St. Kitts was still one of the busiest places on Earth, as O.U.T.R.A.G.E. volunteers worked feverishly on formal language for twenty-five resolutions to be put on November's ballot as referendums. If the people voted in favor of these referendums, they would become part of the law of the land. Article III had been introduced on Friday, January 25, 2008, just eight days after the infamous O.U.T.R.A.G.E. bombings that had killed tens of thousands of politicians, wealthy elitists, squandering celebrities and athletes, greedy corporate executives, and others deemed to be detriments to society.
Article III called for the revision of the Income Tax System to "be more equitable" for all citizens. The current tax system was cumbersome, unfair, and - some thought - unconstitutional. Of course, the complexities of the tax laws helped corporations escape from billions of dollars of taxes. Even wealthy individuals often paid far less tax than many middle-income wage earners, thanks to loop holes in the law. Members of Congress, over the years, had strong-armed inclusions into the tax code that specifically benefited those who made large contributions to their campaigns. Annual changes in tax laws helped certified public accountants earn handsome annual salaries. The I.R.S. was perhaps the most feared, most loathed agency of the federal government. Strenuous inconsistencies had turned most Americans into tax cheats, liars, and thieves. It wasn't about paying one's "fair share" - it was all about how to exploit the insipid tax code to one's personal advantage.
Article IV was a resolution that called for nationalizing the health care system. This, too, was rife with challenges. For United States citizens, health care was a luxury unaffordable to a preponderance of middle and lower-incomed families. Generations of political arm-twisting by pharmaceutical firms, the American Medical Association, the insurance industry and others who profited from people's illnesses, had turned America's health care system into one of the worst in the world. It was confusing, riffled with inconsistencies, and designed purely to protect the profits of those large corporations in the fields of medicine and health care. A corruptive Congress had, over the years, willingly coddled the health care industry into a cradle of comfort and profitable privilege unknown in any other republic on Earth.
Article V introduced a resolution to eliminate all lobbyists and special interest groups, which tied directly to Articles III and IV, since it arbitrarily would kill of the powerful and influential bodies that helped keep America's tax system and health care system so archaic. Many other leading nations of the world had devised streamlined, well-run systems that served the people instead of the special interests. While the U.S. Constitution began with the words, "We the People..." the country had become a toxic landfill of skulduggery devoted to the rich and powerful. Now that most of the rich and powerful had been methodically exterminated, O.U.T.R.A.G.E. could return the country to its people.
Panels of experts and analysts, whose committess also included 'common' people, were hard at work on these issues. Meanwhile, prospective political candidates kept flying in and out of St. Kitts, presenting their platforms to O.U.T.R.A.G.E. in hopes of being 'sanctioned' by this band of benevolent rebels.
On Thursday, June 26, 2008, O.U.T.R.A.G.E. claimed its fifteen millionth member. Just over 6% of the surviving population of the United States now had actively joined and supported an organizatin that had just five months earlier spearheaded an unprecendented nationwide killing spree.

Cigarettes were still being manufactured, thirty years after the U.S. Surgeon General determined they were hazardous to one's health. If cigarette smoking continued unabated, and the current trends held, an estimated one billion people would die from smoking in the 21st century. That's a ten-fold increase over the number of people that cigarettes killed in the 20th century.

Even though California had the toughest laws against smoking in the country, smoking-related deaths continued to increase, along with air pollution and smog. In fact, there was a 9-in-10 chance that a Californian lived in an area whose air pollution exceeded the state's legal limit. Analysts estimated that smog - and its effects - cost California more than $75 billion in extra health-care-related expenses every year. Americans were breathing in noxious fumes from the tailpipes of cars, trucks and busses, then millions of them exacerbated the risks to their ability to breath by sucking on expensive little sticks of tobacco that was proven to kill them! Cigarette manufacturers had been discovered to be adding more nicotine to their products in an effort to keep smokers "hooked". While most manufacturers increased the amount of nicotine that cigarettes deliver to the lungs by only 10%, the makers of Kool cigarettes had added 20% more nicotine! Yet there was no FDA law or regulation that prevented cigarette manufacturers from enhancing the "kill factor" in their dangerous products. Obtuse government rules did nothing to protect American consumers from such danger.

If there was a Federal Bureau of Useless Information (and the surprising thing is that there wasn't!), that government agency might have also revealed these interesting tidbits, annually compiled by something known as the Harper's Index:
* 39% of Americans believed U.S. Muslims should be required to carry a special ID card, identifying them as a Muslim!
* More than 15 U.S. states had, by 2007, installed electroic voting machines that left no recountable paper trail!
* In September, 2006, it took a Princeton researcher ONE MINUTE to hack into a Diebold voting machine and sabotage the actual voting tally!
* While there was considerable public outrage over foreign diplomats who disobeyed U.S. laws while in this country, few people knew that the U.S. Embassy's staff in London owed $1,600,000.00 in unpaid traffic tickets!
* One in two white American women believed they would end up as a "bag lady" in her old age. Yet, only 1 in 3 African-American women said they worried about such a situation (proving that black women knew how to work the 'system' better than white women)!
* Bill Clinton made an average of 65 additions to the U.S. endangered-species list each year he was in office. George W. Bush made an average of less than 9 additions, demonstrating how little he cared about the delicate ecological balance between man, plants and animals that allowed us all to co-exist in this planet's environment!
* 30% of Americans could not even correctly guess which year the famed 9-11 terrorist attacks took place!
* Only 45% of U.S. GDP (Gross Domestic Product) was represented by salaries and wages. Since such record-keeping had begun in 1929 at the height of the Great Depression, that percentage had NEVER reached such a low point! Many experts agreed that if the trend continued downward, it would lead to an economic meltdown that would make October, 1929 look like an ice cream social. Millions of individuals heavily invested in the stock market would find themselves broke. Banks would collapse. An estimated 60% of Americans would find themselves unemployed.
* In 2007, more than 2 million mortgage holders were faced with readjusted interest rates on their adjustable mortgages. Because it increased their monthly mortgage payments by an average of 25%, a record number of foreclosures resulted. In 2008, experts predicted even more foreclosures would completely devastate the lucrative U.S. housing market.
* More than 160 members of the U.S. State Department's staff were required to speak fluent Arabic as part of their jobs. In 2007, only 64 of those employees actually spoke fluent Arabic!
* More than five-and-a-half billion dollars' worth of total expenditures were artificially transferred from the federal government's fiscal year 2006 to fiscal year 2007. O.U.T.R.A.G.E. analysts predicted that the shift from fiscal year 2007 to fiscal year 2008 would approach $7.5 billion, had the Bush administration not been decimated.
* Even with the billions of dollars the Bush administration spent on keeping illegal aliens out of the country, more than 50% of "illegal immigrants" still overstayed their legal visas!
* And, still: even though America represented only 5% of the world's population, Americans squandered more than 55% of the world's natural resources. "Waste not, want not" was a motto for the rest of the world; Americans seemed to believe in their own theory of "want it all, waste it all".

Clearly, the United States of America was on a path of gluttonous self-destruction, not unlike the greedy Greek and rapacious Romans had followed, much to their historical demise. Getting millions of Americans to recognize their fate was like trying to keep an alcoholic from drinking by holding AA meetings in a bar. Persuading millions of Americans to lessen their glutted lifestyles was like holding Weight Watchers' meetings in a chocolate store. O.U.T.R.A.G.E. had its work cut out for it. There needed to be a "mental modification" of the American consumer's mindset. People not only had to learn to live on less; they would have to learn to LIKE living on less. O.U.T.R.A.G.E. had a goal of cutting government functions by as much as 90%; it was like asking a 390-lb. man to lose 350 pounds.

