Even as the storm clouds gather, there is reason to be optimistic, for the river is receding steadily and is near 12.50' at Riegelsville, or ten feet below flood stage.
As to celebrating our freedoms, this should be a sobering July 4, because the same people who claim to have liberated and brought freedom to the Iraqi people have worked tirelessly to erode our own freedoms as codified in the US Constitution.
But hey you say! This is a river blog. Well those same people have been working to undermine the laws that protect river systems. So let's hear it for freedom from: oil and oily politicians.
Tomorrow I will begin writing about the BLAME GAME that is already up and running. I have had more than a few conversations with folks who are fixated on their favorite reason that the river flooded. My response? ARRRRRGGGGGGHHHH!
Here are a few quotes to celebrate the declaration of independence from...King George. No, not that idiot. I mean King George of 230 years ago.
-- "A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it, " Bush was quoted in the July 30, 2001, issue of Business Week.
-- "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
George W. Bush May 25, 2005
-- Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.
Voltaire
-- “We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.…I think it will go relatively quickly… weeks rather than months.”-- Vice President Cheney, 3/16/03
-- The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders . . . All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism."
-- Hermann Goerting, Nazi
-- You can't wage war on terrorists without becoming a terrorist yourself. Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich. Besides that, there is no difference.
-- Peter Ustinov
-- "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."
-- George Orwell
-- "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
-- "He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair."
-- Henry David Thoreau
-- "The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country."
George W. Bush
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