Happy Thanksgiving to the lurkers, virgins, gurus and levels in between

[shereads]

Stay safe. Find something new to be thankful for.

I'm thankful for free speech and free dirty stories. Drop by Rick's Rooftop (where the first drink is free and we run a tab after that) and join us in a toast to Literotica and our generous hosts.

Long may they wave.

 

[PhoenixPrime01]

Thank you shereads and we'd best enjoy those freedoms as long as we can. *s

I have much to be thankful for and one of the prime things is my friends and the wonderful writers here at Literotica's SRP board and some of the boards others as well.

A very Happy Thanksgiving to you and to yours shereads from old and venerable me. *sgs

 

[landiek]

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all


I am thankful for my health and for my pair of horned angels

I'm thankful for friends from Lit and all of the time that they have given to make me feel wanted and missed.

I'm thankful that there are young men and women that believe in the call to join the armed services even with the horrors and rumors of Wartime.

I'm thankful for the people that you hardly notice at the doctor's office that make sure things are in place when you have an exam.

I'm thankful that there are people that care for children that can't be in their own homes during the holidays.

I'm thankful for my friends that I've known most of my life and appreciate everything that they suggest when you feel blue.

I'm thankful for a Master that demonstrates his love daily.

I'm thankful that I live and can share my knowledge with others

Happy Thanksgiving to O/one and A/all

 

[ram1_2]

I know I'm relatively new at this Thanksgiving stuff, but I'm getting the hang of it now.....except the NFL, that is!

Have a safe and happy holiday, everyone!


Ram

 

[shereads]

Thank you shereads and we'd best enjoy those freedoms as long as we can.

I'm glad you said that, PP01. I'm exhausted and disillusioned and grieving as if something precious has already been lost to us, and I'm so close to giving up permanently that I need all the reminders I can get that it's time, now more than ever, to make noise and stay angry and not give up an inch of ground without a fight, because we won't recognize this country four years from now. It's already changed too much, too fast, through the use of fear and lies and the demonization of dissent, as if dissent without fear of reprisal hadn't always been the most American value of all.

Since we're on the topic of things we're thankful for, I'd like to extend a belated Veterans' Day thank-you to Max Cleland and John Kerry and the other Untouchables. God only knows how bitter that day must be for them now. Cleland, at least, has had a couple of years to get used to the idea that he became a coward and unAmerican the day he refused to support the Iraq invasion, no matter that he left 3 limbs in Vietnam and served his country from a wheelchair for decades. "If you're not with us, you're against us." As for Kerry, he's probably still adjusting to the idea that using his right to free speech 30 years ago erased all honor from his record and branded him as the enemy. I wonder if they both wish they could un-volunteer, go back in time and support the Vietnam war by raising a toast to the troops while they got a head-start on their post-graduate degrees. One of them might be in the White House now if they had kept their eyes on the ball and hadn't let themselves become distracted by their generation's war. Did we learn nothing from George McGovern, who served in WWII and lost the White House to to a man whose war experience consisted of making movies for the military in California - and who somehow got credit in the public eye for courage and military leadership, while McGovern, the combat pilot, will go down in history as an anti-military weakling. Amazing how shallow we are. How easily we're manipulated by a little shrewd marketing. Thanks also to Karl Rove for proving against all odds, what P.T. Barnum said about circuses: "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the American public."

I'm thankful to PP01, also a veteran who seems to see this year for what it's been, and to Cleland and Kerry and other Americans who remind me that dissent isn't just a right but a duty in a democracy, and that freedom of speech isn't about defending your right to agree with the majority, it's about defending someone else's right to offend the majority. Happy-talk doesn't need defending, people. Points of view that scare us and sicken us and make us angry; those are what we either have to defend, or hope that our own views won't someday be considered offensive by a majority.

Your right to be here is under attack right now, at the Justice Department. Your right to privacy was taken from you three years ago, and when permission was given for the government to monitor your internet use, your preferences in reading material at the public library, your purchases from Amazon, and phone conversations with your lawyer if you have one - without obtaining a warrant - no distinction was made between terrorist activity and surfing porn.

Can you say, "keyword search?"

