The Bible Passage that Pat Robertson and Wal-Mart never read.

James 5 (King James Version)

1Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.

2Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.

3Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

4Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.

5Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.

6Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.

I prefer the NIV of this passage:

Warning to Rich Oppressors

1Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. 2Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. 6You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you.

I saw this while I was channel surfing the other night and it stuck in my mind.

Locksley Hall

Locksley Hall

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)


COMRADES, leave me here a little, while as yet ’tis early morn:
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn.

’Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,
Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,

And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro’ the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.

Here about the beach I wander’d, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;
When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed:

When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.—

In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish’d dove;
In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,
And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.

And I said, “My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me,
Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee.”

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a colour and a light,
As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.

And she turn’d—her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs—
All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes—

Saying, “I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong;”
Saying, “Dost thou love me, cousin?” weeping, “I have loved thee long.

Love took up the glass of Time, and turn’d it in his glowing hands;
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass’d in music out of sight.

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring,

And her whisper throng’d my pulses with the fullness of the Spring.

Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships,
And our spirits rush’d together at the touching of the lips.

O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more!
O the dreary, dreary moorland! O the barren, barren shore!

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,
Puppet to a father’s threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!

Is it well to wish thee happy? having known me—to decline
On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!

Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day,

What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.

As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse

What is this? his eyes are heavy: think not they are glazed with wine.
Go to him: it is thy duty: kiss him: take his hand in thine.

It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is over-wrought:
Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.

He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand—

Better thou wert dead before me, tho’ I slew thee with my hand!

Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart’s disgrace,

Roll’d in one another’s arms, and silent in a last embrace.

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth!
Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature’s rule!
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten’d forehead of the fool!

Well—’tis well that I should bluster!—Hadst thou less unworthy proved—
Would to God—for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved.

Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit?

I will pluck it from my bosom, tho’ my heart be at the root.

Never, tho’ my mortal summers to such length of years should come
As the many-winter’d crow that leads the clanging rookery home.

Where is comfort? in division of the records of the mind?
Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her, kind?

I remember one that perish’d: sweetly did she speak and move:
Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.

Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?
No—she never loved me truly: love is love for evermore.

Comfort? comfort scorn’d of devils! this is truth the poet sings,

That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof,
In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall,
Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.

Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep,
To thy widow’d marriage-pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep.

Thou shalt hear the “Never, never,” whisper’d by the phantom years,
And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears;

And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain.

Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow: get thee to thy rest again.

Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry.
’Tis a purer life than thine; a lip to drain thy trouble dry.

Baby lips will laugh me down: my latest rival brings thee rest.

Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother’s breast.

O, the child too clothes the father with a dearness not his due.
Half is thine and half is his: it will be worthy of the two.

O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part,
With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter’s heart.

“They were dangerous guides the feelings—she herself was not exempt—
Truly, she herself had suffer’d”—Perish in thy self-contempt!

Overlive it—lower yet—be happy! wherefore should I care?
I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.

What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?
Every door is barr’d with gold, and opens but to golden keys.

Every gate is throng’d with suitors, all the markets overflow.
I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I should do?

I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman’s ground,
When the ranks are roll’d in vapour, and the winds are laid with sound.

But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honour feels,
And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other’s heels.

Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page.
Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous Mother-Age!

Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife,
When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life;

Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield,
Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father’s field,

And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn,
Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn;

And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then,
Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men:

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new:
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do:

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew
From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro’ the thunder-storm;

Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

So I triumph’d ere my passion sweeping thro’ me left me dry,
Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye;

Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint,
Science moves, but slowly slowly, creeping on from point to point:

Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion creeping nigher,
Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire.

Yet I doubt not thro’ the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widen’d with the process of the suns.

What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys,
Tho’ the deep heart of existence beat for ever like a boy’s?

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore,
And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast,
Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest.

Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle-horn,
They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their scorn:

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder’d string?
I am shamed thro’ all my nature to have loved so slight a thing.

Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman’s pleasure, woman’s pain—
Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain:

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match’d with mine,
Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine—

Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah, for some retreat
Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat;

Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil-starr’d;

I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle’s ward.

Or to burst all links of habit—there to wander far away,
On from island unto island at the gateways of the day.

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,
Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.

Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag;
Slides the bird o’er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag;

Droops the heavy-blossom’d bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree—
Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.

There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind,
In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind.

There the passions cramp’d no longer shall have scope and breathing-space;
I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.

Iron-jointed, supple-sinew’d, they shall dive, and they shall run,
Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun;

Whistle back the parrot’s call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks,
Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books—

Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I know my words are wild,
But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child.

I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains,
Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains!

Mated with a squalid savage—what to me were sun or clime?
I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time—

I that rather held it better men should perish one by one,
Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua’s moon in Ajalon!

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range.
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

Thro’ the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day:
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

Mother-Age (for mine I knew not) help me as when life begun:
Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the Sun—

O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set.
Ancient founts of inspiration well thro’ all my fancy yet.

Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall!
Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall.

Comes a vapour from the margin, blackening over heath and holt,
Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt.


Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow;
For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.

The Backlash from Virginia Tech

When the media finally revealed the perpetrator in what happened at Virginia Tech, they said that he was Chinese or Korean, possibly a Foreign exchange student. I read this article this morning from the Alternet site. In any event, its not a "blame the immigrant" issue. Anyone, American, Korean, Chinese, Vulcan, could have snapped and done this. Nationality doesn't have anything to do with it. Blaming the immigrant is the easy thing to say. Its a terrible tragedy, but what that idiot in Virginia did was not something endemic in his nationality. What he did was because he was sick, twisted and had easy access to a gun. What he did was no different than when Charles Whitman went to the top of library tower at the University of Texas in 1966 and shot 15 people. No different than when George Hennard drove his car into the front of a Luby's cafeteria in 1991 and then opened fire on the crowd and killed 24 people. Both of these people were Americans. Its not a question of where someone comes from in the world. The sad fact of the matter is that often times we can never tell who is going to be a potential madman. We can't single out someone just because of where he comes from.

Eventually though, I fear a race war in this country soon. Truth be told, Caucasians are going be a minority soon in this land and we will have to start dealing with that. We can be reactionary and become like Germany in the 1930's or deal with it in a constructive fashion and become the melting pot that we promote ourselves as.

I pray for the people in Virginia. They didn't deserve what happened to them. There are going to be so many dreams unfulfilled. So many people who could change the world that are not going to be there to change the world.

From Greg Palast - The Accomplices for Virgina Tech

From Greg Palast - The Accomplices for Virgina Tech
Note to the reader: I got this in my e-mail this morning. For those of you who don't know, Greg Palast is an American who does investigative reporting for the BBC. He has written several books as well including his latest damning expose on the Bush Adminstration entitled "Armed Madhouse." Be warned that Mr. Palast has been arrested for his statements in the past. I am not so nieve to think we live in a democracey anymore. Read this with the warning that this may be material considered subversive by the federal government.

The Accomplices: Sundance George and Butch Reid and the Virginia Tech Massacre

by Greg Palast
Tuesday, April 17, 2007

He had accomplices. Don't kid yourself: 23-year-old Cho Seung-hui didn't forge his two little pistols in his smithy shop.

He had a dealer, a guns-and-bullets pusher-man who put the heat in his hand, took the kid's money and pocketed it with a grin.

"Whether you are looking for a pistol for affordable training or simply the excitement of shooting, the P22 is the pistol for you!"

That's the ad on the Walther website for the student-reaper, a Walther .22.

Not that Walther, or its fellow murder-maker, Glock, which crafted the other Weapon of Student Mass Destruction, the Glock 7mm, kept all of the killer kid's money. The gun makers religiously tithe a portion of their grim reapings to their friends in Washington.

