In the original edition of the book this movie was based upon, the lovable and industrious characters portrayed therein were described as pygmy Negroes, who’s diet at one time included tree bark.
This from Mimi Hall at USA Today:
WASHINGTON — The Coast Guard’s ships, planes and helicopters are breaking down at record rates, which may threaten the service’s ability to carry out its post-9/11 mission of protecting ports and waterways against terrorism.
Key members of Congress, maritime security experts and a former top Homeland Security Department official say that the fleet is failing and that plans to replace the Coast Guard’s 88 aging cutters and 186 aircraft over the next 20 years should be accelerated.
“This nation must understand the dire situation in which the Coast Guard now finds itself,” says Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, chairwoman of a Senate Coast Guard subcommittee. She favors replacing the Coast Guard’s “deepwater” fleet — the ships and aircraft capable of operating far offshore — over 10 to 15 years.
This on Yahoo News from Ted Rall:
If Newsweek’s report is accurate, Karl Rove is more morally repugnant and more anti-American than Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden, after all, has no affiliation with, and therefore no presumed loyalty to, the United States. Rove, on the other hand, is a U.S. citizen and, as deputy White House chief of staff, a high-ranking official of the U.S. government sworn to uphold and defend our nation, its laws and its interests. Yet he sold out America just to get even with Joe Wilson.
[…]
Rove and his collaborators should quickly resign and face prosecution for betraying their country, but given their sense of personal entitlement impeachment is probably the best we can hope for. Congress, and all Americans, should place patriotism ahead of party loyalty.
If you read the whole article, you will find the by “best we can hope for,” Rall is referring to his earlier calling for Rove’s execution. But tell me Ted, shouldn’t Rove “and his collaborators” wait at least until all the information is in? My information is that, while Time Inc.’s records indicate that Matt Cooper spoke to Rove, they do not expressly say that Rove fingered Plame.
Hat Tip: Gateway Pundit
Update: Well, it looks like Cooper has agreed to testify, under blanket permission from his “source”. Miller’s “source”, whom we might assume to be different from Miller’s, as, if they where going to get the same information from Cooper, Judge Hogan would have no reason to violate privilege (necessity test), and jail Miller. This goes further to “clear” Karl Rove in the “court of public opinion.” But, as grand jury proceedings are secret, Rove will never be found “innocent in fact,” and this will live on, like the “Bush lied” issue.
Our friends from Down Under might note that we are only on season two here, about three years behind you. Our current episode is You Can’t Leave Your Hat On.
Well, concurret with my previous post, this is pretty much a stock melodrama. It’s just amazing to see something this well produced come from overseas.
But, as I inferred in my previous post, the real attraction of this series is those georgous Aussie women [I still think Lisa Chappell and Sela Ward were twins, seperated at birth. (Although, in truth, Lisa is about 12 years younger, and has blue eyes, rather than Sela’s brown.)]
But there’s something beyond that: It’s that wonderful Kingsford Homestead (the fictious Drover’s Run). I mean, a million dollars wouldn’t build sets like this. And the Barossa Valley: I mean this is the Orange County I saw evaporating before my eyes in the ’60s.
This ties into an email I just received from one of our more brilliant (albeit perhaps rather innocent) readers, quoting Hermann Goering:
Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the
country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the
people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament
or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be
brought to the bidding of the leaders. That’s easy. All you have to do is tell
them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifist for lack of patriotism,
and exposing them to greater danger.
I pointed out to her that, while not untrue, this quote was hardly seminal. But, by attaching it to a reviled Nazi, certain factions gain political advantage.
An incise knowledge of history is essential, for the electorate to rise above the demagogues.
Argh! I lost the whole first half of this post, concerning David McCullough, 1776, and the unpopularity of the American Revolution. Oh, fuck it.
…Hello Baton Rouge. Won’t you turn your radio down…
I’m just sounding off to see what readers we have around and abouts on this long weekend. Please chime in with your handle and locale.
I am currently watching The Magnificent Ambersons, for about the dozenith time. And I can’t help but wonder: How much were the generational frictions of the ’60s were precursed by this movie?
Just reflecting on the great line from the banquet scene: “Perhaps the world would be better if automobiles had never been invented.”
Yes, perhaps the world would be better if the wheel hadn’t have been invented either. But that’s really not the question, is it?
