Month: May 2014
James Webb – Who Needs Veterans?!?
Minute Men – Yanks & Rebs – Doughboys – GI Joes & Janes – Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Veterans are what become of those we send off to war to kill or be killed, even bleed-out in foreign lands, keeping us free to stay behind, without a peek at war’s grime and grind.
Veterans are what’s left of the 1% we tell, go to war is hell, who return battle scared, physically wounded, too often, visibly or not, mentally and psychologically maimed. War leaves neither Veteran nor nation, the same.
With or without ticker-tape parades, Times Square kiss or posthumous presidential proclamations, post war homeland lacks opportunity, welcome home jobs or life of peace. Admit it, after war, for most, supporting Veterans is an empty boast.
Dog Tags no longer saluted as badge of honor; cheers and support our troops, like government and civilian population, fade away. Our Veterans are not left behind by combat buddies on the field, but rather deserted in the waiting rooms, employment offices and absent from duty affordable housing and healthcare deal.
No, not the Veteran, but those who give the order, wave fare-thee-well, pawn the volunteered blood, sweat and tears to die, if necessary, to preserve, protect and defend the ruling corporate empire, once again. No, not my friend and yours, the Veteran, but those kept safe from harm on American shores – they are the ones who turn away, when Johnny comes marching home from wars.
There is little less American than those who continue to deny the truth unseen by averted eyes: We are the world begins as often in a Wall Street board room, as a Middle America home for Memorial holiday, memorializing e-coli on the family grill.
Yes we love defenders of our piece of the millennium of conveniences to which we’ve become too digitally attached to see beyond the tip of our noses to the melted tip of icebergs, mountain top removal, intentional Coal Ash runoffs and What The Fracking regurgitates.
Pretend, or even blind patriotism can run amuck when as new national pastime, we rest on our laurels, heads bowed, eyes lowered, whether to Bible or iPhone. Focused on making the next buck, we toss aside promises now easily disposable at the expense of those we deem expendable.
Yeah, who needs Veterans anyway, or our defining moment, an Emma Lazarus ideal torched by The Statue of Liberty? When will our Red, White and Blue be Brown, Yellow, Black and Native American enough for the King in you?
In search of quick and easy answers, we fail the fallen in advance and forget the heroes who follow. Now home, lay down the sword, honor the dead, heal both mass shooting assassinators and families full of dread. Live to serve all who’ve sacrificed and been sacrificed to violence and war. For those who stayed and those who’ve returned, let not one patient’s needs be ignored.
We are better served not by decapitating heads like Veteran Eric Shinseki, but rather guaranteeing safe food, clean water and educational equality; then abolishing privatized prisons for profit and growing police state – a banking and government investment merger to marginalize the brown immigrant and black slave descendent.
What all Americans need, civilians and Veterans alike, is for the served, protected, loved and missed now receive in-kind, more than meaningless clichés replacing substantive Congressional leadership with political fantasy; more gender, educational and economic equality of opportunity; more active grassroots for Out of Many, One advocacy.
Veterans, like all Americans, deserve a We The People more like Pope Francis, than private prison investing Wall Street Bankers.
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Collateral Consequences: Veterans – Equal Pay – Jobs
Believing…
NY Times Editor Jill Abramson is the only woman cheated by the Republican vote against The Paycheck Fairness Act; Return of segregation and voting restrictions are southern phenomenon only; Veterans are the only American citizens being ignored to death; Families buying corporate owned bottled water to replace their employer’s Coal Ash deposits into their children’s drinking and bathing water isn’t sacrificing the health of all Americans; Having a job frees us to ignore equal economic opportunity, separate but unequal, Support Our Troops, western droughts & eastern floods – then The Program is Addington’s plum.
However, it wasn’t the butler in the parlor with a candlestick, nor educators and First Responders who failed to protect our shores from a decade of war dead & wounded, Too Big to Fail and the MERS Virus: It was corporate lawyers, bankers and Koch heads in secret top floor rooms.
Who are the bad guys responsible for Veteran deaths? Eric Shinseki, Dr. Robert Petzel, Phoenix Director Sharon Helman or does neglect infect through laziness from the ground up?
As a veteran, and human being, I’m appalled at an alleged 167 deaths of veterans because of a delay in treatment to any patient, but though in need of repair, it isn’t the VA system that’s broken, it’s Congress’ systematic failure to finance military and civilian services.
Mad as Hell, like Gonzales’ Can’t Recall fifty times defense, grants only temporary stay from accessory to medical negligence or vehicular attempted murder of the Middle Class.
So before pouring GM gloating over chumps champagne, celebrating chump change 35 million value put on endangered American lives, let’s recapture our moral backbone and insist Eric Holder finally lawyer up against The Program: Grand Jury investigations, indictments, trial by jury and privatized prison black time for white collar criminals.
In service to the under-served 99%:
The Good: 1952 National Security Agency created because of Pearl Harbor
• Thomas Drake NSA Senior Executive (2001-08) discovers, before 9/11 NSA had capture/discern/discriminate global phone and email communications capability, using a program created by
• William Binney NSA technical director (1965-01) — Thin Thread, programed with protections preventing spying on Americans
• Edward Loomis NSA (1964-01), “Let us allow collection between U. S. to foreign, foreign to U. S. against the terrorism problem.”
Note: it’s not the plan as much as the president assuming the power to program the plan
• Jack Goldsmith Legal Counsel Office Head (2003-04) withdraws legal approval for spying on emails of millions
• James B. Comey (2004) led DOJ resignation of two dozen executives, including Goldsmith and FBI Director Robert Mueller (2001-13)
The Bad: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was created in 1978 (in a bank vault), because during 1970s, Nixon’s NSA repeatedly violated our Constitution’s Fourth Amendment.
FISA, legally limits administrations believing, as Nixon when the president does it that means that it is not illegal, by requiring warrants to spy on Americans.
If, like Bush/Cheney administration, you didn’t go through FISA and get a warrant, you’ve committed a federal felony.
• Vito Potenza NSA Deputy General Counsel (1993-06)
• Robert Deitz NSA General Counsel (1998-06)
• Alberto Gonzales White House Counsel (2001-05)
• Andrew Card, Bush White House Chief of Staff (2001-06)
Maureen Baginski, third highest ranking official at NSA, we’ve gone with another program: The Bush/Cheney/Addington administration corrupted American protected surveillance Thin Thread, into The Program.
The Ugly: October 26, 2001, Patriot Act created – With Cheney in his ear, GW Bush assumed extra-constitutional authority, telling NSA, I want you to go develop a program; we’ve got the lawyers working on it; but you have my order; we’re going to do this.
• Porter Goss, Chair of House Intelligence Committee (1997-04) CIA Director (2004-06)
• General Michael Hayden, NSA Director (1999-05) (CIA: We kill people based on metadata)
• David Addington, Dick Cheney Attorney (2005—2009) authored The Program — the creation of a whole new surveillance program without warrants, looking for unknown terrorists by spying on Liberal, Independent and Conservative American men, women, students, teenagers, of every color and religion – equality at last.
The Program authorized by President George W. Bush on October 4, 2001 isn’t old news but, Why We Did It, at the expense of military youth, Veterans, Women, the Middle Class, Retirees and JOBS.
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