The Patrick-Patrick team had its hands full. Not only were they now responsible for orchestrating veterans' parades in dozens of American cities, they were still charged with continuing their quest to build support for Article XX: the legalization of drugs. Patrick Hamilton and his other half, Cher Thomas, were plotting their new itinerary when Lynn Patrick walked in to bring up a new 'twist'. "I'm getting a lot of flack from O.U.T.R.A.G.E. cells in the field," she announced. "Our efforts are being undermined by smokers who basically are saying, 'Why are you trying to legalize drugs when so many municipalties are trying to outlaw cigarette smoking?'
She had a point, Hamilton surmised. The state of California had been under an all-out smoking ban for several years now. If you wanted to smoke in your own car, you had to roll up all the windows. Most public places were legally obligated to ban smoking. In fact, you couldn't even smoke outside except in designated areas. City governments around the country had tried to tackle the problem with a mish-mash of no-smoking rules in their own communities. One Indiana city had wrestled through years of conflict between smokers and non-smokers. The local legislators had first required restaurants and other public facilities to provide separate smoking areas, a law that had cost small restaurant owners huge amounts of money because they had to remodel their establishments to conform to the law. Less than a year later, the same legislators decided to ban smoking all together in restaurants, bowling alleys, and other places where those under the age of 21 were allowed to frequent. Now these same restaurant owners who spent thousands of dollars to build separate smoking rooms for their customers were told those smoking rooms were now illegal! The law threatened to bankrupt many small businesses. What was even more astonishing was the vapidity of the law: legislators provided that some small communities within the county could "opt out"! It was kind of like saying, 'Do not pass go; do not collect $200; go directly to jail.....unless, of course, the town in which you live says otherwise." What made the law even more insipid was that the two legislators who admantly supported the bill were both physicians, who claimed they viewed this as a public health issue. "The consequences of breathing second hand smoke are far worse than we originally thought," said one of the doctors. "That's why we had to pass this law - to protect the health of our citizenry."
Anyone with half-a-brain knew it was political bullshit.
The law could be applied in a discriminating manner. If a restaurant owner in one small town wielded any influence, he was able to persuade his local lawmakers to "opt out" - the hell with protecting the public's health. If a smoker were to "light up" both the smoker and the restaurant owner faced $500 fines - an excellent way to enrich the public coffers with the money of (pardon the pun) public coughers.
Of course, the biggest argument was the simplest argument: if local legislators really wanted to protect the public from the health dangers from cigarettes, wouldn't it be easier to simply ban the manufacture and sale of tobacco products?? Politicians carefully overstepped that sticky wicket; after all, cigarette sales already generated huge amounts of tax dollars, even at local and state levels. Not to mention, that banning the sale of cigarettes might be in violation of federal laws that protected cigarette manufacturers and allowed them to continue making and marketing their cancer sticks.
If the Patrick-Patrick team wanted to legalize drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin, then surely it must also become an advocate for the legalization of smoking cigarettes, which - after all - took far longer to destroy a person's health. The stage was being set: the Patrick-Patrick team could soon find itself on a collision-course with "big tobacco".
Even though the national headquarters of most large tobacco manufacturers had been destroyed, and most tobacco CEOs were now dead as a result of O.U.T.R.A.G.E. bombings, the industry still commanded a huge presence in the United States.
Tobacco retailers and wholesalers, vending machine operators, and countless bars or restaurants that sold cigarettes stood to lose millions of dollars if the sale of cigarettes was banned. On the other hand, those cigarette sellers faced much more profitable futures if the Patrick-Patrick team were to support the legalization of cigarette smoking as a basic "right" for all Americans. This was a matter of free choice, as much as smoking marijuana would be if Article XX became part of the law of the land.
This also became a matter of states' rights. If O.U.T.R.A.G.E. was intent on eliminating 90% of the federal government, and returning power to the states and/or local municipalities, how could it even consider telling those states they couldn't ban smoking in public places? For that matter, what business was it of theirs to tell states they couldn't make drugs illegal? The quandry wasn't easily resolved. All O.U.T.R.A.G.E. and the Patrick-Patrick team could do was make cigarette smoking and drug use legal as far as the federal government was concerned. If individual states didn't want to decriminalize such activity, the federal government shouldn't interfere. The crux of the matter was that by making it legal at the federal level, it saved the federal government from having to enforce such laws, try such offenders, and incarcerate those found guilty. Legalizing drugs was one way of cutting the federal law enforcement budget by billions of dollars. If individual states wanted to go to that expense, it would still be up to each states' citizenry.
Legalization of drugs (or cigarettes, or alcohol) was an intensely emotional issue, just like abortion, right-to-die, flag burning and gay marriage were all emotional issues. Politicians had used these issues to rouse voters' rage in every election since the days of Richard Nixon. It kept voters distracted from the real issues such as a corrupt two-party political system; the banal influence of the rich and powerful in American government; the indifference of a bloated and incorrigible Congress; the untrustworthiness of the federal government; and the incompetence of a national bureaucracy that was out of control.
O.U.T.R.A.G.E. was sure to face heavy "lobbying" on this issue. While lobbying for or against an issue was certainly the right of any American, O.U.T.R.A.G.E. had to be particularly careful that no money influenced this political decision. It was one thing to answer a survey and saying, "Yes, I support the legalization of cigarette smoking" or "No, I don't support the legalization of cigarette smoking". It was something different to contribute money to influence the cause.
This issue was about to become one of the most explosive issues facing the nation's reformation. Patrick Hamilton retreated to the private bedroom he and Cher shared in their motorhome and lit up a doobey. He washed it down with a six-pack of Bud, contemplating what would be the best way to engineer an appropriate strategy for this upcoming conflict. As his team traveled around the country, the burning ash at the end of his Marlboro was sure to become a very heated issue.

Throughout its 232-year history, the United States has been a fickle, capricious country.
As senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, author Max Boot once wrote, "We have been betraying friends since our first overseas conflict, against the Barbary priates who captured ships off the African coast and enslaved their crews. To defeat the pasha of Tripoli, the U.S. made common cause with his brother, Hamet Karamanli. In 1804, American envoy William Eaton led a motley force of mercenaries and Marines across North Africa to install Karamanli on the throne. The offensive was called off prematurely when President Jefferson's envoy reached a deal with the pasha to free his American captives in return for [the princely sum of] $60,000. Karamanli was evacuated to the U.S., but his family members were left as hostages. Eaton raged, 'Our too credulous ally is sacrificed to a policy, at the recollection of which, honor recoils, and humanity bleeds.'
We should not sacrifice another 'too credulous ally' on the altar of a dishonorable and inhumane policy."
As the twenty-first century approached the close of its first decade, calls for a re-examination of the U.S.A.'s foreign policy were being heard from all corners of the political and intellectual spectrums. America had, for far too long, intervened in conflicts that were none of our concern, only to retreat when circumstances changed that might affect U.S. interests. Beating its chest after World War I, the United States championed "national self-determination" at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, yet ngelected Czehoslovakia and Poland when the Nazis arbitrarily occupied those countries shortly afterwards. Following Woodrow Wilson's lead of non-activity, the U.S. repeated itself after World War II. While publicly encouraging countries behind the Iron Curtain to seek their independence, the U.S. stood by idly as East Germans rose up against their oppressors in 1953. When Hungarians battled the Communists in 1956, it was dramatically televised by the American media, but the U.S. government did nothing. President Kennedy let Cuban rebels die or be taken captive instead of providing air cover for the anti-communist forces battling an aggressive Cuban army. When the Czechs revolted in 1968, the U.S. watched silently as the rebels were easily crushed. About that same time, the U.S. tried to stop a communist takeover in Vietnam, but tired of the games and left South Vietnam to its own devices years later, after 57,000 U.S. soldiers died. In 1953, the U.S. government helped install the Shah of Iran, only to abandon him in 1979. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush encouraged Iraqi citizens to "take matters into their own hands" and overthrow Saddam Hussein. Yet Bush ignored Hussein's heinous genocide as Saddam's gang of ruffians quickly stifled the uprisings.
It was no wonder most Iraqis were more willing to fight for the milita and insurgents than for a puppet government backed by the whimsical, unpredictable United States of America. Iraqis knew what the U.S. government wanted. And, it finally 'elected' a couple of stumblebum oilmen capable of engineering a 'war' that would bring all that easily-accessible 'black gold' to America's shores.
Gross mismanagement of war, and mercurial mind changes, helped portrait America as a country that couldn't be trusted to stand by its allies. The 'smart money' among Iraqis was that they were simply pawns in an American game that self-righteously called for bringing democracy and stability to the country. As soon as all of Iraq's oil was drained away, America would abandon Iraq and leave the civil war rebels drifting toward yet another dictatorial regime. As in Vietnam and Desert Storm, billions of dollars in demolished tanks, Jeeps, military equipment, and facilities would be left behind to slowly rust away. Americans were well known for not cleaning up after their military messes. They simply deserted their 'friends' and went on to another conflict that could reap fresh profits for the giant U.S. military-industrial complex.
O.U.T.R.A.G.E. was intent on repairing such hypocritical hyperbole. Interim Vice-President John McCain addressed this vital issue on a nationally-televised speech on Monday, June 23, 2008. "It's time for all of our friends and allies around the world to know that America can be trusted unconditionally," he stated. "Our erratic behavior is regretable, and unacceptable. The United States must become a staunch and steadfast friend if we are to be trusted throughout the world. I urge all potential political parties to give this serious thought as part of their political platform. Our foreign policy has all-too-often been self-centered, as we have looked out for the interests of America instead of the interests of the Earth." McCain's call for foreign policy reform was an issue that had not been addressed in any of the twenty-five resolutions introduced last January and February. The United States of America, now itself destroyed by bombs, earthquakes and hurricanes, needed to acquiesce to a new world order: one that would not allow for America to continue to bully its way around the world. America had to learn how to "play nice" and share its wealth with the rest of mankind.
War-mongers like President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were dead and gone. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and current Secretary of Defense Bob Gates had been killed. War-profiteers from companies such as Halliburton, Bechtold, McDonnel-Douglas, Lockheed, Sirkorsky, and countless others had all been annihilated. Bankers, lawyers, squanderous celebrities and athletes, media moguls, entertainment ghouls, peddlers of vulgarity, wealthy elitists, government bureaucrats, politicians, and all others whose existence served no community purpose in America, were dead. All the people on the top rung of the ladders to success, wealth, power and status were now extinct. There was no better time than now for the U.S.A. to revitalize its image as a world leader and global peacekeeper. Not only was it an appropriate time to do so, it was absolutely necessary if the U.S. didn't want to become a third-world, third-rate, third-class country.

