An American Gothic

Riches For The Corrupt, Crumbs For The Rest Of Us

2009-07-15T13:37:00.012-04:00

From ( http://www.alternet.org/workplace/141275/we_offer_riches_and_perks_for_corrupt_cronies%2C_and_crumbs_for_everyone_else/)

We Offer Riches and Perks for Corrupt Cronies, and Crumbs for Everyone Else

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig. Posted July 14, 2009.
If you defraud banks and customers of billions, you get taxpayer money. But if you are poor like Tearyan Brown of Trenton, N.J., you are in trouble.
Tearyan Brown became a father when he was 16. He did what a lot of inner-city kids desperate to make money do. He sold drugs. He was arrested and sent to jail three years later for dealing marijuana and PCP on the streets of Trenton, N.J., mostly to white kids driving in from the suburbs. It was a job which saw him robbed at gunpoint and stabbed in the chest. But it made him about $1,400 a week.
Brown, when he got out after three and a half years, was done with street life. He got a job as a security guard and then as a fork lift operator. He eventually made about $30,000 a year. He shepherded his son through high school, then college and a master’s degree. His boy, now 24, is a high school teacher in Texas. Brown would not leave the streets of Trenton but his son would. It made him proud. It gave him hope.
And then one morning in 2005 when he was visiting his mother’s house the cops showed up. He saw the cruiser and the officers standing on his mother’s porch. He hurried down the block toward the home to see what was wrong. What was wrong was him. On the basis of a police photograph, he had been identified by an 82-year-old woman as the man who had robbed her of $9 at gunpoint a few hours earlier. The only other witness to the crime insisted the elderly victim was confused. The witness told the police Brown was innocent. Brown’s friends said Brown was with them when the robbery took place.
“Why would I rob a woman for $9,” he asks me. “I had been paid the day before. I had not committed a crime in 20 years. It didn’t make any sense.”
He was again sent to jail. But this time he was charged with armed robbery. If convicted, he would be locked away for many years. His grown son and his three young boys would live, as he had, without the presence of a father. The little ones—11-year-old twins and a 10-year-old—would be adults when he got out. When he met with his state-appointed attorney, the lawyer, like most state-appointed attorneys, pushed for accepting a plea bargain, one that would see him behind bars for at least the next decade. Brown pulled the pictures of his children out of his wallet, laid the pictures carefully on the table in front of the lawyer, looked at the faces of his children and broke down in tears. He shook and sobbed. It was a hard thing to do for a man who stands nearly 6 feet tall and weights 210 pounds and has coped with a lot in his life.
“I didn’t do nothing,” he choked out to the lawyer.
He refused the plea bargain offer. He sat in jail for the next two years before getting a trial. It was a time of deep despair. Jail had changed since he had last been incarcerated. The facilities were overcrowded, with inmates sleeping in corridors and on the floor. The gangs taunted those who, like Brown, were not affiliated with a gang. Gang members knocked trays of food to the floor. They pissed on mattresses. They stole canteen items and commissary orders. And there was nothing the victims could do about it.
“See this,” he says to me in a dimly lit coffee shop in downtown Trenton as he rolls up the right sleeve of his T-shirt. “It’s the grim reaper. I got it in jail. I was so scared. I was scared I wouldn’t get out this time. I was scared I would not see my kids grow up. They make their own tattoo guns in jail with a toothbrush, a staple and the motor of a Walkman. It cost me $15, well, not really dollars. I had to give him about 10 soups and a package of cigarettes. On the street this would be three or four hundred dollars.”
Under the tattoo of the scythe-wielding, hooded figure are the words “Death Awaits.”
He had a trial after two years in jail and was found not guilty. The sheriff’s deputies in the courtroom said as he was walking out that they “had never seen anything like this.” He reaches into his baggy jeans and pulls out his thin brown wallet. He opens it to show me a folded piece of paper. The paper says, “Verdict: Defendant found not guilty on all charges.” It is dated Jan. 31, 2008.
But innocence and guilt are funny things in America. If you are rich and guilty, if you have defrauded banks and customers and investment firms of billions of dollars, as AIG or Citibank has, if you wear fancy suits and have degrees from elite universities that cost more per year than Brown used to make, you get taxpayer money. You get lots of it. You maintain the lavish lifestyle of jets and spas and million-dollar bonuses. You live a life of unchecked greed and have too much in a world where most have too little. If you are moral scum in America we take care of you. But if you are poor, if you are, say, Tearyan Brown and African-American and 39 years old with four kids and no job and you live in the inner city, you are in trouble. No one comes to help you. You don’t get a second chance. This is what being poor means.
Brown found that life had changed when he got out. He had lost his job as a fork lift operator. And there were no new jobs to be found. He had faithfully paid child support until his arrest but, with no income, he could not pay from jail and now he was being hauled into court by the state every few weeks for being in arrears for $13,000. The mother of his three youngest boys goes to court with him. She explains that he paid regularly while he had work. She explains that when she works on the weekends Brown takes the kids. She asks that he be forgiven until he can get a job and begin paying again. But there are no jobs.
“I would not be in arrears in child support if I had not been incarcerated for something I didn’t do,” he says. “I will never get above ground owing $13,000. How can I pay $120 a week when I don’t have a job?”
Brown lives on $200 a month in food stamps and $40 in cash. Welfare will pay his apartment for another four months. He is barely making it. I ask him what he will do when he loses the rent subsidy.
“I’ll be homeless,” he says.
“My son says come down to Texas,” he adds. “Start a new life with me. But what about my three little boys? I can’t leave them. I can’t leave them in Trenton. They need a father.”
Brown works out every day. He does calisthenics. He is a vegetarian. He volunteers at a food pantry. He attends the Jerusalem Baptist Church with his little boys. “They are church kids,” he tells me proudly. “They are pretty much raised by the church.”
He is trying to keep himself together. But he lives in a world that is falling apart. The gangs on the streets of Trenton carry Glock 9-millimeter pistols and AK-47 assault rifles. When the Trenton police stop a car or raid a house filled with suspected gang members, they approach with loaded M-16s. A local newspaper, The Trentonian, reports the daily chronicle of crime, decay and neglect. The lead story in the day’s paper, which Brown has with him, is about a young man named James Deonte James, whose street name is “Lurch.” James was charged in the death of a 13-year-old girl during a gang shooting. He is reputed to be a “five star general in the Sex Money Murder set of the Bloods street gang.”
In another story, an ex-con and reputed mobster, Michael “Mickey Rome” Dimattia, was arrested in his car after a woman behind the wheel was seen driving erratically. “Mickey Rome,” dressed in a black bathrobe with a red scarf around his neck, was found to be wearing a bulletproof vest, with three guns stuck in his waistband, and had a crack pipe, crack cocaine and prescription pills in his pockets. He had been convicted in 1990 of killing a 17-year-old boy with a shotgun blast to the head. He served less than three years for the murder.
A feature story on Page 4 of the paper is about a man with AIDS who raped his girlfriend’s son 55 times and infected the boy with the virus. The boy was 9 when the rapes took place.
“There are thousands more guns out there than when I was on the street,” Brown says. “It is easier to buy a gun than get liquor from a liquor store.”
He says he rarely goes out at night, even to the corner store. It is too dangerous.
The desperation is palpable. People don’t know where to turn. Benefits are running out. More and more people are out of work.
“You see things getting worse and worse,” he says. “You see people who wonder how they are going to eat and take care of themselves and their kids. You see people starting to do anything to get food, to hustle or rob, to go back to doing things they do not want to do. Good people start doin’ bad things. People are getting eviler.”
He pauses.
“All things are better with God,” he says softly, looking down at the tabletop.
He is reading a book about the Bible. It is about Jesus and God. It is about learning to trust in God’s help. In America that is about all the poor have left. And when God fails them, they are on their own.

© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

I bring this up to your attention because the preceding article ties into the post which I have been doing on the economic problems which the poor in Tampa have been going through as of late. I've been focusing mostly on the working homeless, and I'm now going to add into the equation the problems which these workers have with the Tampa Police Department constantly harassing them and writing tickets for "open container" violations. This practice is a total waste of taxpayer money. More on this next time araound.

Tampa Economy: Wasted Taxpayer Money...

2009-07-11T11:05:00.007-04:00

....and I'm sure that the idiots who run the City of Tampa's courts and police departments will love this post.
First off, I should make it clear that I do not drink alcohol with the exception of very rare reason of celebration. I do have a problem with the city of Tampa and their "open container law' enforcement, or their over use of the law in trying to deal with homelessness and those who drink out in public.
Let me point out a few things here. Someone gets a ticket for having an open container of beer or wine, or whatever. The ticket gives the offender a court a date, at which time the offender will be given a fine of something like $135, give or take. I'm okay with things up to this point. What I'm not okay with is...
Said offender maybe has a warrant out on them because they have been arrested or ticketed for the same offense on previous occasions. Obviously, they haven't paid the past fines so now they face either 5 or 10 days in the Falkenburg Jail, depending on the mood of the presiding judge. So, that $135 fine that hasn't been paid is now going to cost the taxpayer $370.20 to keep the offender in jail for 5 days, or $740.40 for a 10 day visit. This is a waste of money which could be better spent on other things in Tampa and Hillsborough County.
I have also noticed that the majority of those getting tickets are in fact the homeless and/ or the day labor workers. I'm not for just letting these offenders off of the hook, but the city/county is never going to collect any of the fines from this group, and locking them up has not been a deterrent either.
$74.04 per day to lock one of these people up. That is cash which is basically going up in smoke. Money out the window! Gone, for nothing. That lost cash is not helping the local economy in the least. Come up with another idea Tampa. there are other ways to pad the officers arrest record.

State Of The Economy: Tampa

2009-07-10T16:39:00.006-04:00

As you are all aware of by this time, the economic state for many lower income residents of Tampa is in a major degree of shambles. sure, the minimum wage is at a whopping $7.21 per hour, but with rises in the price of food, drugs ( legal ones ), and tobacco, that wage increase has been totally snuffed out of existance.
Want to have a really shitty time trying to live on minimum wage in this area? then might I suggest that you get sick for a week? That is what I did from the 4th up till now. I went and caught a bad case of pneumonia. Is there a good case? This illness has set me back almost to the starting point once again!
On Monday the 6th, I had just a bad headcold, which I could live with. On Monday, after going to a temp service and getting only a few hours of work per week, I finally got a decent job with 10 hour days, six days per week. Yippeee?! After spending Monday going from the high heat and humidity into a nice ice-cold truck on a regular basis, I got a little bit more sicker. Tuesday? Forget about it! I couldn't even move!the lungs were aching,the muscles were sore, and I'm not sure what the rest of me was doing. I'm a type 1 diabetic, so this shit did not help me much. So imagine. No income coming in, and plenty of income going back out. Needless to say, the job was taken over by someone else. Another one bites the dust!
There are many more people in even worse situations than I, and I do not see how they manage to pull living off on a regular basis. Perhaps this is why so many of the poor in the Tampa area drink and do drugs. I guess that the escape, even though temporary, is a means of management for the people here.
I'll have more on this after my illness is finished with me.

U.S. Unemployment Rate 9.5%...

2009-07-02T11:37:00.007-04:00

... which is little changed from the previous month of May. 467,000 jobs were lost in the month of June with the largest losses coming in the manufacturing industry, as well as in the professional,construction, and the business services industry.
The unemployed stands at 14.7 million persons as of June 2009.

In June, unemployment rates for the major worker groups--adult men
(10.0 percent), adult women (7.6 percent), teenagers (24.0 percent),
whites (8.7 percent), blacks (14.7 percent), and Hispanics (12.2 per-
cent)--showed little change. The unemployment rate for Asians was
8.2 percent, not seasonally adjusted.
Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who com-
pleted temporary jobs (9.6 million) was little changed in June after
increasing by an average of 615,000 per month during the first 5 months
of this year.
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or
more) increased by 433,000 over the month to 4.4 million.In June, 3
in 10 unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more.

www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.html

Friday is the third of July,so that means that our 4th of July holiday weekend is beginning. Many businesses will be closed or they will be having short work days. I am no exception. There will be no new postings at this site until Monday, the 6th.
Have a great and safe holiday everyone!

