Happy Independence Day

[RecycleMichael]

I hope everyone is having a great holiday enjoying it with their families and friends.

I want to say a special thank you to those who served in our Armed Forces to help protect the freedoms that the rest of us enjoy. Thanks guido and any others on this forum for your service.

Have a great Fourth of July everybody.

[guido911]

A unique and imo clever take on this great day.

Country Founded by Armed Religious Nutjobs Celebrates Anniversary

A country founded on the belief that human rights are derived from God is now somehow miraculously celebrating its 235th birthday. That same country was started with the belief that when the people are deprived of their God given rights they have the right to abolish that government.

http://www.creativeminorityreport.com/2011/07/country-founded-by-armed-religious.html

[Teatownclown]

A unique and imo clever take on this great day.

http://www.creativeminorityreport.com/2011/07/country-founded-by-armed-religious.html

BS....they were non-theists and they were smart which is why we are at this place today. But because you drew a slant into the occasion I thought I'd throw down a more pertinent article for today.

The New War of Independence - Against Corporate Politics
Monday 4 July 2011
by: Richard (RJ) Eskow, Campaign for America's Future | Op-Ed

http://www.truth-out.org/new-war-independence-against-corporate-politics/1309788086

This is the age of corporatized politics. That means we may admire our leaders, but we can't depend on them. We're paying the price for Thomas Jefferson's unfulfilled desire to "crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

This July 4th, politics is too important to be left to the politicians. The stakes are too high and the system is too broken. Citizen action is everyone's job now, and it will be as long as our political debate focuses on misplaced austerity and ignores the majority's yearning for jobs, growth, and those things that government does best.

But the problem isn't just with politicians, or even the system. The problem is dependence itself.

We call it "Independence Day." But the British didn't leave on July 4, 1776. The war lasted until September 3, 1783, when the Treaty of Paris was signed. July 4th is the day we declared ourselves independent. Victory came with the recognition that freedom is our natural condition. Our country wasn't born with violence, but with the realization that freedom is discovered and claimed, not granted by others. That's why we celebrate July 4, not September 3, as our Day of Independence.

That will disappoint the history-challenged right-wingers whose patriotic posturing is limited to speaking in their odd pseudo-military lingo, that echolalic Esperanto for fantasy revolutionaries. They don't realize that war is a tactic, not a system of values. And "independence"? Today's "Tea Party" wasn't named for the tea-dumping patriots of Boston, but for some self-entitled commodities traders shrieking "losers!" on cable television. They were sneering at struggling homeowners, mocking middle-class people like the Tea Partiers themselves. And they were enraged at the idea that ordinary families might be rescued the same way their own financier class had been rescued.

They won. Nobody's rescued the middle class yet. Unlike them, the Founders believed in common purpose. They shared George Washington's goal of "protecting the rights of humane nature and establishing an Asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions." They understood what conservatives don't: There's a difference between declaring independence and telling people they're on their own.

When Sarah Palin tells her followers to "RELOAD!" she has no idea where to aim. When Michele Bachmann says she wants people to be "armed and dangerous," she doesn't understand who or what would be endangered. When John Stossel "jokes" about hanging Barney Frank in effigy, he's putting reason (and the tattered shreds of his own reputation) in the noose generals once used for hanging enemies - and patriots like Nathan Hale.

At least their mangling of Revolutionary War history gave us a great chuckle, when Keith Olbermann said Sarah Palin thought Paul Revere was "warning the British Invasion that kicks keep getting harder to find." Conservatives adopt the Revolution's pose and forget its principles. They're dress-up generals in a make-believe war, corporate servants who use the rhetoric of yesterday's revolution to serve today's Redcoats.

We fought for the principles of self-representation and economic freedom. Those principles are under attack again today. But there's no place for rhetorical violence (or any other kind) in today's debate. When corporations intimidate us with economic pressure and distorted information, the best responses are communication and mobilization.

We resisted Britain's state-sanctioned monopolies in 1776. Today's government-sanctioned corporations hang out on Wall Street, not by the chartered Thames. The spirit of the East India Company lives in the five banks which now control nearly 96% of the derivatives market in this country. Our financial oligarchs receive Treasury Department money, Federal Reserve giveaways, and get-out-of-jail-free cards for a corporate crime wave that would make Al Capone blush.

