Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch?

Clearly, the yahoos who want to send the immigrants back just don't have a tamale connection.

Enough already!

When are we going to start standing up to this bullshit?! I know the Democrats aren't without fault, but the Republicans know no end to political corruption. We get the government we deserve, but who deserves this?

Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR
KBR Told Victim She Could Lose Her Job If She Sought Help After Being Raped, She Says

By BRIAN ROSS, MADDY SAUER & JUSTIN ROOD
Dec. 10, 2007—

A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.

"It felt like prison," says Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming "20/20" investigation. "I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened."

Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.

"I said, 'Dad, I've been raped. I don't know what to do. I'm in this container, and I'm not able to leave,'" she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.

"We contacted the State Department first," Poe told ABCNews.com, "and told them of the urgency of rescuing an American citizen" -- from her American employer.

Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones' camp, where they rescued her from the container.

According to her lawsuit, Jones was raped by "several attackers who first drugged her, then repeatedly raped and injured her, both physically and emotionally."

Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.

A spokesperson for the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security told ABCNews.com he could not comment on the matter.

Over two years later, the Justice Department has brought no criminal charges in the matter. In fact, ABC News could not confirm any federal agency was investigating the case.

Legal experts say Jones' alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to an enormous loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law.

"It's very troubling," said Dean John Hutson of the Franklin Pierce Law Center. "The way the law presently stands, I would say that they don't have, at least in the criminal system, the opportunity for justice."

Congressman Poe says neither the departments of State nor Justice will give him answers on the status of the Jones investigation.

Click Here for Full Blotter Coverage.

Asked what reasons the departments gave for the apparent slowness of the probes, Poe sounded frustrated.

"There are several, I think, their excuses, why the perpetrators haven't been prosecuted," Poe told ABC News. "But I think it is the responsibility of our government, the Justice Department and the State Department, when crimes occur against American citizens overseas in Iraq, contractors that are paid by the American public, that we pursue the criminal cases as best as we possibly can and that people are prosecuted."

Since no criminal charges have been filed, the only other option, according to Hutson, is the civil system, which is the approach that Jones is trying now. But Jones' former employer doesn't want this case to see the inside of a civil courtroom.

KBR has moved for Jones' claim to be heard in private arbitration, instead of a public courtroom. It says her employment contract requires it.

In arbitration, there is no public record nor transcript of the proceedings, meaning that Jones' claims would not be heard before a judge and jury. Rather, a private arbitrator would decide Jones' case. In recent testimony before Congress, employment lawyer Cathy Ventrell-Monsees said that Halliburton won more than 80 percent of arbitration proceedings brought against it.

In his interview with ABC News, Rep. Poe said he sided with Jones.

"Air things out in a public forum of a courtroom," said Rep. Poe. "That's why we have courts in the United States."

In her lawsuit, Jones' lawyer, Todd Kelly, says KBR and Halliburton created a "boys will be boys" atmosphere at the company barracks which put her and other female employees at great risk.

"I think that men who are there believe that they live without laws," said Kelly. "The last thing she should have expected was for her own people to turn on her."

Halliburton, which has since divested itself of KBR, says it "is improperly named" in the suit.

In a statement, KBR said it was "instructed to cease" its own investigation by U.S. government authorities "because they were assuming sole responsibility for the criminal investigations."

"The safety and security of all employees remains KBR's top priority," it said in a statement. "Our commitment in this regard is unwavering."

Since the attacks, Jones has started a nonprofit foundation called the Jamie Leigh Foundation, which is dedicated to helping victims who were raped or sexually assaulted overseas while working for government contractors or other corporations.

"I want other women to know that it's not their fault," said Jones. "They can go against corporations that have treated them this way." Jones said that any proceeds from the civil suit will go to her foundation.

"There needs to be a voice out there that really pushed for change," she said. "I'd like to be that voice."

Fight or Flight?

It’s a character flaw, I suppose, that my instinctual reaction to danger is to get the heck out of Dodge. You’ll never catch me standing ground against Mother Nature. When disaster strikes, I’m outta here.

I have nothing but respect and admiration for Hurricane Katrina survivors – and all those poor victims – who, by choice or circumstance, chose to ride the storm out. But those mislabeled folks who fled for higher ground are my soul mates. I guess that’s what Tom Petty meant by, “you don’t have to live like a refugee.”

Anyway, this “fight or flight” conundrum took hold of me around noon, when I learned the college – administrative offices at least; final exams would go on as scheduled at the predominately residential institution of uncommon sense – was shutting down in the midst of an ice storm. The dean of the faculty, bless her heart, vowed to man her post in her office in a locked administrative building until the threat had passed – or four o’clock, whichever came first.