State Of The Economy II: Tampa Florida...

2009-07-01T11:08:00.009-04:00

...and it got just a little bit worse for those low income, hourly workers today. This would be concerning the new Florida excise tax on cigarettes which went into effect on July 1,2009. Another blow to smokers and tobacco dealers everywhere.
Yesterday I wrote that I would be introducing you to some of the cast of character's who actually have to resort to all kinds of tricks in order to feed themselves since the work environment here in Tampa is the pits. That will have to wait for another day.
The state of Florida has added an excise tax of $1 to each pack of cigarettes sold in the state.Rolling tobacco such as "Tops" and "Bugler" are also hit by this tax.So why is the state doing this? The excuse as of last week was that the state has to come up with the cash somewhere because the state's tax revenues are down. The state is not making any money so let's just raise smoker taxes and fuck them even more!
The better off will grumble and grip about the increase, and a few may even decide that it is time to quit. Those who are not so well off will feel the increase the most. Granted, some will opt to give up the habit. Great for them!
This tax increase will definitely be a burden to those who are working at the minimum wage level. Let's look at the price increases on a few brands of smokes.
"Remington" brand of little cigars. This brand is the low-budget, generic brand of smokes that anyone could afford, whether homeless or not. This is the last resort brand for smokers in the Tampa area. The price per pack on June 30,$1. Price on July 1,$2.25 at one nearby store.
"Winston" brand from RJ Reynolds, my personal favorite. June 30,$3.89 per pack. July 1,$4.99. "Marlboro"? Forget about it! June 30,$4.89 per pack. July 1,$5.99.
This is at a store in my neighborhood. I have seen some selling for as much as $6.99. This is ridiculous! Tampa has a bad enough problem with folks getting robbed by crack-heads and other druggies, not to mention people who just plain need the money. I'm wondering how long that it will take before we are getting held up for cigarette money or the smokes themselves.
Though I now believe that smoking is not so good for the person, the state should not be placing the cost of their ineptitude on the lower-wage workers who just happen to smoke.
As an after thought, I should note that Cigars are exempt from the excise tax. I would guess that since most cigar smokers are just a little bit better off than most of us, it just wouldn't be fair to tax them along with you and I.

State Of The Economy: Tampa Florida ( Continued )

2009-06-30T15:58:00.007-04:00

Maybe I should clarify a few things before continuing on with this topic.
When dealing with the " state of the economy " here in Tampa Florida, I am talking about the economy of the hourly worker. I'm not concerning myself with salaried workers at this time because they seem to be not suffering as much as the hourly employee is.
I am also concerning myself with those hourly workers who now happen to be living on the streets behind some building, or who are sleeping in cars, Salvation Army centers, or other homeless shelters, ect.
Many of you readers will think of the homeless as that group of people who are to lazy to work or who are either drug addicts or alcoholics. While it is true that a few of the individuals that I have hung out with are one or both, most are actually hard-working and have ended up on the streets because they could no longer afford to live the way in which they were accostumed to living, because of company downsizing or whatever.
So. Are we all on the same page now? I hope so, because the reader is about to get educated on how life is in the world of reality. Stay tuned folks because this could very well be you in our currant economy, and in that which is still to come.
Tomorrow you will meet a few of the players in this saga, and in the days to follow I will take you out with them in their daily struggles to find even temporary work in order to put food in their mouths.

State Of The Economy: Tampa Florida...

2009-06-29T16:01:00.008-04:00

...and it is not a pretty picture here in the " sunshine state."
It is reported that the unemployment rate here in the Tampa area is 10.2%, while the state's rate is at 10.6%. These numbers would be higher if not for the fact that many of the unemployed have left the state in droves and this trend is continuing.
I lived here back in the late early 2000's, and things have certainly gone downhill since my last stay as compared to this currant stay. In 2000, you could walk into a temporary service or a day labor service and you'd be working the very next day, if not the same day. That ain't gonna happen again anytime soon. I walked into a temp service which I use to frequent in the past, and I sat in the place everyday for a week before I was finally sent out on a job. An eight hour day? Not hardly. It was a half-day of work. Thus far this June, I've logged in 54 hours of work. For the record, I've shown up at the office every day looking for something.
Thus far while making my rounds, I've discovered that there isn't much work in my particular field, which would be "data recovery" or "data extraction" depending on who wants the work completed for them.
So what has my work consisted of? Funny that you should ask! 90% of the jobs which I have completed have been dealing with moving. Basically, unloading furniture out of moving vans and carrying the stuff into the homes of the new owners. Some of these have been apartments, which has required carrying the belongings up two or three flights of stairs. No easy task, especially in this hot Florida heat and humidity. Pay-rate? How about 8 dollars an hour? Not very much in this day and age. There is a bright side though. I've gotten some great tips from not only the home-owners, but from the van drivers as well. Throw in the tips, and the hourly rate averages something like $33.50. Now if I could just manage to get two of those per day. I have managed to unload these trucks in under three hours in most cases, which does help make the money look better. ( continued )

Latest E. coli O157:H7 News...

2009-06-29T10:53:00.004-04:00

...As of Thursday, June 25, 2009, 69 persons infected with a strain of E. coli O157:H7 with a particular DNA fingerprint have been reported from 29 states.
Ill persons range in age from 2 to 65 years; however, 64% are less than 19 years old; 73% are female. Thirty-four persons have been hospitalized, 9 developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS); none have died.

(http://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/2009/0625.html)
A newer update will be out at around 9 pm eastern time, and it will be posted at this site.
Also, as you can still see, I am still not able to get my freakin' links to display as they are supposed to. Anyone have any ideas?

Celebrity Deaths...

