Armadillo holiday mystic wish

With many great wishes to you and yours
the wondrous story of an age old tail that
was there even as cave men dwell,
waiting for the next rock to fall with the hope for another day
to bring a hide or two to start this race we all call life.

Hope is the light of every morn, even if our teeth are worn
which means to all that is has all been one step to the next
as the moon moves and the stars twinkle
and bring you the blessings of time in the light
of the search of good deeds to be done to help humankind.

Barrow A. Dillo

The great armadillo has just found a glyph that shows great problems in the thinking of these war leaders in there not understanding of trying to live another day when people are trying to make you dead.
Here is the glyph translation.

"If you fight in Iraq make sure the corporate housekeepers don't catch you with extra tape on the wall for your wife's or girlfriend and don't forget the children's pictures on the tent wall you'll get demerits or worse yet make your self safe, or extra gas even ammo or you'll end up in prison."

What's coming? A look in the armadillo mud root ball and the glyphs of the earth gods.

Lets have a peek, and be prepared.

Here is some of what's coming, what will be happening in our country in the next few years:

1. The theft of all social security funds, to be transferred to those who control money, and the increasing destitution of all those dependent on social security and social welfare programs.

2. Rising numbers of uninsured people in this country that already has the highest percentage of citizens without health insurance in the developed world.

3. Increased loss of funding for public education combined with increased support for vouchers, urging Americans to entrust their children's education to Christian schools.

4. More restrictions on civil liberties as America is turned into the police state necessary for fascism to work.

5. Withdrawal of virtually all funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System. At their best, these media sometimes encourage critical questioning, so they are correctly seen as enemies of the state's official stories.

6. The reinstatement of a draft, from which the children of privileged parents will again be mostly exempt, leaving our poorest children to fight and die in wars of imperialism and greed that could never benefit them anyway. (That was my one-sentence Veteran's Day sermon for this year.)

7. More imperialistic invasions: of Iran and others, and the construction of a huge permanent embassy in Iraq.

8. More restrictions on speech, under the flag of national security.

9. Control of the internet to remove or cripple it as an instrument of free communication that is exempt from government control. This will be presented as a necessary anti-terrorist measure.

10. Efforts to remove the tax-exempt status of churches like this one, and to characterize them as anti-American.

11. Tighter control of the editorial bias of almost all media, and demonization of the few media they are unable to control as the New York Times, for instance.

12. Continued outsourcing of jobs, including more white-collar jobs, to produce greater profits for those who control the money and direct the society, while simultaneously reducing America's workers to a more desperate and powerless status.

13. Moves in the banking industry to make it impossible for an increasing number of Americans to own their homes. As they did in the 1930s, those who control the money know that it is to their advantage and profit to keep others renting rather than owning.

14. Criminalization of those who protest, as un-American, with arrests, detentions and harassment increasing. We already have a higher percentage of our citizens in prison than any other country in the world. That percentage will increase.

15. In the near future, it will be illegal or at least dangerous to say the things I have said here this morning. In the fascist story, these things are un-American. In the real history of a democratic America, they were seen as profoundly patriotic, as the kind of critical questions that kept the American spirit alive are the kind of questions, incidentally, that our media were supposed to be pressing.

Speaking of war, we're going to need all Blue States citizens back from Iraq. If you need people to fight in Falujah, just ask your evangelical voters. They have tons of kids they're willing to send to their deaths for absolutely no purpose. And they don't care if you don't
show pictures of their kids' caskets coming home.

So, you get Texas and all the former slave states, and we get the Governator and stem cell research. (We would love you to take Britney Spears off our hands, though. She IS from the south, right?)

Since we get New York, you'll have to come up with your own late night TV shows because we get MTV, Letterman, the Daily Show, and Conan O'Brien. You get... well, why don't you ask your people at Fox News to come up with something entertaining!? ( Maybe you should just watch Crossfire. That's a really funny show.)

We wish you all the best in the next four years and we hope, really hope, you find those missing weapons of mass destruction. Seriously...Soon.
Sincerely,
California

Dear President Bush:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from you and understand why you would propose and support a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. As you said, "in the eyes of God marriage is based between a man a woman." I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination... End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanness (Lev.15: 19-24). The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev.1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath Exodus 35:2. clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination, (Lev. 11:10) it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?

7. Lev.21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev.24:10-16). Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

Thanks for clarifying ...


Your devoted fan.

Just a thought from a glyph in one of the great armadillo digs
where there were many of these things the humans called "books".

"You've got to sing like you don't need the money,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Dance like nobody's watching,
You've got to do it from the heart, if it's going to work."
{Author unknown}

Internet and free press

Every armadillo knows a problem when he sees the glyphs on the wall.

We best pay attention to the attacks on the first amendment in all places all areas of our good old USA.... We best pay attention to the attacks on the first amendment in all places all areas of our good old USA.

We need for a group to, organize, pillers and posts, chief cooks and bottle washers along with John Q public to come to the aid of this nation NOW, For the GOP Corporate lobbyists, and the non-think groups want to return to the dark ages so they can burn and destroy this great nation.

So lets take it to the streets or our freedom will fade away into the dark ally of time.

Just remember that that the light of the torch of
Truth with the research of the acts of all men protects us from the evil of men as the thieves of freedom in the dark quest for power, greed and need to possess other souls in the suite of self-righteousness.

Does God Exist Or Not?

Maby the question should be why GOD is dead?

Or why did you kill him?

Maybe at the hands of the false pride that is sold so cheaply by preacher, mullah, rabbi, priest, shaman, or pick your favorite sports idol or corporate entity saying donate a buck and we'll get you the power or money and a web site for 15 minuets of fame or a stroke of love or forgive the ugliness and the gibberish of Slobbering on a fake printed cloth, chip or some other unholy material picked up and pre-packed and drop shipped from your local SMC dealer.

The shame and burden that is in his death is in each of our hearts as this must fall for the sending of a shekel or gold piece to support this con of beating, promising, through this self appointment as the channel for your entity to be forgiven, made rich, made whole again when only “HE” can give you all this and it is freely given.

Look in to your souls for their is only you, it is the hate of your self and ugliness of anger at being nothing, having nothing, and facing the guilt for all the animal behavior that blinds this self judgment along with a desire of eternal life.

So think with the freewill you were given to learn what morality is GOD put it here for the greater good in respect to the sick, poor, hungry, children, family, disabled, education, elderly, of laws justice with a list that is as endless as there are humans in this universe.

So cast the first stone if you have not sinned in some manner in your life, and then you can look to your soul and say you have walked in another’s shoes with their demons of personnel choices of human behavior.

It is a sad day when you elect a leader that lies to all thinks he is appointed by GOD Then creates a war, gives all to the rich while along with the moral responsibility to be a good steward to the GOD that made this world we walk on. This leader and friends are polluting, defiling this wondrous creation with the rape and pillage of it for short term profit and power of possession by a few .

Next look to the disrespect, when a political enmity tells you what your GOD is and only he can make you whole and safe again because he'll make a law so any one that doesn't agree, act, say the "right" word goes to hell or prison, while his same friends tear down this balance of the human soul with this hate.

While others seeking the truth where ever it goes brings to the table of life a fear in the fact all might have to look into the mirror of their soul and see the tears in the eyes of "GOD".

You can shout all you want and speak the name GOD BLESS AMERICA When the principles and morality of this great nation kill the innocent, degrade another's beliefs, create hate, look for vengeance and retribution at the expense of this republic and the democracy then subvert it for personal power, profit and greed along with the foul mouth of a "Go F... yourself" leadership.

All this rather than that of hard work, to bring reason along with the wisdom with which all others can equally seek out the causes and bring justice along with the laws of all men so all may see that each individual responsible for a wanton attack on innocents for any reason is an evil of our time and must suffer punishment so all may be shared to show that the light of truth is there for all that terrorism is an abomination in the eyes of human wisdom and we are all equally there to wittiness the results of this criminal act of making the innocent pay for some political belief real or imagined.

But GOD is dead. for the false profit's are here selling the book of the dead scrolls, oils of ointment, the wood chips of the cedars, natural vitamins, along with the terrorizing with fear and false promises to motivate the soul of greed.

So GOD is dead, killed by coveting others souls to punish for the guilt of being unable to control the soul of self in this journey of life.

This is a armadillo glyph find that might show where this culture melted into a glyph symbol that keeps repeating itself and some some call it profit others call it greed.

This job thing is something like chipping flint rock spear heads found around shards and large beasts described in other glyphs found in other intodiggins of the past.

If you can bring more light to the glyphs, let the dillo know? knowledge is power.

a series of glyphs from communication device.

Bureau of Labor Statistics grossly underestimates U.S. jobs lost to outsourcing, report from Cornell and U. Mass. labor experts suggests
FOR RELEASE: Oct. 15, 2004

Contact: Linda Myers
Office: 607-255-9735
E-Mail: lbm3@cornell.edu

ITHACA, N.Y. -- A just-released report to a bipartisan Congressional commission documented 48,417 U.S. jobs outsourced to other countries or publicly announced as being scheduled for outsourcing, from January through March 2004. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics had reported that only 4,633 private-sector jobs in companies with more than 50 employees were lost during that time period, a gross underestimation, warn the report's authors.