This report isn't about gun control legislation or the right to bear arms or any of that sideways crap. This is about a group of co-conspirators who dropped two killing devices into the hands of someone who shouldn't have had access to a plastic spoon.

But before we bring in the suspects for questioning, let's pull back the camera lens for the bigger picture. Because what we saw at Virginia Tech was just a concentrated node of a larger, nationwide killing spree that goes on day after day in the USA. Eighty-thousand Americans take a bullet from a hand gun in any year. Thirty-thousand die. That's one thousand shooting deaths off-camera for each victim at Virginia Tech.

Sundance Bush is right now at the school for his photo op. The President is, "saddened and angered by these senseless acts of violence." But will our senseless and violent President do anything about it? He already has: On July 29, 2005, the US Senate passed, then Bush signed, a grant of immunity from lawsuits for Walther, Glock and other gun manufacturers.

Now, corporations that make hand-guns can't be sued for knowingly selling firearms to killers. Like that? No other industry has such wide lawsuit immunity -- not teachers, not doctors, not cops -- only gun makers.

Here's how Cho got his guns. It's a story you won't hear on CNN. It begins with something known as, The Iron Pipeline. At one end of the Pipeline are states like Alabama where gun laws are loosey-goosey. Gun makers including Glock stuff the 'Bama end of the pipe with far more guns than can ever be bought legally in that state, knowing full well that the guns will be illegally shipped up the pipeline into states where gun laws are tougher. Virginia law prevents "gun-trafficking"; in Alabama, they could care less.

In every state in America, a bar owner is liable to lawsuit if a bartender serves too many drinks and a customer dies in an auto accident. Hand a chainsaw to a child, you're in legal trouble. Until Bush signed the 2005 protect-the-gun-makers law, the same common law against negligent distribution applied to firearms.

Bush was aiming at Stephen Fox. Steven can describe feeling pieces of his brain fly from his skull after a mugger shot him. He's permanently paralyzed. A jury charged the makers of .25-caliber hand guns with negligent distribution -- and Bush went wild.

He was especially worked up because the City of New Orleans sued the gun makers for the cost of hospitalizing cops shot by armaments pooping out the end of the Iron Pipeline. The NAACP joined in the suit with the effrontery to demand the gun-pushers alter their marketing programs to keep their products out of the hands of maniacs and murderers.

Do the gun manufacturers know their .22's are being used for something other than hunting long-horned elk? Every year, the federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency sends 800,000 requests to the gun companies to trace weapons found at crime scenes. As Fox's attorney told me, criminals are a much-valued, if unpublicized, market segment sought out and provisioned by these manufacturers.

But they're safe, the gun-makers, even if we aren't, because of Bush's immunity law. But Sundance Bush didn't act alone. There was Harry 'Butch' Reid, leader of the Senate Democrats, riding shotgun on the immunity bandwagon.

The Walther .22 comes from Austria. Hitler came from Austria, too. The Glock 7mm student-slayer comes from Germany. With the legal protection handed them by Bush and Reid, the two Teutonic weapons profiteers can skip free of legal judgment with that line well-practiced by their countrymen: "We were only taking orders -- for our product."

**********

This report is adapted from, "Just Put Down that Lawsuit, Pardner, and No One Gets Hurt" in the Class War section of the new edition of Greg Palast's bestseller, "ARMED MADHOUSE: Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of A White House Gone Wild." Order it now at www.GregPalast.com before its official release next week.

Irony can be so ironic.

In what has become a hideous irony, I must say something. In my previous post, I compared some aspects of the incident at Virginia Tech to a Saturday Night Live skit many years ago. In a parody of ABC's Nightline, a Ted Koppel caricature interviews Eddie Murphy's caricature of the "Our Gang" character Buckwheat. As it progresses, "Buckwheat" leaves and is assassinated by "John David Stutts" (also played by Murphy by the way) filmed in such a way as to resemble the assassination attempt by John Hinkley on President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Stutts is captured and his neighbors and co-workers are interviewed and asked if he wanted to kill Buckwheat to which they reply "Yes, that's all he ever talked about." The climax of the skit consists of Stutts being killed in a parody of the Oswald assassination.

