Edwards Campaign Facing Heat On Vets, Health Care

Burleson -- Veteran Tea Party activist Angela Cox confronted U.S. Representative Chet Edwards here at a campaign stop emphasizing veterans issues.

Said Ms. Cox, "Get this. Chet Edwards told the people assembled, 'If we don't win this race, I want you to know, I'll be OK. I am blessed, my wife is blessed and my children are blessed...'

"I couldn't help myself with all his I's and my's, so I spoke up and said, 'Glad to know you and your family are so blessed and you're going to be OK, at tax payer expense, but why don't you do something really good for your constituents...who have no jobs, are losing their homes and lives that they've worked so hard for, most of their lives...People started laughinig and clapping. Chet just got red in the face and changed the subject.




"He took no questions, but I did manage to have a
conversation with him on veterans issues...'One thing we can
agree on is that we do need to take care of our veterans.'"

Ms. Cox said she told Mr. Edwards, "'I will consider your
request, but first, as a sign that you are genuine in your
request, I would like to know why as of today, that you have
not denounced (Department of Homeland Security Secretary)
Janet Napolitano's statement that she made that vets coming
home from Iraq and Afghanistan should be considered as
possible terroristic threats to the U.S.'

"Media was right there and their jaws dropped. They looked
at Edwards and he walked off. LOL!"

Mr. Edwards will appear at 3:30 p.m. today at White Horse
Station in Clifton.

According to automated telephone messages he sent to
constituents in the area, he will have leaders of veterans
groups with him at the appearance.

Former Bush Administration VA Secretary Andrew Principi made
an appearance with the Representative at Waco yesterday.

He played a major part in retracting Agent Orange service
connection disability benefits to Navy "blue water" veterans
of the Vietnam War who did not put their feet on "dry land"
after Congress had previously passed a law guaranteeing they
would receive the same benefits as those who served on dry
land.

Congressman Edwards has signed on to legislation introduced
by House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Bob Filner (D-
California) that would reverse the former Secretary's
amendment of the dapartment's M-21-1 Adjudication Policy
Manual that denies such benefits to Navy veterans who served
offshore in Vietnam categorically.

The public law and Code of Federal Regulations extends the
service connection benefits to all veterans who served in
the Republic of Vietnam or its coastal waters.

Clifton resident Tim Hix died of Agent Orange-related
prostate and bone cancer two years ago. He was a Navy
veteran who served aboard the destroyer U.S.S. Dennis J.
Babcock in 1967, 1968 and 1969. Mr. Hix was billed $25,000
for an initial prostate operation because of the reversal of
policy. His combined family income was too much to receive
VA health care promised him when he was honorably discharged
as a combat veteran of the Vietnam War, according to a VA
ruling.

The Babcock fired on-shore bombardment missions from within
a thousand yards of the coast of Vietnam with her 5-inch
automatic guns. Mr. Hix served as a "phone talker" in his
General Quarters combat station.

He was a friend of The Legendary, a coffee drinking buddy
who worked at Clifton's Go Industries, and he is missed
every day by his many friends.

The VA denied Mr. Hix service connection when the U.S.
Supreme Court declined to hear the case of a fellow Navy
veteran who was blinded by a diabetic condition due to
exposure to Agent Orange.

Darwin Wrong! Competition No Part of Evolution

New biological research suggests competition for "living space" was the key factor in evolution, according to a new study.

Generations of teachers and researchers have concluded that
Charles Darwin's theory of evolutionary development is
predicated on a world in which organisms battled for supremacy. Only the fittest survived, according to the completely unscientific theory of "social Darwinism."

Not so, according Ph.D. student Sarda Sahney and colleagues at the University of Bristol published today in "Biology Letters."

Using fossils as their guide, the researchers concluded that
evolutionary patterns over 400 million years of history
suggest that animals living on land, amphibians, reptiles,
mammals and birds developed "biodiversity" as a result of
the availability of living space.

"Competition did not play a big role in the overall pattern
of evolution," said a co-author on the study, Professor Mike
Benton.

For instance, when birds developed the ability to fly,
"suddenly the sky was literally the limit."

When the reptilian species of dinosaurs died off in a sudden
chilling of the planet - the ice age - mammals came to the
forefront simply because they now had room to move.

According to Professor Stephen Stearns of Yale University,
"...And in general, what is the impetus to occupy new
portions of ecobiological space if not to avoid competition
with the species in the space alreaedy ocupied?"

Illegals: To Juggle With Price of Justice Is Costly

I read the news today, oh, boy,
4,000 holes in Blackburn-Lancashire.
And though the holes were rather small,
They had to count them all.

