That’s right. You won’t normally read about this but they tried to start a coup against FDR in that year. You see, Roosevelt had serious enemies in the business community.

And during war time, the business community makes obscene profits. We’re seeing this now with Halliburton. Must be nice to get a no-bid government contract and then not do the job or overcharge for the job. But then, when your former CEO is the Vice President of the United States it is that much easier to have your will done.

Anyhow, back to the coup. It appears they asked Major General Smedley Butler to lead the insurrection against FDR. He promptly went to the newspapers and then testified before congress.

He saw combat in World War I and by 1934 could see that we were building towards war again. Even wrote a nice five chapter pamphlet about it called War Is A Racket.

Yes it is a racket. We’ve been duped once again. Just substitute Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran for the country names, you’ll only need to substitute a few company names as many of the players of that era that profited from World War I are still with us today, including DuPont and Domino Sugar among many others.

So I beseech you, read the document. Pass it around. Lets help to wake up our fellow citizens to the reality that has become our government. It is no longer a government by and for the people. It still may be of, but that is where the similarity ends.

So I was surfing through YouTube and found this. What shocks me is Bert is there and no Ernie. I thought they were a couple! In any case, because I’m such a public transit advocate I thought it’d be appropriate to bring this to my readers.

I see that lots of people like The Simpsons. Don’t get me wrong, I like them too but I need something a little more, um, adult.

Family Guy filled that need for me. For example, check out the following clips:

The cast doing a reading

What Really Grinds My Gears

Brian’s Novel

One of my faves Take On Me

Some random clips

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter

Jesus Cameo’s – I love the Water to Funk one.

Oh just go to DevilDucky and search on Family Guy.

I completely forgot about transfer of liabilities. My bachelors is in Information Science with a minor in Accounting and a specialization in Sociology of all things. But I completely forgot about transferring liabilities.

So if you want, open a business that’s a gross polluter. Then shut it down and transfer the environmental liabilities to a shell company and let that company file bankruptcy. A deft trick. And a loophole that should be abolished. Leave a major corporation on the hook for environmental damage? Heaven forbid but I say make them pay. Make the CEO’s give up 2/3’s of their salary to satisfy cleanup cost demands. Make each member of the board personally responsible.

I say this because under the 14th Amendment corporations think they have the same rights as people. Well then, one of the rights we have is to be personally responsible for our actions. Corporations and their officers should be held responsible for theirs. The recent conviction of Lay, Skilling, Ebbers et al give me hope that the corporate shield is starting to crack with age, or perhaps judiciaries are finally realizing that the 14th Amendment should be applied equally.

It’d be good to knock down a couple of the gross examples of greed and let someone else take the reigns and perhaps for once, run a company with true ethics.

The buzz about the dead and wounded in Iraq has been all over the net for the past few weeks. And what did I come across today but yet another posting on The Huffington Post about why soldiers forget.

They simply don’t have the luxury of grieving. And the Bush administration is doing all it can to not remind people of the body count. That we’re rapidly approaching 2,500 dead (Which is remarkable considering we only have a force of 130,000 in Iraq, or 1.9% dead), and well over 15,000 wounded (11.5%). Yes, trauma medicine has caught up but quality of life after the ‘repair’ is still not 100%.

And as these troops rotate back home they’re getting some sort of welcome, at least here in RI the Governor, the Major General of the RI National Guard etc. all show up for homecomings.

But during that same time the Bush administration has pretty much cut off any benefits to those returning soldiers.

This is what Memorial Day is all about.

So I was surfind around other blogs and had to take the “What Kind of Flirt” test. I turn out to be a natural flirt.

In any case this one was more interesting because I’ve taken tests like this before and the results were much the same.

Tony’s Linguistic Profile:

55% Yankee

25% General American English

10% Dixie

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

The predominant Yankee is obvious from where I was born and lived all my life. The General American English comes from my time doing radio, the upper midwest is actually Ohio, which is where my maternal grandfather was from. But what surprised the hell out of me is the Dixie until I realized, Keyron is from North Carolina, just as he’s picked up some Yankee speech patterns from me, I got some Dixie from him.

But here are his results:

Keyron’s Linguistic Profile:

40% General American English

30% Yankee

15% Dixie

10% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

His highest is General American English which for North Carolina is obvious enough. But his Dixie value is only 5% greater than mine. What gives. Could it be the amount of time I spent in Florida? He also scored higher in upper midwest which is interesting as I can trace mine directly to an ancestor. He can’t.

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

With the recent raid on Congressman William Jefferson’s office, both Republican and Democratic congressmen are showing unparalleled cooperation to stop this.

This was definitely started by the Bush administration, the fact that Jefferson is a Democrat is enough. But why would the rest of congress be afraid?

Were you to place every congressman and senators names into a hat and pull one at random and then investigate, the probability is somewhere in the range of .6 to a full on 1 that you’d find something dirty in those offices.

That’s why there’s a palpable fear in congress. It isn’t that they’re trying to stop executive power, it’s that their own asses are on the line.

Paul Hardcastle’s “Soundchaser” popped up in my iTunes playlist so I googled him and came across this video:

The average age in WW II was 26, in Vietnam it was 19, in Iraq it’s 30. It was also found that more than half those returning from Vietnam were suffering from PTSD, and I’d wager that more than half those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan willl suffer from it too. War is hell. You don’t get dragged through that and not have violent flashbacks.

When you’re that close to it you don’t have the ability to rationalize it so you tuck it away and let it eat at you. My maternal grandfather saw the horror of WW II and it affected him profoundly. But they never knew about PTSD when WW II vets came home. Granted, they were taken better care of than those in Korea, Vietnam, Gulf I, or Gulf II.

The proverbial crap is going to hit the fan soon.

A previous post about NYPD’s tactics for dealing with protestors was enough to raise my hackles.

But this one takes the cake. That all the deputies have been fired is a good first step but something about this makes me wonder if this was an official arrest or were they just there to rob him.

The audio tape is 39 minutes long and well worth a listen. If you still trust a cop after this I’d be surprised.

I hope they all get nice, long sentences to think about what they did.

When I checked my email this monrning I found this little missive about the fact that the Bush administration is attempting to block lawsuits regarding the NSA’s spying on U.S. citizens.

The Bush administration holds the current record for classifying more material and blocking more law suits than any other administration. And congress simply rolls over and lets them get away with it.

There needs to be a serious check on executive power. But the Bush administration has been crafty in bending and twisting law to support its positions.

Hopefully in six months it won’t matter anymore, if a new congress has the stones to impeach the bastard.