After a quick lunch at the cafeteria – you never know where your next meal is going to come from, right? – I polled the local hotel market for available rooms and alternative energy sources, just as I had when a similar storm hit last February. I should have taken notes.

With all of the other schools in town shut down for the day, my kids were at home and/or a neighbor’s house, neither of which had power. The steady morning rain had the potential to cause widespread damage, which I witnessed first-hand while driving from work to the movie rental store. Sewers overflowing, tree limbs scattered about or leaning menacingly over the road, ice-covered power lines hanging dangerously low… and here I am driving past the grocery store to rent movies I could only hope to watch if power was restored. Fittingly, “Superbad” was out.

Our power was restored shortly after I got home, sparing me the dilemma of opening the garage door manually. Though I typically opt to wait until it’s over before clearing the walks, early removal was the key to success this day. Then, after a previously scheduled telephone interview didn’t pan out and the predicted confounding snowfall didn’t materialize, we ventured out to get the family Christmas tree.

Schedules and circumstance had prevented us from completing this important tradition yet and our windows of opportunity were few. So, as neighbors and fellow residents were chopping ice and sawing trees, we went from store to store seeking out our holiday bush. Isn’t it ironic?

I’d be a poor prospect for a bomb shelter salesman. It’s not that I throw caution to the wind so much as I find the whole idea of emergency preparedness to be as overblown as the local news. Knock on wood, rub a rabbit’s foot and wish upon a star, I’ve never had to endure a prolonged power outage like my blog partner did just about a year ago. And I never would.

I’d be out of town before finishing the first of that three-day supply of water and non-perishable food the emergency management folks recommend you keep on hand. Theoretically, of course, since I maintain no such emergency supply kit. The only three-day supply I know of is a trip to the grocery store. And the only response I know to danger is flight… and, it occurs to me after rereading this post, denial.

these kids today

Although it's true that I'd likely turn in my certificate were I ever required to again teach Americans or even my preferred immigrant groups in numbers of more than ten or twenty at a time, I have to say that being employed in a field that requires me to spend time with teenagers is no burden at all. In fact, I actually like 'em. In small numbers, mind you, and most definitely excluding those entitled and profane citizens, but the rest of them, they do make me laugh and warm my heart, challenge my mind and raise my blood pressure every single day, sometimes all at once, but at least I am never bored.

Surprised, sometimes, but rarely caught off guard. They want to talk about where babies come from? All right. I've even got books with pictures. It's hard to phase Ms. P. But on a day like today, when they're so distracted for a most unlikely reason, well, I don't know what to make of them. Cannot fathom nor comprehend these alien beings in my room. The gap between us is so huge, and I just cannot relate or even pretend. I'm just flummoxed, and all I can do is laugh.

"You all are this excited about THE CHIPMUNKS MOVIE? You cannot be serious!" And I'm met with squeals and peals of irony-free laughter, and tonight, an e-mail from a kid who was not even present, expressing that he, too, is "so looking forward" to Alvin and his CGI friends. They are all totally serious, except, you know, insane. And I am supposed to teach them? I'm suddenly wracked with doubt.

Although, I don't know. The mark against these kids today is that they're growing up too fast, but being this eager to see a kids' movie that features a poop joke in the trailer? It's certainly no sign of that.

Nacho discount!

Tavin's never going to top gravy packets at the Thanksgiving parade, but it's been a while and this is pretty good. I mean, who would pass up a discount on nachos?

un-snow day

This was a test of the new-fangled emergency snow day system. I mean it had to be, right? Despite the fact that there was nothing in the air but some mist and some fog, that the roads were clear and the radar was patchy, that the temperature was hovering right about 32, our phone rang at 4:48 this morning with some fairly surprising news. School was out for my daughter, canceled for the day. Officially, according to the automated voice, the superintendent had determined that conditions warranted.

But today, oh today I wonder, given the new bat-signal system our district has just installed. Unofficially, wouldn't it just figure if the chief were sitting in his comfortable home, playing should-I-or-shouldn't-I, will-I or won't-I with his brand new toy when whoops! there goes the call to the homes of seven thousand students. No turning back, no matter what was not falling from the sky. Unlikely I suppose, but even if it was not accidental, it certainly was an eager call, first in the vicinity. . .for no apparent reason. Oh, I know sometimes it's tricky, and some of our routes are rural, and nobody wants a bus trip to be even more adventuresome than usual. But heavens to Fahrenheit, Mr. Superintendent, I had to drive thirty-some miles to the district that employs me to find me some ice! on the sidewalk! leading to my open-for-business school!