The new report is from two labor experts at Cornell University and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, who obtained their information through online tracking of media reports, corporate research and the creation of a database of information on all production shifts announced or confirmed in the media. Their report was commissioned by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which sought the information because there is no government-mandated reporting system to track production shifts from the United States to other countries.

The authors believe their methodology only captures one-third of all production shifts in most cases, which, if true, would bring the actual number of jobs lost to outsourcing in 2004 to 406,000 by year's end, compared with 204,000 in 2001. "We know we're not capturing all the numbers because companies are wary about the negative publicity and often don't share it fully with reporters," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of Labor Education Research at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations and co-author of the study, along with Stephanie Luce, research director and assistant professor at U.Mass.-Amherst.

The researchers, who also studied U.S. job outsourcing from Oct. 2000 through April 2001 for a predecessor commission of the bipartisan Congressional group, saw these important differences in their new, 2004 study:

Unlike in 2001, when the majority of job shifts were to single destinations, this year the shifts are to multiple destinations simultaneously, some from the United States to "near shore" or close to home, such as Mexico and Latin America, and some to "off shore" or far away, such as China and other countries in Asia. This trend is global, with companies in European countries also simultaneously shifting jobs to Eastern Europe and Asia, and high-wage Asian countries shifting jobs to low-wage neighboring countries and to China.

Also unlike 2001, white-collar service jobs, particularly ones involving information technology and call centers, are being shifted from the United States and Great Britain to India. That change is especially tough for U.S. service workers because the U.S. Department of Labor's Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program only offers compensation (income support, relocation and job search allowances, and a health coverage tax credit) to workers who lost jobs that produced a "product," as defined by TAA rules, state Bronfenbrenner and Luce.

Other key findings included in their executive summary are as follows:

o Of the documented jobs that left the United States for other countries in January through March 2004, 23,396 went to Mexico, 8,283 to China, 3,895 to India, 5,511 to Latin American countries other than Mexico, 4,419 to Asian countries other than China and 2,933 to other countries.

o The U.S. Midwest lost the most jobs to outsourcing (18,968 ) from January through March 2004. Other U.S. regions that lost a lot of jobs were the Southeast (8,604) and Northeast (7,223). The states hardest hit were Illinois (7,555 jobs lost) and Michigan (5,283 jobs lost).

o Unionized jobs accounted for a disproportionate 39 percent of the U.S. jobs that moved to other countries during the time period studied. In addition, 29 percent of the companies shifting production out of the United States were unionized, the report showed.

o From January through March 2004, there were 69 production shifts from the United States to Mexico (compared with 30 during the same period in 2001); 58 shifts to China (compared with 25 shifts in January-March 2001); and 31 shifts to India (compared with 1 shift in January-March 2001). The companies shifting jobs to China tend to be large, publicly held, highly profitable and well established, with 72 percent of them owned by U.S. multinationals.

The report is titled "The Changing Nature of Corporate Global Restructuring: The Impact of Production Shifts on Jobs in the U.S., China and Around the Globe." Access the full report in PDF format (544K) at http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Oct04/jobs.outsourcing.rpt.04.pdf .

-30-

Any Armadillo knows that has watched this Kafka election nightmare that even a blind Armadillo can see the Hypocrisy of this debate with a Vice President with a foul mouth, a wife and daughter should feel upset as he must not have respect in as much for this is probably the language he used when he found out she was being herself and just happend to be gay and unique.

Why should any one be up set at a remark by John Kerry for it was you must remember that Dick Cheney her own father that brought her into the political ring to set a CYA in the Brouhaha about gay relationships that the great new "GOD" reborn G. W. Bush and a special amendment to our constitution created the need for the right press release and sound bit op.

So please give us all a break John Kerry was polite and kind to really broach the subject of the difficulties in our society about being different.

It is with sadness that we now seem to not respect each other for our difference and only dwell on this hate and ugly behavior emulated from TV where people promote bad taste, ugly behavior, belittling the weak along with promoting anything gross and then pretending it’s cute.

Please mister PR man take a vacation and use the time to go back to school and learn to think, create, and put the light of imagination back into play.

Let go this marketing nightmare tunnel of believing your a god in charge of free will.

A focus group is great but put something in front of them that has positive movement not the trash barrel melt down gray cell follies that rehash every old concept.

It's a bore..

The great armadillo has found a strange set of glyphs that has social questions of a sort on a eve of something called voting it seems to consume the souls of great passion for iner peace?

But is lost in the shouting of nothing air of darkness and sings with,

THE SONG GOES "WHERE OH WHERE HAS ALL THAT MONEY GONE?" Now that they have seen Iraq.

THE GOOD CITIZENS OF THIS COUNTRY SUFFER, THE TOMMY THOMSON DRUG DEALERS GET RICH AND THE ELDER ARE TOLD TO GO OUT AND DIE ALONG WITH THE VETERANS AND CHILDREN OF NO SUBSTANCE.

I BET THERE ARE FLU SHOTS FOR ALL IN POWER AND THAT LUCKY 1% TAX CUT BUSH BUDDIES AND THIS JUST ADDS ON TO THE HALLIBURTON FUN FEST OF MAKE CHENEY RICH. AND DR. FIRST FAMILY GETS RICH ON ALL THAT END UP IN THE HOSPITAL.

THIS IS THE BUSH BALANCE THE BUDGET FOR THE NEEDY GREEDY CORPORATE COWBOYS AS THEY RIDE OFF INTO THE SUNSET.

I guess this is the day that Halliburton and Cheney boyz hope that there ship has come in again with a free ride to the sunset.... as the bushville follies travel to the next little rip off project wiith the Saudie gang oiling the way to new greed.

As every Armadillo can see in this research of the glyph's left on these disks that the culture was in some disstress?

If something doesn't change in the direction of this country there will be more in the poor house and wal-mat and the Chinese will have to send there goods back home so all the out sourced companies can buy and redistribute to some EU country as no one here will be able to buy anything except at a thrift store.

The min wage combined with a 30% national sales tax on anything you want to buy should limit your buying power to mud huts, rubber tired hand pulled carts, tire soiled sandals, toped of with stale bread and used tea bags so to speak.

Of course if you complained the thought police would pick you up for being un-American and put you in an all white room with a multi-medium show of food while the sound would play "let the good times roll" and a voice over from darth vader spoke in your ear the poem of POE line "on a dark and dreary day " ?

with this over tone of rap music bass that rattles your gray cells into innocence state of some kind of mind altering state of total submission.

a underground observation of stupid human gray cell glyphs of history

Any Armadillo knows that has watched this Kafka election nightmare that even a blind Armadillo can see the Hypocrisy of this debate as a Vice President with a foul mouth with a wife and another daughter should feel that he must not respect much for that is probably the language used when he found out she was gay.

Why should any one be up set at a remark by John Kerry for it was you must remember that Dick Cheney her own father into the political ring to set a CYA in the Brouhaha about gay relationships that the great new "GOD" reborn G. W. Bush and a amendment to our constitution created the need for the right press release and sound bit op.

So please give us all a break John Kerry was polite and kind to really broach the subject of the difficulties in our society about being different.

It is with sadness that we now seem to not respect each other for our difference and only dwell on this hate and ugly behavior emulated from TV where people promote bad taste, ugly behavior, belittling the weak along with promoting anything gross and then pretending it’s cute.

Please mister PR man take a vacation and use the time to go back to school and learn to think, create, and put the light of imagintion back into play.

Let go this marketing nightmare tunnel of believing your a god in charge of free will.

A focus group is great but put something in front of them that has positive movement not the trash barrel melt down gray cell follies that rehash every old concept.

It's a bore..

Greetings one and all from the armadillo world,

With hope that everyone has the winds of time blowing in the great spirits of life.

That we all have been in mother natures good graces as she seems to let us know to look at our selfs and our stwardship of these gifts she has given to our care..

I'm still hanging in there like an old dirty shirt, knowing that when I wake each morning walkin, and talking the world is great.

As I look to what my art and muse that keeps me on this adventure called life, I must confess that the communication profession which I have been apart of its creation truly needs kick into a new level.

The present state of affairs has a quality problem as mediocrity today is truly the flood of a gray matter melt down, as created by cookie cutter MBA's and their masters from their cosmic world of a Kafka cockroach nightmare.

I don't mean to put Kafka down nor the poor cockroach on his wall, but it does point to a high end use of the gray matter in the spirit of insanity.

For that it is real is a wounder in itself.

While the others in trying to look smart are just showing themselves as one of the blind corporate fascists of the GOD of greed on its journey to the muse of nowhere land.

Just remember to use the feather of the bright, to tickle the muse of all art for the joy and the reflection that will bathe your soul with the Zen of just being.

( WOW that's to much I think?) just remember their is an Armadillo watching?
So keep the faith be kind and gentle with yourselves as all need help in our journey.

An Armadillo knows that fire arms are a great responsable element in the human culture and that to own them is a privilage.

