On Labor Day Bush Runs Away

DENNIS KUCINICH will be our guest on BASHAM AND CORNELL PROGRESSIVE TALK on September 17!

Keith Olbermann gave another of his riveting "Special Comments" on the unconscious person in the White House. George Bush has shamed our nation. He has written a book revising history for his "legacy." Instead of helping the families of the troops who died for his disastrous war, he is bragging about pocketing speaking fees of $50,000 after he leaves office. He is the cause of their deaths, yet he goes to Iraq on our labor day for a photo op. There is a brilliant post at my friend Alicia's blog called "Suicidal Insanity." Last Left B4 Hooterville

As hard as it is to love our enemies, I believe we must pray deeply for George Bush. We must pray to see him guided by the right ideas and principles, instead of fear. Every thing he has done, has been fear-based and disastrous. It's as if he has no moral compass, no conscience and no feelings for others or what they go through. He is playing with toy soldiers.

But there is a spiritual power that is much bigger than Bush or any of us, believe me I know firsthand. When we actually put into practice true prayer (which has nothing to do with the anthropomorphic fear and punishment fundamentalist god of the religious right) THINGS ACTUALLY CHANGE.

This is a universe of laws of harmony. We ourselves must stop our defeatism. Refuse to allow any thought of Bush starting war with Iran into your consciousness. We ourselves cannot be fearful. Bush cannot have that much power. We will not allow him to start war with Iran. I for one, am seeing him as waking up. If he has even a glimmer of the true "Christ" within, he will know he has been ruled by fear. Love casts out fear.

We have to stop saying "Bush is going to attack Iran" as if it's a done deal. We can say, "We will not tolerate this any longer" but let's get active. We need to get out on the streets.

We need to hold our thoughts higher about the man. It is metaphysics and I guarantee it works. As hard as it is to change our vision of him, we have to. Our vision of him will create a different outcome.

ON THIS LABOR DAY ...



On this Labor Day in the United States, a national holiday established more than a century ago to honor the American worker, Americans typically spend the day away from work, enjoying picnics in the park or spending the last holiday of the summer outdoors.

We must not forget that U.S. workers had to literally fight for their rights to a decent wage and improved working conditions and many risked their lives trying to organize.

In 1894, some 34 railway union members were killed when President Grover Cleveland ordered federal troops to break up a railroad strike outside Chicago, Illinois. Cleveland, who was up for re-election that year, needed to appease angry workers nationwide, so he signed into law a national holiday called Labor Day in honor of the worker.

Violence against U.S. workers continued in the 20th century. In 1902, 14 coal miners
were killed by a mine company's private police force. In 1911, about 150 people, mostly women and children, died in a fire working in a New York City sweatshop, Massachusetts police beat women and children in a textile strike.

Americans labor in many different ways. On this Labor Day, the number of people without health insurance continues to rise, up to 15.8% last year. 47 million Americans lacked health insurance in 2006, an increase of 8 million since Bush took office.

Median annual earnings for full-time, year-round workers dropped from last year, the third year in a row. Household income is down $956 since 2000. It rose slightly last year because more household members are working, and for longer hours. But they are getting paid less for their work.

Wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s.

The trend to re-classify full-time workers as “independent contractors” continues to rise. Although the same work is done by the same people, contracting it out allows employers to avoid the minimum wage increase and terminate benefits that accrue only to “employees.” Reclassification also lets them avoid payroll taxes, a dodge that creates an invisible subsidy to corporate America in the range of $3 billion.

Since 2000, premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance for families have skyrocketed. The average monthly worker contribution for family coverage in 2000 was $135. It has increased to $298 or by 84%.

In the first quarter of the year, wages and salaries represented 41 percent of gross domestic product, down from almost 50 percent in the first quarter of 2001 and a record 53.6 percent in the first quarter of 1970, according to the Commerce Department.

The corporate policies of George W Bush has allowed more manufacturing companies to move overseas in the last six years, giving the country a trade deficit of more than $700 billion annually. And the jobs lost in manufacturing have been disproportionately union jobs.