In one of the trailers for the new Bravo series, Being Bobby Brown, our central character introduces himself as ” hi, I’m Bobby Brown, Whitney Houston’s husband.”
Ack: that’s about it for you, Bobby. And a tenuous thread in itself.
Well, I’m still here, manning my post. But I havta’ telya’, at least half my friends are out-of-town – taking advantage of a four-day weekend.
I hazard to think that the same is true of my readership on the blogosphere. Should I bother posting? Does anyone really care?
This From OpinionJournal’s Best of The Web:
House Party
Liberal blogger Steve Smith observes, intriguingly but inconclusively, that
there is a strong correlation “between a robust housing market and Democratic
voting patterns”:In fact, the correllation [sic] gets stronger the further back you go in
time. While there are a handful of Blue States in the third quartile of the
housing market for 2004, and only one (Michigan) near the bottom, only one
Blue State (Michigan, again) was in the lower half from 2000-2004. Going back
even further in time, every state (and the District of Columbia) that voted
for John Kerry last year, without exception, was among the top 24 states in
the country in terms of the increase in residential property values since
1980. The 27 states with the lowest rate of increase, again without exception,
voted for George Bush. Only four Red States (Virginia, Florida, Nevada and
Colorado), placed in the Booming 24, and Kerry was competitive in each of
those states.I don’t know what it all means, but I thought I’d share that with you.
Mickey Kaus notes this and asks:
Do Democrats produce rising home values or do rising home values make people
Democrats? (The latter seems implausible.) Are both phenomena related to high
education levels and/or a large concentration of universities? And how does
this correlation jibe with the much advertised GOP dominance in the fastest-growing
states, which you’d think would be states with rapidly appreciating real estate?
Explain it away if you can, Michael Barone!Well, we’re not Michael Barone, but here are three factors that may explain
it in part:First, Democrats help produce rising home values by supporting development
and labor regulations that suppress new construction, thus limiting the supply
of housing.Second, geography produces both Democrats and rising home values. That is,
Dems tend to prefer living in old cities that are already built up and that
often have physical barriers to sprawl (i.e., oceans, lakes and rivers). The
housing supply in these places is less elastic than in Republican-leaning cities
like Phoenix and Dallas.Third, low housing prices attract Republicans. As the Los Angeles Times reported
in November (and we noted):In this month’s election, President Bush carried 97 of the nation’s 100 fastest-growing
counties, most of them “exurban” communities that are rapidly transforming
farmland into subdivisions and shopping malls on the periphery of major metropolitan
areas. . . .These growing areas, filled largely with younger families fleeing urban centers
in search of affordable homes, are providing the GOP a foothold in blue Democratic-leaning
states and solidifying the party’s control over red Republican-leaning states.In other words, housing prices are low in Republican areas because there’s
enough land and enough freedom for the supply to keep up with the demand, whereas
in Democratic areas housing is expensive because it is scarce, for both natural
and artificial reasons.
I think the idea merits further investigation.
I just saw a commercial, sponsored by Anheuser-Busch, which touted beer-drinkers as “the nation’s best moderators.” Oh, give me a break.
Survey after survey has shown that, even among hard-core boozers, those with the greatest tendency towards moderation are those who drink it “straight”, or nearly so – “say, scotch-on-the-rocks, or a very-dry-martini.”
The fact is, the harshness of high-proof beverages produces a self-moderating effect. Save for a few real zoners, the hard-core drinkers consume at 30 proof or less.
There are so many conservatives taking so much objection to so many liberals taking such exception to the current administration’s policy, vis-a-vis Iraq, that one is driven to say: “yea, yea, what new do you have to offer?” I was just about to cite yet another liberal vanilla flavored opinion piece, but what’s the point? It’s time to say, “yea, fuck you, and your mother,” and get down to business.
And, history is with us: do you think The Revolution would have succeeded, where it up to popular opinion? How about Truman’s war against Japan? No, there are points in history where the bold must make bold moves. And these are those times.
At Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Skippy objected to the term “blogosphere”, because nothing in the internet is truly “spherical”. I countered, with citations of “sphere of influence,” and “magnetosphere“.
