The company I work for at the airport employs women from the U.S. territory American Samoa; I have to say these women are quite capable of holding their own with any man when it comes to performing manual labor. We probably could have used one or two at my former place of employment, looking back now on that experience. I called a former colleague to find out what was going on there, since I had heard the warehouse was closing. Apparently it is still inching along, the near empty warehouse staffed by a skeleton warehouse crew. The only employment sector that didn’t take a major hit was the one upstairs, where in good times it constituted 50 percent of the payroll, and now about 80 percent. The downstairs people were always the ones who had to make the sacrifices, to be under a constant cloud of paranoia and uncertainty, to take the blame for any failure in the business.

But this digresses from the point I want to make. I was given the names of the warehouse workers who were still there; all were female save for one male who was hired after I left. It caused me to remember how in my last few years there was this undercurrent of discontent among the male warehouse employees. When things were riding high, the warehouse manager was given a certain amount of authority in who he wanted working for him; he seemed to take a shine to people who had an assertive attitude, since these people tended to take their work seriously. When sales started to tumble (especially when competitors began snagging the company’s best sales reps), the Chief Operating Officer, a floozy-looking blond who I originally took for trailer trash (her bigotry bore that out), decided to take control of the minutiae of warehouse operations. The manager didn’t cooperate, so after he was gone, a guy with no management experience who could be controlled was brought in, along with his worthless daughter and her equally worthless boyfriend—whose parents had some money and threatened to cut him out of their will unless he got a job.

The COO was also one of those people with a certain amount of gender sensitivity, and when someone like that is in power, politics tends to take precedence over productivity—and physical wellbeing. The discontent was over the fact that the health of males in the warehouse was something the COO did not take into consideration in her hiring approvals; women had priority. If all there was to warehouse work was picking and packing, this would not be an issue; but we routinely had 40-60 foot shipping containers with up to a thousand 40-60 lbs boxes that had to be loaded or off-loaded, and unless we had temps who did that work during the summer, it was the five or six full-time male employees who were called off their regular responsibilities (which were stressful enough) to perform this function, sometimes all day. None of us were what you would call “young men,” but not old either.

The result was as follows: One man had a stroke, before he died of cancer; another man had a mild stroke, and went blind in one eye; another man developed Parkinson’s right before our eyes in a very short time. Another man had a heart attack; I recall the last time I saw him, the company gave him a rather belated farewell luncheon so that we could also see him in his last throes. The president of the company toasted him, and enjoined him to give a speech; unfortunately, he was so far gone, that speech escaped him altogether. Watching him make a painful effort to speak and failing, I decided to end this pathetic, embarrassing spectacle myself by initiating an applause. As for myself, I worked for the last three years as the shipper, usually by myself. Whenever I had to race to measure, weigh, manifest and label hundreds of packages in a few hours, and load them onto trucks myself, I would find myself needing to sit down, experiencing a sensation of lightheadedness. I could feel that my pulse was beating a few hundred beats a minute; the strange thing was that I wasn’t breathing hard, and hardly felt my heart beating. Had I continued like this—well, I don’t want to think of such things.

It’s no use laying blame for these things that all happened in the five years worked for that company. I am just saying that there are reasons why men have shorter life spans than women.

Why would an "American FAMILY Association" have any particular knowledge on military affairs?

Why not have a dentist?

Dr. Hasan wrote about suicide is never allowed in the Muslim faith. I believe that Dr. Hasan was so distressed about the possibility of being required to become active in a war against people of his faith that he wanted to end his life. To justify an act that was repugnant to him and against his beliefs the only out was to declare a Jihad against his own comrades in the name is Islam and thus die by being shot by the police. This would allow him to enter heaven as a martyr.

@ AZAFVET - Let’s reinstate the draft and make those of the Muslim faith exempt.

Seems to me that might incentivize conversion to Islam. That's not really your goal, is it?

Actually, I was trying to be sarcastic.

In regard to the conversation with Bryan Fisher, if the Army should be concerned with Muslims in its ranks and expelling them, why stop there? After all, Timothy McVeigh served in the first Gulf War, and that wasn't even a real "war." I remember a soldier who posted his gang colors on the wall of his barracks' room, and no one told him to take it down; I recall that "respect" was an issue with him, and there was always the suggestion of menace and violence if he thought you were "disrespecting" him. More recently, it has been noted that the Army was relaxed its standards in regard to "moral" character, meaning that recruits with Nazi tattoos are not questioned about their beliefs; the SPLCenter has reported the infiltration of the military by white supremacists, especially on the airborne bases like Bragg and Benning.

In the healthcare debate Republicans have been hysterical about government bureaucrats dictating what healthcare procedures Americans can receive. Now before legislation is even enacted they are doing that very thing with abortion coverage. The Republicans must have been warning us about themselves.

Thom invites conservatives on his show. My only suggestion to Thom is to please not let these conservatives fillibuster the question or a response with their babble and rambling of nonsense.

Thom, you solved the problem today... No fed abortions... no viagra. Start making protest signs. .It's a quick fix.

loretta,

:)