I try not to be biased or discriminatory, but I had my doubts about hiring Stevie. His placement counselor assured me that he would be a good, reliable busboy. But I had never had a mentally-handicapped employee, and wasn't sure how my customers would react to Stevie. He was short, a little dumpy with the smooth facial features and thick-tongued speech of those with Downs Syndrome. I wasn't worred about my trucker customers; truckers don't care who buses a table as long as the meatloaf platter is good and the pies are homemade.
The four-wheeler drivers were the ones who concerned me: the mouthy college kids traveling to school; the yuppie snobs who secretly polish the silverware with their napkins for fear of catching some dreaded "truck stop germs"; the pairs of white-shirted businessmen on expense accounts who think every truck stop waitress wants to be flirted with. I knew these people might be uncomfortable around Stevie, so I closely watched him for the first few weeks.
I shouldn't have worried. After the first week, Stevie had my staff wrapped around his stubby little finger, and within a month my truck-driving regulars had adopted him as their official truck stop mascot. After that, I really didn't care what my other customers thought of Stevie. He was a 21-year-old in blue jeans and sneakers, eager to laugh and eager to please, but fiercely attentive to his duties. Every salt and pepper shaker was precisely in place, not a bread crumb was visible after Stevie got done cleaning a table. Our biggest problem was persuading him to wait until after the customers were finished before cleaning up. He'd hover in the background, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, scanning the dining room until he found an empty table. Then he'd scurry over and carefully remove the dishes and glasses, then meticulously wipe the table up with a practiced flourish of his wet rag.
We had learned that he lived with this mother, a widow disabled from repeated cancer surgeries. They survived meagerly on Social Security benefits in public housing just two miles from my restaurant. Money was tight, and what I paid him was probably the difference between them living together or Stevie being sent to a group home. That's why the truck stop was a gloomy place last August, the first morning in three years that Stevie missed work. He was at the Mayo Clinic getting a new valve put in his heart. His social worked explained that people with Downs Syndrome often have heart problems, so this was not unexpected. There was a good chance he'd come through the surgery in good shapre, and would be back to work in a few months. A ripple of relief ran though the staff later that morning when word came that the surgery went well, and Stevie was doing fine. Frannie, my head waitress, let out a war whoop and did a little dance in the aisle. When Beller Ringer, one of our regulars, asked, "What's that all about, Frannie?", she told him, and the two truckers sitting with him, the good news. "But I don't know how he and his mom are going to handle the bills. They're barely getting by as it is."
I hadn't had time to round up a substitute bus boy, and the girls really didn't want me to replace Stevie, so they resorted to cleaning up their own tables while Stevie was out. Frannie didn't get around to cleaning Belle's table until after he'd left and Pony Pete and Tony Tipper sat at the still-dirty table. "When I got back to clean their table," Frannie told me, "I found this napkin folded uner a coffee cup." She handed the napkin to me and three $20 bills fell out. On the outside, printed in big bold letters was, "Something for Stevie". Frannie continued: "Pony Pete and Tony Tipper asked me what that was all about, so I told them. They ended up giving me this." Two folded napkins with "Something for Stevie" scrawled on the outside revealed two crisp fifty-dollar bills. Frannie looked at me with wet, shiny eyes, and said simply, "Truckers".
That was three months ago. On Thanksgiving Day Stevie came back to work. He'd called ten times to remind me that he was returning to work, fearful that I'd forgotten about him in the three months he'd been gone. I asked his mom to bring him to work that day, then invited them to celebrate Stevie's first day back. He was thinner and a little pale, but he pushed his way through the door and headed for the back room where his apron and bus cart stood waiting for him. "Hold on there," I said, "not so fast, Stevie. Work can wait for a few minutes. To celebrate your returning to work, I want to treat you and your mom to breakfast." I led them to a large corner booth at the back of the room. I could feel the rest of the staff behind us as we marched through the main dining room. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw booth after booth of grinning truckers empty out to join the procession. The big table was covered with coffee cups, plates and saucers, all sitting slightly crooked on dozens of folded napkins. "First thing you have to do, Stevie, is clean up this mess," I said, trying to sound very stern.
He looked at me and then at his mom, then pulled out one of the napkins. It had "Something for Stevie" scrawled on the outside, and as Stevie picked it up, two $10 bills fell out. Stevie stared at the money, then at all the napkins peeking from beneath the tableware, each with his name printed on it. I turned to his mother and announced, "There's more than $10,000 is cash and checks on that table, all from truckers and trucking companies who heard about your problems. Happy Thanksgiving."
Well, it got real noisy about that time, with everybody hollering and shouting - and shedding a few tears as well. But you know what's funny? As everyone else was busy shaking hands and hugging each other, Stevie was busy clearning all the cups and dishes away from the table. That big smile on his face told me how grateful he was for the friends he'd made here, and how much he valued his job. Best worker I ever had.

Stories like these can bring tears to even the most calloused people. And yet it's stories like these that makes one wonder why America has gone so askew. It's stories like these that recognize the true spirit of America.

Most of America's corrupt, arrogant politicians were now dead. Greedy chief executive officers had been killed. Professional athletes and big-time celebrities who squandered their good fortune on themselves hadn't survived the O.U.T.R.A.G.E. bombings. Wealthy elitists, evil bureaucrats, selfish 'self-made millionaires' and most people in positions of useless power or status had been 'exterminated'. The tens of millions of selfless, considerate, giving, loving, caring citizens could now make a fresh start and bring America back to its roots. Compassion could replace grandiosity. Goodness could replace evil. For the first time in decades, power could be returned to the poor, the weak, the underprivileged, the disadvantaged, the homeless, the hungry, the disabled, and the 'common' people of the great United States of America. People like Stevie......

Jil, Dana, and Lynn sat in the run-down bar at the run-down Motel 6 in Bullhead City, Arizona. They'd been up all night gambling and carousing in Laughlin, Nevada, and now had to prepare to "take their show on the road". Jil's frustrations were mounting because the "National Parade of Honor" she had organized so meticulously was coming apart at the seams. Because of its phenomenal success, everybody wanted the parade to stop in their town. The original plan called for visiting 111 towns and cities in 40 days between Memorial Day (Monday, May 26, 2008) and Independence Day (Friday, July 4, 2008).
That in itself was a grueling schedule of almost three cities per day. But calls were coming in from American Legion and VFW posts all over the country. The parade had sparked a national renewal in patriotism and thanksgiving to our veterans.
Lynn, ever the tactful diplomat, barked, "What the hell do they expect us to do? Clone ourselves?"
"Eureka!" Jil exclaimed (had she ever uttered the word 'Eureka' before in her life?). With typical business aplomb, the beautiful blue-eyed blond had an instant idea: "why not split us up?" As Lynn and Dana held their heads and tried to pretend they were actually conscious, Jil outlined her plan on a bar napkin. "We've got a whole fleet of motorhomes, a contingency of people, and hangers-on that all want to be part of this parade," she explained. "Let's break 'em up into smaller groups and send them all over the country. I'll be we could cover six or eight cities a day - or more!"
In an effort to subdue Jil's contagious enthusiasm, Dana pointed out that two of the motorhomes were still sitting on Casino Drive in Laughlin. "One's got some sort of a tire problem," said Dana, "and the other's sitting in front of the Golden Nugget with a transmission leak." Nothing deterred Jil as she unfolded the napkin and kept scribbling. "We could send Bob and Cher east," she proposed, "while Patrick and Cher head up north. Ron could take a group to the deep south. Phil and Janie could cover the Midwest. The three of us could run up and down the west coast and still end up in L.A. on July 4th as we originally planned!" Jil was excited; Dana and Lynn were groggy. Cell phone calls to the rest of the AROB Group quickly brought grumblings and moans. Bob Ryan summed it up best when he said, "What the hell's up with you? The rest of us are practically passed out cold; how can you be so bubbly at 5:45 in the morning?" The parade had rumbled through Bullhead City Friday afternoon, and the sun was just beginning to rise over the mountain range that cramped Bullhead City and Laughlin like a size 38 belt around a size 42 waist. The parade wasn't scheduled to be in Jacob Lake, Arizona until 3:00 p.m. Saturday. Like most of the others, Bob was looking forward to a relaxing repose before getting back on the road. Instead, Jil was calling for a "meeting" at 7:00 a.m.! "How the hell did you end up in a Motel 6 anyway?" asked Bob. Jil was reluctant to provide details, but mumbled something about how she, Lynn and Dana met an Elvis impersonator who also did Chippendale improvisations at the Frontier casino; he'd promised them a 'private' performance if they'd drive him back to his room.
The soppy gang of revelers stumbled into a hastily-rented conference room at Harrah's in Laughlin. Jil outlined her plans; most of the parade leaders quickly agreed in hopes of getting back to their rooms for a few hours' sleep before leaving for Jacob Lake. "It's amazing what you'll agree to in an alcoholic haze," said Ron. A team of coordinators was assembled to begin making phone calls and arranging for the "National Parade of Honor" to spread its wings across America.
It was a tribute to our veterans, and Jil believed this was important. Who could argue with her? Those who tried only found themselves on the receiving end of those sapphire blue eyes turning into stone cold pale blue icebergs of determination.
By noon, the new multiple tours were pretty much arranged. As Phil and Janie Baker guided their motorhome onto the bridge crossing the Colorado River, Phil grunted and said, "Well, here we go again!" He discharged a fart that filled the motorhome with noxious fumes, much to the displeasure of the other passengers. Tentatively, it looked like the 'National Parade of Honor' would now visit closer to two hundred towns before July 4th.

There was this tiny little girl sitting all by herslef in the park. Everyone passed her by, and no one bothered to stop to see why she looked so sad, or why she was alone. Dressed only in a very worn, tattered, faded pink dress, barefoot and dirty, the little girl just sat and watched all the busy people pass her by.
She never tried to speak. She never said a word. As she quietly sat on the park bench, passers-by simply walked on, too busy with their own lives to care about this pitiful, lonely waif.
The next day I decided to return to the park to see if the little girl was still there. To my surprise, she remained in the very same spot, and still with those huge, mournful eyes staring into space as no one paid scant attention to her. I decided I would intervene today; after all, someone should be concerned about such a small child alone in a public park full of strangers. As I approached, I could see the back of the little girl's filthy pink dress. It was grotesquely shaped. Perhaps that was why people ignored her, I thought. Those with deformities (or flaws, or shortcomings, or poverty, or retardation, or disabilities, or other 'differences') in our society are often neglected or avoided. God forbid we would make a step toward assisting anyone who was "different" than us. As I got closer, the little girl lowered her eyes in shame; I could see the shape of her back more clearly now. She was oddly shaped in a humped-over form. I smiled to let know it was okay, hoping she wouldn't be afraid. I sat down beside her, and said, "Hello."
The little girl acted shocked, and stammered, "Hi" in a voice hardly audible. Afer a long stare, she smiled shyly and I returned a soft smile. We talked until darkness fell, and the park emptied. I asked, "Why are you so sad?" Quietly, she replied, "Because I'm different."
Immediately, I said, "That you are! In fact, you remind me of an angel...sweet and innocent." She looked into my eyes, then slowly got to her feet and said, "Really?" Her smile broadened as I continued, "Yes, you're like a little guardian angel sent to watch over all these people that walk by everyday," I announced. She nodded in modest agreement, and smiled again. With that, she opened the back of her dirty pink dress and - to my complete awe - the ugly "hump" on her back became beautiful white angel wings. She spread her wings and said, "I am!" I was speechless - certain I was hallucinating! "I am your guardian angel," she said with a sparkle in her eyes. "For once you thought of someone other than yourself. My job here is done!"
Awestruck and still in a state of wonderment, I asked, "But why wouldn't anyone stop to help an angel?" She smiled at me, and replied, "You're the only one that could see me." And then she was gone, disappeared into the atmosphere. With that, my life changed dramatically, and I realized that I was put here on Earth for a purpose. Not to serve one's self, but to be of service to others.
Some might call this a Christmas story; others might call it a fantasy. But it's a story that's been passed down through the ages in all kinds of cultures and in many societies. It's strange how all human beings like to talk about their goodness, and want so very much to be "good" people...but somehow rudiments of power, prestige, and personal wealth become the standards by which we live our lives...and the basis of our very being on this Earth becomes lost.
Even organized religion had become mired in the muck of "bigness". It wasn't enough for residents of a small rural town to worship in their tiny one-room white chapel. They had to be part of an ecclesiastical body, an eccumenical council, a synod, or a larger organization. There wasn't room for little girls in faded pink dresses, even in the rectory of "the church".
"The larger any organization, corporation, or government gets, the less manageable it becomes, and the fewer people benefit from it."
O.U.T.R.A.G.E. had destroyed the 'big" monoliths that man had built in worship of his own egoism. Hopefully, as the nation reformed itself, "big" would be measured by the magnanimity of the man instead of the pomposity of his power. Perhaps our society would start taking more notice of little girls in tattered pink dresses.

