Tracy Baker has spent nearly 25 years helping people converse with one another; whether a salesperson of any ilk to a potential client, a customer service representative to a customer, or a manager to an employee. A student of human nature and a curmudgeon-in-training, he has been writing essays under the moniker "The Milkman's Son" for the last 5 years. About them he says:
"Okay, okay. I can finally admit it. I am the milkman’s son. This does not, however, mean I am an unfortunate bastard (contrary to popular belief). My father, you see, was a proud member of this long gone profession. A friend of my parents used to tease my mother, implying all her children where the result of liaisons with the milkman.
"It always brought laughs from the “adults”. I never understood what was so funny. My father was a milkman and I was his child. So? I call this little something-or-other “The Milkman’s Son” because despite my path in life, despite how successful (or not), I am who I am because I am my Father’s child. He died nigh on ten years ago now, yet he still influences most things I do. A plainspoken man from Michigan, he liked to act the curmudgeon. Yet when you paid close attention, you’d find a man who truly cared for people and for life."
These essays are my way of sharing what I see, read, or hear all around me, everyday. And as John Adams, expounding on a quote from Samuel Johnson once said:
Samuel Johnson said ‘When I sat upon my throne in the tavern, I dogmatized and was contradicted, and in this I found delight.’
“My throne is not in a tavern but by my fireplace. There I dogmatize, laugh, and there newspapers sometimes make me scold…and in dogmatizing, laughing and scolding, I find delight. Why should I not enjoy it, since no one is worse for it, and I am the better!”
John Adams, 1805
We taxpayers underwrote a $50 million witch hunt to look into a busted land deal that amounted to about nothing in the cosmic and economic scheme of things. I may have this all wrong, but it sure seems like the current administration is in up to its elbows with Ken Lay and his crew at Enron. The Cheney people are doing everything they can to hide the fact that at the very time Enron and others were fraudulently manipulating the California energy market (a time with the Bush people were pointedly telling California to suck eggs), Ken Lay was rolling Easter eggs on the White House lawn and helping the Veep draft his new energy policy.
There are only three alternatives on the brewing intelligence fiasco surrounding 9.11.02
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Nobody knew anything.
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The information was there but for some reason it wasn't processed into something actionable
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People knew and decided to do nothing (one of the theories that has been repeatedly advanced with overwhelming documentation regarding Pearl Harbor)
There are no other choices. They all have huge implications. We need to peel this onion and find out.
May 20, 2002
The Milkman's Son
By Tracy Baker
Sour Cream#76
Samuel Johnson said 'When I sat upon my throne in the tavern, I
dogmatized and was contradicted, and in this I found delight.'
"My throne is not in a tavern but by my fireplace. There I dogmatize,
laugh, and there newspapers sometimes make me scold…and in dogmatizing,
laughing and scolding, I find delight. Why should I not enjoy it, since no
one is worse for it, and I am the better!"
John Adams, 1805
Republican Train of Thought
Within three months of the tragedy of September 11, 2001, the Republican
Leadership with tacit approval of the Bush Administration, openly and
viciously, without any proof, laid much of the blame at the feet of former
President Clinton and his cabinet.
Within three months of the tragedy of September 11, 2001, representatives of
the Bush Administration appeared before Congressional hearings and swore
under oath that none of the intelligence agencies or the Administration had
any warning of any kind that this was going to happen.
Within four months of the tragedy of September 11, 2001, leaders of the GOP
were strategizing how they could use the President's newfound popularity,
the tragedy, and the "WAR ON TERRORISM" to their political advantage during
the 2002 Congressional races.
Now, eight months since the tragedy of September 11, 2001, we find that the
FBI had a piece of the warning of what might happen, the CIA had a piece of
the warning of what might happen, the NSA more than likely had quite a few
pieces of warning of what might happen (they are not saying), the
Administration was briefed on what might happen, and adding what we already
knew, that one of (what we would learn later) the would-be hijackers is
arrested in August at a FLIGHT SCHOOL …oh, yes, and the President raised 30
million dollars trading on that same tragedy of September 11, 2001.
THOU SHALT NOT CRITICIZE THY PRESIDENT…(Unless He's a Democrat)
When Democratic Leaders chose to point out, first, the obvious hypocrisy of
the President and the Republicans, who delighted in 8 years of bashing
Clinton fundraisers, they were vilified as (to quote Spiro) nattering nabobs
of negativism. Lincoln bedroom? National tragedy? Neither appeal to my
taste but I'll be damned if one is justified over the other simply because
he is a "War-time President."
Second, when the FBI memos regarding Middle-Eastern men training at US
flight schools and Intelligence briefings regarding operatives of Usama bin
Laden hijacking airliners came to light, Democrats and Republicans have
called for hearings into why our intelligence is not coordinated, as well as
why the administration did not reveal this information for the past eight
months.
Bush has implied that the Democrats are second-guessing and unjustly
criticizing him, and has sent out his minions - Rice, Ashcroft, Cheney,
Fleischer, Limbaugh - to defend him. Their line? How dare anyone suggest
that the President knew this was going to happen and how dare them criticize
the President at a time of war! This from an administration that blamed
Clinton, swore under oath they had no warning, and then proceeded to use
what happened to their political advantage.
Just where is this criticism? I haven't heard one wit from anyone with half
a brain blaming Bush for September 11 and wouldn't support anyone who did.
The focus, as I hear it, should instead be on how three different
intelligence agencies of the United States, along with NATO partners, all
came up with information that if it had been woven together would have lit
up Al Qaeda's plot like a Christmas tree…or at the very least raised enough
flags in proper places that something might have been done to mitigate it.
Even if not, why didn't the administration clean house in those agencies
after September 11 and instead, other than hiring figurehead Tom Ridge to
appease the masses, have let the status quo of non-cooperation remain.
And on, and on, and on the political Merry-Go-Round goes round.
Fini
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