Hightower Lowdown
"The opposite of courage is not cowardice, it's conformity." -- Jim Hightower
In This Issue
Some random thoughts on the 2004 Presidential race
December's Lowdown
The many REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL after Election Day 2008
After casting her ballot for Barack Obama, Amanda Jones said simply, "I feel good about voting for him." Ms. Jones, of Cedar Creek, Texas (a town just south of Austin), is African-American, and what gives her vote some historic punch is that she's 109 years old. Her father was a slave. Her mother was born right after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. She's been through it all--Jim Crow segregation, women's suffrage, the Great Depression, the poll tax, FDR, the civil-rights movement, desegregation, 13 years of George W (five as guv, eight as prez), and now: Barack Obama. This last change fills her with joy, she says.
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Code orange absurdities
While federal, state, and local budgets are so tight that even basic public services are being slashed, America was put on "Code Orange Alert? during the holidays, providing a show of armed force across the land. But does any of it actually make us safer?
1. There were media shots of Coast Guard officers patrolling New York Harbor, armed with automatic rifles and scanning the water, pre- pared to shoot... what exactly?
2. At Houston's intercontinental airport, there was a new patrol of four armed guys in cowboy hats riding horseback around and around the airport's perimeter fences, apparently to catch... what exactly?
3. The FBI issued a nationwide alert to 18,000 police units warning them to be on watch for "people carrying almanacs.? Yes! The agency's bulletin breathlessly noted that terrorists might use the Old Farmers Almanac, World Almanac, or whatever "to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning.? This is supposed to make us feel safer?
Code Orange has become a green light for pouring tax money into police bureaucracies.