Now would my attitude be different if that early early early morning phone (though not wake-up) call had been for me? Not really; it'd still be ridiculous. Sublimely ridiculous. Emphasis on sublime. But, come May, when they're making up this day? Advantage me.

George's hands

George is never going to graduate from high school.

Well, never say never. Someday he may see some value or a need and come back for a G.E.D., perhaps encouraged by one of the seven kids he says he intends to father, but I would be shocked. He sees his future more clearly than most anyone, more clearly than I see my own, and it's hard to argue with that kind of certainty.

Another family is preparing to move from that community back to Mexico--given the current climate, I wonder if that will become a trend--and yesterday I found myself nearly pleading with a friend of the boy--the-soon-to-be-emigrant is not my student, though I know him-- to help persuade Luis to finish up his classes and his finals before he hits the road.

"You just don't know what life will bring! Someday he may wish he had those credits here! He might come back! He just doesn't know!" and I realize I'm all up in arms because I know that boy, so smart, with such potential, probably won't go to school at all once he crosses the border because no one will make him. He should get what he can, just in case.

I think George is smart too, but I'd never have that talk with him, at least not in that same way. His gravity is too powerful, it always pulls me in, and when he says, "I'm just going to work construction," I always end up saying, "I know you are," though I don't mean it unkindly. It's not as if he doesn't have the skills, the callouses on his hands, the clear-eyed view about how a person in his unofficial position can make the best money. It's not as if he's not 18, a ninth grader on credits who will be a ninth grader until they drop him either for attendance or LOI, "lack of interest." That's truly the official term.

But George is not uninterested; George just does not play the game. He is an artist who is failing Art, and that's the indictment of us all, from school to teacher to student. One of the Art I assignments is to draw hands, though to me that always seemed an advanced project. George's hands, from last year, his first pass through ninth grade, are hanging on my classroom wall. They are pencil sketches, framed in red and black paint, that show enough talent for the brittle white women who staff our art department to take this tough Mexican teenager under their wings and show him another path, or they would, if life were more like a hokey inspirational movie and less like, well, life.

George impressed me with those hands, but better yet, he impressed himself. He knows who he is, that he is more than certain credentialed people see, though I wonder if he's been hanging around high school for his chance for a part in the real-life version of one of those sappy movies. He was excited for a while about a chance to create a scoreboard in another hands-on class, but then it didn't work out, just like soccer and then football eventually required credits he didn't have.

Though occasionally he gets diligent in algebra or science--more for the personal challenge, I suspect--he'll pass neither class. On the other hand, he's done everything I've asked him this year, writing while asking me how to spell every third word. In that room, the one with the hands on the wall, pride--finally--does not interfere. I take no credit, display no magic wand. If anything, it's the fact that I don't have 150 students, and thus the time to talk to him--for years now-- like the grown-up that he nearly is. If only I taught art or something mechanical, something to keep him coming back or to open a door.

When the news made its way through the ESL student network that George was working days again because he needed the money, I wasn't too surprised; I think I was more offended that I had to hear it third-hand. But, I'll see him again. One day he'll show up, ask what we're doing, and, until the school cuts him loose, we'll just start fresh, or at least, again. In the meantime, though, and forever after, I've got his drawings centered in my back-corner student gallery: the low-riders, the roses, and of course, the hands.

Those hands on my wall are so realistic, so powerful, so strong. But, they're just hands, helpless on their own to go or to do or to learn anything new. They are just so George.

lost in the mail

"Neither rain nor snow, nor sleet nor dark of night shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

Notice that creed doesn't mention anything about especially interesting reading material detouring into the mailman's (relax, he is a man) hip pocket before it makes it into my box. Yes, I do have my suspicions, especially during weeks like this one, when neither one of my Sportsman of the Year Sports Illustrateds--my mother's gift renewal to me has been screwed up, and I've been getting two--have shown up and, for the love of Brett, it's Saturday. Good grief.

Thanks to the magic of the Internets, I've already read the article and probably have seen most of the photos, but that is not the point. My mail is my mail! And where is it, Mr. Postman? These days, I'm probably more fond of the e- version of the mail, given the instant gratification and the notes from my friends, but I still look forward to checking the box or seeing what the girl brings back from her trip down the drive. Someday, my irrational hope persists, it'll be something better than catalogs and credit card solicitations. Something like my magazine! As soon as my must-be-a-Bears-fan, kidnapping mail carrier releases it, I guess.

holiday news of the weird (or at least unlikely)

I can just feel it, can't you?

