Post 61 of 100 of Brad’s Tiny World Scribefire Challenge.

Elizabethton Star Online Edition

Friday, October 17, 2008
776th…our hometown army

Today, members of the 776th Maintenance Company of the Tennessee National Guard left town on their first leg of deployment, which will eventually take them to an overseas assignment in either Iraq or Afghanistan. A spokesman for the Tennessee National Guard office in Nashville said more than likely the local soldiers will be sent to Iraq.

In the meantime, families of these soldiers ready for life without husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters. For the past few weeks, the troops have been busy sewing up the loose ends in their own lives while their families prepare to live without them until late next year.

The 776th’s mission is to ease the strain on the regular Army. Although things have calmed down in Iraq, it is still a very dangerous place to be. You can do everything right and still be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

For the most part, the men and women who are members of the 776th Maintenance Co. are only part-time soldiers. They are firemen, salespeople and mechanics, service-industry workers, city and county employees, health care workers, etc. They are our neighbors; they coach Little League; some are students; and some attend the same church as we do.

They feel a sense of responsibility to serve. They leave behind warrior wives and mothers, who this week often put on a brave face for their soldier husbands and sons. During the next few months, they must pay the bills, do the running, fix the flat tires and broken hot water heaters, and any other tasks around the house that must be done.

This is the third time since 1990 that the 776th has been deployed. This 100-plus soldier unit knew what they were in for when they signed up — a part of their contract that states can be mobilized if there is need. A good number of them hoped they never would have to go. Yet, when the time came to go, they were ready and willingly went. When local men and women receive the call to go, it makes all wars local.

As these men and women drove down Elk Avenue last Friday in their camouflaged uniforms, we saw fresh-faced men barely out of their teens, middle-aged and older men with heavily lined faces reporting to meet a responsibility perhaps they thought they had fulfilled long ago. Many of the troops are young recruits, and most of the officers and senior sergeants are veterans on their second and third call-ups.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the military has relied heavily on reservists to conduct overseas operations. More than 450,000 of these part-time soldiers — they generally train during one weekend a month and two weeks of active duty a year — have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan since 9/11; more than 800 of them have died. In the prolonged ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, no reservists have spent their blood and sweat more unreservedly than those of the Army National Guard, which has deployed more than 190,000 soldiers and lost nearly 500.

The 776th Maintenance Co. is our hometown army…and while they are away serving our country, we urge those left behind to support them with care packages, cards, e-mails and prayers. Until they come home…we wish them the best!

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New superpowers are competing for diminishing resources as Britain becomes a bit-player. The outcome could be deadly

I have long been saying that it was water not oil that really matters in the world. If you have ever thought Tibet was about land you would be greatly mistaken, unless you were referring to the watershed from those mountains. There will come a time in the not so distant future when oil hits $200 a barrel, or maybe even $150/barrel that Americans decide they have had enough and make the hard switch to biofuels. I am not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I can put two and two together and many large corporations have been buying farm land for decades and losing money on it.  They wouldn’t do that if there wasnt a future profit motive to it. That tells me others have seen a biofuel future too.

When America refuses to pay the burden of oil, it won’t take long before we are producing most of our own fuel, as we did more than a century ago. Then let us ask what happens to the rest of the world. The hardest hit will be developing countries that often rely on food subsidies from the US. We will simply say, I am sorry there is no wheat or corn for you, because we moved our surplus production that you have relied on for decades into sorghum, switchgrass, and oilseed crops. Don’t think for a moment that Americans aren’t going to feel that pinch too. Given our habits most Americans would rather have cheap fuel, then they would a sandwich especially when the cheap bread goes to five dollars a loaf.

In some respects $5/loaf will be good for the people. years ago when government statistics were put together they gave a much higher weight to food prices when they decided what poor was. For years now food has not kept up with the price of housing, which has over taken the American budget. Of course this being the American government we are talking about, they are likely to decide that after decades of study and sitting around with their heads up their asses that the cost of housing really is what we should base poverty levels on. Coincidence? I very much doubt that, this is the US government we are talking about.