2009-06-26T11:12:00.007-04:00

...have been a big happening this week, in case you've been on a deserted island and haven't heard about them yet.
Fisrt off, we had Johnny Carson's sidekick Ed McMahon die on Tuesday at the age of 86. Cause of death has not been released as of yet.
Next up, we had Farrah Fawcett die on Thursday after a three year battle against cancer.
Also on Thursday, pop star Michael Jackson bit the dust at the age of 50 from cardiac arrest.

Cardiac arrest is a condition in which the electrical signals to the heart become abnormal, making it impossible for it to properly pump blood through the body. In over 90 percent of victims, death occurs.

The first sign that something was wrong with Jackson likely occurred when an ambulance arrived at his home and took him to the medical center just a few miles away. But even if paramedics responded immediately, Jackson's chances would not have been good.

"This is something where minutes count," said Cannon. "Survival tails off from 50 percent survival down to 1 percent over a 10-minute period."

Cannon said cardiac arrest is different from a heart attack, which is normally the result of a blockage in an artery that supplies the heart with blood.

abcnews.go.com

Jackson's death came as quite a shock to many of his fans, who did not know that Jackson had been having some serious health and drug problems over the past few years. It is reported that stress had been a major issue with Mr. Jackson.
It has been said by some Jackson Acquaintances that Jackson was a heavy user of the drug Demerol, a pain killer. (http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MichaelJackson/story?id=7934491&page=1)
I am not a very big fan of Michael Jackson, even though he did release a few tunes that I did happen to like. " Dirty Diana" and " Billie Jean " being a couple of them. Mr. Jackson was a very real talent who was popular with most everyone no matter what race. It is a shame that we will never see Michael doing his comeback tour, which would have kicked off next month.
Another " American Gothic " comes to an early end.

Iran's Past Democracy...

2009-06-24T16:50:00.003-04:00

...and that would be the one which was alive in Iran back in the day before the United States took it away from the Iranian people, as Chris Hedges from truthdig.com points out. My links are still not working correctly so please bear with me.
Published on Monday, June 22, 2009 by TruthDig.com
Iran Had a Democracy Before We Took It Away
by Chris Hedges

Iranians do not need or want us to teach them about liberty and representative government. They have long embodied this struggle. It is we who need to be taught. It was Washington that orchestrated the 1953 coup to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the Middle East, and install the compliant shah in power. It was Washington that forced Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who cared as much for his country as he did for the rule of law and democracy, to spend the rest of his life under house arrest. We gave to the Iranian people the corrupt regime of the shah and his savage secret police and the primitive clerics that rose out of the swamp of the dictator’s Iran. Iranians know they once had a democracy until we took it away.

The fundamental problem in the Middle East is not a degenerate and corrupt Islam. The fundamental problem is a degenerate and corrupt Christendom. We have not brought freedom and democracy and enlightenment to the Muslim world. We have brought the opposite. We have used the iron fist of the American military to implant our oil companies in Iraq, occupy Afghanistan and ensure that the region is submissive and cowed. We have supported a government in Israel that has carried out egregious war crimes in Lebanon and Gaza and is daily stealing ever greater portions of Palestinian land. We have established a network of military bases, some the size of small cities, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Kuwait, and we have secured basing rights in the Gulf states of Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. We have expanded our military operations to Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Egypt, Algeria and Yemen. And no one naively believes, except perhaps us, that we have any intention of leaving.

We are the biggest problem in the Middle East. We have through our cruelty and violence created and legitimized the Mahmoud Ahmadinejads and the Osama bin Ladens. The longer we lurch around the region dropping iron fragmentation bombs and seizing Muslim land the more these monsters, reflections of our own distorted image, will proliferate. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that “the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy.” But our hypocrisy no longer fools anyone but ourselves. It will ensure our imperial and economic collapse.

The history of modern Iran is the history of a people battling tyranny. These tyrants were almost always propped up and funded by foreign powers. This suppression and distortion of legitimate democratic movements over the decades resulted in the 1979 revolution that brought the Iranian clerics to power, unleashing another tragic cycle of Iranian resistance.

“The central story of Iran over the last 200 years has been national humiliation at the hands of foreign powers who have subjugated and looted the country,” Stephen Kinzer, the author of “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror,” told me. “For a long time the perpetrators were the British and Russians. Beginning in 1953, the United States began taking over that role. In that year, the American and British secret services overthrew an elected government, wiped away Iranian democracy, and set the country on the path to dictatorship.”

“Then, in the 1980s, the U.S. sided with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, providing him with military equipment and intelligence that helped make it possible for his army to kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians,” Kinzer said. “Given this history, the moral credibility of the U.S. to pose as a promoter of democracy in Iran is close to nil.

Especially ludicrous is the sight of people in Washington calling for intervention on behalf of democracy in Iran when just last year they were calling for the bombing of Iran. If they had had their way then, many of the brave protesters on the streets of Tehran today—the ones they hold up as heroes of democracy—would be dead now.”

Washington has never recovered from the loss of Iran—something our intelligence services never saw coming. The overthrow of the shah, the humiliation of the embassy hostages, the laborious piecing together of tiny shreds of paper from classified embassy documents to expose America’s venal role in thwarting democratic movements in Iran and the region, allowed the outside world to see the dark heart of the American empire. Washington has demonized Iran ever since, painting it as an irrational and barbaric country filled with primitive, religious zealots. But Iranians, as these street protests illustrate, have proved in recent years far more courageous in the defense of democracy than most Americans.

Where were we when our election was stolen from us in 2000 by Republican operatives and a Supreme Court that overturned all legal precedent to anoint George W. Bush president? Did tens of thousands of us fill the squares of our major cities and denounce the fraud? Did we mobilize day after day to restore transparency and accountability to our election process? Did we fight back with the same courage and tenacity as the citizens of Iran? Did Al Gore defy the power elite and, as opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi has done, demand a recount at the risk of being killed?

President Obama retreated in his Cairo speech into our spectacular moral nihilism, suggesting that our crimes matched the crimes of Iran, that there is, in his words, "a tumultuous history between us." He went on: "In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians." It all, he seemed to say, balances out.