Skippy still takes issue. But, as this point it is a digression from the main thrust of his (her?) thread, I thought we might take it up here. Oh, and BTW: anyone looking for a REALLY cool graphic of the magnetophere should go here: http://www.pparc.ac.uk/Nw/Magnetosphere.jpg
In a bit of intellectual disintegrity, right on the heals of declaring that government can seize the homes of private individuals, the Supremes pronounced that the cable lines of giant corporations are protected:
“Today’s ruling is bad news for millions of Americans who are overpaying billions of dollars every year in cable Internet service,” said Mehrdad Saberi, chairman of the California ISP Association. “The interests of American consumers and businesses have been sold out as the FCC and now the court have defined Internet service in such a narrow way that allows cable companies to escape proper regulation. Nearly every innovation in Internet service has come from independent ISPs. Now that source of Internet innovation, consumer choice and affordability is threatened with extinction as cable companies block the benefits of competition.”
Not that I really see this as a bad ruling, but I don’t see how the public is not better served by the lower prices and improved service that invariably comes from competition, than from a highly speculative community redevelopment project.
The two cases are No. 04-277, National Cable & Telecomm. Ass’n v. Brand X Internet Servs., and No. 04-281, FCC v. Brand X Internet Servs. I will be surfing the blawgs later tonight looking for other opinions on this.
Update: David Kopel at Volokh has an interesting post, in which he points to this policy study he did in 1999. He states that open access to cable systems would discourage cable providers from making improvements in infrastructure, as they would have to share the benefits of those improvements with companies which made no such investment.
I agree, and see an analogous situation with Kelo: Homeowners and small investors will be far less likely to make improvements and renovations in structures, particularly in less affluent areas most likely to be targeted for redevelopment.
After Timmer’s earlier post, I thought it might be enlightening to post some excerpts from the NYTimes’ David Brooks’ Sunday column:
Jeffrey Sachs, as you may know, is the Columbia University economist who has done more to put poverty in Africa atop the global agenda than anybody else. He has hectored and lobbied the developed world to forgive debts, set goals and increase aid to ameliorate the suffering of the extremely poor.
But Sachs is a child of the French Enlightenment. At the end of his new book, “The End of Poverty,” he delivers an unreconstructed tribute to the 18th-century Enlightenment, when leading thinkers had an amazing confidence in their ability to refashion reality so that it would conform to reason.
[…]
Sachs is also a materialist. He dismisses or downplays those who believe that human factors like corruption, greed, institutions, governance, conflict and traditions have contributed importantly to Africa’s suffering. Instead, he emphasizes material causes: lack of natural resources, lack of technology, bad geography and poverty itself as a self-perpetuating trap.
This gives him an impressive confidence on the malleability of human societies. Though $2.3 trillion has been spent over the past 50 years to address global poverty, without producing anything like the results we would have hoped for, Sachs is sure that with his insights, and most important, with more money, extreme poverty can be eliminated with one big, final push. “We can realistically envision a world without extreme poverty by the year 2025,” he writes. “Ending the poverty trap will be much easier than it appears,” he declares.
[…]
Instead of Sachs’s monumental grand push to end poverty, the Bush administration has devised the Millennium Challenge Account, which is not dismissed by Sachs, but not heralded either. This program is built upon the assumption that aid works only where there is good governance and good governance exists only where the local folks originate and believe in the programs. M.C.A. directs aid to countries that have taken responsibility for their own reform.
It has the faults of its gradualist virtues. I recently sat in on a meeting in Mozambique between local and American officials. It was clear that the program, while well conceived, has been horribly executed. The locals had been given only the vaguest notions of what sort of projects the U.S. is willing to finance. After two years of trying they had received nothing.
Nonetheless, the Bush approach, when reformed, at least builds on the experience of the past decades, while Sachs, as reviewers have noticed, repeats the 1960’s. If, à la Sachs, we assume money translates easily into growth, if we pour aid into Africa without regard to local institutions, we will do little good, we will exhaust donors and we will discredit the aid enterprise for years to come.
No, ending poverty in Africa will not be easy. There are entrenched interests there dedicated to continuing the impoverishment of the people. For Africa to prosper, those interests must be eradicated. And history tells us that seldom happens without the expense of blood, as well as treasure.
One might think that the viewership of C-SPAN would be made up of the most intelligent, urbane, and sophisticated individuals this society had to offer.
