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Why Can't We Get Along?: What Disturbs Me About America Every time I lo g in to face book, or Google Plus, it's  the same thing: We are divi ded, it seems, into two camps who cannot for the life of them say a civil word a bout each other .  Republicans and Conservatives look down their noses at anyone who does not agree with their business oriented view of America, and consider all Democrats and Liberals parasites and a drag on the country. They look at them as lowlife individuals who don't want to work for a living. The Democrats and Liberals, on the other hand, look at all Republicans and Conservatives as heartless, demonic souls who only look at the bottom line with no concern about the humanity that drives the economy of the country, and who want to control every aspect of a citizens life, while claiming to want less government. Both sides claim to have the best interest of the American People in mind. Both sides claim that the other side has distorted what America

I n 1934, a group of indu stri ali sts , unhappy with the direction that Pre sident Roosevelt was taking the country, attempted to recruit a group of WW I ve terans to mount an armed insurrection and overthrow the d emocratically elected government and i nstall a f acist type dictatorship in it's place. They m ight have accomplished this, save for the man that they recruited to lead the ins urrection: t wo time medal of ho nor winn er and Marine Corps General, Smedley T. Butler. Although a vocal critic of the administration, General Butler was true to his oath, t o protect and defend the constit ution of the United Sta tes against all enem ies, forei gn an d domestic. The plot was foiled, the conspirators were never prosecuted because they represented the rich and powerful of the time. If the plot had succeeded, things would have been very different, and the outcome of WWII may very well have been very different, and the course of the history that we all remember today would ha

My Back Pages: Martin Luther King Day, January 21, 2013 : Martin Luther King Day,  January 21, 2013   On April 4, 1968 I was a young Marine in a casual company barracks in Okinaw a, w a iting f...

Martin Luther King Day,  January 21, 2013   On April 4, 1968 I was a young Marine in a casual company barracks in Okinaw a, w a iting for my orders to leave for Vietnam. It wa s actually April 5 in Okinawa, because we were a day ahead in the Western Pacific. It was early morning, and we were getting read y for chow, when the word came that Dr. King had been assassinated. When I had left the States, the civil rights movement was in full swing, but being from the north, I did not fully understand the sweeping changes that were taking place in the country. We didn't have blatant se gr egation in New York. Not to say t hat there was not discrimination, there was, but is was a more sub t le kind o f discrim ination. There was discriminatory hiring in jobs, and s chools in some t owns , indeed, in some areas of cities, were strategically p laced so that they were segregated. I had liv ed in a integrated neighborhood. Blacks and whites living side by side with very little tension

My Back Pages: My Back Pages: Thoughts At Year's End and the New ... : My Back Pages: Thoughts At Year's End and the New Year Ahead : 2013 is just over the horizon.... one day and a few hours away. Wouldn't it ...

The best lin e from Godfather 3 belon g s , fittingly, to Michael Corleone: "Every time I think that I'm out, they pull me back i n!" Well, I am not comparing my self to the fabled son of Vito Corleone, it 's just that the se damned politici ans just can't seem to act like reasonable men and women. Rather, they think that they are abo v e t hose kinds of emotions, and think that they serve a higher purpose. Well, I have news for them, there is no higher purpose in the business of the congress of the United States than serving the people that live here. In fact, the force that put you he re is not c elestial, it is, in fact, the will of the people. You swore an oath to protect and defend, and you are doing ne ither. No t f ar from where your crying spe aker sheds his c rocodi le tears, just up I 95 and I 80 from the halls of C ongress, where  better men than you debated and compromised on is sues affe ctin g this great nation, we have American citizens living in