Some of our ancestors came to this country as slaves or indentured servants. The slaves were freed in body but their descendants' economic freedom is not yet fully won. Unemployment's much worse for African Americans. Infant mortality rates are 2.5 times higher than they are for whites and life expectancy is years shorter. Indentured servitude's making a comeback, too. In colonial days people signed away years of freedom for the "loan" of ship's passage to America, where they were sold to bidders for a period of bondage. If only Wall Street had existed then! Imagine the money Goldman Sachs could have made on selling "IBS's" - "indenture-backed securities."
And then shorting them, of course.

Today's borrowers aren't exactly indentured servants, but their contract terms can be unilaterally changed and their debts sold and resold without notice. Their homes may be foreclosed by unknown lenders for violating terms they didn't know existed. If they resist paying unfair penalties the full weight of the law will be brought down on them (but not the banks.) Bad credit may leave them unable to borrow money, rent a home, or even find a job.

These economic injustices and others will continue as long as wealthy contributors corrupt our political process. Many of us feel the President can and should do much more to rein in Wall Street, create jobs, and defend Medicare and Social Security. But any likely opponent would probably be far worse. Politicians in this post-Citizens United world are either limited by corporate power or prostituted to it..
So we must work around, as well as within, the electoral system. That means getting the truth out, speaking for the majority's viewpoint, and outlining the real choices we face. That's especially hard when almost everyone in Washington is pushing austerity over jobs and growth (no matter how many Nobel Prize-winning economists tell them they're wrong), and when media empires mislead us about our situation and its causes. So we must wage a war for the mind - a war against corporate think tanks and TV talking heads who tell us our problems arise from self-indulgence and those in need, not corporate malfeasance and runaway greed.

Politicians can help this war against media monopolies and for publicly-financed elections. But they can't lead it. This week some conservatives claimed John Lennon was a secret Ronald Reagan fan. Jon Weiner, the writer and historian who's authored two books on Lennon, effectively refuted them. Weiner points out that Lennon's last political statement was in support of union workers. But to truly dismiss their claim, all you need (besides love, of course) is this Lennon quote:

"You make your own dream ... If you want to save Peru, go save Peru ... Don't expect Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself."

Lennon was right, and if he were still around I suspect he'd add another Presidential name or two to that list.
We can vote for the best (or least objectionable) choices in the next election, but we can't surrender our fate to them. We'll need to keep pressuring them with calls, petitions, and other initiatives. In this corporatized system, we can't expect many leaders to heed Revolutionary pamphleteer (and ur-blogger) Thomas Paine, who said "Attempting to debate with a person who has abandoned reason is like giving medicine to the dead." Paine also made this timely observation: "Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice."

Some of us have surrendered to despair. Chris Hedges, one of our most brilliant political writers, wrote recently: " When did our democracy die? When did it irrevocably transform itself into a lifeless farce ...?" But he's wrong. Democracy hasn't died here, not yet. Despite a half-century of corporate manipulation and misinformation the country elected a President with an unlikely name and biography, one who promised real change.

What we've learned since then is that the system itself must change. That begins with the vision of something better. "Revolution is not the uprising against preexisting order," said the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset, "but the setting up of a new order contradictory to the traditional one." We have to imagine what our leaders can't or won't imagine, then work to bring it into being.

Hard? Sure. But democracy? Dead? Tell it to the Egyptians. They won't be completely free or democratic until we're completely free and democratic. But they've accomplished what seemed impossible, and so can we. It will take action - independent action, action that doesn't depend on a leader or a spokesperson or party, action that rejects even the most informed pessimism or the deepest despair. That kind of action needs an independence that comes from within.

Happy Independence Day.

[guido911]

Taking time out to watch Extreme Home Makeover honoring Lori Piestewa, I believe the first Native American woman killed in combat, and Native American veterans as a whole. Powerful stuff. 