I know what some of you are thinking, so what if a bunch of people in Africa starve. Well you should care, not just because they are human beings either. Africa is not only a land of tribal peoples, but of great Muslim extremism. if you think we have the Islamicists pissed at us for our involvement in those oil rich countries, think what happens when we tell the ones we have been feeding all these years to suddenly go fuck themselves. Without water and without food, they have nothing to live for except to hurt us, and hurt us they will. They flock to terror training camps with not a holy crusade, but revenge in their hearts…

read more | digg story

Is there a solution to all of this? Not an easy one, and not one that doesn’t mean changing our habits and demanding better fuel efficiency now, rather than cheaper fuel prices later. We will never see dollar a gallon gas prices again, but I do believe it is possible to see twenty miles per dollar spent on fuel.

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Dick Cheney is neither stupid nor naive. I can say a lot of things about the man, but neither of those really apply. However the rhetoric he is spouting about freedom while perusing the Middle East might lead one to that conclusion.

“You and I know what it means to be free…”

That is one of the most laughable things I think I have ever heard the man say. Americans have no idea what freedom is. If you think it is having an alternative between Coke and Pepsi or McDonalds and Burger King, you would be wrong. Freedom was having the choice of dozens of smaller locally owned businesses to choose from that Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds, and Burger King forced out of business in a war of corporate consumerism. America rolled over, because giving up freedom to choose was supposed to be the cool thing to do. Too much individualism would lead us down the dark and murky path to anarchy. Bullshit! Too many choices meant we were free to choose something other than the establishment.

We keep telling the troops that we are fighting to give the Iraqi and Afghan peoples freedom, but that is the last thing we want them to have. Do you know what happens when they have true freedom? They inevitably make choices that are not in our best interests. The Palestinians had the freedom to vote and what did they do? They chose Hamas. What is needed right now in Iraq and Afghanistan is not freedom, it is security.

“We’re helping them fight back because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s important to our own long-term security,” Cheney said. “As President Bush has said, the war on terror is an ideological struggle and as long as this part of the world remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export.”

If these people wanted freedom, they would need us to fight back for them. When The World Trade Center was attack, we were told this was a financial attack on America. Oh how right they were. What has been the cost of it so far? I am not talking just about the deficit spending by the government either. How has the rise of prices and down turn in other areas affected your ability to function? How will the war affect your children’s economic well being? We were told this war would pay for itself? Will it fix the economy of the dead and dismembered?

Dick tells the troops we are doing this because it is the right thing to do. I scratch my head at this notion. These were people who didn’t yet want freedom, they weren’t willing to give up everything in the name of it. Janice Joplin got it right when she sang “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose…” When the pain of change is less than the pain of death for you and your family, then you are ready for freedom. Neither the Iraqi nor the the Afghani people were ready for that yet. What we did was give them anarchy in the name of our own national vanity.

Dick wants you to believe that their lack of freedom was a threat to our nation’s interest, he also thought that helping corporate giants squash middle class mom and pop businesses was good for your freedom. It is time to think for yourself and not be a Dick!

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Dick Cheney is neither stupid nor naive. I can say a lot of things about the man, but neither of those really apply. However the rhetoric he is spouting about freedom while perusing the Middle East might lead one to that conclusion.

“You and I know what it means to be free…”

That is one of the most laughable things I think I have ever heard the man say. Americans have no idea what freedom is. If you think it is having an alternative between Coke and Pepsi or McDonalds and Burger King, you would be wrong. Freedom was having the choice of dozens of smaller locally owned businesses to choose from that Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds, and Burger King forced out of business in a war of corporate consumerism. America rolled over, because giving up freedom to choose was supposed to be the cool thing to do. Too much individualism would lead us down the dark and murky path to anarchy. Bullshit! Too many choices meant we were free to choose something other than the establishment.