On Thursday, June 19, 2008, the O.U.T.R.A.G.E. headquarters in St. Kitts was batttered by torrential rainstorms that created minor power outages during the day, and into the evening. Television broadcasts that had been continous - 24 hours a day, seven days a week - were now sometimes disrupted to some regions of the U.S.A. Teleconferencing capabilities were also limited, which meant that O.U.T.R.A.G.E. 'cells' in some parts of the country were unable to communicate with St. Kitts.
News of the tornadoes that struck southwestern Missouri was all but lost as downed power lines and satellite facilities were incapable of connecting with each other. O.U.T.R.A.G.E. committess continued their work, both in the field and at the St. Kitts headquarters, as planes shuttled prospective political candidates on and off the island. Special six-or-eight-member panels had been established within each committee for research and evaluation before any candidate was sanctioned; O.U.T.R.A.G.E. wanted to ensure that all candidates running in the November 4 elections would adhere to its platform prior to receiving any official endorsement or support from the O.U.T.R.A.G.E. organization.
Many new political parties and their candidates were being 'merged' with parties and candidates of similar persuasions. Some new parties were arbitrarily rejected as unsuitable, such as the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) which promoted sexual activity between adult men and young boys; arguing that NAMBLA's interests were completely legitimate and above-board, the organization was visibly angered when its charter was rejected, and O.U.T.R.A.G.E. refused to give its endorsement or financial support. NAMBLA threatened to proceed with the formation of its own political party (which, or course, it had every right to do - and which O.U.T.R.A.G.E. could not prevent). The Children's Party vehemently protested the action, but there was nothing O.U.T.R.A.G.E. could do. "This is still a free country," explained one O.U.T.R.A.G.E. political advisor, "and any citizen is free to pursue his or her own idealisms, regardless of how offensive the majority may find it to be. Just five months ago, most Americans believed O.U.T.R.A.G.E. to be a sinister organization, and was highly critical of the 'Rebellion of '08'.
Other new political parties that O.U.T.R.A.G.E. refused to support included the KluKluxKlan Party, which was intent on returning America to the days of racial segregation; the American Nazi Party, which advocated a 'final solution' for all those 'undesireables', including Jews, gypsies, "half-breeds", and the mentally retarded; and an outrageous "Death to Deadbeats Party" which wanted to put all American citizens who earned less than $12,000 a year on "poverty reservations" where they would not "interfere with the productivity of more ambitious American citizens". There was a political party with overtones from the days of the Communist U.S.S.R., which believed in total government control over its citizenry. A Modern Feminist Party put up its all-female slate of candidates and declared its mission to be the "total rule over a country that has been destroyed by centuries of male dominance". Some of these off-the-wall organizations were rumored to be plotting a legal challenge against O.U.T.R.A.G.E. in order to get the recognition and financial support necessary from what seemed to be the well-financed, well-structured, and well-respected revolutionary organization. O.U.T.R.A.G.E. pointed to its bevy of literature that specifically stated it was not a political party, but only an organization dedicated to the preservation and protection of the commonwealth. Its mission had been, from the very beginning, to eliminate those groups, corporations, lobbyists, and individuals whose 'special interests' were all - and only - about themselves. An O.U.T.R.A.G.E. spokesman said it best on a segment which only was able to be televised to about two-thirds of the American audience (because of the power outages):
"We believe that all men are created equal...and that - while a man has a right to pursue his own ambitions, wealth, and status within our society - he also has an obligation to not abuse his power, privilege or profit to the disadvantage of others.
Our intent is pure and untethered, even though some might perceive it as simplistic in its naivete. Everyone should be allowed to pursue their own endeavors, but everyone must also consider it his moral and social responsibility to share his good fortune with those less fortunate." The spokesman then cited examples: the WalMart family billionaires who paid slave wages to their Chinese employees; the professional athlete who used his million-dollar salary for drugs and prostitutes; the members of Congress who believed themselves to be some kind of royalty, above and beyond the laws they expected others to obey; and the bawdy celebrity movie star whose personal vulgar conduct influenced his fans to follow in his footsteps.
Elections were less than five months away, and O.U.T.R.A.G.E. still had not put a cohesive collection of viable political parties together. This was getting to be complicated....

Atlantic Monthly magazine published its list of the top 100 most influential people in the history of the United States in late, 2006. Among those that made the cut were many of the country's founding fathers such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Abraham Lincoln was rated the most influential person in American history, topping a list which - as could be expected - generated controversy and disagreement. Among notables from recent memory were Martin Luther King, Jr.; Bill Gates; Warren Buffet; and Ralph Nader. Curiously absent from the list were popular contemporary icons who had contributed little to the strength and fiber of the nation, but who - instead - chose to squander their power, wealth and influence on trivial pursuits of the flesh and raw, undaunted materialism. Elvis Presley made the list, even though he had, indeed, pissed away a fortune during his short life span. Perhaps the magazine's committee that compiled the list saw Presley's contribution as the changes his music influenced in America's culture. One of the magazne's chief editors profoundly stated, "It seems that when we die, we all want to be remembered for our philanthropy. Why is it, then, that as we live, we mostly pursue only our own philandering?"
In the days of Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt there was a culture that revolved around God, country, and family. By the time the world entered the twenty-first century, the American culture had been reduced to revolving around an amoral indifference to morality, a lack of true patriotism, and a complete disregard for family values. As much as politicians tooted different horns of eloquence on how we needed to return to deeper human values, the truth was the good ol' U.S.A. was spiraling downward into an abyss of indirection and improbity. Shamelessly bold vulgarity, impudent acts of sensationalism, and querulous personal conduct was the norm; 'common' citizens were influenced by what they watched on television, read in the newspapers and gossip magazines, and saw at the movies. If Tom Cruise could have a child out of wedlock, then so could John Doe. If Britney Spears could appear nude on a magazine cover, then why shouldn't all the plain Janes of the world follow suit? If Mark Foley and Catholic priests could seduce little boys, what was wrong with the average, everyday pedophile doing the same thing? If Andrew Dice Clay could say all those dirty words on TV, why shouldn't the entire country be 'okay' with hearing the "f"-word in routine daily conversation? If O.J. Simpson could get away with murder, why couldn't the guy next door kill his bitch of a wife?
This was the cultural downslide O.U.T.R.A.G.E. wanted to curtail. Such pedantic, quodlibetic excessiveness of personal irresponsibility, avarice, corruption and sheer disregard for humanity had to be slowed. That's why they delivered small home made bombs to homes and offices of government agencies, infamous celebrities, wealthy elitists, and squanderous infidels who held such noxious influence over the 'common' American citizen. It wasn't intended to bring America back to a Puritan state; but the gross excesses that were eating away at the very foundation of the nation had to be subdued before society turned into a contemporary version of the raucous Roman empire whose depraved reprobation eventually destroyed its civilization.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008 started off as a beautiful spring day throughout most of the United States. Then an unprecedented string of late-season tornadoes struck the southwestern corner of Missouri, leaving three dead and massive property damage. It was beginning to become almost commonplace: as volunteers finished their search-and-rescue missions in one area, they moved on to another. Granted, the major areas of destruction were along the east and west coasts, and those major metropolitan areas were still - exactly five months after the O.U.T.R.A.G.E. bombings - in turbid times as they tried to recover from multiple disasters.
Branson, Missouri - one of America's newest "hot spots" for gaudy entertainment - had not been affected by the bombings, the west coast earthquake, or the east coast hurricane. O.U.T.R.A.G.E. had bombed a few of the luxury condos and seasonal homes occupied by some of the country's most decadent performers, but - other than that - the city remained pretty much as it had been. Now, a violent tornado had ripped through the town, unplugging most of the glitzy city lights. By nightfall on Tuesday, not many of the nightspots were still standing. Country-and-western stars were seen helping to pull victims from mountains of rubble that used to be upscale hotels. Singer George Jones was rescued from his hotel suite by a group of devoted fans who heard his raspy cries for help underneath a pile of wreckage; other than some minor bruises, he had survived unscathed. In a gesture of unusual proportion, he pledged $500,000 to help with the local rescue efforts, publicly thanking those who saved his life. This, too, was becoming commonplace: as Americans suffered together, they also finally were learning to work together, live together, and share their pain, their fortunes, and their humanity. Regardless of their skin color, creed, net worth, political belief, or sexual persuasion, Americans were becoming a team again - just as they had during the days of a team of conestoga wagons crossing the great barren frontier. Gradually, "All for One...ME" was being replaced with "All for One...US".
St. Kitts was abuzz with new information about the tornado-stricken area. O.U.T.R.A.G.E. dispatched volunteers to help the local O.U.T.R.A.G.E. 'cell' cope with coordinating relief efforts. The American Red Cross was there, but had little impact since it, too, had seen its national organizational structure collapse. O.U.T.R.A.G.E. had targeted this venerable charity organization because of its dismal corporate mentality. Humongous executive salaries, over the past few decades, had eaten away at the once-humongous capital reserves the Red Cross had for national disasters. Now, most Red Cross units were operating as independent, local charities, relying on independent, local contributions in cash and human resources. The O.U.T.R.A.G.E. television broadcasts were replaced from time to time with breaking news about the tornado damage. Aid was pouring in from all over the country, and from around the world.
The 'National Parade of Honor' had been scheduled to be at the George Washington Carver National Monument near Neosho, Missouri at the end of June, but - considering there wasn't much left of the small community - the VFW there requested that it be excluded from the parade tour.
Exciting things were coming together across America. People used to living in 2800-sq. ft. single-dwelling houses were now sharing tents with multiple families. Television snippets from all corners of the country vaguely resembled what most U.S. citizens were only used to seeing on news broadcasts from Iraq or Iran, or other war-torn regions of the world. While many Americans had this preconceived notion that such turbulence could never come to the good old U.S.A., they now found it necessary to open their eyes to the stark reality: it, indeed, could - and had - happened on American soil. A donation of blankets and shawls from the "Crescent" - a middle east version of the Red Cross - arrived in Branson via Federal Express overnight. The huge package had come from the Crescent headquarters in Baghdad, Iraq.
So, there apparently were some Iraqis that didn't hate Americans enough to ignore them in their time of tumult. If these 'common people' could show compassion for unknown victims eight thousand miles away, why couldn't the leaders of all the warring factions learn to show comparable munificence?