I am no friend of the Iranian regime, which helped create and arm Hezbollah, is certainly meddling in Iraq, has persecuted human rights activists, gays, women and religious and ethnic minorities, embraces racism and intolerance and uses its power to deny popular will. But I do not remember Iran orchestrating a coup in the United States to replace an elected government with a brutal dictator who for decades persecuted, assassinated and imprisoned democracy activists. I do not remember Iran arming and funding a neighboring state to wage war against our country. Iran never shot down one of our passenger jets as did the USS Vincennes-caustically nicknamed Robocruiser by the crews of other American vessels-when in June 1988 it fired missiles at an Airbus filled with Iranian civilians, killing everyone on board. Iran is not sponsoring terrorism within the United States, as our intelligence services currently do in Iran. The attacks on Iranian soil include suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, sabotage and "targeted assassinations" of government officials, scientists and other Iranian leaders. What would we do if the situation was reversed? How would we react if Iran carried out these policies against us?

We are, and have long been, the primary engine for radicalism in the Middle East. The greatest favor we can do for democracy activists in Iran, as well as in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf and the dictatorships that dot North Africa, is withdraw our troops from the region and begin to speak to Iranians and the rest of the Muslim world in the civilized language of diplomacy, respect and mutual interests. The longer we cling to the doomed doctrine of permanent war the more we give credibility to the extremists who need, indeed yearn for, an enemy that speaks in their crude slogans of nationalist cant and violence. The louder the Israelis and their idiot allies in Washington call for the bombing of Iran to thwart its nuclear ambitions, the happier are the bankrupt clerics who are ordering the beating and murder of demonstrators. We may laugh when crowds supporting Ahmadinejad call us "the Great Satan," but there is a very palpable reality that has informed the terrible algebra of their hatred.

Our intoxication with our military prowess blinds us to all possibilities of hope and mutual cooperation. It was Mohammed Khatami, the president of Iran from 1997 to 2005-perhaps the only honorable Middle East leader of our time-whose refusal to countenance violence by his own supporters led to the demise of his lofty "civil society" at the hands of more ruthless, less scrupulous opponents. It was Khatami who proclaimed that "the death of even one Jew is a crime." And we sputtered back to this great and civilized man the primitive slogans of all deformed militarists. We were captive, as all bigots are, to our demons, and could not hear any sound but our own shouting. It is time to banish these demons. It is time to stand not with the helmeted goons who beat protesters, not with those in the Pentagon who make endless wars, but with the unarmed demonstrators in Iran who daily show us what we must become.

The fight of the Iranian people is our fight. And, perhaps for the first time, we can match our actions to our ideals. We have no right under post-Nuremberg laws to occupy Iraq or Afghanistan. These occupations are defined by these statutes as criminal "wars of aggression." They are war crimes. We have no right to use force, including the state-sponsored terrorism we unleash on Iran, to turn the Middle East into a private gas station for our large oil companies. We have no right to empower Israel's continuing occupation of Palestine, a flagrant violation of international law. The resistance you see in Iran will not end until Iranians, and all those burdened with repression in the Middle East, free themselves from the tyranny that comes from within and without. Let us, for once, be on the side of those who share our democratic ideals.

© 2009 TruthDig.com
Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, will be out in July, but is available for pre-order.
Copyrighted 1997-2009
www.commondreams.org

Mark Sanford See Mistress On Taxpayer's Dime?

2009-06-24T16:33:00.004-04:00

What interesting times we live in!
First, Mark Sanford,Governor from South Carolina, tried to reject the stimulis money that the feds were offering the state. The South Carolina Supreme Court said that the state had to take the cash. Now we hear that Governor Sanford has a mistress down in South America and that it is possible that the man used some of the stimulis money to go and visit his slut down south!
Now, it seems that there has been talk of impeachment in the South Carolina state capitol!

The governor’s trip – taken together with the bitter intraparty battles over the budget in South Carolina and Sanford’s profile as a potential GOP presidential contender – is raising questions about whether he committed “serious misconduct” as chief executive, which is an impeachable offense under South Carolina’s constitution.

Complaints are that the governor turned off his cellphone without making plans for succession and that he apparently misled his staff about his whereabouts. According to his office, he had told them he was going hiking on the Appalachian Trail and instead traveled to Argentina, where he’s said to have taken quiet drives along the beach.

This man was considered an actual contender for the Republican Presidency in 2012? Sure, right up there with Sarah Palin, right?

Latest E. coli O157:H7 Outbreak News

2009-06-23T12:16:00.006-04:00

In case you haven't been keeping up with this ongoing story, the CDC ( cdc.gov) now says that as of Monday, June 22,70 persons have been infected with this E. coli starin and that those infected now live in 30 of our states.

Ill persons range in age from 2 to 65 years; however, 66% are less than 19 years old; 75% are female. Thirty persons have been hospitalized, 7 developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS); none have died. Reports of these infections increased above the expected baseline in May and continue into June.

E. coli O157:H7 And Cookie Dough

2009-06-20T10:48:00.009-04:00

In case you have not been keeping up as of late with the latest outbreakes of bacteria in our nations food supply, I now present you with the latest.

As of Thursday, June 18, 2009, 65 persons infected with a strain of E. coli O157:H7 with a particular DNA fingerprint have been reported from 29 states.
Ill persons range in age from 2 to 57 years; however, more than 70% are less than 19 years old and none are over 60 years old; 75% are female. Twenty-five persons have been hospitalized, 7 developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS); none have died.

Preliminary results of this investigation indicate a strong association with eating raw prepackaged cookie dough. Most patients reported eating refrigerated prepackaged Nestle Toll House cookie dough products raw.

E. coli O157:H7 has not been previously associated with eating raw cookie dough.

Clinical Features
Most people infected with E. coli O157:H7 develop diarrhea (often bloody) and abdominal cramps 2-8 days (average of 3-4 days) after swallowing the organism, but some illnesses last longer and are more severe. Infection is usually diagnosed by culture of a stool sample. Most people recover within a week, but some develop a severe infection.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are warning consumers not to eat any varieties of prepackaged Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough due to the risk of contamination with E. coli O157:H7

It would seem that most of my favorite foods continue to get contaminated. Can I start calling this a vast right-wing conspiracy yet?