It is therefore the burden of each owner to know, understand, and the care that must be taken to not allow the animal or dark side of the indvidual to hold court with any weapon, that being said.

It holds true that the fire arms that were designed for warfare (assult weapons or military nature )have no need to be on the street only in the hands of the professional in military service of course the tech side of alol this will create the need for the never ending rules of use?

It is this present reality that needs attention however in our primitive culture that is in question?

I just wonder if these gun owners realize that that they are helping the terrorists in that they would be great filling stations for weapons as they would not have to bring any in this country, but just go to the yellow pages, gun clubs, and any dealer magazines to find out where and what, oops their goes another freedom, who to best steal from.

With the prime targets those who just have assault weapons. I'm sure right now there are some good folks at the NRA big meet bragging about what the have just as they’re some group there checking out who has what maybe some homeland security spies also.

Whoooo knows what evil lurks in the minds of men, terrorists and the government?

Rupert Murdock the non-citizen

Is one of largest smut peddlers of low life yellow journalism that pay for the story, news, creative event providers in the world, both print, air and TV.

Greed, power and a desire to manipulate for the power of the gold to control and own every government and the citizens mind along with dollars in their pocket.

Murdocks great fear of thinking people and the desire for revenge on the congress of the USA for not passing Republican legislation to make him a citizen of this country.

The power of ownership of "communications and the words along with the images of shouting heads and black suit, briefcase experts punching non-think emotional animal buttons" will blind and blow out the light of truth.

Just look at the Utah Sen.Orin Hatch wants congress to do so the "GOP-groper" Governor Arnold can run for president.

By the by Orin is one of Rupert’s under the table boyz.

Just take a look at the non-think aggressive, emotional, news personalities on FOX networks and other media outlets the world over.

Where the "Fox talking heads" wrap themselves in a flag of where ever there at and use the old trick of attack loud and leave no time for reply then on to the next attack.

And most people in this country do not know that he is the owner publisher of those great journals of truth and substance in the local super market specials “ THE GLOBE, STAR, INQUIRER and other publications along with trash TV the world over“.

Check out the other related trash and sex publishing entities all around the world.

Truly a man who lives off other people’s misfortune, disabilities, poor judgment, and someone to smear, as they know it will sell and boost circulation and ratings.

And now knowing all this,
George and Jeb sure got help in stealing the election with all that FOX spin not to discount the GOP Corporate Fasicist, "The $2000.00 Hot Dog Boyz" being sold a few points in the ownership of the U.S. Government and free use of the tax payers dollars?

So now it's payback time.

Of course this is all just an Armadillo thought.

Now it’s OK'd to buy DirecTV as a great case of a Bush payoff through the one and only Sec. of State Collin Powell's son the FCC leader of a mindless route to that land of greed (the same one that wanted to raise the ownership of media out lets)
lets give little Rupert some more toys to spread the GOP Follies of blowing out the candles of truth.

As he could not get little Rupert in the front door so lets open "him" the back door of the FCC committee.

Ony the armadillo knows or are there other buddies such as some ex regent of the university of Texas know

There is a lot of ad spin tcya/ for this "wag the dog war" cut and paste these web sites and find out the money and the players.

http://www.whitehouseforsale.org

http://www.angelfire.com/creep/gwbush/remindus.html

Something to check out, I'm a vet and heard every word and still I'm watching fine citizens die along with the service personal put in harms way in the name of greed, with the honor lost in name of the "Bushville Follies" which put men and women in shames way with the lack of leadership by a group that is selling out America to the highest bidders.

To add to the lies of this " The Bushville follies".

There is another direction for you to look for where great amounts of this money comes from.

Check the board of regents for the University of Texas, the BIOS of all these players and the investment scandals of the past also check the relationship from there to Phil Gramm at Texas A&M also Gramm's wife as a director of one of "Enron" secret investment funds who are they? Who got the profits? Where are they now?


Also check "outsourcing is great" Don Evens the Secretary of Commerce and the Midland, Texas connection and the stock deals and the buy out by one of the regent groups of Bush's failed CO. S along with the buy in of the "Texas Rangers"?

There is lots of information online about the boarder banks and there relationship to the money people that put Bush in the Gov. of Texas and then Pres. office?

As Armadillos always diggin we'll try and run down the exact translations of the glyphs found on a system of glyphs on something called a net smet or Feb sites any way the truth will find its way out into the light.

An armadillo looks at the lost souls of the middle class.

It is with great sadness that I'm watching the destruction of the good citizens of America by a group of GOP fascists that have been reincarnated from the nazi non-think.

What happened to the great party of Lincoln? A fine party of the people for the people with a responsibility for common fiscal use of the peoples money along with the caring that as long as each citizen is becoming the best he can be so will all be what they can be.

All this with being a good stewards of all that is gods gift of life is the soul of America.

Now, we have a president that cares for only one thing the power of money, just look at the facts as he sells off to all who will give him two-bits or better and pass a buck to by his way out of what ever.

This is a president of truth stained with the blood sweat and tears of all the good citizens of America.

The shame of it really turns the soul to the dark side.

Keep the faith

Just a note on an armadillo observation of human demographic concept thought.

They think that way because the word "veteran" puts us in a block demographic number that they can use to sell us "widgets" and lots of vets are not aware that there is someone punching their emotional buttons.

While they the "lambs " say "oh that’s great" as the “demogphfer” concepts the thoughts for the photo-op, sets up someone with words and smiles and steals all they have including their freedom.

Today is the time to be awake and use the little gray cells everyone has for that is the "silver bullet" for the wolf.

Mediocrity today is truly the flood of gray matter melt down, created buy cookie cutter MBA's and their masters from a dimentution of a Kafka cockroach nightmare.

I don't mean to put Kafka down nor the poor cockroach on his wall, but does point to a high end use of the gray matter in the spirit of insanity.

For that is real.

The others in trying to look smart are just showing themselves as one of the blind fascists of the GOD of greed on its journey to the muse of nowhere land.

Just remember use the feather of the bright, to tickle the muse of all art for the joy and the reflection that will bathe your soul with the Zen of just being.

( WOW that's to much I think?)

An Armadillo looks at the " Haliburton Cheney Corporate Army
Someone should take issue with and research this tax dollar give away for a 15,000 private security force which makes it the second largest group of armed men in Iraq.

This is certainly a strong attack point of the greed of the Halliburton corporation and this administration for insulting and creating a moral problem in the folks that are putting there life on the line for peanuts when you see them along side the private security guard $500.00 a day folks.

Lets do a little math here, if one man gets $500.00 a day x 7 days that equals $15,000.00 a week and 4 times that equals $60,000.00 a month with 12 x being $960,000.00 a year that's pretty great especially when compared with an Army PFC. or Corporal getting 10.00 to $30.00 a day at best $210.00 a week.

Just think if 5 private security guards around a VIP costs $4,800,00.00 a year plus they have special bulletproof SUVs, now that's a chunk of change that could be used for some stupid thing like the welfare of our children's education. Or balance the national debt or recruit more in the military?

There is also another problem building here and that is it takes about $250,00.00 to train someone in the “special forces,” but now as soon as their enlistment is up they hire themselves out as mercenary's to these corporate security companies and low and behold we train them with tax dollars and then the company's get them.

I wonder what a MP feels or for that matters any service person that puts his life on the line for the honor of being a defender of the citizens?

This is just a little armadillo thought from the underground in buddy Holly town of Lubbock, Texas

The great armadillo has seen the most out of synch globes the translation was very hard.

Know your busy but there are a couple of themes in that john Hopkins presentation that are very important for people to here.

They have to do with the "the over 15,000 private security force bought and paid for by Halliburton and other corporate friends" Do the American taxpayer is spending as much as $1,000,000.00 per man to guard the VIPs and truck drivers along with all there joy riding friends,

How an enlisted man making $30.00 per day putting there life on the line must feel next to a mercenary making $900.00 per day plus for the same job.

The General pointed to the fact this is the first step to give up control and leadership and a private army that does not have to give there loyalty the president or the flag only to the people that buys it.

These corporate private contractors as we know have caused great disrespect for the character of this nation. Anyway lets take it to the streets register, register, speak out and move forward.

introduction's Barrow a. Dillo

I am very sorry that you are having to endure this from people with any
kind of authority in your church. Sometimes people get so lost in the
book that they fail to receive the message.

folks I want to make you aware of what's going on in my church
>
> I received this E-mail from a friend at ST John Neumann the catholic
> church I attend, and I'm quite upset about it for it borders on what I
> consider off limits.
>
> The Kyle is a deacon in the church/to cast aspersions on some ones
> knowledge of knowing a verse one way or the other and base judgment on
> the whole of there being is showing the most ugly and display the
> reason that the forefathers put separation of church and state in the
> constitution for the history they fled from to this country to create
> democracy and republic.
>
> There is also information I have of a Knights of Columbus executive
> threatening members that he would tell the bishop to stop giving them
> communion if they voted for Kerry I can get the Name of the person if
> you think it would help. This has been the behavior since that Dallas
> K of C convention the Bush spin people put that desire out to them.
>
> I am sick and tired of this hate and more so now that it is showing up
> in
> “houses of GOD” by people that present themselves as moral and
> servants of “GOD.”
>
> I do not know where to go from here except to say I believe this is
> going on in a lot of the conservative areas.
>

Below is the statement e-mail that I received also the e—mail trail.