But I have been watching Washington Journal semi-regularly (I frequently wake at 4 am, but seldom make it to 7) for the past several months. And I must say: compared to my brief experiences with talk radio, this is far worse; by-and-large, these people are the dregs of political society.
And I have tried to call a few times (always on the “others” line). And, save for a couple of interminable rings, I have always been met with a busy signal. And I wonder if this doesn’t have something to do with those who actually get through, and get on the air. Perhaps the only ones with the perseverance are the real kooks?
With funding for public broadcasting an issue just now, and one big glaring facet of the controversy being political bias, you would think that PBS stations would shy away from such politically charged “documentaries” as what I am currently watching on KLCS: Oil on Ice. I mean, this is about as much of a documentary as Fahrenheit 9/11. This is pure propaganda. The actual facts presented are slim, generally twisted, and come only in short snippets. Between those are these long stretches of pap, designed strictly to appeal to the emotions – complete with a heart-wrenching soundtrack. There are all these Rousseauvian images of native peoples living quite primitively, hunting/fishing for subsistence, and (of course) “using every part of the animal.” There is a very brief mention of all the benefits these people have gotten as a result of Prudhoe Bay oil, all countered by the requisite “buts”. Nowhere is it mentioned that the strongest support for drilling in ANWR among any group of Americans, except perhaps oil company execs., is with those same native Americans.
Oh, I can’t even believe this, now they are talking about the evils of automobiles, coral reefs, rain forests, and (of course) global warming.
I think I have to go hug the toilet.
Update: Just came back from the bathroom to hear them proclaim the “declining fuel efficiency” of automobiles. Fact: the real “fuel efficiency” of automobiles running on Otto-cycle gasoline engines; that is, the amount of energy delivered, versus the theoretical total chemical energy of the fuel consumed, has been increasing steadily, and now exceeds 98% under optimum conditions. Another proclamation: “If everyone in America were driving vehicles as ‘fuel efficient’ as the ‘best’ hybrids, we wouldn’t need to drill in ANWR.” Fact: The Honda Impulse only meets the transportation needs of a tiny fraction of American consumers. And if you aren’t satisfying your needs, you are not being “efficient”; you are just depriving yourself.
Please translate the following: “Klaatu Barada Nikto.”
For this week’s winner: A free Kevin Connors action figure, as soon as I seal the deal on that marketing tie-in.
Oh, and of course, using search engines, or other automated means, would be cheating. 🙂
This from OpinionJournal’s Best of the Web:
That Boy Ain’t Right, I Tell You What
You’ve heard of “South Park Conservatives,” those who lean to the right and enjoy the exuberantly obscene, and politically incorrect, Comedy Central series. (Buy the book here.) Matt Bai of the New York Times magazine is hoping there’s a counterpart, “King of the Hill Democrats.”Bai interviews Gov. Mike Easley of North Carolina, who is “is so obsessed with the show that he instructs his pollster to separate the state’s voters into those who watch ‘King of the Hill’ and those who don’t so he can find out whether his arguments on social and economic issues are making sense to the sitcom’s fans.” Easley has a whole theory of main character Hank Hill’s political philosophy:
Easley told me that Hank would never support a budget like the one North Carolina’s Senate recently passed, which would drop some 65,000 mostly elderly citizens from the Medicaid rolls; Hank, after all, has pitched in to support his own father, a brutish war veteran, and he would never condone a community’s walking away from its ailing parents. Similarly, Hank may be a lover of the environment–he was furious when kids trashed the local campground–but he resents self-righteous environmentalists like the ones who forced Arlen to install those annoying low-flow toilets. Voters like Hank, if they had heard about it on the evening news, would have supported Easley’s ”Clean Smokestacks” law, which forced North Carolina’s coal-powered electric plants to burn cleaner, but only because industry was a partner in the final bill, rather than its target.
We’re pretty sure South Park conservatives don’t sit around trying to figure out what Eric Cartman’s position would be on tort reform or the Central American Free Trade Agreement. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Democrats take cartoons far too seriously.
As Hank Hill has praised both Ann Richards and George W. Bush, one must question what his political affiliation is.
Personally, I think Hank is a conservative learning to exist in an increasingly liberal world.
I’ve been paying $10 for a haircut for the last 10 years. But my stylist has just retired. I shudder to think what I might have to pay now.
