Crazy ass people running this country.
Read this! Here's a bit:
Here's a great quote from this Time Magazine article on a
faith-based initiative for our national parks:
“For years,” author Tom Vail explains, “as a Colorado River guide, I told people how the Grand Canyon was formed over the evolutionary time span of millions of years. Then I met the Lord. Now I have a different view of the Canyon, which according to a biblical time scale, can’t possibly be more than a few thousand years old.”
By the way, real geologists place the canyon’s age at around six million years.
So why does this matter? Vail's book, “Grand Canyon, a Different View,” which claims that the canyon was formed 4,500 years ago by Noah's flood, is being sold at the official Grand Canyon bookstore. Despite numerous complaints by respected geologists, the National Park Service hasn't pulled it from the shelves. From the article: "Even more troubling, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) charges that Grand Canyon National Park no longer offers an official estimate of the age of the canyon."
---------------------------------------------
LA Times has
a story on National Guard troops currently in training to be sent to Iraq. They are complaining about their lack of training. Here's a bit of the article:
The soldiers at Doña Ana emphasized their support for the war in Iraq. "In fact, a lot of us would rather go now rather than stay here," said one, a specialist and six-year National Guard veteran who works as a security guard in his civilian life in Southern California.
The soldiers also said they were risking courts-martial or other punishment by speaking publicly about their situation. But Staff Sgt. Lorenzo Dominguez, 45, one of the soldiers who allowed his identity to be revealed, said he feared that if nothing changed, men in his platoon would be killed in Iraq.
Dominguez is a father of two — including a 13-month-old son named Reagan, after the former president — and an employee of a mortgage bank in Alta Loma, Calif. A senior squad leader of his platoon, Dominguez said he had been in the National Guard for 20 years.
"Some of us are going to die there, and some of us are going to die unnecessarily because of the lack of training," he said. "So I don't care. Let them court-martial me. I want the American public to know what is going on. My men are guilty of one thing: volunteering to serve their country. And we are at the end of our rope."
----------------------------------------------
In other news, here's a bit of prose from Joseph Heller:
Colonel Cargill, General Peckem's troubleshooter, was a forceful, ruddy man. Before the war he had been an alert, hard-hitting, aggressive marketing executive. He was a very bad marketing executive. Colonel Cargill was so awful a marketing executive that his services were much sought after by firms eager to establish losses for tax purposes. Throughout the civilized world, from Battery Park to Fulton Street, he was known as a dependable man for a fast tax write-off. His prices were high, for failure often did not come easily. He had to start at the top and work his way down, and with sympathetic friends in Washington, losing money was no simple matter. It took months of hard work and careful misplanning. A person misplaced, disorganized, miscalculated, overlooked everything and opened every loophole, and just when he thought he had it made, the government gave him a lake or a forest or an oilfield and spoiled everything. Even with such handicaps, Colonel Cargill could be relied on to run the most prosperous enterprise into the ground. He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody. (Catch-22)
Once you're gone, you can't come back.
-----------------------------------------
Seven Curses:
(listen)
Old Reilly stole a stallion
But they caught him and they brought him back
And they laid him down on the jailhouse ground
With an iron chain around his neck.
Old Reilly's daughter got a message
That her father was goin' to hang.
She rode by night and came by morning
With gold and silver in her hand.
When the judge he saw Reilly's daughter
His old eyes deepened in his head,
Sayin', "Gold will never free your father,
The price, my dear, is you instead."
"Oh I'm as good as dead," cried Reilly,
"It's only you that he does crave
And my skin will surely crawl if he touches you at all.
Get on your horse and ride away."
"Oh father you will surely die
If I don't take the chance to try
And pay the price and not take your advice.
For that reason I will have to stay."
The gallows shadows shook the evening,
In the night a hound dog bayed,
In the night the grounds were groanin',
In the night the price was paid.
The next mornin' she had awoken
To know that the judge had never spoken.
She saw that hangin' branch a-bendin',
She saw her father's body broken.
These be seven curses on a judge so cruel:
That one doctor will not save him,
That two healers will not heal him,
That three eyes will not see him.
That four ears will not hear him,
That five walls will not hide him,
That six diggers will not bury him
And that seven deaths shall never kill him.
Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music
littleboxes