Now they know how many holes it takes to
fill the Albert Hall... - John Lennon, "A Day In The Life"

When lawmen caught up with the accused serial murderer at the Atlanta airport, he was on his way back to Israel.

Elias Abuelazam prefers to use the blade. He allegedly stabbed his victims in Michigan, Ohio and Virginia.

But hard times are taking their toll on the criminal justice system.

Accused of attempted murder in Genessee County, Michigan,
prosecutors figure it will cost them anywhere from $2,000 to
$10,000 to have the accused murderer extradited. The
problem is that the county is facing an $18 million deficit.

Mr. Abuelazam is an Israeli citizen.

In "lower level" offenses, it's much, much cheaper to
decline prosecution. The more attractive alternative is to
let the accused go and have federal authorities worry with
the costs of deportation. The trade off there is that no
one knows precisely where the perpetrators will go and what
they will do when they get there.

To juggle with limited resources sets lawmen on edge.

"County sheriffs are suffering immensely with extradition
costs. And this isn't something to be taken lightly," said
Aaron Kennard, the executive director of the National
Sheriffs Association. "If we don't extradite them, they
never pay for the crime. If we don't go get them, we're
thumbing our nose at the judicial system."

No one tracks the data on how many offenders are extradited
each year.

The truth is, it's a costly problem. The alternatives are
simple enough. Get the authorities who have the suspects in
custody to chip in some of the cost just to get the
prisoners off their books. Another solution is to have them
meet half way to turn them over.

A third alternative, one that is not so attractive, is to
have federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials
make a decision on what to do with foreign offenders. They
have been deporting violent illegal aliens first. It's the
number one priority. But there is a budget crunch there,
too.

The decision is made by another authority and not the

local prosecutor.

If local prosecutors choose not to prosecute aliens, they
are set free in the community where they allegedly committed
offenses.

The District Attorney of Northampton County, Pennsylvania,
stated the problem bluntly. "It doesn't make sense to spend
more tax dollars to colect tax dollars that are owed," said
John Morganelli. "If it's a misdemeanor charge, a case where
no great public harm is involved, we just can't go."

Border Zone Looks Like A Mideastern Battlefield

America is locking up the biggest share of the world's prisoners

Every year at U.S. Representative Silvestre Reyes' border security conference in El Paso, participants see a slide show put on by ICE officials.

Every year the pictures get more violent and starkly
indicative of near-civil war conditions on the other side of the border.

This year, according to a newsman who heads his own border news service, the pictures shown of the narco war in Tamaulipas State near Matamoros and Reynosa resembled more a mideastern war zone than Mexico.

Rivals interrogated a cartel member prior to his
decapitation.

A convoy of 50 vehicles with the CDG logo of the Gulf cartel passed through a highway toll booth without slowing down.

A squad of gunmen with both a grenade launcher and a rocket
launcher attacked the town of Camargo.

The lifeless body of 2010 candidate for Governor Rodolfo
Torre lay on the ground next to some of his unfortunate
companions.

The development that took the most attention from the group
was a banner that beseeched citizens who see any Zetas to
text or call a special hotline set up by Cartel de Golfo.

They are fighting the Mexican ex-Special Forces members for
the exclusive rights to smuggling drugs across the border in
the area.

The same is true in Ciudad Juarez, where the same type of
warfare is taking place between the Zetas and the Sinaloa
Cartel.

According to the best figures tabulated by a university
researcher, there were 47 people gunned down on the Juarez
side of the border during the weekend conference - August 13
to Sunday, August 15. By the next morning, the news
websites Lapolaka and El Diario had reported at least eight
more victims murdered in Juarez.

Over the past 4 years following a crackdown ordered by
President Felipe Calderon, the security budget has more than
doubled from about $5 million per year to $10 million.



According to Alejandro Hope, director of international
affairs for CISEN, Mexico's counterpart to the CIA, four
large drug cartels have been splintered into numerous
smaller ones.

Authorities have seized 84,049 weapons, 6,000 grenades and
$411 million of cash.

The cost is high. More than 28,000 people have been cut
down in the resulting drug-related violence.

But the results were countered by U.S. Amabassador to Mexico
Carlos Pascual. He told conferees that the U.S. estimate of
drug profits is a total of $19 to $29 billion in laundered
funds each year, counting the funds stacked up on both sides
of the border.

Less than $800 million is estimated to have come from drug
sales inside Mexico. America is the end market for the
massive carnage and loss of life.

One of the Mexican scribes writing about the problem
provided food for thought in print.

He wrote an extensive opinion piece that places the blame
squarely on American officials.

Such a market cannot exist, according toFrancisco Martin

Moreno, a columnist for the Mexico City daily, "Excelsior,"

unless there is an extensive culture of corruption among the

American law enforcement communities, intelligence officers,

judges,prosecutors and legislators, he said.

