...For a thread. Having missed the entire point, you're all losers for the rest of your lives.

Until something substantial changes, that is.

I wish you all great pain. Followed by great hope.

...and a well-regulated militia. What does that mean in the context of the necessity to secure the freedoms and liberties of a free people?

I think RIGHT NOW it means SERFU. It means 50 caliber weapons and ammo to all who value human life and liberty and can shoot straight. If you can afford it, arm your friends, provided that they are emotionally stable enough to responsibly handle a high-level of destructive force.

A semi-automatic version of the SERFU would be more awesome.

Every meely-mouthed congressional war supporter, every judge or justice who ever subverted the Constitution, and every chicken-s*t General who lacked the resolve to put these idjits in their place from the outset. Every Bush-tainted CIA or other intelligence operative. Every member of the Bush family. Every member of Skull and Bones. Every public apologist or employee of Fox News and the Republican Party.

The next President needs to offer clemency to anyone who puts these targets to sleep and ONLY these targets.

We'll figure out what, "well-regulated," means just as soon as that discussion becomes relevant. Right now the entire hope of humanity lies in the American people getting their own government UNDER their control as quickly as possible.

Not even the most powerful military in any world can win a war against an insurgency. Not yet, anyway. And I pray that it may never be so. Not until we get this whole governance and education thing permanently resolved.

...but I do know who has by their behavior.

I haven't seen much of it on this thread. And none of it in the hit piece.

There was a time when strangers were welcomed here with open arms.

...or you can apologize to readers, everywhere, whom you have offended with your misplaced indictments of Eric Schaeffer.

I experienced the cold chill of Republican anti-labor sentiment after I'd filed a labor grievance with my employer back in the early 1980's in California.

In the space of a single month, my case worker -- an obviously pro-labor supporter -- and most of the staff in the office, were completely replaced.

The caseworker who replaced my original caseworker refused to treat me with anything like dignity or respect even though I had had well over 3,300 dollars of overtime pay due to me.

What transpired after that fact was an unwelcome IRS audit -- something I've never seen or heard of the IRS doing to a college student -- and the opening of my mail.

Looking back I can understand the issues better. I never confronted my managers about the illegality of what they were asking their workers to do. I simply and stealthfully collected information over a two year period and when a significant grievance came up, I dropped the bomb on them. That is not how I would do business now, but it was how this second generation Okie had learned to deal with employers who treated their workers like chattel. In Salinas, California of all places.

No wonder Steinbeck wrote as he did about my former neighbors!

The intimidating tactics and so forth that triggered my passive-aggressive approach were not in my imagination. A fellow trusted employee who had been working for my employer for some time by the time I began working for them, stole thousands of dollars of merchandise from our store and didn't take responsibility for his actions for at least a month. The intimidation kicked into high gear as I became the prime suspect during that month before my colleague finally fessed up and resigned.

Incidently, the act that was the tipping point for me was the refusal of my employer to allow me to take the lead on a government project worth well over 1,000,000 dollars. The owner simply refused to do business with the government at a remote location in Jolon, which cut me out of tens of thousands of dollars in commissions and the potential for even more. If I hadn't have been in my early twenties and inexperienced, I might have blown the place up. As it turned out, the owner was trying to sell the store out from under us and didn't want to incur anymore costs or headaches.

I could blame this popular local businessman for his unethical treatment of his employees, but I do not. In fact, the entire Salinas Valley is chalk-full of Theory-X agribusiness employers who command massive amounts of capital and think not a wit about how they make life difficult or impossible for a medium-sized businessman like my former employer. He was probably raised working in the fields with the caballeros or on the boats with his fishermen family members. He worked hard all of his life to provide for his family just as my father did for our family, so seeing how spoiled by abundance the generation coming up actually were would have easily offended anyone from his background.

Still, becoming persona non-grata in my own hometown on top of everything else that happened, was a bit harsh. I couldn't even walk into any of his family's businesses for years. Over a measily 3300 dollar labor settlement! Such is the life of an arrogant 20 year old with more brains than experience.

The problem with antilabor sentiment is actually coming from the very top of the economy, down. Workers do not have time or the inclination to advocate for themselves, and so the harshness raining down from the top results in the scapegoating of the workers at the bottom of this ponsi scheme we call capitalism.