I tell you all this to get to the ironic part. It seems that our protagonist showed all the signs. He wrote disturbing plays, prompting his English professor to advise him to seek counseling. (Unfortunately, we lack the laws in this country to forcibly commit someone for writing disturbing plays. That may change after this, but I digress). He had a loner mentality and was so disturbing to his classmates that many identified him as the perpetrator even before his name was officially released. It seems that killing and darkness were all he ever talked about and something set him off, drove him over the edge.

The media coverage on this incident seems so like this skit that the ironic parallels are just crazy. I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this contradiction. Perhaps Murphy's writers at SNL struck a chord in this media savvy world of ours that pointed out this sometimes idiotic rumination whenever there is a major incident such as this. (Part of the skit consisted of playing the "Buckwheat assassination" over and over in slow motion much like the Challenger disaster and the Reagan assassination which were recent history at the time of the skit).

So, if you see me walking down the street, chuckling at the media coverage of this deplorable incident, please do not think me callous. I only laugh at the irony of the media which has become obsessed with blood and disaster, endlessly obsessing on stories to the point that they no longer have meaning or impact. Stories which in our strange media world sometimes have no meaning except to the media insects themselves.

On Virgina Tech and Violence

On Virgina Tech and Violence

All I have to say to this is that it is a symptom of the callousness of what living in the US is like. Oh, there is plenty of sympathy and sadness for these people. I am not faulting that. What happened in Blasksburg, VA is a symptom of what is wrong with this country. Its touched my life before (check out Some Undisciplined Brat Shot up my School) and I have to face the fact that each day, something like that could happen to me in my job as a security officer. It a part of living in the gun culture of America, where no one is safe on the streets and an armed citizenry is a "safe" citizenry.

Watching the news coverage makes me sick. I don't want to sound callous, but all I can think of is the skit that appeared many years ago on Saturday Night Live where Eddie Murphy plays a parody of the Kennedy assassination in which his parody character of Buckwheat is assassinated by a "lone gunman" named "John David Stuts." (Mel Gibson's "Jerry" in "Conspiracy Theory" was right. Assassins always have three names. We will probably find out this guys middle name I am sure. But I digress).

There is the Catch-phrase title "Massacre at Virgina Tech" to give it a tag. Then they ruminate over the same thing over and over again. We see the lone gunman's life examined over and over and over again until we see anyone as a potential lone gunman and a threat. His neighbors will be interviewed, his parents will be interviewed, maybe even ostracized.

As a security worker, I also find it infuriating of all the second-guessing, 20/20 hindsight and "Monday Morning Quarterbacking" that is being done to the security people at the campus. You can't have cameras everywhere without invading people's privacy. You can't have a guard everywhere. They would outnumber the students, and they would have no money to educate the students. The people there made the best decision, based on the information they had at the time and unfortunately, they got bad information. The fog of "war" or the lack of information is something that a decision maker has to suffer with. Unfortunately, I think a lot of good people will loose their jobs because they made the best decision they could based on bad information. You make the best decision and sometimes its a bad one. The media is going to ruminate over this thing until we become numb. This is another step in our slowly becoming a police state where we are all safe, but not free.

Speaking of which, I also find it interesting that the scheduled testimony of Attorney General Gonzalas was postponed because of this. Other blogs and speculative media have noticed a pattern of incidents such as this and the fact that it diverts attention away from failures on the part of the administration. Coincidence? Maybe, but I have learned to be cynical in my old age. The President will attend the memorial service, but he is a part of this culture of Death, contradicting himself when he called for the culture of Life the other day. And unlike our fearless leaders' performance on 9/11, he is trying to appear Presidential here.