> >From: "kyle"
> >To: "Jimmy Villa"
> >Subject: Fw: The Lord has a way of revealing those who really know him
> >Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 08:44:24 -0500
>
> >----- Original Message -----
> >From: "kyle"
> >To: "Richard Alvarez" ; "kippy broderson"
> >; "Vic Wanjura"
> >Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 8:41 AM
> >Subject: Fw: The Lord has a way of revealing those who really know him
>
> > Subject: FW: The Lord has a way of revealing those who really know
> him
> > > > > Think about it! Kerry gave a big speech last week about how
> his
> >faith
> > > > is
> > > > >so "important" to him. In this attempt to convince the
> > > > >American people that we should consider him for president, he
> >announced
> > > > >that
> > > > >his favorite Bible verse is John 16:3.
> > > > > Of course the speech writer meant John 3:16, but nobody
> in the
> > > > Kerry
> > > > >camp was familiar enough with scripture to catch the error.
> > > > > And do you know what John 16:3 says?
> > > > > John 16:3 says; "They will do such things because they
> have not
> > > > known
> > > > >the Father or me."
> > > > >The Spirit works in strange ways.
> > > > >
> > > > > VOTE, VOTE, VOTE!!
HAVE NOW THAT THIS E-MAIL IS A HOAX? IT HAS BEEN BROUGHT OUT FOR OTHER CANADATES IN THE PAST , BUT IT STILL A MINDLESS ACT OF NON-THINK.

Searching through the glyphs of man in the many strange writings that have been noted in their comparison to the early findings that the real founders of this group that begin the journey of man.

It was truly gentle but spirited in their conceptual debates of how men should live in good spirit and will for each other that showed the light of a age of knowledge , before the darkness of a group called Bush became
motivated by that ugly treat these humans had called greed, power, the result of believing the were not animals.

I did run across a group that believed as in the beginning that knowledge, thought along with respect in communication that put a light on them.

See as follows:

“Please accept my thanks for being a gentleman of the spirit from the age of the founding fathers in the this the debate for the heart of what this great country is about namely the heart of a free society of men and laws are about.

The shame of a Man that is The Vice President chooses in an open form to tell another in toilet tongue to go F...yourself and then three days publicly say it made him feel better and that it had to be said, just proves that he has a limited mind for good judgment and to think this is a man that is the heart beat away from the commander and chief of this nation that says he is a christen.

This is truly a sick joke, and an insult to the founders and all the citizens blood that has been spilled in the name of freedom this has nothing to do with political party it has to do with all the values of what an Citizen of this country is about he may be what ever he may be not some right or left, top or bottom , Christen, Buddhist, Jew, Muslim, shaman or blue eyes, green eyes or just plain nobody..

Just please mention this in someway , I am a US marine Corp veteran of the Korean time (now 71) and now live on my disability and this war and all that has created makes me ashamed.”

It is your honor and intelligent observations of what is best about our country and the courage to speak and seek the truth in a time when there should be no labels.

Just what the light of truth should show those in the corporate world that choose the dark side of a lack of balance between a profit of dollars and the profit of labor as the engine that drives a nation to be respected for the quality, pride in being the best.

From an Armadillo diggin’
History shows mans need for greed even if it means killing a friend.
Just look for the truth some where out there?




THE GREAT ELECTION GRAB
by JEFFREY TOOBIN
When does gerrymandering become a threat to democracy?
Issue of 2003-12-08
Posted 2003-12-01

With his West Texas twang, loping swagger, and ever-present cowboy boots, Charlie Stenholm doesn’t much look like or sound like anybody’s idea of a victim. Since 1979, he has been the congressman for a sprawling district west of Dallas, and his votes have reflected the conservative values of the cattle, cotton, and oil country back home. He opposes abortion, fights for balanced budgets, and voted for the impeachment of President Clinton. His Web site features photographs of him carrying or firing guns. Through it all, though, Stenholm has remained a member of the Democratic Party, and for that offense he appears likely to lose his job after the next election.

Stenholm was a principal target in one of the more bizarre political dramas of recent years—the Texas redistricting struggle of 2003. Following the 2000 census, all states were obligated to redraw the boundaries of their congressional districts in line with the new population figures. In 2001, that process produced a standoff in Texas, with the Republican state senate and the Democratic state house of representatives unable to reach an agreement. As a result, a panel of federal judges formulated a compromise plan, which more or less replicated the current partisan balance in the state’s congressional delegation: seventeen Democrats and thirteen Republicans. Then, in the 2002 elections, Republicans took control of the state house, and Tom DeLay, the Houston-area congressman who serves as House Majority Leader in Washington, decided to reopen the redistricting question. DeLay said that the current makeup of the congressional delegation did not reflect the state’s true political orientation, so he set out to insure that it did.

“This was a fundamental change in the rules of the game,” Heather Gerken, a professor at Harvard Law School, said. “The rules were, Fight it out once a decade but then let it lie for ten years. The norm was very useful, because they couldn’t afford to fight this much about redistricting. Given the opportunity, that is all they will do, because it’s their survival at stake. DeLay’s tactic was so shocking because it got rid of this old, informal agreement.” But Texas law contained no explicit prohibition on mid-decade redistricting, so the leadership of the state government, now unified in Republican hands, tried during the summer of 2003 to push through a new plan. Democrats attempted novel forms of resistance. In May, fifty-one House members fled to Oklahoma, to deprive the new leadership of a quorum; in July, a dozen senators decamped to New Mexico, for the same purpose. But defections and the passage of time weakened Democratic resolve, and, on October 13th, the plan sponsored by DeLay was passed.

“They did everything they could to bust up my political base,” Stenholm told me. “They drew my farm and where I grew up into the Amarillo district, and they drew Abilene, where I live now, into the Lubbock district.” As a result, Stenholm will be forced to run in one of these districts if he wants to remain in the House. The new map creates similar problems for half a dozen other incumbent Texas Democrats, so the reapportionment may add as many as seven new Republicans to the G.O.P. majority in the House of Representatives and shift the state’s delegation to 22-10 in favor of the Republicans. “Politics is a contact sport,” Stenholm said. “I’ve been in this business twenty-five years. I will play the hand I was dealt.”

In Texas and elsewhere, redistricting has transformed American politics. The framers of the Constitution created the House of Representatives to be the branch of government most responsive to changes in the public mood, but gerrymandered districts mean that most of the four hundred and thirty-five members of Congress never face seriously contested general elections. In 2002, eighty-one incumbents ran unopposed by a major party candidate. “There are now about four hundred safe seats in Congress,” Richard Pildes, a professor of law at New York University, said. “The level of competitiveness has plummeted to the point where it is hard to describe the House as involving competitive elections at all these days.” The House isn’t just ossified; it’s polarized, too. Members of the House now effectively answer only to primary voters, who represent the extreme partisan edge of both parties. As a result, collaboration and compromise between the parties have almost disappeared. The Republican advantage in the House is modest—just two hundred and twenty-nine seats to two hundred and six—but gerrymandering has made the lead close to insurmountable for the foreseeable future.

There is, it appears, just one chance to change the cycle. On December 10th, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that could alter the nature of redistricting—and, with it, modern American electoral politics. The court has long held that legislators may not discriminate on the basis of race in redistricting, but the question now before the court is whether, or to what extent, they may consider politics in defining congressional boundaries. “There is a sense of embarrassment about what has happened in American politics,” Samuel Issacharoff, a professor at Columbia Law School, said. “The rules of decorum have fallen apart. Voters no longer choose members of the House; the people who draw the lines do. The court seems to think that something has to be done.” The case could well become the court’s most important foray into the political process since Bush v. Gore. As Ronald Klain, a Democratic lawyer in election-law cases, puts it, “At stake in this case is control of Congress—nothing more, nothing less.”

The off-cycle timing of the Texas redistricting fight, as well as the farcical drama of the fleeing Democratic legislators, made the saga look like a colorful aberration. But the results of that altercation merely replicated what happened, after the 2000 census, in several other states where Republicans controlled the governorship and the legislature. Even in states where voters were evenly divided, the Republicans used their advantage in the state capitals to transform their congressional delegations. In Florida, the paradigmatically deadlocked state, the new district lines sent eighteen Republicans and seven Democrats to the House. In the Gore state of Michigan, which lost a seat in redistricting, the delegation went from 9-7 in favor of the Democrats to 9-6 in favor of the Republicans—even though Democratic congressional candidates received thirty-five thousand more votes than their Republican opponents in 2002. (The Michigan plan was approved on September 11, 2001, so it received little publicity.) Pennsylvania, which also went to Gore, had one of the most ruthless Republican gerrymanders, and it is the one being challenged before the Supreme Court.