Somewhere the fact that the a Branson Board of Aldermen has a proposed a resolution expressing its support for celebrating Christmas, or rather "Ozark Mountain Christmas" --though shouldn't that holiday be spelled with a K?--is morphing into an e-mail to be forwarded by people who forward such things, people who favor CAPITALS and color and exclamations! and baby Jesus for sure. That's my bet, anyway, that some two-fingered typist will make this into a law to protect Christmas and not the bottom line, and thus either a sign of Armageddon or Missouri as the promised land.

Apparently there's some concern that Branson may not have enough Christmas decorations to appease the post-Thanksgiving pilgrims. Now, I've never been there and I'm not going, no matter how many time-shares my in-laws buy (current total: two), but I find that fairly hilarious. Not enough Christmas in Branson, when I can't get through the grocery store here in the suburban prairie without being assaulted with mandatory festivity? I just find that hard to believe. But, if it's true, well, all is not lost on the holiday slogan front. There's another one out there. A classic. The original, in fact: peace on earth. Heck, if that could possibly describe Branson, the hillbilly Vegas outlet mall wonderland, I might even come!

Who needs writers when there's football?

A so-called "street" free agent four years removed from Division III Coe College (not exactly what you'd call a football factory) starts at running back for the Buffalo Bills. In his debut as an NFL starter, he goes off for 151 yards and leads his team to a comeback victory over the Washington Redskins.

You can't make this stuff up.

His name is Fred Jackson and I'm damn proud to know him. He sent me a text message Thursday saying he was going to make the Coe family proud. On Sunday he went out and did it. Now he's the toast of the town in Buffalo and Cedar Rapids, not to mention a hot property in fantasy football circles.

Stories like this are the reason I love sports of all sorts, but football in particular. It's not "the thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat" (as the sports world of my youth asserted), it's the imperfection, the randomness, the any-given-Sunday nature of it.

I don't care how much the Patriots were favored by last night, I like that the Ravens damn near beat them. I'm sorry that the Bills' first round pick and his backup got hurt, but I'm thrilled Fred got to show his stuff in a real game. I'll concede the NFL MVP award to Tom Brady, but Sports Illustrated couldn't have made a better choice for its "Sportsman of the Year" than Brett Lorenzo Favre.

And at the moment, I don't particularly mind that the writers are on strike. I'm on their side, of course, but I don't miss them yet. So far, I've been able to get my fixes of "Friday Night Lights," "The Amazing Race" and "Survivor." I miss "The Office" most of all, but so long as Kenny Mayne is on ESPN, I can live without Dwight Schrute.

And so long as it's football season, I can live without the striking writers. Now after the Super Bowl, and the halftime show by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, when the NBA takes the spotlight, we're gonna have a problem.

a close call

I wonder what Pavlov would say about four-color brochures?

No sooner had I finished explaining that being burnt out on the MLB is what sent me headlong into this football season when the mail arrived. Oh no, not them again. The team that just signed a let's-be-nice-and-call-him-slumping shortstop rejected by three clubs in two years. The organization that has swindled me out of more dollars than I can count for seats behind fences and foul poles and hand rails (we have, I've learned, different definitions of OBS VU). That's right, the Cardinals, sending me temptation in the mail.

And yet I scan the booklet of ticket packages slickly designed for holiday giving--the marketing department is still championship-caliber--and I wonder, "Do I wanna go?" No! I mean, yes! I mean, I don't have the money! Upwards of three hundred bucks lately gone for concerts and football--both much surer bets for my entertainment dollar--but still! I'm such a sucker.

Last year was an easy rejection. The "Pujols Packs" were mostly terrible games--think the Nats in April--assembled to sell otherwise empty seats. I just got on my high horse and rode away. But now I see the Giants, the Cubs on my birthday weekend, the Cubs in September, the Dodgers in August. Even if they're lousy, I'll still like to go. I feel the justifications brewing, the jones for summer starting. The on-sale is Saturday. You think I can arrange by then for a big pile of twenties to fall from the sky?

As if I wouldn't have about forty-seven other places to spend them before they even hit the ground. As if, I should remind myself, I didn't stop paying serious attention baseball about when, May, this year? (Except for Ankiel's magic month, and of course that was fake, too.) The off-season sure is something; wipe the slate clean start again. Except, I should remind myself, this is not the off-season: it's the very tail end of Week 13!

