I would like to take a moment to do something different on this site, a moment to take a step back and say thank you to the people who give it life and breath something into it I could not by myself.
To all of the writers who spend their time researching, writing, and publishing their stories on WatchingTheWatchers.org, thank you. We have a truly gifted and talented bunch of columnists who do excellent, insightful work in this community, and their presence here is much appreciated.
To the readers of the stories and diaries in this community, thank you for stopping by. You are the life and death of this site, and your comments, your links, and your existence are appreciated more than you know. You have brought visitors to the site, strengthened it with your heartfelt and sincere commentary, and often contributed to the education of not only myself, but all of the columnists on WTW.
To Chris Bowers, who invited us into the Advertise Liberally network some months ago and who graciously accepted our decision to leave the network without taking offense, thank you. You run a great blog, and are part of something bigger than we are, and your notice and attention of us made me very proud.
To all of the sites who have linked to our work, including BuzzFlash, RawStory News, PageOneQ, PrisonPlanet, BreakForNews.com, and the BradBlog, thank you for taking the time to read our stuff and post it as you felt appropriate.
Thanks to all of you, we have a place on the web where people can speak their piece in their own way without fear of censorship or retribution. Thanks for that. Thanks for making WTW what it is.
~A! I have a friend who is seriously interested in fostering a dog for any family that was displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Who will rule the 21st century? The new cold war begins as the new super powers and wannabe super powers scramble for the stars or so stupid.
Ok, I picked up the "local paper" this morning, and I started reading. It's been a while since I've actually read print news, but I was at an IHOP trying to chase a screaming toddler half the day, so I said what the hell, I'm going to relax with a nice newspaper, those old school creations that have drifted from the mind of the internet generation(s).
And I learned you can sue someone if your kid overdoses on drugs. Your kid's best friend's parents. I ain't much of a writah, but I knows me some shit when it hits the fan. Dese mutha fuckas up here in Washington knows the deal, because they ain't takin' no chance on dis new shit in Florida. America's march backwards continues with this morning's report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which reports that:
(1) Real average weekly earnings fell by half of a percent from July to August after seasonal adjustment, with a 0.1 percent increase in
average hourly earnings more than offset by a 0.6 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W).
(2) Average weekly earnings rose by 2.7 percent from August 2004 to August 2005. but again that increase was more than offset by inflation, for a net decrease of 1.1 percent in real wages.
(3) Unadjusted figures showed average weekly earnings of $545.70 in August 2005, compared with $535.57 a year earlier.
According to this week's The Economist magazine, the US is one of a very few industrialized countries experiencing a drop in real wages--what you can afford to buy.
Diminishing real wages, cutbacks in environmental protection, reduction of oversight of stock trading and corporate reporting, diminishing numbers of unionized workers, increasing college tuition, increasing cost of college textbooks, astronomical growth in health care costs, no public transportation tof any value outside a few major cities, gas prices making it increasingly hard for the poor to own a car, dismantlement of federal welfare programs, strident insistence that Social Security begin the process of privatization....
Good news for nostalgia buffs, 19th century, here we come!
As al-Qaeda, teaming up with Sunni insurgents, have declared all-out war on the Shiites in Iraq, it is time for U.S. troops to come home. I forget what elder taught me that old redneck maxim from my youth, the one that goes "If'n ya toss a rock inta a pack of yappin mutts, the one hollars loudest be the one ya smacked!" Speaking of Katrina & New Orleans, check out this great insight from "The State and the Flood," by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama] http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/flood.html
"Can levees and pumps and disaster management really be privatized? Not only can they be; they must be if we want to avoid ever more apocalypses of this sort. William Buckley used to poke fun at libertarians and their plans for privatizing garbage collection, but this disaster shows that much more than this ought to be in private hands. It is not a trivial issue; our survival may depend on it."
Say, do you suppose the Dutch floodgates which manage to keep out the Sea, are privatized? Is that why they work so much better than the New Orleans levees? I think not. I really, really think not.
I think Rockwell and his fellow believers, including all the folks at the Any Rand Institute, see what they want to see, that they find in all human events what they expect to find, simply because they would decline to see anything else. My personal wish for them is
that they get to experience at least 10 years of living on the absolute edge of society, without any means to advance, without any means to aid those whom they love, in the midst of a society where affluence and wealth are continually jammed down their throats, and where people like Rockwell and the Any Randers tend to shift the blame to the character of the people involved.
One of the reasons yours truly didn't mind being "fired" from the local Southern Baptist Institute Of Mind Control was that more often than not, someone's demented mindset kept getting in the way of the truth. |