Obama And The Federal Reserve

2009-06-19T12:08:00.002-04:00

Published on Friday, June 19, 2009 by The Nation
Don't Cede More Economic Authority to Unaccountable Fed
by John Nichols

The reviews are in on Barack Obama's plan to address the crisis of Wall Street speculation and casino capitalism that has dramatically increased the gap between working Americans and the rich, created pressure for the deindustrialization of the United States and depression of wages and income for workers and farmers and created a nasty banking crisis.

Though even Obama acknowledges that this is the big one –- the issue that as much as anything led Americans to elect him last fall –- his "financial overhaul plan" did not merit above-the-fold coverage on the front page of The New York Times, the country's "newspaper of record." Two stories from Tehran and one on a poll about health care reform held the top spots. The overhaul merited only a feature suggesting –- correctly -- that there was "only a hint of Roosevelt" in Obama's plan.

In other words, for the great mass of Americans there will be no new "New Deal." To be sure, there's some good stuff here: creation of a new agency to help protect consumers of "financial products" and some stronger transparency requirements, a few more rules regarding banks and mortgage-backed securities. "But," as Times writer Joe Nocera notes, "it's what the plan doesn't do that is most notable." Nocera focuses, appropriately enough, on the failure of the administration to do much about the problem –- for taxpayers and for democracy –- of banks that are "too big to fail."

But the real concern ought not be focused on what this seemingly tepid plan fails to do.

The real concern is what it does.

The plan dramatically increases the authority and reach of the Federal Reserve, an already too powerful and unaccountable institution that will -- to the delight of the administration's "Fed men": Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and administration economic adviser Lawrence Summers -- become what the Wall Street Journal says will be "the nation's most powerful financial overseer."

"The proposal, if passed into law, would represent one of the biggest changes ever in the Fed's role," explains Journal writer Sudeep Reddy. "The central bank would win power to monitor risks across the financial system, and sweeping authority to examine any firm that could threaten financial stability, even if the Fed wouldn't normally supervise the institution. The nation's biggest and most interconnected firms would be subject to heightened oversight by the central bank."

In announcing the plan, President Obama claimed "that lines of responsibility and accountability are clear" with regard to the new authority being placed in the Fed's hands.

That is a ridiculous statement.

The Fed is famously unaccountable and resistant to transparency. Even Geithner acknowledged in his Thursday morning session with the Senate Banking Committee that there is a need to look at reforming the Fed's lax governance structure.

But don't expect Geithner of others in the administration to take a lead when it comes to fixing the Fed, an agency that zealously guards –- for logical reasons, as its track record is one of frequent missteps and failures on an epic scale. As Senate Banking Committee chair Chris Dodd said after reviewing the central bank's significant flaws, "There's not a lot of confidence in the Fed at this point, and I'm stating the obvious."

What should be obvious to everyone is that Congress needs to get a grip on the Fed –- which is structured in a manner so that it faces little or no congressional oversight -- before it allows Obama's proposal to advance.

So says Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, the dissident Democrat who responded to Obama's plan by declaring that: "Before Congress gives the Fed any new authority, we must thoroughly examine the Fed's response to our current economic crisis."

Noted Kucinich:

Since August 2007 the Fed has intervened in the economy in an extraordinary way, as a result ballooning their balance sheet from $847 billion to more than $2 trillion. Yet, we still don't know what the Fed has done or who got the money. That is why I introduced the bipartisan HR 2424, which would grant the GAO the authority to audit the Fed's response to our nation's economic crisis, a response that has dwarfed the $700 billion TARP program by more than 2 to 1.
Before we grant the Fed any new authority, we must demand greater transparency from the Fed; an earnest and open audit of the Federal Reserve's response to the economic crisis would be a significant step in the right direction. We can't continue to let the Fed operate within a black box.

Kucinich has proposed HR 2424, a piece of legislation that would amend United States Code "to authorize reviews by the Comptroller General of the United States of any credit facility established by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or any Federal reserve bank during the current financial crisis, and for other purposes."

Several progressive Democrats and old-right Republicans, including Texas Congressman Ron Paul, have cosponsored Kucinich's measure. Additionally, Paul has proposed H.R. 1207, which would amend the bill "to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes."

A majority of House members –- 234, so far, ranging from the most progressive Democrats to the most conservative Republicans -- have signed on as cosponsors of this necessary legislation.

This is one of those issues that makes sense to any honest representative, no matter what the party or what the ideology. Our elected and reasonably accountable federal officials cannot cede more control over the U.S. economy to the unelected and unaccountable Fed without auditing, reviewing and reforming how the Federal Reserve System operates.

© 2009 The Nation
John Nichols is Washington correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. A co-founder of the media reform organization Free Press, Nichols is is co-author with Robert W. McChesney of Tragedy & Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy - from The New Press. Nichols' latest book is The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders' Cure for Royalism.

Presidential Tracking Poll

2009-06-19T11:34:00.005-04:00

According to Friday's Rasmussen polling, President Obama has the approval of 34% of Americans who strongly approve of the way that Obama is performing his duties as President. On the other side of the fence, 33% of Americans strongly disapprove of the way in which Obama is running his show.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 34% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-three percent (33%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of +1. Only once (two weeks ago) has his rating been lower (see trends).

Seventy percent (70%) of Americans say they will not be impacted by the closure of GM and Chrysler dealerships. Only 9% are Very Likely to feel the pain.

GOP Energy Plan

2009-06-11T11:04:00.002-04:00

I am still having software issues, so here is an article brought to you by .

Published on Thursday, June 11, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

The GOP’s 100-Reactor/Trillion-Dollar Energy Plan Goes Radioactive
by Harvey Wasserman

As the prospective price of new reactors continues to soar, and as the first "new generation" construction projects sink in French and Finish soil, Republicans are introducing a bill to Congress demanding 100 new nuclear reactors in the US within twenty years. It explicitly welcomes "alternatives" such as oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and "clean coal." Though it endorses some renewables such as solar and wind power, it calls for no cap on carbon emissions.