After 2000, Pennsylvania lost two seats in Congress, and its legislature had to establish new district lines. Republican legislative leaders there engaged in no subterfuge; they candidly admitted that they intended to draw the lines to favor their party as much as possible. In the midst of the battle over the Pennsylvania plan, DeLay and Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House, sent a letter to the Pennsylvania legislators, saying, “We wish to encourage you in these efforts, as they play a crucial role in maintaining a Republican majority in the United States House of Representatives.” The Republicans in Harrisburg used venerable techniques in redistricting, like “packing,” “cracking,” and “kidnapping.” Packing concentrates one group’s voters in the fewest possible districts, so they cannot influence the outcome of races in others; cracking divides a group’s voters into other districts, where they will be ineffective minorities; and kidnapping places two incumbents from the same party in the same district.

Frank Mascara was kidnapped. A Democrat first elected to Congress in 1994, Mascara represented a district in the rugged industrial country south of Pittsburgh. “My district had been more or less the same for about a hundred years,” Mascara told me on the porch of his house in Charleroi, which overlooks a glass-making plant on the banks of the Monongahela River. The son of a steelworker and the first member of his family to go to college, Mascara worked his way through county politics until he won his seat in the House. “A lot of people couldn’t believe that a congressman lived in a house like mine,” he said, noting its aluminum siding and probable resale value of about thirty-five thousand dollars. “But that’s the kind of guy I am,” he said. “I go to church down the street. I represent the average person.”

With the Republicans in charge in Harrisburg, Mascara knew he would be little more than a spectator to the redistricting process. “I still thought my district would for the most part remain intact,” he said. “That didn’t occur.” Mascara had met me at a McDonald’s in Charleroi’s ragged downtown, and then led me to his home on a quiet street called Lincoln Avenue, where we parked because he has no garage. From his porch, he pointed to our cars. “The cars are in the twelfth congressional district, and my house is in the eighteenth,” he explained. “When they drew the new lines, they started in Allegheny County, which is north of here, and made, like, a finger out of that district, and the finger went down the middle of the street where I live. The line came down to my house and stopped.” The Republicans’ meticulous line-drawing through Charleroi was designed to force Mascara into a primary battle with his fellow-Democrat John Murtha, which it did. Murtha defeated Mascara, ending his congressional career and reducing the Democratic presence in the House by one.

The Republicans carved up Pennsylvania into many strangely shaped districts, which won monikers like the “supine seahorse” and the “upside-down Chinese dragon.” Such nicknames for gerrymandered districts go back to the origin of the term, which was coined as an epithet to mock Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry, who in 1811 approved an election district that was said to resemble a salamander. Like most gerrymanders throughout history, the Republicans’ creation in Pennsylvania produced the desired results. Even though a Democrat, Ed Rendell, won the governorship in 2002, Republicans in that election took control of twelve of the nineteen House seats.

Democrats accomplished less in the 2000 redistricting cycle only because they controlled fewer states and thus could do less to protect their interests. DeLay’s mid-cycle reapportionment may be without precedent, but Democrats have their own inglorious history of gerrymandering. Before the Texas coup this year, the most notorious redistricting operation in recent years was the one run by Representative Philip Burton, following the 1980 census in California, which transformed the Democrats’ advantage in House seats there from 22-21 to 27-18. In 2002, a Democratic plan in Maryland turned that delegation from being evenly divided to a 6-2 Democratic advantage, and Georgia Democrats gained two seats in the House even though in the same election voters rejected a Democratic governor and a Democratic United States senator. In California, where Democrats also controlled the process, they settled for protecting incumbents of both parties. There, in 2002, not one of fifty general-election House challengers won even forty per cent of the total vote.

There is no doubt, though, that on balance the 2000 redistricting cycle amounted to a major victory for Republicans. Even though Al Gore and George W. Bush split the combined vote in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, Republican control of the process meant that, after redistricting, the G.O.P. now holds fifty-one of those states’ seventy-seven House seats. “The important thing to realize was in 1991 the Republicans had control of line-drawing in a total of five congressional districts,” one G.O.P. redistricting expert told me. “In 2001, it was almost a hundred seats. Both parties made the most of it.”

The transformation of congressional redistricting began long before the 2000 census, and the crucial issue was race. In the early nineteen-sixties, the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, transformed American politics by enforcing the principle of one man, one vote, and requiring that all legislative districts contain the same number of people. Before these decisions, which started with the famous case of Baker v. Carr, in 1962, Southern (and some Northern) states had designed districts so that black voters had no meaningful say in Congress. Later in the decade, the Voting Rights Act established the principle that not only did blacks have the right to vote but they had to be placed in districts where black candidates stood a good chance of winning. The act, which was one of Lyndon B. Johnson’s most important civil-rights initiatives, led to the election of many more black members of Congress—and was a classic demonstration of the law of unintended consequences.

“When the civil-rights movement started, you had a lot of white Democrats in power in the South,” Bobby Scott, a congressman from Virginia who was first elected in 1992, said. “And, when these white Democrats started redistricting, they wanted to keep African-American percentages at around thirty-five or forty per cent. That was enough for the white Democrats to keep winning in these districts, but not enough to elect any black Democrats. The white Democrats called these ‘influence’ districts, where we could have a say in who won.” But Republicans sensed an opportunity. “They came to us and said, We want these districts to be sixty per cent black,” Scott, who is African-American, said. “And blacks liked that idea, because it meant we elected some of our own for the first time. That’s where the ‘unholy alliance’ came in.”

The unholy alliance—between black Democrats and white Republicans—shaped redistricting during the eighties and nineties. Republicans recognized the value of concentrating black voters, who are reliable Democrats, in single districts, which are known in voting-rights parlance as “majority-minority.” As Gerald Hebert, a Democratic redistricting operative and former Justice Department lawyer, puts it, “What you had was the Republicans who were in charge for every redistricting cycle at the Justice Department—’81, ’91, ’01. And there was a kind of thinking in the eighties and in the early nineties that if you could create a majority-minority district anywhere in the state, regardless of how it looked and what its impact was on surrounding districts, then you simply had to do it. What ended up happening was that they went out of their way to divide and conquer the Democrats.” The real story of the Republican congressional landslide of 1994, many redistricting experts believe, is the disappearance of white Democratic congressmen, whose black constituents were largely absorbed into majority-minority districts.

It was a version of the unholy alliance which may doom Charlie Stenholm and his fellow Texas Democrats. All the congressmen who are likely to lose their jobs in the new DeLay plan are white. Many of their black constituents have been transferred to safe Democratic seats, where they can’t harm Republicans. The unholy alliance has had the additional side effect, especially in the South, of making the Democrats the party of blacks and the Republicans the party of whites—which presents daunting long-term political problems for the Democratic Party. Many Democrats can’t help but express a perverse admiration for the cleverness of the strategy. Benjamin Ginsberg, a Republican redistricting operative who helped to construct the unholy alliance during the 1990 cycle, referred to the initiative as “Project Ratfuck.”

Since the 2000 cycle, these Republican gains have locked in and even expanded. To see how this was done, I asked Nathaniel Persily, a genial assistant professor of law and political science at the University of Pennsylvania, to visit my office and bring his laptop. Persily, who is thirty-three, has built a reputation as a nonpartisan expert and occasional practitioner in the field of redistricting.

Before 1990, most state legislators did their redistricting by taking off their shoes and tiptoeing with Magic Markers around large maps on the floor, marking the boundaries on overlaid acetate sheets. Use of computers in redistricting began in the nineties, and, as Persily demonstrated, it has now become a science. When Persily opened his computer, he showed me a map of Houston, detailed to the last census block. (The population of each block usually ranges from fewer than a dozen to about a thousand.) “This is the same map that DeLay’s people used to redistrict,” Persily said. Indeed, DeLay’s political operation purchased ten copies of the software, which is called Caliper’s Maptitude for Redistricting and costs about four thousand dollars per copy. The software permits mapmakers to analyze an enormous amount of data—party registration, voting patterns, ethnic makeup from census data, property-tax records, roads, railways, old district lines. “There’s only one limit to the kind of information you can use in redistricting—its availability,” Persily said. (In Pennsylvania, Republicans used Carnegie-Mellon University’s mainframe computer, which would have allowed them to add even more data, such as real-estate transactions.)

With a few clicks, Persily changed the map from one that showed party registration in each census block to one that revealed voting results in each block. The colors ranged from dark red, for heavily Democratic votes, to dark blue, for strongly Republican. He showed voting results in about two dozen races, from President to governor and from congressman to local offices. “The whole process has got much more sophisticated,” Persily went on. “Party-registration data are not the only kind of data you want to use. You want to use real election results. That’s a big change from ten years ago. We have become very good at predicting how people are going to vote. People’s partisanship is at a thirty-year high. If I know you voted for Gore, I am better able to predict that you are going to vote for any given Democrat in a future election.”

I asked Persily to give me a demonstration of how to draw district lines. He moved his mouse to the border between two congressional districts. A ledger on the top half of the screen showed that one of the districts, as currently configured, had about forty thousand more people than the other one. “The Supreme Court has said that the requirement of one man, one vote means that each district must have exactly—exactly—the same number of people,” Persily explained. An early version of the Pennsylvania plan was rejected by the courts because the districts were just nineteen voters apart, in districts of about a half million people. Requirements for that sort of precision virtually mandate the use of computers for redistricting.