Monday morning quarterback

"So how are you?" I ask as I get out the workbooks and the papers for this beginning class-within-a-class.

"I am very fine!" comes the response, and I have to smile. Enthusiasm is so foreign to Monday

"The Hams! The game was very good!" and I have to resist the urge to roll my eyes. Enthusiasm is so foreign to football in St. Louis, these days.

"Really!" I reply. My new Brazilian friend has been resistant to the appeal of football. After all, he believes football to be a game played, without hands, to a scoreless tie, by men in shorts. Silly boy.

He asks me if I watched, and I explain there was no TV ("not even Fox?") and tease that they're no good anyway (he knows my team's the Packers), and he keeps speaking English to tell me, "No, no, they win!" He even sustains his excitement through his recounting of the scoring and my explanation of why people were shouting "dog killer" at the Falcons and my insistance that the Ed Jones dome is actually a terrible place to watch a football game (it's important to tell the truth).

Finally, he says, "my chairs were very good, too!"

"Oh, really? Where were they?"

"Six from the game."

"Six rows up?" I say, drawing the scene on the board. "Wow. That's very good."

"Yes!"

My eyes narrow, as finally, I get it: "Were you by the cheerleaders?"

"Yes!"

And I laugh right out loud, "You don't like the fooball! You just like the girls!"

number 5012 in a series

For years, I've told them nothing was going to change, but I kinda thought--hoped, at least, that I was just tamping down their expectations, protecting their hearts from breaking. Helping them wait. As if so many of them aren't already tougher than I'll ever be. But now I see clearly. Nothing is ever going to change, at least not for the better, at least not any time soon.

Because immigration is the new hot button--thank baby Jesus that mess is Iraq is resolved, that the constitution has been restored, that we all have healthcare, a place in a functioning economy, and citizenship in a nation that is not on its way to being a worldwide pariah. Not that the system of official coming and going shouldn't be fixed; on the contrary, I think everyone concerned is begging for rational, workable plans grounded in some kind of reality. But as soon as even three words are strung together that might describe even the shadow of one part of that, the gotchas and the virtual pitchforks come out, poking the spineless pols, in turn, back into their corners.

Apparently Mike Huckabee once even had a logical thought, and as governor of Arkansas backed a never-enacted plan to allow the children of undocumented immigrants--families that are legal residents of nowhere--to pay in-state tuition to state universities. In his words, ". . . the point in Arkansas was, we had kids who had been in our schools, by law. And to simply shut them out of any additional educational advancement, to me, seemed not only in their worst interests, but ours, as well as the state's."

And while he gets to the heart of it--it's better for us all if we're educated--the current mood is all Us and Them and Don't Give Mine Away (there's no "we" in willfully ignorant racism), and so now the other Rethugs smell blood in Iowa, and will use those thoughts to try to derail him for the next month, playing on their constituents' insecurities. While I can only hope the Red candidates beat each other to a bloody pulp, given my doubts about the Dem nominating process, to me the real big picture is this national mood, the one generated by people so afraid for the future, so willing to scapegoat and blame the most powerless. (Will somebody please stop me from reading the comments on these immigration news articles? Please? Just sit here beside me and click me to safety? I've been off the blood pressure meds for months now, and I sure like it better that way.) I think we should be angry, agitating for change, out in the streets. But the source of our biggest problems is not washing dishes or picking tomatoes. Guarantee it. No matter what they want you to think.

not such a virtual world

They're not readers, my students, sometimes too literally, but that day the room was as silent as the story was long, and they did it-- they read. Page after page, a sigh and a struggle, but also determination to reach the end. Apparently all it takes to draw them in is the suicide of a thirteen year-old girl in a neighboring town, a cold-hearted mother, an online disaster.

What a world, the one Megan Meier's story reveals. It's one these kids both live in and don't. An address on Waterford Crystal Drive, or some other division of brick-fronted homes with ridiculous price tags and ridiculous names, might someday be an aspiration, but fulfillment is generations away. The income gap isn't the main separation between the teen in the story and the teens in my room, however, and envy isn't anywhere among their emotions.

They wonder why rich people seem to have so many problems, they wonder why 'white' kids are the ones who are hyper, and really, there's something to that, both in the culture and in the fact that the public health clinic isn't going to prescribe Ritalin or be on the look out for ADHD. They point out that their mothers aren't so wrapped up in their lives as the ones in the paper, and by that they mean their mothers are the opposite of neglectful. The expectations are so different; there is no helicoptering. Some of them want the mother who concocted a fake boyfriend to torture Megan locked up and put away; some want more responsibility put on Megan and her family. They discuss and evaluate and their insights become fodder for some pretty good academic writing. While I wish for a world that offers less compelling reading, at least it feels as if we've done something useful with it, and that, perhaps, they may have thought about their own behavior. Because these kids all have MySpace, too.