"Terrorism" was a word that got thrown around a lot in the Bush administration. Every disjointed, mangled speech George W. Bush ever made invoked the constant threat of "terrorists". Yet, no one seemed to recognize that of the five most loathsome terrorists of the past seventy years, only one had ever been brought to justice for his heinous crimes. The 'tally sheet' was clear:
Joseph Stalin reportedly killed 10,000,000 of his countrymen.
Adolph Hitler reportedly killed 6,000,000 Jews, gypsies, and other 'undesireables'.
Idi Amin reportedly murdered 2,000,000 people in Uganda during his brief reign of terror.
George W. Bush had killed over 750,000 Iraqis, Iranians, and American soldiers during his 8 years as U.S. President.
Saddam Hussein was convicted of killing 148 people in a small Iraqi village, and was sentenced to death.

These five "terrorists" had collectively been responsible for the deaths of at least 18,750,148 people.

Yet, Stalin died in his sleep. Hitler chose to commit suicide. Amin fled his country and lived out the rest of his life in exile. Bush was finally assassinated by the O.U.T.R.A.G.E. revolution. And only Hussein was tried in a court of law for crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to death by hanging. Oh, to be sure, everyone "knew" he'd killed more than 148 people, but his trial was nothing more than a sham, engineered by the Bush administration to "get even" with Saddam for humilating George H.W. Bush during Desert Storm. Bush (Sr.) had always been highly criticized for "not finishing the job" and ousting Hussein back in the early 1990's. George W. Bush went to war with Iraq for three primary reasons: 1) His family had a personal vendetta against Hussein ever since the days of Desert Storm, and this was their way of 'settling the score'; 2) the giant U.S. military-industrial complex hadn't had a good 'war' for almost fifteen years, and it needed to boost its sagging profits; 3) Dick Cheney and his buddies at Exxon-Mobil wanted all of Iraq's OIL so that they could get richer and richer and richer as they continued to feed American motorists' dependency on foreign OIL. As long as Americans continued to drive $60,000 gas-guzzling SUVs, the blood of 735,000 Iraqi citizens and 15,000 U.S. soldiers was on their hands. George W. Bush was the 'trigger man' - the "Commander-In-Chief", who made it happen. But few Americans were willing to give up their precious fancy cars just to stop the killings.
On Monday, June 16, 2008, a plant manager at a General Motors truck assembly plant in Fort Wayne, Indiana made a startling announcement. Since there was no longer a General Motors executive hierarchy to over ride her decision, she had ordered that all Chevrolet and GMC trucks being built in her plant would now be equipped with a small device which would enable the vehicles to easily double - or even triple - their gas mileage! The device was easily manufactured and attached to the trucks at very little additional cost (perhaps $2.00). A group of engineers from the now-defunct Tokheim Corporation (a Fort Wayne-based gasoline pump manufactuer that had went bankrupt in the late 1990's) had developed the device, and brought it to their local GM plant manager. She was so impressed, she took it to her superiors in Detroit. They were so impressed, they ordered her not to pursue it any further. Resembling a ballpoint pen, the device could also enhance fuel economy of those vehicles powered by Ethanol-85, used cooking oil, or other alternative fuels. Economical performance was not the only featured benefit of this invention: it also helped keep the engine block cleaner, and assisted in maintaining almost all the major parts of a vehicle's engine so that those engines would last much longer! The engineers were confident this tiny, easy-to-install, simple device could double - or triple - the life of an automobile engine, perhaps by as much as 300,000 miles or more! General Motors executives, obviously, didn't want to hear that. Why in the world would they want a engine to last so long? That would mean drivers might keep their cars for ten, fifteen, or twenty years before buying another one! That could impede profits, and GM was too short-sighted to recognize that this simple little addition to the products could help them stop the erosion of their U.S. market share, which had brought GM perilously close to bankruptcy. It had even created an "alliance" with Nissan to try and fend off such impending doom....but even that merger of the minds hadn't helped General Motors' fortunes all that much. "I don't have anyone to answer to anymore," said the Indiana plant manager, "so I'm going ahead with this on my own. I believe it will add value to our vehicles, and will be of benefit to our customers."
She has placed an initial order with the laid-off Tokheim engineers for 100,000 pieces. They would be added to GM trucks as soon as the order was fulfilled.
She admitted that this would, of course, cut into oil companies' profits as well. If people bought less gasoline, demand would diminish, and oil companies might have to go back to selling gas at a dollar a gallon. If the standard margin on a gallon of gas was 10%, that meant they would earn only ten cents a gallon instead of thirty cents a gallon. Bad news for oil company executives and shareholders; good news for the 'common' American motorist. This was the classic example of how governments and corporations were so tightly entertwined. For over fifty years, this conspiracy had screwed the American public so that a handful of muckkity-mucks, their executive management staffs, and major shareholders (like Cheney) could reap enormous riches off the backs of hard-working average Americans. It was the perfect illustration of the Reagan "All for One...Me" mentality that had so infused itself into the American consciousness.
From the perspective of the socio-political-economic professors, this "trickle down" theory was the catalyst that had gradually dragged the United States closer to a two-class society, similar to those in Haiti and the Dominican-Republic, where there was a handful of the very, very rich - and the rest of the population, the very, very poor. The strength of the U.S.A. came from its hard-working, prodigious 'middle class'. That 'middle class' was being eroded because of the avarice of a few million people at the top of the food chain, whose appetite for money and power were unsatiated. They couldn't be satisfied with a million or two; they always needed more. So they shipped manufacturing jobs offshore, refused to give in to a respectable minimum wage, and manipulated the geopolitical system of the world all for their own grandiose gratification.
It didn't matter how many innocent people died, how many families found themselves unable to pay their bills, or how many elderly citizens resorted to eating cat food. All that mattered was......more power....and more power meant more money for them. Reagan's trickle-down economics worked as long as no one broke out of the mold. Now, a diminutive, short-haired lady in Indiana threatened to undo all that. It was a dream-come-true for O.U.T.R.A.G.E. followers.

O.U.T.R.A.G.E. membership had now exceeded twelve million Americans. While that still represented only about 5% of the entire surviving U.S. population, it was ample evidence of how people were embracing the movement. Just a few months ago, Oppressed United Taxpayers Revolting Against Government Excess had been a rebel organization viewed by most citizens as an evil, destructive order out to conquer control of the country. Now it was becoming perhaps the brightest symbol of political and social reform the U.S.A. had ever known.
America had denigrated into a sewer of political deceit and social impurity. Fueled by sheer avarice and unbridled lust, the national core had been gnawed at until nothing remained except shreds of excessiveness. Reckless consumerism kept most American families from having any significant savings (most wouldn't be able to survive for more than three months if they lost even one of their jobs). Temeritous government spending had put the United States in debt that would take generations to pay off (calculated in trillions of dollars, most politicians couldn't even comprehend the enormity of such debt, so they just chose, instead, to ignore it and let it continue to pile up).
The O.U.T.R.A.G.E. message was beginning to grab hold of the collective consciousness. The world was a fragile place, not able to sustain all the waste, fraud, fighting, and disorder heaped upon it by stupid, greedy, reckless homosapiens. Whether you believed that the Earth was created from an evolutionary "big bang" process, or God, or "nature", or an 'intelligent designer', you also had to accept the fact that man's carnality had altered the orderly way the world was supposed to work.
Over the most recent centuries, man - within the confines of his own hedonistic, hebetudinous habits - had managed to destroy the goodness, richness, beauty and humanity of the Earth. Yes, there had always been wars. Yes, there had always been greed and sloth. Even in the days of Moses, weak people turned to idolatry for comfort or satisfaction. But only in the last two hundred years had man's flagitous disregard for his own species (and all other species on the planet) overpowered man's appreciation for things ethereal.
The simple beauty of a bird or a butterfly was something most of us failed to notice.
So we replaced those heavenly, delicate values with earthy values: power; money; uninhibited language; casual sex; exotic machinery we used to call 'horseless carriages'; fantasy drug use; and all other kinds of extravagances - including war.
Our sea of humanity had become a cesspool of inhumanity as we followed Ronald Reagan's stalwart message: "All for One, ME..."
The fate of the polar bear or a rare frog in the jungles of the Amazon no longer meant anything to us. The well-being of a poor black child starving to death in Darfur was thousands of miles away from our consciousness. A pile of decaying waste lying in a landfill wasn't of our concern until, of course, it reached our own backyard. Toxic fumes from our HumVees and oil refineries went up in smoke, destroying an ozone layer or a polar ice cap that we couldn't see. Eskimo tribes living in the vast void of the Arctic hinterland seemed strange - and dispensable - to those of us who lived in warm, comfortable houses built out of trees that we cut down at alarming rates each year. A mother trying to raise three youngsters on a small stipend from the government was none of our concern - other than to be critical of her 'living off the government'. The teen-ager, who was sentenced to ten years in jail because he couldn't pay his $40 court costs after being convicted of drug possession, was left to his own devices. Videos of African children, lying in squalor and surrounded by flies, were ignored because those people were just "too lazy to work" (few of us ever bothered to look into the real cause, which - in many cases - was a lack of iodine in their diet, something that could easily be repaired for a few hundred bucks). We loved to listen as Elvis belted out "In the Ghetto" from our $3,000 sound system, but refused to believe that a young man might buy a gun and steal a car out of desperation to escape from his hostile environment - and, God forbid, we ever bothered to try and help him do that. We revered Anna Nicole Smith, Michael Jackson, or O.J. Simpson because of their wealth, even though they were, in actuality, nothing more than a common whore, a pedophile, and a murderer. "Low prices - everyday" at WalMart meant more to us than the fact that WalMart used slave labor, and browbeat its vendors in bankruptcy, just to give us those low prices (while four of Sam Walton's relatives were always among Forbes' magazine's list of the top ten richest people in the world). We went to 'war' so that huge corporations could enhance their bottom lines, oil companies could reap ten-billion-dollar quarterly profits, and the military-industrial complex could remain a strong, viable part of the American 'security' scam. Politicians showed little shame in the crusty and crooked ways they maintained their power base.
It was all this - and much more - that O.U.T.R.A.G.E. intended to change. The slaughter it had unleashed in America on January 17, 2008 was the scratch on the surface. Now the real work was beginning, but it would take years.