What's more, the press never carries the names of big time
dope king pins on the U.S. side of the border.

His main question was this. Can you name one, just one
American king pin in the trade that results in profits of
tens of billions of dollars per year?

The answer is no. That means the media is bought off, the
officials thoroughly bribed, and it leaves people with
ordinary lives with the perception that the problem exists
solely in Mexico, that there is no drug problem in America.

Meanwhile, the jails and penitentiaries are chock full of
drug offenders. Ameria has incarcerated the highest per
capita rate of offenders of any nation in the world, bar
none. At year end 2008, 2,424,279 people were behind bars,
62.6 percent of them in federal and state penitentiaries and
the remaining 32.4 % in local jails. That represents an
imprisoned rate of 506 persons per 100,000 in population.
This compares with a worlwide population of incarcerated
invdividuals of 9.25 million. Almost half are in the U.S.,
which accounts for only 4.5% of the world population.

Selling dope to people and locking them up is a huge growth
industry. "The Atlantic" magazine called it "The Prison-
Industrial Complex" in a December, 1998 article.

How to win the game?

Don't use drugs. Simple enough, no?

Looks like many Americans find it a hard thing to do. The
powerful people in the U.S. make a big share of the profits
off their resulting misery, as shown by the numbers.

Mideast Guns Silent After Cuss Fight Over Nuke

Israel "Too Weak" to attack Iran, says President Ahmadinejad

It's an old, old story, one everyone has seen on the
playground before they get out of grammar school. One of
them is scared and the other is glad of it.

That's the way it is in the war of words between Iran and
Israel over Iran's on-again, off-again nuclear power plant
at Bushehr, a sea coast city on the Persian Gulf shore.

More timid souls trembled with trepidation last week when the Bush Administration's former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton kibbitzed the cussing match by mentioning that Israel had only a few days left to attack before the Iranians began the process of loading fuel rods in the reactor. Headlines unfurled under many flags following the harsh remark.

But neither Israel, nor the U.S. attacked to prevent the
Iranians from using the reactor, which was begun in 1974,
halted in the Islamic Revolution of 1979, then resumed
construction in the 90's.


With its completion, the complex could theoretically produce fissile materials of weapons grade, something experts from the community of nuclear engineers in Russia and the U.S. have strongly discounted.

According to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Israel is "too weak" to attack the antagonistic and militant
Iranian nation.

It has been an open secret for several decades that the
nation of Israel has the capability of unleashing nuclear
warheads against its enemies.

After all, what good is a weapon if they don't know you've
got it and that you will use it?

"There are no logical reasons for the United States to carry
out such an act," Mr. Ahmadinejad said in an interview with
the Al-Jazeera Network.

In such a case, said Deputy Revolutionary Political Affairs
Brigadier General Yadollah Javani of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards, "the Islamic Republic's hands and
advocates will be powerfully activated against the hegemonic
system and U.S. bases outside the region, according to a
report published today in the international Israeli
newspaper Haaretz.

The Reality of Santa Muerte, On The Border - And Beyond

A warrior named peace discusses his awakening to Aztlan

"We didn't cross the border; the border crossed us." - a
Chicano saying

A disquisition on El Dia de los Muertos - "the day of the
dead," or, "All Saints' Day," November 2

By "Bacsi," Lewis T. Pace, Jr.

Mr. Pace lives in the Texas Rio Grande Valley and in a home
in the moutains of el norte in Mexico. He is perfecting his
application for Mexican citizenship. When he served in the
Special Forces, he was a medic, or "Bacsi," Vietnamese for
doctor. - Ed.

One of the things that has absolutely fascinated me during
my 44 years of being "married to Mexico" is the Mexican
fascination with death.

Halloween for us is a chance to dress funny, go "trick or
treat" and have fun with the kids.

The Day of the Dead is a very important part of Mexican
culture. Mexicans on both sides of the border clean the
cemeteries, party and honor the dead on November 2, All
Saints' Day.

What we Anglos call bull fights are no such thing. The highest ranking toreador, or bull man, is the matador, the killer. The whole purpose of the thing is to see a man demonstrate style and skill in the presence of death.

That animal goes into the ring to die.

There is a convenience store and gas station about 100 yards from my place in Mission, Texas. I drop in any time of night for a couple of jalapeño hot dogs and a Coke.

I stand around and chat with the kids behind the counter. They're impressed that an old gringo can speak better Spanish than they can and actually lives in Mexico.

I noticed the other night that one of the young girls who had been talking to me about wanting to study nursing didn't seem to be around anymore.

The older girl there said she had gone back to Mexico with her boyfriend.

