Tuesday, August 26, 2014
[1743 - Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, chemist, born in Paris]
[1791 - John Fitch is granted a US patent for his steamboat]
[1839 - USS Washington seizes the Spanish slaver Amistad]
[1873 - Lee De Forest, scientist, vacuum tube inventor, born in Council Bluffs, Iowa]
[1883 - The Krakatoa Volcano, East of Java in the Pacific Ocean, begins to erupt and explode]
[1904 - Christopher Isherwood, novelist, playwright, born in Disley, Chesire, England]
[1906 - Dr. Albert B Sabin, research physician, polio vaccine discoverer, born in Bialystok, Russia (now Poland)]
[1920 - 19th Amendment to the Constitution is enacted (women's suffrage)
[Photo Credit: Doug Mills, AP]
[1922 - Irving R. Levine, journalist, author, born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island]
[1935 - Geraldine Ferraro, attorney, politician, member US House of Representatives, born in Newburgh, New York]
[1952 - Michael Jeter, Tony & Emmy Award-winning actor, born in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee]
[1957 - Russia announces a successful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test]
The demonstrated porousness of the US borders has most politicians falling all over one another in the attempt to appear stronger than the next guy on the issue of protecting the homeland from terrorists, immigrants, illegal aliens, legal aliens, extraterrestrials, and other undesirables. In the rhetoric and emotion of the manufactured security crisis over illegal immigrants, we seem to have forgotten that virtually all of the 9/11 terrorists were able to enter this country legally and take advantage of our excellent flying schools to learn enough piloting skills to crash airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and, but for some brave patriots, the White House or US Capitol.
As earlier emperors learned in China, you can build the biggest and longest wall the world has ever seen and it will not keep you safe. Those who threaten you will eventually find a way over, under, through, or around your best barriers. So, why are the President and Congress set on increasing the national debt by spending more billions of taxpayer dollars on the latest in an unbroken series of failed walls on the pretext of sealing our borders? Could it be that those billions will flow to their friends, contributors, and other corporate cronies, or are they just pandering to the electorate?
William's Whimsical Words:
Perish the thought that those same billions could go into a really first rate system of wetland improvements, levies, gates, pumps, and channels to protect the city of New Orleans from a repeat of the Katrina disaster. After all, the poor people who drowned there as a result of presidential neglect contribute very little to the campaign funds of incumbents.
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