Friday, June 13, 2008 turned out to be a lucky day for O.U.T.R.A.G.E.
H. Ross Perot, a self-made billionaire who started his business empire with a borrowed $1,000 from his young bride, made the largest single contribution to the rebel organization: five billion dollars.
Already flush with cash, O.U.T.R.A.G.E. now had substantial financial resources with which to initiate new programs that would dramatically alter the socioeconomic landscape of the United States of America. Perot pointedly emphasized that his gift was to be specifically used to help rebuild the country's infrastructure and restore the delicate ecological balance between man, plants and animals so that all creatures could coexist in the Earth's environment as nature had intended. It was an unusual direction for Perot; most observers, when first learning about the donation, expected that Perot would want the money to be funneled into reforming the putrefied two-party political system, which he abhorred. Americans had multiple choices in everything from cars to cucumbers, except in their voting process. The 'Republicrats' had held a stanglehold on American politics for more than a century, and American voters were reduced to choosing between the lesser of two evils.
Perot explained his reasoning by expressing confidence that O.U.T.R.A.G.E. was already well on its way toward reforming the political processes; he felt more immediate attention needed to be given to the infrastructure and environmental crises facing the country.
Presentation of the check was planned to coincide with the "National Parade of Honor" , and Perot wanted the ceremony to take place in his father's home town of New Boston, Texas, not far from Taxarkana, where Ross had been born.
Jil Adams had led the parade through fourteen states and over fifty cities. When she heard about the change in course, Lynn screamed, "What in hell's name do they expect us to do? Get on our brooms and fly to Texas??" The entourage, which now included dozens of motorhomes, trucks, and busses, and hundreds of people, was in Pueblo, Colorado, where the Pueblo Army Depot just happened to have a fleet of military cargo planes based temporarily. The Bush administration had plans for those planes to take tanks and Humvees to Iran, but those plans never materialized after the January 17 bombings that killed President Bush and most of his cabinet members. O.U.T.R.A.G.E. arranged for the entire parade retinue to be loaded on to the planes and delivered to the Texarkana airport.
Dana and Lynn settled in comfortably with a platoon of Army 'regulars' who hadn't had the privilege of female company since before they began intensive training for Iran. One of Jil's most outstanding talents was her ability to separate 'party time' from 'business'. Whenever she was partying at one of her Midwest bars, Jil would pitch in and help in the kitchen, on the floor, or behind the bar whenever things got busy. She recognized the need for a businesslike approach to this parade mission, but she also understood the need to 'let one's hair down' along the way. By the time the fleet of planes arrived, most had had time to 'sleep it off' and were ready to get back down to business. Lynn, however, found herself entangled with an Army commander who had introduced her to one of the small storage compartments usually intended for soldiers' gear. It was larger than most airplane lavatories, and Lynn and her new suitor found it to be a perfect 'get away' for their private encounters enroute to Texas. Fortunately, they had been left alone long enough to polish off a pint of Jack Daniels; unfortunately, they now found themselves wedged in the compartment and unable to free themselves from the bonds of their hot, sticky, naked bodies. Apparently, they didn't realize how compact - and airless - this little 'love nest' was, and it seemed the more they struggled to free themselves, the more they were unable to extricate themselves from each others' clamy extremities. "Jil," hissed Lynn, "just go on without us. We'll get ourselves out of this mess - eventually." Then she slammed the door of the compartment without any further regard for her perfervid predicament. Coming up for air didn't seem to be the most important thing on the minds of Lynn or her gentleman friend, thirty-one years her junior.
The "Parade of Honor" actually marched the nineteen miles from Texarkana to New Boston, then regrouped at the American Legion Hall before parading through the center of the small town. On the steps of the Legion Post, after the parade was over, Perot presented the check to Colin Powell and John McCain, who had flown in from St. Kitts for the ceremony. It was the first time the two men had stepped foot - together - on American soil since being installed as Interim chief executives of the country.
By the time Jil, Dana, Bob, Cher, Ron, Phil, Janie, Lynn, Patrick, and Cher had returned to their cargo plane, Lynn and Commander Whatever-His-Name-Was had freed themselves, smoothed out their tangled hair, and redressed. Lynn's face was still flush with a sensual satisfaction known only to women capable of such arousing advenures; the commander's eyes were still glazed over, having been oriented into tactical maneuvers not found in any Army combat manual. Jil, Dana, Cher, Janie, Lynn, and Cher looked on with a bizarre blend of quiet disgust - and unrequieted envy.
It was obvious Lynn had introduced this soldier to a whole new concept of "boosting the morale of the troops". It was apparent Lynn gave new meaning to the military term of "head-to-head combat".
Now, the parade contingent ws flown back to Pueblo, where it would resume its march westward.

"Environment" was always a dirty word among politicians. It was an issue they simply didn't want to deal with because it wasn't 'emotional' enough or 'sexy' enough to stir voters. Who wanted to talk about mountains of trash littering the nation's landscape? Who wanted to embrace those 'tree huggers' who believed a rare spotted owl's life was worth saving more than a land developer's opportunity to make a million dollars on a new housing addition? Who cared about global warming? Who had time to separate their trash and take it to a recycling center? How could anyone get worked up about an invisible hole in the ozone layer?
The earthquake in Los Angeles and the hurricane that ripped up the east coast created more environmental problems as rescue workers tried to dispose of all the debris. If there was ever a time to change America's attitude toward environmental issues, it was now. Many communities, prompted by the sheer magnitude of the problem, finally implemented recycling programs that forced residents to separate plastics, paper, metal, magazines, aluminium, newsprint, glass, tin, phone books, and all other recyclable materials. Heavy fines were imposed on those who didn't recycle. Restaurants that used to throw their used cooking oil down the drain were now selling it as an alternative fuel to farmers or truck drivers who could easily convert their vehicles; the only negative was that their vehicles now emitted the smell of french fries instead of the gasoline fumes most people were used to inhaling.
"Infrastructure" was another dirty word politicians avoided. Washington knew the nation's infrastructure was crumbling, but no one inside the beltway wanted to sound that alarm. Again, it wasn't an emotional issue like abortion, gay rights, Social Security reform, or tax cuts. It was difficult to arouse people about the dangers of a dilapidated bridge. Much of the current infrastructure had been built in the late 1930's as part of the FDR's Works Progress Administration (WPA). In an effort to create jobs for Depression-weary society, Roosevelt put three-and-a-half million people to work building 78,000 bridges; 700 miles of airport runways; 116,000 new public buildings; 130 new hospitals; 650,000 miles or new roads; 4,383 new schools; and 9,000 miles of new sewer lines. WPA workers planted 24 million trees, and created 8,000 parks.
Roosevelt's approach was to "percolate-up" economic growth by funding projects which put money directly into the hands of the people who did the work. Ever since Ronald Reagan's "trickle-down" theory, Presidents had funneled federal funds into the greedy outreached hands of CEOs at Bechtel, Halliburton, and other government contractors. The bulk of the money went into the pockets of the owners and executives of those companies; what 'trickle' was left wallowed into the wallets of the workers, usually at minimal wages.
On Thursday, June 12, 2008, Colin Powell and John McCain appeared before the O.U.T.R.A.G.E. televison cameras to announce a new environmental initiative designed to help get the unemployed back to work while, at the same time, helping to restore much of the nation's infrastructure that had finally collapsed from O.U.T.R.A.G.E. bombings, a deadly earthquake, and a string of hurricane damage unlike anything that had ever struck the United States of America. Powell called on the corporate and scientific communities to work together to quickly create new technologies that would rebuild America in short order. 'We did it during World War II," McCain argued, "we can do it now to rebuild this great nation." Assembled with Powell and McCain were noted scientists and entreprenuers who had some unusual ideas. One Michigan man had already developed a slurry made up of human waste, garbage, and debris that could be used to pave roads. He claimed it not only was cheaper than cement or asphalt, but it was more environmentally-friendly, and this concoction would be resistant to constant maintenance since weather and other elements couldn't cause potholes or other damage. A scientist from Massachusetts displayed his idea for a new building material that could easily be manufactured from the mangled debris of aluminum siding, wood, roofing, and drywall that now littered many communities. Agaiin, it was not only safer for the environment, but it was less costly to manufacture, and had been proven to sustain high winds, severe flooding, and other natural disasters.
At one point during the telecast, Powell asked the assembly why these products had never come to market before. The impish reply from the group could best be summed up in one sentence: the huge national conglomerates didn't want anything to do with products that lasted longer. Planned obsolesence was a part of American industry. Having to replace houses, highways, or headphones frequently was good for business.