Another thing is that this is a daily situation in Iraq and other places in the world. While I don't want to denigrate what has happened in Virgina, there seems to be a double standard here. It seems that when it happens overseas, its not news, but when it happens here, its 24 hour news and we ruminate over what happens and its impact. Thirty-two people dead is nothing compared with what happens on the streets of Baghdad. Virgina Tech Massacares occour daily there and sometimes in multiple locations involving hundreds of persons. Multiple incidents of this nature permeate EVERY aspect of life in Iraq. Yet we in this country can go on and live our lives without sacrifice, while soldiers die and civilians are killed.

I hope I don't sound too cynical and heartless there. And if I have offended anyone, I apologize in advance. Right now, its fresh and numb and I just don't know what to feel.

Wit and Wisdom from Lee Iacocca

I read this in an e-mail I got today and I think it bears repeating. A lot of wisdom is here and I think Lee says it for America. There needs to be some changes made and soon, or our ship of state will start to sink. We can't use the old ways for very much longer and we must change soon, before that radical change is forced upon us by circumstance.

Excerpt from Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

From Chapter 1: Had Enough?

Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."

Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?

I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have.

My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to -- as soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but at least it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us.



WHO ARE THESE GUYS, ANYWAY?


Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them -- or at least some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy.

And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not just a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.

Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make us stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of Lincoln? What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and Truman? There was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?


THE TEST OF A LEADER


I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I understand a few things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine points -- not ten (I don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses). I call them the "Nine Cs of Leadership." They're not fancy or complicated. Just clear, obvious qualities that every true leader should have. We should look at how the current administration stacks up. Like it or not, this crew is going to be around until January 2009. Maybe we can learn something before we go to the polls in 2008. Then let's be sure we use the leadership test to screen the candidates who say they want to run the country. It's up to us to choose wisely.

So, here's my C list:

A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of the "Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously, because the world is a big, complicated place. George W. Bush brags about never reading a newspaper. "I just scan the headlines," he says. Am I hearing this right? He's the President of the United States and he never reads a newspaper? Thomas Jefferson once said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter." Bush disagrees. As long as he gets his daily hour in the gym, with Fox News piped through the sound system, he's ready to go.

If a leader never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different ideas, he grows stale. If he doesn't put his beliefs to the test, how does he know he's right? The inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means either you think you already know it all, or you just don't care. Before the 2006 election, George Bush made a big point of saying he didn't listen to the polls. Yeah, that's what they all say when the polls stink. But maybe he should have listened, because 70 percent of the people were saying he was on the wrong track. It took a "thumping" on election day to wake him up, but even then you got the feeling he wasn't listening so much as he was calculating how to do a better job of convincing everyone he was right.

A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try something different. You know, think outside the box. George Bush prides himself on never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping. There's a disturbingly messianic fervor to his certainty. Senator Joe Biden recalled a conversation he had with Bush a few months after our troops marched into Baghdad. Joe was in the Oval Office outlining his concerns to the President -- the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanded Iraqi army, the problems securing the oil fields. "The President was serene," Joe recalled. "He told me he was sure that we were on the right course and that all would be well. 'Mr. President,' I finally said, 'how can you be so sure when you don't yet know all the facts?'" Bush then reached over and put a steadying hand on Joe's shoulder. "My instincts," he said. "My instincts." Joe was flabbergasted. He told Bush, "Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough." Joe Biden sure didn't think the matter was settled. And, as we all know now, it wasn't.

Leadership is all about managing change -- whether you're leading a company or leading a country. Things change, and you get creative. You adapt. Maybe Bush was absent the day they covered that at Harvard Business School.

A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not talking about running off at the mouth or spouting sound bites. I'm talking about facing reality and telling the truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to know how to talk straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time trying to convince us that things are not really as bad as they seem. I don't know if it's denial or dishonesty, but it can start to drive you crazy after a while. Communication has to start with telling the truth, even when it's painful. The war in Iraq has been, among other things, a grand failure of communication. Bush is like the boy who didn't cry wolf when the wolf was at the door. After years of being told that all is well, even as the casualties and chaos mount, we've stopped listening to him.