[custosnox]

Leave it to the two sides of the extremist coin to come in and crap on this thread.  Couldn't just leave it with a good wishing of the holiday.

[guido911]

Leave it to the two sides of the extremist coin to come in and crap on this thread.  Couldn't just leave it with a good wishing of the holiday.

You are forgiven.

[guido911]

I am a sucker for tradition, and every July 4th I look to see who wins the Nathan's hot dog eating contest. Jaws Chestnut won again.

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/43632095/ns/sports-other_sports/

Here he is destroying a burrito:

[Conan71]

That will disappoint the history-challenged right-wingers whose patriotic posturing is limited to speaking in their odd pseudo-military lingo, that echolalic Esperanto for fantasy revolutionaries. They don't realize that war is a tactic, not a system of values. And "independence"? Today's "Tea Party" wasn't named for the tea-dumping patriots of Boston, but for some self-entitled commodities traders shrieking "losers!" on cable television. They were sneering at struggling homeowners, mocking middle-class people like the Tea Partiers themselves. And they were enraged at the idea that ordinary families might be rescued the same way their own financier class had been rescued.

Journalistic narcissism on full display.

[Teatownclown]

Journalistic narcissism on full display.

The shoe fits.

[sauerkraut]

To get back to the Holiday- We at least had great weather all weekend long, Can't beat the weather.. Our neighborhood seemed to have more fireworks than they had on the river. When I lived in Ohio private fireworks are banned just sparklers and "pop" makers are allowed, sure some people set off bigger fireworks but it's not common. Nebraska also has very restrictive fireworks laws. Here in Tulsa people in my neighborhood people were setting off fireworks from around 8:30 pm to 11pm non-stop. I don't get it, I heard fireworks are not legal in Tulsa, but they sell them all over and don't enforce the laws. They had some bad fireworks accidents too one 19 year old guy was killed by fireworks, others were hurt.

[TurismoDreamin]

To get back to the Holiday- We at least had great weather all weekend long, Can't beat the weather.. Our neighborhood seemed to have more fireworks than they had on the river. When I lived in Ohio private fireworks are banned just sparklers and "pop" makers are allowed, sure some people set off bigger fireworks but it's not common. Nebraska also has very restrictive fireworks laws. Here in Tulsa people in my neighborhood people were setting off fireworks from around 8:30 pm to 11pm non-stop. I don't get it, I heard fireworks are not legal in Tulsa, but they sell them all over and don't enforce the laws. They had some bad fireworks accidents too one 19 year old guy was killed by fireworks, others were hurt.

Hardly the case. I was listening to my scanner on the way to watch the fireworks show on the river and on my way home from it too. It seemed like every single call they were getting was to respond to fireworks. And this included all the departments too: Mingo Valley, Riverside, and Gilcrease division. This takes away from the more important calls. Plus, it's not a priority when other things are going on.

On a different note, this years show was great until the grand finale...or a lack of one. We've been having the worst luck lately when it comes to putting on a flawless show. Hopefully we can get some sort of refund for the fireworks that were not lit. Take the money from that and get A&M Pyrotechnics to reimburse us for 2009 and we'll have a big head start on the 2012 show.

[guido911]

Okay, I'll admit it. Had a mortar firework go off in my hand on July 4. One of these:



Anyone else in the last couple years have a moment of idiocy with fireworks?

[Townsend]

Okay, I'll admit it. Had a mortar firework go off in my hand on July 4. One of these:

Anyone else in the last couple years have a moment of idiocy with fireworks?

Not in the last couple of years but I wasn't always the brightest handling fireworks in the past.  (Roman candle duels and bottle rocket fights, etc.)

[carltonplace]

A guy in Wynona died this year setting off his own fireworks. I'll never get why people take their lives into their own hands to set off explosives.

Hey ya'll watch this

[Conan71]

Been a long time since I blew any money on them and much longer since any mishaps.  As a stupid young 'un I've picked up a used sparkler by the hot end, had a lady finger go off in a hand, and had a Black Cat go off right about next to my ear as I was getting ready to throw it. 

I wasn't very good at following directions like: "light on a non flammable surface and get away from as quick as possible" or "handle safely with adult supervision"