While the unionization rate in manufacturing was more than 40 percent in the sixties, in 2006 it was just 11.6 percent, less than the 12 percent average for all workers, although still somewhat higher than the 7.4 percent average for the private sector as a whole.

Government policies have also supported anti-union practices in other ways. A main purpose of trade agreements like NAFTA was to make it as easy as possible to relocate factories overseas.

A 30 percent over-valued dollar effectively imposes a 30 percent tariff on goods exported from the United States, while providing a subsidy of 30 percent on goods imported into the United States.

We have a growing crisis in America today, and it is our own countries purposeful neglect of the homeless, the hungry, and the working poor. It was recently reported that there are nearly one million people that are homeless in the United States today.

Even worse, over 40% of the homeless are families. Reuters reported that more Americans went homeless and hungry in 2006 than the year before and that children made up almost one quarter of those in emergency shelters.

Nearly one million families lost their homes last year. This year, it will likely be 2 million. There were 25,000 layoffs in the mortgage industry in the first three weeks of August. Building supply and furniture manufacturers have been cutting back. With home construction 25 percent below last year and falling, hundreds of thousands of building trades workers could lose their jobs.

As economic conditions worsen, right-wing corporate interests are always ready to sow division and fear. It’s the immigrants’ fault. Consumers aren’t spending enough. Consumers aren’t saving enough. It’s the government’s fault for wasting your tax dollars on health care for kids.

In the Great Depression of the 1930s, the American people rejected those arguments. They rejected racism, and under the slogan “Black and white, unite and fight," They organized unions that raised wages and improved working conditions.

On this another Labor Day, Americans have labored with the fact that their sons and daughters, neighbors and friends are strapped in an endless war for profit, with no end in sight.

The U.S economy is quickly falling into a severe recession, that could very well end up in a Modern Day Depression if something isn't done. Millions of Americans lose their jobs each month, millions more are underemployed.

There is much laboring going on in America, on this Labor Day. The homeless labor for a better way, our nation labors over those stuck in a needless war, each American labors over the future of the economy and those in the workplace labor with fear over the future of their employment.

That is America, On This Labor Day!


We live in the richest country in the world. There's plenty to spare and for no man, woman, or child to be in want. And in addition to this our country was founded on what should have been a great , true principle -- the freedom, equality, and rights of each individual. Huh! And what has come of this start? There are corporations worth billions of dollars--and hundreds of thousands of people who don't get to eat.

Carson McCullers

The Price For Exposing Corruption in Iraq

There are brave soldiers and Americans who step forward on occasion to report abuse, corruption, fraud and an assortment of other activities that would land most Americans in jail for their crimes.

There brave individuals are seldom rewarded for their honesty and loyalty to the country they serve. Instead many find themselves in more trouble than any criminal would ever go through.

Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods. He was told very little about why he was there.

There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.

Vance thought he was doing his Patriotic duty when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.

So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn’t know whom to trust in Iraq.

For his efforts, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.

Corruption has often occurred in Iraq reconstruction. Hundreds of projects will never be finished, including repairs to the country’s oil pipelines and electricity system. Congress gave more than $30 billion to rebuild Iraq, and at least $8.8 billion of it has disappeared, according to a government reconstruction audit.

The Project on Government Oversight says they will never find out what corruption is going on if people fail to come forward and reveal such abuses. The problem is the U.S government is sending a message to anyone involved, if you tell you will pay dearly.

The highest-ranking civilian contracting officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bunny Greenhouse testified before a congressional committee in 2005 that she found widespread fraud in multi billion-dollar rebuilding contracts awarded to former Halliburton subsidiary KBR.

Greenhouse was quickly demoted after she told of her findings of corruption. She now sits isolated in a small area for a workstation waiting for the other shoe to drop, all because she revealed what any good American should if they found such illegalities.

Julie McBride worked as a “morale, welfare and recreation coordinator” at Camp Fallujah, she saw KBR inflate costs by double and triple counting the number of soldiers who used recreational facilities.She also said the company took supplies destined for a Super Bowl party for U.S. troops and instead used them to stage a celebration for themselves.

