America
PROVIDENCE, R.I.
All Downhill For Hero After Battle Of San Jacinto
All Downhill For Hero After Battle Of San Jacinto The daughter of a long dead and all but forgotten hero of the Texas Revolution unveiled a statue of her tragic father at a Galveston intersection on Oct. 23, 1938. San Jacinto should have ensured success and immortality, but Sidney Sherman knew only pain and disappointment. The most powerful politician of his day ruined his reputation, and three suspicious fires left a promising career in ashes. Yet his public ordeal could not compare with the private anguish of burying four children and a wife. Sherman proudly admired the fruit of four years labor since leaving New York City in 1831. Nevertheless, the Cincinnati businessman was willing to risk everything to fight for freedom in a foreign land. On March 6, 1836, Sherman and 50 volunteers from Ohio and Kentucky reached Gonzales, where reinforcements were supposed to be ready for an Alamo rescue mission. But no relief column was waiting, and the stunned officer refused to lead his men into certain annihilation. Five days later, Gen. Sam Houston showed up and forged the chain of command that included Sherman as lieutenant colonel. When confirmation came that night of the massacre in San Antonio, the commander gave the order for a full-scale retreat which Sherman and many others found hard to swallow. At the Colorado River, the outspoken newcomer pleaded for permission to cross the tributary and surprise a Mexican force twice the size of his own contingent. Harsh words were exchanged, when Houston pulled rank and insisted Sherman resume the withdrawal. Word of the slaughter at Goliad sapped the already anemic morale of the rebels and set mutinous tongues to wagging. Sherman was the popular choice of the dispirited soldiers to replace their do-nothing general, a fact duly noted by Houston who would always despise his rumored successor as a back-stabbing traitor. As the two sides jockeyed for position the day before the climax at San Jacinto, Sherman proposed a preemptive strike against Santa Anna
An Experiment In Hate
An Experiment In Hate Since this will be my last column before the election, I was hoping to write something positive about exercising your right to vote. But the Republican rabble, in Congress as well as among the electorate, spurred on by an unrelentingly vicious Palin-McCain ticket and its utterly disgusting mismanagement, have made such a well-intentioned endeavor an impossibility. The thought of John McCain in the Oval Office was distastefully scary enough, but it became entered the realm of horrifying when Sarah Palin hijacked the campaign and wrested control of the ticket from the aging senator. After all the fearmongering based upon outright lies that “Sarah the Governor” and “John the Senator” have puked up at their rallies, inciting “real Americans” to act more like angry mobs out for blood, the insanity has actually intensified. Clearly, it was Sarah who opened the floodgates for the vile invectives of hatred shouted aloud from those who fear honest discourse, well out of camera view and Secret Service scrutiny at Palin-McCain gatherings: “traitor,” “terrorist,” “kill him.” We
America
America
Bond With Your Child This Halloween; Dress Them As A Portobello Mushroom
Bond With Your Child This Halloween; For some of you, Halloween is an exciting time that allows you to bond with your child by making their Halloween-costume dream come true. For the rest of us, it
Dress Them As A Portobello Mushroom
Orwellian Alert! British Crackdown Threatens Us All
Orwellian Alert!
Dr. Fredrick Toben, an Australian citizen and historical revisionist scholar, was arrested and imprisoned while passing through London
Sen. John McCain Will Win In 20 States, But Obama Will Win The Presidency
Sen. John McCain Will Win In 20 States, But Obama Will Win The Presidency
These solely are my own predictions based on my research and views of state polls and from the media campaign news from each state:
The odds of winning the presidency:
Obama -230 McCain +160
I believe the REAL “battleground” states are Florida and Ohio where either candidate could still win.
I predict that Sen. John McCain will win the following states:
Texas
Montana
Wyoming
Georgia
Indiana
Tennessee
Arizona
Alaska
Alabama
Louisiana
Kentucky
South Carolina
Oklahoma
Arkansas
Mississippi
Nebraska
Utah
West Virginia
South Dakota
Idaho
Peter Stern of Driftwood, Texas, <pstern@austin.rr.com>, a former Director of Information Services, university professor and public school administrator, is a political writer well-known and published frequently throughout the Texas community and nationwide. He is a Disabled Vietnam Veteran and holds three post-graduate degrees.