According to the New York Times, this is the defining GOP alternative to a Democratic energy plan headed for a House vote later this month.

But niggling questions like who will pay for these reactors, who will insure them, where will the fuel come from, where will waste go and who will protect them from terrorists are not on the agenda. Given recent certain-to-prove-optimistic estimates of approximately $10 billion per reactor, the plan envisions a trillion-plus dollar commitment to a newly nuke-centered nation.

With this proposed legislation the GOP makes atomic energy the centerpiece of its strategy to deal with climate change.

Nuclear power requires energy-intensive activities such as uranium mining, milling, fuel enrichment, plus other carbon expenditures for plant construction, waste management and more. Reactors also convert buried uranium ore into huge quantities of heat, much of which becomes hot water and steam emitted into the environment. Reactors in France and elsewhere have been forced to shut because adjacent rivers have been taken to 90 degrees Farenheit by hot water dumped from reactor cooling systems.

None of this troubled GOP hearings this week on the future of atomic energy. There were no answers to how new reactors would be insured. Since 1957 the federal treasury has been the underwriter of last resort for potential reactor disasters. Renewed in the 2005 Bush energy plan, the commitment applies to all new reactors.

So reactors licensed to operate through 2057---as would be virtually certain under the GOP plan---would extend to a full century the atomic industry's inability to cover its own risks. Neither the Obama Administration nor the GOP has presented detailed plans for dealing with such disasters, or explained how they would be paid for.

Despite the GOP's endless focus on the terror attacks of 9/11/2001, no significant structural upgrades have been made to protect the currently licensed 104 US reactors from an air attack. The new reactors will be required to demonstrate an ability to resist a jet crash, but testing that requirement remains an open issue.

The ability to fuel this new fleet of reactors remains questionable. Reprocessing used fuel into re-usable Mixed Oxide rods has proven dirty, expensive and dangerous.

The initial experience with building new reactors runs parallel. As reported in the New York Times and elsewhere, French-financed construction projects at Flamanville, France, and at Okiluoto in Finland have soared hugely over budget and behind schedule. Much of the economically catastrophic experience endured by utilities and rate payers in building the first generation of reactors in the 1960s-1990s appears to be repeating itself with even bigger deficits. The French government's front-group Areva, which is building the new plants, has sunk into serious financial and political chaos, with potentially devastating implications for this much-touted "new generation" technology.

Recent radioactive leaks in Vermont and Illinois have underscored bitter disputes over re-licensing the 104 "first generation" US reactors. Some could now operate past the 60-year mark, even though most were originally designed to operate just 30, and all have serious issues ranging from frequent leaks to structural decay, unworkable evacuation plans and much more.

Meanwhile, with the apparent cancellation of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, the industry is no closer to dealing with its radioactive waste than it was 50 years ago.

None of which seems to daunt the industry or the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has yet to turn down a proposed re-licensing. Two states---Florida and Georgia---have now passed rate hikes aimed at funding new reactor construction. And Obama's Department of Energy may soon dole out $18.5 billion in construction loan guarantees put in place by the Bush 2005 Energy Plan. The DOE has identified four prime candidates for the money.

Nonetheless, since 2007 reactor opponents have three times defeated proposals for $50 billion in loan guarantees for new reactor construction. There is no indication from Wall Street and what's left of the private banking community that without heavy government guarantees, investments in nuclear power plants are at all attractive.

But while billing itself as the party of free enterprise---especially when it comes to health care---the GOP has made itself the unabashed champion of a technology that can't raise private capital without taxpayer backing, can't get private insurance, can't manage its wastes, and shows no sign of offering a meaningful solution to the problem of carbon emissions.

What the nuclear power industry does seem to have, however, is unlimited funding to push its product in the corporate media and Congress. This latest GOP proposal for 100 new nukes may not fly in this House session.

Sadly, Democratic-sponsored legislation is not nuke-free. The situation in Congress remains fluid and unpredictable, often changing from day to day. Various aspects of bills supported by various Democrats include hidden subsidies, disguised loan guarantees, counting nuclear power as "green" in proposed renewable portfolio standards, backdoor handouts and more. Sometimes the boosts are buried in obscure corners of sub-clauses that border on the indecipherable.

But surface they do, again and again. Thus far the anti-nuclear movement has done a remarkable job of blocking the worst of them. Continuing to do that will require eternal vigilance, endless grassroots action and the steadfast belief that in the long run, our species has the will and foresight to somehow avoid radioactive self-extinction.

Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.

2009-06-02T13:37:00.002-04:00

According to , President Obama has the approval of 33% of Americans so far as his job performance is concerned.24% of those survayed strongly dissapprove of the President performance at this point in time.

Thirty-one percent (31%) say the President’s economic stimulus package has helped the economy while 27% believe it has hurt. Fifty-two percent (52%) are now worried that the government will do too much while responding to the economic crunch.

Overall, 58% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance so far. Forty-one percent (41%) disapprove. For more Presidential barometers, see Obama By the Numbers and recent demographic highlights.

How long will the honeymoon last? Obama will stay in good standing with Ameas long as the economy doesn't sink to much farther into a hole. If things work out according to plan, Obama will manage to stay in our good graces.

State of the Economy

2009-06-01T13:43:00.002-04:00

What a dreary day in the united States! To start the day off, an American icon ( General motors ) went and filed for bankruptcy. This puts many workers on the unemployment line and it will not help our economy in any short order. Not soon after GM filed, the NYSE delisted the firm. If you still happen to own stock in GM, I do, then it's possible that we may never get our money back out of the company. My bet is that in the longer term, I'll recoup my investment with a very decent return. Can't do any worse than i've been doing with Microsoft.Time will tell, I guess.
I'm wondering if I can now buy a GM vehicle at one of those major dealer discounts that I've been hearing about? Not happening in Tampa,Florida, yet.

Reverse Racist?