McBride voiced her concerns about what she believed to be accounting fraud, Halliburton placed her under guard and kept her in seclusion,” she told the committee. Her property was searched, and she was told that she was not allowed to speak to any member of the U.S. military. She remained under guard until she was flown out of the country. Halliburton and KBR denied her testimony in court.

The Bush administration was quick to give many no bid contracts to Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater and many other corporations loyal to the Bush/Cheney conglomerate of business elite.

The U.S government either fails or refuses to monitor where taxpayer dollars go involving the Iraqi reconstruction. Bush regularly seeks and receives billions of dollars from Congress to supposedly rebuild the country he has completely destroyed.

These are a few of the countless stories coming to light of what innocent people go through if they expose corruption inside George W Bush's war in Iraq. Each story is similar in nature and telling about why the U.S is really in Iraq.

As thousands of American and Iraqi lives are taken as a results of Bush's onslaught of destruction, the rebuilding is continually being delayed, more U.S funds are filtered into the hands of corporate allies of Bush.

How long will the war in Iraq last? It will last as long as Congress sits idly by and allows American citizens to be thrown in prison, demoted from their jobs and financially destroyed for doing what Congress should do.

If honest Americans are punished and abused for revealing massive corruption within the Bush administration and their corporate allies, what does that say about our government?


Image by Stephen Pitt Cartoons

AMERICAN PSYCHO TED NUGENT is a DRAFT DODGER TOO

Force always attracts men of low morality.
Albert Einstein

Why isn't Ted Nugent in jail? He should be arrested for threatening the lives of public servants, and he should be fined for waving automatic weapons around in a public place, advocating killing humans for sport, as a form of pornographic violence. We need to make sure people like this are held responsible for their anti-American unpatriotic, treasonous behavior. Are our children feel safe with this monster loose on the streets? He is the male Ann Coulter, but with even more testosterone. And SHAME on Sean Hannity for not condemning these remarks.

Warning: the language in the article below is not appropriate for children or any living, moral creature.

Gonzo is gone, and if you don't know why, I'll list some of his crimes at the end of this article tomorrow. But not enough attention has been paid to Ted Nugent, a true representative of the Bush-Cheney administration. I know it's sort of taboo to write about such a sad joke as Nugent -- but he so perfectly represents the extreme right-wingers who have taken over our civilized society.

Study history Ted: when man enjoys killing animals for sport (as Cheney does, and Bush did as a child) society begins to die. It's not a good sign.

Facing a draft, Nugent bravely wet his pants
Rocker is all talk as he calls Obama, Hillary vile names

August 27, 2007
BY RICHARD ROEPER Sun-Times Columnist
So Ted Nugent roams a concert stage while toting automatic weapons, calls Barack Obama "a piece of -----" and says he told Obama to suck on one of his machine-guns. He also calls Hillary Clinton a "worthless bitch" and Dianne Feinstein a "worthless whore."

That Nugent, he's a man's man. He talks the talk and walks the walk, right?

Except when it was time to register for the draft during the Vietnam era. By his own admission, Nugent stopped all forms of personal hygiene for a month and showed up for his draft board physical in pants caked with his own urine and feces, winning a deferment. Creative!

Ah, but that was a long time ago. Nugent isn't just a washed-up rocker -- he's a right-wing madman who's not afraid to call out some of the leading Democrats in language so vile it makes the Dixie Chick Natalie Maines' comments about President Bush sound like a love poem.

You'd think even someone such as Sean Hannity would dismiss Nugent as a macho clown, desperate for attention.

Yeah, right.

In a discussion on his show last week, Hannity refused to condemn Nugent's remarks, saying, "I like Ted Nugent . . . he's a friend of mine," and even laughing loudly as Alan Colmes read the transcript of some of Nugent's remarks.

Funny. I don't remember Hannity being so cavalier about the Dixie Chicks went they criticized Bush.