And within a week, I'm in the guidance office having a counselor call in the student who was most indignant about the virtual wrongs committed against Megan Meier. Turns out she'd posted maliciously captioned photos about her classmate, the teen mother. Ah, high school. And while I'm tempted to take matters into my own what-are-you-thinking I-know-you-know-better don't-you-see-a-connection-here hands, I seal my lips and write passes to the office and assign another reading. This time it's about the year since the suicide and the consequences of actions.

I expect no epiphany; I'd settle for an insincere truce between these girls, if it would last long enough for them to mature a little and leave this nonsense behind. Because that I do expect, and I think that they do, too. They were most apalled with the fact that it was an adult who messed with Megan Meier, not with the fact that it happened. They believe youth gives them license, a problem in itself, one that needs resolving. But, I believe the odds are exactly zero that they'd do what Lori Drew did, act like a teenager once they've grown. I suppose it could be wishful thinking, but I trust how they've been raised, trust what they've been taught. And I trust that if the instigator doesn't straighten up, like, right now, she's going to be really, really sorry.

R.I.P. Evel Knievel

Long before there was ESPN, there was the Wide World of Sports. And long before guys like Brett Favre were role models for our nation's youth, there was Evel Knievel. Evel died today, but memories of his death-defying jumps (or attempts) over the fountain at Caesar's Palace or Snake River Canyon live on the minds of my generation. Of all my childhood toys -- from Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots to electric football -- the one I wish I had saved is the Evel Kneivel stunt cycle. It wouldn't compete with today's video games and electronic gizmos, but boy was it cool. It was also Ideal!

Other things that suck (besides the outcome of that game)

So once upon a time Eric Schlosser wrote a book called Fast Food Nation, and I stopped eating hamburger at McDonald's. This was no hardship, because, yuck, and I don't take a hardline stance as I do against the Wal-Mart. Once in a while I'll drive thru the arches; I just don't eat the McCows. Some time here lately I noticed I'd stopped eating at Burger King, too, but that was purely a matter of taste: the proportion of filler to beef in their burgers seem to have tilted entirely to soybeans. I suppose I'm a supporter of Illinois and its crops, but when it comes to hamburger, I want them to be meat, and now we have a Culver's! And now, thanks to Mr. Schlosser, I can again cloak my fast food selectivity in righteous indignation. Turns out the Burger King honchos not only have creepy taste in ads but are also greedy bastards. Shocking, I know.

Penny Foolish
By Eric Schlosser

From NYTimes.com

THE migrant farm workers who harvest tomatoes in South Florida have one of the nation’s most backbreaking jobs. For 10 to 12 hours a day, they pick tomatoes by hand, earning a piece-rate of about 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket. During a typical day each migrant picks, carries and unloads two tons of tomatoes. For their efforts, this holiday season many of them are about to get a 40 percent pay cut.

Florida’s tomato growers have long faced pressure to reduce operating costs; one way to do that is to keep migrant wages as low as possible. Although some of the pressure has come from increased competition with Mexican growers, most of it has been forcefully applied by the largest purchaser of Florida tomatoes: American fast food chains that want millions of pounds of cheap tomatoes as a garnish for their hamburgers, tacos and salads.

In 2005, Florida tomato pickers gained their first significant pay raise since the late 1970s when Taco Bell ended a consumer boycott by agreeing to pay an extra penny per pound for its tomatoes, with the extra cent going directly to the farm workers. Last April, McDonald’s agreed to a similar arrangement, increasing the wages of its tomato pickers to about 77 cents per bucket. But Burger King, whose headquarters are in Florida, has adamantly refused to pay the extra penny — and its refusal has encouraged tomato growers to cancel the deals already struck with Taco Bell and McDonald’s.

This month the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, representing 90 percent of the state’s growers, announced that it will not allow any of its members to collect the extra penny for farm workers. Reggie Brown, the executive vice president of the group, described the surcharge for poor migrants as “pretty much near un-American.”

Migrant farm laborers have long been among America’s most impoverished workers. Perhaps 80 percent of the migrants in Florida are illegal immigrants and thus especially vulnerable to abuse. During the past decade, the United States Justice Department has prosecuted half a dozen cases of slavery among farm workers in Florida. Migrants have been driven into debt, forced to work for nothing and kept in chained trailers at night. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers — a farm worker alliance based in Immokalee, Fla. — has done a heroic job improving the lives of migrants in the state, investigating slavery cases and negotiating the penny-per-pound surcharge with fast food chains.