Persily zeroed in even more closely, and a little donkey popped up inside one of the census blocks. “That’s where the local congressman lives, a Democrat,” he explained. “We have little elephants for the Republican incumbents.” The program seemed easy to use, justifying the boast, on the software company’s Web site, that you could “start building plans thirty minutes after opening the box.” Persily chuckled. “At a certain point, you admire the video-game appeal of all this.

“There used to be a theory that gerrymandering was self-regulating,” Persily explained. “The idea was that the more greedy you are in maximizing the number of districts your party can control, the more likely it is that a small shift of votes will lead you to lose a lot of districts. But it’s not self-regulating anymore. The software is too good, and the partisanship is too strong.”

The effects of partisan gerrymandering go well beyond the protection of incumbents and the guarantee of continued Republican control. It has also changed the kind of people who win seats in Congress and the way they behave once they arrive. Jim Leach, a moderate Republican and fourteen-term congressman from Iowa, has watched the transformation. Leach agrees with Richard Pildes on the numbers: “A little less than four hundred seats are totally safe, which means that there is competition between Democrats and Republicans only in about ten or fifteen per cent of the seats.

“So the important question is who controls the safe seats,” Leach said. “Currently, about a third of the over-all population is Democrat, a third is Republican, and a third is no party. If you ask yourself some mathematical questions, what is half of a third?—one-sixth. That’s who decides the nominee in each district. But only a fourth participates in primaries. What is a fourth of a sixth? A twenty-fourth. So it’s one twenty-fourth of the population that controls the seat in each party.

“Then you have to ask who are those people who vote in primaries,” Leach went on. “They are the real partisans, the activists, on both sides. A district that is solidly Republican is a district that is more likely to go to the more conservative side of the Republican part of the Party for candidates and platforms. Presidential candidates go to the left or the right in the primaries and then try to get back in the center. In House politics, if your district is solidly one party, your only challenge is from within that party, so you have every incentive for staying to the more extreme side of your party. If you are Republican in an all-Republican district, there is no reason to move to the center. You want to protect your base. You hear that in Congress all the time, in both parties—‘We’ve got to appeal to our base.’ It’s much more likely that an incumbent will lose a primary than he will a general election. So redistricting has made Congress a more partisan, more polarized place. The American political system today is structurally geared against the center, which means that the great majority of Americans feel left out of the decision-making process.”

Scholarly research gives some support to Leach’s impressions. “Partisan gerrymandering skews not only the positions congressmen take but also who the candidates are in the first place,” Issacharoff, of Columbia, said. “You get more ideological candidates, the people who can arouse the base of the party, because they don’t have to worry about electability. It’s becoming harder to get things done, whether in Congress or in state legislatures, because partisan redistricting goes on at the state level, too.” Among members of the House, partisan redistricting has also bred an almost comic sense of entitlement to landslides. In a hearing on the post-2000 reapportionment in New York, Representative Benjamin Gilman, an upstate Republican, said that during the 1982 redistricting he was promised by the majority leader of the state senate that “if I accepted that challenge of a fair-fight district, I would never again be asked or forced by the state to face that prospect of a fair fight once again. . . . I think it would be unfair not only to myself and my district to face that divisive prospect once again.”

With partisan gerrymandering, House members in effect pay a penalty if they reach out too much to members of the other party. “What is laughable is the basic premise of what is going on,” Charlie Stenholm, the endangered Texan, said. “The great sin I committed is that I won the last election 51-47 in a district that went 71-28 for President Bush. But I am a conservative Democrat, and that’s why these people vote for me. There shouldn’t be a penalty for reaching out across party lines.” If Stenholm and his ilk disappear, they will be replaced by reliable Republicans—who won’t have to worry about their own chances for reëlection.

The question before the Supreme Court later this month is not whether partisan gerrymandering is wise but whether it is constitutional. The issues are strikingly similar to those faced by the Warren Court in the early sixties—and the stakes may be as large as well. The framers of the Constitution designed the House of Representatives to reflect the popular will. James Madison, in the Federalist Papers, said the House was meant to be a “numerous and changeable body,” where the members would have “an habitual recollection of their dependence on the people.” While the House was supposed to be impetuous, the Senate was intended to be stable. Madison said that senators would serve six-year terms as a defense against “the impulse of sudden and violent passions” of the House, and the members of the Senate were to be elected by state legislators, providing a further level of insulation from the popular will. (The Constitution was amended to require direct election of senators in 1913.) The Senate had to remain stable, Madison wrote, because “every new election in the states is found to change one half of the representatives.”

Today, the House and the Senate have precisely flipped roles. Senate races, which are not subject to redistricting, are decided by actual voters, who do indeed change their minds with some regularity. Control of the Senate has shifted five times since the nineteen-eighties. The House, by contrast, has changed hands just once in the same period, in the Republican takeover of 1994. In 2002, only one out of twelve House elections was decided by ten or fewer percentage points, while half of the governors’ and Senate races were that close. In 2002, only four House challengers defeated incumbents in the general election—a record low in the modern era. In a real sense, the voters no longer select the members of the House of Representatives; the state legislators who design the districts do.

The question, then, is what, if anything, is unlawful about that? The legal debate on that question is especially stark. In the case now before the Supreme Court, Pennsylvania Democrats argued that the Republican gerrymander denied them equal protection of the laws, asserting in their brief that it is “unconstitutional to give a State’s million Republicans control over ten seats while leaving a million Democrats with control over five.” The Republican response is to say, in effect, “Welcome to the big leagues. State legislatures have always played this kind of hardball, the courts ought to stay out of the game altogether, and there’s no such thing as a nonpartisan solution.” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a former Arizona state senator herself, may have put the argument best when, in the mid-eighties, the Supreme Court last considered a political-gerrymandering case. According to Justice William Brennan’s notes of the court’s internal debate, O’Connor said that any legislative leader who failed to protect his party’s interest in redistricting “ought to be impeached.”

In that case, a challenge to the congressional-reapportionment plan in Indiana following the 1980 census, a plurality of the justices said for the first time that a partisan gerrymander might, in theory, violate the equal-protection clause. But in the 1986 decision the court ruled that the Indiana plan did not violate the Constitution. Indeed, the court said that the Constitution was not violated unless one political party was “essentially shut out of the political process.” According to Heather Gerken, of Harvard, “The court set the bar so high for constitutional violations that no one has ever successfully fought a partisan gerrymander anywhere since 1986. Political parties are never totally ‘shut out’ of the process—they raise funds, put up candidates, make speeches. So these challenges have always lost. By taking the Pennsylvania case, the court seems to be saying that it’s time to get back in the process.”

The best argument for Republicans in the Pennsylvania case, it seems, is that it’s simply not the court’s business to scrutinize legislative maps for partisan gerrymandering. “Redistricting deals with inherently political questions,” J. Bart DeLone, the senior deputy state attorney general who will argue for the case for Pennsylvania, said, “and those questions should be left to the political branches of government, where they belong, not to the courts. Then you are trying to measure things that have no standards unless you are making political judgments.” Still, this is a Supreme Court that has not hesitated to tell politicians what to do. “It’s an extremely confident court,” Gerken said. “They second-guess Congress, states, state judges all the time. They are deeply engaged in the democratic process. I can’t imagine that this is anything but an effort to pull in the reins of partisan gerrymandering.”

But how? The Democrats propose a rule based, in part, on the Court’s race jurisprudence. In a series of cases in the nineties which challenged some of the majority-minority districts, the Court held that it violated the Constitution for states to gerrymander congressional districts exclusively for racial reasons. “The rule now is, You can’t draw ugly districts if it’s purely for race,” Sam Hirsch, one of the lawyers for the Pennsylvania Democrats, said. “The rule should be, You can’t draw ugly districts if it’s purely for politics, either.” But Hirsch’s adversary, DeLone, pointed out, “There is a fundamental difference between race and politics. Racial classifications are inherently suspect. If you are doing something specifically because of race, we are always going to take a hard look at it. Not only are political judgments O.K. but we expect them.” Since it’s been so long since the Supreme Court addressed the issue, most election-law experts see the Pennsylvania case as difficult to handicap, and the key factor may simply be how bad the justices believe the problem of partisan gerrymandering to be.

In any case, the situation appears to be getting worse, even as the Pennsylvania case has been pending. While Texas was shifting its districts, the governing Republicans in Colorado did their own mid-cycle reapportionment, to solidify their hold on the one House seat in the state that produced a close election in 2002. (Legal challenges to the new Texas and Colorado districts are now pending.) At one point, the Democrats who control Oklahoma and New Mexico threatened retaliation, but the Party lacks a DeLay-like figure to press the issue. One state that has gone its own way is Iowa, which turned redistricting over to a nonpartisan civil-service commission after the 2000 census. Consequently, four of Iowa’s five House races in 2002 were competitive, so a state with one per cent of the seats in the House produced ten per cent of the nation’s close elections. The rest of the country will follow only, it seems, if the Supreme Court requires it.