Not that he's operating under a double standard or anything.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/roeper/529419,CST-NWS-roep27.article

I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war. -Albert Einstein

REST IN PEACE, TEDDI WINOGRAD

Rest in peace Teddi Winograd (Nov. 24, 1919 – August 21, 2007) Today Teddi will be laid to rest at 1 p.m. Teddi Winograd, 88 years old, was one of the sweetest, most courageous souls on the planet and I will miss her so much. As a supremely moral, ethical, humble, loving mother and patriotic American peace activist, she would appreciate this picture of Bush and the Impeach Bush banner in the sidebar. God Bless you Teddi and God Bless Marcy and the family. We will carry your mission of restoring Democracy to America - onward!



THE WHITE HOUSE: If they have nothing to cover up, why are they covering everything up? Read more below, but first, this:



Peace activist extraordinaire, the inimitable Teddi Winograd — one of my heroes, mother of the amazing Marcy Winograd who ran for Congress last fall -- and one of the greatest women in America, passed on Tuesday. "During her final hours, my mother took great pleasure in seeing me in my Impeach Bush and Cheney t-shirt. When I changed clothes, she said, 'Where's the Impeach t-shirt? I like to look at it.' Wanting to please my mother, I wore the shirt and read to her about Karl Rove's resignation. Rove's exit made her feel good when her health failed. For more on my fabulous mother, please read on" ... Warm regards, Marcy

Linda Milazzo writes: "What most amazed me about Teddi is how much more stoic she was than those of us who are decades her junior. She never complained. In fact, she wore the rest of us out. But I understand the source of her strength. She was, as Tom Brokaw would come to say, part of the "Greatest Generation." She gave birth to her son Barry while Sam was away in the Second World War. She fended for herself with dignity and strength. Barry was twelve months old the first time he saw his father.

If you want to know how a woman can go from being a millinery worker at thirteen to owning a home on Rodeo Drive, you have to read Teddi's autobiography, "Chit Chat This 'n That." If you want to understand how a woman can know EVERYTHING about owning and operating a multi-million dollar business, how a woman who never went to college self-educated herself to grasp the innermost workings of the stock market, you must read this book. If you want to understand the depth of undying love and devotion to a spouse, how deeply a parent loves her children, how much she'll do for her grandchildren, how she weathers great tragedy with dignity and grace — and how one lives with endless enthusiasm, read it.

If you want to see how Teddi and Sam Winograd dedicated their entire lives to the cause of peace, read it and you will understand why the door to Teddi's home was always open to anyone with a commitment to bettering our world.

What is left for us ... are the very same orders Sam gave Teddi in 1998 when Parkinsons took him away: "CONTINUE TO WORK FOR PEACE."

Teddi, we will!!

For many of us, the only good that has come out of the downfall of our democracy over the past seven years has been the creation of our own progressive community that embraces Teddi's passion for peace. In Los Angeles, Marcy and Teddi have been leaders in the progressive community. Teddi's lovely home has been a welcoming hub for democratic activism, intellectual stimulation, and political and social education for countless guest speakers and eager attendees.

The maternal heart of The Progressive Democrats of America, Teddi hosted the Great Minds Series at her home in Beverly Hills, where she welcomed authors and speakers Gore Vidal, John Dean, Elizabeth de la Vega, John Nichols, Cynthia McKinney, Syd Blumenthal, Cindy Sheehan, Tim Carpenter, Mimi Kennedy, Lila Garrett, Danny Schector, Harvey Wasserman, Joy Horowitz, Joe Mealey, Michael Shoob and others. She was waiting for my book to come out and had invited me to be part of the Great Mind series. I now feel Teddi is sitting on my shoulder, giving me the courage to go forward without fear.

A week before she died of cancer, she enjoyed an anti-war serenade in her peach bedroom, then courageously went to the window to wave to Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich addressing a fundraiser in her backyard garden. (Marcy Winograd: winogradblog

Teddi ready to hit the streets with her placard opposing Schwarzenegger's special election ballot measures.
Photos by Margery Epstein.