As we talked, some things came out. She was legal, a native-
born U.S. citizen; her boyfriend was an illegal. He had
just gotten out of jail. He is a guardia for the Zetas,
big time drug enforcers led by ex-Mexican Special Forces
soldiers.

She had willingly walked away from home, family and school
to go with him.

I nearly choked. To me, that was the height of insanity. I asked why would someone do something so stupid.

The answer was very simple. The boyfriend had made a vow to her on "La Santa Muerte." I had never heard of any such thing.

The girl I was talking to told me that la Santa Muerte is a religion, a religious practice similar to being a Catholic, and that any such vow is the most potent thing in this
world.

She told me that she and her novio, her live-in boyfriend, are also faithful followers and that he had just gotten a
tattoo of La Santa on his thigh.

When he came in, he hiked up his shorts and showed it to me.
She was going to get one on her shoulder come payday.

We talked it over and I learned the similarities in this
belief and the one followed by black folks in my native
Georgia, "Juju," in which Baron Samedi rules the underworld
and Babalú drums and dances through the night, then escapes
into the day before sunrise. He is in pursuit of his lover.

She is as revered as La Santa.

Anthropoligists call La Santa Muerte a syncretism between
Mesoamerican and Catholic beliefs, though the "cult" is
condemned by the Catholic Church in Mexico.

The Aztecs inherited from their ancestors the gods
Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacihuatl, the lord and lady of
Mictlan, the realm of the dead.

One often sees them depicted on glossy calendars distributed
by las panaderias in barrios from San Francisco to
Brownsville, and all points south.

Skeletons symbolize to European Catholics the need for a
muerte santa, a good death, fully confessed of sins. Often
in latin countries of Europe, the skeletons are dressed in
royal vestments, given crowns and scepters and paraded in
the streets. The practice was most popular in times of
plague.

In Chiapas, there is a wooden skeleton believed to be a
replica of the remains of San Pascualito, who comes to
people after they die. This belief is from the times prior
to the 19th century, when Santa Muerte was practiced in
secret.

Later, José Guadalupe Posada created a non-religious, but
similar, figure by the name of Catrina, a skeleton dressed
in fancy clothing of the time.

She is also known as La Señora de las Sombras, or lady of
the shadows and as Señora Blanca, the white lady, or Santa
Negra, the black lady. Similarly, she is referred to as Niña
Santa, the holy girl, or as La Flaca, the skinny one.

She is always robed because the Mexican cult of death
recognizes flesh as something that falls away, as does a
robe. Posed with a scythe in her right hand and a globe in
her left, in depiction she closely resembles La Virgen
de Guadalupe, patron saint of Mexico.

In her crown, adherents insert pictures of loved ones and
tokens of their passing. Altars, called ofrendas, are lit
by candles, filled with bread, beans and tobacco, as in the
West African cults present throughout the Caribbean, Miami,
and America's truly third world city, New Orleans.

Many knowledgeable social scientists view this trend among
youthful chicanos and chicanas as part of a gradual
"occupation" of the mythic land of good health in el norte,
the land of Aztlan, so named for seven caves in a mystic
mountain occupied by the seven tribes of the Aztec nation so
revered by Moctezuma, King of the Valley of Mexico.

Drug Cartels Grow Marijuana In National Forests

With no need to cross border, it's much easier to get to market.

Drug cartels recruit agricultural workers with family on the
other side of the border in Mexico.

They bring them to the U.S. where they have them tend
massive and lucrative crops of marijuana in the national
forests.

This way, there is no need to smuggle the bulky, smelly crop
into the U.S. The workers are easy to control because their
families in Mexico could lose their lives if they do not
cooperate fully.





Mercenary grower teams sport AK-47 assault rifles, booby
traps and 24/7 security guards throughout hundreds upon
hundreds of secluded acres in remote parts of the forests.

The plant naturally grows best under the partial cover of
second growth trees and brush, which is a plus because of
the weed's bright green color. It's very easy to spot a
marijuana patch from low-flying planes and helicopters.

Narcotics authorities earlier this month broke up a very
large operation spread out across 10 grow sites in
Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, a 350,000 acre reserve
located about 50 miles north of Green Bay. They uprooted
and confiscated thousands of plants.

But that's not the only place marijuana growers have been
busted. In forests all over northern California, Oregon and
Washington, agents have found similar operations. Certain
areas of Riverside County, California, and national forests
in Indiana, Tennessee and Nevada have seen similar
operations.

The chief task left to the authorities is to clean up the
mess once the operation is secured. Growers dig water pits
the size of kiddie pools and use them for irrigation, leave
sacks of fertilizer on the ground, and trash and garbage
strewn everywhere.

The finished product is very expensive and cutting out the
task of smuggling it across the border or ashore in bales
really cuts out a tremendous cost factor.