When it comes to drawing political boundaries, there never was a golden age of statesmanship. “When we Democrats controlled the legislature, sure we protected Democrats,” Charlie Stenholm said. “But we didn’t do harm to the Republicans who were in office. This thing today is a whole different order of magnitude.” On his porch in Charleroi, Frank Mascara said the issue is a lot bigger than he is. “I’m through, I’m done, out of politics,” he said. “It won’t affect me one way or the other. But the system is now totally out of whack, and that matters to a lot of people. It’s not about me, it’s about power on a national scale.”

The great Armadillo found a new set of glyphs that when decoded say that it was created by a GOP faction in order to confuse and misdirect so as to focus attention to the emotional side and to look at this wag the dog war that keeps on spilling the blood of good men.

It means that you should read and study the glyphs meaning of separation of church and state no one has the right to tell another what to do in a democracy for that is what has made this a great country.

If you want this as a law the next is they will decide that all men need two wives one for pleasure and one for work and one child per family just like communist china where all the jobs and factories are going now.

May be they will make marriage laws like the Islamic law where the husband has a right to beat his wife and if he feels like you bring dishonor to the family they can cut your head of and not even break a sweat over it.

So if it is your desire to be hetro do it! Be proud of it and as God said live by example and cast no stone at another only if you are without sin your self, so stop trying to run other peoples life's and concentrate on being the best you can be. It is not you place to judge another as that is for each in his own closet and soul, spirit or God to deal with.

I hope you realize that you are a stat, a pebble, a nothing in time as the system tells you what and where to buy along with what to eat, drink and add infinity for in the nelson ratings you are an age group that like this color and that brand and sell you sanitary personal products at lunch and dinner time and create a sports logo and tag line and a bunch of expert black briefcase men in suits with a flag and button in the lapel telling you some opinion. So you can hate or love what ever and assume to please yourself, for they know if you really knew that to assume is to make an ass of you and me.

They all want you in this mode for you are a perfect consumer and you would probably sell your soul to be humiliated on Jerry Springer or be made a fool of your soul on a hot reality show for that 15 minutes of "fame."

We all ready have a president that is a liar and a vice president that has a toilet tong with no apologies and TV that wants you to buy medicines that tout a cure, but the side effects will kill you.
on top of all this there are 40,000,000 people who can't read or write and another 52,000,000 that can't tell the difference in price signs in a grocery store.

Add to this the 25% of the population that live on starvation diet, and the lack of money for children in education and a lunch at school may be all they have to eat all day. The fear of terror by Homeland Security is a Tom Ridge (donated over $200,000.00 to the bush reelection fund) joke, when 88 illegal can fly on the same airplane from one coast to another yet you are almost strip searched at the airport mean while they are coming across the southern boarder by the thousands and know one knows where they are, it could be a whole army of terrorists could be in the very house next door, mean while he gives out a ten Billion dollar contract of your tax dollars to a foreign company that happens to be owned by the foreign company with the name of Arthur Anderson that was put out of business because of Enron?

How about all those that are spilling the blood to keep this country "free" from right wing religious nuts that don't even believe in being a christen while trying so hard to make and sell others on there believe so they can sell themselves that they are believers.

I say to you all get a life and look at the real problems around yourselves do something positive go out a take care of all the children in need, the hungry, the disabled, the elderly, save this democracy in honor of the for fathers and the blood that was spilled to protect the freedoms of all.

I will call and tell them to vote against any amendment to the constitution and work as hard as I can to see that that they are not elected to office again.

If you want the truth try this as the Bushville follies rape and pillage this country the the only thing he cares about is himself and that the illusion that god made him president when in all truth is that the shame he has brought to this country certainly elevates him as a contender for the anti-Christ with all the lies and stealing from the very citizens that built this country and inviting all the illegal into this country so his corporate friends can have slave labor.

at least Jimmy carter is a real christen compared to this soulless group of greed at the shame time Clinton may have been a womanizer or what ,but not a drop of blood was spilled on a Wag the dog war for corporate greed, oil and power and Cheney, Rumsfeld, and then blame it on the people that can least defend themselves from these GOP fascists


The Bush Record: Top 5 Scandals
Scandal #1: Misleading the Nation Into War

In his public speeches leading up the war with Iraq, President Bush insisted that Iraq was developing an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that included biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. No evidence of such programs has been found. According to chief weapons inspector David Kay, "we were almost all wrong," about the Iraqi weapons threat.1

Scandal #2: Lying to the Nation During the State of the Union

During his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush claimed, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." In March 2002, both the CIA and State Department learned that evidence linking Iraq to the African nation of Niger was unfounded. In October 2002, CIA Director Tenet personally intervened with Condoleezza Rice's deputy National Security Advisor to have the charge removed from Bush's speech to the nation. Rice herself was sent a memo debunking the claim. In January 2003, just days before Bush uttered the false charge in his State of the Union, CIA officials again tried to remove the language, but the White House insisted it remain -- with officials arguing that they had received the information from British sources.2

Scandal #3: Exposing a Covert CIA Agent for Revenge

Ambassador Joseph Wilson publicly disclosed in July 2003 that he had investigated and debunked intelligence linking Iraqi nuclear ambitions to the African nation of Niger. Wilson's investigation concluded in March 2002, nearly a year before Bush made the assertion in his State of the Union address that Iraq sought uranium in Africa. Days after Wilson went public, columnist Robert Novak revealed that his wife was a CIA operative.

The Washington Post reported that "a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife." President Bush later told reporters: "I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official...I have no idea whether we'll find out who the leaker is." He claimed he had ordered his staff to "cooperate fully" in the investigation of the leak.3

Scandal #4: Halliburton and Dick Cheney

As the Iraq war began in March 2003, the Pentagon awarded Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), the construction wing of Halliburton, a no-bid contract to help rebuild Iraqi oil fields and conduct "operation of facilities and distribution of products." The initial deal was thought to be worth as much as $7 billion. In postwar Iraq, Halliburton is the largest private contractor, with potential deals totaling over $11 billion.4

While Vice President Cheney served as chairman and chief executive of Halliburton, the company acquired two subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., which had signed contracts to sell oil production equipment to Iraq under the oil-for-food program for more than $73 million.5

The military investigated Halliburton and found that it overcharged for gas it imported into Iraq from Kuwait by as much as $61 million. In March 2003, the Pentagon announced it would withhold nearly $300 million in payments to Halliburton due to the company's overcharging on food contracts. "Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said the company disagreed with the decision and hoped to persuade the Pentagon to drop its plans."6

In his retirement package from Halliburton, Cheney was granted deferred compensation that paid out his salary from 1999 over a five-year period and his bonus from that year in 2001. Following his departure from Halliburton, Cheney retained possession of 433,333 options of Halliburton stock. The Cheneys announced they were committing the options to three charities. The Congressional Research Service released a report saying that federal ethics laws consider both Cheney's deferred compensation and his unexercised stock options as a lingering financial interest in the company.7

Scandal #5: Lying About Medicare Costs and Threatening Whistleblowers

The Bush Administration relied upon the Medicare drug plan's alleged $400 billion price tag to win over skeptical conservatives in Congress. Within weeks of the bills passage, however, the White House admitted it had underestimated the cost by $135 billion (35 percent). Medicare Chief Actuary Richard Foster was threatened with losing his job if he told Congress the true cost. "We can't let that out," Foster recalls Medicare chief Tom Scully telling him. Scully was quoted in June 2003 as saying that he would only release the analysis "if I feel like it."8

Bush said on January 30, 2004, that he first learned of the higher estimates in mid-January. "The president is always very clear with the American people in the decisions that we are making and very upfront with them about the information that we have," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters.

But the New York Time reported that Bush spokesman Trent Duffy "said no White House official had instructed Mr. Foster or Mr. Scully to withhold information from Congress. But Mr. Duffy acknowledged that the actuary's cost estimates had been sent to White House officials, including Doug Badger, a special assistant to President Bush who negotiated with Congress on the Medicare bill."9

Sources:

1Washington Post, 8/10/03; Kay Testimony, 1/28/04; 2Bush State of the Union, 1/28/03; Time, 7/21/03 Issue; Hadley/Bartlett Gaggle, 7/22/03; New York Times, 7/13/03; Washington Post, 7/20/03; National Public Radio, 6/19/03; 3Washington Post, 9/28/03; Bush Media Availability, 10/7/03; 4Los Angeles Times, 5/7/03; Washington Post, 2/10/04; 5Washington Post, 6/23/01; Petroleum Economist, 6/93; 6Associated Press, 2/9/04; Reuters, 2/23/04; Associated Press, 3/17/04; 7"Income: Type and amount," Schedule A, Standard Form 278, Richard B. Cheney Personal Financial Disclosure, May 15, 2002; May 15, 2003; White House Press Release, 4/13/01; Washington Post, 9/26/03; 8Boston Globe, 1/30/04; Los Angeles Times, 1/31/04; New York Times, 3/14/04; Wall Street Journal, 3/15/04; AP, 6/26/03; 9Los Angeles Times, 1/31/04; New York Times, 3/20/04

Oh where, oh where has freedom gone? When a child hood icon a symbol of democracy has become a corporate rat on the leash of the Bushville gang viva, The chief Disney Michael "D’ rat" Eisner who has turned the wonderful world into the dark side of the underworld ugliness of pure greed and power.