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WHITE HOUSE SECRETS

If they have nothing to cover up, why are they covering everything up? Not only are they trying to prevent the people from knowing what was contained in the 5 million missing e-mails, but Dick Cheney's lawyer instructed the Secret Service that it "shall not retain any copy" of material identifying visitors to the vice president's official residence. Why? Isn't the government in our country, THE PEOPLE? This administration is the most dishonest bunch of crooks in the history of our nation. Even Nixon didn't go this far.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Tuesday that records about missing White House e-mails are not subject to public disclosure, the latest effort by the Bush administration to expand the boundaries of government secrecy.

Administration lawyers detailed the legal position in a lawsuit trying to force the White House Office of Administration to reveal what it knows about the disappearance of White House e-mails.

The Office of Administration provides administrative services, including information technology support, to the Executive Office of the President.

The office has prepared estimates that there are at least 5 million missing White House e-mails from March 2003 to October 2005, according to the lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a private advocacy group.

More....

In court papers seeking to end the case, the Justice Department said the White House Office of Administration has no substantial authority independent of President Bush and therefore is not subject to the disclosure requirements of the Freedom of Information Act.The issue came into focus early this year amid the uproar over the firing of U.S. attorneys. It turned out that aides to Bush improperly used Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts for official business and that an undetermined number of e-mails had been lost in the process.

The Justice Department Web site, which lists all FOIA contacts inside the government, identifies seven units inside the Executive Office of the President as responding to FOIA requests, including the Office of Administration.

The Office of Administration "has certainly acted like an agency in the past," said Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive, a private group advocating public disclosure of government secrets.

Fuchs' organization filed a request in February 2006 after Fitzgerald revealed that e-mails might be missing. When the Office of Administration finally denied the private group's request in June of this year, the office said it was not an "agency" as defined by the Freedom of Information Act and was therefore not subject to the law's requirements.

The administration has been resisting disclosure of information on an array of fronts.

In September 2006, Vice President Dick Cheney's lawyer instructed the Secret Service that it "shall not retain any copy" of material identifying visitors to the vice president's official residence. The lawyer, Shannen Coffin, wrote the letter as The Washington Post sought copies of Cheney's visitors.

The letter regarding the vice president's residence was in addition to an agreement quietly signed between the White House and the Secret Service when questions were raised about visits to the executive compound by convicted influence peddler Jack Abramoff.

That agreement, which didn't surface publicly until late last year, said White House entry and exit logs were presidential records not subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

When the agreement was signed in May 2006, a number of private groups and news organizations had filed FOIA requests with the Secret Service in an effort to identify how many times Abramoff or members of his lobbying team visited the White House.

(read the entire article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070821/white-house-secrecy

PARTING SHOT

THE YO-YO and THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH

GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS. Please contact your local USO and send CARE packages and letters to our troops as often as you can. They need our love and support and chocolate. Or Rice Krispie Treats, as one Marine told me. Also, Sgt. Timothy Deane is back home safely. Welcome home!!

God Bless miners who are trapped and the rescue workers who have died. It's odd that the news networks cover the mine tragedy 24/7, but never profile a single soldier who has died. We should at least have news coverage of the families of soldiers and how they cope with their losses.

This just added! IMPORTANT ITEMS from my friend Brad Friedman, investigative journalist of BradBlog.com: "There are -- far too quietly -- some of the most important decisions of our generation now being made in states and counties around the country. Again, over the past few days, we have been focusing on them at The BRAD BLOG. Here are links to some of our most notable reports from the last day or two, leading off with one stunning revelation concerning the 2000 Election...believe it or not...and how we got to this mess in the place.... -- Brad

DAN RATHER REPORTS VIDEO: 'The Trouble with Touch Screens' Will be HUGE Trouble for Sequoia, ES&S and Maybe the Republicans from the 2000 Election! Complete, Disturbing Investigative Exposé, Featuring Troubling New Revelations About America's E-Voting

NOTE: The original Google video of this report has been taken down for some reason, so we are making it available in full, in three easy to watch segments. FULL STORY, VIDEO OF RATHER'S COMPLETE INVESTIGATIVE REPORT:
BradBlog.com

Holy Cow! If you haven't seen this report's enormous news concerning Sequoia's apparent effort to create havoc with Florida's punch-cards in 2000, you must do so immediately.

