Happy Birthday America

[mtmynd]

<center>Happy Birthday, America</center>

Well, America, today you're a whopping 231 years old... too old to still be involved in this ridiculous war in Iraq if you ask me. But I know better... these past 6 years you'd never ask anyone that wasn't a Conservative/Republican for anything. Seems as though at your age you've become so singular-minded about what you want versus what you need that anyone implying anything different for the current status quo appears to be on the fringe.

Two-hundred and thirty-one years is a goodly amount of time to develop into a decent Democracy, but lately... I don't know. Is it because you're listening to only one side of the populace? Or, (and I hate to mention it), do you just really don't care about all the freedoms that your Constitution originally proclaimed? Your attitude as of late is not really what it should be. Could age have anything to do with it?

Remember when you were young? Those days when you were free to try all sorts of things. My gosh, the country was really a vibrant place. But nowadays you seem to have so many suspicions about we the people, that there's airs of distrust and anger at what we people say and do. Your President, G.W. Bush, swore the Presidential Oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, I ask you America, has this man lived up to his promise? He has twisted your Constitution to fit his own ideals, his own defense and those of his administration.

And your free press Damn, America, it used to be such another great model for the rest of the world. The past several years you are more than concerned at what this freedom to print is doing to your image, or so it seems. If you continue in that direction you can't help to be viewed as having something to hide, you know?

All this secretiveness you've been up to these past six plus years is sneaking up on you. You can only keep secrets for so long before they come out and turn against you, and it seems the veil is shredding.

The real secret is that you're ailing, America. You just aren’t the example of Freedom and Democracy you once aimed to be. You're in debt up to your Chesapeake and the flood waters are leaking over into the populace. At your age you are trying to put on a face that all is well and you’re a healthy and vibrant place. But you're dis-eased, America. You're supposed to be one body united... you know, the United States of America? But all this red state and blue state divisions..? You just can't stand strong and united if this division continues. You know that.

Maybe age makes you less pliable, less agreeable to change. America, my friend, change is what you have been all about for all these 231 years, and those changes have always been for the better. But look at yourself now - trying to stifle change, inhibit your freedom to express and move with the times. Those are signs of old age and you've got to get a transfusion or else you are going to live in the past.

America, your original declaration of forming a more perfect union with liberty and justice for all is growing weak. True, those that are wealthy have a great deal of liberty... the more wealthy they are the more liberty they have. But is that the intent you had in mind, America, when this was written up and agreed upon 231 years ago? How about justice for all? Your own Bureau of Justice statistics show that only one year ago there were about 2.2 million of your own people incarcerated in jails and prisons throughout your country. The U.S. incarceration rate has QUINTUPLED since 1971 when Republican President Richard Nixon declared the "War on Drugs." 1973 was the year Nixon's DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) began. How many of these people are locked up solely because of their own pursuit of happiness? (You know you granted that clause in your Constitution, don't you?). How about 'insuring domestic tranquility'...? I don't think by locking up so many people you're really insuring your own tranquility. Do you?

Seems like you need to take a good look at yourself, especially now that you're 231 years old. Take a good look at where you are now and compare that to when you were young and full of ideas and love of living. Don't forget all the progress you were responsible for - things like the light bulb, automobiles (and assembly lines with fair pay), the telephone, television, airplanes, movies, arts, wonderful architecture... the list is long and wondrous. Wouldn't you like to keep adding to the list? Or don't you have the energy to keep up with progress?

Wouldn't you still like to be a 'Beacon of Freedom' for the world... the freedom for your citizens to keep on keeping up with their own ideas and their own measures of success? America, you shouldn't forget the 1930's so quickly, when FDR put a stop to a few that became so powerful that your citizens grew weak. But you're allowing it to happen all over. Your corporations are running you and 'we the people' are losing ground. You didn't intend that to happen, but in your old age, you seem so lacking in compassion and caring for the same people that once gave you a feeling of being proud and confident, happy and fun to be with. Look at you now.

I won't go on and on, even though there are so many things that just aren't healthy about you. But be assured, America, that I have faith that you will get strong again, and I don't mean only militarily strong, but internally strong, a renewal of your original intent “to provide for the common defence (and not the defense of one party), promote the general Welfare (that means all of us), and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity ... great words to live by and to live for, America. Don't squander them for the benefit of greed and thievery of the Treasury that 'we the people' have contributed to.