Money and power are puckish aphrodisiacs.
It seems the more one has, the more one wants.
Nowhere was the covetous need for money and power more prevalent than in the hallowed halls of the U.S. Congress and the executive suites of corporate America. Money and power were the rich man's Viagra: impotent CEOs who couldn't get it up in the bedroom were always able to make it hard for everyone in the Boardroom. Hollywood's lust for money allowed them to use any means possible - vulgarity, violence, murder - to turn a B-rated movie into a billion-dollar blockbuster. When Japanese baseball pro Daisuke Matsuzaka accepted $51.1 million just to let the Boston Red Sox 'negotiate' with him, it was seen as a sporting industry gone berserk. People who spilled hot coffee in their laps thought nothing of suing multi-national corporations for millions of dollars. The U.S.A. had more lawyers per capita than any other nation on Earth. Politicians, who claimed to be public 'servants', satiated themselves on outlandish six-figure salaries, extravagant 'perks' and benefits, and the best health and medical coverage in the world. Movie stars greedily grabbed upwards of twenty million dollars to make a picture that required less than six months out of their lives. Corporations, especially in certain industries, touted out profits in excess of $10 billion per quarter.
Meanwhile, the 'common' citizen suffered. Two working heads of households wasn't enough anymore. Nowadays, just to "make ends meet", many families saw both parents working multiple jobs or running home-based businesses on the side.
Low-incomed families often survived at poverty-scale wages.
'Success' was measured by the kind of car one drove, the number of houses one lived in, the value of one's stock portfolio and offshore investments, or the inventories of Armani suits, imported French wines, and valuable art treasures one stored or displayed. In the U.S. Congress there was an eclectic assortment of wife beaters; pedophiles; white collar criminals; lawyers; psychopaths; homosexuals; liars; adulterers; alcoholics; presecription-drug abusers; gambling addicts; rapists, and - if the truth be known - perhaps even a murderer or two.
You could verbally belittle your wife in public, beat your kids, seclude your aging parents in a distant institution where they would be left to die, or seduce your secretary. As long as you had power and money, it didn't matter much. "Go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and cheat a friend. Do it in the name of Heaven, you can justify it in the end........and, yes, one tin soldier walked away. "Honor" was a word tossed around like a rag doll. "Integrity" was replaced by "damage control". "Truth" became "spin". It didn't matter - as long as you had money and power.
It was this kind of inequality that O.U.T.R.A.G.E. wanted to combat. The concept was not to detract from free enterprise or the capitalistic economic system of the United States. The concept was to give more people more opportunity to share in the wealth. The O.U.T.R.A.G.E. revolution had exterminated most of the 'movers and shakers' in the public and private sectors, particularly those who squandered their prosperity, abused their power, or flaunted their good fortune.

Quirky things happen on the road.
Especially when the 'road crew' consists of some of the O.U.T.R.A.G.E. organization's most colorful volunteers. By now, the "National Parade of Honor" had visited another twenty cities throughout the upper Midwest. On Tuesday, June 10, 2008, the eclectic band of revelers were in Bar Nunn, Wyoming, just outside of Casper, off I-25. A small town of less than 900 people, Bar Nunn was known only for its two most prominent landmarks: the Bar None Inn, a shantytown-type cowboy bar that pretty much allowed anybody in town to belly-up to its bar (thus, the name, Bar None). Housed on the second story of the Bar None Inn was the town's American Legion Post. When the O.U.T.R.A.G.E. motorcade arrived, it seemed that the whole town - and then some - had come out for the festivities. Jil, Lynn and Dana emerged from the O.U.T.R.A.G.E. motorhome first; from the second motorhome came Bob, Cher, Ron, Phil and Janie - all part of the AROB team, all still recovering from Monday's all-nighter in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. The third motorhome was the official vehicle of the Patrick-Patrick team, and Lynn Patrick, Patrick Hamilton, and Cher were no worse for wear. The Scottsbluff VFW had insisted on keeping the bar open until 4:00 a.m. in appreciation for the O.U.T.R.A.G.E. entourage including its little town on the parade tour.
The town manager of Bar Nunn, ironically named Bart Nunn, also happened to be the Commander of the local legion hall. "Welcome," he bellowed, much to the annoyance of those in the O.U.T.R.A.G.E. party who were still hungover. "Our little town is proud to be part of your tour, and we've put together an entire day of celebration. After the 'Parade of Honor' winds its way through town, we'll come back here for a day of drinking, dancing - and dining on some of the best buffalo stew ever to tempt your tastebuds!"
Oh, joy.....just what the O.U.T.R.A.G.E. entourage needed: more drinking, dancing and dining. Jil made a mental note to herself: stock up on Milk Thistle; we're all gonna need it to save our livers! She had just turned 41 ten days ago, and this constant daily grind of sleepless partying and excessive alcohol consumption was beginning to take its toll on even the heartiest O.U.T.R.A.G.E. drinkers. Even Bob Ryan, Ron Oetting, Phil Baker and Patrick Hamilton were beginning to wear down, and Jil thought these guys all had endless capacities for what Baker liked to call 'complimentary alcohol'.
As the cluster of O.U.T.R.A.G.E. visitors entered the Bar None and headed up to the Legion hall, they were stopped by a framed photo at the top of the dark, creaky stairway. Headed "Generations of Valor", the photo depicted a Pearl Harbor survivor embracing a U.S. Marine staff sergeant. What made the picture more poignant was that the Marine had only a hook for the hand he had lost while defusing a bomb in Iraq a few years before. He had also lost a leg and an eye. It was one of the most memorable images of the Iraqi war, one that had floated around the Internet for years. Yet, encased in a large gunmetal gray frame and lighted by a demure gallery light, the picture presented a commanding presence. Underneath the picture in a smaller gunmetal frame was this inscription:
"We truly take a lot for granted.
Forget the football 'heroes' and movie 'stars'.
This is the price of freedom.
Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you: Jesus Christ and the American soldier.
One died for your soul; the other died for your freedom."
Jil, Dana, Lynn, Bob, Cher, Ron, Phil, Janie, Lynn, Patrick and Cher were all obviously moved as they viewed the vivid photograph of the old man hanging on to the young, maimed Marine in an emotional clasp of genuine appreciation. All eleven members of the O.U.T.R.A.G.E. ensemble were stunned by the piercing affectivity of the image. Hangovers and headaches aside, they suddenly realized what their "National Parade of Honor" meant to all the veterans they had met, and to those they were yet to meet before this tour ended on July 4, 2008. Of the eleven, only one (Bob Ryan) had served in the military. The door opened and eleven O.U.T.R.A.G.E. members entered the Legion's large open hall. Here was a place where people drank away their sorrows night after night; where some reminisced about their wartime experiences; and where some just came to have a good time. In front of the huge old oak backbar were hundreds of bottles of every kind of libation one could imagine. Each bottle was adorned with the dog tags of a Wyoming veteran. Some had died in World War I; others had died in more recent conflicts. Nine were deceased veterans of the Iraqi war. "The booze helps us forget," Nunn whispered. "The dog tags help us remember."
To the left of the handsome, polished backbar, quietly seated on folding chairs, were thirty-seven men in full military dress. All thirty seven, Nunn explained, were Wyoming veterans who had been permanently maimed, disabled or injured in Iraq. "They all wanted to be here for this very special event."
Tears welled up in Jil Adams' sparkling blue eyes.
For perhaps the very first time, these O.U.T.R.A.G.E. volunteers came to a sobering realization. Yes, they were on a mission to celebrate the American veteran and honor his contribution to the American dream. Yeah, there was a lot of gaiety that 'came with the territory'. The AROB Group, the Patrick-Patrick team, and Jil, Dana and Lynn had a job to do, but until today they'd never recognized what a significant role their job played in people's lives; lives that had been destroyed by O.U.T.R.A.G.E. bombs, east coast hurricanes, and a massive west coast earthquake. These events had mired the whole country in a kind of murky mudpuddle of despair, grief, and stunned sadness. There was no way Jil, Dana, Lynn, Bob, Cher, Ron, Phil, Janie, Lynn, Patrick or Cher were going to slow their activities. It ws important for the moral of the country. Even though millions of Americans had long disagreed with the Bush administration's crazy Iraqi war, it was still necessary to honor our troops. Jil made another mental note to herself: this 'Parade of Honor' will give glory to all those men and women in uniform. For too many years, Americans idolized athletes who squandered their million-dollar salaries on drugs and debauchery; politicians pissed taxpayers' money away like it was water; movie stars and other celebrities lived life 'high-on-the-hog' while others in America barely got enough to eat; white collar criminals who embezzeled millions from pension funds got their hands slapped while a poor black kid holding two grams of dope went to jail for twenty years; wealthy snobs got enormous tax breaks, or paid no taxes at all, while middle-class Americans were burdened with taxes on taxes; Congressmen got annual automatic pay raises while hard-working low-incomed citizens couldn't even be paid a pverty-level wage; corporations got away with criminal behavior that would have put a 'common' citizen in prison for life.
This was why O.U.T.R.A.G.E. had caused a second American Revolution on January 17, 2008. For equality. For fairness. For "the people" who made this country great without gorging themselves on their own pomposity. Millions of Americans loved their country for what it had been, a rich land of great promise and integrity. Millions despised what they had allowed America to become: a pit of illusive impurity and self-serving grandiosity.
These O.U.T.R.A.G.E. volunteers now understood why they were doing what they were doing. They had moved around the country in celebration, motivating their countrymen and helping to put the nation back on its spiritual track. But in no city had they been as moved as they had been in Bar Nunn, Wyoming. No city had opened their eyes as to the veracity of the O.U.T.R.A.G.E. movement. Bar none.