Seven company whistleblowers, all interviewed on camera, and by name, reveal their repeated objections to the company's use of faulty paper and purposeful misalignment of chads -- specifically for Democratic Palm Beach County, FL only -- in the 2000 Presidential Election.

"Someone" at the company okayed the faulty ballots despite the objections of the employees, including the Quality Control manager at the factor who is also interviewed. Sequoia has yet to admit who that "someone" was.

The revelations here are remarkable and breathtaking, should earn "Dan Rather Reports" an award for investigative journalism, and have already led to a call for a full Congression Investigation... Companies, Now Available in Full Online... FULL STORY, VIDEO OF RATHER'S COMPLETE INVESTIGATIVE REPORT:
BradBlog.com
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Good news! According to the new book "Richistan" many of the new billionaires, the younger ones, are Democrats, eager to do good things in the world. There is nothing wrong with wealth or the American spirit of the entrepreneur. But as Hilary Clinton stated, the old Republican idea that "You're on your own" does not work in any society. As Hilary so brilliantly stated, "You're On You're Own" stands for "Yo-Yo". Think about it: someone is pulling the strings of the middle class, just like a yo-yo. Boy is she right. Kudos to Hilary for this great metaphor.

To repeat: the old Republican idea that "You're on your own" does not work in any society. The term "society" means we are social beings, interdependent, interconnected -- and we can not do it alone. No one does it alone. And it's our societal obligation to take care of widows, orphans, the elderly, the lame and the poor. Public education is in society's best interest. Most of these unfortunate people do not have equal opportunities in this new America, called "Richistan" by Robert Frank in his bestselling new book. http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2007/06/05/why-richistan-why-now/

By raising the standards of the poor and middle class, we create goodwill and harmony, thereby uniting America.

Andrew Carnegie, the wealthiest man in America at one time, wrote "The Gospel of Wealth," in which he stated his belief that the rich should use their wealth to help enrich society. In fact, he basically said that the rich have an obligation to help society with their wealth, which does not really belong to them, it belongs to the community which helped him get rich. In other words, 'you can't take it with you' as Shakespear said, so it's important for the mega-wealthy to teach their children good values of charity and generosity -- that no one can do it alone.

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish industrialist, businessman, a major philanthropist, and the founder of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Steel Company which later became U.S. Steel. Carnegie is known for having built one of the most powerful and influential corporations in United States history, and, later in his life, giving away most of his riches to fund the establishment of many libraries, schools, and universities in America, Scotland and other countries throughout the world.

The following is taken from one of Carnegie's memos to himself:

"Man does not live by bread alone. I have known millionaires starving for lack of the nutriment which alone can sustain all that is human in man, and I know workmen, and many so-called poor men, who revel in luxuries beyond the power of those millionaires to reach. It is the mind that makes the body rich. There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else. Money can only be the useful drudge of things immeasurably higher than itself. Exalted beyond this, as it sometimes is, it remains Caliban still and still plays the beast. My aspirations take a higher flight. Mine be it to have contributed to the enlightenment and the joys of the mind, to the things of the spirit, to all that tends to bring into the lives of the toilers of Pittsburgh sweetness and light. I hold this the noblest possible use of wealth. ”
Carnegie believed that achievement of financial success could be reduced to a simple formula, which could be duplicated by the average person. In 1908, he commissioned (at no pay) Napoleon Hill, then a journalist, to interview more than 500 high and wealthy achievers to find out the common threads of their success. Hill eventually became a Carnegie collaborator, and their work was published in 1928, after Carnegie's death, in Hill's book The Law of Success (ISBN 0-87980-447-5) and in 1937, Think and Grow Rich (ISBN 1-59330-200-2). The latter has not been out of print since it was first published and has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. In 1960, Hill published an abridged version of the book containing the Andrew Carnegie formula for wealth creation. For years it was the only version generally available. In 2004, Ross Cornwell published Think and Grow Rich!: The Original Version, Restored and Revised, which restored the book to its original content, with slight revisions, and added comprehensive endnotes, an index, and an appendix.