Are you aware that you no longer have a right to privacy because there's no longer an absolute need to show a judge probable cause why you should be spied upon? Do you know how easy it is to misunderstand something said here, and that now a simple misunderstanding could send you to jail indefinitely, without you being charged with a crime and allowed to speak to a judge or a lawyer? (You won't be a criminal defendant, you'll be a "person of interest" so all bets are off.) Are you prepared to give up Literotica to make someone else's church happy? "Cleaning up the internet" was already a top priority at the Justice Department even before Nov. 2 when it officially became payback time for religious extremists. They're going for it, this coming year, as soon as there's a case worth bringing before the Supreme Court. If you were hosting Literotica, would you stick around waiting to be penalized with fines and legal fees and nuisance lawsuits while waiting for the Supreme Court to give a nod to free speech? I hope our hosts will do that for us, but I don't think I'd be that brave. If you care, let your congressional representatives know your that your definition of freedom doesn't have to be the same as your grandmother's, or your minisiter's, or anyone else's, as long as you're minding your own business. It's now or never.

Like PP01 said. Yes, I blame him completely for my rant here tonight. I had sworn off political rants for the duration, when I saw most of what I love about my country die on Nov. 2. But if people who've put themselves in the line of fire so that others wouldn't have to, are willing to speak out, knowing they risk being pariahs and having TV commercials made about them, comparing them to Osama Bin Laden, well then I can risk having some of you tell me this isn't an appropriate topic for the Lit SRP.

If we don't make it one, there won't be a Lit SRP.

Hey Ashcroft: I'm still laughing because you lost your Senate seat to a dead guy; I know, I know, you got the last laugh when they put you in charge of the Justice Department and you tried to have a drape placed over the naked breast of the statue in front of your office building. I still think it's a hoot that you lost to a dead candidate; nobody deserved to be brought down a notch as much as you did. Now they'll probably nominate you to the Supreme Court. Whatever. You still suck as a singer and songwriter.

Still, I'll gladly listen to "Let Eagles Fly" once a week for the rest of my life if you'll stop picking on terminally ill people in chronic pain who have chosen a different end to their lives than you would choose for them. Drop your case against Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, you poor, pathetic, tight-lipped, self-hating victim of abusive toilet training. Be content with having stripped us of our right to privacy and of having come so close to eliminating habeus corpus as an inalienable right, which has been around since the signing of the Magna Carta. An impressive piece of work, that. It's amazing what people will give up if they're kept in a constant state of uncertainty and fear punctuated with vaguely defined Orange Terror Alerts for three years.

Meanwhile, until the Supreme Court rules otherwise, I'm free to write and read pornography, others here are free to call it erotica and argue the difference, and if I want to call the president a sheming, narrow-minded little monkey, my doing so is as American as apple pie. It's my right and my duty to say I consider this president guilty of negligent manslaughter in the deaths of 1000 Americans and an unknown number of innocent civilians who've been liberated with extreme prejudice in Iraq. In fact, it's a lot more American for me to call Bush clueless and Cheney a conscienceless power-whore than it is for them and their minions to stifle dissent and reinvent the Bill of Rights to stop me from saying it. They have a right to their narrow view of the world, and others have a right to share it. But they don't have a right to foist their world on me. I deserve better.

Garrison Keillor wrote something I really needed to hear, in his book "Homegrown Democrat."

"Democrats are deciduous. We fade, we lose hope. We appear to die away. Then something happens that gets the sap stirring again. We return, full of passion." s

I'm thankful that he wrote that and that I still have the right to read it. I'm less thankful that if someone in government wanted to, they could demand that amazon.com or the public library give them a list of what I like to read, for no other reason than that I gave money to Greenpeace and joined the ACLU.

Keillor also wrote, "There are more important things than winning."

Thank you, those who bothered to read this for. If you're ticked off about it and won't let me blame PP01, then blame the Theraflu cold medicine.



Wishing you all a safe Thanksgiving, and free speech next Thanksgiving and the one after that. Thanks for the naughty stories.

 

[Subo97]

Thanks

I've been grateful ever since the first day I met shereads. If I can't lift your heart, my sweet, then feel free to come ride along with mine. A heart like yours deserves to soar.

 

[PhoenixPrime01]

shereads your eloquence is wonderful to behold and I willingly accept any and all blame for sparking that wonderful "rant". *BG*

Sure this is an SRP Board, but, as you pointed out so well, if we don't stick up for what we have and enjoy as one of our rights guaranteed by the wonderful document the Bill of Rights, what right do we have to exepct to have and keep any of them at all. Getting rid of Freedom of Speech is a primary first step in stifling any and all opposition from a free people that is so feared by facisits of all types.