On May 18, 1999, Bill Clinton had his hair cut in Air Force 1 on the LAX tarmac, by one of Hollywood’s top stylists, Christophe, reportedly holding up air traffic (delays in air traffic later debunked). The word at the time was that Christophe got $300 for a typical haircut. Jose Eber was just on Cavuto, talking about “the $800 haircut” (he gets $400-500). On a recent episode of Bravo’s Blow Out, Jonathan Antin said he gets $500 for a haircut in his shop, and $5000 for a “housecall.”
OpinionJournal’s John Fund looks again at America’s deficiency in history education, with an eye towards Philadelphia’s recent requirement for an African-American history course:
Other critics note that schools already put on programs every February for Black History Month, something not done for other ethnic groups. They fear a separate course will diminish student understanding of the overall American experience. Back in the 1960s, novelist James Baldwin testified before Congress that the triumphs and tribulations of black history should be woven into all history courses, rather than segregated. Diane Ravitch, a leading education reformer, agrees that African-American history should be studied but hopes it will be “based on the best scholarship, not ideology or politics.”
Dream on. What’s more likely to happen is that the creation of a specific African-American history course will fuel demands from other groups, such as Hispanics or gays, for similar history mandates.
[…]
We are risking something very basic by failing to communicate the basic ideals of America and instead, as historian David McCullough told me, “raising a generation of students who are historically illiterate.” But many of those students will eventually become curious, and without a solid grounding in the past, they could easily fall prey to revisionist history, whether it be of the Confederate or Oliver Stone variety.
[…]
When Ronald Reagan delivered his 1989 farewell address to the nation, he noted there was “a great tradition of warnings in presidential farewells,” and he would make no exception. He told his audience that the “one that’s been on my mind for some time” was that the country was failing to adequately teach our children the American story and what it represents in the history of the world. “We’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion, but what’s important,” he said. “If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I am warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.”
As well-meaning as Philadelphia’s attempt to raise the self-esteem of black students may be, we should take time this coming Fourth of July to realize that our failure to teach America’s story demands far more strenuous solutions.
Philadelphia is notorious for having some of the nation’s worst schools. As is typical, the curriculum is being determined by political fad and fancy, rather than an objective look at what’s required to turn out successful graduates.
…The Al-Arian trial in Florida is perhaps the biggest yet in the Islamofascist War. Yet only hard-core news junkies even know about it. The MSM attitude is typified by the NYTimes’ Eric Lichtblau:
Clearly the Mississippi trial warranted that coverage, but one can make the case that Islamic Jihad is to the 21st century what the Klan was to the 20th and that the trial of Al-Arian is every bit analogous to Killen’s.
The Times, however, after three stories covering the opening of the Al-Arian trial has decided to take it off the daily beat.
Eric Lichtblau, the Times reporter on the case, wrote in an e-mail to The Jewish Week, “It’s uncertain when I’ll be back in Tampa, but we’ll be monitoring the trial and probably doing occasional stories along the way on key witnesses, the start of the defense, closings and the verdict. That’s the norm for a case of interest like this one. There are very few trials that we or other national media cover on a day-to-day or even weekly basis, and the slow start for the prosecution in Al-Arian didn’t suggest there would be enough to warrant frequent coverage. But if you hear of something interesting on it, let me know.”
Hat Tip: Roger L. Simon
I am currently watching A Few Good Men, on TCM. And there is little to be ashamed of with this. After all, in-and-of itself, this is, arguably, Tom Cruise’ best movie – after Rain Man.
But what gets me is: this is a classic? Man – it’s only thirteen years old!?!?! I mean, this certainly has more substance than, say, Mister Roberts. But it doesn’t have the gravitates which comes with age.
Is it just me?
Update: Perhaps what makes this a classic is Nicholson, as Col. Nathan R. Jessep, and the fact that this was released eleven years before Gitmo became a POW camp. I can just see him spitting out in Dick Durbin’s face; “you can’t handle the truth.”
Update II: After watching this movie again, in full, including the loathsome and anticlimactic ending, I must say, it is strictly the questioning of Col. Jessep which makes this film a classic. In an instant, this rises from a petty legal who-dun-it, to high courtroom drama, on a par with To Kill A Mockingbird or Inherit The Wind. Yes, for those few minutes, this film certainly deserves a place among the pantheon of classics.