We keep telling the troops that we are fighting to give the Iraqi and Afghan peoples freedom, but that is the last thing we want them to have. Do you know what happens when they have true freedom? They inevitably make choices that are not in our best interests. The Palestinians had the freedom to vote and what did they do? They chose Hamas. What is needed right now in Iraq and Afghanistan is not freedom, it is security.

“We’re helping them fight back because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s important to our own long-term security,” Cheney said. “As President Bush has said, the war on terror is an ideological struggle and as long as this part of the world remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export.”

If these people wanted freedom, they would need us to fight back for them. When The World Trade Center was attack, we were told this was a financial attack on America. Oh how right they were. What has been the cost of it so far? I am not talking just about the deficit spending by the government either. How has the rise of prices and down turn in other areas affected your ability to function? How will the war affect your children’s economic well being? We were told this war would pay for itself? Will it fix the economy of the dead and dismembered?

Dick tells the troops we are doing this because it is the right thing to do. I scratch my head at this notion. These were people who didn’t yet want freedom, they weren’t willing to give up everything in the name of it. Janice Joplin got it right when she sang “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose…” When the pain of change is less than the pain of death for you and your family, then you are ready for freedom. Neither the Iraqi nor the the Afghani people were ready for that yet. What we did was give them anarchy in the name of our own national vanity.

Dick wants you to believe that their lack of freedom was a threat to our nation’s interest, he also thought that helping corporate giants squash middle class mom and pop businesses was good for your freedom. It is time to think for yourself and not be a Dick!

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Dick Cheney is neither stupid nor naive. I can say a lot of things about the man, but neither of those really apply. However the rhetoric he is spouting about freedom while perusing the Middle East might lead one to that conclusion.

“You and I know what it means to be free…”

That is one of the most laughable things I think I have ever heard the man say. Americans have no idea what freedom is. If you think it is having an alternative between Coke and Pepsi or McDonalds and Burger King, you would be wrong. Freedom was having the choice of dozens of smaller locally owned businesses to choose from that Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds, and Burger King forced out of business in a war of corporate consumerism. America rolled over, because giving up freedom to choose was supposed to be the cool thing to do. Too much individualism would lead us down the dark and murky path to anarchy. Bullshit! Too many choices meant we were free to choose something other than the establishment.

We keep telling the troops that we are fighting to give the Iraqi and Afghan peoples freedom, but that is the last thing we want them to have. Do you know what happens when they have true freedom? They inevitably make choices that are not in our best interests. The Palestinians had the freedom to vote and what did they do? They chose Hamas. What is needed right now in Iraq and Afghanistan is not freedom, it is security.

“We’re helping them fight back because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s important to our own long-term security,” Cheney said. “As President Bush has said, the war on terror is an ideological struggle and as long as this part of the world remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export.”

If these people wanted freedom, they would need us to fight back for them. When The World Trade Center was attack, we were told this was a financial attack on America. Oh how right they were. What has been the cost of it so far? I am not talking just about the deficit spending by the government either. How has the rise of prices and down turn in other areas affected your ability to function? How will the war affect your children’s economic well being? We were told this war would pay for itself? Will it fix the economy of the dead and dismembered?

Dick tells the troops we are doing this because it is the right thing to do. I scratch my head at this notion. These were people who didn’t yet want freedom, they weren’t willing to give up everything in the name of it. Janice Joplin got it right when she sang “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose…” When the pain of change is less than the pain of death for you and your family, then you are ready for freedom. Neither the Iraqi nor the the Afghani people were ready for that yet. What we did was give them anarchy in the name of our own national vanity.

Dick wants you to believe that their lack of freedom was a threat to our nation’s interest, he also thought that helping corporate giants squash middle class mom and pop businesses was good for your freedom. It is time to think for yourself and not be a Dick!

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1. Don’t be a Dick Dick Cheney is neither stupid nor naive. I can say...
2. Don’t be a Dick Dick Cheney is neither stupid nor naive. I can say...
3. Racism in America I am more than a little disgusted that we are...

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