O.U.T.R.A.G.E. members pressed forward, making plans, recruting new candidates, and preparing for new national elections which were now less than five months away. Some American 'greats' were now heavily involved in this revolutionary group of rebels. Colin Powell, John McCain, Nancy Pelosi, and Ross Perot were among the most notable among leaders. But the true heroes were those millions of O.U.T.R.A.G.E. members who had thrown themselves into a tireless, endless circle of work. As every new member joined, they were asked to participate, and - almost unanimously - they agreed. For most people, they'd spent their lifetimes watching the American two-party system corrode into a cesspool of corruption.
The so-called leaders of the great United States of America had degenerated into a band of drunken, arrogant, worthless sleazebags looking out for their interests and persuing their own pleasures at a terrible cost to taxpayers. Extemporaneous exaltations of right to vote rang hollow as most voters recognized they were only choosing between the lesser of two evils. Politicians didn't see the lack of voter turn-out as a critique of their crookedness; they attributed low voter turn-out as a sign of apathy, and - secretly - appreciated such apathy, knowing that the more people that voted, the better chance they might not see re-election. Voters, on the other hand, viewed it differently. Why make a statement and vote for Republican against Democrat? Not voting at all made a much more profound statement: "I don't like either candidate!" Of course, the holier-than-thou voters always said, "If you don't vote, don't bitch." The non-voter had the right to bitch about anyone who was elected, because that's why (s)he didn't vote: neither candidate was a viable option.
'Republicrats' had melded themselves into one political party. There was no difference. Once elected, a politician spent most of his time raising money to get re-elected. Once entrenched in the ways of government, a politician was honor-bound to become a part of the "let's make a deal" mentality that pervaded inside the beltway. Service to the American people was out of the question; generating campaign money was of prime importance.
One O.U.T.R.A.G.E. panel was charged with writing legislation for a voters' holiday, wherein all registered voters would be given a day off with pay if they voted. By submitting a ballot 'receipt' to their employer to prove they had voted, they would be paid for that day. As an adendum to this legislation, the committee was also a 'think tank' trying to develop ways to fund election campaigns that would be fair and equitable for all candidates. Should campaigns be funded with taxpayer money? Should contributions be limited to individuals? Should there by a maximum contribution of - say - a hundred dollars? Might all campaign contributions be put into a pool that would then be equally divided among all candidates? Should free air time be given to each candidate so that (s)he could reach large audiences of potential voters?
The right to vote was one of America's basic freedoms; still, it had been one that was largely ignored by the preponderance of eligible citizens. Other issues were at hand: if an 18-year-old can join the military and serve the country, why can't that 18-year-old be allowed to vote? If special interest groups were not allowed to support specific candidates, would that then exclude the voices of some members within those groups (union members, for example)? Voters had become a runagate to the voting process, and inadvertently, therefore, allowed the sleazy politicians to twist things into a conundrum of red tape, idiotic regulations and stupid election laws. The whole process needed to be streamlined and simplified. That was all part of the legislation being proposed for a referendum on the November ballot: Article VI was the non-binding resolution that had been introduced on January 28, 2008. It would now become a cornerstone of the new America.

Insurance companies had ridden a roller-coaster ride since the beginning of the century. In 2005, insurers claimed to have "lost" $40 billion in claims from Hurricane Katrina alone. From a simpleton's point of view (such as the one writing this blog), it seemed curious as to how those could be considered "losses". After all, wasn't that the business they were in? They collect money from premium holders, hang on to that money, and pay it out when premium-holders file claims. Apparently the insurance companies don't see it that way: all the money they collect from premium-holders is evidently considered theirs, to do with as they please. Then they raise the cost of insurance, especially to those who have filed claims! It seems the perfect business model: I'll sell you something and claim to protect you in the event of a catastrophe. But, when the catastrophe strikes, I'll refuse to pay your claim - or, if I do pay your claim, I'll raise your rates to cover my "losses". Should't insurance premiums be put in some kind of trust fund and used only to pay claims as necessary??
Social Security had always been called an "insurance" program. Even Time magazine used that term in a cover story regarding the government's plan to phase out Social Security and replace it with private retirement investments. Again, the simpleton's approach was easy: if you don't need financial assistance when you retire, you shouldn't get it. Social Security should be just like any other insurance. You pay car insurance, for example, and hope you never have an accident. If you never file a claim, you don't get your premiums back. Those premiums supposedly went into a pool to help pay the claims of those who needed it. On Thursday, January 24, 2008, Article II was introduced as a resolution to "modify Social Security to ensure more social equality". The whole idea was simple: everyone paid into the plan, but only those who truly needed it would ever file a claim and collect. It seemed ludicrous that millionaires with two luxury cars in the garage and two vacation homes needed a paltry Social Security check to survive. Their argument, of course, was "I paid into it; I am entitled to get it back." In many cases these were the same people who opposed all kinds of other government entitlements, such as welfare for single mothers.
The more viable argument was, "Everyone pays into the pool, and that enables our society to share our wealth with those less fortunate."
But just as insurance companies considered paying out legitimate claims :losses", Social Security recipients with millions of dollars in the bank considered it their birthright to get a monthly check for as long as they lived, which helped them pay the property taxes on their Florida time share. Experts predicted that as many as ten major hurricanes could strike the U.S.A. in 2006, and insurance companies braced for more billion-dollar losses. Instead, there were no major hurricanes in 2006, and St. Paul Travelers Insurance saw third-quarter profits rise to $1.04 billion. The company had paid out only $10 million in claims in 2006, compared with $1.01 billion in claims after Katrina. The rest of those pumped-up premiums were kept and premium-holders received no discounts or rate reductions because there were no hurricanes. A St. Paul Travelers spokeswoman said, "While a below-average hurricane season is certainly a welcome change from the past several years, and perhaps may have some impact upon the market in which we participate, it by no means diminishes our need to properly account for and manage our catastrophe exposures." Allstate posted a $1.55 billion "loss" in 2005 after Katrina, then recovered nicely in 2006 with a third-quarter profit of $1.16 billion. Again, no premium holders who had seen their rates rise after 2005 saw a similar rate decline in 2006. The insurance companies kept the money, paid its executives massive salaries and bonues, built new chrome-and-glass monoliths to themselves, bought, sold or merged with other companies, and pretty much gorged themselves on fiscal recklessness. When the unseasonable hurricane struck the east coast of the United States in March, 2008, the insurers were unprepared for such major devastation. O.U.T.R.A.G.E. was dealing with this event, trying to force those insurers who still were in operation, to pay their insureds' legitimate claims. It was a grueling task, and a fiscal nightmare, especially since so many of the insurance company headquarters had been obliterated on January 17, 2008.
Government regulation of insurance companies was as important as government management of Social Security.
The O.U.T.R.A.G.E. panel chairing the committee regarding this issue was hard-pressed to come up with a compromise that would allow free enterprise to work effectively while still minimizing the callous disregard for frugal corporate business management. Powell and McCain had the same idea almost at the same instant: H. Ross Perot would know how to fix this!
Perot had immediate solutions: he agreed with the resolution to modify Social Security. "After all," he said, "no one knows where they'll be by the time they're ready to retire, especially in these times of volaltile business practices where fraudulent accounting practices, pension fund thefts, and irresponsible management abounds. Too many people end up without any security blanket at the end of their careers, and often due to no fault of their own." Perot blasted the corporate community for its avarice, insensitivity, and corruption. Why not, Perot suggested, turn over all Social Security revenues to reputable insurance companies and allow them to invest it as they invest their own incomes? They could take a modest fee for such services, provide investment instruments, and make Social Security financially sound for generations to come. "The government isn't very good at investment," barked Perot. "Let the professionals handle it, yet make them responsible to the government, which - in this new case - is the people. They can't use these funds to line the pockets of their upper-echelon executive officers; they must be willing to do all this for the public good." It sounded simply enough....

Saturday, June 7, 2008 was a warm day throughout most of America.
O.U.T.R.A.G.E. volunteers in St. Kitts, and across the country, were busy preparing for the upcoming November elections. New political parties were being introduced; new candidates were being put through an orientation program designed to refresh their memories as to the importance of patriotism, selflessness, and servitude. Elementary school Civics courses were part of that program.
Other O.U.T.R.A.G.E. members were still working with rescue and recovery efforts. Still others were concentrating on rebuilding infrastructures, reforming political processes, or promoting specific resolutions that were intended to be on the November 4th ballot as public referendums. The AROB Group was the motivational arm of O.U.T.R.A.G.E., criss-crossing the country in an effort to build a groundswell of support for the O.U.T.R.A.G.E. movement, enhance a new patriotism within the American consciousness, and pump up weary O.U.T.R.A.G.E. volunteers. The 'Rebellion of '08' had wreaked a lot of havoc - and the hurricane and earthquake that followed only served to shatter the American spirit. Many citizens seemed defeated, exhausted. Some lost the will to carry on. It was reminiscent of what millions of Europeans must have gone through during Wolrd War II. Still, perserverance perservered. There were many more millions who were ready to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and start all over again - and, more surprisingly, there were many millions of Americans willing to help others do the same.
The days of "All for One, ME" seemed to have disappeared as people recognized that such a monumental rebuilding task would require a gargantuan team effort. It had been not yet five months since the 'Rebellion o '08' changed the course of America's social, economic, and political dynasties.
"In twenty days, I'll be 78 years old," said the squeaky voice over a secured phone line to Colin Powell's office in St. Kitts. "I might not be the man I used to be, but I'd like to help in any way I can." It was H. Ross Perot, former Presidential candidate in 1992, vocal critic of dirty politics and inept corporate bunglings, and self-made billionaire who started out as a star salesman for IBM, before the behemoth company was affectionately known as 'Big Blue". Powell embraced Perot's offer of assistance, and invited him to St. Kitts for a high-level conference with other O.U.T.R.A.G.E.volunteers. Even at his advanced age, Perot had the vigor and vitality of a man in his fifties. He was full of great ideas, had enormous financial resources, and plenty of influence in political and business circles.
Perot acknowledged that he was wary about the O.U.T.R.A.G.E. organization, and kept his distance for months, just to see "what you guys were really up to". Now convinced that O.U.T.R.A.G.E. had the best interests of his beloved United States at heart, Perot wanted to jump in and be a part of it. Powell and McCain knew how much Perot liked the limelight, and also remembered what a phenomenal presence he cast over the '92 elections. He had won 19% of the popular vote after putting together a band of political rebels in a relatively short period of time. He had scared the beJesus out of many career politicians. The question was: how could O.U.T.R.A.G.E. best use Perot's extensive resources and multiple talents?