Rudeness in the Workshop

If I am rude in defense of someone who has been the unwilling victim of rudeness what does that make me?

Corps Places Faulty Pumps in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS - The Army Corps of Engineers, rushing to meet President Bush's promise to protect New Orleans by the start of the 2006 hurricane season, installed defective flood-control pumps last year despite warnings from its own expert that the equipment would fail during a storm, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.................

The pumps are now being pulled out and overhauled because of excessive vibration, Corps officials said. Other problems have included overheated engines, broken hoses and blown gaskets, according to the documents obtained by the AP.................

The drainage-canal pumps were custom-designed and built under a $26.6 million contract awarded after competitive bidding to Moving Water Industries Corp. of Deerfield Beach, Fla. It was founded in 1926 and supplies flood-control and irrigation pumps all over the world.

MWI is owned by J. David Eller and his sons. Eller was once a business partner of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in a venture called Bush-El that marketed MWI pumps. And Eller has donated about $128,000 to politicians, the vast majority of it to the Republican Party, since 1996, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

MWI has run into trouble before. The U.S. Justice Department sued the company in 2002, accusing it of fraudulently helping Nigeria obtain $74 million in taxpayer-backed loans for overpriced and unnecessary water-pump equipment. The case has yet to be resolved.

Entire Article, NW Ind. Times


So the nation has, in effect, re-hired a company which they are already suing for fraud.

I'd do that, too, wouldn't you?

Especially if Jeb Bush was a friend of mine.

Any Man - revision # 1

Any Man

Remember how when we were young, we walked
outside the rapist's house, back and forth, to
and fro, until at last our parents called
us in? My mother said, "You're teasing fate."
Your father said, "You're tempting man." But we
were ten - and curious - and sex and rape
were two small words we did not understand.


But now that I've been raped by love, and you,
my friend, by marriage vows, we comprehend.
The face that sometimes hides inside a closed
suburban home - where fancy curtains can
not keep a secret kept - is someone's son
and someone's spouse and that his name may quite
well be the whispered name of any man.