When a U.S Soldier In Iraq Won't Soldier

Please read the following article from the Christian Science Monitor on what a soldier goes through when he doesn't agree with the war.

What does the Army do with a private who can't be persuaded to load his gun?
By Mary Wiltenburg | Correspondent of Christian Science Monitor

No one looked comfortable at the sentencing hearing. Not family and friends who packed the US military courtroom's straight-backed benches. Not the rookie Army prosecutor in stiff dress greens who flushed with every "Your Honor." Not Judge R. Peter Masterton, whose usually animated face was now grave.

And not the convicted deserter – Army medic Agustín Aguayo – on the stand in a US military court in central Germany last March, pleading for understanding.
"I'm sorry for the trouble my conscience has caused my unit," Private 1st Class Aguayo said, his voice thick with emotion. "I tried to obey the rules, but in the end the problem was at the very core of my being."

Colonel Masterton, a veteran military judge, stared down at his bench. The defense wanted him to free this man of conscience. The prosecution asked that he put the coward away for two years to show other soldiers that "they are not fools for fulfilling their obligation."

Aguayo craned to face the judge. "When I hear my sergeants talking about slashing people's throats," he said, crying openly, "if I'm not a conscientious objector, what am I when I'm feeling all this pain when people talk about violence?"
Next door in the press room, where reporters crowded to watch the proceedings on bleached, closed-circuit TVs, a soldier guarding the door wiped tears from his face.

Every war has its deserters, troops who abandon their posts. And every war has its converts to pacifism. The Defense Department reports that 5,361 active-duty service members deserted the US Armed Forces last year; nearly 37,000 since October 2001. In today's all-volunteer force, that means a desertion rate of less than half a percent – much lower than the Vietnam War draft era, when it reached a 1971 high of 7.4 percent. In the past six years, 325 Army soldiers have applied to be recognized as conscientious objectors (COs), soldiers who no longer believe in war; 58 percent were accepted.

Still, Aguayo's story is revealing of the mental battles of these thousands who change their minds during a bloody war – and, arguably, of many who don't.
Struggling to support a young family in the patriotic months after 9/11, Aguayo chose to serve a nation heading into a long fight. War made a man of the naive private – but not in the way his officers intended. While his struggle to believe in his mission probably resembled that of many young recruits, no one imagined how it would end.

Aguayo is a small, soft-spoken man, tentative but quick to smile. Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, he immigrated legally to Los Angeles with his parents when he was 4. At 19, he became a citizen and married a girl he'd met at church, the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants. He worked a dead-end bank job; for his twin daughters' sake, he wanted more. So he got second and third jobs and enrolled in community college. At Home Depot, where he worked in the fall of 2002, the radio blared through his shift with Army Reserve ads promising he could stay with his family and get a four-year degree.

On the way to renew his driver's license, Aguayo saw a recruiting station and stopped in. "No, you don't want the Army Reserve," he recalls the recruiter saying, "have a seat." Two weeks later, Aguayo joined the active-duty Army. His wife didn't want him to – the Afghan war had subsided and the Iraq invasion was imminent. "But he was so excited and so sure that the future would hold great things," Helga Aguayo says, that she supported his decision. She recalls asking him what he'd do if he had to go to war. "He kind of laughed and said, 'They train you for that. I'll be a different person."

But in basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., Aguayo couldn't adjust like other recruits did. It pained him to march to "Left, right, kill!" and to chant "We are not men. We are beasts." He stumbled out of gas-mask training crying, and wrote to Helga that the sting of the gas made him think of Nazi gas chambers. "The point is for you to learn how to use the mask," he says, "but [the gas] hurts, and I'd never want to hurt anyone like that." He hoped his qualms were normal, that he'd master them.