2009-05-30T11:04:00.002-04:00

So once again, racist Rush Limbaugh is up to his old tricks, the typical conservative asswipe!
You've all heard about him calling judicial nominee Sonia Sotomayor a reverse racist because of her stance with the firefighters, in which, according to Rush, she sided against the white firefighters.
What I would like to know is, what the fuck is reverse racism? You are either a racist or you are not. Going by the theory of Mr. Limbaugh, if you are a racist against a white person of color, you are a reverse racist. If you are racist against people of other color, then you are just a racist. What is the fucking difference? There is no difference in the real world. A racist is a racist, period!

Lost in Space

2009-05-29T14:17:00.002-04:00

So now I am in Florida gertting ready for a funeral. i also have an appointment with the Department of Labor over my former bosses illegal wage practices. I'll be getting into that in a later post. I can tell you that I will be suing the former boss for double over-time and a host of other labor issues. Two years gathering information on this asshole and now i have him!
Stay tuned kiddies, you may learn something about your rights before this is over!

Latest H1N1 ( Swine Flu ) Stats

2009-05-07T08:39:00.004-04:00

As of May 6th, 2009, 41 states have been hit with this flu. Out of those states 641 cases have been confirmed in lab tests, and 2 deaths have occurred.
The CDC expects that there will be more cases and hospitalizations due to this flu, meaning that there will be more deaths in all likely-hood.
Internationally, 2099 infections have been reported from 23 countries.
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/

Obama's Approval Ratings

2009-05-06T12:21:00.007-04:00

It would seem that President Obama's approval ratings are holding steady, but, I think that he is suffering among some of the Democrats. We all know that he is among Republicans.
37% of voters approve of his role as President so far as his performance goes. 30% do not like the way that he is running things. I am one of those.
77% of the liberal voters think that Obama is doing a wonderful job, while only 15% of the conservative group think so. In fact, as should be expected, 54% of the conservatives actually disapprove of Obama's performance. I am shocked!

Overall, 57% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance so far while 43% disapprove. The President’s overall approval rating has stayed between 54% and 58% every day since April 1 and every day but one for the past two months.

You can view the polling results at rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
i'll certainly be glad when I get this link crap fixed!! This shit pisses me off! Have a great day everyone!

Republicans And Bankers

2009-05-06T08:54:00.002-04:00

Thomas Frank at the Wall Street Journal said it best so I chose a few of his words as the quote of the day.

Thomas Frank:

Incentives work, all right. Just look at the way our bankers come back to bonuses, finding in every occasion a good opportunity to cut themselves a slice of largess. Their determination is unrelenting, monomaniacal. It's like Republicans returning to tax cuts, the universal solution to every problem.

UAW Dumping Stock

2009-05-06T00:33:00.008-04:00

It is about time that the United Auto Workers take a little action against the automobile manufacturers and dumping some of their stock is a decent move.
As my link software is not working at this time, I have to type out the source URL for you. That would be: http://www.dollarsandsense.org/blog/2009/05/uaw-plans-to-dump-chrysler-stock.html
I hate having to post links in that way. Really, I do!

Dollars & Sense
It appears that the worker takeover of what remains of industrial America will be short lived. The other day the Senate shot down the possibility of bankruptcy judges being able to alter the terms of first mortgages, citing the "sanctity of contracts." Considering that the big worry here is how to finance the commitments to retired workers, it will be interesting how much concern these same Senators for the contracts of auto workers.

From the wires:

STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. - The United Auto Workers union has no intention of keeping its 55 percent stake in the new Chrysler and will sell the shares to fund a trust that will take over retiree health care costs next year, the union's president said Monday.

Speaking to reporters at a news conference in suburban Detroit, Ron Gettelfinger said the trust, called a voluntary employees beneficiary association (VEBA), will struggle at first. It is starting with $1.5 billion from an existing company health care trust, and will get $300 million from the company next year. The total retiree health care obligation is $10.9 billion for about 82,000 retirees, as well as current workers who eventually will retire.

While he said he is confident in the trust's funding, Gettelfinger warned that the VEBA may need to make additional cuts. Benefits such as dental and vision coverage already have been cut.

"The VEBA will be on life support initially," he said. "We took a lot of risks here."

Although the trust has a seat on Chrysler's new board, it essentially has no voting rights because it must vote with a majority of independent directors, he said. Retirees have the right to object to the VEBA settlement in bankruptcy court.

The union endorsed a deal for Fiat to run Chrysler and potentially take a controlling stake because it was the best option, Gettelfinger said.

"Of all of the alternatives that were out there in front of us, clearly this is head-and-shoulders above anything else," he added.

Gettelfinger said that critics who think the union is getting a better deal than Chrysler's secured debtholders are wrong because the UAW is taking a big risk with Chrysler stock funding the trust. The stock is worthless today, he noted.

"Let's be honest, it's zero today. The equity is going to be stressed," Gettelfinger said. "This isn't about finance, it's about people that expected health care benefits for life."

Gettelfinger said the union made concessions in 2007 and this year that have helped the company, although he would not place a specific number on how much the concessions are worth.

"It is billions and billions of dollars in relief to the corporation from the standpoint of cash flow," Gettelfinger said.

Some of Chrysler's secured creditors, however, are objecting to the deal in bankruptcy court and the UAW's larger ownership stake.

After the automaker and Treasury couldn't come to an agreement with certain debtholders, Chrysler filed for bankruptcy protection Thursday and is trying to emerge in 30 to 60 days as a stronger company that could eventually end up majority owned by Italy's Fiat Group SpA.

Internet Problems...

2009-05-05T23:47:00.002-04:00

... are still on-going with me. It seems that most of my software will not run right, if at all, and my verizon Wireless broadband seems to be the main culprit. Not to sure yet, but having the Net come and go at its own choosing is getting rather annoying.
Hopefully, I'll get the bullshit sorted out soon so that I can get back to sounding off about our President and the rest of government.
I hope that the Swine Flu is not bothering you or any of your loved ones. There are now some 400+ cases with two deaths thus far. Be safe people!