I used this quote in my signature line for quite awhile and I think this is a perferct place to post it again for it shows you and I aren't the first to feel the way we do about liberties and "safety". And we know that the bogus Terrorist Alerts and that horrendous Patriot Act which should be named the Abridging the Bill of Rights Act is but a first step:

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” ~ Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)

This sentence was much used in the Revolutionary period. It occurs even so early as November, 1755, in an answer by the Assembly of Pennsylvania to the Governor, and forms the motto of Franklin’s “Historical Review,” 1759, appearing also in the body of the work.—Frothingham: Rise of the Republic of the United States, p. 413.

We've all been watching a very professionally produced example of the same type of propaganda that the German citizens were subjected to as the Nazi party rose to power in pre-WW II Germany. Keep the population facilitating between fear and uncertainty in varying amounts so they never have time to stop and think. An example in real life of the movie "The Tail Wagging the Dog" in action with the American public being duped into believing the "Resident", for that drunken frat boy pawn of the ultra rich elite, the corporate power brokers is in no way, shape or form my President nor worthy of the respect that title or office should engender.

A prime example of the abuse of power was the "Resident" ordering all of the Bin Lauden family members who resided in the U.S. when 9-11 happened being escorted to airports and flown out of the U.S. when all air travel for any and everyone else had been forbidden and all flights grounded for several days. It's rather interesting that "Pappy Resident" is the front man for the bin Laudin family oil interests, but of course that wouldn't have any bearing on it now would it.

By the way, had any of my friends or associates who were in any branch of the military reserves during the Viet Nam debacle missed a year of reserve meetings as the "Resident" did they would have immediately been activated and very likely sent to participate in the SE Asia War Games and Weapons System Testing Program. None of them had Daddy "Resident's" clout to run interference for them and make sure all was well for sonny boy.

I'm sure it's also just one of those unexplainable "coincidences" that JFK was assassinated just months before he implemented his planned start to withdrawing US soldiers from Viet Nam by Christmas of the year he was murdered. What else could it have been. Right?

I, personally, feel what we all, and I do mean all, need to do is find a viable third party to support, Libertarian perhaps, or start one to take seats away from the main stream parties who are mostly in the pockets of the "power brokers".

In case any wonder, I'm neither Republican nor Democrat. I'm registered as Republican, but that's only because in Florida Independents have no vote in primaries. If I had to "label" myself I'd be a Constitutional Independent.

Let me conclude my rant *s* with these quotes and you decide for yourself if either are pertinent to Iraq or the current state of things in America today shereads and my other friends.

In re Iraq:
“In most communities it is illegal to cry “fire” in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?” ~~ Dwight D. Eisenhower; On Middle East crisis, address to General Assembly 13 Aug 58.

In re the military-industrial complex and politics:
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.
Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” ~~
Dwight D. Eisenhower; farewell radio and television address to the American people, Washington, D.C., January 17, 1961.—Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960–61, p. 1038.

Hmmmm, I wonder if that would include Chaney’s Halliburton, et al, complex? Perhaps we should ask the “Vice Resident” what do you think?

Read the Patriot Act, if you have a very strong stomch, and then read Articles 1, 4, 5, 6, and 7 of the Bill of Rights and you decide if they've been abridged by this unconstitutional legislation. That's five out of ten. How long before a pretext is found for the next five fundemental articles?

shereads, may I have your permission to copy and paste what you wrote to emails to those on my email list?
I'll put what I've just written after yours if you'll allow it and ask that it be passed on. Perhaps we can start a grass root movement for alternative candidates in the Congressional election in two years. Now wouldn't that be wonderful. *S

BTW, any wishing feel free to use what I've written as long as it's in its entirety and nothing is taken out of context.

PP

P.S. Want an example of two other abuses of power, this time Congressional? How about voting yourself a pay raise in a late night session after the public raised hell about an earlier attempt.

How about retiring from your "job" and getting all pay and benefits until you die, as our Representives and Senators do and which they voted themselves rather than using Social Security as the rest of America does. Want Social Security fixed? Make them take away that Platinum Parachute (worth Millions to them as wives are also included) not Golden as it's worth so much more and make them join the Social Security System.

Health care reform would be immediate too if they didn't have the plan none of us can have or like afford that's at tax payer's expense.

(Edited to correct a couple of typos and for the P.S.--PP)