A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you want to test a man's character, give him power." George Bush has a lot of power. What does it say about his character? Bush has shown a willingness to take bold action on the world stage because he has the power, but he shows little regard for the grievous consequences. He has sent our troops (not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens) to their deaths -- for what? To build our oil reserves? To avenge his daddy because Saddam Hussein once tried to have him killed? To show his daddy he's tougher? The motivations behind the war in Iraq are questionable, and the execution of the war has been a disaster. A man of character does not ask a single soldier to die for a failed policy.

A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about balls. (That even goes for female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage. George Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he likes to talk like a cowboy. You know, My gun is bigger than your gun. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.

If you're a politician, courage means taking a position even when you know it will cost you votes. Bush can't even make a public appearance unless the audience has been handpicked and sanitized. He did a series of so-called town hall meetings last year, in auditoriums packed with his most devoted fans. The questions were all softballs.

To be a leader you've got to have CONVICTION -- a fire in your belly. You've got to have passion. You've got to really want to get something done. How do you measure fire in the belly? Bush has set the all-time record for number of vacation days taken by a U.S. President -- four hundred and counting. He'd rather clear brush on his ranch than immerse himself in the business of governing. He even told an interviewer that the high point of his presidency so far was catching a seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his hand-stocked lake.

It's no better on Capitol Hill. Congress was in session only ninety-seven days in 2006. That's eleven days less than the record set in 1948, when President Harry Truman coined the term do-nothing Congress. Most people would expect to be fired if they worked so little and had nothing to show for it. But Congress managed to find the time to vote itself a raise. Now, that's not leadership.

A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking about being flashy. Charisma is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's the ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him. That's my definition of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great guy to hang out with at a barbecue or a ball game. But put him at a global summit where the future of our planet is at stake, and he doesn't look very presidential. Those frat-boy pranks and the kidding around he enjoys so much don't go over that well with world leaders. Just ask German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who received an unwelcome shoulder massage from our President at a G-8 Summit. When he came up behind her and started squeezing, I thought she was going to go right through the roof.

A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn't it? You've got to know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got to surround yourself with people who know what they're doing. Bush brags about being our first MBA President. Does that make him competent? Well, let's see. Thanks to our first MBA President, we've got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on life support, and we've run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just for starters. A leader has to be a problem solver, and the biggest problems we face as a nation seem to be on the back burner.

You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE. I call this Charlie Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in the car business, one of my first jobs was as Ford's zone manager in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham, who was the East Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with a warm drawl, a huge smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell me, "Remember, Lee, the only thing you've got going for you as a human being is your ability to reason and your common sense. If you don't know a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream, you'll never make it." George Bush doesn't have common sense. He just has a lot of sound bites. You know -- Mr.they'll-welcome-us-as-liberators -no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job -Brownie-mission-accomplished Bush.

Former President Bill Clinton once said, "I grew up in an alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the reality-based world -- and I like it here."

I think our current President should visit the real world once in a while.

THE BIGGEST C IS CRISIS

Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.

On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a pet goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It's all on tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route back to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the panicked people of this country, he decided it wasn't safe to return to the White House. He basically went into hiding for the day -- and he told Vice President Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker. We were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we were going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero.

That was George Bush's moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when he'd regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq -- a road his own father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn't listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you, I don't know what will.


A HELL OF A MESS


So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.

But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when "the Big Three" referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen -- and more important, what are we going to do about it?

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?


HAD ENOUGH?


Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope. I believe in America. In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises -- the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If I've learned one thing, it's this: You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a call to action for people who, like me, believe in America. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough.

Copyright © 2007 by Lee Iacocca & Associates, Inc., a California Corporation