Green Burial: Part 2
Green Burial: Part 2 If you are considering a green burial, remember that most bodies that are not embalmed are placed in cold storage for some period of time until funeral arrangements may be made. Evidence suggests that prolonged periods of refrigeration greatly reduce or eliminate altogether many pathogens. Refrigeration helps to minimize the risk of such contamination. If your green burial site is also a natural preserve, it is kept in as natural a state as possible, with little disturbance. This means that there is no use of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals that are routinely employed in the landscaping of the more commercial cemeteries. Such chemicals pollute the groundwater far more than any natural decomposition of human remains would. Also, in a natural preserve cemetery, no water is used for irrigation of lawns or shrubs and other plants. And of course, since green burial sites use no embalming, there is no danger of such chemicals escaping into the groundwater. Some people are concerned that in a natural preserve, the wild animals might disturb the bodies. There
Never Enough Time
Never Enough Time Thank goodness we are now HOME! Hooray! While living in hospitals, I continually searched for interesting ways to keep my mind off the horrors of the debilitating process that was taking place inside Zack, where I was, and what was happening to our lives. I previously confessed that I discovered and succumbed to EBay somewhat promiscuously for a time. (Then I went cold turkey, but have been “watching” some items lately, in a much more responsible fashion than my previous frantic buying mania). That was one of the more exotic forays I explored in the name of occupying my mind, one of my strangest diversions. I found it difficult to read actual books, although I did manage to make it through two about Guillain-Barre (and plan to write my own soon). I believe I also read quite a bit of medical information (and one interminably long insurance manual). I read one novel, but it took me a very, very long time. Well-meaning friends often asked if they could bring or send books
Political Language 2008
Political Language 2008 I reflect on a childhood world where politics was theater. Politickin
Scattershooting While Wondering Whatever Happened To Mercedes McCambridge
Scattershooting While Wondering Whatever Happened To Mercedes McCambridge As Uncle Hugh used to say, “If you can
What
NEW YORK CITY, N.Y.
How To Piss Off Wall Street
How To Piss Off Wall Street To the modern American aristocract, elections are wars; voting booths foxholes, ballots bullets, and you and your family are terrorists. No? Listen to George Will. Said the blue-blood class
Film To Expose TxDOT Lobbying, Perjury
SAN ANTONIO, Texas
Man Tells Bank To
MILPITAS, Calif.
Bush
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Free-Market Guru Commits Heresy
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Comet To Wipe Out Republican Party — GOP Faces Extinction: Texas Populist
GOP Faces Extinction: Texas Populist SAN ANTONIO, Texas Punk is dead. Unions are dead. Latin is dead. Communism is dead. The Republican Party… dying? Wha? Yup, that’s what David Van Os told The Lone Star Iconoclast, and he’s not about to change his mind any time soon. The San Antonio-based labor lawyer has faced Republicans in three political campaigns in 10 years. Though he lost all three, including a bid to become chairman of the Texas Democratic Party this August, his tea leaves say it’s looking mighty grim for the red team. So what’s the reason he gives for the GOP’s demise? Silly haircuts? Draconian labor laws? Poisoned water? Berlin Wall graffiti? A comet from heaven? “I think George W. Bush and Dick Cheney destroyed the Republican Party,” said the former Democratic candidate in an exclusive interview. “The Republican Party hitched their wagon to Milton Freeman’s mythology to completely deregulate big business. That mythology has now been discredited. It just did not turn out right. It’s been discredited. It’s brought the whole world into chaos,” he added. Need proof? Take 9/11. President Bush had plenty of warnings issued to him from all the intelligence agencies on Capitol Hill. But did Bush call his Cabinet or even a working group to try to prevent the catastrophe? Nope. “[Bush] does absolutely nothing. He doesn’t want his vacations to be disturbed,” said Van Os. “As the 9/11 Commission said in their report, the red light was blinking.” A similar light blinked before the $8 trillion housing bubble burst this year, but instead of telling Wall Street to cool its jets, the Bush administration drove their getaway truck with a bailout bill worth $700 billion that the financial elite is using to balance its ledgers. “I mean, that was an armed stick up. They basically pointed guns at the country and Congress and said, ‘If you don’t relieve us Wall Street aristocrats of our gambling losses, you’re going to take you all down with us!’ he said. Indeed, it was as if al-Qaeda had magically materialized on Wall Street in Brooks Brothers suits. “[Treasury Secretary] Henry Paulson being given the blank check book to be the rescuer is like Osama bin Ladin being given the job of investigating the 9/11 tragedy,” said Van Os. Paulson previously served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the behemoth Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs. “And [the Democratic majority in Congress] gave in with a lot of help from the press present company excluded. I mean, the press did the same thing they did in stampeding the country into war in Iraq,” he noted. Van Os stands with former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi in this damning assessment of the American media, which still reports that the recession was caused by the credit crunch. Hint: it’s the $8 trillion housing bubble, stupid! “Buliosi makes this point that it’s so ironic that the mainstream press with the complicity of leading Democrats continued to get away with the fraud of saying that for all of Bush’s faults, national security and the war on terrorism are his strong points,” he said. Buglio