Now the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange has threatened a fine of $100,000 for any grower who accepts an extra penny per pound for migrant wages. The organization claims that such a surcharge would violate “federal and state laws related to antitrust, labor and racketeering.” It has not explained how that extra penny would break those laws; nor has it explained why other surcharges routinely imposed by the growers (for things like higher fuel costs) are perfectly legal.

The prominent role that Burger King has played in rescinding the pay raise offers a spectacle of yuletide greed worthy of Charles Dickens. Burger King has justified its behavior by claiming that it has no control over the labor practices of its suppliers. “Florida growers have a right to run their businesses how they see fit,” a Burger King spokesman told The St. Petersburg Times.

Yet the company has adopted a far more activist approach when the issue is the well-being of livestock. In March, Burger King announced strict new rules on how its meatpacking suppliers should treat chickens and hogs. As for human rights abuses, Burger King has suggested that if the poor farm workers of southern Florida need more money, they should apply for jobs at its restaurants.

Three private equity firms — Bain Capital, the Texas Pacific Group and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners — control most of Burger King’s stock. Last year, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd C. Blankfein, earned the largest annual bonus in Wall Street history, and this year he stands to receive an even larger one. Goldman Sachs has served its investors well lately, avoiding the subprime mortgage meltdown and, according to Business Week, doubling the value of its Burger King investment within three years.

Telling Burger King to pay an extra penny for tomatoes and provide a decent wage to migrant workers would hardly bankrupt the company. Indeed, it would cost Burger King only $250,000 a year. At Goldman Sachs, that sort of money shouldn’t be too hard to find. In 2006, the bonuses of the top 12 Goldman Sachs executives exceeded $200 million — more than twice as much money as all of the roughly 10,000 tomato pickers in southern Florida earned that year. Now Mr. Blankfein should find a way to share some of his company’s good fortune with the workers at the bottom of the food chain.

Eric Schlosser is the author of “Fast Food Nation” and “Reefer Madness.”

3rd generation's the charm

"So are we going to Buffalo Wild Wings?" she asks, eyebrows raised, all please say yes.

"No, the game's on free TV," though I should've said already paid for, since I'd give anyone else crap for calling Dish free.

"Oh, well that's good," she says, though she's totally faking it. "Grandma said you'd be excited."

"Grandma got that right."

For the record, that Grandma, who raised me to be a Dallas fan in the days of Staubach and Dorsett, was not at all pleased to realize that she won't be able to watch those 'boys play the Packers in the comfort of her own home. The NFL is playing chicken with the cable companies, so Romo and Favre will duke it out in relative private, and those of us who do have the NFL Network will endure Bryant Gumbel for the privilege. I just love being a pawn; don't you?

Now, my mother's certainly welcome to watch a little football with me, assuming she swaps any residual blue and gray for the more appropriate green and gold, but that'll never happen. Oh, that's okay, she'll say--it's late and cold, and you know, your dad. But I know she wishes she could. On the other hand, if that girl said, "Grandma, could you take me to the Wings?" Instantly! She'd be there, order anything. And, oh look at what's on the screen. . .

Arianna unglued

My affection for Arianna Huffington is no secret. I especially like it when she comes unglued over a topic. When that topic is "Bush's Brain," all the better.

Karl Rove's Shameless, Remorseless, Soulless Attempt to Rewrite History

by Arianna Huffington

I went on Countdown last night to talk about what Keith Olbermann called Karl Rove's "attack on history."

During an interview with Charlie Rose, the erstwhile Boy Genius pulled out his bucket of whitewash and audaciously claimed that "one of the untold stories" about the war in Iraq is that the Bush administration had been "opposed' to Congress holding the vote authorizing the president to use military force in Iraq just a few weeks prior to the 2002 elections because "we thought it made it too political."

Too political? For Karl Rove? That's like saying something was too bloody for Count Dracula.

He went on to paint a picture of a White House pushed into war, and laid the blame for much of what has happened since on a Congress that had "made things move too fast." If not for Congress, you see, there would have been more time for weapons inspections, and to build a broader coalition.

It was a satiric tour de force worthy of Jonathan Swift or Stephen Colbert -- but Rove wasn't joking. He actually expected us to buy his load of b.s. Watching Rove, two things were perfectly clear: his disdain for the truth and his contempt for the American people know no bounds.