In August 2003, five months after the US invaded Iraq, Aguayo's unit was sent to a base in Schweinfurt, Germany. There they received orders to deploy to Iraq in the new year. His roommate assured Aguayo that the war was over and they would be peacekeepers. Aguayo, who rarely followed the news, felt better.
Then their training changed. "It wasn't targets anymore. It wasn't about me getting a badge. It wasn't about me getting a pat on the back," he says, "It was about me getting ready to take someone down."

In February 2004, on the eve of his Iraq deployment, Aguayo confided to Helga, who had joined him in Germany with their 8-year-old daughters, that he wasn't willing to kill, even in self-defense. She was alarmed. She searched for help online, and found a story about a marine who had refused to serve in Iraq. They read it together; some of the words were new to them.

"I had never heard the term 'conscientious objector,' which is embarrassing," she says. They Googled it, and called the hot-line number that came up. Volunteers explained the application process, and Aguayo, deploying in two days, hurried one together.

In Iraq a week later, he woke to the sound of shouting. Near his Tikrit aid station, a US military truck with five passengers had hit a roadside bomb. Aguayo zipped two officers up in body bags. His horrified expression caught the attention of a physician's assistant who took him aside. "You have to understand, there is a bigger picture," Aguayo remembers him saying, "God has a bigger plan."

"I couldn't reason like that," Aguayo says. "I thought, 'How can God have anything to do with this?' To me it was ignorance: on our side and on the guys that put the bomb out there."

Aguayo never got used to the routine cruelties of war: The men in US uniform he heard speak lewdly to veiled women, the American squads that cut clotheslines on Fridays while families were at prayer. "When someone sees me on a corner, then sees this guy next to me," he says of these soldiers, "he thinks we're the same."
Despite his misgivings, Aguayo developed a reputation in his unit as a mature presence and a diligent worker. He was promoted to the rank of specialist and recommended for another promotion to noncommissioned officer status, which he refused. Friends who served with him say that although they didn't share his beliefs, they respected his growing pacifism.

For his 12-month tour, Aguayo refused to carry a loaded weapon. His medical duties didn't require one, but dangerous patrols in Saddam Hussein's hometown did. Out of consideration for his beliefs, superiors looked the other way as he hoisted an empty rifle. When he told Helga, she was appalled at the danger he was putting himself – and others – in. "I said: You can't do this. You have a family. You have to come back," she says.

In August 2004, Aguayo's CO application was denied. The decision was divided: Aguayo's company commander and investigating officer called him "absolutely sincere" and said he had a "legitimate concern with being a soldier." The next four levels of command recommended rejection; one called Aguayo's application "an attempt to remedy [the] anxiety all soldiers face during an extended deployment in a combat theater."
Aguayo knew there were other ways out: A friend used illegal drugs to get discharged; others went AWOL. But he hated the idea of breaking the law. So the Aguayos threw themselves into challenging the decision when he returned to Germany in February 2005. Superiors decided that whatever the result, he didn't belong in the Army. A sergeant took him aside and promised to "paper" him out: charge him with enough small defiances to disqualify him from service.

But with only one infraction on record – failing to raise his M-16 in a training exercise – and another pending, his unit got word. They were going back to Iraq.


Read the rest of this chilling story here:

When a Soldier Won't Soldier

ROVE RESIGNS!

TODAY on Basham and Cornell Progressive Talk we'll be discussing Rove's resignation as well as other juicy politcal news.

The Basham and Cornell Show broadcasts weekday mornings at 8 am Pacific Time on AM 1230 KLAV in Las Vegasat 8 am Pacific (11 a.m. Eastern). All shows are simulcast on the Internet (and archived) and can be listened to at BASHAM AND CORNELL.COM

If you missed it, you can listen in the archives. This past Friday August 10th, Senator John Edwards was our guest, and Tomorrow, Tuesday August 14, we are having Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan, author of "Take This Job and Ship it: How Corporate Greed and Brain Dead Politics Are Selling Out America."









Open Thread.