The Thomas Chronicles

The building started shifting and swaying laterally. The lamps overhead swung.

Yup, this is my first major earthquake here in Southern California. It lasted for about 10 seconds and according to the USGS, this quake was about a 5.8 on the Richter Scale.

Seeing that this is my first quake, my legs still feel a bit like spaghetti. But nothing around the office was broken. Just a bit of excitement for an early afternoon.

A co-worker sent me this video today, and I thought this was too good to pass up.

This video was particularly timely since I just finished reading fresh pickings from the Drudge this morning on the same comparison.

On first glance, this small piece of news doesn’t sound too significant. The LA Daily News reported today that police officers are telling IndyMac customers to stay calm; otherwise, they’ll be arrested.

To provide some background to this story, Pasadena-based bank, IndyMac, has just gone financially belly up from the continuing ripple effects of the sub-prime loan disaster. Rather than let the bank go under, the federal government has stepped and has taken it over.

I don’t think I need to get too involved in telling you that a) this is bad and b) that the ripple effects of this bank’s demise might extend further than Pasadena.

So, as would be expected, IndyMac customers are filling into IndyMac banks to withdraw their money from this proverbial sinking ship, and, as would also be expected, the customers are none too happy about it.

Although I understand the necessity of keeping order and calm in this situation, the ultimatum the police gave the customers smacks of something even more ominous.

The lead from the LA Daily News reads:

Police ordered angry customers lined up outside an IndyMac Bank branch to remain calm or face arrest Tuesday as they tried to pull their money on the second day of the failed institution’s federal takeover.

At least three police squad cars showed up early Tuesday as tensions rose outside the San Fernando Valley branch of Pasadena-based IndyMac.

“Stay calm or face arrest”? That’s an awfully slim pretext to arrest someone, isn’t it?

According to the standard they’ve stated here, can’t they say with equal validity that they don’t like the look on someone’s face, therefore, they can be arrested?

What? Are your emotions now grounds for arrest?

I know it was slim before, such as arresting people for “disturbing the peace”, “reasonable cause” for search and seizure and other things of this nature. But making ones’ emotions the basis of legality leads our system into strange territory, and it smacks of the ‘Thought Police’, if you ask me.

I’m sure there are more punitive measures a police officer can take short of arrest to keep a crowd of disgruntled customers calm, such as pulling them from the line, issue warnings, etc. Of course, the threat of arrest must be maintained as a deterring factor, but it shouldn’t be used as a first resort. That’s absurd.

Keeping order does not equate to strong man tactics, especially when the offense if measured in something as nebulous as a man’s emotions.

Last week, my friend and I were treated to yet another hair-pulling episode at the Veterans Administrations hospital. Given the copious amount of literature surrounding the various incompetencies of this monstrous system, I don’t think I’ll attend to the specifics.

I’ll only say that it is an absolute travesty of justice for our elected officials to treat our veterans as though they were charity cases. They are not. It is right there in their sign up contracts that they will defend our country with all their might and with their very lives, if necessary, and in return, their health needs will be cared for by the government.

These vets have upheld their end of the bargain. Where is the honor of our government? President Bush keeps lauding our troops, calling them heroes and such. Many of our troops are returning home and are being treated like trash at the VA.

And the thing is, these soldiers are being treated better… better than vets of yesterday’s war. I keep seeing vets from the Cold War, from Desert Storm, from Vietnam pacing those hallways, sitting in overflowing waiting rooms, and these “doctors” barely give them the time of day.

These are our broken men and women. They are our soldiers. They wore the uniform of our country, stood in the path of the juggernaut and preserved our freedoms. And this is how we honor them as a country? Treating them like a pack of losers?

I’ve even heard that desk clerks have called security to cart men away for protesting their shabby treatment. In all the times I’ve been there, which have been considerable, I find that these so-called altruistic “doctors” have rarely shown up on time, EVEN AS there are signs posted everywhere telling vets not to be a “no show”.

What’s more galling is that once you’ve waited for over an hour for these “doctors” to show up, if you’re not there when they call your name, you get busted back down to the bottom of the waiting list. This means that the next available appointment is going to be scheduled six months later.

And if you protest this, you might get carted off by security because some louse behind the counter didn’t like the tone of your voice. This gets marked down in your record, and you’re automatically labeled a troublemaker. Tough tamales.

What a monstrous system, indeed.

We treat our veterans like dirt and we put chocolate mint bon-bons on the pillows of our enemies.

Forgive me if I don’t believe our politicians’ sincerity when they praise the heroism of our soldiers, liberal AND conservative.

The latter is particularly offensive to me at this point because they keep waving God and the flag in our faces while they seem to be systematically selling us out to the Globalists. What? Maybe they think that we wouldn’t see their sell-out because they’re chanting “hate queers” in the name of marriage?

(I hear it’s the President who keeps wanting to cut back funding for our non-Iraqi War veterans… So, wouldn’t it necessarily mean that our current troops being shot at in Iraq would be forgotten and dispossessed of health care when the next war occurs?)

It’s been a busy few days and I haven’t been able to post anything substantial, but I thought I’d drop in and wave. I’ll have a new post up in a few.

He agrees that immigrants should speak English. Plus. He thinks that our kids should speak Spanish. Equals. Schizophrenic European Spanglish America.

Can you parlez-vous Espanol?

For those wanting a political pseudo-messiah to solve all their problems, all I’ve got to say is…