Rove's appearance was the work of a shameless, remorseless, soulless political animal taking the first steps on what will no doubt be a high profile and lucrative march toward historical revisionism. He knows that he stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the fanatics responsible for the worst foreign policy disaster in American history -- not exactly the best thing to put on your post-government resume -- so he is hell-bent on replacing reality with the latest incarnation of The Big Lie.

A student of history, Rove is obviously also up on his Orwell: "Who controls the past, controls the future."

Unfortunately for Rove, this isn't 1984; we now live in the Age of Google, and YouTube, and Lexis-Nexis searches. So the refutation of his lies is just a click away.

The evidence that it was President Bush and Vice President Cheney -- and not Congress -- who were hungry for war is overwhelming. For starters, we have Bush's own words before the vote, when he explicitly told Congress that "it's in our national interest" to get the vote "done as quickly as possible." And the insistence of then-Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld that "delaying a vote in Congress would send the wrong message." And the words of then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle who says that when he asked Bush in September 2002 why there was such a rush for a vote on Iraq the president "looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: 'We just have to do this now.'"

And there is the insider evidence provided by Richard Clarke, who wrote that within hours of the 9/11 attacks, this administration had its heart set on heading into Iraq. And from Paul O'Neill, who made it clear that invading Iraq had been Bush's goal before he had even learned where the Oval Office supply closet was.

Even now, with his approval ratings scraping the bottom of the historical barrel, Bush still dominates the Congressional agenda on the war. And Rove wants us to buy that back in the heady days of 2002, when the president was still riding a wave of support forged by 9/11, his desire for caution and reasoned action were overridden by a war hungry Congress? "We don't determine when the Congress votes on things," Rove told Rose. "The Congress does." I guess he and Bush landed on the whole "I'm the Decider" thing later (maybe after they orchestrated that triumphal landing on the Abraham Lincoln).

The truth is that the zealots in the White House were not about to allow their desires to invade Iraq -- which had been laid out years earlier by the Project for a New American Century -- be quashed by anything as piddling as the facts or the evidence or reasoned debate or Congress. Especially a Congress populated with Democratic leaders so rattled and timid that to call them spineless would be an insult to invertebrates everywhere.

Indeed, it was the perfect political environment for an administration intent on shoving a war down the throats of Congress and the American people.

Let's remember, this was the time when the administration had pulled together the White House Study Group (which included Rove himself) with the express mission of marketing the war. These people weren't in the mood to wait, they were in the mood to sell, sell, sell. The Downing Street Memo showed that by July of 2002 they were already fixing the intel to sell the war. By August 2002 the White House was already using Judy Miller and the New York Times as prime advertising space. And by September 2002, Condi Rice was already warning of smoking guns turning out to be mushroom clouds, and Cheney was using aluminum tubes to make the case that Saddam was "actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons."

So the record is irrefutable: the drumbeat of war coming from the White House couldn't have been louder. And no amount of 5-years-down the road spinning by Karl Rove is going to change that truth.

Depends on what you mean "is" is

demagogue (noun): 1.a person, esp. an orator or political leader, who gains power and popularity by arousing the emotions, passions, and prejudices of the people.

Sen. John McCain, for whom the immigration issue has proved particularly vexing, defended his support for an unsuccessful overhaul of immigration laws that included a temporary worker program and a path to citizenship.

"We must recognize these are God's children as well," McCain said. "They need our love and compassion, and I want to ensure that I will enforce the borders first. But we won't demagogue it."

Note to self:
Thursday sunrise: 6:57 a.m. CST

Mornin'

Out the door, running late. Already pinched, pounding, slightly disheveled. Forty-seven trips up and down the stairs. As I pull out, the dash clock glows 6:45--yes, in the morning--and I'm stressed up with some place to go. Only fifteen minutes past normal, but I'm praying for no traffic tragedies when an orange glow flickering through bare branches catches even my distracted eyes.

"Oh." I actually say aloud. "That's pretty." And when I reach the park entrance down the street, I pull in. I have neither time to stop nor time not to, and as I pull up to the pond, it feels right. I think of my friend, newly attending Quaker meeting: "Okay, ducks," I think, "here's my silent worship." And I lower the window and exhale my frantic morning into the cold.

I only pause a moment, look at the sunrise, breathe, snap that photo, but instantly I feel better. The sky is huge, and so is the universe; in the end, it doesn't matter if my child goes to school naked, as for a while there it seemed she might. Life is good. I'm happy to be here. Even if I arrive a little late.