I have previously derided the advertisers for HP, for overplaying the all-too-common, and simplistic Ray Davies tune Picture Book, until they’d run it into the ground. Well, I guess they got one on me. Because, for the past couple of weeks or so, they’ve been playing a tune WHICH I KNEW I KNEW, but I couldn’t place it.
Well, I doubt you’ve EVER heard it before, unless you are at least ten years older then I, and likely a West Coast Beat-Nik or Zoot-Suiter. As I only know this song from having been a regular listener to the Johnny Otis show on KPFK.
Anyway, the song is called Out Of The Picture. And it was recorded by a West Coast R&B group called The Robins, in 1956. It was one of their last.
Oh, and the guy lip-syncing: that’s Francois Vogel, the director of the commercial.
Those of you who have had problems accessing The Daily Brief of late will be happy to know that our host has moved us to a new server. And we are assured that, while momentary problems are unavoidable, the extended and repeated downtimes, as well as slow access, are a thing of the past.
At this point, just a few days since the move, I must say that response seems to be MUCH faster. I would like to thank you for bearing with us.
Straight on the heals of Raich, which establishes that Washington can limit any activity, we now have Kelo, which establishes that we have private property rights only so far as it is convenient to government. In her dissenting opinion, Justice O’Connor says it:
In dissent, O’Connor criticized the majority for abandoning the conservative principle of individual property rights and handing “disproportionate influence and power” to the well-heeled.
“The specter of condemnation hangs over all property,” O’Connor wrote. “Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.”
At least Justice Kennedy seems to recognize some limits to the license granted to governments by Kelo:
Kennedy was not so reticent. Although he joined the Stevens opinion in full, it is clear from his concurring opinion that he sensed that the prospect of abuse was more evident than Stevens had acknowledged. Since his vote was necessary for the city of New London to prevail, his separate opinion in some sense may be said to be controlling.
According to Kennedy, if an economic development project favors a private developer, “with only incidental or pretextual public benefits,” that would not be tolerated even by applying the minimum standard of “rational basis review.”
His opinion elaborated: “There may be private transfers in which the risk of undetected impermissible favoritism of private parties is so acute that a presumption (rebuttable or otherwise) of invalidity is warranted under the Public Use Clause.” He called it a “demanding level of scrutiny,” thus indicating that it was something like “rational basis-plus.”
He did not spell out such a heightened standard further, saying the Kelo decision “is not the occasion for conjecture as to what sort of cases might justify a more demanding standard.”
Glenn Reynolds sees the probability of political fallout:
I predict that this will be a big political issue, on both the left and the right. For Bush and the Republicans it’s a big vulnerability — if they don’t do anything about it, many conservatives will stay home in disgust at the next election. On the other hand, if they do something — like, say, backing Congressional action to limit takings for private use — they’ll offend wealthy real estate developers, merchants, and influential local populations. They’ll be squeezed, and I don’t think that “help us confirm our judges to reverse this” will be a sufficient answer, though they’ll try to make it one.
On the left, it’s seen (rightly) as a victory for the hated Wal-Mart, and as a rule whose burden is sure to fall mostly on the poor. (When did a city ever level a rich neighborhood for this sort of thing?) On the other hand, the left isn’t big on limits to government power, especially in the economic sphere.
It’s certainly a hot issue on talk radio and in the blogosphere already. I suspect it’ll stay that way through the 2006 elections.
Perhaps this will drive more people to vote Libertarian? That would be a good thing.
As usual, Austin Bay is dead-on:
Given the vicious enemy we face, five years, perhaps 15 years from now, occasional bullets and bombs will disrupt the political and economic building. This is the Bush administration’s biggest strategic mistake — a failure to tap the reservoir of American willingness 9-11 produced.
One afternoon in December 2001, my mother told me she remembered being a teenager in 1942 and tossing a tin can on a wagon that rolled past the train station in her hometown. Mom said she knew that the can she tossed didn’t add much to the war effort, but she felt that in some small, token perhaps, but very real way, she was contributing to the battle.
“The Bush administration is going to make a terrible mistake if it does not let the American people get involved in this war. Austin, we need a war bond drive. This matters, because this is what it will take.”
She was right then, and she’s right now.