I truly hope it's not too late, America, for you to restore your vitality and freedoms so you can continue being a country that will inspire others to trust and believe in. There are millions of us that want you to regain your health and continue progressing towards a future for all of us, not just a faction. We may be called 'Progressives.' Among us are those that believe in Freedom and Liberty for all. We may be called 'Liberals.' These shouldn't be dirty words in your eyes, America, but rather they should be words that mean the original intent of what you were conceived to be for all of us... even those that fear liberty and justice for all. That's what made you strong to begin with... inclusion of all, for all, by all.

America, on this your 231th year, may you reflect upon your humble beginnings.

I (still) love you and wish you a healthy future, not based on your war powers but the goodness of your populace to inspire others around this world of ours.


Cecil
04 July 2007

[stilltrucking]

I been thinking about learning Chinese. At least the fireworks are safe.


Happy Independence Day compadre, don't let me rain on your parade.

[Lightning Rod]

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[YABYUM]

Very nice read Cecil. Think I'll hang that one on the fridge for the day.
Nice additive Lrod.....I love how Jimmi mouths out his guitars sounds or perhaps it is vice versa.

[Arcadia]

231 years since you give the tea to the water!!! mmm... were you or the brits?
feliz cumpleaños!!!

[Dave The Dov]

I wish I did this on the 4th of July but better late then never.

America by Allen Ginsberg

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
_________________
og kush marijuana

[hester_prynne]

I took Stella and her stepsister, who was visiting, to the local fireworks event here in this new town I'm living in.
I swear, when I left I had PTSD.
Why do we celebrate our country's independence with incessant bomb sounds?
I still am hearing them at night.
I don't get it.

H

[jimboloco]

And your free press Damn, America, it used to be such another great model for the rest of the world. The past several years you are more than concerned at what this freedom to print is doing to your image, or so it seems. If you continue in that direction you can't help to be viewed as having something to hide, you know?

tremendous thread
Mikey Moore gave it to Wolf Blitzer ojn CNN, finally, but as an intrusion
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl? ... 11/1343221

i agree i hate the loud bangs
got home and hid in my room depressed
so i say that i am patriotic when i talk to rabid right weiners who call me a traitor, because molly ivans told me to go at them like snarling dawgs

thank gawd 4th of july is over
veterans day used to be armistis day
memorial dayshould be for all the war dead
these three "holidays" are depressing to me.

but i am fond of saying i want my country back
never really "had" it before
hope it happens sometime soon

[Arcadia]

I like the fuegos artificiales we use to have here in november during the colectividades fiesta. Last time I was below them, I was eating greek food!!

[stilltrucking]

cecil said

Remember when you were young? Those days when you were free to try all sorts of things. My gosh, the country was really a vibrant place.

I sat in a room full of truck driverrs while our whtie boss was giving a speech about the glories of our past and he said something like what you said and I looked around at the black drivers in the room who were all rolling their eyes.

My fourth of july parade got rained out this year.

[the flaming ace]

yank my doodle it's a dandy!
yank my doodle do or die
a real live nephew of my uncle sam
i am that yank my doodle guy

http://www.bingoplayer.ca/bpm4015_HAiR.htm
"Om mani padme om
Om mani padme om
Folding the flag means taking care of the nation.
Folding the flag is putting it to bed for the night.
I fell through a hole in the flag
I'm falling through a hole in the flag
Help!

Don't put it down
Best one around
Crazy for the red blue and white
Crazy for the red blue and white ........
and yellow-green"


- "Don't Put it Down" Hair musical

[stilltrucking]

Yes I am a traitor

[the flaming ace]

you ain't betraying me
i won't let you
i won't rain on your parade
you are a firecracker
fond of jane

[stilltrucking]

We are barely civilized compared to China's three thousand years that they been at this civilization thing. They loan us the money to buy their goods.


Here is the link for the story about that flag

Made In China

Is it possible to go for a whole year without buying any products made in China? One woman in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, wanted to find out. FP spoke with author Sara Bongiorni about her new book, the hidden role China plays in our everyday lives, and what it’s like to be a mother of two without a coffee maker.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms. ... ry_id=3905

That plastic flag don't mean much to me anymore
But I loved the feel of those old cotton flags with the 48 stars.

I am heart sick jim. When I go by a flag pole I expect the flag to be flying at half mast. But nobody important died today, just some grunts in Iraq or Afghanistan. Or just some rag heads. I watch the faces scroll by on Jim Lehrer news hour during their silent memorial to the fallen at the end of the show and instead of the smiling faces of american youth I wonder what they look like now with their faces shot away.

Out of sight out of mind. I support our troops, I have decided to put another magnetic sticker on my car just to prove it.


The strange thing is all we got going for us these days is the military industrial complex.

[bennie2]

happy. birthday. america.

that is all