus.

With their direct connection with the Sky Pilot, I suppose one shouldn't be too surprised that the greatest offenders against the Constitution are in the Air Force.

Go Sign A Petition To Increase FDA's Inspection Budget

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/988291138

My Message to my Congresscritters:
As the US economy becomes more and more 'globalized,' and the gap between rich and poor metastacizes, more and more of our food supply will come from nations wherein elementary food safety and sanitation practices are problematic, to say the least.

While it is probably expensive to conduct food safety inspections on the ground in those places, it is --and will continue to be-- much less expensive than the murderous, illegal, immoral occupation being waged in Iraq and being planned for Iran, for instance.

If the Congress cannot bring itself to actually direct resources to the safety and sanitation of the food supply for the WHOLE COUNTRY, it could clearly be indicted, wholesale, for dereliction of its duties. The deaths of hundreds of pets and no small numbers of humans over the past several years, due to preventable contaminations of various kinds, suggests both the scope and the gravity of the situation.

I urge my representatives to 'do the right thing,' and radically increase the budget for food safety and sanitation in the FDA.