Oh the shame of it all in this once up a time land.

The Armadillo says bury the man, lets get on with the living.


This has turned into a media and Hollywood production of epic proportions for a GOP Bush photo-op directed with the bad taste of the right along with the "M. Jackson and wife/baby murder trial riding along with the Reality T.V. sick shows.

Just put him in the ground and get on with life as we have men in a "wag the dog war" bleeding in a Kafka world created out of greed and power by the corporate GOP fascists.

These gentlemen insult the good name of Lincoln and all who died for our freedom and the work of this on going journey called a republic and democracy.

Truly this greatest journey that the doors of creative minds opened for man to step into the future.

As it has come to this journey in time and our lack of morals in over 200 hundred years.

We stepped over the line to the dark side in shame of torture while we have a man that swore an othe on a bible and as a public servant a “ Attorney General” that believes he is above answering to the good citizens a question that defines our very humanity.

Ashcroft must have a SS trooper tattoo some where on his person.

Does he believe this is some kind of corporate Rumsfeld joke or is this a right wing sudo christen mental case?

Who would drape a statue in the halls of justice just as he has a drape of hypocrisy over his own head while the “Bill of Rights” along with the “Constitution” are put under the GOP jackboots to wipe their greed and power of contempt for the middleclass that paved the way for America freedom and justice.

Now, added to the great Homeland insecurity along with the rape of our privacy.

We have to do everything include taking your shoes off , while 88 illegal fly from LA to New York before they are caught and put this along with NAFTA Trucks that can drive on our highways with bad breaks along with who knows who is at the wheel or what poison or cargo is they carry then top it off with the insult that they even use tax dollars to give contracts to people across the boarder as each state must pay for highway damage?

Give me a break.

Reagan’s time as president has come and gone to the place he holds in history. is for future study as he is just still another citizen who in our democraticy happened to be our elected 43rd president in this land we call the USA. Where every one counts equally for better or worse.

Lets get on with the problem solving to make new roads to the future
As right now we know we are in deep trouble.

Found a Armadillo glyph from the underground where a mouse turned into "D'rat".

Oh where, oh where has freedom gone? When a child hood icon a symbol of democracy has become a corporate rat on the leash of the Bushville gang viva, The chief Disney Michael "D’ rat" Eisner who has turned the wonderful world into the dark side of the underworld ugliness of pure greed and power.

Oh the shame of it all in this once up a time land.

Keep those questions and the quest for truth in this clutter of misdirection in our thoughts

I ask did Jesus have a gun?

When logic is based on men's lies and self-deception of the history of man.

Hate and violence will rule so how can a man call himself a Christian when he is acting as a tool of the gun and the heart of the devil.

This is but the logic of an agent of the Antichrist NRA and G. W.BUSH

Just an armadillo wonder of where love and forgiveness went in a mind that would be the divine emporia of all.

The Armadillo looks at the Bush (here we go again) legacy.
More body bags in the night coffins hidden shipped in shame along with war cost., Medicare lies where special interest rule and insurance company’s get fat, a total (Huxley) non-think, mercury tuna for the world to eat, oil, gas and energy rip off (wonder what the Saudi pay off is)? And a line up of the Bushville Follies Boyz and the great "Wag the dog war line up of the GOP fascist say 'it's to complex for we the people to under stand." Rhetoric from the sneak thieves that slither at night..

Add to all this the uninsured medical with a phony pill pushing Bush drug card hiding the corporate pushers stealing all they can coupled with the corporate outsourcing of jobs by thieves that say retraining for jobs that don't exist more is the smart way to go.

This President and his administration have as much care about the good citizens of the middle class in this great land of ours as a hoard of shrews eating there body weight every 20 minuets and Kafka cockroaches in the wall thinking of a new to bug every one so will all become corporate slaves to serve there greed.

An Armadillo looks at the " Haliburton Cheney Corporate Army
Someone should take issue with and research this tax dollar give away for a 15,000 private security force which makes it the second largest group of armed men in Iraq.

This is certainly a strong attack point of the greed of the Halliburton corporation and this administration for insulting and creating a moral problem in the folks that are putting there life on the line for peanuts when you see them along side the private security guard $500.00 a day folks.

Lets do a little math here, if one man gets $500.00 a day x 7 days that equals $15,000.00 a week and 4 times that equals $60,000.00 a month with 12 x being $960,000.00 a year that's pretty great especially when compared with an Army PFC. or Corporal getting 10.00 to $30.00 a day at best $210.00 a week.

Just think if 5 private security guards around a VIP costs $4,800,00.00 a year plus they have special bulletproof SUVs, now that's a chunk of change that could be used for some stupid thing like the welfare of our children's education. Or balance the national debt or recruit more in the military?

There is also another problem building here and that is it takes about $250,00.00 to train someone in the “special forces,” but now as soon as their enlistment is up they hire themselves out as mercenary's to these corporate security companies and low and behold we train them with tax dollars and then the company's get them.

I wonder what a MP feels or for that matters any service person that puts his life on the line for the honor of being a defender of the citizens?

This is just a little armadillo thought from the underground in buddy Holly town of Lubbock, Texas

I just wonder if these gun owners realize that that they are helping the terrorists in that they would be great filling stations for weapons as they would not have to bring any in this country, but just go to the yellow pages, gun clubs, and any dealer magazines to find out where and what, oops their goes another freedom, who to best steal from.

With the prime targets those who just have assault weapons. I'm sure right now there are some good folks at the NRA big meet bragging about what the have just as they’re some group there checking out who has what maybe some homeland security spies also.

Whoooo knows what evil lurks in the minds of men, terrorists and the government?

Nobody?

armadillo NRA gun thoughts of what might be

I just wonder if these gun owners realize that that they are helping the terrorists in that they would be great filling stations for weapons as they would not have to bring any in this country, but just go to the yellow pages, gun clubs, and any dealer magazines to find out where and what, oops their goes another freedom, who to best steal from.

With the prime targets those who just have assault weapons. I'm sure right now there are some good folks at the NRA big meet bragging about what the have just as the're some group there checking out who has what maybe some homeland security spies also.

Whoooo knows what evil lurks in the minds of men, terrorists and the government?

Nobody?

Keep the faith

Armadillo sees the long nose glyph of a the Chief "leagle begel" Ashcroft an the syndrome of “right wing rightists”

Here we are again the right to keep medical records between doctor and patient.

This is not a home land security question, but one of a right wing religious zealot attorney general to stick his nose in some poor souls Virginia just to tantalite his pedophiliac myopic gray mater and Kafka ghoulishness.

It is no wonder that the state of Oklahoma has a divorce rate of 71% of all people married part company.

Where the Oral Roberts of the University of the same name had his way with both the brides and grooms in the Counseling rooms (who knows maybe that's Ashcroft’s problem also?} I guess we would have to speak to one of Kafka's cockroaches from the walls of justice as he has the desire to cover up sculptures that do not meet his small bit of gray mater

Armadillo sees in the new glyphs Bush Ranger Steven Byrd and dollars for deceptions

My job allowed me a lot of access to a great many large corporations and all their infighting and division VPs and empire building In that vertical structure use other peoples ideas and sweat with out giving credit to any one that is really responsible don't get me wrong as their are those that are true leaders for they don't ask any one to do any thing they can't do them selves and if need be roll up their sleeves and help get a job done.

I learned the lessons above when I was in the Marines that accepting responsibility and working together is what it is all about to live for another day.

You get a lot more done with honey than you do with vinegar as the saying goes.

Steven Byrd is one of Bushes money Rangers he has contributed more than $2,000,000.00 to Bush in was in Berkley NWSP and the San Francisco paper, how he worked it is to keep at the $2,000.00 by inviting all the venders to a $2,000.00 plate dinner in several different cities, so what could they say if they wanted to keep on the "right Side" for the health of there business? The large funds are the ones that are going after him also in the same manner as at Disney.

They also made their other divisions do the same, they have no respect for Unions only "greed."

Its like all the energy companies from here "Enron for one" screwed the people of California, Washington, Oregon just as they are screwing with the people of Texas now with the lie about deregulation.

The Bush legacy of here we go again here we go again in new glyphs translated that speak of more body bags,
Medicare lies, total (Huxley) non-think, mercury tuna for the world to eat, oil, gas and energy rip off (wonder what the Saudi pals pay off is)?
And a line up of the Bushville Folly Boyz and the great "Wag the dog war line up of GOP fascist " say the citzens can't use our gray mater as it's to complex for we the people to under stand."

When add to all this the uninsured medical costs with phony pill pushing Bush drug pushers puting up cash to relect committie so they can keep stealing all they can coupled with Doctors and Health care Corporations add this to the corporate outsourcing job thieves that say retraining for jobs that don't exist is the answer. And freetrade wiith out a fair playing field is in the best interest of the security of this country has truly a lose conection in the gray cells.

This President and his administration have as much care about the good citizens of the middle class in this great land of ours as a hoard of shrews eating there body weight every 20 minuets and Kafka cockroaches in the wall thinking of a new to bug every one so will all become corporate slaves to serve there greed.